Long, long ago in the 1990s, I wrote and drew small press comic books, publishing about 40 of them from 1990 to 1998. The most “successful” was my sorta-superhero series Amoeba Adventures.
I’ve recently excavated much of the Nik Archives (TM) from my parents’ basement where it’s been living for the last 15 years or so, and hope to get around to preserving it all online in some form in 2020.
Below is a sneak peek into the vaults, one of the “rarest” minicomics I ever did, 1992’s Imitation Crab Meat #1, a stab at autobiographical comics I only ever did two issues of.
I might’ve printed as many as two dozen copies of this one, a bittersweet Christmasy story of my wasted youth. It’s so obscure I don’t even have the cover art any more! My chicken-scratch art will never win any awards but there are things I still like today about this teenage angst-filled little story in miniature.
Enjoy, and have yourself a merry little Christmas and a grand start to 2020.
I don’t know about you, but I’m having a whole lot of trouble processing the fact that we’re just a couple of weeks away from the end of a decade.
The 2010s! Flickering past like those calendar pages did in them old movies once! I decided it was time to join the parade and look back at the less-old movies that sprang up from 2010-2019 and pick my 10 favourites.
It was a decade of superheroes and smartphones, paranoia and Trump-astrophes. Here’s my picks, in chronological order:
Boy (2010): It’s been a good decade for Taika Waititi, who’s broken New Zealand box office records and stormed Hollywood. He hasn’t made a duff move yet, and every film he’s made this decade is worth watching, but this cozy and kind of heartbreaking family comedy is still probably his best, most personal film.
Cabin In The Woods (2012): I love a good horror movie, and Joss Whedon’s twisty Cabin turns every horror cliche inside-out for a rollicking good, terrifying time. It’s a rampaging roller-coaster ride through scary movie history, and genuinely surprising where it ends up. And it’s got immense rewatchability value, a very important quality when picking your favourite movies.
The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013): Excess, testosterone and the American Dream. As I said recently, it’s been Martin Scorsese’s muse for something like 50 years. This unrelenting, three-hour epic is dazzling and exhausting in equal measures, but it’s also incredibly funny, with what I’d have to say is Leonardo DiCaprio’s best performance. It’s an ugly world Scorsese shows us, but so darned good-looking you can see its appeal.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): Wes Anderson’s miniatuarist, detailed sensibility finds a perfect home in this tragicomic tale of World War II, a glorious hotel, its impossibly perfect concierge, and a young refugee in love. It’s a wonderfully absurd doll’s house full of wonderful moments, and yet it’s got a sting to it that makes it one of Anderson’s best works.
Spotlight (2015): It’s been a hard decade for journalism and journalists. As one of the many journos who’ve watched newsrooms empty out and resources vanish, I’m always a sucker for a life-affirming testament to the sheer power of good, bareknuckled investigative reporting. This Oscar-winning story of the Boston Globe’s investigation into abuse by the Catholic Church is harrowing, hard and leaves you thinking, like any good story should. It also sadly feels like a monument to an era that’s rapidly receding into the past in far too many places.
Captain America: Civil War (2016): There’s been so MANY great superhero movies this decade that it’s hard to single out just one. Teenage comic book geek me never would’ve imagined this era we’re living in. Pretty much every Marvel movie released this decade was on the upper end of ‘very good’ popcorn fun, and quite a few lifted even higher. That said, I slightly give the edge to this one, anchored by Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr’s amazing performances, the introduction of Spider-Man and Black Panther to the Marvel Universe, and a series of stunning action sequences that set a bar that is pretty hard to beat.
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017): Is this a cheat? Probably. I don’t care. It’s essentially an 18-hour movie, as director David Lynch himself has said, and it’s his magnum opus. A sprawling, dreamlike and horrifying epic, it’s not what anyone imagined a return to the cozy donut-and-coffee-filled cabins of Twin Peaks would be like. And it’s better for it. It still haunts me.
The Shape of Water (2017): I love Guillermo Del Toro, and seeing him finally win an Oscar for his magical Creature From The Black Lagoon reimagining was a delight for monster-loving nerds everywhere. At his finest, Del Toro brings fairy tales to life with plenty of heart but also a sobering dose of realism. I could watch this beautiful film for ages to come.
BlacKkKlansman (2018): It’s a premise that shouldn’t work – a black cop “pretends” to join the Ku Klux Klan. But under Spike Lee’s sure, confident approach, this is a movie that says more about race in America than most filmmakers do in their entire career. Funny, stark and filled with Lee’s trademark directorial imagination and passion, it was a classic from the moment it came out.
Parasite (2019): I’m going to be hard-pressed to find a better film this year. Bong Joon-Ho’s Korean tale of class envy features more twists and turns than any mainstream Hollywood thriller in a long time, and an amazing sense of place. With The Host, Okja, Snowpiercer and more, Bong is crafting a unique seat at the table for himself with the film greats.
And bubbling just under, 10 more films from 2010-2019 that I’d all rank collectively at #11 on this list:
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010); Skyfall (2012); John Wick (2014); Creed (2015); Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Get Out (2017); Lady Bird (2017); Avengers: Infinity War (2018); The Irishman (2019); Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood (2019)
The quest for comic books drove much of my youth. I wrote in Part One about the thrill of the hunt, of trying to find my comics in a small mountain town where shops came and went like the wind. (Big thanks to pal Bob for his very kind words on that essay!) Let’s turn the page now to the late ‘80s.
Eventually, I got older, learned to drive, even got jobs so I could buy more comics (notably a rather unsuccessful 6-week stint working at McDonald’s in the summer of ’88). After Kayo closed for the final time, there was a year or so there where the only places I could find new comics was at supermarkets.
Then, in the shiny new shopping mall at the south end of town, a brand new comic store opened around 1989. It was a glorious change from the rather poky, uncertain shops I’d been used to. This was in a MALL, and it was a big, well-lit, clean space, with row after row of comic books. It hit during the peak of Batmania thanks to the ’89 blockbuster, and I recall an entire rack being filled with copies of the multi-coloured first issue of Legends of the Dark Knight.
It was a boom time, comics were cool, and I was old enough to have a part-time job and spent way too much money on Batman and X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man, where this weird artist named Todd McFarlane was making a splash. It was kinetic and expressive but I wasn’t entirely sure I liked it, being a fan of John Romita Jr.’s sturdy Spidey. The art seemed flashy, but lacking in substance. Welcome to the 1990s.
That mall comic shop – whose name I can’t even recall – was blandly professional but it did lack a certain style that the McNeil’s and Kayo’s of my youth had. Maybe I was just older, and less easily dazzled. But it was gone by the time I finished high school and moved across the country to little ol’ Mississippi to go to college.
My transient state and lack of a car led me to sign up for Westfield Comics, a thoroughly cool mail-order comics service I used on and off for many years until I moved overseas – they were great, but I’ll admit, I mainly used them because I didn’t have a comic shop within walking distance for long periods of my life. There’s nothing quite like discovering a new comics shop, with its hidden treasures and quirks.
And I found a great one in Memphis, an hour or so away, that I made frequent trips to for years – Comics & Collectibles. This was now the mid-1990s, when I became less and less interested in Marvel and DC as the “Image Comics” art style became prevalent and stories and artwork became contorted, incomprehensible messes for too many years.
Fortunately at the same time there was a golden age in great independent comics, and I would regularly hit up C&C for my fix of Hate, Eightball, Dork, Naughty Bits, Yummy Fur, Cerebus and more. Those creators kept me going through what I still consider the direst years of mainstream comics, the naughty ‘90s.
I don’t collect quite as many titles today as I once did – maybe 6-8, and a handful of miniseries and specials. I don’t do digital comics – they’re fine for some, but not for me. I’ve got two very good comic shops in my current city, which I dig.
I do still trawl the shops and online an awful lot for the old comics, because the things you grew up with are always the best things. Comics from roughly 1976-1988 hit that sweet spot for me, and always will. Obsessed comics geek for life, yo.
Marvel Comics in the 1970s was this great mad sprawling bestiary of ideas. Comics were hip, and Marvel was cool with Smilin’ Stan Lee always out hustling, but we were a long way from billion-dollar blockbusters and everyday people on the street knowing what Wakanda was.
There’s always been a soft spot in my heart for the coulda-beens, the never-was of Marvel’s 1970s. Comics like Black Goliath or Human Fly or Shogun Warriors. And of course, the Man-Wolf, whose entire gloriously weird short resume has been collected in the new Man-Wolf: The Complete Collection TPB.
The Man-Wolf remains obscure. He’s a werewolf, see, but he’s Spider-Man’s werewolf. He’s also an astronaut, and the son of tabloid terror J. Jonah Jameson. Oh, and he carried a sword for a while and fought aliens. Gloriously weird, indeed.
The Man-Wolf first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #124, one of the oldest Spidey comics I owned until my moth-eaten copy fell apart. It’s a groovy Gil Kane cover practically ordering you to read it. The Man-Wolf ticked all the Spidey villain boxes – creepy animal alter-ego, tragic backstory, plenty of guilt. He must’ve been popular in the early 1970s, because he suddenly got his very own starring role in Marvel’s C-list Creatures on the Loose comic.
It’s weird because Marvel actually already HAD a star lycanthrope, Werewolf By Night. But this was the monster-filled 1970s, where Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, “living vampires,” mummies and zombies all had their own comic books. The problem was nobody at Marvel really seemed sure what to do with Werewolf #2, who mainly differed from the Night guy by being greyish-white instead of brown, oh, and an astronaut.
Reading Man-Wolf: The Complete Collection is the diary of a character who never entirely fit in. Was he a rampaging beast, a quasi-superhero who battled the Nazi villain the Hatemonger, or something else?
In one of those glaring comic book about-faces that gave fans whiplash, suddenly he was a “chosen one,” the Star-God, saviour of another dimension in a strange fantasy adventure, drawn by a great young George Perez and featuring on one of the most honestly daft comic book covers of all time – he’s a Man-Wolf! In Space! With a sword!
This collection follows the wolf’s rambling travels across dimensions and comic books, from his short-lived solo tales to guest appearances with Spider-Man and a very odd stint in Marvel’s Savage She-Hulk comic, one of the most blandly generic titles ever published. It all ends with the werewolf curse being kicked… for now.
The Man-Wolf’s appeared since his ‘70s heyday, but really, this book collects the best of his strange saga, and while I’d balk at calling it great comics, it’s tremendously fun comics, the story of a C-list character who never quite caught on.
But you never know… by the time Marvel Studios gets to Phase 5 or 6, a space werewolf with a sword epic starring Timothée Chalamet might just be the ticket.
I try and stay away from stupid internet controversies, because they’re usually stupid internet controversies. This year’s king so far is the whole “Martin Scorsese vs. Marvel Movies” stoush.
I believe you can be a fan of both – and arguing about what’s “real” movies is kind of pointless. Scorsese is entitled to his view, and god only knows the internet will share its own views. The art stands by itself.
And while I adore the Marvel movies and will never stop being thrilled by seeing Thor or the Black Panther fly across the screen, I don’t think I’ve ever been left haunted by a Marvel movie in the same way that Scorsese’s best films affect me.
I’ve been on a big Scorsese binge the last few weeks, after watching his epic The Irishman unfold gloriously over 3 1/2 hours on a big screen (thanks Hollywood Cinema!), which is the only way to really appreciate a movie like this.
Watching The Irishman at home on a laptop between checking your Facebook feed and feeding the dog isn’t the same thing at all. It’s the antithesis of binge, binge, binge multitasking culture, a contemplative, mournful coda to Scorsese’s career of misguided men lashing out in their hunt for the American dream.
Returning to movies such as The Wolf Of Wall Street (a glorious monument to hedonistic excess that just gets better with each viewing), The King of Comedy or Goodfellas, we can see how Scorsese has been weaving this tapestry his entire career, all the way back to Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Toxic masculinity, if you want to call it that, has always been his biggest theme. For those who superficially watched Goodfellas and thought, wow, the gangster life sure looks glamorous, The Irishman is Scorsese’s final damning rebuttal.
The haunting final half hour or so of The Irishman sticks with me, as a damning indictment of a life full of regrets and passive evildoing. While watching The Irishman requires a commitment, it’s worth it. Robert DeNiro hasn’t been so good in years, Al Pacino tones down his “hoo-ha” overplaying to good effect, and it’s a real treat to see Joe Pesci on screen again after far too long.
The true test for a movie’s greatness to me is how often I find myself turning it over and over in my head after seeing it, thinking about what it showed me. By that standard, The Irishman is one of the best films of the year.
I think you can have superhero movies and you can have what Scorsese calls “cinema,” and they’re all different yet related animals. But when it comes down to it, one is a roller-coaster ride and one is a lingering meal of fine dining. Scorsese’s entire argument was that films that aren’t big-budget franchises are in danger of disappearing from the table entirely, and that would be a shame.
The Irishman is Scorsese’s feast after a lifetime of serving up thoughtful dishes, and sprawling and deliberate as it is, it is a masterpiece.
Nik Dirga 