InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "hmm"

houbanaut (houbanaut) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-02 18:13:00

Entry tags:

char: athos, char: ming the merciless, publisher: fantagraphics, title: last musketeer

The Last Musketeer

This story won the Eisner award for "Best U.S. Edition of International Material" at this year's Comic-Con, so you should check it out!

Seven pages from a 46-page book under the cut.

Were I to pick two words to describe most of Jason's stories, "understated" and "melancholy" would come to mind. That also describes The Last Musketeer, but only in part. It's probably the straight-up funniest and most exciting book he has done in years.

These laser blasts (or as a scientist explains, "balls of laser energy") turn out to be the first wave of a martian invasion. Athos sees it as his duty to protect France against the invaders, but no one takes him seriously. Patrolling that night, however, he soon runs into them:

From here on, Athos gets wrapped up in a good old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure on Mars, complete with killer robots, a martian princess and her secret lover, an old adversary, and this guy:

In Jason's world, iconic pop-culture characters usually live lives of emptiness and quiet desperation, or just petty frustration. His series of one-pagers about Darth Vader dealing with everyday life is both funny and relatable (and predates the YouTube fad by a number of years).

Finally, another page that I just think captures a lot of what this book is about. Athos, the princess and her lover (a meekly rebellious lieutenant) have fled the Emperor's forces, but crash-landed in the desert:

Being a hero doesn't make life any easier to deal with.

Given the almost complete lack of interest the last time I posted a bit of Jason's work, I wasn't going to bother scanning more of his stuff (they're hard to scan too, without cracking the spine too badly). But it looks like I'm not the only one who likes it after all...

So good work, Eisner voters, and
Congratulations, Jason!

(Post a new comment)

	ashez2ashes 2009-08-03 12:30 am UTC (link)
	This is okay... it doesn't seem amazing or anything... What's the criteria for winning an Eisner anyways? (Reply to this) (Thread)

houbanaut
2009-08-03 01:17 am UTC (link)

Well, it varies from category to category, obviously (writer, humor, kids, etc.), but the constant is "best". The committee and voters thought this was the best foreign comic published in the US in 2008 (aside from manga, which gets its own category).

I more or less agree: I think it's fantastic, and can't think of any better candidates for the award (though I haven't read any of the other books that were nominated). But I can understand that it's not for everyone. As much respect as I have for, say, Chris Ware (this year's best writer/artist), his comics do nothing for me.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	lonewolf23k 2009-08-03 01:20 am UTC (link)
	Honestly? It's not as if mainstream comics like Countdown and Ultimatum give stuff like this much competition. Still, looks amusing. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	thehefner 2009-08-03 06:21 am UTC (link)
	Well, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Just because it doesn't feature superheroes doesn't make it any better. I don't dislike Jason's work, but rampant mediocrity is just as much a problem in indie comics as it is in the mainstream, much as the indie crowd doesn't seem to want to admit it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	arilou_skiff 2009-08-03 07:37 am UTC (link)
	Totally. This though? is not mediocre. This is awesome. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	thehefner 2009-08-03 03:42 pm UTC (link)
	See below. I messed up my wording and did not intend to call this specifically mediocre, but was just trying to make a general point to the poster specifically. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	geoffsebesta 2009-08-03 08:28 am UTC (link)
	This seems more like a brilliant inversion of heroic paradigms to me than "mediocre." We're sorta in a postmodern phase right now when it comes to fiction. We don't really believe in it the same way we used to. Quiet, understated, thoughtful stuff is all the rage. Give it a while and it'll swing back to sturm and drang. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

thehefner
2009-08-03 03:41 pm UTC (link)

My mistake. I wasn't referring to this specifically as mediocre, but just trying to make a general point to the poster above.

That said, I'm not quite feeling the brilliance of the above. I wouldn't ever call it mediocre but any stretch (and I'm at least digging it more than I KILLED ADOLF HITLER) but it's not for my tastes.

Well heck, that opens up a WHOLE messy discussion right there. I mean, shit, weren't we in a postmodern age twenty years ago at least? Thirty, even? I recall a noted screenwriting guru raging against the fact that there's no such thing as avant garde film, because the so-called arthouse films are just recycling the same tropes of avant garde films over the past fifty years rather than actually doing anything avant garde themselves!

The guy who said that is a grumpy old man prone to cynical overgeneralizations, but his words certainly strike me as having the ring of truth, especially in the indie comics world. I've often wondering just how much of comics in general are just mired in stagnancy, and no amount of going back and forth between understated and overstated will change that.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

geoffsebesta
2009-08-04 03:56 am UTC (link)

I'm sure somebody with a degree will have better words for this than I do, but it seems to me that culture goes in alternating modern/postmodern cycles.

Obviously those are terrible terms for the phenomenon but it's quite effective. "Modern" eras create works that exult in the formulas, "postmodern" eras deconstruct and question them.

This is a heroic myth stripped to the bare minimum. The fighting (here, at least) is minimized and often offscreen. The hero is ridiculous and not particulary puissant. The "drama" is dry and bare, and the real focus is on the characters and their interactions, the way they deal with this artificial situation.

"Modern" eras seem to produce a few really good things and a lot of credulous, imitative crap. "Postmodern" eras seem to produce a lot of different, really good, slightly boring work. It's hard to get excited about postmodern stuff, especially if you're kid.

We're definitely in a postmodern cycle with comics right now, pretty much have been since Jimmy Corrigan ten years ago. It's about to swing the other way but first someone has to come up with a heroic fantasy that people can actually believe in.

I would say that Sandman was a product of a "modern" cycle, like Image was. I think Watchmen and JLI would be the result of "postmodern" cycles.

Everything is always mired in stagnancy. The most experimental work is sometimes the most traditional -- notice the extremely classic and understated art of Watchmen, reaching back to before Kirby.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	arilou_skiff 2009-08-03 07:09 pm UTC (link)
	It very much reminds me of Don Quijote. The gently patethic hero whose silliniess inspires us to compassion (even though that's probably not what Cervantes would have wanted :p) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	geoffsebesta 2009-08-04 03:58 am UTC (link)
	I'm gonna finish that book one of these days. It's so damn long! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	oddpuppets 2009-08-03 02:49 pm UTC (link)
	Fantastic icon, by the way. HP the Musical for the Win. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	mrmojorisin1135 2009-08-03 03:17 am UTC (link)
	I loved his book "Why Are You Doing This?". Thanks for posting these, I really should make it a habit to pick up more of his stuff. (Reply to this)

	Noirsensei postulates... (Anonymous) 2009-08-03 03:47 am UTC (link)
	Does Jason have a last name? Or are you two on personal terms? Also, is this what comics are like in France, all the time? Granted alot of stuff from the big two is dreck, but if that's the case then I'm kinda thanking the stars right now that I didn't grow up in France. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Noirsensei postulates...

houbanaut
2009-08-03 08:30 am UTC (link)

Jason is a nom de plume, with no surname. His real name is John Arne Sæterøy (J.A.S. - I guess he added the ON by his own initiative).

Even in France they don't make you read comics you don't like. And they have a selection and a variety there that frankly puts the US to shame (including translations of most major American titles).

I wouldn't want to only read this stuff, either; so I'm happy that Fantagraphics and Top Shelf and Oni and all the others (including the big two) produce a range of different styles and genres to enjoy. We'll give the French a run for their money one of these days!

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Noirsensei postulates... geoffsebesta 2009-08-04 03:32 am UTC (link)
	One of these days... No time soon. At least the American industry is still better than Mexico's! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Noirsensei postulates... billy_vagrant 2009-08-04 02:55 am UTC (link)
	If you want to see some really fun French comics that are miles removed from this, I'd recommend finding some old Asterix and Obelix books. Well, depending on your tolerance for puns and historical gags. I grew up on those and loved them, though. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	batcookies 2009-08-03 05:49 am UTC (link)
	Eh. Jason's best when he's killing Hitler. (Reply to this)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-03 08:27 am UTC (link)
	I'm always a sucker for the 'aging hero gets one last chance to save the day' subgenre, and this appears to be a pretty good example of that. It's not exactly to my personal taste - the art style is a tad... flat-looking - but it looks like it'd make for an entertaining read. (Reply to this)

	taggerung301 2009-08-03 06:15 pm UTC (link)
	haha, well this is pretty nice the real plain and simple art style combined with this kind of humor works out great (Reply to this)

	proteus_lives 2009-08-04 05:13 am UTC (link)
	Interesting.... (Reply to this)