The iFanboy Letter Column – 02/19/2010

Friday means many things to many people. For some, Friday means freedom as the work week has ended and the weekend can begin. For others, Friday means it’s time to get down get down, get down get down.

At iFanboy, Friday means it’s letter column time.

You write. We answer. Very simple.

As always, if you want to have your e-mail read on the any of our shows or answered here, keep them coming — contact@ifanboy.com

 

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Maybe it’s because of all the Avatar craze lately but I’ve suddenly realized that I haven’t read many sci-fi comics. Sure Green Lantern and Nova are sci-fi with dudes in outer space fighting aliens and all that but it’s still superheroes. And I know Y: The Last Man and DMZ technically counts as sci fi since those are alternate histories but I guess what Im looking for is something similar to films like Blade Runner or Aliens. You know, dystopian futures where sometimes android robots or space aliens exist, that kind of thing.

Outside of Fear Agent, what would you say are some of the better sci-fi comics out there?

Cesar R.

You raise an excellent point and something that I’ve been thinking about lately as well. You’re totally right in that Green Lantern and the cosmic books at Marvel, while they’re science fiction, they really are superhero science fiction, and while Fear Agent is indeed one of the best science fiction comics out there, it’s more of a pulp-y science fiction sort of story. But if you’re a fan of science fiction along the lines of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and that sort of ilk and you want comics of that type, then the pickings become pretty slim.

Y: The Last Man and DMZ are in the neighborhood but they lack that science fiction edge that makes those dystopian futures so interesting. You might want to check out some of Brian Wood’s earlier work, like Channel Zero (if you can find it) and Supermarket, as they have that edge that you may be looking for. Recently IDW did comic book versions of the stories of Cory Doctorow, a great science fiction writer known for setting his stories in the near present. Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of Here and Now features short stories by a collection of different artists. IDW also has the Star Trek and Doctor Who license for comics, if that’s up your alley. For straight up classic science fiction, BOOM! Studios is in the process of doing a comic version of the original text of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the original story that eventually became the film Bladerunner. Even more recently, Rick Remender’s new mini series, The Last Days of American Crime from Radical has an undercurrent of science fiction laid beneath its crime story.

One of my favorite science fiction stories of the 2000s came from Warren Ellis and Chris Weston in the form of Ministry of Space, and was recently reprinted.  It tells the tale of an alternate future where the British won the space race. And finally, if you haven’t checked out Godland by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli, I would definitely recommend that. Like Green Lantern and Nova, it does straddle the side of super hero science fiction, plus with its huge Kirby influence. But the ideas are so big and the art is so amazing, that it’s totally worth it and unlike anything you’ve ever read.

Ron Richards

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I am sort of new to iFanboy. I have been watching all of the the iFanboy episodes (not the Minis) on the Revision3 website and have subscribed to the show through iTunes.

The question I have is this, what about wonder woman? You talk about Batman and Superman but you hardly even mention Wonder Woman. Is she not part of the DCU “Trinity”? I know she has a long history in DC, so why don’t you ever talk about her?

Joe

Before I get to you question, let me say welcome aboard, Joe! We’re glad to have you! And if i may, I think you should check out the Minis! They were a lot of fun and we’re really proud of them. Also, they’re short! You can blow through a bunch at a time.

Okay, on to your question.

It’s funny, I was thinking about Wonder Woman just this week. I attended the world premiere screening of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths this past Tuesday (look for the review show next week) and I found myself pondering Wonder Woman because she’s quite prominent in the film. I found myself thinking about the fact that it would seem that I tend to really like Wonder Woman in animated form, but I have a hard time getting into her comics. I really liked her animated feature, Wonder Woman, and when I reviewed the Justice League cartoon a while back she ended up being my favorite character in the whole series. And she’s really good in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. So why can’t I get into her solo comics? (And it is a problem with her solo comics, I loved her in Grant Morrison’s JLA. Then again, everyone was great in that.)

This is honestly a question I don’t think I have a solid answer to yet. My standard answer to the “Why don’t you read Wonder Woman?” question used to be that I really like Wonder Woman when she’s a superhero, and I find her less interesting when she’s enveloped in Greek Mythology. And that’s a problem because Greek Mythology is the root of the character. In her comics, every time she’d start hanging out in Themyscira and there was a lot of time spent on the in-fighting between the gods I would start to tune out. But then I watched Wonder Woman, and that heavily featured the whole Greek Mythology thing. So now I don’t know what the answer is anymore.

And it’s not like I haven’t tried! I am always giving Wonder Woman’s book a shot. I read some of the George Perez stuff back in the day. I read most of the Phil Jimenez run. I gave the book another try when Greg Rucka wrote it. I picked up the reboot book by Allan Heinberg and Terry Dodson. I just couldn’t really get into any of those runs. Hell, I even dropped Rucka’s run and he’s one of my all-time favorite comic writers! (I actually feel like I need to revisit that run.)

So yes, Joe, Wonder Woman is one third of DC’s “Trinity,” though that is based mostly on reputation, importance, and history rather than actual current popularity (if it were based on current popularity DC’s “Trinity” would be Superman, Batman and Green Lantern). As a character I like her a lot, so I hope that sometime soon I will have cause to talk about her more.

Conor Kilpatrick

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Recently I got a bunch of old comics done by Jack Kirby and loved them. The art is still amazing. Since then, I have read King of Comics and also loved it. All this got me thinking about which artists have been directly influenced by Kirby. One of my friends mentioned that John Byrne initially copied Kirby’s style. Can you name a few who copied him or others who did his art as an homage?

Amir

It’s almost impossible to read any comics since Kirby without seeing Kirby, once you know to look for it. At the time Kirby was still working, artists at Marvel were basically being instructed to draw as much like Jack as they could. Most of those guys broke out into their own styles, but Gene Colan, John Romita Sr., John Buscema all came from a time at Marvel when the house style was the King’s style.

When you ask who reminds me of Kirby most immediately, I think of Walt Simonson. His work on Thor seems like the next step in artistic evolution from Kirby. It was both evocative of Jack’s work, and pressing in new directions. If you look at the Thor comics that came out after that, all through the late 80’s, when I discovered them, Ron Frenz was drawing The Mighty Thor, and looking at them now, they’re straight up Jack Kirby clones.

Today, you don’t see artists doing Jack’s style directly, but his influence is everywhere. Look at some of the blocky figures Sean Phillips draws, or the extreme perspective in Jock’s artwork, or retro-modern style being done by Dale Eaglesham on (what else?) Fantastic Four. Of course, if you’re looking for an exact match, there’s always Tom Scioli, who draws Godland. That guy is channeling straight Kirby from squared-off fingers, to that classic cosmic crackle.

Josh Flanagan