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“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.”

    ~Mark Twain

I had this whole intro planned, but let’s skip it and go straight to the comics.

Nisha #3

Story and Art by Robert Gavila

Editing and Support by Maria Gavila

Published by Crossover Comics, 23 pages for $2.95

I was super-psyched to get the new issue of Nisha in the mail this week from Robert Gavila.  If you don’t remember Nisha, it’s the story of a former Soviet Army special operations asset who’s moved to a remote location in the American Midwest as part of the SALT II nuclear arms treaty.  Nisha is special because she’s a woman with both a gift—a form of telepathy—and a penchant for violence.  She was a weapon that scared the Hell out both sides during the Cold War, but the Cold War has been over for a long time, so at the outset of issue 1, she’s also a woman who’d thought she’d left her former life behind—to the benefit of all involved.  But then her family is abducted by an unscrupulous defense contractor, and suddenly all of the old fears return with a vengeance.  The new issue picks up right where the last one left off, with Nisha on the run and searching for her family even as both the US government and a mob of Blackwateresque non-governmental mercenaries chase after her.

The simple fact is this: Nisha is one of the great independent comics of our time.  It is literally the best comic that Diamond refuses to distribute, the proverbial diamond in the rough that’s better than almost anything on the stands—even as it languishes in small press obscurity.  The book succeeds because it’s got a hyper-intelligent, fast-paced plot that involves a host of characters in labyrinthine machinations that are surprisingly easy to follow.  It successfully introduces of a cast of likeable (and unlikeable!) characters, all of whom have their own agendas and who are all capable of surprising readers.  I liked this book because I’m a smart guy who appreciates good writing and because I like a book that isn’t obvious.  If that also describes you, then you’d probably like this book, too.  My guess is that Nisha would be a favorite for a lot of intelligent adult readers if only they knew about it.

With that said, I can see why Diamond doesn’t distribute this book.  I mean, seriously, it’s got very little in common with the vast majority of the comics in your local shop.  It’s smart, the art is utterly non-glamorous, it’s devoid of sex appeal, and it’s in greyscale.  In short, it LOOKS like an indie book.  The fact that it’s one of the BEST indies you’ll ever read is not immediately obvious—at all.  In fact, Nisha is a book that you have to sit down and read in order to appreciate.  And yeah, maybe that’s the point for Robert as a creator and for me as a fan, but for Diamond and your local shop, the point is making money.  And right now, that means glossy covers that feature neo-porn stars saving the world.  Like it or not, that’s the world we live in. 

Robert Gavila made a decision to make a non-commercial book, and the result is that it’s been largely overlooked by the market.  That doesn’t mean that his book isn’t good.  It is.  It’s very good.  It’s the one-in-one-hundred that makes reviewing indie comics worthwhile.  It’s the book that, after you read it, you say to yourself, “Yeah!  THIS is why I read indies.  And I’d read ANOTHER thousand crappy stories if that’s what it takes to find the next NISHA!”

Bottom line: go check out Nisha.  Seriously, you’ll be glad you did.

Parade (with Fireworks)

By Mike Cavallaro (based on a true story)

Published by Image Shadowline, 26 pages for $3.50

Wow.  Now I feel like an asshole.  Because I was all set to say that I wasn’t super-excited at first about reading Parade (with Fireworks) but that I ended up really liking it, and then I discovered—in the course of writing this review—that Parade (with Fireworks) was done by Mike Cavallaro, who’s long been one of my favorite creators.  So basically, if I’d been paying attention from the beginning, I’d have been a lot more excited from the get-go and probably would have enjoyed the book more too.

What can I say?  Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.

Anyway, Parade (with Fireworks) is a terrific little story from creator Mike Cavallaro, who also did 66,000 Miles Per Hour along with a host of other really good projects.  This new story is based on one of his old family legends, and it’s awesome because it’s both spectacularly well-told and completely unexpected.  Set in 1920’s-era Italy, Parade (with Fireworks) is a family drama staged against the backdrop of the struggle between Fascists and Socialists for the Italian soul.  It follows a collection of Mike’s Socialist ancestors on an ill-fated march through rural Italy in the company of a band and a bunch of thugish Fascist assholes.  The result is, well, a parade… with fireworks!

The story works because it puts its heroes in a tough spot, made tougher by the nature of the times.  I liked it because although we sometimes get the idea that today’s politics are rough, but the truth of the matter is that politics used to be a brass-knuckled affair.  We can read about the brownshirts and understand intellectually that they fought in the streets with those they didn’t like or agree with, but it’s hard to appreciate what that must have felt like for those who refused to go along.  Today, it’s hard to appreciate the terror of living in fear if you’ve never seen your family brutalized.  And I think we therefore tend to gloss over the reality of that time by giving too much credence to the politics of the Fascists when the truth is and always has been that all politics is local.  Many Fascists were nothing more than bullies looking for a way to exploit, repress, and destroy their enemies, and Fascism was for them nothing more than an excuse.  They’d have signed on to any cause that gave their feuds legitimacy.  And that’s what makes Parade (with Fireworks) so good.  It gives faces and names to the otherwise anonymous and nameless.  And in that, it gives us a real feeling for a time that we’d otherwise have no way of knowing.

As I said earlier, it’s no surprise to see Mike Cavallaro producing good-quality comic art, but that doesn’t mean we should take his work for granted.  Not at all.  On the contrary, Mike’s work here is fresh and expressive, and I loved it, not only because it was good but also because it’s different.  It’s nice to see a story told without the (over)use of tits, girdles, and gratuitously plunging necklines.  Parade (with Fireworks) has stylistically more in common with a lot of today’s Sunday newspaper strips, but it’s a style that’s quite well-suited to its subject-matter.  The story is serious but lighthearted, and the art reflects that.  It’s the story of a bunch of guys out for a pleasant Sunday stroll that turns nasty.  We get that here as much from the style as from the context.

I’ve not been following Image: Shadowline as much as I might’ve liked, but between Parade (with Fireworks), Sam Noir, and the new PX! hardcover, it seems like the imprint is well on its way to developing itself as a quality brand based around quirky, well-told stories.  I recommend Parade (with Fireworks) strongly, especially to those of you who are history buffs.  And for those of you who are already Image: Shadowline fans, let me know what else I’m missing.

Stray Voltage

It seems like everybody and their brother is up in arms about inflation these days, but really, what did you expect was gonna happen?  We’ve been spending money like crazy and granting enormous tax cuts into the bargain, so I mean, really, there was only one way for this thing to go.  Running enormous Federal budget deficits year on year is just not good.  The result has been simulateously low unemployment and low wage growth.  Which basically means that most people are working like Hell but still somehow falling behind.  One might suspect that all the good jobs have in some way gone somewhere else.

And now we’ve got the potential for inflation.

It seems lousy, but like I said, it’s relatively easy to understand.  In the first place, there’s the Federal deficit, which can be okay in the short term but which become poison over time.  That happens for three reasons.  First is the fact that when the government’s borrowing money, it makes borrowing money more expensive for everyone else because of simple supply and demand.  More folks are looking for fewer dollars.  We see the effects in the form of higher interest rates.  And then too, when your government owes a lot of money—like ours does now—it has a tendancy to erode global confidence in your economy.  The US generally has a very strong economy, but we’re at a point now where folks are starting to worry, and we’re seeing it, at least in part, in the form of stock market turbulence and lower exchange rates.

Ultimately, it’s the lower exchange rates that are likely to hurt most of us in a tangible way.  That’s because we earn rapidly depreciating US dollars and have to buy things that are valued by those overseas in their native currencies.  For example, oil is going up not just because of an increase in global demand, although there is that too, but also because the folks in the Middle East want to get a fair price for their products—in their home currencies.  If that means they have to raise  prices in order to retain their earnings power at parity, then… well, the results are obvious, no?

Bottom line, we’re seeing inflation because we haven’t done the things we needed to do to contain inflation, notably balance our domestic budget and keep our currency exchange rates under control.  And yeah, it’s not all bad news because a lower dollar means better ability to export, but that’s a problem that would be much easier to tackle aggressively if not for the fact of the budget deficit.  The deficit has NO upside.

All of this brings me to my point, which is that the War in Iraq was really badly timed.  That’s not to say that it’s terrible—I’ve lately found myself turning cautiously optimistic about its ultimate results based on the recent successes of General Petraeus and the military—but the timing and overall strategy out of Washington have been piss poor from the outset.[1]  I mean, here we are with a need to simultaneously balance our budget and counter Iran’s play for regional hegemony, and the one asset that we could’ve used to accomplish both ends is the one we just destroyed—a religiously moderate, conventionally well-armed, Sunni-dominated Iraq.  The fact that the result was entirely predictable makes it no less infuriating.  And, in fact, the full truth of the matter is that a lot of the US’s recent success in Iraq flows from the simple reality that many of Iraq’s Sunni insurgents have finally realized that the US isn’t their PRIMARY enemy.  Their primary enemies are, instead, their country’s Shiites (and, more to the point, Iran’s Shiites) as well as the psychopaths from Al-Qaeada.  These two groups are the Iraqi Sunnis’ historic enemies; next to them, this thing with the US is and always has been a sideshow. 

So now, finally, we seem to have the war we want in Iraq, which is good even if it’s also a little late.  By making even a transitory peace with the Sunni factions of Iraq, we’re now able to contemplate real, substantive action against the forces Iran is using to influence the rest of the country, and that, at last, aligns our mission on the ground in Iraq with our nation’s historic interests in the region.  It’s not perfect, but it beats the holy Hell out of fighting EVERYBODY. 

And yet even that success still leaves us with the problem of a prolonged, massive, expensive occupation even as serious issues are beginning to show in the economic structure back home.  Sadly, the simple fact is that we’ve not been making any sort of choices of late in the US.  We’ve tried to have our cake, eat it too, and give some to the neighbors all at the same time.  This has not been the plan for either good government or good finance, and over time, we’re all going to pay the price.  I’m sad to say it, but I’m really afraid it’s true.

My wife Sally’s fortieth birthday is this weekend, and right now my plan is to get her a pair of His and Hers mountain bikes to commemorate it.  After all, I can hardly get her something that celebrates getting older, no?

It turns out that Sally used to own a Specialized Rockhopper, which she rode every day from her apartment in Morningside Heights to her first teaching gig in the Bronx, but sadly, that bike got lost and/or trashed back when we lived in New Jersey.  She’s been bikeless ever since.  That, of course, has coincided with the arrival of our kids, so perhaps she’s not missed the bike as much as she otherwise might have, but still… I know she wants to ride. 

So now here we are, and I need to learn a new sport.  Fortunately, I’ve been biking every day to the local train station on an ancient Huffy by way of practice, but I’m far from a biking genius.  I mean, I’m enjoying myself, but the bike itself is more than a little small for me, and that has sucked.  Thus, while I know what I want to get for Sally, I’m not at all sure what to get for myself beyond the facts that a) I don’t want to spend a lot of money on a wholly new sport, b) but I know I’ll ride to the train every day, and c) God willing, I’ll also do some downhill riding, hopefully sooner rather than later.  If that tells you anything about what bike I need to get, please email me RIGHT NOW and tell me about it.

Thanks.

And that’s all I’ve got.  It seems pretty random, but hopefully you enjoyed it.

Until next week, stay safe.

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Dan Head is a utilities analyst and freelance writer.  You can learn more about him and his work on his ComicSpace Page or by visiting his hosted forum at AwesomeStormJustice.com.

To get your comic reviewed here, email Dan at dan@paperbackreader.com.