Interview: J. Michael Straczynski Talks About Coming Home to the Twilight Zone [The Beat]

This interview was originally published November 3 on The Beat.

This summer, Dynamite announced that they had the rights to do comics based on Rod Serling's legendary anthology The Twilight Zone, and that J. Michael Straczynski will be writing the series. (That's part of the very busy 2014 Straczynski is slated to have, between six titles for his Joe's Comics imprint with Image, a television series with The Wachowskis for Netflix, and more comic and film work.) Joining Straczynski on the first issue, which will be released next week, is artist Guiu Vilanova, and cover artist Francesco Francavilla.

Straczynski is a natural choice for the series. After meeting Serling as a youth, Straczynski would go on to Hollywood, with his well-regarded work on 1980s The Twilight Zone revival being his big break into live-action television. For Straczynski, working on The Twilight Zone is a kind of homecoming.

In October I interviewed Straczynski about his plans for the series, and how Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone changed his life - reposted below. I also talked to Vilanova and Dynamite publisher Nick Barrucci about the genesis of the project and their personal favorite Twilight Zone stories.

Fransesco Francavilla's cover to Twilight Zone 1

First, how did the project develop and how did each of you get involved?

NB: I’ve always been a fan of the Twilight Zone TV show and it’s a license we’ve wanted to tackle for years. We had talked to CBS about it off and on. What we wanted to do was ensure when we got the license we could to it justice. So we kept in touch, followed up diligently, ensuring that we didn’t miss out on the opportunity to throw our hat in the ring, but we were quite clear that we only wanted to do it if we could do it right.

GV: I worked with my friends of Dynamite on the Dark Shadows series and Dark Shadows: Year One miniseries, and I really wanted to do something big. When Joe and Nick offered me this amazing project, I couldn't refuse. 

JMS: Nick and I had been talking about other projects, and he mentioned that he might go for the Twilight Zone title if I had an interest in writing it. Leaving aside that this is an extraordinary compliment, I've always had a strong tie to the Twilight Zone, having worked on the '88 version and growing up a tremendous fan of Rod Serling's work. I even co-wrote a guide to his Night Gallery series for Twilight Zone Magazine.

And in addition to all the Twilight Zone television work, one of the first few comics you ever wrote was a Twilight Zone comic for defunct Now Comics way back in 1991...

JMS: The book was actually an adaptation of the spec script I wrote for the New Twilight Zone that got me in the door to write the script for "What Are Friends For?"

Nick, you approached Joe about working on the book from the very beginning - what made him the ideal candidate?

NB: I've known Joe for years, and I've always wanted to work with him on this level, but there didn't seem to be the right property for us to work together on. Over the years, we've kept in touch, and I've always hoped to work with him. One day I was in the office looking over ideas from one of our editorial meetings for potential licenses, and I was looking at Twilight Zone, and thought, why not ask Joe. He'd worked on it. I knew he was a huge fan of Rod Serling, but wasn't sure if he'd feel like he'd said all that he had to say or if he would like to jump in. Worst case he would say no, right? ... I asked him if he was interested and he enthusiastically said “yes.” What made him the ideal candidate? He brings so much passion and reverence to the property yet at the same time comes in with a distinct voice and I can’t over emphasize how much his knowledge of the property, yet his ability to come up with a crisp story is important. I can honestly say that Joe is the only person we approached, and he is the right person.

Joe, Twilight Zone stories could be everything from expansive science fiction to grounded suspense thrillers. What kind of stories will you be telling in your run?

JMS: I kind of blended them all together into this one story. It's actually three separate stories told from three points of view that slowly begin to merge together into one larger, meta-story. One is a very grounded thriller, the other is a much bigger, apocalyptic story, and the other deals with time travel. Some folks online have said that the issues should be stand-alone stories, but that misses a very key point: if you extract the amount of script from the average comic book, it's equal to maybe ten or twelve TV script pages. So if you put 3-4 issues together, you have the equivalent of one half-hour TV episode. You can't do a Twilight Zone story in ten pages, or one twenty-two page comic book; you need to be able to establish and develop the character, and that takes time. You could never do a single comic book with the depth of storytelling you'd get in, say, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," or "The Obsolete Man." So by doing our stories in 4 issue arcs we're doing just what would've been done in one episode.

The other thing about the Zone that sometimes folks tend to forget in the cloud of nostalgia that surrounds the title was that it was a proving ground for all kinds of storytelling, from the prosaic ("Mr. Denton on Doomsday") to the more experimental ("Five Characters In Search of an Exit"). The structure wasn't there in network television to do three seemingly independent episodes that suddenly turn out to have connections to one another, and sew together into a larger narrative. The syndication market at that time aired episodes in any order they liked; it wouldn't have worked. Had this sort of technique been available at the time, who knows whether or not it would've been used, but knowing Serling's tendency toward experimentation, I'd bet good money he'd give it a shot. The Twilight Zone was about looking forward, to the future, to trying new storytelling approaches, not about nostalgia for a long-ago form (except as a subject of stories, natch).

Obviously Twilight Zone is known for its twist endings--

JMS: That's kind of the perception, but if you look at the show as a whole, twist endings ("To Serve Man," "Time Enough at Last") were generally about a third of what was actually produced. They have a lot of impact in retrospect, but there were far more non-twists than twist endings. If anything, Serling seemed to lean away from those later on in the Zone's run, because in time the twist can become predictable. Some of the non-twist episodes include "Night Calls," "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Steel," among many others. So we're not specifically going for a twist ending to the stories, though there are a number of twists and turns that should surprise readers.

What will be the structure of the series and how long is your initial run?

JMS: I'm doing twelve issues in three four-issue arcs, as noted above. Each is built around a protagonist in one specific area, who know or are associated with each other. The stories are told in sequence, each starting from a common point, around that character. In the background of each story, however, we get glimpses of what's happening in the other two stories. (Meaning: in the background of a scene with a Wall Street banker in arc one, we see an investigator from the second arc following a lead.) So in essence, all three stories are happening simultaneously. (It's like telling a story about character A from Monday-Saturday; you finish that story, then rewind the clock to Monday and show what happened to character B during that same period.)

You can print the stories as three individual arcs or, and here's the fun of it, you could conceivably interleave the three stories like shuffling a deck of cards and turn the whole thing into one larger narrative that turns the whole thing around in the end. It's not a structure we've seen a lot before, so it's fun to do, though keeping track of all three stories so that the time-frame is consistent throughout is a bit of a headache.

Nick, are there plans to continue the series after Joe and Guiu's run?

NB: I'm pretty sure we will, especially since Joe will create so much awareness for the series. But time will tell. Right now the focus is on putting out a great series. Let's me put it this way. When Joe and I first started talking about this he was thinking this would be a four issue story arc, and we were elated. Joe writing four issues, that’s great, it helps rebrand the property for the comic and the market, creates great awareness, then the hard part is finding someone to fill Joe’s shoes. Not the worst problem to have, but it’s still a challenge to work with someone who wants to follow Joe up and do as good of a job. It would be tough, but again, not a bad problem to have. Then Joe was so excited he suggested writing the first four issues, we bring another writer on board to script the next four, then he would write 4 more as he had another story. Of course I said yes, there’s no doubt about that. Then he came back and said that he has a story for all twelve issues, "how about I write the first 12 issues." That says it all. That’s what made him the ideal candidate. He kept coming up with more and more ideas that kept growing, adding to the story and he just knocks it out of the park. What can I say?

Joe, what are some of the challenges in bringing the concept to comics?

JMS: As we discovered when I worked on the Zone in '88, people have certain fixed notions about what constitutes a Twilight Zone story, because we've had it in our lexicon for decades... a perception that actually didn't exist at the time because the fun of watching the Zone in its original broadcast was that viewers never knew what to expect next. So we have to address that here as well.

The other challenge is that at its heart, the Twilight Zone was about - as Faulkner said - the human heart in conflict with itself. It wasn't generally about big explosions or action set-pieces. A lot of it was two people in a room talking about really important stuff. So the challenge becomes keeping that dialogue-rich narrative without it becoming dull in comic form.

How has Rod Serling's work and The Twilight Zone specifically impacted your life and career?

JMS: Jesus, how hasn't it? Growing up I watched every episode of the original Zone scores of times; there are some episodes, like "Little Girl Lost," or "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" that I've probably seen close to a hundred times. I studied them as a kid, and when I was in high school at a career day held at a local college, the same day that Rod was scheduled to talk, he wandered in and read a couple of my stories, giving me my first validation as a writer. Later, selling a Twilight Zone script became my first live-action sale, and paved the way for me to get the job on Captain Power (which required a minimum of one live-action produced script, which is what that gave me), and positioned me to come on as story editor a year later, where I wrote a new Zone episode based on an unproduced Serling outline. It was the Zone gig that opened up other doors for me in my career. There are more ways even beyond all that in which the Zone has played an important part in my life and my career, but it would take several more screens to tell it all.

So this is far from your first foray into The Twilight Zone. How is your previous work with the franchise coloring your work on the project today?

JMS: I'm trying to let it do so, because I'm not the same writer today that I was in '88. I learned a lot from that experience about what the Zone was and wasn't, and those lessons have had a chance to take root and mature, so my understanding of that now is quite a bit different from what it was then. Also, having run shows gives me a better understanding of what kinds of stories you can do in television, and the constraints under which Rod had to work, so that also informs the storytelling.

I know it's difficult to appraise one's early work, but what are some of your favorite Twilight Zone stories that you have worked on?

JMS: My favorite three would be: "Dream Me a Life" with Eddie Albert playing a man in a retirement home who begins to share dreams with the comatose woman next door, because of how the writing worked out but also because of what Eddie brought to that role... "The Mind of Simon Foster," about a desperate man who begins selling his memories at a special kind of pawn shop and begins to realize the cost of what he's doing... and "Our Selena is Dying," about an elderly woman who begins to draw the life and vitality out of a younger woman, which I wrote based on an outline by Rod Serling. Seeing my name on the same screen as Rod's was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

Guiu and Nick, what does The Twilight Zone mean for you? What are some of your favorite episodes?

GV: Twilight Zone was one of the series that marked my childhood. I saw the first five seasons, long time after the airing of the last episode in the USA. I think in 90's. The first episode I saw was "Time Enough at Last" from the first season, and I really liked the episode "A Hundred Yards over the Rim.”

NB: Twilight Zone means endless imagination for creating new stories, having the right twist from start to finish, being smart with the stories you tell. That’s really what it means to me. "Where is Everybody" is a great one for me, I would say "Time Enough at Last," "Walking Distance," "The Afterhours," "The Eye of the Beholder" and "The Invaders."

The incomparable Francesco Francavilla is doing a cover--

NB: Francesco is doing all the covers and you’re right, he is incomparable. He’s a genius and draws some of the best covers on the market today and we are very luck to have him.

Joe, what does Guiu bring to the table as an artist?

JMS: He brings a very grounded art style that works well with the stories we're doing, especially the first one, as that's the most character-oriented. You can feel the weight of the characters in his art and that's very important for the stories to work.

Bottom line: for me as a writer, but also as a fan of Serling's work, and the Zone, there are few things more exciting than to be able to return to that universe, to that title, and tell another story that pushes the boundaries and delves deep into the important questions that we all have to deal with every day. In a very weird way, writing The Twilight Zone is a lot like coming home....

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Twilight Zone #1 (NOV130938) is written by J. Michael Straczynski, illustrated by Guiu Vilanova, and published by Dynamite Comics. It is currently available for order from Diamond Comics and your local comic shop, for a January scheduled release. 

Change of Art: Looking at CP Smith in Ten Grand

J. Michael Straczynski's Ten Grand had a bit of a road bump in its projected 12-issue first season when artist Ben Templesmith fell off the map a few months ago. Templesmith owned up to it and C.P. Smith came aboard to illustrate starting with last month's issue 5. Templesmith's stuff on the title was some of the best of his career, and I was sad to see him go. The essential feel of the comic was rooted in Templesmith's gritty, dark, twisted grotesqueries, Straczynski's scripting a perfect match for Templesmith's distinct brand of noir supernaturalism. The story - about a dead hit-man who made a deal with some shady aspect of the afterlife to do their bidding in order to see his lost love for a short period of time - had a perfect executor in Templesmith's particular and unique visual voice, a spot-on vision of memorable demons and street thugs, back-allies and demented afterlife. Templesmith, especially on Ten Grand, revels in shadows, not chiaroscuro but the darkness that exists underneath things hidden from the cleansing light of the sun, crawling and worming and indistinct, at the edge of your periphery, scratchy lines in deep reds and browns and highlights of un-light.

Needless to say, in art, C.P. Smith is nothing at all like Ben Templesmith. But, then again, few are. I was skeptical that the title could survive such a drastic midway change. Shuffling art teams happen far too often in mainstream comics, and always as a disservice to the larger story (where there is one). The distinctness of Straczynski's narrative, so rooted in such Templesmithian thematic territory, couldn't really be served by anyone else. So, perhaps a happy structural coincidence, the narrative feel shifts on its axis a bit in issue 5 and C.P. Smith just nails it.

Now, Straczynski isn't exactly breaking new thematic ground here. The horror-magic-noir setting, wedged between heaven and hell, both unreliable and untrustworthy, supernatural forces skittering around a wise and hard-boiled interlocutor (and so on) is far from unique. I don't think the genre has a name, but it exists in many forms. And some of the emotional thematic ground Straczynski touches upon here is also covered in his superb Midnight Nation with Gary Frank. But the overall flavor and execution of Ten Grand's story just works. A frequent (and innacurate) comparison I've seen to Ten Grand is the John Constantine character. But the goals of each book is different, the characters are different. Same genre, certainly.

C.P. Smith doesn't bother with constraining himself to the same stylistic visual territory as Templesmith, instead being true to his own freaky self. His art is a little odd - but the setting of Limbo is appropriately odd. The people caught there are presented as the negatives of weird 3D constructs. Smith uses a lot of these constructs in his art, but it's at least consistent. The story and the art really sinc up about halfway through. After Joe runs into the time-displaced Limbo-trapped version of himself ("I hate quantum existentialism," he says) he comes to a big ole metaphorical river he must cross on Death's canoe.

Death - it's probably Death, though never specified as such -  with visible skull and skeleton hands and feet, is sitting at the edge of the river, in full cloak and hood, wearing an almost glowing yellow reflective life vest over the cloak. He's wearing sandals, but they look like flip-flops on the skully surfer dude wearing a life vest and a hoodie. Death isn't presented as surfer dude, but certainly as disenfranchised, and jaded in his task. He's tired of encountering pathetic people who took the easy road in life, tried to make few mistakes, took no risks. Joe Fitzgerald has a double advantage: he's alive, and he's made so many mistakes, enough to make the trip very, very bumpy. Death relishes the opportunity, and takes Joe on a rough, surf-battered journey across, to the fork in the road between heaven and hell. The art reflects and absorbs and re-presents the potential silliness of the visuals in clever and straightforward ways. And Straczynski, in a very tight space, essentially has Death distill Straczynski's own personal philosophy and a returning theme and leitmotif in his work, that of choice and trying and never accepting and defying convention and authority. All the while foreshadowing a ton of unpleasant stuff to come. The issue ends on a nice twist, though we're certain Joe will find a way out of the predicament. (That said, Straczynski has surprised me by diving right into the all-out big story, unusual compared to his super-delicate pacing style.)

I can easily imagine Templesmith illustrating these sequences, but I can't quite imagine it working as well as it does in C.P. Smith's hands. Another artist altogether could have done better, but it seems unlikely that they could have done it as quickly or as efficiently as Smith does here. His art in these sequences reflect the very cool, slightly off-feeling, casual epicness of the story.  

Ten Grand solidly survives the art change and speeds forward in its story. Issue six is scheduled to come out next week and the trade paperback of the first six issues shortly thereafter.

As an aside, Walking Dead has also recently had the most profound art change in 110 issues with the beginning of the "All Out War" storyline. Joining the usually slapdash Charlie Adlard on pencils is the superb inker Stefano Guadiano. Guadiano gives a weight and detail to the work seen at no point in Adlard's run on the book. Cliff Rathburn's coloring (it is credited as gray tones, but it is coloring) is the unknown all-star of the series and meshes Adlard's defining take of the characters with Guadiano's powerful inking in the best looking story of the series.

[As yet another aside (a postscript!), I completely wrote this review and then somehow it got entirely deleted. Perhaps I angered the writing gods. Anyway, what you read above is a half-assed second go based on my own shifty recollections of my own dodgy writing. Your mileage may vary, especially if you are on the metric system.]

New, J. Michael Straczynski Interviewed, Protectors Inc #1 Reviewed

New! Now online at The Beat, I interview J. Michael Straczynski about his new Twilight Zone Comic, out this January from Dynamite.

And Protectors Inc. #1 by J. Michael Straczynski is out this Wednesday from Joe's Comics. Click here for my original review.

Advance Review: Protectors Inc. 1 by J. Michael Straczynski and Gordon Purcell

Protectors Inc. 1, out November 6 from Image, is the latest superhero title in the newly revived Joe's Comics line by J. Michael Straczynski. The book is competently though unspectacularly illustrated by Gordon Purcell. (Joe was giving out copies at his spotlight panel at New York Comic Con, the special cover for which by Michael Avon Oeming is pictured at right.)

The premier issue is pretty much all set-up, playing with the well-worn tropes of superhero fiction with a slight twist to it. The issue is framed by seemingly disparate disappearances of individuals in a flash of light, one, a CIA asset, the other, a girl coming out of a bar. The book is narrated by a District Attorney in Chicago, briefly going over the history of superpowered beings. Like many modern independent superhero books, Straczynski remixes the established ideas of superhero fiction into a fresh batch. The source of superpowers dates to a mysterious event in World War 2, with powers popping up around the world soon after. The 50 or so heroes, functionally immortal, called themselves Protectors, and would eventually incorporate and become media darlings, settling in big cities. But superpowered villains did not follow (as is usually the case in superhero stories). Occasionally heroes get into fights with each other, but these are usually just for show. The first time we see the Protectors is a flash in the sky as two of them tussle, and it's pretty cool. 

But even the re-imagined superhero mythos has become its own kind of cliche, and it takes something special to really stand out. And Protectors Inc. isn't that special (yet, anyway). Of course this is only the first issue, but many first chapters in serialized fiction (including many by Straczynski) avoid being as somewhat dull and largely unengaging as this. I am a fan of a lot of Straczynski's stuff, so based on how he tells stories there is much more likely to come, but what we get is just not exactly riveting or moving. But it is just 1/12th of a larger story that will hopefully come into focus later. Jupiter's Legacy, another modern superhero rejiggering, only really got interesting with the third issue (and at least it has Frank Quitely).

J. Michael Straczynski is going to have a ridiculously busy 2014 - this is the third new Joe's Comics title along with Sidekick and the delayed Ten Grand. In addition to work-for-hire books for Dynamite (Twilight Zone) and Dark Horse (Terminator) and a television series with the Wachowskis for Netflix (Sense8), he's also got Apocalypse Al and Dream Police with Sid Kotian, and two projects I'm looking forward to, Alone with Bill Sienkiewicz and the return of the wonderful Book of Lost Souls with Colleen Doran. But not everyone can bat a thousand. Middling art, which also effects Sidekick and may soon come to effect Ten Grand, certainly doesn't help.

I'm a long-time fan of Straczynski's stuff, so I'll stick with the book for now. Honestly, Protectors Inc. isn't that bad, it's just not all that great either. 

The Wednesday Review: Creator Pwnage All Over The Place

 A full half of the books I read this week were creator-owned. I usually read a bunch of creator-owned books, but the proportion is much higher this week. And the proportion of damned good books was higher this week as well (not a coincidence). J. Michael Straczynski gives us two offerings from Joe's Comics, Jeff Lemire raises the Vertigo creator-owned banner, Panel Syndicate for the win, and much more in this week's Wednesday Review.

Ten Grand 4, Sidekicks 1, new from Joe's Comics

J. Michael Straczynski is going to have one a hell of a year. Outside of work-for-hire gigs doing new Twilight Zone and Terminator books, his Joe's Comics imprint at Image is set to restart Book of Lost Souls & Dream Police, Protector's Inc is coming in the fall, he's got a trippy book with Bill Sienkiewicz in the wings, and at least two more projects that I'm forgetting. Dude's busy. And as an avowed fan of the Great Maker, I'm pretty bloody excited.

Ten Grand with Ben Templesmith has been going strong and issue four this week ratchets up the stakes significantly. Joe Fitzgerald knows something's amiss in Heaven and Hell, and he has to sacrifice quite a bit of himself to find answers. Templesmith's art continues to be perfectly suited for Straczynski's story, filled with demons and dark alleys and pain and suffering. There's a nifty sequence where Fitzgerald talks to a broken ghost and a brutal fight with demonic types and we're just getting warmed up. I'm really enjoying this book.

And today also sees the release of Sidekick #1 with Tom Mandrake. In the backmatter, Straczynski professes a hate for sidekicks, and it certainly shows here. Flyboy, the sidekick to the superpopular superhero the Red Cowl finds himself rudderless, jobless and broken after Red Cowl is brutally gunned down. No-one believes Flyboy can cut it on his own, and things turn shitty pretty quickly. Resorting to shaking down hookers for blowjobs and creating false crimes for credit in police reports, things continue to spiral out of control for him. And things get worse, and worse, and worse for Flyboy. This is really funny, really mean, really entertaining stuff. We usually don't get such visceral authorial cruelty with corporate sidekicks, and, gawd, do I ever agree with Straczynski that such treatment would be more than welcome. Straczynski isn't the first to tackle the incongruities of sidekicks - see Rick Veitch's Bratpack - but Sidekick is certainly a lot of fun. Even more so if you replace Flyboy with your sidekick of choice in your head. Seriously, fuck those guys.

Jeff Lemire's Trillium, new from Vertigo

Trillium is Jeff Lemire's fully creator-owned Vertigo follow-up to his recently completed Sweet Tooth. I've been really digging Lemire's stuff (though Sweet Tooth was quite uneven), and the cover to Trillium was honestly enough to sell me on it. Well, one of the covers - it's an honest to goodness flip book, the stories in each half of the book meeting in the middle. "Chapter 1: 3797 - The Scientist" was enough to sell me on the book for the long haul. What's left of humanity is on the run from a sentient virus, they've been chased to the edges of time and space and their only hope may be in a flower (the titular Trillium) controlled by an alien species. Nika, the scientist, goes out to the aliens to negotiate anything to help humanity, and things take some fantastic turns. My description does not do Lemire's story justice. The setting and details of the future Lemire paints are astonishing. And his art here is leaps and bounds beyond what I'm used to from him. What's not colored by longtime collaborator Jose Villarrubia is water-colored by Lemire in a style seemingly inspired by good friend Matt Kindt, and that is a good thing. The other half of the book, which takes place in 1921, follows a former soldier exploring the Amazon. There is more to his story, and it connects to Nika's, but I won't say how. Trillium is that rare species, an innovative new fully creator-owned book from Vertigo from one of comics' most distinct voices, and seems it will be worth seeking out and sticking with.

Image, Image, Image, Image.

I loved Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin's Satellite Sam 1 a ton. I love today's #2 with as much tonnage. Prophet 38 is just as impenetrable as the rest, but good grief is it a weird, wonderful little book to just kind of pour over. Brandon Graham, Simon Roy and Giannis Milonogiannis are sure doing something. Who the hell knows what it is, and that's alright. The Brubaker/Phillips Fatale 16 seems like the weakest issue of the series, but that's like saying I'm not really liking this duffel bag of diamonds that just fell in my lap. But, hey, lots of stuff happens and I still can't wait for more. A whole hell of a lot happens in Manhattan Projects 13, my favoritest Jonathan Hickman book. We begin to see the puzzle of the various Projects, and the games being played behind the scenes. Oh, and coked out Kennedy. This book, from Hickman's unhinged story and characters to Nick Pitarra's expressive art, is always so much fun to read.

And then this happened.

The most successful creator-owned superhero comic of the last decade or so, Kick-Ass 3 #2 came out today, too. I continue to enjoy the attempts by normal idiots doing superheroic stuff with only superhero comics as a touchstone, I just don't care about any of the characters. After five years, the book just doesn't have the same pop. But I've stuck with it this long, may as well see it through to the end. And it wouldn't surprise me if Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. surprised me in that end. I hope. And finally, over at Panel Syndicate, Marcos Martin puts those ridiculous DC "Director's Cuts" to shame by publishing the entire behind-the-scenes process of his and Brian K. Vaughan's Private Eye. Why pay $5.99 for warmed over crap when you can pay what you want for a whole art-book worth of material covering one of the year's best comics with all the money going to the creators. No question mark, that's rhetorical. Go to Panel Syndicate and melt your brain. 

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Comics! They're a thing, y'all! Read my other Wednesday Reviews here. Read my essay on J. Michael Straczynski here. Read my essay on Panel Syndicate here. And check out Comic Pusher on Facebook here, because Facebooks are a thing in this future we got even if its not the future we want.

Quick Hits: Delicate Creatures, Persepolis, and Last Day in Vietnam

Delicate Creatures
by J. Michael Straczynski
Art by Michael Zulli
Top Cow/Image, 2001

Reviewed in this week's Quick Hits, three works that reflect on the cost of war and revolution, in two memoirs and a modern fantasy.

Delicate Creatures is often listed as one of J. Michael Straczynski's graphic novels, but this is not a comic by any standard - it's an illustrated novella in album format, featuring art by Michael Zulli. At first blush a light modern fantasy story about tiny whimsical children's story characters living within the walls of a castle in war-torn Europe, it quickly evolves into a parable of loss, pain, freedom, death and revenge as these creatures witness and try to come to terms with the horrors of human war and occupation unfolding before them. Soon, one of these Delicate Creatures intervenes in the conflict with ramifications that can destroy everything around them. Straight-forward, beautiful, and heart-breaking, the only weakness is in the art which again isn't any kind of graphic narrative but simple representative fantasy illustration. Straczynski's exemplary storytelling takes the forefront in this, one of his better early works.

The Complete Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon, 2007

Marjane Satrapi was 8 years old when the revolution started. Born into relative wealth and comfort in a western, modern Iran, it was in her formative years that a popular uprising unseated the US-friendly Shah in favor of a restrictive, conservative theocratic government. This was an uprising committed by the people, against the people. In her stunning and influential memoir Persepolis (originally serialized in France by L'Association), Satrapi tells her story and her country's story with gripping simplicity from the perspective of a child witness to the confusion and loss that such a revolution (and resultant brutal war with Iraq) can cause. The revolution and war took its toll on her home country and her people and played a unique role in her own personal development. While uneven in its second half, the narrative hits all the right notes in a fascinating and brutally honest character study flawlessly interwoven with the developing cultural history of one of the world's oldest and most complex countries. Perceptive, entertaining, educating, Persepolis is one of the new century's truly required reads, a graphic novel of unique power and importance, a vital historical document and startlingly fresh and important work in the often uninteresting genre of the graphic memoir.

Last Day in Vietnam
by Will Eisner
Dark Horse, 2000/2013

While not the inventor of the graphic novel, Will Eisner is often duly credited with popularizing the term and the form - although many of his works were in reality collections of short stories. Last Day in Vietnam, his 2000 collection re-released last week in a fantastic new edition by Dark Horse, is one of his most focused and best. A memoir of his experiences in World War II as a soldier and later conflicts as a military journalist, most of the short stories are simply told in engaging, first-person vignettes, relating tales that re funny, thought-provoking, and most of all honest and real. The collection's concluding comic, A Purple Heart for George, is an astonishingly concise synthesis of story and art, relating in less than ten pages one of the Second World War's tiny personal tragedies in a conflict full of them. It's works like that again put Eisner on the map after an already long and influential career, one of the medium's true giants.