3 Highlights from this Week's FOC
WHAT SHOULD YOU NOT MISS THIS WEEK?
Hello, amigos,
This week in FOC: Psychedelia, Cultural Anxiety, and The Value of Friendship™ (with and without Superheroics)
DC Finest: The Flash: The Finest Man Dead
Thesp Flash! Mind control! Good (and bad) vibrations!
Dig it, readers, it’s the 1970s. The air is hazy with Acapulco Gold and social change. But The Flash is The Man—a square-jawed superhero and a police forensic scientist. Can he get hip to the kids and their crazy jive?
Is this the end of The Tryhardest Man Alive?!?Like a lot of the best DC Finest editions, The Flash: The Fastest Man Dead bridges eras. At the start of the collection, Barry Allen is faced with an endearingly goofy, straight-arrow superhero dilemma: It’s opening night of the Keystone City Police Department’s amateur production of Hamlet, but the rest of the cast is sick! What’s a Scarlet Speedster to do?
This wasn’t for budget reasons, they said. But the union wasn’t happy.Just a few issues later, he’s battled Manchurian Candidate-style mind control, state terrorism, his own well-intentioned white guilt, and a Satanic cult. By the end of the collection, he and Batman are taking super-speed trips into the realm of the dead.
In other words, from its squeaky-clean start, the collection turns psychedelic and anxious, subtly vibrating with an unease verging on paranoia that feels very of its time. But modern readers will find plenty to relate to as Barry Allen careens through a rapidly changing, wildly creative, and uncertain world. Flash Fact!
DC’s Finest: Flash: The Fastest Man Dead includes World's Finest Comics #198-199; The Flash #197-204, #206-212, #215-229; The Brave and the Bold #99.
DC Finest: The Flash: The Fastest Man Dead TP *PRE-ORDER*
€32,99
€39,99
From deathtraps to doppelgängers, Barry Allen’s sprint through the ‘70s is anything but predictable.This era of The Flash catapults Barry Allen through stories that blend superheroics, sci-fi weirdness, and social turmoil. From cultists and cursed rings to alternate realities and… read more
The Tin Can Society
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A celebrity tech mogul builds himself a suit of armor and uses it to fight crime. But Johnny Moore is Black, disabled and raised by a christian scientist who will barely take him to the doctor. And his fortuneis founded on ingenious mobility, not weapons—in other words, he’s no Tony Stark.
To begin with, he has friends.
A lot of the beauty of this book is in its simple depictions of deep, lifelong friendships.But The Tin Can Society opens with Johnny’s murder, and it turns out the whole superhero thing is a bit of a false front. Instead, writer Peter Warren gives Johnny the Citizen Kane treatment, exploring the lives of him and his friends—the Tin Can Society—through their investigation of his death.What follows is a tender, often heartfelt exploration of how friendships and individuals evolve over a lifetime, through the lens of disability, celebrity, sex, and gigantic mecha suits. What could have been a paint-by-numbers superhero story becomes a portrait of a guy who’s vulnerable, brilliant, arrogant, beloved, and sometimes kind of a dick—in other words, a full, flawed human being.
It’s so rare to see power dynamics of friendship—of ability, race, wealth, gender, you name it—treated as subtly and honestly as they are here.
Artist Francesco Mobili and colorist Chris Chuckry are in perfect sync here. The way the colors bring the drawings into sharp relief and create lush, textured environments and tones reminds me a bit of Caspar Wijngaard’s work in The Power Fantasy, my personal pick for Comic of the Year.
Image: Tin Can Society TP collects issues #1–9.
Tin Can Society TP *PRE-ORDER*
€14,99
€19,99
THE TIN CAN SOCIETY is a heartfelt and human look at the evolution of friendships across a lifetime, at disability and ableism, and the destructive power of fame. The first graphic novel of a brand-new miniseries from Giant Generator showcasing… read more
Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories
Speaking of relationships evolving over time, Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories collects 15 years’ worth of Jaime’s Hernandez’s stories about Maggie Chascarrillo and Hopey Glass, best friends and sometimes lovers in the chaotic, swirling mix of Southern California’s punk scene.
The two women’s stories burst with drama, chaotic, often hopeful energy, and the slapstick comedy of uncertainty and failure. Like The Tin Can Society, Locas looks at friendship over time and how they evolve through specific moments, details, and gestures. And while these are “Maggie and Hopey stories,” the two women evolve as much on their own as they do together.
Nobody does the buzz of people coming, going, and socializing like Jaime Hernandez.
The art here is such a pleasure. Hernandez is a master of facial expression, body language, and composition, especially when it comes to crowd scenes; you get the impression he spends a lot of time in crowds and really seeing the peple he meets. As his style evolves from story to story, it’s interesting to watch him ditch extraneous detail in favor of stark, bold composition that loses none of its richness.
Even the background figures look like they have some kind of rich backstory.
Fantagraphics: Locas The Maggie And Hopey Stories HC is a deluxe hardcover edition containing stories from issues #1–50 of Love and Rockets, plus three new stories not included in the previous edition.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Once you're hooked on Maggie and Hopey, there are plenty more Love and Rockets characters and stories, Go wild, go crazy diamonds! And give your friends a hug!
PS. One of my favorite discoveries from the absolutely fantastic Thought Bubble festival in Harrogate, UK, this lasat November was The Mindless Ones, who hosted the irreverent, weird, ramshackle panel Silence! To Astonish with celebrity guests Kieron Gillen, Al Ewing, John Allison, Megan Huang, and Al Ewing's leather daddy hat.
If you’re interested in reading more about Locas, there's a thoughtful, longish post on their website, that's well worth your time: The Mindless Ones.
Locas The Maggie And Hopey Stories HC *PRE-ORDER*
€47,50
€49,99
Jaime Hernandez is one of the most humane, graceful, and imaginatively inexhaustible artists in American popular culture. Locas tells the story of Maggie Chascarrillo, a bisexual, Mexican-American woman attempting to define herself in a community rife with class, race, and… read more
All books on FOC today
...can be found here! Wednesday is the official deadline for low pre-order prices (but we never change prices before Friday... shhhh it's a secret!)
Bye,
Don!
