Brak History Month - Brak...to the Future!

From his humble, evil beginnings, to his cracked out present...what does the future hold for Brak?  Some say that he has run his popularity has run his course and he has returned to space to be with the rest of his race of space cats.  Others feel that he may have been killed and eaten by Zorak.  Still others feel that he is laying in wait...lulling him into a false sent of security and he is amassing his strike force, ready to enslave us all.  I tend to think that he is just resting until a time when we need his unique brand of humor to show us how to laugh again.  I hope that you have enjoyed Brak history month as much as I have and you take time to think about the joy this misunderstood space cat has given us.  Like this gem:

Tradio #35 - Jim Henson's Tale of Sand

Welcome back to Tradio - your weekly dose of graphic novel goodness!  This week we take a look see at a comic book adaptation of an unproduced screenplay by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl entitled Jim Henson's Tale of Sand "as realized by" Ramon K. Perez and produced by Archaia Entertainment.

Tale of Sand was written by Jim Henson with his long time collaborator Jerry Juhl way back in 1967.  A fully realized screenplay they farmed it around Hollywood multiple times and though they got a lot of praise for the work, they never found anyone that was willing to produce it.  Eventually it got filed away as a "lost work" of Jim Henson as his focus turned things like Sesame Street and the Muppets.  The book tells the tale of Mac and his race across the desert that he doesn't quite understand.  Told with very little dialog, it shows the many dangers he has to face as he tries to escape the mysterious Patch.  Told with the amazing art of Ramon Perez, we see him barely escaping death over and over again until his journey comes to thunderous, maddening end. It is honestly unlike anything you may associate with Jim Henson and that is not a bad thing at all.

Tale of Sand is really a masterpiece on many levels.  It is honestly hard to imagine the visuals of the book represented adequately on film as originally intended.  The book is lush and beautiful use of color is amazing.  Honestly, if this was made by Hollywood today, it would be watered down and made into a animated, 3D, kid-friendly disaster voiced by George Lopez and some sort of animal companion thrown in for comic relief.  As it is, I am very happy with it.  A rare book that lets the art tell the story and what a story it tells.  Do yourself a favor and go pick it up, you can't go wrong.

Brak History Month - The Brak Show

Hey all!  We are Brak (hee hee) with another entry about Brak History Month.  Today we want to focus on the odd little show that was The Brak Show.

Built around Brak's here-to-unseen growing up life in suburbia, the 29 episodes of the show were an opportunity to take a very strange look at situation comedies as we got to know Brak's unemployed, illegal-alien, Cuban father and his doting, June Cleaveresque, increasingly British mother.  We meet his neighbors, like the killer robot Thundercleese, and friends, with Zorak from Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast coming back as Brak's not-all-that-friendly, "best friend".  To sum it up, the show was bizarre.  Over the course of the shows, they tended to spiral more and more into the odd, which, really is a lot like most Adult Swim shows before they get cancelled.  As off-kilter as everything was, Brak was still himself.  Doofy and lovable and ready to break out in song at any time.  Like with this little number...

Tradio #34 - Alan Moore's Complete WildC.A.T.s

This week's Tradio focuses on one of Alan Moore's many original works based entirely on characters that totally came from his fertile, creative mind.  This week, we take a look at (deep breathe) Alan Moore's Complete WildC.A.T.s written by Alan Moore with art by a cast of thousands and published by Wildstorm. 

WildC.A.T.s.  One of the original Image books created by Jim Lee when he was at the peek of his popularity.  Jim Lee broke out of his rute at Marvel where he was drawing a monthly team book, to help found Image, where he drew a monthly team book.  Huh...come to think of it, pretty much all of the initial image creaters traded books at Marvel with books at Image that followed the same pattern. McFarlane went from Spiderman to Spawn, Liefeld went from X-Force to Youngblood, Lee went from X-Men to WildC.A.T.s, Larson went from Spiderman to Savage Dragon, Portacio went from Uncanny X-Men to Wetworks...I guess only Valentino and Silvestri broke the mold with one upsizing and one downsizing their art duties.  But I digress.  WildC.A.T.s was one of those early titles with the most promise where Lee had enough foresight to actually get some help early on with the writing duties with the addition of Brandon Choi.  This was a both a blessing and curse.  Great ideas, poorly executed on paper.  Pretty to look at, but lacking a lot of depth that the stories really needed to take root.  After a time, other writers (and artists for that matter), were brought in, to try and breathe new life into a group of characters and universe that people seemed to really identify with.  One of these writers ended up being the legendary Alan Moore and what we as readers were treated to was a fifteen chapter tale that introduced new characters, breathed life into old ones, and attempted to give some depth to the history that had already established the Wildstorm universe.  As far as how successful it was, it did a lot to update the title and explain the history of the WildC.A.T.s.  What it didn't do was create the timeless masterpiece that Alan Moore's works tend to be.  It wasn't that he was using characters that weren't created by him, he has done that over and over in his career and had good results from this, it seemed to be more a result of things that were quite frankly, beyond his control. The most in your face problem is the art.  When Travis Charest is drawing the book, it is on a whole other level.  Deceptively simple, though incredibly detailed, he can convey so many things in the layouts that he does.  For what Moore was doing, he was a much better fit than even Jim Lee himself, whose issues just seemed to be lacking.  That said, only about a quarter of the work is done by Charest, the other art duties are inconsistent and jump from artist to artist with little rhyme or reason.  Even within issues, characters change costumes on opposing pages and some of the layouts just do not work and end up making the story confusing.  The next problem was the Fire From Heaven crossover that in jammed in the middle of Moore run.  It only makes the story about a very long and uninteresting war between the WildC.A.T.s and Stormwatch against various bad guys in New York City that much longer and pretty much pointless.  Those extra issues really could have been better served to explain more of what all happened on Khera with the original group or flesh out what was going on with the new group.  I mean, whatever really did happen with Max Cash and after learning all the things he was capable of, why didn't Warblade actually use any of it on Earth.  Just made a lot of time spent with the characters kind of pointless.  The last problem I think was Moore had more ideas with the characters than he had room to work with and so a lot of the ideas presented just got touched on briefly and never fleshed out, which is fleshing out characters is kind of a trademark of Moore's.  All in all, it made for an interesting story that long out stayed it's welcome.  Worth a read for Charest's art, if you really want to read everything written by Moore, or if you are a WildC.A.T.s completist, though I guess nothing really matters with the DC reboot since they are now part of the New 52 universe.  Happy Reading!

Brak History Month - Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast

If you are like me, you probably really got to know Brak when he appeared on Cartoon Planet during the 90s. Injecting fun and excitement into those episodes he was clearly the shining star of the series. It was a direct spin-off of the popular Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast series and helped to pave the way for Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.  Though dim witted and more than a little naive, he added a sense of randomness to the show and was the perfect balance to the evilness that is Zorak.  Whether he was offering advice, singing a song, or answering a viewer's heart-felt question, Brak was there to help and entertain those who needed him.  He enthralled the hearts of a nation and proved that he was destined for bigger and better things.

Here is an example...see you next week:

Tradio #33 - X'ed Out

Hi all...I think I have settled down some from last week.  Lets look at something completely different.  This week we look at Charles Burns' X'ed Out published by Pantheon Books.

If you have never read Burns' Black Hole, you really need to stop reading this and go do that right now.  Seriously...I will wait.

Ok...wasn't that good?!?! Now, X'ed Out is kind of like that.  With stark imagery, precise linework, and a general economy of words.  But then, X'ed Out is also very different.  It is the first volume of what people on the cover are heralding as a masterpiece (though if something isn't complete yet, can you really call it that?) and sets up a lot more questions than it answers.  In the story, we meet Doug.  He seems to be operating in a dream world as he recovers from some sort of illness or injury that is never fully explained. This dream world seems to have odd connections to what appears to be the real world and what unfolds is a series of scenes that establish that nothing in either world may be what they seem.  He is an aspiring beat poet and photographer with a serious crush on a very odd young lady.  His dreams reflect aspects of his life, but twisted into a whole new world full of strange and disturbing characters that inform his waking memories.  Some very heady stuff and very intriguing.

The volume is good, though a bit of a slow burn.  We get a lot of questions presented, but next to nothing addressed.  This is fine, but it has been over a year since this volume of the series was released so waiting for the pay off for any of it can get a little tedious.  But, based on Burns' other works, I think it may just be worth the wait.  Time will tell and if I can offer a world of advise.  Don't read this before bed...your dreams will be crazy.

Brak History Month - What the Hell Happened to Him?

And then...something changed.  Somewhere between the Space Ghost cartoon and the start of Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast, something very profound changed Brak from an intergalactic badass into something akin to a Cletus the slack-jawed yocal.  What exactly happended is hard to say.  There are a couple of theories that have been floated about.  The official line is that his reduced intellect was the result of being thrown into a space dust cloud when he was defeated at the end of the Space Ghost episode called "The Lure", but another compelling theory is that his simple-mindedness is all a ruse in order for Earthings to trust him and be unsuspecting when he finally enacts his plan to take over the planet and enslave us.  Whichever the case may be, for now, he is as much of a threat as Justin Bieber.

Next week, was talk about Brak's time on Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast and Cartoon Planet.  Till then, I leave you with this heart felt song about personal space...

Tradio #32 - Holy Terror

Welcome back to Tradio!  This week we talked about the much maligned little graphic novel by legendary creator Frank Miller entitled Frank Miller's Holy Terror, published by Legendary Comics.

Holy Terror is a through back to a bygone age of when chaste love and innocence were the norm and comics dealt with real people and their real feelings.  Holy Terror is like a Nicholas Sparks novel brought to life is full color, graphic novel form.  After reading it, you will want to hold your loved ones close and have a good cry of joy for the feelings you have for them and the love you share.

Ok...ok...that is bullshit...and so is this book.  From what it looks like, Frank Miller wrote and started drawing something that was basically another Dark Knight story, was told "Hell No!" and changed it just enough to keep himself out of hot water.  So "The Fixer" and Catwoman...err...I mean a cat burglar fight on a rooftop, make out and then get caught up in a terrorist plot to destroy Empire City, because that is what terrorists do.  The art is crap, the writing is crap, the lettering is even crap.  If someone people had never heard of wrote and drew this, it is very doubtful anyone would care.  I guess it might have made more of an impact if Miller had gotten to use Batman, but as it is, it is just a mess that is insulting and doesn't make a lot of sense most of the time.  Miller's crisp, clean art from Sin City has morphed into a sketchy, hard to follow mess and focuses on the cat burglar's eyes and shoes and nothing at all on the main character of The Fixer.  The dialogue switches back and forth between characters with little indication of who is talking in the thought balloons and don't even get me started about how unnecessary the James Gordon look-a-like is.  Overall, it is just a mess and will really leave you scratching your head as to the whys and hows of it all.


So...you might be able to tell, I didn't like this at all.  You know, I wanted to.  I have loved so much of Miller's work over the years and over the past few years his work has just been spiraling downhill.  I get it that his All-Star Batman and Robin was an ef-you to DC and the fanboys that wanted more of the same from him.  I get that The Dark Knight Strikes Again was a commentary on the culture of the time. I get that The Spirit was your "hey, I have Sam Jackson to do a movie for me".  But come on...you are better than this.  Or at least you were.  Don't leave us on this note, Frank.

Brak History Month - Where to begin?

I have been thinking about it and I proudly declare March as being Brak History Month.  Why?  Why the hell not.  No...I am not high, but I just think it is high time (see what I did there?) that this unsung hero of the small screen gets the praise and adoration that he deserves. So every Friday for the whole month of March, I will be posting something about Brak.  You don't know who Brak is?  Then why are you even reading this?  If you don't know who he is, go check out this here...no wait...here...sorry...

As you can see, Brak has had a varied and diverse past.  He has gone from supervillain to village idiot...yet all the while being some sort of anthropomorphic space cat that is as cute and lovable as he is now stupid.  So, where to start with regard to Brak?  Start with him in his evil days with his brother Sisto on the original Space Ghost cartoon.  You can buy them from Amazon or you can get the disks from Netflix (just not on streaming).  Anyway, here is one of my favorite songs that Brak has performed in the past.  Enjoy and see you next Friday.