The iFanboy Letter Column – 03.25.2011

Friday means many things to many people. For some, Friday means it’s wing night. For others, Friday means cake. For yet more, Friday is just another day when you stumble out into the world, desperately groping around in the darkness for just a little human compassion.

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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After years of mistreating my single issues, I’ve finally seen the error of my ways and repented. Now I need long boxes. What do you all recommend as far as comic storage goes?

Joshua T.

You are my doppelganger, Joshua! After years and years of meticulously bagging and boarding and boxing I’ve gone the other way — no more! I stopped bagging and boarding years ago and just at the end of this past year I decided no more boxing, either. I’m not accumulating any more long boxes, in fact I’m starting to give them away. BUT while I was still getting long boxes I had started to make the switch over from regular long boxes to DrawerBoxes. What’s a DrawerBox? Find out below!

 

I highly endorse the DrawerBoxes, especially if you have a lot of boxes and don’t feel like moving them every time you want to get to your comics.

Conor Kilpatrick

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I just purchased the ninth trade of Ex Machina, while reading issue number 40 it got me thinking. If you were able to have a book made just for you what would it be? Creative team (preferably a writer and artist that have not collaborated before) and subject matter (optional). For me it would be either Jason Aaron and Michael Lark on The Life of Andrew Jackson Or Brian K Vaughan and Francis Manapul on a book about a team of minor league baseball players who discover a dark and mysterious secret about the game they love (oddly specific, I know). I’m curious to hear what your dream books are. 

Carmine

This is a fantastic question, Carmine. In some ways, I feel like some of those books have already been made for me. Gotham Central is a great example of that. The current Detective Comics team is right up there for me. Stumptown is another. Y: The Last Man and Preacher are those books. Some issues of Jonah Hex feel like they are custom designed. Starman and DC: The New Frontier work for me perfectly. The first 25 issues of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America are damn near perfect, and when I read Box Office Poison for the first time, it was as if Alex Robinson were speaking directly to me.

But I must say that your choices are pretty strong. My subject of interest is US history. I am fascinated by the days of the Revolution and 1800’s in general, from a historical standpoint. They were the same people that we are, but things were so different technologically and culturally. Things were so much more dangerous and violent, and the stakes were high in an entirely different way than they are today. So, if I could get a 60 issue series of some kind of post Civil War (not necessarily western) historical fiction, dealing with industrialization and politics. I’m reading Devil in the White City right now, and when I can find the time, I am entirely transported. My favorite novels are Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy, which mixes in with real history and historical figures. If you could get a guy like Greg Rucka on a book like that, with art by Michael Lark, I’d just about lose it.

Funny thing is, this almost happened with TV, but it never came to pass. There was a story a couple of years ago that David Simon of The Wire, and Tom Fontana of Oz were going to do a 12 part miniseries for HBO based on the book Manhunt, about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. Understand that every element of the previous sentence lead me to believe that if this was made, television would be solved. There would be no further need to produce any more, because that would be perfection. Of course, it didn’t happen.

Clearly I lean towards long form storytelling with an ending based on actual history. But I’d read the hell out of that Andrew Jackson book you put together.

Josh Flanagan

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I was thinking about how often musicians and artists have come together to create comic books. We recently had the Tori Amos anthology and the graphic novel based on Neil Young’s Greendale and who can’t forget Tyrese’s Mayhem! (MAY-HEM!). Are there any bands or artists that you would like to see in the comic book medium?

I for one would love to see a book based on The Flaming Lips album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

Timmy W.

Ah, music and comics, two of my favorite things. It’s even better when they get combined. It wasn’t until I saw the anthology of comic stories illustrating the songs of Belle and Sebastian in Image Comics’ Put The Book Back On The Shelf, did I realize that there was some potential to this idea of use comics to merge with music to tell a story. Since then, we’ve gotten the Tori Amos anthology and the Neil Young book, as you mentioned, but also an anthology of The Songs of Spearmint, which got a Book of the Month nod from us. And while I suppose you could include Tyrese’s MAYHEM! in this, I don’t really think that’s a great example of this. But I digress…

When thinking about other musicians that I’d like to see illustrated sequentially, there’s really two directions that this could go in. An anthology, like the Tori Amos and Belle and Sebastian books, where there’s a bunch of comics based on songs, without any real rhyme or reason. Or you can find a concept record like Neil Young’s Greendale and tell a longer story. Luckily enough, I’ve got ideas for both categories.

The obvious and predictable choice for me would be an anthology of songs inspired by the songs of The Smiths or Morrissey. Morrissey’s lyrics already tell such great stories, and are littered with geographic and literary references, that I think some comics creators could have a blast with it. The key to making this sort of thing work is the natural story that is already being told in the song. That’s why Belle and Sebastian and Tori Amos worked so well. For a little less obvious choice, I think that the material provided by Bob Mould’s early 1990s band Sugar would provide some good material for sequential story telling. I would love to suggest The Magnetic Fields for this, but there’s already an effort underway to do just that online. Now that I think about it, I’m somewhat surprised no one’s ever thought of doing this sort of project for The Pixies. Some additional bands that I think would generate some great comic stories would include New Order, Regina Spektor, Bad Religion, Spoon and of course Bjork.

Now for the concept album as graphic novel idea, again I’m biased by my own tastes, but I think that The Decemberists album, The Hazards of Love, lends itself perfectly towards this sort of comic composition. With each song telling another chapter in the tale that Colin Meloy originally planned for a stage production, The Hazards of Love would be a graphic novel I’d love to read. Additionally in the same vein, Green Day’s American Idiot would be a great source of material for a graphic novel and would be a great visual opportunity for an edgy artist.

Of course, the fact that we’ve gotten any of these sort of projects published is a miracle, with all the legal wrangling and song licensing issues. While I can dream of a Morrissey or Smiths inspired anthology, I know in my heart, it will never happen. But when one of these projects do happen, it usually ends up being really special, so enjoy them while you can and join me in hoping that maybe someday we’ll see more of them!

Ron Richards