Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: "Race to Death Valley"
Floyd Gottfredson. Fantagraphics, $29.99 (260p) ISBN 978-1-60699-441-2
Mickey Mouse wasn't always the cute and harmless rodent of Disney megabranding fame. As this dense and action-packed book shows, the early years of Mickey were quite a bit rougher. The first in a series, "Race to Death Valley" compiles the daily newspaper strips written by the inventive Gottfredson (often working from story and character concepts invented by Walt himself) between April 1930 and January 1932, interwoven with thoughtful essays by fellow Disney artists. Gottfredson's strips are jammed with incident and detail, energized with a loopy energy that matches the spunky determination of Mickey himself. Running pell-mell from one dangerous escapade to the next (spooky houses and runaway trains predominate), Mickey is all spit and fire as he confronts louts like Pegleg Pete and the Fox while protecting his risk-prone flapper girlfriend, Minnie: "Give up?? Never!!" The quite visible specter of the Depression and occasional dark humor, as when Mickey tries multiple times to kill himself and fails comically, only add to the sense of heroic grit. (June)
Flight: Vol. 8
Edited by Kazu Kibuishi. Villard, $27 (257p) ISBN 978-0-34551-738-8
The latest collection in the long-running anthology series takes readers on more than a dozen journeys to imaginative, beautifully created worlds. As in previous volumes, the skill of the artists and the remarkable variety of styles presented are the book's main appeal. Each short story, ranging in length from about 10 to 20 pages, takes readers to new worlds of wonder. While there's no direct connection between the tales, there is a general underlying theme of characters pushing themselves to achieve great things. Some stories, such as Tony Cliff's "The Black Fountain," explore the darker side of this ambitious drive, while others, like Scott Campbell's "Igloo Head and Tree Head in Accomplishments," bring a much lighter approach, with the rest falling somewhere between those two. Visually, the stories range from sumptuous fantasy settings to exaggerated cartoonish animals, elegantly simple medieval horror stories to vibrant manga-influenced action comedies. All readers are likely to find a tale they'll love within its pages. (June)
Batman & Robin, Vol. 3: Batman Must Die!
Grant Morrison, Frazier Irving, David Finch, et al. DC, $24.99 (168p) ISBN 978-1-4012-3091-3
An opening scene in which a bat-garbed Dick Grayson is shot in the back of the head gangland-style sets the tone for Morrison's tale. A man posing as Bruce Wayne's father, Thomas, returned from the grave, claims Bruce's wealth and attempts to carry out a twisted vengeance on Bruce's costumed heirs; as the story flashes back to show the events leading up to that scene, villainy appears fated to win. Dick "Batman" Grayson and Bruce's son, Damian, struggle to work out what "Thomas" and his demented allies are up to before Gotham is lost; traditional allies prove to have been suborned, forcing Dick and Damian into an uncomfortable partnership with none other than the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. A follow-up story, set after the return of the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, reveals the next stage of the Bat, the evolution of the legacy into a literal franchise. Like his protagonist, Morrison misdirects and misleads his audience, although for a more beneficent purpose; despite appearances, violence and chaos are self-defeating, and good people can through great effort prevail in the end. The art is divided among a number of artists, mostly to good effect. (May)
Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths
Shigeru Mizuki. Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-77046-641-6
The first English translation of the work of 90-year-old Mizuki, a celebrated gekiga and manga artist in Japan for more than 40 years, is based on Mizuki's own experiences in the Imperial Army in WWII. The story follows the fate of doomed troops fighting in New Guinea as they face hunger, malaria, and the brutality of their own officers, who administer nightly beatings. Mizuki illustrates the soldiers in a "cartoony" style, but uses a detailed, realistic style for his backgrounds and landscape panels, capturing the beauty and desolation of the remote locate. The dual styles underline the complexity of the story, which alternates between broad comedy mocking the absurdity of the army's hierarchy and growing horror at the abuse of the infantrymen and the officers' commitment to the idea that one must die for one's country. First published in Japan in 1973, Mizuki's graphic novel remains a powerful condemnation of war, worthy to stand beside the greatest antiwar comics. (May)
Feynman
Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick. Roaring Brook/First Second, $29.99 (266p) ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8
Jumping from the Manhattan Project laboratories of Los Alamos, N.Mex., to the beaches of Rio, Ottaviani and Myrick’s portrait of the Nobel Prize–winning physicist and general polymath Richard Feynman eschews chronology in favor of rhythm, and it’s an approach that suits their subject perfectly. While Feynman’s role in the creation of the atomic bomb and his contributions to 20th-century quantum electrodynamics are fascinating topics, they share equal time with his vaguely libertine (for a physicist, anyway) approach to romance and his tireless—and uneven—attempts to understand such nonscientific pursuits as art, language, safecracking, samba music, and cooking. Though he was indisputably one of the leading figures in the post-Einstein scientific landscape, Feynman's most enduring pursuit was making physics accessible to the layman, and several sections of the book illustrate how this impulse went beyond mere populism and came to dominate his scientific life. When he wasn’t relaxing on the beach, he frequently chose teaching freshmen or lecturing to the general public over pure research. Myrick’s light, sketchy inks keep the proceedings from bogging down, even in the lecture hall, and an extensive bibliography and sketchbook prove that the most dogged intellectual pursuit can still be a good time. (Aug.)
The Dusk Society
Sidney Williams, Mark Jones and Naresh Kumar. Campfire, $11.99 trade paper (88p) ISBN 978-93-80028-63-7
The eponymous society is a team of scientific and spiritual masters, formed in the early 20th century to combat a dark sorcerer conveniently named Pierceblood, just in case you forget he’s the villain. Working with Pierceblood is a team of classic literary villains, including Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula. The story takes place in the modern era at a smalltown high school and focuses on four students. Barbara, Nick, Ronnie, and Ishita—a psychic, a hacker, a slacker, and a chemistry whiz, respectively—are chosen by a mysterious Dusk Society recruiter, Miss Raven, to fight against Pierceblood. Ishita is the only memorable one in the bunch thanks to her quirky personality; the rest feel like the sort of cookie-cutter teen personalities you see in educational videos. In fact, the story’s tone has an air of middle school library fiction. What’s worse is that the all-star cast is never used effectively, with Dracula and the monster barely getting any face time. On the bright side, Kumar’s artwork is enjoyable, and the characters are likable in spite of their flatness. Tweens stuck on a long car ride may find this serviceable fare. (June)
American Vampire, Vol. 2
Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque, and Mateus Santolouco. DC/Vertigo, $24.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-4012-3069-2
A bloody reinterpretation of American history animates this ultraviolent horror comic. The wide-open gambling and prostitution that accompany construction of Boulder Dam in 1936 are corrupting the town of Las Vegas, Nev.; feeding on human degradation—and blood—is a swarm of vampires, one of the many rival varieties that pass undetected in the transient population of the unsettled West. One local lawman who just wants to protect the innocent finds his comforting certainties stripped away as an outlaw vampire exults in pure wildness. Meanwhile, a female vampire tries to maintain a loving domestic relationship with her mortal husband when she’s not ripping the heads off their enemies. Although Stephen King contributed to the early installments of this saga, Snyder now carries the action along with gusto. Albuquerque (in the first four chapters) and Santolouco (last two) deliver art that’s appropriately raw and brutal. Exploring how dreams and temptations have shaped America, this series offers thoughtful content alongside the grotesque shape-shifting and spurting gore. (May)
