Comics I Bought This Week: May 21, 2009
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got five new comics plus a hard cover collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
I’ve been a bit ambivalent about Paul Pope’s stuff. I never liked his “THB” comic but enjoyed “Heavy Liquid”. I never bothered with his “Batman: Year 100” because I don’t care much to read another Batman story. I almost bought “100%” back when it was serialized in 2002. But at six issues for six bucks a piece I decided I would rather wait for a collected edition. It took DC long enough to publish one.
It’s tough to describe “100%” concisely. It’s a romantic sci-fi story of some sort. It’s about life and love in the year 2050 on the island of Manhattan. Life isn’t really all that different than it is now. There are different gadgets and people have different attitudes but things are recognizable.
I’ve also been ambivalent about Paul Pope’s art. It has alway seemed a little too rushed to me. It has a lot of influence from Japanese comics in it. He does some stuff I like and some stuff I don’t like.
This book contains his best artwork I’ve seen to date. I came to realize upon reading this that Paul Pope has a tremendous mark making ability. Mark making is the vocabulary of lines that an artist puts on paper to describe things.
Most comic artists don’t have many marks in their vocabulary. Many have one, two, or three marks that they build everything out of. All of that scritch-scratchy, crosshatched, early 90’s, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Rob Leifeld style art is built without a wide variety of marks.
It’s not necessarily better to have a wide variety of marks at your disposal but it is unusual for comics. And Paul Pope uses them well. His backgrounds can be lush and moody, filled up with all manner of marks, even if they don’t mean anything literal. Though he wears his influences on his sleeve his stuff is fairly unique in the comic world.
I’m glad they finally put this out in a collected edition and I got a chance to read it. If you’re in the mood for a lush, dreamy, sci-fi romance then check this one out.
I picked up issue #1 of 100% back when it first came out and I couldn’t get through it. Never bothered with another issue. Sounds like it definitely works better collected.
And one thing about about Paul Pope is the guy can draw his ass off. I don’t love his style, but I can appreciate it. Story-wise, I hated Batman Year 100, but the art was a nice mix of western and asian influences. Most American artists who try to do a manga style simply suck ass. He’s the rare exception.