Comics storytelling 21: Establishing a cue

OK, this one is both kinda advanced and easy to understand at the same time. Mort Walker needed to establish that the sound WHOOSH! meant "extremely fast" to emphasize that Beetle is a lazy goof-off who'll only work when under close supervision by a superior officer. Beetle moving extremely fast out of General Halftrack's office shows this, and also that he's the consummate goof-off – when it's necessary, he can move so fast that nobody realizes he's been lazing about all morning.

But while that is a decent joke, playing to one of the strip's strengths – character consistency – it's not strong enough to carry three panels, of which two are some serious build-up. However, with the added cue of the General turning his head, you learn in the final panel that Beetle isn't just fast, he's as fast as a jet fighter airplane – and you have to admit, that's pretty darn fast.

This is an example of things coming in threes in comics, a principle I've used myself when I wrote a few scripts for the Swedish humor comic 91:an. In a couple of stories, I needed to establish a pattern in order to break it towards the end of the story, hopefully producing surprise and laughter in the reader. The principle is the same: First, something happens, second, something more happens, conforming to a pattern with the first event; you need two events to establish the pattern, as one event could be just a random occurrence. Once you have the pattern, you can either break it for comedic effect, as I did, or use it to cue the reader in about something, as Walker does in this strip. Using the General's head-turning as a signal (or "sign", if you're feeling particularly semiotic today) of "extremely fast", Walker conveys the speed of Beetle's movement in the last panel in a sufficiently immediate manner to enhance the joke from "somewhat amusing" to "laugh-worthy".

A lot of comic strip humor works on this principle – to a larger extent in older times, when artists had more space to work in, I believe – using the first panels to build up towards the reader immediately understanding the gag in the final panel, thus enhancing the joke. It's worth keeping an lookout out for when reading humor comics; what has the artist done to make sure I "get" the joke in the final panel? Was it a joke that took a fair bit of work on his part?

Comics storytelling 20: Speech – tone and tempo

Here, the creators of Zits, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, use a combination of body language and speech characteristics to bring home the utter and total desperation of poor Amy when her boyfriend Rich has left her. I'll just concentrate on the speech part, though.

First, note the shading at the bottom left of Amy's speech balloons (except the final one, when she's blissfully reunited with her boyfriend). This is an indication of the darkness of her mood, and how it impacts her tone of voice – a rather impressive thing in a purely visual medium to so effortlessly let you immediately understand that.

Second, note the spacing of Amy's words in the second panel. By separating them into almost-independent balloons, the Zits creators puts additional emphasis on them, allowing each of them to sink in fully with the reader before going on to the next one.

Of course, the joke is that Rich has only abandoned her for a couple of minutes to go to the bathroom, as subtly indicated by the Men's room door in the final panel, making all that drama that was so expertly signaled by Scott & Borgman in the previous pages seem a bit... exaggerated.

Paul Ronge: När Janne Josefsson ringer

Paul Ronge är PR-konsulten som sadlade om från journalistiken till att lära företag, politiker och kändisar hur de ska hantera media och mediastormar. I När Janne Josefsson ringer. Så klarar du pressen börjar han med att förklara för läsaren hur journalister och journalistik fungerar, hur man som journalist alltid har en vinkel som är anpassad för den tänkta läsekretsen, och hur den vinkeln i stor utsträckning styr hur en story kommer att behandlas.

Är du en vanlig medborgare som kanske har råkat illa ut, ja, då tilldelas du rollen som "David" och kan räkna med att reportern är på din sida. Är du sakkunnig inom ett område och används som faktaförmedlare tilldelas du rollen "Expert", och kan räkna med tämligen underdåniga, kunskapssökande frågor. Men är du en makthavare, då ska du inte bli förvånad om vinkeln är att du framställs som en "Goliat" som ska "ställas till svars".

Med lång erfarenhet som skrivande journalist, till stor del på kvällstidningar, kan Ronge konsten att skriva en flyhänt och lättfattlig sakprosa, och det går snabbt att ta sig igenom boken. Många anekdoter från både hans journalistiska och konsultverksamhet samt från svensk nutidshistoria illustrerar och förtydligar resonemangen, och det är inte svårt att ta till sig hans ibland generella, ibland mycket specifika råd.

Intressant är att Paul Ronge talar sig varm både för att journalister ska granska företag och myndigheter och för att dessa ska ha rätt till att behandlas rättvist och med respekt. Han tar avstånd från Janne Josefssons och Uppdrag Gransknings mycket medvetet regisserade och oftast framgångsrika försök att slakta dem som de tar sikte på – men respekterar samtidigt Josefsson för att denne tror på och är skicklig i det han gör. Ronge anser inte att man vare sig som politiker eller företagsrepresentant har rätt att hålla sig undan från reportrar; däremot har man rätt att ta sig tid att analysera en situation så att man har en viss kontroll innan man möter journalisterna och deras frågor.

De viktigaste råden Ronge ger (enligt min bedömning, förstås; jag vet inte om han skulle hålla med om den) går i korthet ut på följande:

• Tag dig tid att ta reda på vad saken gäller när du kontaktas av en reporter. Du behöver inte svara på några frågor omedelbart; det går alldeles utmärkt att säga "jag behöver sätta mig in i frågan, kan jag ringa upp dig om tjugo minuter".

• Det är inte fel att begära att få kontrollera dina citat innan en artikel går i tryck, i alla fall om det är en reporter du inte känner sedan tidigare så att du inte riktigt vet vad du har att vänta dig. (Säger reportern då att det tyvärr inte går av tidsskäl kan man alltid vänligt be honom/henne att i så fall återkomma när det finns bättre med tid.)

• Inför en intervju, speciellt om man ska framträda i radio eller TV, bör man gå igenom vad man vill ha sagt och ta fram upp till 3-4 budskap som man vill ha fram. (Mer kommer det ändå inte att bli tid för.) Börja dessutom med det viktigaste av dem, för man kan inte räkna med att man kommer att få chansen att ta upp dem alla. Bli dock inte så fokuserad på dem att du bara rabblar din innantilläxa oavsett vad du får för frågor, för det ser bara dåligt ut. (Jag väljer att illustrera det med ett aktuellt amerikanskt exempel i stället för det klassiska svenska exemplet, finansminister Bosse Ringholm, som Ronge använder i boken.)


• I krissituationer bör företag ha ett kristeam som koncentrerar sig på att a) ta reda på vad som egentligen har hänt, b) hjälpa personer som kan ha drabbats, c) ta reda på i vilken grad man är ansvarig, d) titta på hur problemet ska åtgärdas och vad som ska göras för att det inte ska upprepas, e) prata med media. Själva problemet har företräde; seriösa journalister respekterar att man inte kan lägga tid och energi på mediehantering innan man faktiskt tagit hand om en akut situation. Däremot kan man inte lägga locket på; kan man inte komma med några besked i det tidiga skedet så talar man helt enkelt om att man inte kan det men återkommer när man vet mera.

• Det räcker inte att "göra en pudel". Bara att säga att man är jätteledsen för att något blivit fel är inte nog; man måste också vidta åtgärder för att rätta till det som blivit fel, och för att det inte ska upprepas. Först då kan man gå vidare, och ibland räcker inte ens det. Ronge går snabbt igenom ett antal uppmärksammade fall med kända personer i mer eller mindre makthavande ställning som gjort en pudel. Inte i något av fallen har det räddat dem; de som rett ut situationen har gjort det i första hand genom övertygande åtgärder för att rätta till situationen.

Det här är en bok som är väl värd att läsa; den ger en hel del information på ett lättsamt sätt, och hjälper läsaren att förstå hur det journalistiska medialandskapet fungerar. (Själv uppskattar jag bland annat bekräftelsen på mina misstankar om hur genomregisserade Uppdrag Gransknings "avslöjanden" är, och hur oemottaglig redaktionen är för information som talar emot den vinkel de redan bestämt sig för när Janne Josefsson skickas ut med mikrofonen i hand.) Ronge har ibland gjort ett en smula ytligt intryck på mig när jag sett honom i TV, kanske beroende på att han alltför nära följt sitt eget råd om ett fåtal budskap som ska upprepas, men den här boken upplever jag som lättläst men inte ytlig.

(Dock ska sägas att han, förmodligen som en eftergift till den tidsanda som rådde när boken gavs ut 2009, har slängt in ett par fullkomligt onödiga sidor om retorikens grunder som bara stoppar upp bokens berättarflöde, och dessutom har klistrat på en till intet förpliktande underrubrik på framsidan: "Den första svenska boken om medieretorik" – vilket förmodligen inte ens är sant.)

Rekommenderas.

Edit: Efter att ha sett Paul Ronge uttala sig i en fråga under 2015 där han framstod som ett självgott, drygt arsle, tar jag härmed tillbaka ovanstående rekommendation.

Otto Soglow: Cartoon Monarch. Otto Soglow and the Little King

IDW has done it again; published a thick volume reprinting an American classic comic strip. This time, it's Otto Soglow's "The Little King". At first, the completist in me was rather disappointed that they had decided to do a "selected strips" (or, more precisely, "selected Sunday pages") volume -- albeit a 430-page "selected strips" volume -- instead of a "complete works" but for reasons I'll get more into later, I think that was the right choice.

Jared Gardner has written an excellent foreword, a very informative essay about Soglow's life and career, from his early years in the recent-immigrants neighborhood Yorkville on Manhattan in 1900 as a child of Jewish German immigrants. His father was a house painter and his mother got occasional household jobs. Otto grew up with youth gangs and movies, which he loved. He had to help provide for his family from his early teens, but soon found that he wanted something more than the menial jobs available in Yorkville. He was way too short to get a job in the movies, med he loved drawing, so...

He got a job painting flowers on baby rattles and did evening studies at the Art Students League of New York. Then, he started to get cartoons published in leftist magazines like The New Masses in a dark, heavy style.

Meanwhile, The New Yorker was founded in 1925, and editor Harold Ross wanted to distinguish its look from other, similar magazines by using a simpler, more modernist style of cartooning. Soglow was in the process of simplifying his style, and found a place at the new magazine with his new style and his somewhat surrealistic cartoons. By 1930, Soglow had made a name for himself, and was getting job offers. In 1930, the Little King also made his first appearance in the pages of The New Yorker. As Gardner puts it, "the Little King in The New Yorker played on the surprise of seeing a man with all the privilege and power in the world longing for a simple life of beer and dancehalls".

The Little King was a hit, and comics lover and King Features Syndicate owner William Randolph Hearst noticed. Also, at the time, comics advertising was starting to take off, which was a potential lucrative source of money. Soglow got an offer from Hearst, created a similar strip called The Ambassador until he'd be free of contractual Little King obligations to The New Yorker a year later, and launched The Little King in September 1934.

There's more to the foreword than that, but I can't jolly well steal it all for a blogpost. It's well worth reading, though, so do seek it out.

So why am I quite content with merely a representative collection of The Little King strips instead of a complete, multi-volume collection? Because it isn't all that great a strip.

Don't get me wrong – it's consistently amusing, like when the king joins a riot against the king so's to not be recognized as the King, when he commands out the Gurads so's he can have a full-scale snowball-war,  or when he, leading a parade, gets himself a can to kick down the street, etc. Also, Soglow, much like Ernie Bushmiller, seems to go out of his way to make his gags as visual as possible. However, the king-as-regular-guy-or-going-against-expectations-of-his-high-office basis of the strip doesn't hold for the full 428 pages for me, and Soglow's style is a tad too simple for my tastes – while I love the simplicity of a strip like Peanuts, Schulz had a dynamc, lively ink line that Soglow lacks. Thus, there isn't anything other than the gags to liven up the strip, and sometime around page 300, they weren't enough for me anymore.

Ookle the Dictator is more cartoonish than evil. August, 1940.

There is however a rather interesting sequence of pages starting in May 1940, when a junkman named Ookle plays cards with the diminutive monarch and wins the kingdom from him. From then on, he titles himself "Ookle the dictator" and starts bossing the king around. Later, his role seems to be downgraded to that of a high official in his majesty's government, but the strips where there is genuine conflict between the two are probably the most interesting of the book, with their connection to the current events at the time.

Anyway, worth reading because it is a classic, and for Jared Gardner's excellent foreword. So big thanks to IDW for their consistently high quality reprints of old classics!

(Here is a more enthusiastic review of the book.)

I did this!

Of course, as usual most of the credit belongs with the Norwegian editorial team, but still.

Showcase Presents: All-Star Squadron Vol 1

Roy Thomas loves comics. He also loves the comics he grew up reading, and he tries to spread knowledge about them and comics in general through his excellent Alter Ego magazine, published by TwoMorrows Publishing. He's also revisited and revived many of his old favorites – like The Invaders for Marvel, and All-Star Squadron for DC, and now DC has relaunched the first year-and-a-half's worth of stories in a 500+ pages Showcase volume.

Thomas is pretty much a legend after having created just oodles and oodles of comic book successes, so I'm sure he and his reputation will survive a bad review from me – which is a good thing, because I think his writing absolutely kills this volume.

It's not like the Bob Kanigher writing killing Showcase volumes like The Losers or The Haunted Tank, by constantly rehashing plots again and again until I as a reader am utterly exhausted by it (and wondering how he could get away with it, until I remember that he had brilliant artists like Russ Heath and Joe Kubert – who by the way contributes a bunch of very nice covers in this volume – hiding all that sloppy, clichéd writing behind their beautiful artwork); on the contrary, Thomas keeps throwing plot development after plot development at the reader, keeping up a constant barrage of story ideas and villains at the reader.

Instead, the problem seems to be that he learned his writer's trade from Stan Lee and added his own didactic touch to it (he was originally a teacher). The character's lines are way too frequently dragged down by all the exposition Thomas crams their balloons with, about what has occurred before, what is happening now, who the character is, etc. A lot of it is meant to be characterization but since it's mainly a lot of clichéd phrases, the result is that the character comes across as an incredibly self-absorbes bore fond of pointing out the bleedin' obvious. The dialogues often become nighunreadable to me, and I also get quite tired of the "Good thing I remembered to…"-type thought balloons sprinkled throughout the volume.

Too much of the dialogue comes across as leaden,
weighed down by all the exposition it has to carry.

Which is a crying shame, because if it hadn't been for that, I'd probably have enjoyed the romping action and the constant effort to create a working continuity for DC's venerable old heroes. (In fact, right now, writing this review, I get to thinking of Grant Morrison, who actually is not so far from a Roy Thomas himself with his obvious love of the heroes he writes about – only with a modern writer's sensibilities, thankfully.)

Also, the art is excellent, mostly. The first couple of chapters are pencilled by Rich Buckler and look pretty good (which they should if he, as it seems to me, cribbed a lot of his figures from Neal Adams), and after Adrian Gonzales takes over, it still looks great even though he isn't quite as adept at conveying movement in his figures.

And the main reason that the art looks so consistently great is… Jerry Ordway.

Some very nice superhero art by Adrian Gonzalez and Jerry Ordway.

Ordway is one of the best inkers I know of. He made George Pérez's (somewhat fidgety) pencils look gorgeous in Crisis on Infinite Worlds, and he makes most of All-Star Squadron (a couple of stories aren't inked by him) look absolutely great. I was so sorry to see him start doing pencils, not because he sucked at it, but because he enhanced the pencils of anybody he applied his magic pen or brush to. It's a crisp, strong line with plenty of powerful blacks and also plenty of sensitive feathering, resulting in beautiful renderings of faces and figures. I'm happy that the cheap Showcase volumes aren't in color, allowing me to enjoy Ordway's inks without any colors obscuring them.

Anyway, I can't really recommend this book as I found it to be too much of a chore to wade through Thomas's prose, but if that doesn't faze you, you're in for some rollicking adventures and some great artwork. Best of luck to you.

Jan Teorell: Determinants of Democratization. Explaining Regime Change in the World, 1972-2006

This is an excellent book looking at the factors behind increasing democratization in the seventies-naughts era. I'm happy to see quantitative methods being used for this, but one should keep in mind that the effects seen in an investigation like this aren't going to be huge, so just because something's quantitative doesn't make it a certainty, and also that quantitative methods won't cover everything, so case studies of single countries are still going to be necessary. What follows is basically the notes I took while reading the book, not any in-depth thinking on my part but mostly cribbing it straight from Teorell. I'll post it anyway, though, in the hopes that it'll offer some knowledge and perhaps inspire you to read the book – it's not a hard read.

Didactically, the book is well composed. In the introduction, Teorell outlines his study and his results, spends chapter one looking att democratization theories including his own, chapters 2-6 looking more in detail into various variables affecting democratization to a larger or smaller extent, negatively or positively, and the final seventh chapter summarizing his results. You read the summary and the introduction, and you basically have the information you need – the rest isn’t “just commentary”, exactly, but you get a whole lot from those two chapters, which is very efficient.

Teorell looks at what he calls the "Third wave of democratization". The first wave came post-WWI, the second post-WWII. However, authoritarian regimes in esp. the Middle East and Northern Africa have stayed intact during this third wave – which also causes some problems when it comes to interpreting the results, as it turns out.

As noted, the book starts with looking at various democratizations theories. Lipset’s (1959) modernization theory is about a general trend toward furthered economic development, deepened industrialization and educational expansion. The “transition paradigm” has democratization coming from above through the strategic skills (and luck) of elites maneuvering under profound uncertainty. This would make systematic study and explanation difficult. The “social forces” tradition sees democratization as triggered by mass mobilization from below, mainly the working class. The “economic approach“ has the rich granting democratic institutions as a concession to the poor, after their fear of redistribution has weakened as a result of eroding economic inequality.

Teorell uses a large number of countries (165 of them) evaluated over the period 1972-2006 on a large number of variables. One of his independent variables is modernization, but a more complicated operationalization of it than merely GNP per capita, which is often used as a proxy variable. Theorell’s “modernization” variable is composed of things like industrialization, education, urbanization and the spread of communications technology.

So what are Teorell's results and conclusions? Basically as follows:

1. Modernization does affect democratization positively. Mainly, it does so by hindering authoritarian reversals rather than actively promoting democratization. The most effective component of the modernization variable appears to be “media proliferation”. As access to newspapers, TV and radio spread among the people, anti-democratic coups appear to get a harder time succeeding or being initiated. (And this might help explain the “stop backslides” effect – you need a certain extent of freedom of expression for the media to be able to work in this manner.)

2. Economic upturns help sustain authoritarian regimes. Economic crises help transitions to democracy. Drawing from case studies, Theorell explains this by deteriorating economic performance driving a wedge between the regimes and the economic elites, leading to the latter withdrawing their support for the regimes, and between hardliners and softliners within the regime. Deteriorating economic conditions also fuel the mobilization of the masses against the regime.

3. Mass protest. Mass protest does not promote democratization generally. Only peaceful demonstrations effectively promote democratization; violent means such as rioting and armed rebellion does not. As can be expected, case studies show violence frequently being a means used by marginalized groups, so authoritarian regimes can “close ranks” and “legitimately” use repression, whereas peaceful mass protest can mobilize larger segments of the population. Confronting such protests with violence leads to moral outrage and further mobilization, as well as international reactions.

4. Democratization of neighbors seems to positively influence democratization. It may inspire the population and shows the elites that democratization doesn’t lead to disaster. Regional organizations may also promote democratization among their member states. These mechanisms seem to be on somewhat weaker evidence, though, with neighbor democratic diffusion being mostly a Sub-Saharan Africa phenomenon.

5. Teorell finds no systematic effects of colonialism, though.

6. Nor does he find democratization to have ensued from increased economic equality.

7. Nor does heterogeneous populations seem to have hurt democracy.

8. Having a predominantly Muslim population or being dependent on foreign trade are factors correlated with less democratization, but Theorell has a hard time finding explanations for these findings; at the micro level, you don't really find any differences in the democratic mindsets of Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslim “gap” seems to be mainly a consequence of a strong contribution to that effect from the Middle East and North Africa, however, which might be a clue.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the "Muslim population" finding is an artifact from the choice of time period (which is pretty much decided by what is possible, you have to have a cutoff date somewhere if you're ever going to be able to actually do your statistics), as democratization movements have been making their presence known in the Mideast-North Africa region lately. I also think the regimes have been exploiting the Israel-Palestine conflict to redirect the public's attention from the problems of their own countries, which may perhaps contribute to the result; "you can't fool all of the people all of the time".

Teorell also discusses the international trade result, which goes against some theories. Contrary to what one would expect from the classical “dependency theory”, countries with trade geared towards the capitalist core of the world system have not been less likely to democratize than others in the same category, which would seem to speak against. My own interpretation – as the previous one, unhampered by any deeper knowledge or insights into the actual issue, of course – is that regimes and elites that can siphon off money from the international trade don't have the same need to enter into a democratic compact with its population as one that doesn't.

9. Also, smaller countries seem  a bit more likely to democratize. Perhaps a smaller country doesn't offer leaders the same possibilities of playing various factions or parts of the country against each other to stay on top?

10. An economy dependent on oil blocks democratization.

11. Freedom from state incursion in the economy blocks autocratic reversals.

12. Income inequality showed no effect on democratization.

13. Foreign intervention sometimes works, sometimes not.

14. Multiparty autocracies democratize to a larger extent than single-party ones, both in and of themselves and in response to popular protest and to short-term economic downturns.

Anyway, an interesting book, and one that I recommend to anyone interested in these issues.

Showcase Presents: The Spectre

When I was a kid, the coolest DC character I knew was the Spectre. I didn't get to read a whole lot about him, only when he occasionally guested the JLA in their swedish comic book Gigant, but he had this cool outfit with a cool cowl, an awesome costume with an awesome color scheme, and he had these totally awesome!! magical powers to boot. He could do almost anything – which of course probably made the character very difficult to write into the stories.

Anyway, it was rare that I got to read The Spectre, but this Showcase edition has over 600 hundred pages of him, so it's safe to say it's a Spectre-palooza. The near-omnipotent Spectre has been tasked with punishing criminals here on Earth before he can come to his final rest, and he resides within the body of murdered but resurrected cop Jim Corrigan… and judging from how Corrigan is depicted in the first half-dozen stories (and frequently in the later stories as well) it's no wonder he got killed, because he does some absolutely atrocious police work, taking ridiculous and unnecessary risks entirely without backup.

In the final analysis, the balance attempted with Corrigan doing the job in the physical world and the Spectre taking care of the magical/spiritual plane of existence doesn't really work, as the Spectre is just too powerful; there simply is little rational, non-contrived reason for Corrigan to be involved in solving the cases at all, as the Spectre ought to be able to wrap them up himself in no time.

There are many versions of the Spectre in this collection, Gardner Fox's, Neal Adams's, Michael Fleisher's, Jim Aparo's, Paul Kupperberg's, etc. All of them have their problems, but only some of them have strengths.

Gardner Fox's 1966-67 Spectre stories, which see him moving from the pages of Showcase to his own book, suffer from Fox being unable to resolve the problem with the Spectre's near-omnipotence in a satisfactory manner. Instead, all the foes he goes up against are inexplicably as or more powerful than him, and it seems to me that Mr. Fox just couldn't come up with stories (or foes) worthy of the character. It's a bit like Dr. Strange with less imagination. A plus, though, for the fine Murphy Anderson artwork and its beautiful feathering. Then, in 1968, Neal Adams takes over the art, and on two stories, the writing chores as well. The stories actually improve – plus the artwork becomes so gorgeous that you're willing to overlook any weaknesses in the plots. Keep in mind that the late sixties Adams isn't just the gorgeous linework; his command of the human figure is also very, very impressive. The book is almost worth getting just for the art on these four stories. Almost.

Neal Adams wrote this story about an evil being possessing an innocent kid's body, and holding the child
hostage while destroying the world. Surprisingly (since I'm not a huge fan of Adams's later writing efforts)
this one works quite well – in fact, better than most of the other stories in the book.

Towards the end of the Spectre's own book, in 1969, DC seems to not know what to do with the character, and he becomes more of the host of a horror anthology book reminiscent of the old EC horror titles. It doesn't work.

Next he resurfaces in Adventure Comics in 1974, written by Michael Fleisher and drawn by Jim Aparo. The Fleisher stories are disturbing; they aren't all that concerned with logic, but concentrates on two things: showing sadistic, evil criminals and showcasing the sadistic means the Spectre uses to kill them off. (Apparently, this development had something to do with editor Joe Orlando getting mugged.) It is seriously off-putting, but Aparo's art has probably never been better. It is strong, moody, with dark shadows and an ink line that sparkles with energy. Seriously, it is great, and together with the Adams artwork earlier it makes this volume worth getting – it contains not-quite a dozen Aparo stories. (An added bonus is actually that you get the stories in black and white, with no colors distracting from Aparo's dynamic art – unlike the recent collection of his Brave and the Bold work.)

The volume is rounded out by some lesser lights' versions of the Spectre, including some muddled stories by Paul Kupperberg, from I don't think I've ever read a story that was well put together, or in fact anything other than a bunch of clichés thrown together somewhat haphazardly.

Recommended? Well, no, not really. But there are about 250 pages of gorgeous Neal Adams and Jim Aparo artwork in this book, and those pages are well worth your time.

Li Österberg: Nekyia

Two mortals descend into the netherworld. One, a philosopher, wants to get some answers on how a good life should be lived. The other is his cousin the necromantic priestess, whom he needs to help him enter the realm of Hades. Simultaneously, the trickster and messenger god Hermes has an errand down to the nether realm, and accompanies a sort of "lost" soul: a young woman, Timareta, who's died in childbirth but doesn't realize that she's dead. The kindly Hermes comforts her as best he can (among other things, pickpocketing her obol from Charon and giving it back to her) but she feels very much out of place, and can't understand what's happening to her.

Li Österberg's Nekyia – funny, sad, and charming.

Hermes brings his message to Hades, a gaunt, somewhat misanthropic figure who doesn't appreciate his cheerful nephew, nor Zeus' invitation to a family gathering. (Hermes, on the other hand, doesn't really appreciate the attention he gets from Hades' three-headed dog… and from the avenging Furies, who think Hermes is a real cutie.) Hades is perhaps even less appreciative of the nosy philosopher Theodoros, who arrives to ask about what the good life is – as Hades says to the priestess Melito, "I'm the lord of the dead, what do I care about the living?".

When you also add two dead heroes (who just happen to be sons of Zeus with mortal mothers) to the mixture, there is plenty of opportunities for conflicts and interactions, and Österberg uses them well, managing to be both funny and thought-provoking in the process. As is a frequent theme in her comics, this story is very much about being an outsider – even Hades, the lord of the realm, is one, after all; he can't stand his own family and is quite satisfied to have nothing to do with them, and he doesn't like the living either.

There is also usually a tragic undercurrent running through Österberg's comics, and this one is no exception: the poor Timareta, who only got to live 16 years before dying during childbirth, is disoriented and depressed (no wonder). But as is also the norm in Österberg's comics, things never get depressingly tragic; there is also an element of hope and comfort.

Both Österberg's love and her knowledge of ancient mythology are vast, and she uses that knowledge to great advantage to craft her story. The gods and the supernatural are taken for granted by the characters in the story to such an extent that they don't mind mocking them a bit, and the characters of the gods and mythological entities make for some very good interplay between them – in fact, the ancient Greek gods are depicted pretty much like a dysfunctional family, and it works very well. And while the philosophical debate between Theodoros and Hades makes for a couple of too-wordy (even if the debate is interesting) pages, neither that nor the many humorous touches overshadow what I think is the main drama (even if it's not the only one) of the story: Timareta's tragedy, and how she will learn to "live" with her new situation.

Plus, you also learn that the ancient Greeks actually had analgesic pills for headaches!

This is an excellent story from an excellent comics creator, and it's really a disgrace that her work isn't translated into English so that she can have the audience she deserves: a world-wide one. Seriously, Fantagraphics, Top Shelf or whomever – get on the ball!

Anyway, warmly recommended. This is very good stuff.

See more examples of Österberg's work at her blog – and if you like funny and intelligent comics, by all means check out her self-published comic book Agnosis as well.

Guy Delisle: Shenzhen. A travelogue from China

Comics artist and animator Guy Delisle is sent to China to oversee the animation work done for a French studio, and to make sure it meets minimal standards. He is supposed to stay 3 months. The book is presented as a travelogue, but it really isn't IMO; Delisle isn't really traveling, he goes to a place to do a job, and leaves after he's done the job. What it is is a sometimes amusing, sometimes sad, log of his experiences in a world he doesn't quite understand and struggles mightily to not just understand but also to influence, to leave some sort of mark on. In the end, he doesn't seem to fully succeed at either.

The book sort of reads as a mix of Stranger in a Strange Land and Lost in Translation. Delisle arrives in China knowing neither the language nor the culture, but knowing animation. Unfortunately, he has to struggle mightily to impart his knowledge of the craft on the animators, via a translator, and often has to settle for getting something "acceptable" out the doors of the studio. After his work is done, he goes "home" to his hotel room, reads and writes, starts going to a gym, enjoys Chinese food and tries but doesn't really succeed to get to know some Chinese and their culture. A visit to Hong Kong is a heavenly reprieve from the unintelligible Shenzhen, but then it's back to boredom and frustration – which he endures, alleviating it by observing and commenting on it, until his three months are up and he can go back to France.

(We also get some interesting observations on the nature of animation – not quite part of the overall narrative, but short asides livening it up a bit.)

I don't think this story would have quite worked as a written book, but as a comics story, it works quite well. Aided by pictures, Delisle's observations and anecdotes are readily accessible, and I don't have time get bored as I suspect I would have been if I'd been reading page after page of prose about them. In comics format, you can tell so much in a couple of pages with words and pictures that would have taken so much longer to convey with just words; this effective storytelling makes comics is a pretty much perfect format for the story Delisle tells us.

I can find it a bit sad – or rather, frustrating – that the story is basically about how he never quite gets to fit in where he is during his stay, or to fit the the place he's at into a sort of broader cultural understanding, but then, that is the story he's telling, so it's probably an appropriate response to Shenzhen.

Recommended.