Sure, we like to read comics, or, in my case, graphic novels. But it’s usually months (often several) after they’ve already been released. I like to think the delay is because I have other things to do…but really I’m just kind of lazy.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the site before, new comics these days seem creatively a bit stagnant, but it is a legitimate Golden Age for reprints, so, there’s still plenty to read.

To wit:

DEVIL DINOSAUR OMNIBUS
By Jack Kirby

Devil Dinosaur — the adventures of a leaping, fire-engine red Tyrannosaurus Rex and his best cro-magnon pal Moon-Boy — is more of a minor work in Kirby’s vast canon. Although the genius for character design and epic science fiction surrealism is still there, overall Kirby’s art just isn’t as sharp or innovative here as it was in the 60s and early 70s. And let’s not forget, as incredible as his ideas frequently were, his writing can take patience.

Still, at the end of the day, it is Kirby and, as such, reliably and enjoyably insane — especially an exceptional four-issue stretch where the strangest duo in comics history repels an alien invasion. Lots of fun and, somewhat surprisingly, not just for Kirby completists.

Grade: B

I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS!: THE COMICS OF FLETCHER HANKS
Edited and afterword by Paul Karasik

First brought to the public’s attention by Dan Nadel in the indispensable anthology Art Out of Time, Fletcher Hanks’s highly imaginative and carefully drawn short stories, produced between 1939-1941 for a variety of independent publishers, are a dizzying assault of weirdness. Often disturbing and always very, very strange, they most resemble the random, eventful, and chaotic storytelling techniques of 8-year-old boys. The superheroic adventures of Stardust the Space Wizard is what many people will gravitate to, but the outlandish and creepy Fantomah (one of the first female superheroes) stories are the standouts.

Although perhaps what’s most impressive about Hanks’s work is it’s never dull or predictable; not something you can say about most Golden Age comics.

Grade: A-

JAMES STURM’S AMERICA: GOD, GOLD, AND GOLEMS
By James Sturm

Sturm made a huge splash a few years ago with a series of lovingly rendered indie comics based around strange and sordid aspects of American history. Unfortunately he’s been quiet since writing one of the finest series to ever carry the Marvel name, Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, and co-founding the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. So, it’s wonderful to have his American history trilogy — “The Revival,” “Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight, and “The Golem’s Mighty Swing” — collected in a single volume: James Sturm’s America.

While “The Revival” and “Hundreds of Feet” are interesting, if underdeveloped and histrionic, reads in their own right, the justifiably celebrated “Golem” is the obvious gem. The story of an independent Jewish baseball team in the early 20s, the quiet intensity and gritty despair of “Golem” is somehow actually better than I remembered.

Grade: B+

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