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Hellblazer, The Fear Machine, and TPBs
Sep. 7th, 2008 11:03 pmFriday I picked up one of the newest trade paperback collections of the Hellblazer, The Fear Machine.
Reading Hellblazer has often been an exercise in frustration because the collections have been very scattered. The problem is that the comic started back in 1988, and that was well before any collections were being regularly put out. Even through the 1990s, only collections of the highlights of series were being published, and thus for a while there were collections of issues #1-9 and #41-46 of Hellblazer, but little else.
Things finally started changing over the last several years, with DC putting out an increasing number of Hellblazers, slowly back-filling the entire 20-year run. I think the movie helped their momentum a lot. At this point they have everything reprinted but half the run of original writer Jamie Delano and the entirety of the run of the third author, Paul Jenkins. I'll looking forward to both of those getting finished up, as my collections of both runs were very spotty.
I can understand why Jamie Delano got saved until near the end. He was the one who really defined the Hellblazer comic and made it successful, long term. But at the same time, he can be a hard read. Though he writes very good characters (which is what I think made the series successful in the long run) he can also get very esoteric, and I've sometimes found standalone issues or the finales of arcs hard to follow as a result.
Nonetheless, I was very pleased to finally see The Fear Machine hit print again.
The Fear Machine is an interesting story because it shows something of the breadth of stories that Delano told in Hellblazer before the comic got a bit more set in his ways. He turned from a story of demons and angels (in the first major trade) to a story of conspiracies and technology here. (He'd next follow it up with a very human serial killer.) I only had bits of this story before, and so I really enjoyed getting to read it as a whole.
I also noted how the individual comic has changed in the last 20 years. The Fear Machine was very much a 9-part story, but it wasn't decompressed. Each story had a lot of weight, sufficient that I wanted to stop and think after each issue, rather than just plowing through. I'm afraid that's something that's been lost in newer comics.
It's funny, but back in the 1990s DC was saying that they didn't know how to collect The Fear Machine because of the length (which was 9 issues). Now, that's entirely commonplace; if anything, people are surprised by a 4-issue trade, which was much more common when the medium was just starting to expand.
I'm really happy about how much trade paperbacks have grown in importance in the comic book market. I think it allows for more mature stories, because people are writing on larger canvases. It also allows for the publication of really high-quality comics that might sell poorly in the periodicals, but which continue selling at those same low but respectable levels month after month, forever, when released as a collection.
DC already has the fourth Delano trade, The Family Man scheduled for later in the year. I'm hoping they'll finish up with Delano early in 2009, then move on to the last set of issues they haven't collected. Jenkins' run is about 40 issues long (the traditional length of a Hellblazer run), so that should keep them busy for a while.
(Crossposted to Xenagia)
Reading Hellblazer has often been an exercise in frustration because the collections have been very scattered. The problem is that the comic started back in 1988, and that was well before any collections were being regularly put out. Even through the 1990s, only collections of the highlights of series were being published, and thus for a while there were collections of issues #1-9 and #41-46 of Hellblazer, but little else.
Things finally started changing over the last several years, with DC putting out an increasing number of Hellblazers, slowly back-filling the entire 20-year run. I think the movie helped their momentum a lot. At this point they have everything reprinted but half the run of original writer Jamie Delano and the entirety of the run of the third author, Paul Jenkins. I'll looking forward to both of those getting finished up, as my collections of both runs were very spotty.
I can understand why Jamie Delano got saved until near the end. He was the one who really defined the Hellblazer comic and made it successful, long term. But at the same time, he can be a hard read. Though he writes very good characters (which is what I think made the series successful in the long run) he can also get very esoteric, and I've sometimes found standalone issues or the finales of arcs hard to follow as a result.
Nonetheless, I was very pleased to finally see The Fear Machine hit print again.
The Fear Machine is an interesting story because it shows something of the breadth of stories that Delano told in Hellblazer before the comic got a bit more set in his ways. He turned from a story of demons and angels (in the first major trade) to a story of conspiracies and technology here. (He'd next follow it up with a very human serial killer.) I only had bits of this story before, and so I really enjoyed getting to read it as a whole.
I also noted how the individual comic has changed in the last 20 years. The Fear Machine was very much a 9-part story, but it wasn't decompressed. Each story had a lot of weight, sufficient that I wanted to stop and think after each issue, rather than just plowing through. I'm afraid that's something that's been lost in newer comics.
It's funny, but back in the 1990s DC was saying that they didn't know how to collect The Fear Machine because of the length (which was 9 issues). Now, that's entirely commonplace; if anything, people are surprised by a 4-issue trade, which was much more common when the medium was just starting to expand.
I'm really happy about how much trade paperbacks have grown in importance in the comic book market. I think it allows for more mature stories, because people are writing on larger canvases. It also allows for the publication of really high-quality comics that might sell poorly in the periodicals, but which continue selling at those same low but respectable levels month after month, forever, when released as a collection.
DC already has the fourth Delano trade, The Family Man scheduled for later in the year. I'm hoping they'll finish up with Delano early in 2009, then move on to the last set of issues they haven't collected. Jenkins' run is about 40 issues long (the traditional length of a Hellblazer run), so that should keep them busy for a while.
(Crossposted to Xenagia)