You think you're behind? (Sigh.) Let me try to get the remaining 2010 books out of the Teetering Tower of Review Stuff:
"Cover Run: The DC Comics Art of Adam Hughes" (DC, $40): I initially passed on this title because I have all the comics whose covers are contained in the oversize hardback, and art books don't have a narrative to sustain my interest.
What a goose I am. Yes, I have all these covers from "Catwoman," "Wonder Woman" and elsewhere, but I don't have them all in one place, all annotated by the artist and all this big. Hughes is a terrific artist, not just with the female form (for which he's known), but in the use of color palettes, composition and light effects.
It would be a joy just to flip through the oversized pictures by themselves, but the amusing, self-deprecating explanations by the artist about his processes and decision-making is fascinating.
"Archie: The Complete Daily Newspaper Comics 1946-1948" (IDW, $40): I also passed on this title, because I usually don't enjoy humorous comic strips. That's because they're usually what's called "gag-a-day," and I think I've read every conceivable three-panel gag. Or they do have a narrative, but each daily installment spends so much time recapping yesterday and anticipating tomorrow. They rarely say much, and it takes forever to tell even a simple story.
Maybe that's not a fair assessment in general, and it surely isn't for "Archie." This stuff -- all written and drawn by Archie's creator, Bob Montana -- is genuinely funny, even though it's 60 years old. Plus, I love spelunking through old pop culture like this, trying to figure out the entertainment sociology of times long gone.
These reprints really whet my appetite for Dark Horse's complete Archie archives, beginning later this year. Also, everyone go buy a copy, so that IDW will publish a Volume 2!
"Harpe: America's First Serial Killers" (Cave In Rock, $10): A self-published, black-and-white historical graphic novel, "Harpe" is the story of two brothers with that surname, Wiley and Micajah, who went on a killing spree in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky between 1797 and 1804. It's hard to think of Knoxville as the Wild West, but it surely was in that time period, which allowed the bloody-minded brothers (with three women in tow) to escape justice long enough to kill more than 30 people. No, that's not a typo. And it's all true (mostly).
