Chibi Comics
$3.00 (and available on-line)
Script, Layouts, inks — by Mike Murphy
Script, pencils, coloring, lettering — by Celina Hernandez

A lot of independent comics these days look like marketing gimmicks. You get the feeling the creators are just throwing in stuff they think might look good on a Slurpee cup or as a Happy Meal toy. So when creators like Mike Murphy and Celina Hernandez create something as a amazing as Red Town, it’s a reason for celebration among those who like story-driven comics that have something to say.

Red Town is a series of inter-related stories occurring in Hedgewiisch “” a place the residents call “Red Town” because a serial killer snuffed 40 people in 24 months. The killer was never captured.

And that’s just the sub-plot…all kinds of other interesting things happen that are dramatic, sad, sweet and even a bit surreal.

In the last few issues we’ve met Anna Walters, who used to be a movie star and lives in house full of furnished by hand-me-down dreams; her ex-husband Jacob Wazinski, who lives in a third-rate nursing home; Darrel, a nursing home attendant that may be Jacob’s only friend; Ben and Sarah, a couple of evicted junkies, and Jessica, a little girl who imagines her doll is eaten by a werewolf.

Examining the dark underbelly of small-town America was been done by many creative forces including David Lynch and William Burroughs. What makes Red Town so compelling is that it merges a complex and interesting story with art that looks deceptively simple.

All the foreshadowing, all the guessing about which “” if any “” of the characters may be the serial killer, all anxiety and strangeness, is complemented perfectly by the easy, graceful art that moves the plot along but never upstages the story.

This is “American manga” style art at its finest. Celina and Mike have created an appealing style that is easy to read, easy to follow, moody without being dark and shadowy “” film noir under florescent lights.

And just when you thought lettering was a lost art in indie books, here we have crisp lettering that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story or bump against the art.

Like all good comics, each issue leaves you wanting more. You can relate to the lives of the various characters and identify with their quirks. I check the Red Town MySpace page frequently to see if there’s anything new.

After reading a few issues, so will you.

Like Disney movies and porn, Christmas films are marketed for a very specific target audience. Christmas movies like to celebrate family values, the spirit of giving, the triumph of ordinary people, and the joy of reindeer ownership.

I can’t relate to any of that.

My favorite Christmas story has always been Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL. For those unfamiliar with the roughly 10 billion versions of this story that have been filmed since movies were invented, the plot involves ugly recriminations, naked greed, squalor, missed opportunities, and dead people. Now those are topics I can relate to.

So while others are watching one of Tim Allen‘s horrendous SANTA CLAUSE films or THE GRINCH or SCROOGED or even SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, I relax with a trio of Christmas movies that feature one or more murders.

These are not “traditional” Christmas movies by any stretch of the imagination (even if your imagination stretches like Plastic Man doing yoga), but they all feature Christmas themes and they’re all more fun that endless reruns of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

I’ve always considered Tim Burton‘s 1992 film BATMAN RETURNS to be a great Christmas movie. How can anyone not love a movie that begins with Pee-wee Herman throwing his deformed baby — stroller and all — into a frozen river to drown?

BATMAN RETURNS is set in Gotham City during the Christmas season, and is probably a more insightful look at the true spirit of Christmas than Burton’s other Christmas classic, A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ever will be.

A murderous, psycho circus, led by the Penguin (Danny DeVito in a role in which his over-the-top performance is actually an asset), terrorizes Gotham City. Catwoman blows up a department store full of Christmas merchandise (this was before director Jean-Christope Comar — hiding behind the nickname Pitof — absolutely destroyed any chance of a Catwoman movie franchise and ruined my favorite Halle Berry fantasy). Christopher Waken lights a giant Christmas tree and Bruce Wayne peels a glued, rubber mask off his face.

Several people die in this movie: The Penguin drowns, Max Shreck (named for the actor who played Count Orlock in the 1922 silent film NOSFERATU) gets electrocuted, and, if memory serves me right, the winner of the Gotham City ice queen pageant gets pushed off a roof. Plus, I figure the guy on the unicycle with a machine gun must have nailed a few people in the crowd, even if they didn’t show it on screen.

The 1934 movie THE THIN MAN hasn’t much in common with BATMAN RETURNS except that both Bruce Wayne and Nick Charles are obscenely wealthy and both films occur at Christmastime and feature murders.

If you’ve never had the joy of seeing William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles I pity you more than Mr. T pities a fool. In all six of the THIN MAN films, Nick and Nora float through life on a cloud of whiskey and cash. They are also very good at solving murders and pioneered the technique of getting all the suspects in one room until the killer either cracks and confesses or tries to escape.

THE THIN MAN is not just clever and sophisticated; it’s extremely funny. Look for the scene where a gang of Nick’s mooching, low-brow buddies crash a Christmas party at the Charles’s penthouse hotel suite. Also check out the scene with Myrna Loy — the ultimate sweetly suffering wife — watching her husband shoot the ornaments off a Christmas Tree in his pajamas and bathrobe. The eternal longing of a wife to have her husband grow up has never been expressed better than the expression on Loy’s face. Loy could convey more just squinting her eyes than Jennifer Aniston could jumping through a plate glass window on fire.

There are only a couple of murders in THE THIN MAN, just to move the plot along; but if you want a movie that will get you in a good Christmas mood, this one works a lot better than another rerun of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER.

Finally, if you want a good Christmas movie that is warm and funny and ends up with someone getting killed, you’ll want to see WE’RE NO ANGELS — the 1955 classic, not the 1989 remake with a sullen Sean Penn and Demi Moore‘s stunt double’s breasts.

A trio of felons — Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov — escape from Devil’s Island prison on Christmas Eve. They hide out in a village on the island and plan to steal from a shopkeeper (Leo G. Carroll) and get off the island. But they begin to like the shopkeeper and his family and decide to stick around long enough to keep him from being humiliated and fired by his greedy cousin (Basil Rathbone). I seem to recall only one murder in this movie (Rathbone’s, naturally), but when he gets killed, you really, really want to see it happen.

WE’RE NO ANGELS is a very funny movie that showcases the comedic talents of Bogart, Ustinov, and Rathbone — three actors you rarely think of as being knee-slappingly hilarious.

So while all your friends and family are watching their traditional Christmas films, you can start your own Christmas tradition with BATMAN RETURNS, THE THIN MAN, and WE’RE NO ANGELS.

And remember: everytime a bell rings, another low-life gets what’s coming to him.

EXISTENCE
Written, pencilled and inked
by Harold Ritchie Jr.
Edited by Tara Ritchie
Unhinged Studios

Let’s begin with a few words in praise of “stark.” No, not Tony (Iron Man) Stark or that Sebastian Stark guy played by James Woods in the new TV lawyer show SHARK. What we’re talking about here is “stark” as a classic concept: the kind of “stark” that means barren and desolate. The kind of “stark” that is harsh and blunt.

An empty farm house in the middle of nowhere in a John Steinbeck novel is stark. The Arizona desert at night is stark. The rocky surface of Mars is stark. “Stark” can be powerful and can also be beautiful. Harold Ritchie Jr.‘s new comic book EXISTENCE is also stark.

EXISTENCE is the story of a band of freedom fighters in a post-apocalyptic world. A dark, secret government rules and the old governments struggle to retain their power and restore order.

This is the kind of story where starkness is an asset. Ritchie’s minimalist artwork and short, brisk dialogue enhance his bleak story. His panels are tight and as claustrophobic as Paris Hilton‘s walk-in closet. This gives the story a moody atmosphere that conveys a world of paranoia and hopelessness. This is one of those comics that actually benefits from being rendered in black and white. It’s almost impossible to think of the world of EXISTENCE conveyed any other way.

The story moves along at a good pace, and — as in the first issue of most comic books — there isn’t time for a lot of character development. Each character gets a brief introduction, we learn why they are necessary to the plot, and then we move along to the next character.

We first meet Jack West, an amnesiac revolutionary who looks a lot like Silent Bob after a few months on a high-fiber diet. West is rescued by an agent of the Guardians of Order, and both Jack and his rescuer are pursued by the bad guys in a wild chase.

That chase sequence is really the best part of the first issue — Ritchie’s art is best in the panels where the good guys are making their getaway. The lack of background detail complements the desolation facing the heroes of EXISTENCE.

We learn that Jack has been tortured for three years by TOC (the Omni Corpus) and that he was once the “strongest soldier” in his unit — which probably means he’ll be around for issue number 2 and beyond.

We meet other members of the cast, but again, we don’t really learn too much about anyone, but we do discover who the bad guys are and get a hint of what they’re trying to do.

But while the art and writing of EXISTENCE is stark, the plot is quite complex. I don’t want to give too much away here, but you’ll want to read this a couple of times to catch all the details. There’s enough happening here that it can be confusing if you’re not paying attention.

In the copy I received for review, there were a number of grammar and punctuation errors (which I hope were corrected before final publication). There were also a few problems with some of the character’s anatomy, which I’m sure will be tightened up in subsequent issues.

All in all, EXISTENCE is a work in progress and should be experienced that way. Be patient, it looks like Ritchie is going somewhere with this and if you like your comics stark, you might want to be along for the ride.

Tony Loco
Art by Mark Teague
Written by Mark Teague, Derek McCaw
and Mitchell Peterson
Illusive Arts Entertainment
Release Date: November 2006
Cover Price: $3.50

What exactly is reality?

Exploring what is real and what we only think is real has always been a popular topic in pop culture. In the movie The Wizard Of Oz, the great and powerful wizard is really just a carnival huckster behind a curtain and the land of Oz only a dream. In the movie The Matrix, reality is manufactured by souless machines. In Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods, an old man named Wednesday takes his friend Shadow “behind the scenes” of reality — and Shadow discovers a giant mechanical spider “search engine” squatting over small piles of flaming bones.

If you thought Hitler was funny on the TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, you should see his movies.

Believe it or don’t — Hitler was played for laughs in several American movies just before World War II. Before the horrors of the holocaust and other Nazi atrocities were discovered, Hitler was often portrayed by Hollywood as a clown. And it all started with Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in the classic anti-war comedy The Great Dictator in 1940. The title dictator was named Adenoid Hynkel, tyrant of Tomania — but everyone could see it was supposed to be Hitler. In the film, Chaplin depicts Nazi politics as laughable and Hitler as arrogant, stupid, and crazy.

So for the next several years, even after World War II erupted, Hitler was always portrayed as a joke. For example, in the short comedy film The Devil With Hitler (1942), the Board of Directors in hell threaten to replace the Devil with Adolph Hitler, unless the Devil can trick Hitler into performing a good deed. Hitler is played by actor Bobby Watson as a moron who brags about his skills as a two-handed house painter.

Apparently this little movie (it was only 44 minutes long) was popular enough for a sequel. In That Nazty Nuisance (1943) again Bobby Watson played Der Fuhrer. This time Hitler, Mussolini, and a Japanese madman named Suki Yaki (perhaps Hollywood was unaware of Hirohito), journey to a tiny island for a secret meeting. Their conference is ruined by a shipwrecked American sailor and a pretty island girl. The humor is the kind of broad burlesque that men today wouldn’t watch because it’s too corny and predictable and women today wouldn’t watch because it’s too much like The Three Stooges.

Better (or at least not as silly) was Hitler Dead Or Alive (1942). Bobby Watson played Hitler (imagine making a career out of playing Hitler for laughs), who was targeted for assassination by American gangsters. The plot centered on a rich American who offered a million-dollar bounty on Hitler. Three American crooks (Ward Bond, Paul Fix, and Warren Hymer) muscle their way into Germany to collect the reward. Viewing the assassination of Hitler as just another hit on another mob boss, the trio joins the Canadian Air Force, hijacks a plane, and heads into the Fatherland for a confrontation. It’s explained that the crooks speak fluent German because they had a bootleg beer racket during prohibition in Wisconsin. They are captured by the Gestapo and escape a prison camp with help from the anti-Nazi underground. They finally capture Hitler, and then shave his mustache and cut his hair. When the Nazi’s catch up with them, they don’t believe this “inferior specimen” is their beloved Fuhrer and he’s shot. The film concludes with the idea that even if Hitler was killed the German military would simply find someone to impersonate him to keep the Nazi ideal alive. The crooks realize that Hitler is just a symbol, and (sadly) Nazism would continue to thrive without him.

Then there was The Strange Death Of Adolf Hitler (1943), which stole bits of plot directly from The Great Dictator. This time Ludwig Donath plays an actor who is given plastic surgery by the Gestapo to look like Hitler. Why? Because they want to install their own Hitler so they can control him. However, the actor is anti-Nazi and tricks the Gestapo — only to be killed by his own wife who thinks he really is Hitler.

If Germany won the war?

1963’s They Saved Hitler’s Brain (also known as The Madman Of Mondoras and The Return Of Mr. H) is another Hitler movie of note. Many sources list this odd film as a comedy, considering it funny the way Plan 9 From Outer Space was funny — the so-bad-it’s-good comedy. Trust me, it isn’t. It’s a really, really boring story that was actually an uncompleted 1950s movie with added footage. Hitler’s head (in what appears to be a pickle jar) barks orders to dimwitted henchmen.

Now many of you are probably saying: “Hold up there, Mr. Pouncey! Aren’t you forgetting about the numerous times Mel Brooks has played Hitler for laughs?

No, I’m not.

The first time Brooks successfully used Nazis for laughs was in the original version of The Producers (1968). However, this movie featured a bad (and, it was implied, stoned) actor called LSD doing a bad impersonation of Hitler. Although Hitler and Nazism are essential to the plot, Hitler-as-a-real-person isn’t there. I enjoyed this film (and the movie version of the stage play released in 2005), but it’s really a satire on Broadway, with Nazi’s and Hitler as a subplot.

Brooks also gave us To Be Or Not To Be (1985), a remake of a much funnier movie (directed by Ernst Lubitsch in 1942 and starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard). Hitler actually does have a cameo in this movie (he’s played by Roy Goldman), and although Nazism is addressed more directly than The Producers, Hitler and his boys aren’t the stars — they’re just bit players.

Now, what are we to make of all this? Is the best way to defeat evil by making fun of it until no one takes it seriously? Or, by trivializing evil as stupidity, do you simply help mask its true nature? Don’t ask me — I’m just a guy who’s seen far too many movies.