all time comics: crime destroyer #1

If Hot Topic were to make a commercial in the style of Robert Rodriguez, you’d have something like the live-action trailer for All Time Comics, the new superhero line of floppies from Fantagraphics. Vapid enough to make any Marvel movie seem like masterful storytelling, the trailer is wildly successful in setting the tone for your reading experience. Much like Crime Destroyer #1, the trailer is a pointless waste of money—the difference being that, with the comic, the money will be your own.

Fantagraphics has built its brand on championing sophisticated artists, original ideas, and strong points of view. Given its stable of cartoonists, who are almost all auteurs, many onlookers were surprised when Fanta announced it would publish work that involved such a high degree of collaboration, much less for a genre it has historically regarded with disdain. What surprises me is that Gary Groth took one look at this material and staked “Fanta does superheroes” on a badly regurgitated DC Universe. Gary, baby, I’ve got an idea for a series starring not-Wolverine that’s gonna blow your freaking mind. Action!! Muscles! Big. Ole. Titties. Call me.

Despite All Time Comics’ profound lack of originality, Josh Bayer, the writer who created the series with his brother Sam, likes to describe himself as an innovator. “Every Velvet Underground needs an Andy Warhol behind it,” he said in an interview, humbly characterizing his role as a creator and his brother’s role as the project’s initial financier. It’s an interesting analogy. On one hand, we have the most fiercely original band in rock history, whose avant-garde sensibility shaped the likes of Bowie and Sonic Youth. On the other, we have Josh Bayer pulling a bunch of comics clichés out of his hat without the wherewithal to deploy them in an interesting, entertaining, or even marginally self-aware way. Note how some of Crime Destroyer’s lines (below, left) seem ripped from the journals of Alan Moore’s Rorschach (at right).

The difference of course is that Rorschach was supposed to sound ridiculous. Riddle me this: if Fantagraphics is such a meritocracy, how did this lorem ipsum-grade script, which never should have made it past the first edit, earn the approval of all those discerning eyes? All Time Comics is not a love letter to the comics of old, as some have described it, nor is it parody; it is the comics equivalent of off-brand cereal. 

In assembling a team, Bayer shows some facility, if zero interest in working with anyone who’s not a man. (Not that there are all that many women associated with Fanta, but off the top of my head, Trina Robbins, Anya Davidson, and Katie Skelly all have aesthetics that would have made sense for this project.) Jim Rugg’s cover is a lot of fun even if the characters, from left to right, move inexplicably from more realistic and detailed to cartoonish and abstract. What happened to that purple lump at the bottom? Did our heroes stomp all of the drawing out of him?

Predictably, Herb Trimpe’s pencils are well done (if too busy for my taste). While I like the idea of an intergenerational team, I wonder how much opportunity there was for meaningful collaboration. The disparate styles on the cover echo lightly through the rest of the book. Trimpe’s detailed drawings and Alessandro Echievarria’s oversaturated color palette, for example, sometimes feel at odds with one another. Just a few tweaks would’ve mitigated the problem by a lot; you can see that those big colors are most successful in the panels and spreads where they have room to breathe, and my guess is that a more tightly edited palette would’ve better served the art.

I’m at a loss for how inker Ben Marra fits into all of this—I don’t read superhero comics, so all this teamwork confuses me a little—but there are a few depth-of-field problems I take to be his, that were then perhaps exacerbated by the colorist? Listen, I’m out of my wheelhouse, but there are places where something went wrong.

This fight falls flat...and also looks flat.

I can say with more confidence that the writing is weak. In Issue #1: “Woke Fukitor” “Human Sacrifice,” our hero battles a gang of Satanic white supremacist gutter punk lizard people who dress like pilgrims for some reason. As mixed-up as that may sound, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth: the pilgrim hats are by far my favorite part.

Ah yes, every mother's worst nightmare...finding the dread pilgrim hat. My second favorite part is when Crime Destroyer says he knows the sewers "as well as his own face."

Haha, that's just too good. I know these streets like I know my own FACE. I'm totally going to start saying that.

So that's one thing: I only laughed at this comic, never with it. I think the stuff that's meant to be whacky and fun just comes across as formulaic, and that's at best. At the other end of the spectrum we have its attempt at political commentary, which is just unfortunate. It’s plain that the racially charged plot, which invokes slavery, lynching, and Black Lives Matter, is meant to echo real-world tensions—though to what end, I cannot say. There’s a whole thread about how black people are complicit in their own misery—Crime Destroyer burns down his own store and Anji, a half-black(?) white supremacist, wants to sacrifice herself to Wotan, whoever the fuck that is—but you know what? I’m not even gonna go there. It’s not worth my time, much less yours. Bayer’s heavy reliance on chunky exposition manages to explain nothing, and how could it be otherwise? This is irredeemable nonsense, which I might have been able to forgive had it managed to be the least bit entertaining. A word of advice to the creators as the series moves forward: more pilgrim hats.

Below, on one of the worst pages of cartooning I’ve ever seen in my life, we learn Crime Destroyer’s backstory, such as it is. Once upon a time, Crime Destroyer was a war hero whose family was killed by looters. (I think??) Like...he returns from "the war" to his small town...which is overrun by criminals...doing crimes...who then murder his family, who lived in the store for some reason(?)...so Crime Destroyer murders the criminals, burns down his house-store, and moves to Optic City to fight the Satanic white supremacist gutter punk lizard pilgrim people. That's the best I can do. The vague, stilted second-person narration is brought to life in six awkwardly arranged bubbles that float hideously over a screensaver featuring Crime Destroyer's disembodied head. It’s as though each person on the ATC team was in competition with whoever went before him to make this page more ugly and confusing as it went through production. The counterintuitive layout, the arrows, the background, those colors, the story itself—there’s just no conceivable explanation for this series of choices other than “hold my beer.”

I’ve compared All Time Comics unfavorably to COPRA (here and here), and character construction is just one more area in which this observation holds up. Despite knowing little about old superhero comics, I immediately recognized the antecedents of Crime Destroyer, whose lack of superpowers, reliance on gadgets, and war against urban blight point straight to Batman; of Atlas, a flying goody-two-shoes with alien powers who’s always blathering about antimatter a la Superman; and of Bullwhip, who is a blatant Wonder Woman knockoff in both character design and her affinity for S&M. Crime Destroyer, with his ridiculous fist-of-solidarity shoulderpads, isn’t the kind of ripoff that’s going to inspire the empty chatter about copyright infringement that surrounds Michel Fiffe, so let’s put it this way: what is an artist’s ethical obligation when he co-opts someone else’s ideas? My own feeling is that if the Bayers are going to model their creations so heavily on seminal characters, they should have something—anything—to say.

That’s a little different than insisting that the work should have a coherent message or be politically correct. I like to joke around about the Fantagraphics guys I call the Post-Dumbs (artists like Marra and Johnny Ryan, who also works on ATC), and the Bayers, with all their heavily stylized stereotypes, seem to fit right in. So far as I can tell the Post-Dumb hustle is in taking loaded imagery, emptying it of meaning, and then decorating its husk with an aesthetic strong enough that people will mistake it for an idea. I don’t know how else to say it: there’s nothing there. Contrast the “satire” of Johnny Ryan with Joan Cornellà, another Fanta artist who makes nonsensical comics that traffic heavily in scatological sex and violence. Cornellà’s strengths are so plain that anyone on the street could tell you what he’s got--arresting images, perfect color palettes, a sense of timing, a surreal sensibility—elements that come together in a way where not quite making sense becomes part of its perverse social commentary. The fuck do those other guys got, apart from a well-respected indie publisher? “Irony”?

Cause that’s the real selling point with All Time Comics, is it not? The sheer novelty of Fantagraphics doing cape comics. That the publisher thinks “are superhero comics art” is even a question says one thing. That it seeks to answer it with this weak, retrogressive claptrap says another. I genuinely wonder who this gimmick is even geared toward. Not to women. Not to superhero comic fandom, surely. Not to the average Fantagraphics reader (meaning folks reading Dan Clowes and Charlie Brown), who is accustomed to buying comics as graphic novels or collections. Anecdotally, my local shop, a regular comics store with a large selection of action figurines and an indie section comprised mostly of books, had never heard of ATC. They had to order it. I imagine I’d have to go to a specialty shop like Quimby’s to find it on the shelf.

And, you know, maybe people are doing that, or ordering it themselves from Fantagraphics. But so far as I can tell, the best way for most people to buy All Time Comics is Comixology. That wouldn’t even be worth mentioning were it not for the author’s note on the inside cover, where Josh Bayer crows about how he’s single-handedly bringing back the pleasures of a bygone era by making a comic book that you can hold in your hands:

The ALL TIME COMICS revolution is just beginning, so tell your friends to switch off “Nyech-flix” and unplug the Galaga console and start paying attention to the real ink, paper, and stapled beauty of ALL TIME COMICS. Paper and ink is the true lifeblood of comics, don’t ya know? And it’s never gone away!

Funny you should say that, Josh, given that literally every other Fanta comic I own has better production values than this thing. (Like…who is he talking to, even? Fanta only entered the digital marketplace for real a year or two back, and it’s hardly their focus. All of my own Fanta comics are on paper. Even over on the corporate comics side, floppies still outsell trade paperbacks and digital by, like, a lot.) This is not to say that ATC looks bad. Clearly a lot of care went into printing this comic, even though it looks and feels disposable. The colors look quite nice. But you know where they look even better? On a backlit screen, where they’re a little less muddy. 

It's just one more example of how everything about the concept and execution of All Time Comics seem deeply confused. Production decisions that were, with old superhero comics, engineered to maximize speed and profit—in-house collaborations, floppy format, variant covers, different titles set in a shared universe—have here been rendered cumbersome, slow, and expensive. Crime Destroyer #1 came out in early March; the next release in the All Time Comics line, Bullwhip #1, is showing a ship date of May 31. At this rate, it seems uncertain that the first four characters will have been introduced by the end of the year—that is, assuming the series lasts that long.

My guess is that it won’t, but who knows? The combination of nostalgia and mediocrity is one that often proves irresistible in today's marketplace, and there's no telling how many of these things are already in production (or what the contracts look like). I hope to see at least a few more issues, anyway, just because I enjoy hate-reading it to an almost unwholesome degree. Josh Bayer has talked about how the series has "a greater significance beyond itself" and how "it stands for all comics," and I agree; for me, it epitomizes everything I dislike about Fantagraphics, alpha bro mall punks, and sexist male comics culture. All Time Comics offers no perspective on the past, and little pleasure in the moment. But it gives me a warm feeling about the future, thinking it will fail.

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libby's dad, a comic by eleanor davis

I wasn't sure I'd like Libby's Dad. Nothing against Eleanor Davis, who's plainly great, but the tagline skewed a little too after-school special for my taste:

Libby's mom told everyone that Libby's dad said he was gonna shoot her. With his gun.

One reader's hook is another reader's Aerosmith-grade reflection on the legacy of abuse, as they say. Obviously Libby's Dad got a lot of praise in 2016, but it's hard to know how much that means? Few people seem willing to say anything negative about top-shelf indie cartoonists these days for any number of reasons, and only one of them is that the work is really that good. (I don't really care enough to chide people, just sometimes it's hard to know what to buy.) In any case, against expectation, I found this title interesting. It's also very nice to look at, but I knew that much going in.

Davis is a cartoonist and an illustrator, and she combines those sensibilities here to great effect. Formally, these images are sophisticated without calling attention to their own tricks. The design of a given spread is thoughtful and intricate without feeling overworked; there's an easiness about everything down to the word bubbles, which feel like they've been truly weighed and considered as part of each composition. Davis's clever use of mixed layouts and multiple perspectives give the story the beats of a comic without relying on the use of formal panels, which brings a satisfying sense of fullness to the page.

The sunlight-colored paper imbues the daytime scenes with a light and airy feeling, while the after-dark scenes feel more intimate--and sometimes oppressive--with heavy blue shading.

Of course the lack of panels also makes Libby's Dad look a lot like a children's book--a presentation that pulls against the menace of the story in a way that feels more subtle and poignant than its other stylistic nod to childhood, the crayon-like finish of the colored pencilling. To be honest, I found Davis's pencil work uneven. While she draws with a delicacy that's perfect for rendering a languid summer afternoon, her more minimalist images toward the end of the story are far less effective.

not feeling this dramatic stencil

sorry, also meh

The simplicity in those two drawings was clearly meant to have dramatic impact--and also convey that the images are ideas and memories, as opposed to part of the material present--but they just look unfinished to my eye.

Much like Davis has considered the visual weight of words so they feel organic to her compositions, her pictures carry the storytelling with practiced economy. Many little character-making details can be found in the body language. For example, the innocence of the youngest character, who always stands out most because of her freckles, is clearly broadcast through the unselfconscious way in which she moves through the world:

Then there's Libby, who's old enough to feel awkward in her body. She recedes into the background in almost every image; you can almost hear her willing herself to disappear. Sometimes she's physically set apart from the others in some way, and other times she wears a distant expression.

"kill me"

I like the way that the girls' expressions here, even though they're crudely drawn, convey so much. You can see how Libby always feels alone in a crowd:

"or maybe kill them, idk"

Libby's recently divorced dad doesn't have to be pictured (or even mentioned) for me to feel his desperation to please his daughter. All that stuff is palpable just in watching the girls eat cake.

These last two images in particular convey the central strength of Davis's work (apart from sheer skill), which is its considerable charm. It really can't be overstated, and somehow it never feels canned or forced.

As for the story's central mystery--and now we're sort of moving into spoiler territory here, if that's the kind of thing you care about--I found it more ambiguous than most readers. Is Libby's dad an abuser? The story doesn't definitively answer this question, to my mind. On one hand, we have secondhand information--possibly a rumor, given that we hear it from a kid--that Libby's dad said he was going to shoot Libby's mom. We know that one kid's mother took this information seriously enough that she won't let her child go to Libby's house, and we also live in a world where these sorts of "rumors" are usually true. Plus you can build a persuasive case from the clues scattered throughout the comic: Libby's moodiness...that image of her mother sobbing in the supermarket...the (somewhat heavy-handed, imo) Garden of Eden imagery in Davis's lush floral setting. There's also the liminal nature of this group of characters, who are at that age where some, but not all, of their friend group are maybe crossing over into puberty. It's all this Lost Innocence stuff in particular that makes "Libby's dad is a total dick" seem like the "real" conclusion.

Despite all that I found myself skeptical. Like...could Libby feel withdrawn simply because of the divorce, and not because there was something sinister going on with her dad? What are we to make of the fact that she lives with her father? (That's not as rare as it used to be, but still only one in four of single-parent households are headed by dads. Is that a coincidence? A class thing? A judge's prejudice against women with mental illness?) Why doesn't Libby seem afraid of him at all? Was that image of her mother sobbing really indicative of some trauma inflicted by an abusive husband, or did she just get weepy when she saw her daughter's favorite snack at the store? Is the mother mentally ill, or is she just perceived as mentally ill for having a normal reaction to abuse? If she's truly unwell, is that linked to the abuse or a preexisting condition?

I mean, I can hear myself making excuses. But also: there's not really much information here. Still, knowing the political leanings of the author (which I share), it feels a little gross to bring any sort of skepticism to the story's thread of abuse. The simplest answer is usually the right one. Also would I even think to ask so many questions if Libby's dad didn't have such a nice house? And so on.

What I finally decided was that maybe the questions the comic asks were meant to be open-ended--that maybe even there was an absurd sort of hubris in imagining that I could figure this family out from a 40-page comic that describes one day in Libby's life. There's something about that tagline--right?--that, whether or not you appreciate the hook, makes you read with a sort of tacky curiosity about what Libby's dad's whole deal is. The curiosity with which you approach the comic as a reader ties into the most interesting undercurrent in the story, which is the unwitting damage we do as all-too-interested spectators to other people's lives. That theme comes through not just in the words of the children, who are inadvertently cruel to Libby, but also in the characters of Taylor and her mother, who are never pictured because Taylor's not allowed to hang out with Libby anymore. In what was probably just a quest to keep her own child safe, Taylor's mother has inflicted unintentional, but very real, damage on Libby--damage that might be affecting Libby as much or more than whatever's going on between her own parents.

When I was looking for other reviews, I learned that reading any ambiguity into the conclusion goes against the author's own intentions, for whatever that's worth. To me that reading feels a little boring and even preachy, though giving Libby's dad the benefit of the doubt is problematic in its own way. Bottom line: the art is mostly superb and the storytelling is great, but the meat of the story itself only became interesting to me when I pivoted from "how much of an asshole is Libby's dad?" to "how much of an asshole am I?" That might just be me, though--I worry about being an asshole pretty much constantly, and probably also I've been broken by the patriarchy. :(

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Libby's Dad by Eleanor Davis is available from Retrofit and on Amazon
Rating: 7/10 - Recommended