People send me PDFs for review. Here's my thoughts on one. Bear in mind that I use a laptop, so my screen space is minimal, and by the time I blow up the pages to be able to read the dialogue, I'm looking at individual panels, not full pages. It's not the most ideal format, but it's effectively free for both of us.

Drafted #1 made me wonder how fair it is to consider the publisher when evaluating a comic. The premise is intriguing -- massive earthquakes around the world have killed hundreds of thousands, and as people struggle to cope with the aftermath and the uncertainty of the cause, aliens appear and instruct everyone to work together to go to war.

The Americans rally everyone together to resist, hoo hah!, and a convenience store clerk and some kind of office worker/intern are also introduced, presumably to play roles in later issues. The art is adequate, barely so at times, and the dialogue-heavy scenes are often visually unexciting. The quakes are staged in key political areas, including Jerusalem, which allows the writer to comment on current hot topics. I found myself wondering if the writer had speculated what the next chapter of Watchmen would be like and going on from there, but it's only the most casual of resemblences.

I'd be a lot more excited about the next issue if the publisher hadn't been built on schlocky licensed titles, horror, and Buffy-wannabe goth girl art. (Edit: Thanks to readers for pointing out I forgot to say that this is from Devil's Due.) I just don't have any faith that a serious exploration of sociocultural development and aftereffects of tragedy can come out from them. Instead of giving the artists credit for a good try, I find myself thinking that it's a shallow attempt at relevance, because of who they've chosen to release and brand their story.

On the other hand, it kept my attention enough to finish the issue, rare for this publisher. I rate it Eh. Find out more at The World Needs You Now, a promotional worklog.

Labels: Johanna

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I read Alan Moore's run on WildC.A.T.S. when it was originally published, between 1995 and 1997, and I don't think I'd read any of it again since. I remembered it as Moore seriously phoning it in, and I figured the republication a month or two ago of all of it in a single volume, ALAN MOORE'S COMPLETE WILDC.A.T.S., would be a good opportunity to go back to it and see how it's aged.

The answer: it's still phoned-in, but reasonably Good anyway. The biggest problem Moore was up against is right there in the table of contents: of the 15 "chapters" collected here (#21-34, plus his eight-page wrapup of a couple of loose ends from #50), no two are drawn by the same art team, and only four have a single penciller working on the entire story. Almost everyone draws in something like the Jim Lee and Co. house style--Lee actually turns up for bits of two issues--but none of the artists seem to be particularly invested in the story, Moore's not writing for any particular artist, and there are a lot of basic points of visual continuity that nobody can keep straight.

The most glaring example is Moore's comedy-relief character: Ladytron, a foulmouthed, sociopathic cyborg. (Her appearance here preceded the band of the same name, but I'm betting both of them were named after the Roxy Music song.) Somebody probably drew a model sheet of her at some point, but neglected to clarify where exactly on her face the robot parts begin. Travis Charest's cover for #22 suggests that her entire lower jaw has been replaced by metal; Kevin Maguire's art for that issue's story makes it look like she's just got some metal covering her chin--it starts a bit below the lower lip she suddenly has. And it goes back and forth for the rest of the book.

Anyone looking for evidence for the received wisdom that hot-superhero-book studios of the '90s couldn't actually get a story across should have a look at this book, actually. I didn't realize that Emp is supposed to be really short until about ten pages before the end, because none of his earlier appearances make that clear. A caption reads "Everywhere there are Daemonites. The streets are filthy with them"; the image that accompanies it has part of one Daemonite head in it. (They're hard to draw, I guess.)

A little while later, another caption reads "Giant stalactowers drip from the cavern's ceiling, far above, while the enormous stalagmansions rise to meet them from below, sequined with lights and windows. Though it's big and beautiful and eerie, it looks less like something out of Blake than the designs of Piranesi." Normally, that would violate the show-don't-tell rule--actually, it looks like it was flown in from a Moore panel description--but it's necessary here, because what's actually on panel is a gigantic shot of one character's shoulder and the back of his head, with a couple of buildings that don't look like that at all making a desultory appearance in the background. And the climactic scene where one character accidentally shoots another defies the rules of anatomy, perspective and basic storytelling--I had to rub the page for a little while to make sure there weren't two pages stuck together.

Given the fact that Moore was writing it, we can assume that the problem wasn't that his scripts didn't spell out what he wanted clearly enough. For his first few issues, in fact, Moore's trying to play along with the multiple-artist setup: he sends half the team out into space while the other half's on Earth, and he switches back and forth with his well-weathered cute segues. ("How could they keep us in the dark?" Cut to all-black panel.) Eventually, the space team comes back to Earth just in time for a big crossover ("Fire From Heaven," of which this collection includes only the WildC.A.T.S. tie-ins, conveniently labeled as chapters 7 and 13; I totally forget what happened in the rest and can't tell from the parts reprinted here), and Moore pretty much gives up and concentrates on wrapping up the plots he's already set in motion.

What makes this different from other Alan Moore projects is what's missing from it: this is virtually his only comics work of significant length that doesn't have some kind of formal plan or explicitly defined aesthetic, either for individual segments or for the entire thing. It's just a straightforward mid-'90s superhero story, and what it's "about" is nothing more than impresive poses and colorful phenomena. Unfortunately, Moore can't quite take that seriously--he keeps shifting into the rhythms of his comedy writing--and so his dramatic pyrotechnics don't push his WildC.A.T.S. anywhere thematically. If there's any recurring idea here, it's that violence is meaningless because it's inconsequential. Hadrian and the other androids destroy each other's bodies as a casual workout ("Ha ha ha! You've blown half my face off, you back-worlds hillbilly oaf!"); Zealot's sword-fight, the aforementioned thousand-razor-kisses thing, is a harmless ritual; Ladytron and Overtkill's big fight scene is an excuse for them to plan a date ("Y-you vicious little bitch! You ripped my guts out... w-with your bare hands! So, uh... are you seeing anyone right now?").

What Moore does when he's on automatic is toss out clever little ideas that he doesn't really have to think through: a hotel with a special "low-probability field," so coincidences happen there all the time; an American President-themed restaurant; a church for cyborgs; a bar for superheroes (he's not the only person who thought of that one...). He falls back on familiar tricks--a sequence, early on, where panels of expository conversation alternate with a fight scene with ironically appropriate bits of that conversation overlaid as captions is practically photocopied from Dan and Laurie's fight scene in the alley from Watchmen. And when all else fails, he overwrites: "A machine of steel and women, turning with jewelled precision, so that birth and sex and life and death are captured in this perfect choreography... this awesome quadrille, in all its appalling beauty. In its sacred violence. We score each other's white flesh with a thousand razor kisses...and the precious ruby wine of our existence flows... and mingles... and we are made one within the blood dance." This all appears on half of a two-page spread that's otherwise occupied by five figures and a fancy color effect to cover up for the fact that nobody got around to drawing a background.

So why is this book an italicized Good? Because even on automatic, Moore's got his knack for developing intriguing plot ideas, moving them forward, and making something entertaining happen on every page. The SF plot in the first half is a great little concept: the characters who've apparently spent the earlier part of the series fighting in this huge galactic war discover that it's actually been over for hundreds of years, their side won, and they've been oppressing the other side ever since. (Moore used roughly the same idea in Book 3 of The Ballad of Halo Jones, but it's still a good one.) The story arc involving the group's new members is nicely paced, and a lot of the plot twists are as surprising as they're supposed to be...

But the other reason I went back to re-read comics I didn't think were so hot the first time is that I've spent so much time reading Alan Moore's comics that now I can get some kind of pleasure out of anything he writes--there's one degree of fun that comes from reading his comics themselves, and then there's another degree that comes from figuring out how they fit into his body of work, and seeing how the minor works illuminate the major ones. (This may be the same thing longtime Claremontophiles get out of reading current Claremont comics; maybe you expect him to write about mind control in the same way you expect Kundera to write about tanks rolling into Prague...) Since the ABC line ended (right, the Black Dossier, I'll believe that one when I see it), I've been missing my regular Moore fix and realizing that there aren't too many comics from him left to come. WildC.A.T.S. suffers by comparison to much better Moore, but it's not bad at all--I read the whole thing in one sitting, and didn't even start to get bored--and at the moment I'll take what I can get. Click Here to Read More...

CABLE AND DEADPOOL #45: They made 45 of these...? Really? This issue is about Deadpool being trapped in a boring comic book. Deadpool and, like, some guy wander around Marvel Comics' World War 2, and meet Captain America and whoever else. They talk, then that's followed by another scene of talking. Usually the talking's just failing to be funny, but at one point, the comic forgets its title and premise and the talking branches out to failing to be serious drama or something. There's a serious scene of Captain America explaining what it's like to be Captain America, which is helpful information to ... to who exactly? If anyone reading this comic is Captain America in their spare time, boy, they are in luck! Meanwhile, in the present day, a bunch of people who aren't identified also have a conversation. There's also a fight-- but I didn't understand how the fight ended much at all, and instead of making me happy that the talking was finally over, it just made me wish they'd get back to having serious conversations about the Nature of Captain America. Anyways, a bunch of crap happens but I couldn't tell if there was a story being told or not-- it didn't seem like it, but I have no idea since there's an arc going on. Cable's not in the issue at all despite the title. Instead, Deadpool hangs out with a 100% rip-off of Arthur from the Tick, which is ... charming. Anyway, I don't really understand what I'm looking at, but it at least tries to be fun even if I'm not sure why this would be fun to anyone. If it lasted 45 issues, someone out there's having a good time; that must be nice. The art's by one of the Ten Ton Studios guys. The backgrounds could be stronger, and there's room for improvement on the storytelling, but it's consistent and the style is easy to read. Okay.

ANNIHILATION CONQUEST QUASAR #3: This comic book is about two super-religious lesbians whose relationship is damaged because one of them has turned into a dragon. There are several pinup drawings of the two of them that look like 80's fantasy paperback covers-- that Anne McCaffrey shit or whatever. Anyway, they fight a cool lizard that looks like Freddy Krueger's belly (that design was pretty good). But then the comic becomes a very strange extreme-left-wing fantasy of lesbians setting off a Weapon of Mass Destruction in order to blow up the US Military before the US Military can harm these hairy dark-skinned "noble savages". It's strange stuff but I don't really get comics set in outer space; space opera's my least favorite stuff in comics. I did enjoy the hyper-earnest Declarations of Love ala old Chris Claremont comics. But besides all that, nothing very interesting happened in this issue-- it seemed like whatever weird story is going on here, it was spinning its wheels in this one. That's just a guess though. Also, the lesbian sticking with her girlfriend even after she's become a dragon reminded me of wives who stick by their husbands after crippling injuries, all of which made me feel vaguely guilty in so far as I doubt I'd have that same courage if push came to shove. I doubt I'm that good of a person. I'd rather that Quasar not have throw that in my face; still, I liked how weird this was, so this gets an Okay.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #6: Have you ever really sat and thought about Superman's origin? Superman started up in 1932. He grew up on a remote Midwestern farm during the Great Depression. Dirt poor family in a place called Smallville...? I think if you really think about it, and give it some thought, you'd have to come to the conclusion that Superman was probably raised on roadkill. By a "more likely than not" standard, Superman probably cooked up and ate raccoon that some old jalopy ran over, at least once, at least one time. I'm not saying that makes him any less "Super." I'm not a snob-- it was the Great Depression. But I think it's something DC, the CW, John Byrne, Bryan Singer and his manic-depressive gay Jesus movie, that they've all tried to whitewash. I think you're being lied to. I might even go so far as to say bamboozled. Okay.

SUBMARINER #4: Apparently this is a 6 part limited series...? I didn't really understand the recap page, which was a bad omen. It seemed like what it was trying to describe might be pretty neat though-- skeletons and political intrigue and coups and backstabbing. Can you do high-stakes political intrigue in the same comic as has a H.E.R.B.I.E cameo? I'm not sure. It starts off with good kid-friendly gore, and there's an adequate amount of punching throughout the comic. On the other hand, Submariner-- why do they keep giving him his own series? Isn't his whole charm that he's a mean jerk? He's an asshole to everybody-- isn't that his schtick? Isn't he a giant asshole dick whose breath tastes like an ass full of brown shit? Doesn't his asshole sometimes shit smaller assholes which shoot feces onto nuns? Who'd want to read about that kind of guy month in, month out? Not me. The art is in panels which are arranged in a sequence that tells the story; I thought that was a smart choice. The big problem is this ending: it's a cliffhanger which doesn't really work because about 50 other comics have used that exact same cliffhanger this year so far. But they have Namor wear clothes in this, at least. Usually he's half-naked. I don't want to see that. Not that. Please not that. This made me say Okay to clothes on Namor.

ACHEWOOD: This week has been pretty good, at least early on. Not a novel observation but: I like how sometimes the funniest panel will be the second or fourth or whatever, and not the "punchline." On the other hand, I found the September 26th entry pretty shaky but then the punchline swooped down and was awesome and made the whole thing great. I didn't think the September 28th entry was funny at all though. Nothing there spoke to me. Still, Achewood? High highs are worth waiting through the low lows; again, not a novel observation. Still, for the week, my reliance on cliche aside, on the whole, I'd go with Okay.

DEATHBLOW #7: I was reading about death the other day; my personal fear of death is of the "fear of ceasing to exist" variety. I read this theory about the fear of death (which I googled), that it's a result of people seeing their lives as a narrative, and that those more predisposed to see their lives as a narrative are more likely to fear death. So in a way, reading comics (and movies, books, tv, etc.), do you think they all help make us more predisposed to see our own lives as narratives and to worry more about that narrative, and live less in the moment and fear death more? I don't know. Probably not. Just a thought. Your ancient philosopher Epicurus might argue that we should all focus on the moment and aim to maintain a state of tranquility. So I'll give DEATHBLOW #7 an Okay.

Labels: Abhay

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The real problem for me of the NewSavageCritic is when Jog and Abhay and Lester all post these wonderful, thoughtful essays that really get to the core of things, and make you think wise and deep thoughts, and then I have to post something, and I just know it is going to sound like "Dur dur! DUH! Dur dur dur!"

I'm still kind of adjusting to the demands of working Every Weekday -- oh, I know, "Poor poor miserable you!", but I spent more than a decade there with a schedule that was, shall we say, relaxed, so to get back into the 5-days-a-week Grind has been an adjustment. Ultimately, its better for the store, to, y'know, have the owner actually in his store behind the counter, but figuring out what work goes when has been tricky for me.

I've still got to finish this month's order form, but I got through the Marvel books, so I'm down to "the back half of PREVIEWS", and I should be able to polish that tomorrow... but then Carissa (AKA The New Girl) dropped me an email saying a friend of hers died and she needed the weekend off to go to the funeral back east, and suddenly I've got to work Sunday this week too, so I guess I can finish the order form then, which means (he said, having run-on sentence after run-on sentence), that I can chill a little bit today, and do some darn writing.

The New TV season just started, so I've been Mr. Vegetable Man every day after work, doing the full-on Zone Out in front of the glass teat, which, naturally, lowers my IQ even further than the plain exhaustion of working every day, plus it has been beastly hot (for San Francisco) here the last few nights, so it's not like I'm getting a full 8 hours each night now. And I'm even more toast-like today since Anina Bennett asked us for help in moving her from one apartment to another this morning, which means I got maybe 5 hours sleep, then had to haul boxes up a two floor walkup, but the things you do for friends, right?

Which is my vastly long-winded way of saying "Hi, I'm tired and feeling retarded, so let's talk about television!"


THE BIONIC WOMAN: I was never exactly what you might call a fan of the original series -- heck as a boy, I'd lose my card if I hadn't preferred Major Steve Austin, Astronaut, a Man Barely Alive, Etc. to Jamie Summers, who, ferchristsakes, had a parachute accident -- but I figured I should check out the first episode at least.

Sorry I did, really.

I'm too lazy to look up the cast, but, man, what a bland-ass actress they picked for the lead. She's pretty enough, but I didn't feel the slightest amount of empathy for her or her situation, because she's just not engaging. At least Lindsey Wagner had a spark of some kind, right?

"Bionic" here seems to mean some sort of nano-robotic thing or something? They're not exactly clear, really, except that her legs are all glowy (and then they aren't)

The best thing about the show is certainly Katee Sackoff (probably spelled that wrong), but one doesn't get the sense that she's going to be in every episode or anything. And, even if she was, I wouldn't watch just for that. The vague set-up (like who ARE these people, and what are their motivations?) is, I think, supposed to be a "tantalizing mystery", but I needed something more to come back next week, and I didn't find it.

One note, however: the show is supposedly set in San Francisco (at least, that's what the title bar said), but San Francisco doesn't have "fall". That is to say, you're fairly unlikely to find trees that have half of their leaves falling off them. Which you do in virtually every street scene here. I guess this is somewhere in Canada... but why set a show in SF if you're not going to use any exteriors, or try to get the "feel" of the town right at all? AWFUL.



JOURNEYMAN: Had the opposite problem -- much like Gaiman and JRjr's ETERNALS series, there's "too much" San Francisco. I know it is a little hard to believe, but, really, in 90% of The City, you probably can't see either the Golden Gate bridge OR a Cable Car.

If it was like how BULLIT is for a SF person ("wait, how did he get from THAT side of the side to THIS one in under 15 seconds?!?!"), that would be one thing, but they decided to DIGITALLY INSERT the GG bridge into shots that make absolutely no sense. Like the scene where he wakes up in "Golden Gate Park", with the bridge LOOMing over him? No, sir -- just because they both have "Golden Gate" in the title doesn't make it so! (All they had to do was say it was The Presidio, and then it could have scanned just fine) I'm pretty certain there's no spot in the Park where you can see the Bridge, except maybe as a little speck in the distance. Really, just go look at a map!

Anyway, the show itself? I dunno, I liked QUANTUM LEAP quite a bit, so I'm going to give it at least one more episode, but I can't say I was especially grabbed by the pilot. With this kind of a Time Travel show, there needs to be Rules, and I don't get the sense that they've figured them out yet themselves. There's something vaguely clever about having his ex-girlfriend ALSO being a Time Traveller, but they need to at least outline The Rules of how this Works really fast, or I'll be moving on just as fast. EH



CHUCK: Yuck.



HEROES: If there was a show I was looking forward to this season, its definitely the second season of HEROES. So I was pretty disappointed to watch it and think "EH". Part of it was dropping us back in "four months later" without a lot of clarity on what was going on, and with some seeming contradictions -- like, why is Claire in "hiding" in California, while Parkman and Cerebrette are still in NYC, living under Parkman's Real Name? WTH happened with the Petrellis? No one seems to be concerned that Sylar's body vanished? Where's the rest of the cast? And so forth.

I thought the cliffhanger with Hiro last year was very cool -- but in this opening, I was ITCHING to get him back into "the present", because the most probable way that story is going to play out (Hiro *becomes* Kensai, or whatever his name is) is... well, played out already.

Either way, they get 3-4 issu... I mean episodes! of grace, since the first season started off pretty badly, too, but that wasn't what I wanted at all. OK


DEXTER: No, not new, but new to me, since I don't have Showtime. We've got DirecTV, and their "version" of "OnDemand", kinda, is channel 101, where they're showing 2 eps a night of the series. They're clearly hacked to pieces -- all of the swearing is overdubbed like "That mother-lovin' piece of spit is a real ashbowl!", and I'm guessing they cut out all of the titties, and a fair amount of penetrative violence, but, regardless, I'm REALLY enjoying this show. I hope the last two episodes tonigth wrap up things in a satisfying way. I've even ordered the novel the show is based upon from the library because I liked the show so much. VERY GOOD.



One last thing, apropos of nothing at all, other than that whole "retail intelligence" thing: After 18 years, I decided to cancel our Yellow Pages display ad this year, and see what happens. Given that the #1 question we get asked on a phone call is "What are your hours?", #2 "Where are you located?" and #3 is "Do you buy comics?", all of which are clearly in our display ad; and given that I tend to answer "Who ELSE buys comics" with "look in the yellow pages and call one after another", and that that usually gets a blank stare in return, I'm no longer convinced that America 2007 even knows that they HAVE a Yellow Pages any longer.



Right, that's my Retarded Ramblings.... what did YOU think?

-B

Labels: Brian

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This one's for Johnny Bacardi, who first told me about this series. And let me tell you, this is the kind of comic you'll probably need someone to tell you about, because not many other roads lead to it.

I'm going to guess that a bunch of you haven't even heard of Elaine Lee, who wrote the comic; maybe the name's rattling around in the back of your head, but nothing of use is cohering. Hey, I don't blame you. Just about every comic she ever wrote is out of print, after all. While I'll take a little room there to equivocate -- she does have a story floating around out there in Charles Vess' The Book of Ballads collection -- I do believe all her bigger works are pure longbox fodder. Most of the smaller ones too.

It's something nobody likes to think about, really. Someone's entire body of comics work sinking down, left to the funnybook subculture of bin divers, no one piece able to latch on to a famed or renowned predecessor/successor by the same person. Down, down into the bog. It's almost as unpleasant a thought as somebody working on a comics project for over a decade, only to see it fade from view. Unlucky, without embrace, and forlorn.

But the former has apparently happened to Elaine Lee, and the latter certainly happened to Starstruck. That's too bad, because Lee's writing on that comic was intriguing and ambitious; Starstruck is just the type of comic that some today would possibly be considering a classic of the form, had its full, 500+ page length ever been published. But pages came out in various forms, at various times, often taking on an individual character that seemed to match their then-current environment. In other words, there was a Starstruck of 1984 that was very different from the Starstruck of 1991. Maybe inevitable, considering the long path a comic of its go-for-baroque type was bound to follow back in the day.

Let me explain.

As often happens with these things, Lee was involved in other arts before she began writing comics. She'd been a working actress since the mid-'70s, and eventually scored a 1980 Daytime Emmy nomination for a supporting role on the long-running NBC soap opera The Doctors (her flawless soap opera character name: Mildred Trumble). She also wrote plays with her sister, Susan Norfleet Lee, who remains an actress and a comedienne today (sans the "Lee"). In 1979, the pair met an artist by the name of Michael William Kaluta; Lee became impressed with a new art book that Kaluta had contributed to, The Studio, and asked him to participate in a new sci-fi stage project.

I'm being coy. I suspect that most of you have heard of Kaluta - he'd been active in professional comics since 1969, including a much-admired stint on DC's The Shadow in 1973-74, and had spent the mid-to-late '70s working with fellow artists Jeffrey Jones, Barry Windsor-Smith and Berni(e) Wrightson (who'd later draw comics about Batman punching a religion in the face), in a shared space they called The Studio. Which was also the name of that book, you see, since it compiled some of each artist's works from the period.

So anyway, the play was titled Starstruck, and it debuted in NYC in 1980. It was written by the Lee sisters and a man named Dale Place, who was at one point Elaine Lee's husband. Kaluta handled the poster art, plus costume and set designs (with some realization aid from the aforementioned Charles Vess). The show would eventually run again in 1983, and the script book is still around. But even as initial work on the show went forward, Lee and Kaluta began formulating a plan to expand the work, quite greatly, into the medium of comics.

I can only think of two other comics off hand that began on the stage: Kings in Disguise and Rich Johnston's Holed Up (and I think the latter actually began as an unproduced script for a sitcom pilot). Both expanded greatly, I understand, once freed from floorboards. I haven't read the Starstruck script either; I've heard it's a silly comedy with songs. But I don't think either of those other works exploded in breadth like Starstruck did. It bears the "created by" mark of Elaine Lee and Michael Wm. Kaluta. It is copyright and trademark them. Lee is the sole credited writer, though some of the material gives plot credit to Kaluta as well. The break from the prior work is clean, as is the break from the prior medium; Starstruck the comic is fully and wholly a comic.

Lee and Kaluta hooked up with one Sal Quartuccio, publisher of various prints and posters, whose S.Q. Productions released a six-piece b&w Starstruck illustration portfolio the year of the show's debut, and eventually facilitated an initial publication of the comics version in Spain (which I haven't read). The work was later published in North America by Heavy Metal magazine, in serial form, 1982-83 (didn't read that either). But that wasn't the end of the beginning (luckily for me) - Marvel Comics took note, and compiled the Heavy Metal material into a 1984 publication titled Starstruck: The Luckless, the Abandoned and Forsaked. It was also Marvel Graphic Novel #13, in case you feel the urge to file it behind Dazzler: The Movie.

Indeed, it's worth noting that many of Marvel's "graphic novels" of the time were often just overlong and oversized Marvel-type comics, with a smattering of 'mature' content pressed in. Others had a way of feeling like extended submissions to Epic Illustrated, with an emphasis on visual aplomb. The Starstruck graphic novel isn't anything like that, despite having run in the magazine that inspired Epic Illustrated - it's layered, layered, layered, yet very tightly wound, seeing a large cast of characters age over the course of only 74 pages of story. Pages are packed with stuff, sometimes three streams of narration at once, with captions wandering from song lyrics to poems to real and fake famous quotes to myriad narrations to conversations occurring off-panel. It's no wonder the book is dedicated to Robert Altman and Thomas Pynchon (now if only I could puzzle out that Borges mention in Super Boxers).

The book is structured as a series of vignettes, ranging from one to sixteen pages in length, moving forward in time over the span of 52 "cycles." Each segment comes equipped with its very own title, timecode, discreet location id, and commemorative statement or quote that likely gets alluded to somewhere else in the larger story. The first and last statements of the book tell us the difference between allusion and illusion - there's plenty of both at work.

I suspect the Starstruck graphic novel was probably tough reading for a lot of people at the time. It's still kind of tricky today, until you realize that the book isn't trying to tell a whole story, just a story, rich with incident and cross-reference and sheer joyous worldbuilding. If there's anything in comics I can easily compare it to, it'd have to be Howard Chaykin's 1986 book Time2: The Epiphany (which was also First Graphic Novel #8, in case you feel the urge to file it behind The Secret Island of Oz), which was meant to be the first installment of a series of comics albums, leaving Chaykin (plus letterer Ken Bruzenak & colorist Steve Oliff, both of whom would work on Starstruck at different times) free to pack in as much graphic overload as possible, hopping from place to place, breathless, not bothering to introduce the 'main' character until a quarter of the way through, all in the service of occasion. Of being somewhere.

But it must be noted that Lee's and Kaluta's work on Starstruck slightly predates even Chaykin's seminal American Flagg!, despite Kaluta's controlled, eye-catching layouts (mostly devoid of the decorative touches and curvilinear framing motifs often associated with his illustration work) and letterer Todd Klein's multitude of fonts seeming 'modern' in much the same way as that trendsetting classic, if somewhat less typographically intense. Kaluta's in-panel art, though, is much cleaner than peer and fellow Shadow artist Chaykin's, with candied technology and costuming everywhere, like in this piece, mixing Kaluta's beloved pulp cover influences with whimsical, Art Nouveau touches.

Lee's writing can be whimsical too; Starstruck retains a good deal of humor, often adopting a flippant posture before grand themes. As its small stories move forward, certain groups of characters emerge as primary, all of them women. First, there's a trio of marginalized women, the luckless/abandoned/forsaken of the subtitle.

We meet Galatia 9, a slight, tough woman, erudite and lusty, who became a space sailor after accidentally reaching the stars in the midst of a socio-religious ceremony. She's an Amazon, with bow skills and missing breast to boot. She teams up with Brucilla the Muscle, a brawny, lusty, good-natured former pilot for the Americadian Space Brigade, who got tossed out of the service in a tragic egging misadventure that claimed 26 lives. She's a Valkyrie, a Brünnhilde, and wears a likeably clichéd iron skirt for most of the story. In this postmodern text, all the fragments of fiction mingle. Finally, there's Erotica Ann, the final model in a destroyed line of sex androids, which means that she's picked up the idea of 'mortality' (no longer being part of a collective with a single goal), and has perhaps developed a soul. Unlike the other two women, she isn't all that lusty, and actually doesn't have a ton of personality, but she's both an object of physical lust and nostalgic, collector's lust, being a rare piece and all.

These three women are often contrasted with a second group of powerful, but no less human(ish) women. There's Indira Lucrezia Ronnie Lee Ellis Bajar, unpopular child of the Borgia-like Bajar clan of dictators, arch-capitalists and damaged man-children, who's become a famous sci-fi writer as "Ronnie Lee Ellis" and formed her very own religion. She's keeping an eye on Prime Minister Glorianna of Phoebus, a former revolutionary and sex andriod CEO who's got plans of her own, dressed in the halo of liberty. Also lurking around is Glorianna's wicked sister Verloona, clad in Jazz Age flapper attire. She the very embodiment of vanity and consumption, and a great fan of the "Running in Place" system of sapping the life force out of donors to preserve one's vitality. Her favorite targets are Galactic Girl Guides, lil' scouts of the future who've taken to learning the real ways of survival: cheating, stealing, and miscellaneous chicanery.

All of these characters, and several more, bounce around Lee's and Kaluta's world, sometimes brushing up against little and big illusions (and countless allusions). Religion, militarism and big business are always revealed to be tools of control aimed at the lessers of the universe, though even the greaters can hardly control their own family affairs. Some of the graphic novel's small sections form lovely little stories, like the take of Ronnie's brother Kalif, who took to loving an Erotic Annie doll behind his father's back, spilling all his secrets:

"Dad took me on a hunting trip to New Siberia. It was so cold that my balls disappeared and I thought they were gone forever and I started to cry and told Dad that my balls were gone and he was so mad that he locked me in the room with my collection of vital organs for three malton units and I threw up."

Naturally, this relationship soon spirals into ruin and overcompensation, eventually leading to the destruction of all Erotic Annies save for one, which sees the Soul escape a seriocomic nightmare of male sex frustration, which itself powers both Kalif's and Ronnie's later actions. Everything in this book, even slight asides or minor characters, have a way of becoming something more important later.

Even then, there's a mystery to Starstruck that's born from its short, serial-ready chapters, perfectly willing to place all of its external influences right on the surface, yet remaining secretive about what it all might mean, and how everone has touched everyone else. As one character says in a in a later incarnation of the series, "The list of players read like a who's who in the social sector and they all had the rule book."

But wait, what's that? "Later incarnation?"

The year after the release of the Starstruck graphic novel, Epic Comics began publishing a six-issue continuation of the work (that's 1985-86). Lee and Kaluta remained as primary authors, with Lee even doing the colors for the first two issues, while the aforementioned Ken Bruzenak did the letters. With issue #3, the aforementioned Steve Oliff took over the colors, and John Workman became letterer.

"All right," you say, "so the Starstruck graphic novel was a big introduction, which explains its elusive nature, and then the series finished it off, right?"

The mutation was somewhat more drastic than that.

I get the feeling that Lee and Kaluta may have wanted their comic to work smoothly in whatever format it happened to exist in at the moment; as a result, while the first issue of the Epic series more-or-less follows the 'short chapters' model of the graphic novel, it's more a stylistic coda than a new beginning. It even concludes with a bravura sequence in which Ronnie explains the thematic and literal relationships between the various cast members through an extended set of card game metaphors, Kaluta packing familiar poses and pictures from the prior incarnation of the story into long panels, for extra iconographic kick.

After that, Starstruck suddenly stretches itself out, for longer stories that flow from issue to issue, much of it following a seemingly minor bartender character (what'd I tell ya?) investigating (or stumbling into) the cast's interrelationships as part of an excellent noir pastiche. It's not just grand plots; I mean, characters turn out to be clones of other characters' grandmothers. Complexities pile up, but the underlying sadness of Lee's story becomes more patent, as all of the relationships in the universe seem fueled by long-ago battles and deep chasms between families. But the dead rise again in Lee's world, and the underappreciated begin taking steps toward betterment.

As a result, the web of relationships Lee creates seems grandly symbolic of the ties that bind the mighty and the meek together in the human experience, little comedies becoming big tragedies, and vice versa. By the end of the Epic series, a resting (but not ending) point is reached, and the thorough reader, with all of the comics spread out before him or her, can isolate dozens of little effects that rippling across characters and into the lengthy world encyclopedia sections in the back, which never replace the comic itself, mind you. The beauty of Starstruck as a comic is that it arranges all of this information in an intuitive enough graphic manner that, say, a fight sequence occurring in the art, a fancy-font religious chant going on with a side character, and various song lyrics from various sources provided via caption, can all draw extra force from spatial proximity and ironic contrast that'd be impossible in any other medium. Not only was this well ahead of the curve in terms of sci-fi comics from Marvel, it's still unique in the mad, uncompromising drive that Lee and Kaluta bring to their million voices. Rings clear today.

However, as I mentioned, the comic stopped rather than ended. After the sixth Epic issue, the characters and creators moved to a backup slot in Comico's Rocketeer Adventure Magazine (The Adventures of Brucilla the Muscle, Galactic Girl Guide), where Dave Stevens' pulp throwback work must have seemed like a nice fit for Kaluta's pulp-fueled art, at least. Only two issues were released by Comico, in 1988 and 1989. Of course, the creators were doing other things too. Lee had actually been working with Charles Vess (him again!) since 1982 on titles like Eclipse's Sabre. Kaluta had many illustration jobs, including a noteworthy illustrated edition of the prose novel Metropolis. But eventually, the Rocketeer magazine wound up at Dark Horse (which eventually published one more issue), and Starstruck found itself revived again.

This time, it was called Starstruck: The Expanding Universe. The plan was that Starstruck was going to be finished for good, now that it was 1990 and readers were totally ready for literary comics and stuff (or that's what I got from Mark Askwith's introduction to issue #1). It'd last for 12 Dark Horse issues in total, with every four issues forming a 'book' in a Starstruck trilogy. In total, over 300 new pages would be added to the work already done. It'd all be in b&w too.

Only four issues (or one 'book') of this incarnation of the series were released, 1990-91. There was a lot of new art -- over 100 pages worth -- and it surely expanded the universe. Of those four issues, the original graphic novel and issue #1 of the Epic series are covered, which sealed that first Epic issue in place as a coda, and would even have set the rest of the Epic series apart from the rest of the work as a new unit, thus excusing the switches in narrative style from tight to broader. It was clever.

But cleverness alone can't always help the nature of comics. Reading through these expanded stories, stuffing characters who'd be introduced much later into the first few pages and greatly stretching dialogues and motivations, it's evident that Lee's outlook as a writer had changed a bit since the whole thing began in the early '80s. She seems more interested in conversational conveyance of information, with more emotion being worn on characters' sleeves and less puckish enigma. Yet, Kaluta can't very well redraw the whole thing - that would be absurdly work-intensive. The old must coexist with the new; perhaps a natural state when working for a long time on a long comic. I personally think that Chris Ware's most undervalued talent is that of assembler, always able to carefully put new books together from bits of old ones, with every project retaining a stunning coherence, like each state of the work is its natural state.

Starstruck doesn't so that. The short bursts of mystery and formal play from the older material sit uneasily beside the more direct newer material, causing a bumpy reading experience, especially if you've read the older versions. The work seems heavier in explanation, and less wonderfully dense for it. If the older Starstruck remains bracingly current, the expanded universe brings it down a bit to the then-present.

But that's the path a long work takes sometimes, in an environment that wasn't built to sustain many works like it.

Work kept up for a while longer, even after publication stopped on the Dark Horse issues. The ill-fated Tundra made plans to publish a five-issue comics 'n activities funtime distraction series titled The Adventures of the Galactic Girl Guards, which apparently did not involve the participation of Lee, but did intend to feature additional art by Linda Medley and Phil Trumbo - the project was never released. Meanwhile, development began on a movie spin-off of the initial Starstruck stage play for no less than Walt Disney Productions, with Kaluta providing everything from visual designs to toy prototypes. It too never took off. A new Starstruck short was completed by Lee & Kaluta for Heavy Metal, which later appeared in 1995, via the initial volume of Skin Tight Orbit, Lee's erotic comics anthology for NBM.

Actually, Kaluta's homepage indicates in his biographical sketch that he was still working on new Starstruck pages in 1996, at which time Marlowe & Co. (which you'll recall published Kyle Baker's The Cowboy Wally Show the same year) was expected to release a collected edition of the first Dark Horse 'book.' Again, the project was not realized, and that was that. Starstruck was never seen again. Luckless, abandoned, forsaked.

Could it have been different today? A comic of the type, populated largely by strong, well-rounded female characters, written by a woman determined to punch the medium into a form that suited her grand design? In a bookstore-friendly market? I also don't know if the broader-than-ever female readership of comics would affect it much - Starstruck is like the mirror image of much of the manga that's so popular today, which also often long, but sleek and decompressed, and easy in narration, and broad in comparison with he emotional beats. That's the popular stuff.

But if there's any broad point I'd like to make, it's that a simple comic is a big enough thing to create, and that a long comic often demands an extremely unwieldy process of creation, and the final result is inevitably dinged and scraped by the extended act of creation. Yet, by looking at these several Starstrucks, we can see the growth of the work across the comics platforms, flailing glamorously in the direction of completion.

Lee worked on a number of odd projects before and after the Dark Horse version of the comic ended. She did a six-issue miniseries for Marvel called Steeltown Rockers (1990), and a two-issue project for Epic titled The Transmutation of Ike Garuda (1991-92). She moved to DC for the six-issue miniseries Ragman: Cry of the Dead (1993-94). At Dark Horse she did some license work on Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny (1995). She was present for DC's short-lived Helix sci-fi imprint with the series Brainbanx (1997). And she found some continuing series success through her Vertigo project with William Simpson, Vamps (1994), which spawned Vamps: Hollywood and Vein (1996) and Vamps: Pumpkin Time (1998-99). Hell, the first one of those got a trade collection! Which is out of print.

Lee wrote for television into the 21st century, once again teamed with her sister. They've written a book together. Kaluta, for that matter, has also been elusive from comics, save for some cover art. Sometimes it's like it's all gone, but that's not really true. The work is still out there, waiting to be pointed at. Anything can be found, here in the future. Even if Starstruck was never finished, it can still act as entertainment and instruction, to those willing to accept its eccentricities, whether by design or by fate.

Labels: Jog

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This essay is about failure. Specifically, it's a response to Abhay's brilliant review of Dr. 13: Architecture & Mortality by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, a review which also--among other things--is about failure: specifically, the failure of the "nostalgicore" genre (Brian Nicholson's term, not Abhay's; Abhay just defined the genre and called for a "core" name) to prevent the growing coarseness of the mainstream comics industry; the failure of an online critic to critique a shitty comic without contributing to the buzz behind it; and, most damningly--if I'm interpreting his final paragraphs correctly--the failure of those opposed to current trends in the U.S. to present any sort of dissent worth noticing, and/or the failure of the U.S. media to notice such dissent, such that the "don't tase me, bro" dude becomes a brief symbol of so much that's wrong with this country (which if I had to enumerate would be: police brutality, absurd attentionwhoreishness , the inability of most of the Internet to process anything other than ironically, and the brevity of the public attention span so that such things are dismissed as tired before they're ever truly dealt with).

My essay about failure will cover all of the above and also, apparently, my failure to write a short, succinct sentence. Also covered will be my failure to organize my essay coherently, and this failure will actually take the visual form of three centered asterisks, like this:


So when you see three centered asterisks, you can rest assured I am acknowledging my own failure to properly organize my essay.


First, I think it's pretty obvious that we truly live in a golden age of complaining. The Internet, email, cell phones, talk radio--I can complain about something within seconds of it happening to me, if not to my wife then to my Twitter network, or the people on the message boards to which I belong. And let me tell you, I am not complaining about the complaining: I am incredibly grateful for all the many outlets open for my endless kvetching, whining and fitful tirade making. If you think about it, back in, I dunno, the '80s, the only people who were able to complain openly and at great length nearly anywhere were sports fans. My father, a lifelong fan of the San Francisco 49ers, did nothing but complain about that team until, thanks to Joe Montana, they suddenly became a championship team which pleased my dad but disappointed me: now that he couldn't complain about them, I talked with him that much less.

And this is my first point in response to Abhay's essay: when he says, "People who care about how charmless and talentless DCU comics in the present are? Stopped reading them, or at least I'd hope they have as that's clearly the most rational response," it seems to me to miss some very important point about human nature--or rather, it doesn't offer a consideration of human nature to superhero comic book fans we tend to offer to fans of other interests. No one but the most beleaguered domestic partner ever says to the complaining sports fan, "Well, if you're so disgusted with the way the [insert your favorite sports team here] are playing, why do you still follow them?" Interestingly, the response to that question would likely be the same: either, "You wouldn't understand," or, if the person responding was being candid, "Because I've been a following them since I was little kid."

It's what kind of drives me crazy about some of the crosstalk about superhero comics on the Internet: people are considered foolish for blindly following X-Men or Batman or Superman from the time they were little to the present, but is it really any more foolish than those dudes who go to football games painted blue and spend insane amounts of money on autographs and jerseys and box seats? It'd be nice if we could retire the idea that rationality should be applied to comic book fandom , the same way no one ever expects a sports fan to be rational about their favorite team or their favorite sport. It'd also be nice if the public at large complained about superhero fans being idiots for their passion as rarely as they do about sports fans.

I am also particularly fond of the superhero/sports team analogy because it allows some quick and easy ways to sum up long-time superhero comic book readers (some fans follow the team, and some fans follow the players, which means two fans can have utterly different experiences while watching exactly the same game) and in part because it allowed me to explain what I did for so long on the Savage Critic--it wasn't reviewing, exactly, so much as it was sports writing: people would come to the site and read reviews of books they'd already read to engage in some Monday morning quarterbacking, or to get an idea books they'd missed: finding out what had happened, so to speak, in the game they'd missed. For a very brief period, I considered writing an essay arguing that superhero comics weren't art, they were sports, and if everyone would just stop confusing them with real art, 90% of our contentious arguments would disappear and people could talk about being fans of certain writers or illustrators without having to make the claim that those writers or illustrators were "artists."

I also liked this idea, because it meant I could compare the direct market to those big schools I've read about where 80% of the funding goes to the athletic department (superheroes) and 20% went to the band (indie comics), the library (classic reprints) and the horribly underpaid, disenfranchised, potentially pervy teaching staff (Joe Matt).

Ultimately, though, I decided against it: not just because I was slandering Joe Matt for no good reason, but because there are enough examples of superhero comics as genuine art that it'd just be the grounds for another endless set of arguments. In fact, I'll go in the opposite direction and suggest that any medium able to construct a meta-work is an art: you can have literature about literature, you can have painting about painting, you can have nostalgicore --superhero comics about superhero comics--but you cannot have a football game about a football game. So, things that are unable to discuss themselves are not art? Discuss.

Years and years ago, I read a Joseph Campbell book describing how a group of seventeenth century monks explained how, precisely, Christ's sacrifice redeemed mankind. As I recall, it was a charming theory that suggested Christ on the cross was like bait on a hook, and his sacrifice lured Satan/Leviathan to try to ingest him, at which point God the Fisherman yanked Leviathan out of the "water," freeing all of us from evil being able to gobble us up in the future. What struck me most about this theory is how much it sounded like the stuff of Marvel letter pages from the '70s, where people tried for no-prizes for pointing out mistakes and then suggesting ideas that explained the mistakes: which is to say, that's the point I realized reading superhero comic books stemmed essentially from a religious impulse. Sports fandom, comics fandom--hell, probably all fandom since the word "fan" is likely short for the word "fanatic," deriving from a Latin word meaning "insane but divinely inspired"--stems from this impulse: the desire to belong to something bigger than oneself, and to participate in a ritual that is given power by the nature of one's belief. Weirdly, I don't believe sports stem from a religious impulse, but sports fandom does.

This brings us to one of the central paradoxes of religion, if you ask me--religion draws its power from the religious impulse, but it must contain the religious impulse in order to survive. There must be something that distinguishes the priests from the masses to which they administer, a closeness to something chosen as the vestment of spiritual power and, for the religion to survive, it must be the religion that defines what that thing is, not the masses. Moses and Jehovah raged against the building of the golden calf; The Catholic church burned any number of monks for heresy; the Pope decides what's a mortal sin, not the masses. Similarly, although the sports and comics industries need their fans to survive, a contentiousness exists between the owners and fans: the DeBartolos decide where the 49ers call home, not the fans; Joe Quesada decides whether Spider-Man stays married, not the fans. (And yes, I just compared the Pope to the DeBartolo family and Joe Quesada .) Although there are other factors in the struggle--sports teams, religions, and comic companies have all proven all susceptible to the lure of short-term profits--you cannot underestimate the not-quite-conscious battle for control that occurs between the insane and divinely inspired ones and the keepers of what they covet. For desire to remain desire, it must promise satisfaction and yet must also always go, in some crucial way, unsatisfied.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. In it, Doctor 13, a man who refuses to believe in anything supernatural or irrational, no matter what evidence is presented to him, finds himself joining forces with a number of wildly unbelievable allies--a ghost pirate, a vampire, an intelligent caveboy, and a talking Nazi gorilla, among others--on a quest to meet The Architects: not their makers, but rather their unmakers , the men who will remove Doctor 13 and his companions from reality. In the end, Doctor 13 is able to defeat The Architects by refusing to believe in their power, but he is unable to defeat an even greater force--the readers--who in the end remove the good Doctor from reality by reaching the end of the book. And I guess this is the second point in response toAbhay's essay: the conclusion to his review is, "I enjoyed Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality-- it's a well made book. But seeing talented people spit in the wind-- it's talented spit, but my point is the wind's a motherfucker. Basically. That's my point." For me, the end of Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality suggests Azzarello and Chiang seem perfectly aware of this in a way other creators of nostalgiacore are not: in Doctor 13, the needs of the reader do destroy these characters, even if not in the way Abhay discusses. Azzarello and Chiang, it seems to me, are spitting in the wind deliberately, and for the same reasons I used to spit in the wind when I was a kid: to see if I could get it to hit the people next to me (in my case, my younger brothers; in Azzarello and Chiang's case, the four writers of 52) and in doing so amuse myself.

This sense of self-amusement, something that usually frustrates me in Azzarello's work (I never feel half as delighted with his writing as he seems to be) works startlingly well here, perhaps because the self-awareness that manifests itself in all the puns, visual gags, and relentless verbal slapstick, is par for the course in a work of metacommentary. Although I would've recommended this work just for the splendor of Cliff Chiang's artwork and Patricia Mulvihill's colors, I'm happy to report Azzarello's in fine form here. But I do wonder if, like Moore, Morrison, Waid & Ross or other Nostalgicore creators, he actually feels for the state of current affairs where goofy characters are conveniently excised, or if he's merely having a laugh. Certainly this quote from the last part of the Azzarello and Chiang's multipart cross-platform interview:

Well, I'm not into comics as much as you think. But I am into music. I needed to spill my love for something into this book to make it work. So I used music. I guess I needed to honestly geek out, to be able to get that geek out of the readers. Who knows why we love what we love?

suggests that, like Doctor 13, his scorn for the Architects comes more from pragmatism (how's a writer who doesn't much care about standard superheroes continue to find work when everything that's not a standard superhero is being taken away?) and obstinate rationality (a talking Nazi gorilla isn't more absurd than a guy in long underwear who flies and fights crime--they're both equally absurd) than the sort of mad love that drives Grant Morrison or Alan Moore to bemoan the fate of Animal Man or Mandrake the Magician. I don't think that's a bad thing, mind you, but I think it's worth noting how Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality distinguishes itself from Pictopia or Flex Mentallo.


By the way, I want to say I agree with what K.L. Anderson points out in the comments, that Abhay's review of Dr. 13: Architecture & Mortality is quite possibly the best thing posted here on the Savage Critic, and all of my points (which so far seem to disagree with Abhay's) aren't a dismissal of that work. In fact, I was so incredibly energized by that essay (and also the section of this entry from Dick Hyacinth that discusses it), I wanted to respond. Just making that clear, before I go on to mangle more of my points, and perhaps pick more at his fine piece of work. Please remember that, as the kids today say, it really knocked me on mykeister.

Ironically, for someone that just spent a few hundred words defending the rights of people to continue buying and bitching about superhero books they're not happy with, I'm a huge proponent of walking away from superhero books for large periods of time. From 1989 to 1992, when I was living in Los Angeles, I shopped at Golden Apple every month and bought nearly nothing of a superheroic nature. I mean, I bought Doom Patrol, Sandman, and a few other Vertigo titles, but I couldn't care less about the Marvel books (this was during the rise of the Image artists) and was incredibly indifferent to DC (this was when everyone was dying and having their back broken, I think?). I mean, there may have been some titles I followed (I remember picking up that second Legends of the Dark Knight arc because Grant Morrison wrote it) but for the most part? I stayed away from superhero books. There just wasn't anything interesting.

Apart from causing some blind spots in my knowledge later when I worked the counter at CE (people would ask about Darkhawk and I would just stare at them blankly), this presented no problems with me at all. Fantagraphics was on a roll, not only with Love & Rockets (which I've followed from way back), but Bagge and Clowes moved from Neat Stuff and Lloyd Llewellyn to Hate and Eightball, respectively, which were tremendous improvements. I picked up an issue of Arcade that finally--FINALLY--made me "get" Crumb: since I realized I loved his middle to late period work, I slowly bought up a collection of Weirdo which turned me on to other artists. Julie Doucet and Chester Brown. There was plenty of stuff to keep me coming to the comic book store, and my knowledge and love for the form grew.

I'll be honest. I'm kind of at that point again: I brought home twelve comic books from CE last week, only seven of which were superhero books (and this was, frankly, from two weeks worth of releases) and none of which I've yet read. But I also bought (and read) the Doctor 13 trade, and Confessions of a Blabbermouth, and Hitoshi Iwaaki's amazing Parasyte, and Fumi Yoshinaga's Flower of Life. My passion for manga, which started out a few years back as a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment (I was mortified I could work in a comic book store and have such a huge amount of ignorance about such a fast-growing part of the market), is keeping me coming back to the store the same way that next issue of Eightball or Dirty Plotte or Weirdo did when I was in L.A. And just as I read Doom Patrol and Animal Man and Sandman and what have you, I'm still picking up Iron Fist and Ultimate Spider-Man and the modern day equivalent of what have you.

I figure some time will pass and more superhero books will come out that I care about. I'm fine for when that happens. But I thought it important to say to those who would care to hear it (and I know this is mostly preaching to the converted at this point) that it can actually be kind of a relief to leave the religion in the hands of the money-changers and see where else you can find your passion. In some ways, it was easier back in the '90s because the alternative market still mimicked the superhero market, and Bagge and Clowes and Brown published more than annually, but there's such an amazing backlog of material out there now, it's not going to be that hard to find something. And maybe it's time to look, for reasons I hope to explain below.

Because there is another reason we complain, apart from the spiritual component to which I alluded earlier. In the same way that hope is an admission of present misery, a complaint is an expression of powerlessness: someone who complains is either powerless to change something, or chooses not to change something (an abdication of power). The complaining on the Internet and elsewhere about seemingly everything is an expression of powerlessness, which is part of why I think Americans are probably bigger complainers now then we've ever been: no matter how we vote, no matter what we say we want, no matter what we do, we've reached a point where things aren't changing. It doesn't matter how mad people get about health care in this country, about voter fraud, about special interests and lobbyists and soft money and corporate interests and media spinelessness: it's not going to change because the people with the money don't want it to, and as long as they have the money in the banks, and the legislators in their pocket, and the media in their corner, we can't really do dick about it, other than (a) something stupid and near-meaningless, or (b) something utterly ineffectual, like bitch.

(To clarify that first option, I remember when the first big protests against the Iraq War started up here in San Francisco and how stupid it seemed: I couldn't imagine anything that would amuse the Republicans in power more than San Francisco shutting itself down. Until we can work out the kinks in the whole "Think Globally, Riot Locally" program, I'd say dissent is probably gonna stay a big old problem here in the U.S.)

I think this is part of the reason why Abhay's review hit me so powerfully: I can feel that link between Nostalgicore and the Countdown to Infinite Crisis Special and the "Don't Tase Me, Bro" guy: John Kerry didn't do anything other than let an annoying attention whore get tased for the same reason the creators of Nostalgicore can write eulogies for their beloved characters but can't revive them--powerlessness. And Abhay complained, and we responded, about a very shitty comic because it gives us a feeling of power although that feeling is itself an expression of powerlessness. And that powerlessness is what we feel when we get frustrated with "the buzz."

Which is why I think maybe those who find ourselves bitterly complaining about superhero books should, if that's the case, try something else for a while--to see if I'm wrong. Maybe we don't complain about everything as a way to blow off steam over our ultimate powerlessness in the face of our crazy-ass culture; that, just as BrianAzzarello decided to spit into the wind at the publishing company behind him, maybe it's just god-damned fun to do so. (There are times when this is god-damned fun, certainly.)


Or maybe we're just so god-damned spoiled and entitled that a terrible issue of Amazing Spider-Man seems like an exemplar of everything that's wrong in the world today?


Or maybe we recognize how wrong and flat and fake "Don't tase me, bro" sounds and we highlight that by putting it in a remix of an M.C. Hammer song?


Or maybe desire, in order to remain desire, must always in some crucial way go unsatisfied, and it's just easier now than it's ever been to express the frustration that results from our mostly-thwarted passion. In some ways, it would be comforting for me to think that?


But maybe we're getting on our computers every night and throwing the revolution we cannot have--not against the oppressors we cannot see and cannot name (in the same way Doctor 13 cannot see or name his readers), but against their easier-to-face analogues: the Architects who hold our superheroes and our superstars and our season passes from us. After all, the flames of spiritual passion are frequently fanned by material causes, and perhaps we find ourselves playing out our passions where people without recourse have chosen throughout history to play out their passions and desires--in the stories and struggles of mythical creatures, those mostly-imaginary beings we dimly recognize, in some unacknowledged corner of our hearts, as gods.

And if we turned away from them, and the passion remained, we might know.

Labels: Jeff

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So I did wind up seeing Eastern Promises, the new David Cronenberg thing, and it was good stuff. I liked it more than A History of Violence, which can be considered a companion film of sorts, given that both pictures see Viggo Mortensen as a man of secrets caught up in the world of organized crime, with violence meeting violence and family ties frayed.

The prior film struck me as really heavy-handed and sorta banal with its mannered small town American archetypes giving way to bloodletting... it was like a lot of high-fiving and shouting WE HAVE ACHIEVED SUBTEXT without anyone pausing to check if the subtext had much of interest in it. Oh, I enjoyed the contrasting sex scenes as much as everyone else, and it had a good ending. Like, the whole last 15 or so minutes with William Hurt were pretty swell, in that they shove the movie halfway into farce and really play up the awkwardness of person-to-person combat. I don't even think there's any music in those scenes, just Viggo Mortensen and random goons tumbling around rooms and stuff.

Actually, those were also the only parts where I picked up much John Wagner flavor, although I haven't read the original comic and I think Cronenberg changed most of it anyway. Hmm.

So, Eastern Promises was better for me. It's leaner and more subdued, and doesn't draw so much attention to its themes, although they're pretty tightly wound into the story. This time Viggo's a driver for the Russian mob in London, standing around and looking cool in a real movie star type of performance, trying to work his way up in the ranks of crime while keeping his hands sorta clean of the nastiest parts of the business. But concerned midwife Naomi Watts keeps butting her head into business after a teenage prostitute dies in childbirth and leaves behind an incriminating diary, eventually leading to some big time trouble with the father-and-son crime elites Viggo's working with.

Lots and lots of stuff going on with 'family' and 'heritage,' although I think the most Cronenbergian touch is the use of skin alterations -- tattoos and scars -- as the living biography of a man. If there's anything in this movie you've probably already heard about it's a big bathhouse fight toward the end between a naked Mortensen and a pair of knife-wielding assassins, and it mostly lived up to the hype for me. I mean, if there's anything Cronenberg always does right it's shooting scenes of violence in a way that slaps the audience around a little, real visceral and nasty stuff, and yet... the fight scene also totally pays off on the running skin motif, with every new cut a more 'real' biography for the character, augmenting the ritual of tattooing.

I don't think it's quite a great movie, mind you - just like in A History of Violence, with Viggo's son getting his own (awful) subplot only to get booted off the screen after a while, the whole Naomi Watts angle gets badly overpowered by the end. It hurts this film more, since she's a co-star at the start, and then has so little to do by the end it's like the movie itself got bored with her. The climax is overbaked and kind of ridiculous (and this time it doesn't help the rest of the film), with some really strained plot movements hammering characters toward resolution. Even then, there's a nicely ambiguous final shot (which, again, mirrors that of Cronenberg's prior film).

Yeah, I liked it. A high GOOD, maybe? A low VERY GOOD? Thank god this isn't comics reviewing, where all my grades are read back to me after I die to see if it's the Lake of Fire or not.

Oh!

The Programme #3 (of 12): I don't have all that much to say about this issue. It's more over-the-top political superhero soap opera from writer Peter Milligan, with dangerous beings breaking things in a haze (literally, thanks to C.P. Smith and colorist Jonny Rench) while government operatives pose dramatically and swap venom. I think the tone is best summed up when a government man mentions how America's errant superman threw him around like a rag doll, only for a liberal scientist type to reply "Now you know how the rest of the world feels about the United States," finger pointed outward. Then the scientist gives his best Don't Tase Me, Bro face after the rest of the present cast threaten to lock him in the cellar for the night. It'll be pretty funny if the character's entire role in the series is to make strident political points and then immediately back down when threatened. Maybe even clever.

Anyhow, the best parts are still hogged by the emerging superhumans ('superpowers' of a bygone Cold War age come back to life, don't ya know), one of which seems to have the power to make Joseph Stalin's disembodied head appear in the sky to evaporate oncoming aircraft. In those segments, Milligan's pushy dialogue and Smith's & Rench's garish visuals are free to expand to rightfully operatic proportions, while the human bits often come off as overblown. Still mired in EH, but the development promised by the last page might push it farther either way, all by itself.

Labels: Jog

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That's a pretty respectable week, it looks like...

52 AFTERMATH THE FOUR HORSEMEN #2 (OF 6)
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #7
AMERICAN VIRGIN #19
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST STAR LORD #3 (OF 4)
ARCHIE DIGEST #238
ARMY OF DARKNESS FROM ASHES #2
ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #3
ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK TWO #4
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #6 CWI
BART SIMPSONS TREEHOUSE OF HORROR #13
BATMAN #669
BETTY & VERONICA #230
BLUE BEETLE #19
BONEYARD #26
BRIT #2
CABLE DEADPOOL #45
CAPTAIN AMERICA CHOSEN #2 (OF 6)
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #37
COUNTDOWN 31
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #2 (OF 8)
CRIMINAL #9
CROSSING MIDNIGHT #11
DEATHBLOW #7
FRANKLIN RICHARDS MONSTER MASH
GREEN ARROW YEAR ONE #5 (OF 6)
HIGHLANDER #11
IMMORTAL IRON FIST #9
IMMORTAL IRON FIST ANNUAL #1
INDIA AUTHENTIC SHIVA #5
INJURY COMICS #1
IRON MAN #22
JLA CLASSIFIED #43
JSA CLASSIFIED #30
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #13 CVR A
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #13 CVR B
KILLING GIRL #2 (OF 5)
LEFT ON MISSION #4 (OF 5)
LONERS #5 (OF 6)
MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #5
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED LAST OF THE MOHICANS #5 (OF 6)
MARVEL SPOTLIGHT THOR
MARVEL ZOMBIES BOOK ANGELS DEMONS & MONSTROSITIES
PHANTOM CVR A #19
PUNISHER MAX ANNUAL #1
RED SONJA VACANT SHELL FOIL CVR
SAVAGE DRAGON #132
SAVAGE PLANET SECRETS O/T EMPIRE
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #180
SPEAK O/T DEVIL #2 (OF 6)
SPIRIT #10
SUB-MARINER #4 (OF 6) CWI
SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #34
SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #6
SUPERNATURAL ORIGINS #5
TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #46
TEEN TITANS #51
TEEN TITANS GO #47
TERMINATOR 2 INFINITY #3
THE ORDER #3 CWI
THIRTEEN STEPS #2
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #46
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #114
UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #1 (OF 8)
UNCLE SCROOGE #370
USAGI YOJIMBO #106
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #685
WETWORKS #13
WONDER WOMAN ANNUAL #1
X-MEN #203
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #4

Books / Mags / Stuff
ALAN MOORE ON HIS WORK AND CAREER HC
ALAN MOORES YUGGOTH CULTURES TP (RES)
ALTER EGO #72
BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE VOL 1 TP NEW EDITION
BRODIES LAW ROAD TO REDEMPTION GN
BYRON GN
CAPTAIN AMERICA RED WHITE & BLUE TP
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE NOV 2007 #1635
DAREDEVIL DEVIL HELL TO PAY VOL 1 TP
DONALD DUCK CASE OF THE MISSING MUMMY TP
FUTURAMA VOL 4 CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE TP
GHOST RIDER TRAIL OF TEARS PREMIERE HC
HEY FUDGE SC
INVINCIBLE SUMMER AN ANTHOLOGY SC
IRON MAN HYPERVELOCITY TP
KILLER VOL 1 HC
LOKI TP
MADMAN VOL 1 TP
MAGICAL LIFE OF LONG TACK SAM TP
PALACE OF A THOUSAND PLEASURES GN (A)
PREVIEWS VOL XVII #10
PUNISHER PRESENTS BARRACUDA MAX TP
REVERE REVOLUTION IN SILVER HC
SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE SLEEP OF REASON TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS METAL MEN VOL 1 TP
SUPERMAN DOOMSDAY ANIMATED MOVIE DVD
SUPERMAN VS DOOMSDAY BALANCED INNER CASE ASST
TEEN TITANS VOL 7 TITANS EAST TP
THUNDERBOLTS BY ELLIS VOL 1 FAITH IN MONSTERS PREM HC
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #158
WALKING DEAD VOL 7 THE CALM BEFORE TP
WHITE TIGER HEROES COMPULSION TP
WIZARD MAGAZINE BATMAN DARK KNIGHT PHOTO CVR #193

ASSHAT OF THE WEEK is a split vote: SAVAGE DRAGON #132 (due in JANUARY) or ALAN MOORE YUGGOTH CULTURES TP (Due in NOVEMBER... and on a resolicit, at that!)


What looks good to you?


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"Don't Tase Me, Bro."

You know that video, right? John Kerry gets asked three pretty reasonable questions by some obnoxious shithead kid, yaddah yaddah yaddah, and the kid's getting an assful of taser despite saying quite clearly "Don't tase me, Bro." Which-- this is Dissent in America right now. We're in the middle of losing two completely shitty wars; the country's being run by these psychopathic incompetents; almost every single person I know for the last 7 years has been saying, "Where's the dissent? Why aren't there riots? Where are the student activists?"

And we got our answer: we got some shitty hippie yelling "Don't Tase Me, Bro."

Last week, DC released a book called DOCTOR 13: ARCHITECTURE AND MORTALITY by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, which was an adventure story featuring out-of-fashion DCU characters. And um... yeah: It was a very nice comic book, well executed by its creators. Cliff Chiang's art is consistently pleasurable; Azzarello's script is light-on-its-feet and assured; etc., etc. I don't know-- what do you want to know? I liked it. Thumbs up. Blue Ribbon. Three and a half stars.

Anyways, it's the latest comic in the genre of "Comics Have Abandoned Their Charming Past, and the Present is Therefore Fucked" stories. Which... let's give that genre a name. Something with "core" in it somewhere-- I just think we need a "core" around here. Music has joycore and hardcore. Movies have mumblecore. Artists didn't create those horrible names; critics did. No artist wanted those terms applied to their art; Will Ferrell didn't want to be in the fucking Frat Pack; Andrew McCarthy didn't want to be in the Brat Pack; being shoegazer wasn't going to help you get groupies. I want a fucking "core", man.

The Godfather of the genre is doubtlessly Alan Moore and Don Simpson's Pictopia, the premise of which was that the charming past of comics was being destroyed by the grim & gritty present of mainstream comics. Also: the finale of Grant Morrison and Chas Truog's Animal Man, one premise of which was that the charming past of comics was being destroyed by the grim & gritty present of mainstream comics. Mark Waid & Alex Ross's Kingdom Come-- the premise was that the charming past of comics was being destroyed by the grim & gritty present of mainstream comics. And so forth. Now we can include the pleasantly-titled Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality to the list.

It's sort of a silly genre in a way. People who care about how charmless and talentless DCU comics in the present are? Stopped reading them, or at least I'd hope they have as that's clearly the most rational response. I'd like to think I've outgrown them, because I'm so mature and shit, but my affection for World War Hulk probably indicates otherwise. But I don't personally have a horse in the race. Doctor 13 was a get for me based on Azzarello and Chiang's work (separately) at Vertigo, but I couldn't guess if that's true of the book's entire audience or not.

On the surface, the genre might seem like it's trying to talk about how charming and nice the mainstream comics your Grampa was reading were, but that's not really it, is it? It's more about impotently grumbling about the present, than celebrating the past. It's the impotence that's starting to stand out as the defining characteristic to me. These works all fail. However good Pictopia is (fuck, dude, it's awfully good), the mainstream audience didn't really care about what Alan Moore was saying. Mainstream comics just get more and more coarse. Think back to Pictopia-- grim & gritty back then was that Hal Jordan knocked back one color-tini too many, every now and then. My god, if that's as bad as it got nowadays at DC, who would even notice?

And if it got that much worse from Pictopia (circa 1986) to now, how much worse is it going to get? In the future, every comic book will be about Hentai-Batman's Neverending War on Horniness. Tony Stark is going to be a well-hung dick-girl in 5.8 years; prove me wrong, internet. In the future, Shiwasu No Okina is your new Jim Lee, fanboys. That's my guess anyway. If I were a betting man, I'd bet it all on dick-girls.

It's hard to know when to complain or if complaints are even valid. Many complaints I might have should in theory apply with equal force to work I do enjoy, if taken out of context (see, e.g., Batman Year One). I'm sure everyone's trying their hardest; I would guess at least some of these ideas sounded good on paper. I think grim & gritty's pretty great in the right time and place; I think it's dramatically helped Marvel, at the moment. And I'm not someone who wrings their hands for "the children"-- I remember that something a little too old for me would be precisely the kind of material I'd be drawn to as a kid. I'd like to think I'm sympathetic. Still: I won't get near a DCU comic right now unless Grant Morrison or Brian Azzarello's name is on it. I'd be afraid of getting a rash. I'd be afraid it's spreading. So I don't know-- what does that tell you?

I once wrote a review complaining about a crappy, sloppy DC book; it wasn't a very well-written review-- it was actually pretty shitty-- but then all these people just linked to it anyways, which I thought was really strange. And what I realized from the experience is at most, I'd only helped the book just by talking about it, even if all I had to say was "look how incompetently this was made". I was adding to the "buzz." I was helping to make it a "talked-about" book.

But if you do complain about a book, the best case scenario: you become part of the marketing; you become complicit. Lingerie-Girl kills Green Arrow; Red Tornado fucks a chicken; the Teen Titans have a Christmas scat party-- whatever Judd Winick thinks up next? You just end up helping it. And that's the best case scenario; because the run of the mill is however eloquently you complain, you get drowned out by the great big background noise of angry lunatics, yelling about Hawkeye or bingo cards or the Manstream or whatever slice of crazy du jour. So, Marvel can publish women getting raped by octopuses on their covers, and instead of asking Joe Quesada anything meaningful (e.g. "Holy shit, why are there women getting raped by octopuses on your covers?"), the story coutesy of spineless Newsarama becomes "Look how the crazy fans are overreacting again; awww, Gumpus" instead.

You're just some guy screaming "Don't Tase Me, Bro."

I enjoyed Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality-- it's a well made book. But seeing talented people spit in the wind-- it's talented spit, but my point is the wind's a motherfucker. Basically. That's my point. I'm going to go embroider that onto a pillow.

Labels: Abhay

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Man, I had no idea the new David Cronenberg movie (Eastern Promises) was already out. I'll have to attend the hell out of that tomorrow. But now...

30 Days of Night: Beyond Barrow #1 (of 3): In which writer Steve Niles returns once again to this movie-bound franchise, now with Bill Sienkiewicz on art. Just look at this. All throughout the issue, there's a good deal of variation packed into page after page of snowy landscapes and backgrounds: bright icy blues and whites interspersed with rolling nighttime clouds, veins of color and light pulsing in the sky, and snowy flecks of paint whipped against the page while digital blur effects swirl. It's a very sumptuous comic, and it knows it - over a quarter of the issue is spent on mood-drenched splash pages, while characters are mainly presented in either Sienkiewicz's vivid, panel-filling close-ups, or muddied against weather conditions.

Meanwhile, the story... well, let me sum it up. A bunch of vampires, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, wander around for a while as captions fill new readers in on the essential 30 Days of Night concept. Then something off-panel kills them all, and Bill Sienkiewicz illustrates a lot of blood and pained expressions. Subsequently, a billionaire adventurer and his company of stock character types (the blithely glamorous wife! the disaffected daughter! the ambitious gunman!) show up, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. Captions tell us about them. They wander around the Bill Sienkiewicz snowstorm, and ignore various warnings of danger, after which Bill Sienkiewicz illustrates a vampire head in the sky, and the issue ends with a splash page of a bearded man frowning, Sienkiewiczly.

There's no doubt as to which member of the creative team is the star here; actually, I'll go so far as to say your enjoyment of this issue will extend exactly as far as your hunger for Bill Sienkiewicz painting frost and gore, so vaporous is the script. That's enough for an OKAY out of me, but others may get antsy.

Batman/Lobo: Deadly Serious #2 (of 2): Ha ha, oh my god. I really do get the impression that this series may have been led around strictly by writer/artist Sam Kieth scratching his chin every so often and thinking "well, what do I want to draw now?" It's a really haphazard piece of storytelling, lurching from event to event with boundless energy, but little regard for pace or character. Worse, this concluding issue sees the title characters return to Earth, where Kieth has fewer wacky things to draw - Batman stands around a lot talking with an abruptly-introduced new character, while Lobo gets himself possessed by last issue's women-inhabiting alien thingy due to his "unusually high estrogen levels."

Kieth does circle around broad questions of what 'femininity' is, implying that a male character like Lobo is free to exist as a sort of quasi-superhero despite his homicidal ways, while female characters exhibiting similarly extreme moods are seen as especially odd, in that they violate expectations of feminine conduct. It's an interesting enough notion, but it gets seriously lost in the fury of Kieth's plot progression, packed full of repetitive fights and chases, and prone to jarring contrivances like Batman rushing to save a little kid pedaling his bicycle across an empty highway outside of a Vegas strip club.

But even then, Kieth manages a few eye-catching panels, like a great view of Batman grinning, or Lobo literally crumpling police officers like they're paper bags. It bumps this issue up to an EH, which is about right for the series as a whole.

Labels: Jog

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This is part two of a two-part review of Runoff, a graphic novel created by Tom Manning that's been published by OddGod Press and was created over the course of the last 8-ish years; plus part two of a bonus interview with Mr. Manning is featured at the end of the review.

It was suggested to me last week in the comment section (thank you!) that I begin this week by noting the following: Guillermo Del Toro (director of Pan's Labyrinth, the Devil's Backbone, Hellboy, etc.) is a fan of the comic, has in some capacity expressed "interest" in Runoff's cinematic potential, and provided the following quote for the back of the third "Chapter":

"Tom Manning has created a world that is as bizarre as it is recognizable. As scary as it is moving. The terse plotting and vivid characters in Runoff collapse the sweet flavor of Americana into a cyanide capsule that is easy to swallow, easy to like, and hard to survive. May we all get poisoned by Tom more often."

He ripped off my pull quote; this is what I wrote:

"The stark art and surprising twists of Runoff set off on a rampage of cannibalism, murder and necrophilia, just like Jeffrey Dahmer. May we all get our toes eaten by Tom soon while In a Gadda Da Vita plays on a stereo."

But others might cotton to poison metaphors coming as they are from a famous director and thereby cotton more to this particular book. I omitted discussion of the fact last time because who knows and who's to say, and I find the whole "this comic has been validated by Holly-weird" thing intellectually lazy and frivolous. With obvious exceptions like Captain America: the Chosen, which was written by Rambo. (It's fucking great: a young soldier with a head full of GOP talking points almost stops and questions his clusterfucked mission, but then he remembers Marvel Comics's Captain America and is so inspired that he kill dozens of nameless, faceless Arabs! Marvel Comics: They Help You Mindlessly Kill the Arabs!)

Or worse, it gives the wrong impression that the comic reads like a movie pitch, when that's so not the case for Runoff. And I have a very kneejerk "go pitch your movie like Buck Henry did in the Player, ya crumb-bum" response when I get a whiff of that. Which... I'm not sure is reasonable. Well, first off, if a comic felt like a MOVIE, I wouldn't have a problem-- if a comic had three arcs that fully realized its premise? It's the feeling like a "movie PITCH" that I think is more aggravating. But even then: what's the acceptable thing to say? The argument reduces down to "how dare you create your work in a way that conveys your intent not to starve." And outside of obsessive nerds like me-- no one cares. No one gives a shit. Marvel publishes a comic book with women getting raped by octopuses on a cover...? Judd Winick: still writing comics...? Plain Janes doesn't have a third act..? No one cares. No one gives a shit. Comics? Nothing matters to anyone.

Tom Manning started working on Runoff in 1999, and finished it 2007-ish. How much validation do you think he got for that in those 8 years? 8 years! I'm going to hope that y'all comic fans didn't throw Tom Manning a parade sometime in that 8 year time span, and didn't invite me. The book exists anyways. Is that the appeal of these kinds of comics for me? That I get to, you know, like, suckle off of someone else's irrational passion, if only for a few hundred pages. Is that gross? Maybe that's gross.

Or you know another thing people say that I'm never sure what it means: "I want comics that feel like comics, and not movies on paper." I don't understand what that means. Well, Runoff certainly satisfies that criteria: it mixes presentational styles, art styles, comic formats, genres, tones, purely visual elements, fantasy elements, etc., with some semblance of an underlying structure underneath that mixing. But: it's also fundamentally "cinematic"-- there's no narration or thought balloons, or explanatory text of any sort. So would the absence of the former somehow make the latter offensive? Or compare it to a book like CRIMINAL, say, which is purely cinematic and without any fantasy element-- is that book somehow less than because of the "comics shouldn't be movies on paper" criteria? I don't think so. I think that's just something people say on their comic blog when they're feeling uppity. In bed.

So, yeah: I don't know. I like Runoff. It satisfies my weird little prejudices that get me really excited about a book. I have a lot of weird things that prejudice me towards liking Runoff:

1. I Got to Discover It Myself: There'd been coverage about Runoff, but I'd not paid it enough attention to seek the book out before. When I got it and then liked it? I got to feel a sense of discovery. So much culture's chosen for people-- someone chooses which movies are important and which music gets on the radio, etc. It's not as fun.

2. It's Black and White: that's my preference in comics. There are great colorists out there whose work I love, but that having been said, I like how immediate a black and white comic is. (Other people might get excited by the hand-lettering, but you know-- that's never been a thing for me; we all have our weird things, but that's not one of mine).

3. Even If It's Funny, It's a Little Sad: Runoff's a comedy and a big silly monster comic, but when it counts, it's just sad about people. Maybe it's from reading Peanuts when i was a kid, but I think that's an important quality for a comic to have. My knowledge of the classic comic strips is limited so I'm not sure how prevalent that is with the great ones. Or I'm not sure if... when I look at the classic Walt & Skeezix / Gasoline Alley stuff, I'm not sure if the strip is sad or I'm feeling sad because it's OLD and a reminder of our collective impernance. In bed. Or, to translate that into mainstream-comics-ese: Ultimate Spiderman is a little sad about people; New Avengers isn't. And so on.

4. It's an Ensemble Piece Set in a Small Town: I grew up in a suburb; my graduating class was 80 kids. I think it's good when whatever surface genre elements are present, that underneath that there be a sense of observation about actual life in there somewhere. Which isn't to say I think it's crucial: I liked the KILL BILL movies or RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, same as anyone. I think there's nothing wrong if all that's being conveyed is a love and affection for a genre. But with Runoff, underneath it all is something I suppose I relate to. And heck, I'm just a sucker for an ensemble.

5. It's Not Perfect: Runoff-- the single mom character is never fully realized or integrated successfully into the plot; the finale over-relies upon exposition; the new residents of the town never get a viewpoint character, etc., etc. Who cares about perfect? I like seeing Manning find himself over the life of the book. I think that's one of the biggest pleasures of the thing-- the journey you go on to the town in Runoff, that's a journey you get to go on with Tom Manning. It's not just being handed to you. I mentioned CRIMINAL above-- it's this polished book by experienced professionals, and that's nice, I certainly like it a lot, I'm enjoying the second arc more than the first, I've really come around to liking the colors, etc. But I don't get excited about it. It's too reliably good. In bed. There's not that same element of risk, you know? There's no gamble. No one's going to get hurt. You watch hockey for the fights; you watch NASCAR for the car crashes.

You bored with this number thing? Oh, I don't think the number thing was a good idea. Anyway: Runoff is available wherever it's on sale, and online probably too from Mr. Manning's website, and maybe you'll like it or maybe you won't because it's all over the map that way, but me: I liked it, and I suspect there are other people out there that will cotton to it as well.

INTERVIEW WITH TOM MANNING PART 2:

Here's more of that interview; again i apologize to y'all for asking the questions so selfishly from the point of view of someone who's read and enjoyed the book, but-- well, hell, that's a lie: I'm not sorry at all. I did it and I'd do it again. SAVAGE critics.

Specifically, I mention the "floating objects" (which are not a spoiler in that they appear within the first 10 pages of Chapter One). One of the elements in the book are there are these floating objects that are creepy/cute. More importantly: people who want to stay strictly pure and unspoiled (and yet... are reading this anyway...?), might do well to avoid the final question-and-answer which concerns the book's themes.

Caveat Emptor, dude.

QUESTION: What was the experience of working on a single book for 7+ years like? Comedy scenes, especially-- after 1 or 2 years, a lot of the jokes in the book might have stopped being funny to you.

TOM MANNING: I have to admit, I still crack myself up at some of the jokes. I liked working on a series for so long, it was like having a movie on pause in your head for years. It seems annoying at the time, but you miss it when it's gone.

INTERROGATORY NO. 36: You've mentioned before that Runoff was intended to last for 4 Chapters, instead of 3. Is there anything you're willing to say about what got cut?

TOM MANNING: It was going to center mostly on the day to day life of the people in Range as they ran out of food and got used to living with ghosts and talking animals. In a way it was going to be the most like Bloom County, where the premise was that these humans and animals lived in one boarding house and didn't think anything of it. I wanted it to seem almost like things were starting to get to a strange sense of normalcy and end the chapter on that normalcy. Anyway, I guess it did come down to a pacing issue. I realized that people may have turned on the book if they were made to put up with sixty pages ghosts, talking animals and humans hunkering down together through a snowstorm.

ME ME ME: I don't want to ask too much about them-- I think that'd be inappropriate, but can you talk about the character design of the floating objects? I especially like that they're always smiling, which seems wildly appropriate to me.

TOM MANNING: Yeah, I admit I usually keep a tight lip on the meaning and look of the floating objects, not to be a jerk in any way, but more in the hopes that my reasoning is never really stated to the readers. But I would certainly say I was excited about the idea behind it because a lot of Runoff is about having elements that are usually separate play off and enhance each other. I guess it would be no surprise that if there is any influence it is Japanese character design, which worked with my interest of playing with what a comic book can do that other mediums can't.

IT'S YOUR BOY: Thematically, Runoff ultimately seems like it's focused on exploitation, how communities or individuals seem designed to exploit one another, and how their polite, social interactions are just a false veneer hiding their true natures. To the extent you agree, can you say why you thought that was an important theme for you?

TOM MANNING: Absolutely. There was something about growing up in the northwest that made one feel that nature will eventually get the best of us in the end. Or rather, we'll get the best of ourselves as nature enjoys the last laugh. Perhaps this stems from having an active volcano like Mt. Rainier in sight at all times! I'm not totally sure where that comes from, I guess. I don't mean to have a dystopian view of humanity, I just think when it comes down to it, in a closed system, we'd really do ourselves in quick. Hm. Maybe that is dystopian.

Labels: Abhay

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I'm literally tying up loose ends before thinking about packing - well, okay, I have the rest of the work day to get through as well, but you know what I mean. My thoughts are of holidays and two weeks away from everything... so let's get through this quickly, okay?

CAPTAIN AMERICA #30: Something I genuinely love about the post-Civil War, post-Cap's death era of this series is that Tony Stark is probably as much of a good guy here as he is in any Marvel book of the moment, despite having been on the other side of that old Civil War from the eponymous hero; seeing him solve the murder of Cap this issue was a surprisingly uplifting moment considering my dislike of the character almost everywhere else in the world of comics. It also brings some plot development right where the book was needing it, as Sharon goes back into fembot mode and shoots two of our new heroic ensemble cast just as Tony works it all out. Brubaker keeps everything moving here, and I'm still not missing Cap at all. Very Good.

COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #1: You have to hand it to Steve Gerber for the unexpected masochist movie star version of Doctor Fate, but as much as I want to snark, I found myself kind of warming to the sub-70s cosmicness of the whole thing, ably sold by Justiano's art. There's also an unexpectedness - a mysterious unexpectedness, you could say - to the Eclipso strip, which not only ties Eclipso to the New Gods, but also manages to make her feel like an afterthought in her own strip. Not as good as Countdown to Adventure, but nonetheless, more Okay than you'd expect.

THE FLASH #232: Yeah, I don't get the people who don't like Daniel Acuna's art; in my book, more superhero books should be as personable, with less generic faces and bodyforms. But then, I also would like to see more superhero books written like this, with alien invaders and faux-science solutions, and an enjoyable family-friendly tone throughout. Very Good, and I'd love for Waid to stick around on this for a long time.

JUNGLE GIRL #1: Amazingly, possibly more gratuitous inside with Andriano Batista's art than the Frank Cho covers would suggest. But those with cartoon fetishes would find themselves with pretty enjoyably hokum accompanying the cleavage and ass-shots. It's really not anything approaching art, but it's pretty Okay. Should I feel guilty for admitting that?

TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS: PARALLAX #1: Well, we'd gotten relatively far in the Sinestro Corps crossover without a piece of entirely unnecessary dreck, so I guess we should've been thankful for that. Sadly, now we have this one-shot that adds nothing whatsoever to anyone's life other than the bank balances of the creators involved. It's not even bad enough to dislike, it's just a boring and needless slice of Eh.

WORLD WAR HULK #4: It's still beautifully drawn, but both this and last issue of the big Marvel summer event feel as if they're killing time before the big conclusion next issue. Maybe it's just that there's not enough story in "Hulk returns to Earth, smashes" to last five issues, or perhaps it's that there's too much (He couldn't just smash and then be stopped? We have to have him recreating his gladiator experience on Earth?), but what started so well has settled into something that's Okay, but ultimately unsatisfying.

And now, for me, two weeks off. Will Countdown come good while I'm gone? Will Dynamite ask me to write the next Jungle Girl series because I called it enjoyable hokum? Will anyone miss me if I decide to stay in Paris instead of coming home...? These questions and more may be answered in just sixteen days, true believers. Play nice while I'm gone.

Labels: Graeme

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I've been writing these things for 15 years, or something, so its really easy for me to get jaded. But I will modestly say that I think I did a really terrific job this month.

Go Read Here

-B Click Here to Read More...

You know how people sometimes laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate moments? And then there's that awkward feeling because they really should be taking things seriously?

That's pretty much how I felt about PENANCE: RELENTLESS #1. It's so self-important (the title page proudly announces "From the pages of CIVIL WAR"), so... well, relentless in its dark and faux-meaningful atmosphere, and yet my only response was to giggle like a Japanese schoolgirl.

That reaction largely stems from Paul Jenkins' total lack of self-awareness: you can almost hear the entire Linkin Park discography playing in the background as Robbie Baldwin, nee Speedball, shows off his nipple rings (?), watches Marquis de Sade biographies (?!), writes tortured and cryptic entries in his journal (?!?!) and cuts himself up like a Thanksgiving turkey (!!!). I can actually see someone with a wry sense of humor, like R.K. Milholland or Kyle Baker, turn this into a hysterically funny parody of the emo sub-culture and its stereotypes... but Jenkins is taking this very seriously, and apparently expects us to do the same.

Which isn't an easy task, precisely because - in his desperate attempt to give meaning to an utterly meaningless character revamp (I mean, seriously, who thought it was a good idea to turn Speedball into a hybrid of Dennis Rodman and Gerard Way?), Jenkins isn't actually doing anything beyond invoking various shorthand cliches. He's taking all the shortcuts, without actually going anywhere; it's not enough to just throw out random excerpts from the Emo Handbook for Maladjusted Outcasts, not in an age when "darkening up" the happy-go-lucky crowd is an all-too-common trend. In his effort to stress how different Robbie Baldwin is, how any trace of Speedball has been erased, Jenkins forgets to make us care about this new Penance kid (who, by all indications, is exactly the kind of douche you'd slap in the face after thirty minutes of enduring his whining about his poor, misunderstood life).

AWFUL stuff, and I can't see this interpretation of the character lasting for very long without getting retooled. It's just too much of an obvious joke to everyone but its creators.

Labels: Diana

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Gah! It looks like the column's gonna have to wait until Wednesday. I can only hope the fever for expansive Marvel Graphic Novel sci-fi featuring outer space girl scouts hasn't cooled by then. For now, I'll begin a chain of reviews.

Gutsville #2 (of 6): I liked the first issue of this Image miniseries from writer Simon Spurrier and artist Frazer Irving, even though the plot seemed kinda rote and the characters stock. I liked this issue a lot more, and not because much depth has been added - rather, the creative team focuses on drawing so much joy out of their puritan-society-in-the-belly-of-a-giant-monster concept that the old tropes almost glow.

I cannot emphasize enough how vital Irving's visuals are to the feeling. This is the best work I've seen from him, wrapping some wonderful bits of character expression into increasingly hallucinogenic vistas of cavernous flesh and membrane. The sleek costumes and hints of magical transformation may be reminiscent of Klarion the Witch Boy, but there's a stronger sense of humor at play here, from clomping piston stormtroopers trampling an unlucky child (straight face maintained), to a long line of murderous revolutionaries standing in shadows, knives out, behind their faux-noble leader, gaily smoking a pipe in the light. And don't get me started on the drug bits!

Plotwise, things proceed as expected. Some parties try to escape the intestines of their monster home. Others jostle for power. Secret loyalties are revealed, bigger mysteries are suggested, and people are simply shocked by what they see off-page, although we'll have to wait longer. I think the deliberate nature of all this throws Spurrier's little touches into sharper relief, like how social classes are differentiated by how people handle profanity. And the writer has developed one really delightful character in Percival Launcet, "Friend to His Lordship, employer of common men, and passholder of the First d__mned Class!" who's also a secret proletariat revolutionary, taken to living his life as an ongoing parody of an arch-capitalist.

VERY GOOD fun all around, well worth checking out.

Streets of Glory #1 (of 6): This is writer Garth Ennis' new Avatar project, and yeah, that was enough to get me to check it out. It's a Western, supposedly Ennis' first without supernatural or fantasy elements.

It's pretty AWFUL on the whole, unfortunately, though there's some ok parts. I liked how the story is narrated aloud by an old man in a diner, with absolutely nobody bothering to listen to him. I'm usually ok with the 'old gunfighting vs. progress' theme, which is big enough to support a variety of stories.

But most of this issue comes off as alternately stilted and shopworn, with characters stumbling through tangled dialogue on their way down just the road you'd figure they'd be on. I understand that Ennis is trying to emphasize characters' backgrounds by contrasting their ways of speaking, but that doesn't make a "has it not" and "can we not" loaded conversation between two brothers any less clumpy and awkward... must be rationing contractions back East! Naturally, the older brother is killed and the younger man goes with a killer (yet soulful!) old gunman, to a dusty town, with black-hatted dastards approaching.

Compounding the problem is artist Mike Wolfer, a decent craftsman who's not at his best here. Most visibly, there's a nasty splash page where I'm pretty sure Wolfer is trying to toy with perspective to make the great gunman look like a giant bestride the landscape, but it's pushed too far and ends up looking really clumsy. Wolfer does deliver the gore, with faces literally falling to pieces under fire, but his storytelling sometimes coughs - there's one page with a villain reloading his shotgun that I read three times before I grasped who was moving where and doing what. Believe me, a first chapter this problematic doesn't need extra reading hurdles.

Labels: Jog

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It’s rare for a comic to live up (down?) to expectations as much as MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #1. Which I first saw the line-up of the book, I wasn’t reminded of the 1990s version of the title (which started with the optimism that maybe characters like Cyclops and Colossus could be the tentpole characters for the book, before realism set in and we got Wolverine and Venom over and over and over again. Ah, such happier days) as much as I was left thinking “So, it’s the Immonen’s Hellcat and lots of filler, I guess.”

It’s not to say that the other strips are bad, per se – although the Vanguard and Weapon Omega efforts come close, if only for the fact that they sacrifice both plot and characterization in their first episodes for some vague sense of mystery that lacks the hook necessary for you to care enough to want to come back for a second helping (Disconnected scenes and foreboding dialogue alone isn’t enough to get me to care, people. You kind of need something more coherent for the reader, especially in an opening episode, to introduce them to the characters before the weirdness sets in) – but they don’t really have the style and panache of the Hellcat story; they feel like back-up strips, and I’m not sure if that’s down to intent or execution. The Thing and Spider-Man stories in the book are nice enough ideas, but either too low-key or, in the case of the Spider-Man story, not enough of an idea to last the length of the story (Sorry, Stuart; it’s a nice gag for a couple of pages, but after that it began to wear thin; that “It was all a dream… or was it?” ending didn’t help, either).

In comparison, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen make their contribution both read and look individual – the script sets out the character first and only really gives you the plot in the last couple of pages, but the pacing and humor (especially the retro pin-up fashion pages) make it seem as if they really care about the strip, as opposed to just filling up pages in a book for a paycheck. As far as the visuals go… Dude, it’s Stuart Immonen. What more needs to be said about that?

Overall, it’s an Okay book, but the Hellcat story itself is Very Good. Wait for the trade of that to come out and snap it up instead.

Labels: Graeme

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GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY WEDDING SPECIAL: It takes THREE different specials to get there (two of them oversized at $3.99), as well as an issue of COUNTDOWN, but what drove me more crazy than the last 4 pages is that we never actually get to see the wedding itself... except in a photograph. *sigh*

As for the last 4 pages, it seems pretty unlikely that's how they've going to leave it, given the monthly comic coming up (BC *can't* carry a solo comic, and Connor probably can't either), so this is probably false jeopardy, but it is so completely left field both from the light and breezy tone of the earlier pages, but also from the "where did that come from?!?" POV. I went looking back through the pages hoping for some sort of clue as to why that happened, and there's just nothing...though there's a background gag over three pages of whom I think is Flash villain Girder goosing Power Girl, and getting his "nuts" ("ha ha") smashed for it.

Amanda Connor's art is just lovely -- being "cute and charming" at the same time as easily handling the requisite superhero smackdown; and Judd's script is basically fine... but I just don't see why they ended the thing on such an ugly, sour note.

And why they didn't show the wedding itself!

This issue careens widely from GOOD to AWFUL, and because that last grade is the taste it left in my mouth, that's where I'm going to leave it.

What did YOU think?

-B Click Here to Read More...

The interesting thing about the cover blurb from GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY WEDDING SPECIAL #1 is that it's more true than was probably intended: "Everyone who's anyone in the DCU will be there! (And you won't BELIEVE this WEDDING NIGHT!)" it says, and it's entirely right; by the end of the book, I didn't believe the wedding night at all. Immediately, I just assumed that there was going to be some kind of out within six months or so, some way of undoing what just happened - Not because I am such a Green Arrow fan that I'm that upset over the end result, but because it not only came from nowhere, but came from nowhere right in an epilogue after the main story and therefore seemed even more gratuitous and "Oh, hell, we need a shock ending" than it would've otherwise.

Another reason why I'm assuming that there's going to be a get-out clause (even if that get-out clause invalidates the wedding, such as "It wasn't really Green Arrow at all!") is because... Well, there's just something super-shitty about having an otherwise light and positive book have such an ending. Never mind that the entire wedding event so far has been so light and frothy that I think everyone and their aunt have been waiting for the other shoe to drop - presumably on someone's head - the entire time; this particular one-shot is (like the Wedding Planner, and pretty much the JLA special as well) a comedy right up until the last four pages. Judd Winick's script plays everything - even the wedding crashing party made up of Deathstroke and an army of supervillains - for laughs, aided and abetted by Amanda Conner's amazing artwork, which nails everything effortlessly; she's an artist who can really get her characters to "act" without breaking the reader's involvement in the story to marvel at the art. It just seems like bad manners - and kind of bad writing, to be honest - to have such a dramatic and unexplained tonal shift at the story, especially going from comedy to tragedy without warning or, more importantly, any sense of it being real or believable.

It's all a set-up for next month's Green Arrow/Black Canary ongoing series, of course, and that's partially why I expect everything to be set right within the next half year or so (The other part of that is that I really don't expect DC to do anything drastic to Oliver Queen after just having Andy Diggle and Jock do a Year One mini about him; I'm that cynical), but the ending really sours what was otherwise a charming, suprisingly Good book. Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but pick it up and stop before the last four pages.

Labels: Graeme

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People send me PDFs for review. Here's my thoughts on one. Bear in mind that I use a laptop, so my screen space is minimal, and by the time I blow up the pages to be able to read the dialogue, I'm looking at individual panels, not full pages. It's not the most ideal format, but it's effectively free for both of us.

Toupydoops #6 is the best issue yet. Kevin McShane's characters are as distinctively animated as ever, but new co-writer CJ Julian brings extra snap to the proceedings.

Toupy's an alien-looking aspiring actor in a Hollywood based around comic books instead of movies. Teetereater is still his slick best friend, a hit with women and a conman player. This issue, however, when the two head to a premiere party, Toupy's the one who hits it off with a gorgeous lady. I'm glad the lug finally got a good night out.

The opening scene sets up the opposite expectation; Teeter's all slick and "oh, yeah, lots of hot women will be inside this hip gathering", while Toupy's tired of expecting yet another night of being ditched by his friend and being turned down, like has happened every time before.

The story involves more than just typical patterns of male hunting and dating interactions with women, although those are funny enough to see. In the character of Ashley, Toupy's date, Julian and McShane tackle the compromises aspiring actors may have to make in order to get a toehold in an appearance-focused industry, whether it's contemplating radical body changes or showing up somewhere they hate just to be seen. Toupy has more in common with Ashley than he thinks, only she's obviously been in town (and shaped by it) much longer than he has.

Toupy's often the naive youngster in attitude, putting what would otherwise seem normal in sharp relief. He's also charming in his innocence when it comes to dating, especially in comparison to Teeter (who's fun to watch getting his commupance, given his smarm). Typical of the series, some existing Hollywood elements are simply translated. In this issue, they introduce the Walk of Fame, only in their world, the stars are for Archie or Robin or touchingly, Betty Boop.

There's an unfortunate whiff of gay panic in some of the comedy scenes, which takes an otherwise Very Good issue to Good. It's no different from a sitcom to have the two men show up at a "hot new club" that turns out to be a gay bar and then run away in fear when they realize their mistake, but it's not right there either. And it's not just a one-off joke; it's echoed at least two other times in the issue. In one of those other scenes, it's taken even further in suggesting being thought gay would be the most terrible thing ever. I don't understand how someone involved in Hollywood could be so retrograde on this particular subject.

Labels: Johanna

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Another round-up.

BOOSTER GOLD #2: DC's new "fun" comic - which is probably the death knell for the book right there - has a second issue filled with fun, frolic and continuity injokes and overload; not as enjoyable or open to new readers as the first, it was still pretty Good nonetheless. It really feels like it wants to be a TV show, all the way down to the sentimental meeting between Guy Gardner and Booster at the end. If you listen closely, you can hear the faux strings of a 1980s soundtrack.

CASANOVA #9: That blue's still distracting, but a much more balanced and complete second chapter to the second volume than the first - Maybe I'm just easily swayed by sexy spacewomen who sometimes have six arms. Just like Captain America, though, the title character is nowhere to be found, and the book doesn't suffer for it whatsoever. Very Good.

DAREDEVIL #100: There's something weirdly old-school about the "It's our anniversary issue, so let's have lots of guest artists from the book's past!" thing, but in a good way - especially the John Romita pages, which again make me want Ed Brubaker to go and do straight-up romance comics at some point. I could've done without the overly-glossy Marko Djurojevic pages, though; there was something too slick about those... Good, nonetheless, and that's before you get to the added bonus of the San Francisco-era back-up reprint.

GREEN LANTERN #23: While the Sinestro Corps rages in space, Hal Jordan's brother gets all upset that the city he lives in isn't that popular. Guess which one captures the imagination more. Given the cliffhanger, though, I'm hoping that the Middle Aged White Man Comics prologue isn't the start of a "Hal's family are murdered" plot to give this otherwise Good comic more angst.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #9: I can see the hate email and comments already, but this Good start of the Kingdom Come sequel marks the completion of Geoff Johns' hat-trick of successful superhero books for the week. Again, rather old-school - it's one of those "super-heroes on their day off, but they never get a full day off" issues that you'd see in '80s Teen Titans or other team books, for the most part - and the appearance of Kingdom Come Superman at the end of the issue is arguably the least interesting thing about the whole book, but it's just well-done, solid, and fun. I have simple needs, my friends, and this meets them.

NEW AVENGERS #34: The "Let's use a magic spell to look inside our heroes' hearts" schtick would've made for a better scene if it hadn't already been done a few issues ago, but there's something to be said for the speed with which Bendis seems to tie up the internal Skrull paranoia subplot here, ahead of Secret Invasion. Otherwise, this feels like filler while the book waits for Mighty Avengers to finish up its first storyline; Okay, but inessential.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #11: And talking of filler... Again, another "downtime between super punching" issue, but this one doesn't work as well... maybe it's because there isn't any climax to any of the three parallel storylines here, just bridging material between other stories. Good to see Ian Brill's Marvel counterpart be turned into a gun-toting psychopath, though. Eh.

THOR #3: Wow, for a book advertised with "Thor kicks Iron Man's ass!" (Well, more or less), there's a significant lack of ass-kicking. Add to the mean tease of Thor essentially saying "NEXT time, I WILL kick your ass" the unnecessary use of New Orleans as backdrop to add cheap angst, and this becomes a nicely-illustrated but ultimately-Eh piece of pointlessness.

This week: I go on vacation on Saturday, so only three days of reviews. I'll choose wisely.

Labels: Graeme

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30 DAYS OF NIGHT BEYOND BARROW #1
30 DAYS OF NIGHT RED SNOW #2
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #66 (A)
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST QUASAR #3 (OF 4)
APOCALYPSE NERD #5 (OF 6)
AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #56
ARMY @ LOVE #7
AVENGERS CLASSIC #4
BATMAN LOBO DEADLY SERIOUS #2 (OF 2)
BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #178
BIRDS OF PREY #110
CAPTAIN AMERICA #30 CWI
CATWOMAN #71
CHECKMATE #18
COUNTDOWN 32
COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #1 (OF 8)
CRIMINAL MACABRE MY DEMON BABY #1 (OF 4)
CYBLADE PILOT SEASON #1
DISTANT #1 (OF 4)
DYNAMO 5 #7
EX MACHINA #30
FLASH #232
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY WEDDING SPECIAL #1
GUTSVILLE #2 (OF 6)
HELLBLAZER #236
HIGHWAYMEN #4 (OF 5)
IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #12
JACK KIRBYS GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTERS #6
JLA HITMAN #1 (OF 2)
JOHNNY HIRO #2
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #134
JUNGLE GIRL PX ED #1
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #6
MAD MAGAZINE #482
MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #4
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #16
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #28
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #1
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED TREASURE ISLAND #4 (OF 6)
NEW X-MEN #42
PENANCE RELENTLESS #1 (OF 5)
PROGRAMME #3 (OF 12)
REPO #4 (OF 5)
ROBIN #166
SCOOBY DOO #124
SHADOWPACT #17
SHOJO BEAT OCT 07 VOL 3 #10
SIMPSONS COMICS #134
SPAWN #171
SPIDER-MAN RED SONJA #2 (OF 5)
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #20
STREETS OF GLORY #1 (OF 6)
SUPERMAN BATMAN #40
TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS PARALLAX #1
TERROR INC #2 (OF 5)
TESTAMENT #20 (RES)
UMBRELLA ACADEMY APOCALYPSE SUITE #1 (OF 6)
WASTELAND #12 (NOTE PRICE)
WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA SUMITA CVR A #8
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #17
WORLD WAR HULK #4 (OF 5) WWH
WORLD WAR HULK FRONT LINE #4 (OF 6)
WORLD WAR HULK GAMMA CORPS #3 (OF 4) WWH
ZERO KILLER #2 (OF 6)

Books / Mags / Stuff
52 VOL 3 TP
ABANDONED COLOR ED GN
AFTER THE CAPE VOL 1 HOW FAR TO FALL TP
BETTY & VERONICA BOY TROUBLE VOL 1 TP
CAPTAIN AMERICA BY ED BRUBAKER OMNIBUS VOL 1 HC
CINEFEX #111 SEP 2007
COMICS JOURNAL #285 (NOTE PRICE)
DR THIRTEEN ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY TP
ELFWORLD VOL 1 TP
EMO BOY VOL 2 WALK AROUND WITH YOUR HEAD DOWN
GODS OF ASGARD GN
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY FOR BETTER OR WORSE TP
HEAVY METAL NOVEMBER 2007 #113
HELLBLAZER THE GIFT TP
INNOCENCE GN 2ND ED (A)
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA VOL 1 THE NEXT AGE HC
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN VOL 7 DIGEST TP
PHOENIX VOL 11 TP
SILENT WAR TP
SPAWN COLLECTION VOL 4 TP
VIDEO WATCHDOG #134
WITH THE LIGHT VOL 1 RAISING AN AUTISTIC CHILD GN
WOLVERINE ORIGINS VOL 2 SAVIOR TP


What looks good to YOU?


-B Click Here to Read More...

Unlike Johanna, I had a couple of moments of unexpected disappointment with SUICIDE SQUAD: RAISE THE FLAG #1. The first was how much it centered around Rick Flag; sure, I knew that the title was a play on his name, and that the mini-series would revolve around his still being alive, but I had managed to convince myself that he's still somehow not be much of a presence in the title itself until the end of the series, partially because I never really enjoyed Flag as a character - for me, Ostrander's Suicide Squad never really became a must read until after his death - and partially because, with series like "The Search For Ray Palmer", I thought missing characters were all the rage these days.

The second, and much more disappointing, was how much the book read like an issue of the original series. Undoubtedly, that's a selling point for many fans, and I can see the logic behind it from that standpoint, but starting off a mini with an issue-long flashback into a decade-old series' continuity, complete with injokes, nicknames and recurring villains who are barely introduced to new readers was oddly disorientating, as well as weirdly unexciting... It read as if the creative team were playing it safe, sticking to their comfort zone and giving the readers just what they think they want. The thing is, I don't want that; I want to see what I enjoyed about the original run brought into a new context, and re-examined to an extent. I mean, nostalgia's a fine thing, but if I want to read the old stories, then I'll just read the old stories (Nostalgia is the reason behind my purchase of SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS, for example, which holds up surprisingly well from when I was eight years old. I'd even go so far as to call it Good). I expected more from this mini, and may even get it in the future issues, but the first, backwards-looking, issue was surprisingly, disappointingly, Okay.

Labels: Graeme

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What I Read This Week:

Stormwatch PHD #11 -- This is why I don't care about keeping up with superhero comics. (You might have noticed my issues with timeliness.) As soon as I find one I like, they cancel it. This issue sets up next's final with yet another bad guy attacking the heroes by striking at those close to them, and events happen in abbreviated fashion. The intriguing character interaction is undercut by boob-focused art when it comes to the female characters. (Gorgeous is less impressive as a bombshell if all the other women also have her exaggerated secondary sex characteristics, you know?) I'll miss Black Betty and several of the others when they're gone. Okay.

Gen 13 #12 -- Gail Simone has clever, funny ideas, but too often, I enjoy them in spite of the rest of the comic. The bigger framework or story too often is left lacking or too familiar. That's what happens here, where we get to see Grunge absorb Fairchild, which gives him superstrength and huge breasts. Once you get past the giggles of that visual (which is censored, of course -- it's still a DC comic), the rest of the book is Eh. In between flashbacks to Grunge's childhood -- surprise surprise, he's a supersmart prig, because there's less dramatic tension if he's the same person from birth to now than if he's the total opposite -- there's a big fight with yet another group of superpowers. I've read enough Authority to get the Authoriteens, but I don't know who the third gang that show up are. WildStorm's got too many characters as it is, and few of them can support any kind of regular title. Why add more? Meanwhile, some crazy robot lady is making new copies of the titular team in a plotline that's been plodding along since issue #1. Make it stop, already.

Wonder Girl #1 -- Cool! I'd love to read about a teen heroine.

What has happened to her chest on the cover? Did she go through puberty and surgery when I wasn't paying attention? First page: oh, ok, she's normal inside. Just typical bait-and-switch comic marketing.

Nice, a summary of her history to catch up those of us who want to read comics, not events. Wait, what's all this Amazons Attack crud? Do I have to pay attention to that to read this? I was enjoying ignoring it. We're supposed to believe that the public is outraged? I thought all that Civil War and Aftermath stuff was the OTHER comic company.

So Cassie is undercover, hiding out because people hate her. That's not a very promising beginning. Why can't she just be a heroine? Why's she got to act like it's so terrible to be able to do amazing things and hang out with other super-kids like Robin? Why's she so eager to take the violent, final solution? Why's she so alone, with all her superhero teams and heritage cut off from her? I don't want to read that. (If I did, I'd be buying Spider-Man instead.) Shame we don't have a Disappointing rating. Or Not What I Wanted. (It'd be more honest.) Eh.

Suicide Squad #1 -- I'm so glad John Ostrander is back writing this book, because no one did it better. The classic team -- Nightshade, Bronze Tiger, Deadshot, Boomerbutt (which raises a continuity question for those who care) -- is sent to rescue Rick Flag, previously thought dead. Most importantly, Amanda Waller is back in charge. As she describes herself, "I'm fat, black, cranky, and menopausal! You do NOT want to mess with me!" She's also usually the smartest person in the room and willing to do what it takes to make the right thing happen.

She's the kind of hero we need today, if you want to read stories dealing with more "realistic" circumstances. It's not the violence that makes her great; it's the strong moral code pushed to excess as a way of exploring justice, with loyalty as the primary virtue. The art, by Javi Pina and Robin Riggs, is lovely in its detail and complemented well by the shading of colorist Jason Wright. Good.

Labels: Johanna

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A new grocery store opened 15-20 minutes from my building today; it seemed like an excellent chance to sustain myself on free samples, and I was totally right. I couldn't believe how many cheese samples they were working the floor with. I wound up buying some buffalo milk mozzarella, since I didn't want to feel like a complete mooch.

And the store didn't tolerate antics, let me tell you - while I was in the ravioli sample line, a young boy jumped right to the front of the line, only for the ravioli sample man to ask sharply if his parents knew he was skipping in line. The boy's mother then pulled him away as he shouted "YOU SAID WE WERE GETTING HAMBURGERS!!" The sample man lamented the state of today's youth. It was a scene of America.

Miriam #1: This is a new oversized ongoing project, from writer/artist Rich Tommaso. Published by Alternative Comics, 24 b&w pages, $4.95.

Tommaso has always shown enthusiasm for combining slick visuals with his fascination for marginalized and perverse bits of Americana. Here, his visuals are slicker than ever, while his favored subject matter synchs with an ambitious take on a youthful relationship between the Miriam of the title and her longtime pal/crush Peter. It's one of those stories where different parts take place in different time periods, and the little revelations we're given about the past affect what we've read about later days.

Specifically, 1/3 of this issue takes place in the mid-'90s, with Miriam as a cartoonist and Peter a (lousy) film student roping her into helping him interview an old exploitation movie cameraman. Then the next portion rolls back to 1986, with Miriam as a high school girl pining for Peter in secret while her metalhead friend -- and Peter's current girlfriend -- destroys all that gets in her way. The last third is set in 1977, where lil' Miriam finds herself drawn to naughty Peter as a brash playmate.

Being only the first issue, it's mostly a lot of pieces floating around, and most of them are very familiar. More alarmingly, the title character remains little more than an accumulation of miscellaneous sensitive-yet-sardonic girl wallflower signals. Still, there's some sly narrative movements -- I really liked how an overheated look at a Russ Meyer girl gang movie is later evoked in an emotional lunchroom fight -- and Tommaso has a nice grip on little characterizations, like how children have fun being annoying, or how two nerds trying to talk to a girl drift into talking to each other about their interests. Gives me hope that this GOOD start will develop.

Labels: Jog

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With vacation less than a week away - I know, you're all as excited at the prospect of two weeks without me as I am at the prospect of two weeks in Europe - I'm clearing out the piles of things that've been waiting for me to review them for long times. Let's start by being girlcrazy today, huh?

CLUBBING: I keep seeing this referred to as the worst of the Minx books so far, and I think I'm on Earth-2. Don't get me wrong; Josh Howard's art is spectacularly unsuitable and almost sinks the book on its own, but I really, really enjoyed Andi Watson's writing here. Not only does the bitchy narrator keep the whole thing moving (and avoids learning a life-lesson that makes her all sweetness and light by the end of the book), but the plot itself is a fun mix of over-the-top English stereotypes and League of Gentlemen-esque plot developments. With a different, less-flat, artist, more people would be calling this a solidly Good book, I think.

CONFESSIONS OF A BLABBERMOUTH: Yeah, I really am just working my way through the Minx books. Coming on the heels of Re-Gifters, Mike Carey's second book for the line - this one co-written by his daughter - was pretty much a disappointment for me. The main character seemed too close to the main character from Re-Gifters, and for whatever reason, the plot felt forced and uncomfortable all the way through. It's still Okay, and a lot of that is due to the background chatter and details in the crowd scenes. Huzzah for the first book I can think about based around a blogger, though. At last, a character I can relate to. Insert the emoticon of your choice here.

EVA: DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON: Not a Minx book, but a one-shot with a female lead character nonetheless! Sadly, despite that title, this isn't in any way, shape or form a kung-fu epic. It's also, to be brutally honest, not something that lives up to Jo Chen's lovely painted cover (Interior artist Edgar Salazar is firmly in the generic Top Cow-esque school of midrange Dynamite artists, and his version of the character lacks the personality of Chen's). Brandon Jerwa's script isn't a story per se, but a large chunk of expositionary origin story followed by what feels pretty much like a pilot for an ongoing series, connected by a metatextual framing sequence where writers are looking for a concept for a new monster show for their TV network; it's nothing revolutionary, but there's something Okay about the whole Dracula's-daughter-versus-all-the-classic-movie-monsters set-up nonetheless. Give me a better artist and more humor in the writing and I'd check out a potential ongoing.

GOOD AS LILY: Talking about disconnects between beautiful covers and completely different interiors, Derek Kirk Kim's cover for this book is completely unlike Jesse Hamm's scratchier-but-not-unattractive work inside, and the comparison it sets up seems somewhat unfair; I spent the entire book wondering how Kim's more cartoony, attractive characters would've looked in the same scenes. Storywise, there's a good concept here that feels like it's waiting to become a big Hollywood movie a la "Big" or "13 Going On 30," but the resolution seemed both too pat and confusing - Exactly why did all the Graces come together at the same time anyway, and what was the event that made each of them go home? That they were happy? That they'd imparted a particular lesson to the main Grace? Don't get me wrong; this is a Good book, but I wanted more, somehow.

Am I the only one following - and enjoying - the Minx line? What do the rest of you think of these books?

Labels: Graeme

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People send me PDFs for review. Here's my thoughts on one. Bear in mind that I use a laptop, so my screen space is minimal, and by the time I blow up the pages to be able to read the dialogue, I'm looking at individual panels, not full pages. It's not the most ideal format, but it's effectively free for both of us.

I can't help but compare Mice Templar to the earlier (and well-lauded) Mouse Guard. After all, they're both about mice with swords and spears. David Petersen's art is much more attractive, though, lending a storybook/fairy tale quality to the premise that helps with suspension of disbelief.

Michael Avon Oeming's mice, on the other hand, have outsized ears that look like satellite dishes with strange tiger-striping inside them, and everything's spiky, not just the weapons. Unlike Mouse Guard's emphasis on its characters fitting into a natural environment, these mice have humanoid body language, with long arms and legs, and they wear torso-covering armor. It looks like someone redrew a Japanese war story or a version of King Arthur by giving the characters mouse heads.

It's also the kind of fantasy story where various made-up names pepper the text in order to give the requisite exotic flavor. An early caption reads "It was upon the once-sacred
field of Avalon where Templar fought against Templar--beneath Kros Cur Onnor Da, that now-desolate tree of grace where the noble dream of Kuhl-En finally came to its end." That kind of thing really turns me off.

Mice kids inspired by the legend of the now-departed Templar dream of being heroes while playing. When confronted with real danger -- a giant spider -- one of their townsfolk is revealed to be surprisingly heroic, and one of the children thinks he's been selected for a special destiny. It's a familiar plot, and the dressing in this case didn't interest me enough to continue or care. I quit paying attention halfway through. Ultimately, I didn't see any reason for these characters to be mice. And there's way too much violence and death for my taste, even for its setting. That gets it an Eh.

Labels: Johanna

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Maybe it's because I've been watching "Slings and Arrows" on DVD recently - it being a Canadian drama about a Shakespearean drama festival and actors with issues and everything that comes along with that - but I feel as if X-MEN: EMPEROR VULCAN #1 has more than the usual (for comics) sense of The Bard in it.

It's in the expositionary scenes, I think. This book actually does that kind of thing relatively well; although I almost entirely missed the Ed Brubaker Uncanny run that set up this mini, I didn't feel lost at all while reading this latest version of Space Opera that seems to be hitting both Marvel (Annihilation and Annihilation: Conquest) and DC (Sinestro Corps) lately (Is it just me, or does this latest round of space tales seem to owe a lot to Star Wars, and specifically, the last three movies instead of the original trilogy? The scenes of big action and adventure seem to be continually punctuated by scenes of people standing around in circles, talking about some kind of political decisioning, even if it's the Guardians talking about rewriting the Book of Oa. Has George Lucas ruined everything for all of us again?). Part of the reason that I felt as if I could understand everything that was happening was because of the way in which writer Chris Yost uses his characters to tell you everything you need to know in these melodramatic scenes that play on the over-the-top epic nature of the set-up (Brothers set against each other for the kingdom of a powerful empire!); my favorite being the lovers-meeting-in-secret scene, with Vulcan under a hood while his wife does a Lady MacBeth.

None of this is to suggest that this is a dry or old-fashioned book; Yost also brings a particular humor to proceedings that lightens up the slower, more plodding scenes - I'm particular amused by his take on Lorna, for some reason - and there're the prerequisite scenes of explosions that honestly feel kind of unnecessary. In addition, Paco Diaz's art is solidly 2003 in its look and execution - good enough, but unspectacular - and the whole book feels entirely, surprisingly, Good if inessential.

Labels: Graeme

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People send me PDFs for review. Here's my thoughts on one. Bear in mind that I use a laptop, so my screen space is minimal, and by the time I blow up the pages to be able to read the dialogue, I'm looking at individual panels, not full pages. It's not the most ideal format, but it's effectively free for both of us.

First up, Potter's Field #1, Mark Waid's first book from Boom! Studios now that he's their Editor-in-Chief. It fits right in with their publications, reading more like a media project storyboard than a comic. The first five pages set up the premise, another twist on the "oddball solves murders" plot that's so common in hour-long TV procedurals.

A mysterious John Doe is working his way through New York City's Potter's Field, where the anonymous dead are buried. His goal is to put names to the dead bodies. (Continuing premise: each episode can be a different grave tackled. Kind of like Cold Case.) I can think of better ways to spend one's efforts, but if that's what he wants to do... we don't get any sense yet of his motivation, but all that time spent hanging out in cemeteries is vaguely reminiscent of the Spirit.

Our Doe is described as follows: "He goes places the police can't. And he never rests until he can give the dead the only thing he can: A name to be remembered by." I can hear David Caruso saying that now. And in fact, whenever we see Doe, his eyes are replaced by blank aviator shades. The art is by Paul Azaceta, and the word that first comes to mind is "serviceable", which also categorizes other Boom books I recall. The colors by Nick Filardi are pretty and atmospheric, at least on screen.

Doe's got a network of operatives who owe him favors and do the groundwork, kind of like Global Frequency, only lower-tech. Waid's also picked up Ellis' tendency to lightly rewrite gruesome real-life stories. In this case, I was reminded of the story of a young girl who's been kidnapped and kept captive for years, only for her to later escape.

There's a vaguely misogynistic twist in which the terrified, despairing mother is blamed for her daughter's death through a convoluted chain of blame. And some of Doe's helper's abilities are too facile; why can his guy decode an old audio tape when the police couldn't? Can't they also call experts?

I don't blame Waid for creating a story where most of the key points remind me of other TV shows and comics. It's awfully hard to come up with anything original these days. But I get the feeling that he's not aiming for original, but for option money. It's too slick, wrapping up too neatly while allowing Doe to ride a hobbyhorse against a Nancy Grace-like TV host. It left me thinking it was Okay -- I'd likely watch this television show.

Labels: Johanna

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The strange thing about PARADE (WITH FIREWORKS) #1 is the sense of scale; this is a relatively small tale told against a large canvas, and despite the best efforts of Mike Cavallero, it reads as mismatched as that sounds. The problem isn't with the plot - based on the real life experiences of one of Cavallero's relatives - but with the way in which the plot is executed. After a promising prologue that suggests a more personal, internal, story than what we get - running through the history of one of the main characters in the main part of the first issue - we're taken into a narrative that relies on a political background that gets no explanation whatsoever. Don't get me wrong; the reader could read Communists versus Fascists as the Jets versus the Sharks if they've got no knowledge or interest in international political history, but that gets slightly less easy when the plot relies on events shifting when particularly political music is played at the wrong time for the wrong audience. It's as if Cavallero got too caught up writing family history that he maybe knows too well, forgetting to explain things to newcomers who don't happen to be related to him.

On the plus side, the art is a beautiful thing - A more European version of Scott Morse's stuff in many ways, with some great color work and surprisingly good acting from very simple linework. As much as I'm tempted to say that it's worth the cost of the book on its own, that does a disservice to the dialogue and characterization that the writing offers; although there isn't enough of a history lesson for my liking, Cavallero's writing isn't bad at all - he brings an interesting sense of pacing and drama, and keeps everything moving and readable. While the book may not be entirely a success, it's at least worth a Good look, and enough to make me wonder if the second half will pay off the prologue of the first.

Labels: Graeme

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Hello to you all! I'd hoped to do it this week, but it seems next week I will begin slowly creeping backward towards the wee hours of Wednesday slot I'd originally planned for this column to run in. That's a good sign of progress, in a sort of 'supermarket having a sale to bump down the prices it just raised last month' kind of way.

So, in the spirit of a thrilling triple coupon discount effort, I'm happy to announce a very special feature for this week only (until I do it again). No bonus card required! It's a little something I like to call:

Involuntary reader participation!!

You see, back in the very first installment of this column, I observed that there were certain similarities between two Vertigo-released comics: the Peter Milligan-written Rogan Gosh (the subject of the column) and the Grant Morrison-written Flex Mentallo. Down in the comments section, Brian Nicholson pointed out that he'd picked up on similarities between another pair of Morrison-Milligan Vertigo works: Morrison's 1995 Vertigo Voices one-shot Kill Your Boyfriend, and Milligan's 1996 Vertigo Vérité miniseries Girl. I then conceded that I'd read neither work, and my credibility faded away in the manner of an enchanted coach turning back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, and the pumpkin then getting hit by an oncoming truck.

However! I have since finally gotten around to reading both works, and I can only say that Brian was very right. And he's apparently not the first to pick up on the connection - according to Girl artist Duncan Fegredo (in a now-vanished thread on the Engine; the best I can link to is a Barbelith post reacting to the original post), Vertigo itself had once planned to package the two works together in a single collection. Believe me, after comparing these two works I can understand the impulse.

But I also wonder what the ultimate effect might have been. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on between these works, and not all of it is docile.

Both stories concern the exploits of a young female protagonist who narrates directly to the reader as a means of exposing her private thoughts. Both narrators are unhappy with their place in life, and eventually become caught up in a wild adventure when they run into an attractive person of mystery that's essentially them. Violent acts swirl around both of them, while they attempt a massive, burning act of destruction against a looming structure. Both play identity games, both wear a blonde wig at some times, both chafe against the expectations of society, both encounter semi-useless groups of misfits, both are chased by the police, both have their worst crimes attributed to their alter egos, and both eventually end up in much the same place as they started.

Yet, it's the differences that stand out the most. The tone, themes, writerly outlook, visual style... everything is so different, so opposed, that the latter work, Milligan's, often comes off as a scathing critique of the former, Morrison's.

In a way, it might usefully highlight the differing worldviews of fiction that both writers possess.

One at a time. Spoilers, folks. Fresh eggs and new items at the hot bar.

A. Kill Your Boyfriend

As I mentioned before, this came out as part of the 1995 Vertigo Voices line of one-shot specials, four in total (incidentally, Milligan & Fegredo were behind another one of them, Face; the other two were Jamie Delano's & Al Davidson's Tainted, and Milligan's & Dean Ormston's The Eaters). Pencils were provided by Philip Bond, with D'Israeli assisting on inks, and Daniel Vozzo handling colors. It was later reprinted in the Prestige Format.

Initially, it's a bit hard to separate Kill Your Boyfriend from popular works that directly preceded it. Surely the scent of the 1994 Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers (which Morrison seems to have enjoyed, or at least respected) can be picked up from the basic plot, concerning the romantic and bloody flight of two young people -- a girl liberated from her domestic circumstances by a wild boy -- eager to live free and wild.

Our Heroine in this comic initially lives a comfortable but boring life, addressing us with Disillusionment 101 musings on formal education (school just teaches us how to be robots, you know!), fantasizing about shooting her classmates to death, and feeling let down with her dull, chunky, pimply boyfriend, who's less interested in despoiling her virtue than reading mediocre fantasy novels ("This is... well, it started as a trilogy and this is the seventh book. I suppose he just had so many ideas.") and pretending to study while waching porn ("It's so good, baby. Uh. Yeah... touch my tits with your claw...").

However, a handsome young man catches her eye with his casual disregard for common decency. He steals a man's cigarettes, and whistles at her as she passes by. Late, after arguing with her parents over a condom she has little hope of unwrapping, the girl storms out of her house and runs into the boy again. She gets drunk for the first time. She watches him vandalize a dopey three-wheel vehicle for invalids - meaningless and unfair destruction is fighting the world on its own terms! She throws a rock though a dozing elderly couple's window - to wake them from the deathly nap their boring lives have lulled them into! And for lack of anything more interesting to do, they head over to that awful fucking sensitive mild-mannered bookish shithead boyfriend's house, and she watches as the cool boy unloads seven gunshots into that horrible nerd until he is dead, dead, dead.

And she falls in love.

One might be tempted to view this chain of events as satire on Morrison's part. After all, the boy's constant parade of justifications for his cruel acts has a hint of absurdity to it - upon giving an older man a fatal heart attack after breaking a vodka bottle over his head, the boy instantly assumes that he had a bad ticker, and probably would have lost control of his car at some point, thus causing a deadly accident, so really they've saved lives in aggregate! Then again, it might just be the character cracking a little joke. And Morrison tosses in a little too much bloviating about good morals from the television and the police for his story to leave any doubt about who's on the side of the angels (if you will). Why, that dead older man soon turns out to be a well-off fellow with an apartment full of sexy outfits and drugs and stuff! Secrets behind the closed doors of the respectable- have you heard?!

So what is it with this book? Simple nihilism? A fart blown in the direction of the writer's fanbase, some of whom he must be aware resemble the killed boyfriend a hell of a lot?

Ah, but this is very much a Grant Morrison story, so it's redolent with that career-spanning obsession: transformation. Which is maybe even more potent than usual due to the lack of superheroes and the like. Our Heroine, in the dead old man's closet, changes into a slinky red dress and a blonde wig. She addresses the reader:

"Why should I study for exams when I could be the girl dancing in the studio audience of some late-night tv program for the under-25's?

"I want to be the girl the boys all fancy.

"The one with the big tits and a big smile and nothing in her head."

She then smiles and acknowledges the anxiety most readers are probably having over such an... unprogressive means of self-exploration. She asserts that she's become a wholly fictional person, a figment of the boy's imagination, and is thus no longer personally responsible for any ills she causes. Her persona is dissolved into story, into imagination, or archetype. Maybe even myth; after all, Morrison does allude to the tale of Dionysus and the Maenads (and by 'allude' I mean 'have a schoolteacher directly face the reader and detail the story' - in the interests of storytelling grace, Morrison does not have ALLUSIONS TO MYTH IN COMIC BOOKS, SUCH AS THE ONE YOU ARE HOLDING written on the chalkboard). I expect the focus of Morrison's interest in the Maenads is on their wild violations of social and moral norms, and appealing and appalling freedom from boredom.

Of course, you could say all that really amounts to, by the terms of the comic, is 'freedom' through total supplication to the male gaze. On the other hand, Morrison's emphasis on fiction and fantasy and melting into the heads of other people renders the boy less the 'boss' of the girl than an extension of her, and she of him. Duality is another Morrison fave. If she is what he dreams a girl to be, he's just the gun-toting stud she needed to break out of her dreary life. Morrison even inserts an incest theme into the story - by the end of the book, we learn that our lovers are probably brother and sister, reinforcing both the mythic aspect and their status as two-of-one.

And it's funny. The book has a lot of funny lines. It's eager to draw comedy out of bucking the expected. The pair take Ecstasy and go clubbing, then fuck wildly back at the apartment:

"All the books I ever read had scenes where the girl has sex for the first time and it's a big disappointment.

"Why did they lie to me? This is brilliant!"

Fantasy is what powers the work. Bond's character art compliments this, with lots of bright expressions that sort of nudge at realism but back away. It's like a world of candy. I can't say the art infuses the work with much extra zip - it's broadly appropriate, as were most of the hand-picked Seven Soldiers artists, and is clearly illustrative of the action. But Morrison, as is usually the case in his comics, is the dominant party.

Taken as metaphor, Kill Your Boyfriend is a celebration of excellence, with excess as its synonym. Mildness and 'morality' are equated with mediocrity, and thus the boyfriend must be killed. Trust me folks, if Brad Bird ever stops making all-ages movies, we're gonna see a cartoon just like this. Society and its hypocritical rules are always in conflict with excellence, and teenage rebellion rules the day.

On the run, the girl and the boy fall in with a group of would-be art terrorists who want to blow up the Blackpool Tower, the gun and the bomb being the only true art objects in today's age. Fluid identity and sexual experimentation is the norm (the inevitable same-sex encounter is actually between the boy and another man). But it turns out the artists and the thinkers aren't ready to take it all the way - they're just pretentious boobs nattering over inaccessible nonsense, as opposed to the pure pop glory of knocking down a tower through a terrorist act. Right?

On its own terms, in the midst of such broad metaphor, this shot at conceptual art carries all the resonance of a Nancy strip, while the story's heroic suicide bombing climax will probably inflate the message past the eye-rolling limit for many readers. There's only so much you can do broadly with a not-very-complex fantasy of teen violence as burning pop soul before you accidentally start to reinforce the pleasures of the middlebrow, and that has a way of weakening Morrison's play with transformation.

Still, he trudges forward. The final page sees Our Heroine as a mother and housewife, slowly poisoning her husband to death. He probably reads Terry Pratchett anyway!

B. Girl

Look. The comparison can begin instantly. Look at the titles.

Kill Your Boyfriend is assertive. It is an order. A demand. Action must be taken.

Girl is descriptive. It denotes an emphasis on what is, not what must be done. It gives us a subject, not a plan of action.

Shit, look at the publishing labels! Vertigo Voices suggests a booming sound for you to hear. Vérité, meanwhile, is "truth." It is a status.

This all makes sense. If Grant Morrison's #1 theme is transformation, Peter Milligan's may well be identity. Which does not guarantee change, just knowledge.

Girl is three issues long, and has never been collected. It was released under the Vertigo Vérité label, which was a 1996-98 attempt to promote new Vertigo projects devoid of the supernatural qualities that had gotten to define the publisher (four other works were released: David Wojnarowicz's & James Romberger's one-shot Seven Miles a Second, Peter Kuper's three-issue The System, Terry LaBan's & Ilya's & Ande Parks's four-issue The Unseen Hand, and Jamie Delano's & Sean Phillips' Hell Eternal). As I mentioned before, the artist is Duncan Fegredo. The colorist is Nathan Eyring. For the record, both this and Kill Your Boyfriend share letterer Ellie de Ville.

Visually, this work is very different than that from the year before. Fegredo's lines are scraggy and vivid. You can all but smell his environments. Eyring's colors are rich and deep. The feeling is not 'candy.' It is hyper-reality. Characters bristle on the edge of caricature, but retain a great liveliness that I don't quite get from Bond's flatter, more iconic figures. If the visual approach of Kill Your Boyfriend shines as pure fantasy with a wink toward realism, Girl presses realism into blur of daydreaming.

And god, are daydreams necessary. This story is a big downer. You might not even notice at first, since Milligan pumps it up with visions and jokes and rueful, witty narration, but studying the plot for more than a few seconds reveals that the laughs are only there to keep us from breaking our own necks over the tragedy of it all. Which eventually gets to be the whole point of the work, but let me back up.

The narrating heroine of Girl is Simone Cundy, who is fifteen years old.

"I don't believe in God but I believe in the Holy Trinity.

"My head, my heart and my hymen.

"All three remain unbroken, and I intend them to remain so."

Like the heroine of Kill Your Boyfriend, she is unhappy with her lot in life. But unlike the general teenage malaise that settles over Morrison's character, Milligan places his focus firmly on class and economics. While comedic and exaggerated, Simone's family is rooted in a firmly working class rut, with specific problems in opportunity. The biggest employer in town is a lottery ticket factory, juxtaposing hard work with wild dreams of riches. Education isn't taken very seriously, and not in the cool, fighting-against-becoming-robots way of Morrison's work, but in the 'no hope of betterment' manner.

Hey, I won't pick on Kill Your Boyfriend for that. It's total fantasy. Girl involves fantasy, but places it in the context of a vivid reality. Simone has a very active imagination. For a stretch of issue #1, we're led to believe that she's killed herself (with rat poison, the weapon at the end of Morrison's work), and her body is displayed in a coffin in the family television room, a scene that eventually gets wild when it looks like they're all going to hit the lottery, and then the family dog pisses on her, causing her bloated belly to explode, her enrails ruining the winning ticket. And after we see that it's all a dream of hers, we observe the little details added in, like how a local sewer worker is folded into the dream as her boyfriend.

Eventually, adventure awaits, and two men are killed! Again! With an enchanting stranger involved! Of course, this time the first man is a would-be rapist who's assaulting another woman when Simone cracks him on the head with a brick. And the woman's the enchanting stranger, a blonde doppelganger of Simone. In this way, Milligan effectively defuses the hint of paternalism that hung around Morrison's work, while hitting on the theme of duality even harder. It won't take a genius to figure out that the blonde Simone literally isn't real (as opposed to being a fictional persona of a real person) - but Simone doesn't know that, and Milligan exploits that nicely for the second death, the death of the older man: Simone's father, who slaps her mother around and just killed the family dog. Motive!

Killing isn't much fun in Milligan's work. It's scary when you don't quite know if you did what you did, and people take a long time to die. Nevertheless, Simone has her adventures, guided by her new friend into an effort to break out of her dreary life. Implicitly, and upon comparison, Girl becomes quite the bruising nipple twist of Morrison's work (and it's not all implicit - some bits read like direct lampoon, like when blonde Simone details a ridiculous story about how she was given away at birth to "childless explorers and cultural anarchists," thus making the pair... siblings!), with Simone -- wearing a blonde wig, even!-- undergoing just the underwhelming loss of virginity that Morrison's heroine read about. Drinks and dancing make her puke. She's quickly suspected of murder, and running away is no lark.

On its own terms, Girl is a very elegant, bracingly funny and tragic work. It helps greatly that Simone is a lively character, and that Milligan smartly poises her all-consuming daydreams as a way of escaping the dead end she was born into. I mean, her father is killed, her sister's boyfriend is abusive, the dog dies, a baby is stillborn... it'd be crushing if it weren't for the verve of Milligan's characterizations, the expressive zip of Fegredo's lines, and the poignancy of the story's use of fantasy as both horrible and thrilling, and probably needed to cope with life itself.

And even for comparison's sake, Girl isn't just a parody or critique or 'response' to Kill Your Boyfriend. It seeks to absorb just that type of fantasy into itself, and demonstrate both how it doesn't quite apply to a more realistic life, and how it can nevertheless be a salve. If Morrison leaps directly into play, Milligan stands back and wonders how such play might interact with those playing. As a result, Morrison's heroine/narrator is eventually a simple vessel for ideas and themes, while Milligan's seems like far more of a developed person, even if she can't embody the pop appeal of archetype. She has to deal with archetypes inside her own head.

This is played out nowhere better than in Girl's endgame. Simone plans to burn down the lottery factory, going out with just the bang that would have rewarded Morrison's teen heroes. But dammit - the sprinklers come on, like they often do in life. Her alter ego/thrill-seeking friend just fades away, with no bang. Her problems kind of solve themselves - even the murders affect no substantive change. She's back where she started.

The finale of the work is, to me, similar to that of F.W. Murnau's silent film classic The Last Laugh, which used its one and only proper intertitle to point out how it was going to give the otherwise bleak as hell movie a big happy ending, because movies need happy endings, fake or not. And at the end of Girl, Simone and her mom win the lottery! They climb into a limo in front of a silly line of angry neighbors, and flip them all off as they ride away into the sunset. If Morrison's heroine can't stop killing, Simone can't stop dreaming, though Milligan never tells us if this last bit's really a dream. I think the rest of the story more than plays that out. For Girl, wild teenage fantasies, like pop singles, are all right. They help you cope. Comics like Kill Your Boyfriend can be healthy enough, when considered as escape.

But holster that gun, miss. It’s not taking you goddamned anywhere.

Labels: Jog

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Continuing the apropos of nothing nature of my posts, I'd like to partially recind my WTF to Nellie McKay. Yes, she continues to play live in San Francisco when I'm on vacation and unable to see her, but having now heard her third album, I'm happy to report that the plot that she so spectacularly lost on the second album (If ever there was a second album that showed someone so flushed with success and thinking they could get away with anything, pushing away editors, it's "Pretty Little Head") has apparently been rediscovered; "Mother of Pearl" alone is worth the price of purchase. Also, Bob Dorough sings on one of the tracks! How can anyone have a problem with Bob Dorough?

But you don't want to read about the semi-jazz music that I've been listening to. You want to read about the comics.

How much is too much? That's what I ended up thinking when I finished WONDER GIRL #1, which is another example of something from DC that has a lot of potential being buried by it's reliance on current continuity and the readers' knowledge of same (See: Jodi Picoult's Wonder Woman run, which ended up being less than half of an Amazons Attack crossover, or Tony Bedard and Renato Guedes' Supergirl run, which seems to consist entirely of Countdown- and Amazons Attack-related filler, amongst many other things). It's not that the creators aren't trying their best - J. Torres' script is clear and does its best to introduce the backstory necessary for the reader to follow the story, and Sanford Greene's art is an attractive cross between the DC-animated style and Ed McGuinness or Paco Medina - but that the series itself feels like nothing as much as tying up of loose ends from Amazons Attack and Teen Titans plots instead of a story in and of itself. And I wondered, why does this feel so unnatural? Isn't this just old-school organic storytelling, with plots and characters running across books and things that happen in one story having effects that go beyond that particular storyline? Why, when I genuinely like the creators' work, do I end up feeling as if this is an Okay attempt to get around some kind of idea forced on them from outside, instead of a story that they were dying to tell?

When does this kind of thing go from being organic crossover to editorially-mandated mess, I guess is what I was really getting at. The best I can figure is when not only does nothing ever get resolved in and of itself, but when things don't even get started in and of themselves. The central character arc in Wonder Girl, for example, comes from Teen Titans, and despite the best expositionary efforts of Torres, feels alien and as if anyone picking up Wonder Girl has missed the important first part of the story; even if the continuation of that story is enjoyable - and it is - the first issue is still an unfulfilling experience, because the reader feels as if they've missed an important something (because, well, they have). It's probably the same thing that made me so disappointed in the Search for Ray Palmer; the feeling that it's all middle (although, in that case, not even enjoyable middle) - the structure of the series as purely a small part of a greater, unknowable, whole being too apparent and ruining the fun.

Interestingly enough, the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA WEDDING SPECIAL #1 manages to sidestep that issue, for two reasons that are both tied to the presence of writer Dwayne McDuffie. Firstly, despite this being a tie-in to the ongoing nuptual doom of Black Canary and Green Arrow, this is very clearly the first chapter of a story, with proper introductions being given to not only the new villains of the piece but also new (guest?-)star Firestorm, continuing a storyline from his recently cancelled solo series. Secondly, McDuffie brings a sense of humor to the book that gives it a completeness despite the cliffhangers - by setting up and then following through on a couple of slow gags, there's some weird sense of closure by the end of the issue, even though the story's simply getting started (Similarly, you can almost look as the Firestorm subplot as coming to a bad conclusion, even if that conclusion is McGuffin to start the main story)... there's a feeling of there being a wholeness to this issue that is missing from Wonder Girl, even if it's as tied to DCU continuity and other books as the latter book is.

Sure enough, there's not much original about the new plot nor the new villains - even ignoring the (referenced in story) Secret Society from Infinite Crisis time, we've seen the Lex Gathers Anti-Justice League plot in McDuffie's own JLU cartoon and Grant Morrison's JLA within the last decade - but nonetheless, this is a fun, smart, Good set-up for what promises to be a much more super-heroic and old-school take on the team and book than Brad Meltzer's attempt. Worth checking out for those who like guys in costumes fightin', anyway.

Labels: Graeme

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The first issue of Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta's POTTER'S FIELD doesn't feel like the first issue of a miniseries, which is what it is, or like the first 22 pages of a 66-page story; it feels like an adaptation of the pilot episode of a TV show. The premise is that there's an uncanny, one-step-ahead-of-you guy known only as John Doe, whose life's work is figuring out the names of unknown people buried in the public cemetery on Hart Island, and scratching them into their numbered stone markers; he has operatives all over New York. Hour-long TV detective drama, right? Or maybe the sort of series of short stories that used to appear in the back pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. (As is often the case with Waid's writing, there's some Biblical resonance here too--the title isn't just the generic term for a mass burial ground, it's an allusion to Matthew 27.)

The result reads a bit like Waid and Azaceta's take on FELL--noir tone, done-in-one narrative, muted palette, eccentric supporting cast, perpetrator of inhuman perversions brought to justice. Azaceta's artwork is chunky and vaguely Euro-ish--there are hints of David Mazzucchelli in the design, and a certain amount of Alex Toth in his linework (those surprise lines!). It looks terrific, for the most part, with unruly, jagged shadows and brush-crushing smears of ink turning up everywhere, although it doesn't flow as smoothly as it might; a crucial wordless sequence is a little bumpy. He uses lots of shorthand to get around showing facial expressions (over-the-shoulder views, silhouettes, panels focusing on small details, faces hidden in shadow or seen from a great distance)--I still don't have a mental picture of what a lot of the major characters' faces look like--but he's very good with body language: John Doe, in particular, has pretty much the same physical presence as the Spirit, fittingly enough for a guy who hangs out in a graveyard.

The writing, for the most part, is Waid showing off his particular skills, especially getting across a whole lot of information in very little space. The first four pages of the issue lay out Doe's raison d'être and m.o. almost too neatly--it's exceptionally tight storytelling (very much like Waid's backup origin features in 52, actually), and it leads straight into the plot for the issue, but it also means that four pages into the story we know everything we're ever supposed to know about Doe. He's got a similar knack for establishing characters in a few lines: Doe's operative Harold Steinway gets his personality firmly outlined in an amusing four-panel, one-page sequence that moves the plot forward too.

The actual plot of the story, though, is where POTTER'S FIELD falls down. The solution to the mystery involves some nearly impossible leaps of logic, and requires a particular character to be a household name in one conversation and nobody in particular in another. There are at least six characters here who look like they'll be making recurring appearances, and we know the surface circumstances of all of them, but none of them have particular depth yet. And the ending of the story is strangely awkward: a character from the background of the plot suddenly jumps to the foreground in a rather forced way, and the "cliffhanger" ending seems more like the first page of the next story (in fact, the next-to-last page would work perfectly fine as a final page).

It's a stand-alone story, but not terribly satisfying as one; if this were the first issue of an ongoing series, I'd imagine that Waid had some kind of bigger picture in mind, the way EMPIRE expanded beyond its initial setup. But there are only three issues of POTTER'S FIELD planned, as far as I know (although today's Newsarama interview suggests there might be future minis too), and that means it seems more like a sales pitch for an actual TV show. It's not just a detective series, but a series about a really specific kind of detection--the theme of the series, from its title on down, is "lonely death," and I'm not sure how many interesting variations on that can be wrapped up in 22 pages, or for that matter 22 minutes. Very pretty to look at, but ultimately just Okay. Click Here to Read More...

I'm not dead; I missed Monday and Tuesday due to insanity at the day job that saw me pull 12-hour days without breaks and with stress that caused episodes that may have included vomit.

That's what I get for working as PR flack for Britney Spears in the shadow of her VMA performance, I guess.

Nonetheless, COUNTDOWN PRESENTS THE SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER: WILDSTORM is pretty much of a wasted opportunity. I know, I know; you kids are reading this and all "Dude! Where was the opportunity in this cynical cash-in to a flawed mini-series that you're always complaining about?" (Admittedly, you may not be using those exact words, but still), but here's where I get optimistic about what the series could have been... I mean, I love crossovers and alternate earth stories. If you're looking for the sap who kept buying all those Crisis on Multiple Earth trades, even as they got into the lesser, '70s, reprints, then look no further. There's such potential in bringing characters from different versions of the same place together, in terms of comedy and drama and mindfuckery, that it's almost impossible to ruin entirely (Hell, even Exiles manages some glimmer of entertainment on a regular basis). Imagine a series of one-shots that managed to trade on that potential and show off the particular alternate universes in such a manner that made you actually want to read more about them, making the most of their particular quirks and variations while also advancing the overall Ray Palmer plot and amazingly not feeling like a sales pitch.

And then ignore that imagination, because there's nothing in this issue that doesn't feel cynical or the result of someone(s) in editorial telling Ron Marz what to do; as much as Wildstorm isn't the universe of wild imaginings and unrestrained ambition - not that that's a bad thing - this is a lifeless book that has nothing at all to do with Ray Palmer or a search for him at all; any character could be plugged into the Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner or Jason Todd roles here, and any McGuffin could be used in place of Ray's disappearance. There's no genuine character on display (the dialogue is beyond generic) and it's not even because it's been sacrificed for plot, because there's not even a plot here - the closest we get to that is a stand-off between the DCU heroes and the Authority, but even that goes nowhere, and exists purely as a situation to show how bad-ass the Authority is meant to be - except that they're neutered in the event by having Majestic show up and tell everyone to stop fighting.

It's an entirely depressing experience, reading this book; everything feels not only unnatural, but also somewhat unpleasant in its openly cynical pointlessness. I came out of it and felt as if it had not only not shown the Wildstorm books off to their best potential, but missed everything about them that had been interesting in the first place. Crap.

Labels: Graeme

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Hello. This is part one of a review of Runoff, a horror-comedy, funny-animal, monster, all-ages gore comic mash-up from Tom Manning, published by OddGod Press.

Runoff is comprised in its entirety (beginning, middle and end) of three "Chapters" -- softbound graphic novels running 144 to 176 pages each. In total, roughly 456 pages of black and white comics (eventually plus greytones), drawn over the course of ~8 years.

The book is set in a small, isolated town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest named Range, and the central mystery of the book is as follows: Range has been afflicted by a condition where people can enter into Range from the outside world but no one in Range can leave. Small towns can feel like suffocating prisons; Range literally is one.

Then, things start to get weird.

For example: as much as there's a Twin Peaks element you might have picked up on (see, small town of horror-mystery in Pacific Northwest), the book's other sine qua non influence is Berke Breathed's Bloom County. One of the mysteries as the book develops is animals in town begin to talk, and the way that's handled is descents into a loving recreation/theft of the look-feel of the classic era of Bloom County strips. So the comic jams together the two different styles, shifting back and forth from Bloom County styled humor strips to cinematic Twin Peaks influenced horror. Plus horror gore.

Also: Runoff has over-the-top comic book elements interspersed as well, including a homicidal pirate, a dancing helper monkey, and eventually, a number of monsters. These elements work inconsistently-- the pirate character especially never really worked for me except to introduce other, better elements into the book's blender. The monsters work well thematically, but so-so otherwise, alternating between legitimate threats to cheesy cereal-box monsters.

And wait, there's more! Did I mention that Manning is a Dave Sim fan and that influences the visual style of the book (e.g. hand lettering)? So yeah: add that to the stew, Captain.

Visually... the First Chapter is more than a little crap-- there's hints at some storytelling ability but that's about it. But Manning grows by leaps and bounds as an artist over the course of the project, so midway through the second book, the art just kicks in and snaps to life-- over the course of maybe 10-20 pages, the hand lettering starts to work, the drawings become clean and pleasing, the environments become more fully realized-- abra dabra, you have a book that's worth looking at. I had purchased all three Chapters at once so I could see the improvement was ahead of me; otherwise I'm honestly not sure I'd have finished Chapter One. But-- that's part of the fun for me, personally, seeing that much growth and improvement as an artist over the life of the piece.

Let me pause and acknowledge that, you know, for some of you this will just sound like a big mess, and it won't sound.. it won't sound fun for you. In that case, here's what I recommend: wait by a crosswalk for a large crowd of people to surround you and then start whistling the song Desparado as loud as you can to yourself. The Eagles's Desperado, written by Don Henley and Glen Frey. "Desperado, why dont you come to your senses?" That song. Then, just watch people's expressions change as they gradually realize what you're whistling. Have you ever done that? That's fun. Fact.

It sounds like a big mess? Dude, it IS a big mess, a big overstuffed bursting-at-the-seams mess. The book jams together so many different elements. It's not a great book visa vi the classic rule of suspension of disbelief that you should only have a single fantastic element for a reader to accept. Granted, this is comic books, and I think we're all used to that by now, but that's a rule I happen to put some stock in. Oh, the thinking behind it is sound. The dilemma of the premise is this: as people come to the town and become trapped there, one pressure the town faces is dealing with its gradually increasing population. So by adding all these different style/genre elements struggling for attention, the reader gets to experience that same suffocation but in a different way. I'm not saying it doesn't make a certain amount of sense; it just asks a bit of patience from its readers, that you know-- sometimes you're willing to give, and sometimes you ain't. Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't. Almond Joy's got nuts; Mounds don't. Think about it.

Here's the thing though: THE ENDING. On its own highly peculiar terms, Chapter Three's sort of a weird triumph. Think about it.

Fucking-a, it ends so well. The ending is persuasive. It's persuasive that the different styles fit together. It's persuasive that the disparate elements are linked thematically if not plotwise. It's persuasive that Bloom County and Twin Peaks go together way, way better than you'd ever guess. Italics.

It's persuasive that all the different elements needed to be there for it to have been as effective because the comic is about an existence that's layered, that has a hierarchy and class system, castes, with different elements in a larger interconnected social structure that's struggling to come together in the face of the book's central mystery. So by having different elements that are as exaggerated as Runoff has, I would advance the proposition to you that the social structure is thereby more clearly delineated and the books' themes are thereby more effectively communicated.

I think the ending works thematically. I think I can explain what each of the different elements mean in terms of the ending and the themes advanced by the ending. And I think it's spooky and sad and mysterious and inevitable, like a horror ending should be. It's one of those endings that stuck with me for a little while after the book. It's insane that comic books so resolutely avoid endings, when Runoff is such proof of how much crazy fucking mileage a work can get from sticking the landing.

So: I think this is just part one of the review, but I'm also going to present part one of an interview with Mr. Tom Manning which was conducted by e-mail recently.

INTERVIEW WITH RUNOFF GUY, TOM MANNING

I've only done one other interview, and I thought it'd be fun to do an interview for this review. Are interviews appropriate for this site? This is a review site and all, but I don't know-- I thought it'd make this piece more interesting. But: too far off the mission-statement?

In the interview, I mention a moment I refer to as the "Laughing Squirrel" -- I should probably edit that out, but it's my favorite moment in the comic, so I had to ask about it. For all of you who have read Runoff, I'm going to leave it and for those of you who haven't... uhm: there's a part where there's a laughing squirrel that's kind of great. Mr. Manning's comments were edited down slightly in order to hopefully avoid spoiling too much. Think about it.

SPECTACULAR INTERVIEWER WHO SHITS BRICKS OF PURE GOLD: Most of the comic's preoccupations seem like they're from childhood-- Bloom County, monsters, funny animals, pirates. What was it about those things that drew you to them? Were they all things you'd enjoyed at age 12, or-- do you remember how you arrived at that particular mix of elements? What's surprising is how many of them seem organic to the piece's themes by the finale.

TOM MANNING: In a way Runoff is a dance between genres and subjects that have been favorites of mine for most of my life. With the town of Range being based off my hometown of Enumclaw, Washington, I decided to work with the genres and elements that I was into when I was younger and remain into now. I also thought I would like to try leaving certain genres or elements out as well, ones that people may feel obligated to put in a long story like this. Leaving out romance all together kind of excited me.

MR. HANDSOME: In Runoff Chapter 1, while it tells the story, the basic drawing is honestly not very accomplished. There's steady improvement throughout Chapter 2-- around where the characters arrive at the Mayor's cabin in the woods, I remember feeling like you'd turned a corner. Would you agree with that? What do you attribute the "improvement" to-- were you doing things extracurricularly that lead to the improvement like life-drawing classes? Or was it just a result of having done so many pages?

TOM MANNING: Oh yeah, I'd agree with you there. My improvement really came down to two things. One was working on a larger scale. The pages I drew for Runoff chapter one were all done on a 1: 1 scale, where chapters two and three were done on a larger scale and reduced 30%. The second thing was just the fact of getting better by working on something. I got to be a better inker and penciller... and hopefully a better letterer... page after page. One other thing I should mention is the gray tones. At first I was trying to do all the tones by hand, cutting them out with an X-acto knife. But those Letratone sheets got more expensive and harder to find, and eventually I reluctantly had to turn to Photoshop to do them. So you can see about mid way through Chapter 2 when I was forced to stop doing the gray tones by hand. Of course it probably means it started looking better, but I still regret not doing every thing on the page by hand.

BRANIAC T. MACHORSECOCK: In those other interviews, you mention first starting to work on Runoff in 1999. When do you think you had the story completely figured out? When did you have that ending (which I thought was great)? Was there a lot of evolution as it went along? My favorite moment in the comic was the Laughing Squirrel. Could you talk about when you had that?

TOM MANNING: I had the main arc worked out from the beginning, a kind of list of scenes and plot points that were vivid in my head. As I went along I let the scenes in between these plot points come to me in a looser fashion, so there was a nice mix of rigidity and looseness in writing the series. Scenes that were pretty much in my head from issue one included things like SPOILER and SPOILER in the pet store, the Society of M outside the cabin, the bear in Charlie's Cafe, and the final scenes. There were also patterns I knew I wanted to plant and repeat. The Laughing Squirrel is one of these patterns, though it serves to really evolve and finish the Bloom-County-animals-and-humans relationship. It actually is used as a punchline to the series itself. It's funny you brought up that laughing squirrel, because that was one of those ideas that came to me later in the series that I was so excited to have. It's one of my favorite moments in the series for sure.

Labels: Abhay

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Looks like a much more "normal sized" week to me.

100 BULLETS #85 (RES)
2000 AD #1551
2000 AD #1552
AGE OF BRONZE #26
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #12
BAD PLANET #3 (OF 6) (RES)
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #9
BATMAN STRIKES #37
BETTY #168
BLACK ADAM THE DARK AGE #2 (OF 6)
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #129
BOOSTER GOLD #2
BPRD KILLING GROUND #2 (OF 5)
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #17
CASANOVA #9
CASTLE WAITING VOL II #8
COMPASS #1
COUNTDOWN 33
COUNTDOWN SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER WILDSTORM #1
COVER GIRL #5 (OF 5)
CTHULHU TALES TAINTED ONE SHOT
DAREDEVIL WRAPAROUND #100
DMZ #23
DRAFTED #1
FABLES #65
FALLEN ANGEL IDW #20
FANTASTIC FIVE #5 (OF 5)
FEAR AGENT LAST GOODBYE #3
FINAL DESTINATION SPRING BREAK #5 (OF 5) (RES)
GEN 13 #12
GHOST RIDER #15
GREEN LANTERN #23
GROO 25TH ANNIV SPECIAL
HEROES FOR HIRE #13
IDW FOCUS ON 30 DAYS OF NIGHT
JACK OF FABLES #14
JLA CLASSIFIED #42
JLA WEDDING SPECIAL #1
JOHN WOOS SEVEN BROTHERS SERIES 2 #1
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #262
JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #23
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #9
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA VAR ED #9
LIBERTY COMICS #1
LONE RANGER #8
LONERS #5 (OF 6)
MAINTENANCE #5
MARK OF AEACUS (A)
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #3
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED MAN IN THE IRON MASK #3 (OF 6)
MIRIAM #1
MOON KNIGHT #12 CWI
NEW AVENGERS #34
NEW AVENGERS TRANSFORMERS #3 (OF 4)
NICOLAS CAGES VOODOO CHILD TEMPLESMITH COVER #3
NIGHTMARES AND FAIRY TALES #20
NOVA #6
PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #115
PARADE WITH FIREWORKS #1 (OF 2)
POTTERS FIELD #1 (OF 3)
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #11
SE7EN ENVY #6 (OF 7) (RES)
SONIC X #24
SPAWN GODSLAYER #4
SPIDER-MAN FAIRY TALES #4 (OF 4)
STAR WARS LEGACY #16
STAR WARS REBELLION #10
STORMWATCH PHD #11
SUICIDE SQUAD RAISE THE FLAG #1 (OF 8)
SUPERMAN #667
THIRTEEN STEPS #1
THOR #3
TRIALS OF SHAZAM #8 (OF 12)
ULTIMATE POWER #7 (OF 9)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #113
ULTIMATE X-MEN #86
UN-MEN #2
WALKING DEAD #42
WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #10
WITNESS CVR A #1
WONDER GIRL #1 (OF 6)
X-FACTOR #23
X-MEN EMPEROR VULCAN #1 (OF 5)

Books / Mags / Stuff
ANGEL SKIN GN
BATMAN STRIKES DUTY CALLS TP
BATTLE ANGEL ALITA LAST ORDER VOL 9 TP
BLURRED VISION VOL 3 GN
BORDERLINE VOL 2 TP
CONFESSIONS OF A BLABBERMOUTH
CRIMINAL MACABRE TWO RED EYES TP
DESPERADOES BUFFALO DREAMS TP
DISTANCE MAKES THE HEART GROW SICK SC
ESSENTIAL PUNISHER VOL 2 TP
GEORGE PEREZ ON HIS WORK AND CAREER HC
HELLBOY VOL 7 THE TROLL WITCH & OTHERS TP
I LUV HALLOWEEN VOL 3 GN (OF 3)
ION VOL 2 THE DYING FLAME TP
LEES TOY REVIEW SEPT 2007 #179
LEGEND OF GRIMJACK VOL 8 TP
MARVEL ZOMBIES ARMY OF DARKNESS HC
NARUTO VOL 16 TP
NARUTO VOL 17 TP
NARUTO VOL 18 TP
NEIL GAIMAN ON HIS WORK AND CAREER HC
NIGHTLY NEWS VOL 1 TP
PATH OF THE ASSASSIN VOL 7 TP
RICK GRIFFIN HEART AND TORCH
SHOWCASE PRESENTS BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS VOL 1 TP
SLAINE BOOKS OF INVASIONS VOL 3 THE BOOKS OF INVASIONS HC (C
STAR TREK MANGA VOL 2 GN
STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION THE SPACE BETWEEN TP (MAR07826
SUPERMAN DEATH AND RETURN OF SUPERMAN OMNIBUS HC
TOYFARE HAN SOLO ANIMATED MAQUETTE CVR #123
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN VOL 18 ULTIMATE KNIGHTS TP
WEIRDLY WORLD OF STRANGE EGGS GN
WOLVERINE CLASSIC VOL 5 TP


One other thing: Ben is about to turn 4, and he has told me that he wants a "Father/Son" trip... and that he wants to go to Disneyland (CA, not FL). I figure among the thousnads of you reading this, a few of you know your Corporate Parks. Any tips? Any suggestions? Any secret websites I should read over? Anything? It'll just be a day trip....

Other than that... what looks good to YOU?

-B Click Here to Read More...

I'd planned for a longer intro but, wow, work is busting my ass today. Anyway, here's some reviews of comics and not-comics with love from me to you:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #544: Is it just me, or does Joe Quesada's art here have a deeply strange nose fixation? Check out that first panel of page three where Peter's well-detailed schnoz utterly throws off the visual line of the storytelling, for example. In fact, the most dramatic page in the story--Peter's webbing of Iron Man--is notable for being the only page except for the first without a nose. Surely that's no accident? The other odd thing about the issue is the cover: between it and the preview of next issue's on the very last page, it's clear the storyline is being positioned as in the grand old tradition of enjoyably melodramatic Spidey stories straight from the Stan Lee mold (check out that "Attention, True Believer! If you should read but one comic this decade, this one's it!" on the last page). And yet, Quesada is doing a very, very bad job of it. It took me a while to realize this issue's cover should have that classic Gil Kane "giant heads o' drama!" look, but because of the arrangement and the garish lettering, it's more like Spidey is so horrified by being web-hentai'd he's pooped the story title on Peter Parker's head. Pretty EH, particularly for the price, but let's see where it goes.

HALLOWEEN: If you couldn't quite figure out how Rob Zombie was going to bring his southern culture on the skids style to his remake of John Carpenter's ur-slasher pic, Halloween, you weren't alone: turns out Zombie couldn't quite figure it out, either. Here, he chops the movie in twain, with the first half recounting Michael Myers' childhood with all the hard luck ugliness you'd expect from watching The Devil's Rejects, and the second half being what Ian Brill rightly calls "the Cliff's Notes version of Carpenter's movie." It's not a bad solution although Carpenter's original, a masterpiece of low-budget moviemaking, touches on the mythic by giving the viewer more questions than answers, while Zombie's solution strips the mythic right out--it's impossible to think of Myers as the possible embodiment of an abstract eternal evil after watching William Forsythe's brilliantly awful white trash boyfriend call him "a fag boy" at the breakfast table. But even with all the additional disquieting trash talking and animal mutilating, Zombie either can't or won't bother to answer some of the really interesting questions: considering the movie shows the initial sessions between Samuel Loomis and Myers, I was disappointed we didn't get some Watchmen-esque scene that would explain why Loomis, a psychiatrist, spends most of the movie talking like a renegade priest. But in the second half of the movie, Loomis and everyone act the way they do pretty much because the original (or established canon) dictates that they do, and the movie's no more or less edifying. It's just longer and gorier.

Despite all that, it's not terrible, and Zombie makes some good choices to cover for his bad ones: although no longer an eerily graceful killer, Michael Myers as played by Tyler Mane is so physically huge and imposing, he's terrifying to look at. And I was impressed that the second half of the film had a very different, less gritty vibe (at least until the killings start)--I can't tell if Zombie was trying to make a point about the sterile safety of modern culture or just decided he couldn't make the movie work as a remake without aping the lovely stillness of Carpenter's original, but I found it heartening Zombie could convincingly create a different tone: everything else I've seen by him has been in a single trash-talk-and-unwashed-underwear mode. And since most of the actors in the second half have very little to work with, it's surprising they create as much sympathy as they do: Scout Taylor-Compton's Laurie Strode has none of Jamie Lee Curtis' teen awkwardness, and probably a tenth the lines, but she's still compelling, and you still feel for her. The original Halloween worked for me in part because Debra Hill did a great job recreating the way teen girls talked and bickered and teased and I could almost believe that was true here, despite them hopping up and down like kids swept away on a sugar high. This version of Halloween isn't going to replace the original--but then, did anyone really think it would?--but I'd say this was at least highly OK. It was certainly a more satisfying remake than that Texas Chainsaw Massacre from a few years back.

JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE, VOL. 4: So there's 67 pages of fighting largely done in the reflection of people's eyeballs, an incredibly creepy fight between a man and a tumor on his arm, and then there's a cliffhanger (literally, of course) with a malevolent, sentient automobile. Pretty much puts the awe back in awesome, in other words. Quite GOOD, if you like high weirdness manga.

THE LAST FANTASTIC FOUR STORY: I love how Stan Lee apparently believes the best Fantastic Four stories are ones where giants in skirts appear so everyone in Manhattan can look up and see ginormous genitalia threatening to blot out their existence. (And maybe he's not wrong?) Also, check out the first two pages where Stan tries his hand at decompressed storytelling by dragging out one sentence for an entire page--to me it underlined that Stan is a bit of an anachronism, out of place in a world he made. And it's kind of sad he has the Fantastic Four retire not because the world is safe (or even rid of Doctor Doom, because he's still there) but because "we can never top what we've already done." (Oh, Stan! Can't you see what your subconscious is clearly trying to tell you?) On the other hand, it's certainly better than what I read of the Jeph Loeb Wolverine arc. Again, for the price, it's barely EH.

SWEENEY TODD: Not a comic, but if you're in San Francisco and thinking of catching this production, make sure you're familiar with how the play is traditionally staged. As you've probably read, this production makes the cast members responsible for the orchestration as well as singing and acting their parts: people will hop from instrument to instrument, some taking over for others in mid-part so the liberated person can step forward and sing their part. Technically, it's astonishing, and it does a great job of bringing back the Brecht/Weill vibe with which the musical was conceived (Really, when you see Mrs. Lovett shake her big old caboose while playing the tuba, you will think of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill), but it makes it, I think, impossible to understand the story if you're a Sweeney newb. And, sadly, some scenes in the new staging make almost no sense whatsover--Sweeney and Lovett's challenge of Pirelli is just a jumble, and the opening to Act II is also badly marred.

The biggest problem with the production, though, is Sweeney himself: although the local critics have raved about his performance, I found David Hess' portrayal of Sweeney to be hugely disappointing. I mean, I know that the role is tricky--you either have to have Sweeney be an insane fiery zealot from word one, or you have to show him as a little man grown powerful in his madness in which case you don't have a lot of text on which to build your arc--but Hess seems small and lost on the stage, his acting maybe better suited for a screen portrayal (what reads to me as awkwardness on the stage may be a mesmerizing stillness on screen), his voice unremarkable (the guy playing Anthony actually blows him away in their later scenes together), and since he's given the least to do of all the cast--I'm not sure but I think he's the only member in the cast who isn't also playing an instrument--he's the least technically impressive overall.

And yet, after two paragraphs of bitching, I fully recommend this production if you're a fan of the musical: not only is Judy Kaye as Mrs. Lovett really fantastic (and I prefer Lauren Molina's Johanna to the original) but the orchestration of the music is superb--it brings out a suppleness to Sondheim's score I had no idea existed. Even now, almost a week later, I've got the music stuck in my head. If you're a fan of Sondheim and Sweeney Todd, you'll find this production worth your time and (considerable) coin.

Y THE LAST MAN #58: I should get some bonus points for calling the Yorick/355 love thing. On the other hand, WOW, did I not see that final turn of events coming. Clearly, a lot depends on how Vaughan and Guerra use their last two issues so I can't give you a firm rating. In terms of cliffhanger alone, VERY GOOD--but as I said it all depends. Without the cliffhanger and the next two issues, I'd give it a high OK: a lot of the scenes (particularly the Yorick/355 scenes) felt rushed.

Labels: Jeff

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I'll start with what's by far the most fashion-forward comic of the week, keeping in mind that I didn't buy The Black Canary Wedding Planner...

Wolverine #57: Howard Chaykin almost stopped my heart this issue; for a split second, I seriously thought he had Wolverine looking for trouble on the mean streets of Iraq in a mesh t-shirt. That may sound unbelievable, but when you realize that Chaykin has also clothed Logan's Atlantean lover/partner Amir in a battle ensemble that's mainly composed of leather straps, and has decked out the henchmen of new villainous organization Scimitar in Phantom Blot body stockings with thigh-high red chrome boots and knobs on their ears, clearly anything is possible. Sadly, it soon becomes clear that it's only Captain American chainmail stuff on Our Hero.

Still, I love it. It's the same sort of character detail verve that made Blade, in its best pages, seem truly plugged-in to the patchwork totality of the Marvel U, perfectly capable of handling vampire capes and S.H.I.E.L.D. jumpsuits and Spider-Man and everything.

Writer Marc Guggenheim is also back from Blade, although he's really following up a bit on his Wolverine Civil War tie-in from a ways back. It's a jumpy setup story - I presume the extended WWI flashback that kicks off this issue will work better when all the chapters are in, but that Iraq business seems mainly present to goose up the violence before sending Logan off to save Tony Stark from assassination, a misadventure which then serves to set up what I presume is the real plot, of which we'll not hear of until next month. Kind of annoying in its wheel-spinning, but Guggenheim does show a little bit of the nonsense energy that enlivened Blade by having Wolverine save travel time to a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier by clinging to the bottom of the X-Jet instead of riding inside.

OKAY for now, but mostly because Chaykin can draw a mean horde of gas masks.

Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus #1 (of 5): Be aware that the inside front cover bears the telltale "NUMBER 1 IN A SERIES" note, demonstrating that Dark Horse may be interested in turning this miniseries into one of the Hellboy universe's patented ongoing series disguised as a set of miniseries.

For as deliberate an artist as he used to be on Hellboy, creator Mike Mignola has become a fairly prolific writer; this is the third concurrently-running Hellboy title of the moment, and Migola at least co-writes all of them (B.P.R.D. is written with John Arcudi). Here, he presents a solo outing for the popular black-clad brute of his extended landscape, Lobster Johnson. I never doubted that Mignola could give this character his own series, despite Johnson's being little more than a scowling symbol of harsh-but-devout justice in his prior appearances; the premise is a little too rich with possibility for the weird adventures Mignola loves.

And so it goes. Artist Jason Armstrong is a nice choice, his style appropriately blending the scratched approach of B.P.R.D.'s Guy Davis with a little of Darwyn Cooke's mid-century design flavor. He'll be fine for what looks to be a kind of pulp hero lark, filled with Johnson leaving his Phantom-like doom insignia on the heads of the wicked and screaming "HERE IS THE CLAW" through gunfire, and an apparent yellow peril type villain teaming with Nazis to seize the power of Vril for war or something.

Entertaining and well-crafted enough, but extremely lightweight for this first issue; this probably won't stay fresh for long, and it does suffer a bit in comparison with its sibling and parent title, both of which manage to meld their own individually joyous history-of-oddness approaches with broader, affecting themes (B.P.R.D. has gotten especially good at this). Still, perfectly GOOD for a start.

Labels: Jog

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This was definitely BKV's week, as he comes out with a comic that's most-likely to be the best-selling thing he has ever written, as well as a getting even closer to the end of his personal magnum opus.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON EIGHT #6: As much as I liked Whedon's first five issues, I'm going to commit a little heresy and suggest that I liked BKV's first even more -- crisp action, nice plot movement, and snappy dialog (I thought that Faith and Gile's voices were pitch-perfect -- I could easily hear Dushku and Head's intonations in every line). If you were thinking "Oh, I can drop this now that it isn't Whedon", I'd say think again -- this was really EXCELLENT, with the only tumbles being in a few bits of Jeanty's art looking rushed)

Y, THE LAST MAN #58: Oh, no you d'int! Major spoiler warning in the next sentences, so go away if you're squirmy like that. While I can certainly see Yorick making such a dumb move, I can't, at all, for the life of me, even slightly begin for .355 going for it at all. And so, while the ending was of real peril, it felt to this read like absolutely cheap melodrama that was entirely out of place. Who knows, maybe that's because I have two temporal months between this one and the last, and maybe it will read better in the book, but this feels to me right now this second, to be a horrific fumble and crashing misstep in the final steps of the marathon. I guess we'll see if the last 44 pages can erase this bad taste from my mouth.

One thing that occurred to me when reading this, came to mind when flashing on last week's "Hey, the KKK are just like superheroes!" (or reverse, depending on your POV), EX MACHINA MASQUERADE SPECIAL, is that totally coincidentally or not, we just had the major Jewish character kill the major Black character here. I don't think that would have ever occurred to me if EM: MS wasn't JUST last week, but it leapt out at me in that context.

But even completely ignoring that, just based on the character's previous characterizations, I'm going to have to go with this being CRAP.

That's a rare Trick, scoring the top and bottom rating (and what would have been PICK OF THE WEEK and WEAK, if I still was doing that) in a single week. Good job, Brian!


THE BOYS #10: I usually tend to think that Garth Ennis overuses the Gay jokes, maybe too interchangeably with the dick- and fart-jokes. It's hard to admit, especially for a Politically Correct San Franciscan like myself, but y'know, sometimes, in small doses, -ist humor can be funny. Too much spoils the broth, however.

So I have to give points for Garth stopping the story cold in the middle of jokes to have Hughie basically say "Shut up, someone is dead, through no fault of their own, who gives a fuck about their sexuality?" It was a strong and serious, and EFFECTIVE moment, in a comic that's meant much more for a laugh.

I've also generally appreciated the attempt of some shading on the issue, with having "Swing Wing" *pretend* to be Gay so he could gain popularity (and presenting it as a negative, not as "how droll" kind of thing like that "Adam Sandler is a (Fake) Gay Fireman", whatever that was. A solid VERY GOOD from me.


What did YOU think?

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Let's get the obvious thing out of the way first: There is no reason for the BLACK CANARY WEDDING PLANNER to exist. I mean, ignoring the obvious cash-grab element and desire for DC to try and fill the shelves as much as possible, of course, this is a book that seems to have been brought about purely out of a desire to - as editor Jann Jones has said at numerous occasions - create the girliest comic possible.

It's not the girliest comic ever, if you're really wondering.

It's also remarkably slight - there's nothing resembling a real plot here, beyond "Dinah has to organize her wedding! Oh noes!" and even that gets no kind of resolution whatsoever, because - hey! - there are two more special one-shots to get through before the wedding itself. What we're left with is more or less an illustrated checklist of things that are involved in wedding planning, with some cheap jokes thrown in. And yet, if you take it in the (throwaway, all-in-the-name-of-fun) manner in which it's intended, it's kinda Okay.

There are gratuitous parts, of course - Vixen, Wonder Woman and Dinah trying on sexy lingerie (with, interestingly enough, especially unsexy art including characters with faces too small for their heads and a weirdly misshapen Wonder Woman) got a particularly withering look from Kate - but J. Torres' script is charming enough, and co-artist Christine Norrie's interludes offer some stylish moments in an otherwise fairly generic-looking book. Don't get me wrong; I still expect there to be a "surprising" twist where Green Arrow gets killed at the ceremony and this issue to be reduced to a cruel bait before the switch, but right now, it's light and fluffy and, surprisingly, not as bad as it could've been.

INFINITY INC #1, meanwhile, isn't as bad as it could've been either, but also isn't that good, either; much more complicated - and reliant on the reader having read 52, despite the attempt at a recap page at the start of the book - than any first issue should be, Peter Milligan's script substitutes cynicism for characterization and confusion for plot. While that worked for him in his Wildstorm series The Programme, it fares less well here, perhaps because there's nothing here that matches the sense of humor from the former series, nor enough of a throughline to pull fans of the storyline from 52 into attempting a second issue. More than anything, it read like a comic written by someone who was given the assignment of writing something that those weird emo kids would like, even though they're 40 years old and would rather listen to John Denver. Disappointingly Crap, given the creators involved.

Labels: Graeme

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I've said it before - and always about this title, weirdly enough - but the downside of solicitations for books three months in advance, and the ever-increasing lead-time of the news cycle, is that the comics themselves seem to become more and more of an afterthought. Take THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #544, for example, the first part of the once-weekly, now-taking-place-over-three-months-ly "One More Day" crossover. Despite all the hype about the storyline, it's completely anti-climactic; not only have we seen the one action sequence in the book in previews for the last, what, four months or so, but the entire storyline feels like something that we have to suffer through before we get to the relaunch storyline of "Brand New Day" that we've been reading about for the last month.

It doesn't help that there's no surprise or even true plot development in this first episode; we finish the issue more or less in the same place as we started it, with Aunt May still about to die and Peter still desperate to stop that from happening. Okay, so now we know that her medical care will be paid for, but I doubt that that many people were really reading the story for hot HMO action. As with every issue of Amazing in the last year or so, this doesn't read as a Spider-Man story as much as J. Michael Straczynski's desperate attempt to come up with something as serious and genre-defining as Alan Moore's mid-80s DC Universe work no matter how inappropriate it may be for the characters that he's writing, and as a result, it's not anything approaching an enjoyable experience, if only because the entire thing is crushed by the need to "matter".

To add visual insult to JMS' wooden-footed-injury, Joe Quesada's art has turned into this overly-rendered (thanks, inker Danny Miki!) superdeformed thing that renders all characters unrecognizable and all textures identical, making the whole book look like some unseasoned fan's portfolio attempt to look cool and edgy. On the one hand, it's nice to see a big name '90s artist who's really made an attempt to change his style in the last decade plus; on the other, he's made his style into something that really isn't very appealing at all.

In the end, then, this really does feel like something to work through in order to earn the promise of the brighter, less self-important, "Brand New Day" relaunch for Spider-Man; no fun, all heaviness and reading like a 15-year-old's pre-masturbatory attempt to be taken seriously. Crap, sadly.

Labels: Graeme

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I agree with Graeme that there's something transparently jingoistic about CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN #1, from its over-the-top cover to its horrendously cliche dialogue - seriously, some of David Morrell's lines could give "DO YOU THINK THIS A ON MY HEAD STANDS FOR FRANCE?" a run for its money. There's a considerable gap between the serious issues Morrell is trying to raise (ie: if you're a soldier in a foreign war zone, will you always recognize your enemies when you see them?) and the simplistic, ethnocentric We Are Right And They Are Wrong Because We Are America way in which these issues are raised. Given that David Morrell created Rambo, I don't know that we should've expected anything more, but Marvel missed the zeitgeist here: it would've been perfectly fashionable to publish this comic four or five years ago, when the post-9/11 atmosphere necessitated an inherently patriotic response (remember Doctor Doom crying in the ruins of the Towers?), but that sort of blind flag-waving has mostly gone out of style, to the extent that overly zealous displays of patriotism tend to earn polite snickers, if not outright parody. And while this particular interpretation of Captain America as a flag with legs was commonplace during John Rey Neiber's run, or Dan Jurgen's, it's a little harder to reconcile with Ed Brubaker's character-centric approach - even as FALLEN SON and mainstream news outlets treated Captain America's "death" as a purely symbolic story, Brubaker's own comic continues to treat Steve Rogers as a person first, icon second. And that makes THE CHOSEN #1 look even more AWFUL than it already is.

Fortunately, readers seeking strong characterization and an intriguing plot can always turn to Brian Vaughan, who kicks off a four-issue run with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #6. It's gratifying, though not surprising, that Vaughan chose Faith as his protagonist rather than the titular heroine; he always does so well with damaged women like Hero Brown and Mystique, largely because he understands that to make an antihero appealing, you can't be explicit about what's going on in their heads. On TV, we usually only saw understated glimpses of Faith's pain, and Vaughan keeps that up by dropping hints about her mental state rather than be overt about it (ie: the state of her apartment wall). I actually enjoyed this issue more than any of Whedon's, mostly because I feel Whedon's priority when scripting the first arc was to do things that couldn't have been done on television (Dawn the giantess, zombie ballroom dancing, Amy and Willow duking it out in midair and so on). And while the spectacle was entertaining enough, it wasn't quite as dramatically fulfilling as I might've hoped. Vaughan, by contrast, has scaled back the grandiose Peter Jackson-esque sequences for the sake of exploring individual characters, and even devotes a few pages to a surprisingly flirtatious scene between Buffy and Xander (am I imagining things or are those two getting a bit closer than they used to be?) just to keep the overall "seasonal" storyline going. I like the premise; I like the way Vaughan writes the characters; I like that part of this issue is dedicated to a pretty serious warping of Emily Post and her damned salad forks. VERY GOOD.

Labels: Diana

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Let me cut straight to the chase: Rutu Modan's EXIT WOUNDS is one of the best graphic novels I've read this year and I'm kinda surprised it hasn't gotten more online coverage. I'm trying to think why that might be--perhaps some perfect storm of unfamiliar creator, pricey packaging and lousy title? (Thanks to the miracle that is Steven Seagal, I was instantly put off by this title. Those of you working on the indy graphic novels "Fire Down Below," "Today You Die," and "Half Past Dead," take warning.) I can see why that might be the case, although it's deceptive in all particulars: Rutu Modan, although not a household name over here, has a long career over in Israel and is working at the top level of craft; although $19.95 isn't a price that encourages impulse purchasing, it's a good deal for a 172 page color hardcover; and despite the title that sounds like a generic action flick, Exit Wounds is in fact simultaneously a mystery, a romance, and a meditation on identity, both personal and cultural.

The nickel tour: Koby Franco is a taxi driver in modern-day Tel Aviv, who lives with his aunt and uncle and is estranged from his father. He and his cab are summoned to a military base where Numi, a female soldier, suggests that his father may have died in a recent suicide bombing. Although still angry with his father for any number of slights and offenses, Koby tries to check in on his father and is unable to locate him anywhere. Working with Numi while trying to discern what relationship she had with his father, Koby chases down one lead after another, trying to discover whether his father is dead or not, until finally Koby's father, like some quantum ghost, seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

Initially, I wanted to compare Exit Wounds to Allison Bechdel's Fun Home--not only because both novels are about protagonists struggling to come to terms with the influence of absent fathers, but because both novels are highly literary, deeply satisfying at the expert level with which they draw together their themes and motifs. But whereas the literary tradition is one of the themes of Fun Home, Exit Wounds reminds me more of the classic City of Glass in the way the theme of the novel provides the answers (or explains why there are no answers) to the novel's plot. I hate to perpetuate the snobbery outside reviewers frequently fall prey to when reviewing graphic novels in the New York Times Book Review, but I finished Exit Wounds feeling like I'd read a "real" novel. What's great is Exit Wounds is able to do this without feeling pretentious or "important": it's first and foremost an enjoyable, gripping read

That's not to say the charms of Exit Wounds is purely literary: Modan's work reminds me a bit of Hergé or Joost Swarte in the way the knowing use of color helps reinforce the solidity of the supple linework, yet also brings a depth of focus the unvarying lines might otherwise lack. (If it wasn't so sophisticated in its palette, the color would be like that of Marvel Comics from the Shooter years where, in order to make the foreground figures pop, a blob of unvarying color was laid onto the background.) Unlike Swarte or Hergé, however, Modan's faces are more crude, more broadly exaggerated, which can occasionally be detrimental--the faces can look unfinished or even badly drawn--but frequently give the work a caricaturist's vigor.

Yet, while I dug the art, it was the dialogue I most admired. As Koby and Numi spend more and more time together in the search for his father, Numi's warm-heartedness gets Koby to open up and drop his guard but it's done bit by bit, and the tone of their conversations changes mercurially from banter to arguing, from inquisitiveness to manipulation, and back again depending on how each reacts to what the other says. Even though he suggested the book's title (which, sadly, is too generic to be effective), Noah Stollman does a truly commendable job with the translation.

Writing laudable reviews can be difficult, particularly when the joy of discovering a new creator and a new work can be found, at least in some small part, in the joy of discovery itself, and I would not want to strip any of that joy from you. So I hope I've convinced you to seek out the work without marring the pleasure you'll get when you do so. I also worry about the similar dangers in overhyping a work to the point where the reader is let down when they try it for themselves. And yet, I still cannot shake my conviction that Exit Wounds is in the top echelon of graphic novels released this year, and very much worth your time and money to get a copy. It's a truly enjoyable and EXCELLENT piece of work.

Labels: Jeff

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The logo, as much as the rest of the cover, tells you a lot about IRON MAN: ENTER THE MANDARIN #1. Reminiscent of the Indiana Jones logo, with the rounded and Art Deco-ish letterforms of the subtitle, the message is there pretty clearly: old-school adventure and excitement in here (Compare it with the other Iron Man logos of recent times; no circuitry or tech-forms here, fanboys). Add that to the Rocketeer-lite imagery - again with Art Deco background - and the message is repeated. This isn't about the new, but about the familiar.

It's also, however, about the entirely enjoyable. It's completely a throwback of a book, whether it's in the plot, which returns us to Communist Bad Guys and mysterious evil Asian warlords (but in such an over-the-top, energetic way as to seem harmlessly tongue-in-cheek instead of the self-important xenophobia of Captain America: The Chosen), the characterization (Tony Stark as playboy, dating "Miss Veronica Vogue," supermodel!) and dialogue, or Eric Canete's amazing, cartoony and wonderfully scratchy artwork - his barrel-chested Iron Man is a joy to look at, Pixar-with-marker-pens and pop, miles away from the sterile nature of something like Steve McNiven's take on the character in Civil War. Dave Stewart, colorist to the stars, adds an understated presence to the art, pulling it together in quiet ways that underline what makes the linework so powerful without undermining it. Visually, it's a stunning thing that I'd love to see more Marvel books approach.

But back, at least for a second, to Joe Casey's story, which takes great pains to work within Marvel continuity while updating it slightly; it's another of his retro-books, like the Earth's Mightiest Heroes series or his First Family mini, but one that's more successful than either because it doesn't rely on the reader's knowledge of the continuity that he's working around. Instead, it's something that could be appreciated by anyone who understands that Iron Man is the good guy and the spooky guy with the magic rings the bad guy - it even ends its first chapter with the promise of a slugfest next issue (This coming after, of course, a full first issue that included plot set-up, a preliminary battle between the hero and villain, and quick expositionary burst to explain who Iron Man is for anyone completely unfamiliar with the character... The story goes at quite a speed, and a lot happens here), which probably makes it exactly the kind of movie-tie-in potential that Marvel were undoubtedly hoping for in the first place. I hope the next couple of issues keep up the pace and quality of this opener, and stay something that you could imagine Robert Downey Jr. smirking his way through, because somewhat surprisingly, this was rather Good.

Labels: Graeme

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Hey there folks. It's past the stroke of midnight. The sky is clear. I've finished hanging my latest superhero rasterbations. It's one week later, plus a bunch of hours. It's time for another column.

First off, I really need to thank everyone who's dropped electronic money into the PayPal slot over to the side. Prior to this, my most vivid memory of making money off of internet writing was the check I was sent for a sci-fi prose story I wrote when I was 19, about space aliens who inspire the development of the American cinema by hanging out with some guy at his home. I do believe there was an Irish fellow with a jetpack in there too. Needless to say, of the 1,000,000 bad words I'd have to write before getting to the good ones, those were #2,750 through #4,015, so I'm much happier with this recent experience. Me and the counterfeit anime wallscroll operation your generosity has supported salute you!

Ok, enough introduction. As you may have guessed from this column's prior coverage of an 18-year old anthology comic, a low-selling X-Men spinoff from the turn of the millennium, and a barely-translated French sci-fi series, I'm all about contemporary funnybook publishing. So I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this week's Dark Horse release of City of Others #4, the final installment (for now) of a new horror series from artist/co-writer Berni(e) Wrightson.

Now, I won't gloss things over - Wrightson's and Steve Niles' script never rises above the level of cute, when it even gets that far, and the decision to have colorist José Villarrubia work straight from Wrightson's pencils results in a sometimes rich, sometimes muddy visual display. Moreover, Wrightson's layouts are clear, but very staid. Save for several key splashes of mandatory gross-out impact, there's a lack of energy to the story progression, and even the character designs. It's on the low end of EH, all things considered.

Yet, Wrightson is one of those artists I'll always at least take a look at; there's something about his distinctly playful approach to drawing his beloved monsters and ghouls -- not to mention his slick, caricature-friendly human figures -- that invigorates his obvious EC influence with an extra youthful glee, as if every reader is made to stare at the art as a child would upon opening a beloved comic for the fifth time, still far from getting bored.

Some of this feeling is present in all of his work. For stronger semi-recent Wrightson material, I'd recommend hunting down his 1993-94 Kitchen Sink miniseries Captain Sternn: Running Out of Time (never collected, so you'll have to sniff out all five issues on their own), an apparent attempt to smooth out his venerable Heavy Metal character for wide consumption. It didn't catch on, but it did give us 240 full-color pages of Wrightson tossing every damned fun thing he felt like drawing -- dinosaurs! zombies! zombie dinosaurs! sci-fi gizmos! vainglorious hair! -- into a single, exhausting plot. It seemed more summary than anything, but its accumulation was a trip.

But you know, for better or worse, that's still not the Wrightson comic that first springs to mind when I look back on his intermittent last two decades of comics work. No, I suspect the book I'm thinking of is the same one a lot of comics readers will have in mind: a very high-profile four-issue DC superhero miniseries titled Batman: The Cult. But I don't know how many people share my reasons for thinking of it.

I've tried to fish around for reactions to this series. I can't find many online, and I don't have much of a library of comics magazines from the late '80s. From what little I can gather, the story has a reputation for being dark, weird, dark, dark, violent, dark, disturbing and dark. It is clearly a child of its time, those blood and thunder superhero years following the 1986 one-two punch of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and the debut of Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen.

The Cult (as I'll now call it) was released in 1988. It doesn't have the wild innovation of those earlier books. It wasn't written by anyone venturing onto semi-unfamiliar ground; the script was by Jim Starlin, who had been the regular writer of Batman (er, Batman: The New Adventures) since 1987. You might be tempted to call Batman: The Cult the quintessential post-DKR DC superhero project, what with all the darkness and bleeding and such, bereft of funnybook leadership qualities.

That wouldn't be exactly it, though. The Cult wasn't inspired by The Dark Knight Returns. It comes off as an utterly slavish homage to it. Hell, call it a rip-off (I'm sure many have), but this book's appropriation is a bit too comprehensive for that. If Frank Miller's book is the big tough dog with the bowler hat in the Looney Tunes, this book is the jumpy little dog that races around and does nothing but tell it how completely fucking awesome it is. I don't know if that was even the creative team's intent, but that's nonetheless how it is. There's more than a little Watchmen in there too. Indeed, one of the book's main henchmen bears a... striking resemblance to a certain bearded comics writer whose visage would have surely been all over the place at that time.

But this is Batman, and Miller wrote the big Batman work.

As a result, The Cult has real enthusiasm, enough to transform itself into a sort of jarring carnival mirror version of Miller's work, while also chasing after the interests of its artist and writer. Wrightson gets to whip up all sorts of horror images, for instance. And Starlin, bless him, dives into a broad statement about religious opportunism in a politically divided America, albeit one that involves Batman staggering around on drugs for the better part of three issues before transforming the Batmobile into a monster truck and invading a Gotham City taken over by homeless madman and conservatives.

That's the real pleasure this book has in store. It is dark, I guess. It's certainly violent. But it's also very, very silly, seemingly inspired in its final pages by Golan-Globus action movies and buddy cop films, and so broad in its political statement that the plotting tumbles into absurdity. There is no modulation to any of the book's moods, rendering it a tonally inchoate mix of gory shocks, bathetic capes 'n tights angst, and occasionally intentional comedy. It appeals to me, despite its many glaring flaws. If I were to give it an official Savage Critic(s) grade, it could only be AWFULly GOOD.

I think the statute of limitations on spoilers has run, so get ready for 'em.

The tale begins in high style. Young Bruce Wayne is nosing around an unfamiliar mansion, making his way down deep into a cave. There, he's confronted by the Joker, who declares "Such a cute little boy! Just my type!" in the overtly effeminate manner employed by Frank Miller. He then scares poor Bruce with dynamite, but the explosion only produces lovely flowers. Then young Bruce literally mutates into Batman, and whacks the Joker to pieces with an axe, the villain's smiling head bouncing merrily away to panel right.

We soon discover that Batman is bound and bleeding, hung in the sewers and being lectured to by homeless folk who think that one Deacon Joseph Blackfire, leader of the sewer people, is an ancient and powerful messenger from God. Deacon Blackfire's ranks have been growing, thanks to Gotham's hordes of street persons, starving for any purpose in the world - the Deacon sends them up to the streets to unleash bloody murder on criminals (a reaction to "weak liberal laws," in the words of the Deacon), and talking head news reports of the type employed by Frank Miller inform us that the good people of Gotham kind of like it. There's a teeny little bit of play with Batman's distaste for killing, but that's mercifully brushed aside as the Deacon pumps Our Hero full of hallucinogenics and brings him before a decidedly phallic giant totem that inspires the woozy Batman to sign on to... The Cult!!

Did you pick up on any moral ambiguity there? Well, don't worry about it - by issue's end, Starlin has already flung nuance aside as the street people murder a good-hearted small-time crook in an aspiring artist-themed killing faintly evocative of the mom-with-art-supplies murder bit employed by Frank Miller. Blood spatters the boy's portfolio of bright superhero drawings, providing just the level of subtlety required. Meanwhile, the Deacon confides to his hairy number one underling and possible former Sounds contributor Jake that this religion trash is all a plot to take over Gotham.

It goes without saying that Wrightson has a ball drawing all this stuff, with tightly-arranged panels packing claustrophobic sweat into Batman's and his city's predicament. He excels in dreams and visions, depicting Batman as a writhing green monster to convey his drug haze, or conveying his loss of consciousness over the course of four panels through the very walls of the frames themselves shattering like glass around the same kneeling image of the character. A later return to the waking world is shown in overlapping partial-image panels, arranged in homage to Bernard Krigstein's Master Race.

All of this is soaked in the sickly, spotty colors of Bill Wray, which occasionally adopt the washed-out feel employed by Lynn Varley in a famed Frank Miller comic, but mainly soak in their own vomitous splendor. Some may find this approach to be distracting, but to my mind it compliments the book's lurid, druggy point of view nicely, especially when the Deacon has Jake (in between drawing episodes of Maxwell the Magic Cat, I guess) bring Batman out with the gang on murder sprees. Wray splashes the page with watery mixed reds and yellows as Wrightson depicts gun & axe bedlam like something out of George Romero's The Crazies, although the virus here is religion, manipulated by the powerful to exploit society's poorest.

I don't mean to make this story out to be some cunning statement on the society of 1988. It's not. The main problem with Starlin's grasp of satire here is that he's so angry, so strident in making his points about cynical political-religious manipulation that the story eventually fails to work on its own terms. Soon, the Deacon's people are running rampant through the streets, putting criminals to death left and right, then assassinating the whole of Gotham's legislative body; still, half of the city's citizens side with the Deacon, who writes it all off as the work of criminals.

I see the point Starlin is attempting to make, but it's unbelievable that most of the city wouldn't think that maybe the horde of vigilantes on the streets is possibly responsible for the systematic slaughter of their elected officials. What he's doing is painting 'the other side' as complete idiots, utterly beyond being afforded the slightest consideration, because they're depicted as having given in to an impossibly stupid situation. And even then Starlin works to squelch ambiguity further - the more the Deacon gains, the more he strives to take, until he's literally forcing people into slave labor gangs, and bathing in a swimming pool of blood, fresh corpses hung from the ceiling with their throats cut open. The book pats itself on the back for having defeated its opponents in as rigged a match as possible, then spells out how wrong there were all over again.

Still, even if I can't take the book seriously as a statement, it does provide some strange fun. Batman eventually escapes the clutches of evil, stumbling through a park and scaring away picnickers to gobble eggs out of their basket like a bloodied, drug-addled Yogi Bear. He winds up experiencing visions for most of the story, even after meeting up with Robin (Jason Todd version), and ends up muttering "Welcome to Hell" over and over when the two find themselves stuck in a mooshy heap of rotten bodies. I love drug Batman! The Dynamic Duo escape, Batman destroys a television set because the news talk shows have too much bullshit, and Alfred picks them up in a limo. "Have any trouble getting here, Alfred?" asks Robin. "Nothing I couldn't handle," replies Alfred, clutching a pistol in one hand and the steering wheel in the other.

Eventually, martial law is declared, most of Gotham is evacuated, and the military moves in while Batman & friends chill out somewhere else. There's talk of nuking the city, thus raising both the anarchy in the streets doom specter employed by Frank Miller, while also anticipating the 1999 No Man's Land Bat-crossover. Just for the sake of balance, Starlin also throws in glasses-wearing, mussy-haired, bowtie-sporting namby-pamby liberal politician caricature to suggest appeasing the barely-situated villains with diplomacy. Bah! Real liberals don't negotiate! We fight threats to decency! Just like... Frank... ahhh! I've heard it said a bunch of times that Miller 'snapped' at some point, and went politically wacky. But to me, Miller's current politics are no more than a fairly straightforward extension of the old chest-thumping liberalism espoused by him in some of his works, and Starlin in this particular work (see also: American Flagg!). It's not the only possible extension, but it's a an extension.

Thankfully for Gotham City and us all, Batman & Robin already know the future South Park rule that the correct path always can be found somewhere in between grotesquely caricatured extremes, so they decide to take back the city the Batman & Robin way. Which involves driving a big-wheeled monster truck into Gotham while firing tranquilizer dart machine guns and shooting missiles at buildings that explode and miraculously never kill anyone much like in the hit cartoon show G.I. Joe. At this point the story has given way to total insanity, with the Dynamic Duo rumbling through the streets gassing crowds of people before leaping out into the sewers, locked and loaded with goggles on over their masks and non-lethally shooting the entire remaining population of Gotham City. I wonder if Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have read this?

Nobody has their face impaled on a model church steeple, though. Instead, Batman faces the Deacon hand-to-hand Captain Kirk-style in an underground fighting arena, eventually handing out such a phenomenal ass-kicking that it ruins the Deacon's entire religion. Just to put that in bold: the book climaxes with Batman beating the shit out of an entire religion. Can't you see why I like this thing?! Oh, and there's also a question of whether Batman will *gasp* *choke* kill the Deacon, but he doesn't, and the evil man's followers wind up tearing him limb from limb in plot-resolving anger. Also, Alan Moore goes down like a punk when Robin shoots him with a knockout dart. You were a terrible auxiliary supervillain, Alan Moore.

So ends Batman: The Cult. It's not much of a superhero classic, but I like it for its misguided energy and healty appreciation for excess. Some superhero books from that time are just frustrating, but this one is too mad for that.

Starlin wouldn't have much longer to go with Batman; he's said that the project is actually what prompted him to quit the main Batman book, since DC didn't want a regular Batman writer handling a special project. He'd have one storyline left after The Cult finished, the infamous phone-in death of Jason Todd gimmick extravaganza A Death in the Family. It wasn't the best way to go out, being a malformed piece of work seemingly unaware of what to do with itself after the bomb went off. As such, the last chapter of the story saw Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini appointing the Joker as Iran's ambassador to the UN as part of a scheme to gas the world's diplomats, prompting Batman to team up with Superman and glower a lot since his sidekick got killed and stuff. It reads just as smooth as it sounds.

But that wasn't the end of the Starlin/Wrightson/Wray team. In 1991, a crypto-sequel to The Cult was produced at Marvel, another four-issue project titled The Punisher: P.O.V. And yes, as the link just above indicates, the plot really is a sequel to The Cult with the Batman parts replaced with Punisher parts, since DC didn't accept the pitch. It's not as good a work on any level, although the core idea of Frank Castle (in his early '90s prime with Microchip and the Battle Wagon!) taking on a paroled '70s relic trust fund anarchist who's literally been turned into a zombie by his arch-capitalist dad is kind of neat. Wrightson is given some real monsters to draw, and there's a few striking pages. But the series is burdened with a clunky, Meltzeresque multiple narration concept (the Point Of View of the title) that Starlin loses interest in halfway through, the plotting is disjointed, fight sequences drag on forever, and Castle's 'voice' isn't really nailed. It feels like something that should have been something else, which is what it is.

Not like The Cult. It's an awful lot like the popular works around it, but it's finally only itself.

Labels: Jog

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CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN #1 is proof, if anyone needs any more, that writing for the trade is a bad thing. For almost the entire first issue, this book is almost laughably bad, with no characters or plot beyond an overly patriotic, Fox News-friendly vision of our fighting forces in Iraq keeping America safe from those freedom-hating terrorists, complete with cameo by Osama Bin Laden (saying "Death to America! Death to Satan! Death to Zionists!", for those who fear subtlety; this is followed by a scene of a woman and child about to be stoned by a crowd, who say "I caught him listening to music!" and "She isn't wearing a veil!" just in case you've somehow missed the idea that "They" aren't like us and hate our decadent Western ways of life). The narration is leaden, killing its good intentions under triteness like "Al Qaeda. Zealots crazy enough to believe that... hate... is the same thing as believing in God. But what they really believe in... is pain and death," and its characterization non-existant, replaced by terrorists who actually say things like "I get to be a martyr! I go to paradise! Virgins wait for me!"

Even Captain America, ostensibly the protagonist of the series, falls to this cardboard cut-out line of characterization, appearing midway through the book to fight the bad guys while spouting lines like "To fight the enemies of freedom? To fight hate? You want to know how long we can keep doing this? As long as we're able to lift a finger. As long as we can draw a breath."

It's a set-up that's so... patriotic isn't the word, but a very particular view of patriotism that sees the world as Us versus Them, with Us always in the right no matter what and Them always personifying a faceless, inhuman evil "other," that it's actually kind of stunning to read. A throwback to Cap's first appearances, perhaps, but that doesn't make it any less uncomfortable, or any better in terms of quality of writing (The art, meanwhile, is impressive throughout, with Mitch Breitweiser and colorist Brian Reber coming up with something not unlike John Cassaday meets Jackson Guice in places). It's reductive, patronizing and worst of all, dull; devoid of true conflict, drama or humor.

And then there's a second-last-page swerve. It's nowhere near enough to lift the quality of what you've just read, or save it from being conservative wet-dream material, but it is enough to make you wonder if all of what came before was intentionally that way, as misdirect for a completely different story... perhaps. And that's the biggest problem with the issue; there's so little of the swerve that you can't tell whether it's a smart trick that will cause you to re-evaluate what you've read, or whether it's a cheap twist to get you to try a next issue that will reinforce everything from the first one. It causes the issue itself, out of whatever final context it will exist in when the collected edition comes out, to be entirely dissatisfying in two different ways - One, in terms of quality of what appears in the issue itself, and two, in terms of it being an entirely, intentionally, incomplete reading experience that purposefully twists away from allowing the reader the ability of reading enough to make up their own mind about even what kind of story to expect in the remaining issues.

It's possible, based on the second issue, that the series will be all about propaganda and the cost of war on a country's psyche, and that it'll be a stunning piece of fiction. It's possible that it'll be more of the jingoistic, reductionist faux-patriotism of this issue. I literally have no idea which of the two it'll be closer to at this point, and that's ultimately why I closed the book and pretty much thought that I'd just read a stunning piece of Crap.

Labels: Graeme

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Firstly, thank you all again for the donating and stuff, genuinely. Secondly, Onomatopoeia on the internets? I'm really going to have to watch what I say now. Thirdly, yeah, yeah, I really should've had these up yesterday, but real work got in the way. If Brian really did have me chained up in his basement, at least you'd have some consistency in my posting habits. Still, better late than never, right?

To the world of comics!

ACTION COMICS #855: As much as I love Bizarro and the idea of a Bizarro World, this particular journey there offers little besides a chance to look at Eric Powell's attractive, slightly sloppy, artwork. Maybe if All-Star Superman hadn't done a Bizarro story so recently, this wouldn't feel so familiar and anti-climactic, but as it is, this is thoroughly Eh.

AMAZONS ATTACK! #6: The last-page reveal on this reminds me very much of a the last-minute reveal of Villains United, the pre-Infinite Crisis mini... The idea that not only have we not known who the mover and shaker of the whole thing really was but that, now we do know, things are much more exciting and dangerous than before. The difference between that series and this one is that we all knew that everything was coming to a head the next month, with the release of Infinite Crisis #1 - Here, we're left with "Wait, it's Granny Goodness? What does that even mean? Maybe we'll find out sometime in the next six months of Countdown, or maybe we'll have to wait a bit longer. Or maybe Granny will die first, just like lots of New Gods characters are getting killed these days. Huh. Okay, then." As much as the "The Amazons are now hidden amongst humanity!" thing is ripped off've the end of Grant Morrison's first JLA storyline - even if that ending had the greatest immediately-forgotten addendum ever (The Martians weren't just hidden undercover as humans, they were hidden undercover as humans who were in close contact with fire on a regular basis, so that their powers never returned. Apparently it wasn't just most readers who didn't get that at the time) - I kind of like the idea that this makes them easy pickings for Granny Athena's Women's Shelter Fury army down the road. Outside of its larger context for Countdown and Final Crisis, this was a pretty weak conclusion of a somewhat dull and flawed mini-series, but I can't shake the feeling that most of that blame falls at the feet of editorial, rather than Will Pfeifer and Pete Woods. Eh.

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #5: In which we find out that there's a shady black-ops division of The Initiative, that the Hulk doesn't kill everyone in the Marvel Universe, and that despite a competent script and relatively attractive art, it's really really hard to get me interested in this series. Eh, again.

BATMAN ANNUAL #26: Pretty much scene-setting for the upcoming Batbooks crossover next month, I'm not sure how true the cover blurb ("The origin of Ra's Al Ghul") really is - we see parts of his past, sure, but I don't really feel as if I've learned that much more about his motivations or exactly how he went from idealist to psychopath... Cutting to Talia explaining that his wife got killed and that "darkened his soul" doesn't really do the job for me. Again, Peter Milligan playing it straight is curiously unsatisfying - he doesn't really hit the petulant child mark for Damian, surprisingly - but David Lopez's art is nicer than his recent Countdown efforts. Okay, overall.

EX MACHINA MASQUERADE SPECIAL: Another in the series of the pointless apparent-cash-ins for Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris' series, this time we flash back to just after Mitchell Hundred's accident to find out that John Paul Leon does a very nice version of the past, and that the KKK are just like superheroes. Or something. It's Okay, but there really is a feeling of playing for time here.

FANTASTIC FOUR #549: You can't fault Dwayne McDuffie for lacking ambition. In one issue, he finishes the Frightful Four storyline and then starts to make the universe fall apart in full view of a gang of Watchers, and manages to make the Invisible Woman both scary and awesome in between. Admittedly, there's a lot of Black Panther worship going on, but I have to admit enjoying this old-school slice of Good nonetheless.

OUTSIDERS: FIVE OF A KIND: WONDER WOMAN AND GRACE #1: And so we reach the end of this seemingly endless preview to the new Batman and The Outsiders series which has accomplished the reduction of my desire to read said new series by almost 100%. While each of the oneshots - with the exception of the surprisingly good Metamorpho/Aquaman one - has on its own been disappointing and Eh, adding each together has given this series a momentum of Crap all of its very own.

SILVER SURFER: REQUIEM #4: So, he dies, then. An unsurprising Crap end to an unsurprising if beautifully illustrated series.

TEEN TITANS #50: I can see what they were going for in this anniversary issue, with chapters from Titans-related creators as well as new writer Sean McKeever, but the end result is more clip-show filler than a celebration of the team or bold new step forward... It reads very like one of Claremont's "quiet" issues post- whatever big storyline the X-Men would have completed some point in the mid-80s, with both the compliment and insult that you can read into that comparison. A high-ish Okay, but I'm not sure that there's enough to make any new readers come back for the next issue...

Tomorrow: New comics brings the joy of the Black Canary Wedding Planner, arguably the most eagerly-awaited comic of the last ten years. You know that I'm excited, right?

Labels: Graeme

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So, as some of you will recall, we do (at Comix Experience) a monthly newsletter called ONOMATOPOEIA.

For a really really long time I've had people asking me when it would be available on teh intarwub, and while what I think most of them are envisioning is something more akin to an interactive order form so they can be paperless, I'm strongly suspecting that that is way way beyond my level of technical/trainable skill and/or budget, relative to the number of people who might actually do something with it.

When Mark Richman installed MOBY at the store, he also installed something called CutePDF, which puts "make a .PDF" as one of my options in any print dialogue box. Wowsers, that makes it dumbly trivial for me to put these up on the web doesn't it?

Kate McMillan talked me through the (really simple once you understand what you're looking at) act of uploading these PDFs to the site. Since I'm using Firefox, she pointed me towards FireFTP which puts the whole process in my browser window, and means the entire process, from start-to-finish, including making the .PDF is like 7 minutes.

So, yeah, I can do that.

Right now you can go to http://comixexperience.com/Subforms/ to find a .PDF of COMIX EXPERIENCE ONOMATOPOEIA #140 (for books shipping in November 2007). You can also find a copy of the subform that would normally be inserted into a CEO.

(the latter is almost certainly of no use to 99% of you)

Actually, I have to say that CE #140 is probably not a very representative issue -- because of the new POS, and Diamond getting us the photocopy of PREVIEWS really really late, it is only 8 pages instead of the usual 12.

I'm at home, so I don't have access to the two previous issues (since I started doing them at the store, now that I have a computer there) so, hrm, let me also throw up a copy of CEO #136, the issue for July 2007 shipping books. Since most of that has shipped, you can see how close we got it. 136 also has one of Lester's final "Fanboy Rampages", as well as one of Peter Wong's "Lost in Pictopias". That's probably closer to a "representative" issue.

I'll try to remember to give you notice of when each month's new issue is up, but otherwise you can check that link monthly to see when it is up (should be within a day or two of PREVIEWS going on sale)

I'm sure we're all curious as to what you think (if anything, other than "wow, Brian's layout skillz kinda suck, don't they?")

-B Click Here to Read More...

So, the first weeks results of Jeff's "telethon" pitch to you to contribute to the SAVAGE CRITICS is in, and we've taken in a little over $250. Hooray!

Everyone writing for the site gets a nice lunch out of it, while I get a portion of my expenses back.

I'd like to personally thank the 47 of you that have contributed, but I'm just a little lazy, so I'm going to cut and paste. Here's everyone who donated, in, er, alphabetical order by first name....


Alex Chylinski
Brendan Cahill
Brian Duffy
Brian Linnen
Chiron Mukherjee
Christopher Ritter
Cynthia McShane
Drew Bell
James Woodward
Jason Wyckoff
Jeremy Kahn
John McInnes
Jonathan Kline
Jury Rigged Comics
Marc Anderson
Marcel Martinez
Mark Bender
Mark David Parsons
Mark von Minden
Matt Bucher
Matthew Brady
Matthew Ciccarelli
Matthew Vergin
Max Smith
Megaflow Graphics
Michael Reyes
Morgan Johnson
Paul DesCombaz
Pulp Fiction
Ralph Mathieu (Our BIG SPENDER, for $52... or $1 a week!)
Richard Jones
Robert DiManna
ROBERT GHIORZI
Ryan Bonneville
Samuel Phillips
Scott Davis
Sean Phillips
Southside Press
Stephen Hickman
Steven Dandois
Steven Darrall
Timothy Bumpus
Timothy Price
Tobias Carroll
Two Headed Cat
Wilhelm Lang
William Jennings


THANK ALL OF YOU FOR CONTRIBUTING!!!!!

The PayPal button is still over there off to the side, so please feel free to donate as the mood strikes you. Paid bloggers are happier, more productive bloggers (at least I think so!)

The only thing I'll add is, PayPal charges 33 cents in fees on the FIRST dollar, so it ends up that $2 or more donations are probably a better idea...

Again, thank you to everyone who donated some money -- it is REALLY appreciated!


-B Click Here to Read More...

So, this comic actually came out a few weeks ago, but I just managed to find a copy now so it's good as new to me! I recall someone requesting a review of this too...

Angry Youth Comix #13: I can't recall exactly when writer/artist Johnny Ryan began poking at 'literary' comics' superstars, but it's since become a major element of his work, and a pretty effective one in mixing critique of self-serious funnybook stultification with personal attacks so encyclopedically gag-driven they seem distinctly adorable - after reading enough AYC, a panel of, say, cartoonist Seth being covered in jism seems no different then his getting a pie to the face, especially when the cumshot in question is provided by a walking, talking, big-dicked copy of the New Yorker.

But Ryan isn't without perspective. One of this issue's three stories sees a bevy of comics notables engaging in all sorts of XXX acts for the honor of contributing to the aforementioned big-dicked publication. Punchline: the tale ends with Ryan providing his own email address for "the fucking idiots" at the magazine to contact him about prospective illustration work. In another story, recurring lead character Loady McGee goes absolutely apoplectic upon discovering that somebody has made fun of him in their comic book; when told that he makes fun of people in his comic books all the time, Loady replies "Haven't you ever heard of a little something called 'the double standard'?" before embarking on a religion-fueled torture crusade against wholly innocent targets that drags the book straight into the territory of guro manga and a certain strain of horror film.

Yet, it's all still conveyed in a slick, joke-focused style; a Bloodsucking Freaks reference in a prior issue maybe hints at where Ryan's been coming from for the last few issues, which has seen AYC's slapstick getting nasty enough to prompt agog stares as much as laughs (as a result, this issue's Boobs Pooter story suffers in comparison to last issue's full-scale Boobs epic). Still, there's laughs, and a VERY GOOD sense that there's no telling what might happen next.

Labels: Jog

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Please remember that, due to the Labor Day holiday, comics are on sale this week on THURSDAY. If you go into your local comics store on Wednesday, looking for new comics, they're going to laugh at you behind your back once you leave...


30 DAYS OF NIGHT RED SNOW #1
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #65 (A)
ACTION PHILOSOPHERS #9 THE LIGHTING ROUND
ALL NEW ATOM #15
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #544 OMD
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST WRAITH #3 (OF 4)
ARCHIE #578
BLACK CANARY WEDDING PLANNER
BOYS #10 (RES)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #6
CAPTAIN AMERICA CHOSEN #1 (OF 6)
CITY OF OTHERS #4 (OF 4)
COUNTDOWN 34
DAREDEVIL BATTLIN JACK MURDOCK #4 (OF 4)
DARK XENA #4
DETECTIVE COMICS #836
DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #2
DUST #2 (OF 2)
EVA DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON ONE SHOT
EXILES #98
EXTERMINATORS #21
FAKER #3 (OF 6)
FANTASTIC FOUR AND POWER PACK #3 (OF 4)
FRANK FRAZETTAS DEATH DEALER #4 (OF 6)
INCREDIBLE HULK #110 WWH
INFINITY INC #1
IRON MAN ENTER MANDARIN #1 (OF 6)
JONAH HEX #23
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #37
LIONS TIGERS & BEARS VOL 2 #4 (OF 4)
LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS #1 (OF 5)
LOONEY TUNES #154
LUCHA LIBRE #1
MADAME MIRAGE #2
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #31
METAL GEAR SOLID SONS OF LIBERTY #11
METAL MEN #2 (OF 8)
MIDNIGHTER #11
MS MARVEL #19
NEGATIVE BURN #12
NEW EXCALIBUR #23
NEW WARRIORS #4 CWI
NIGHTWING #136
OUTSIDERS #50
PAINKILLER JANE #3
PRO NEW PTG
PS238 #25
SCALPED #9
SHANNA SHE-DEVIL SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST #2 (OF 4)
SHE-HULK 2 #21
SNAKEWOMAN VOL 2 TALE OF THE SNAKE CHARMER #3
SOLLITARIA #2
SORROW #1 (OF 4)
STAR TREK KLINGONS BLOOD WILL TELL #5
STAR TREK YEAR FOUR #2
STEVE NILES STRANGE CASES #1
STRANGE EMBRACE #4 (OF 8)
SUPER VILLAIN TEAM UP MODOKS 11 #3 (OF 5)
SUPERGIRL #21
UNCANNY X-MEN #490
VERONICA #183
WHITE TIGER #6 (OF 6)
WOLVERINE #57
Y THE LAST MAN #58




Books / Mags / Stuff
13TH SON WORSE THING WAITING TP (RES)
CHECKMATE VOL 2 PAWN BREAKS TP
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL TP
DARKNESS VOL 6 DEPTHS OF HELL TP
DEATH VALLEY VOL 1 TP
DMZ VOL 3 PUBLIC WORKS TP
GIANT ROBOT #49
HELLO ME PRETTY GN
HOPE NEW ORLEANS VOL 1 GN
JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL 2 HC
KODT BUNDLE OF TROUBLE VOL 21 TP
MS MARVEL VOL 2 CIVIL WAR TP
PET ROBOTS HC
PROCESS RECESS 2 PORTFOLIO SC
PUNISHER MAX VOL 8 WIDOWMAKER TP
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL VOL 1 CIVIL WAR TP
SENTENCES THE LIFE OF M F GRIMM HC
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG ARCHIVES VOL 5 TP
SPIDER-MAN FAMILY BACK IN BLACK DIGEST TP
SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION THE DOMINATOR WAR TP
SWORD OF THE ATOM TP
WHISTLES VOL 1 THE STARLIGHT CALLIOPE GN
WONDER WOMAN ARCHIVES VOL 5 HC



What looks good to YOU?


-B

Labels: Shipping Lists

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If you remember what I said about pullquotes, you'll know that I paid particular attention to the quotes on the back of THE MICE TEMPLAR #1. Sure, you could almost expect a Mike Oeming book to have generic niceties from Powers partner Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar, but it's the quote from Katie Mignola, Mike Mignola's daughter, that nails the appeal of the book: "You cannot go wrong with mice with little tiny weapons."

I was completely prepared to dislike this book. I hadn't been particularly impressed with what little I'd read of Oeming's stuff in the past, and the fantasy setting of the book was pretty far outside of my area of interest as well - all it needed was for there to be a guest-shot by prominent Republican politician Mitt Romney to complete my current list of Things I Don't Particularly Want To Read Right Now, Thanks. And yet, I ended up won over at least slightly by two things, and one of those was the fact that it was mice with tiny little weapons who were the focus of this particular brand of quest fiction, fighting rats and spiders and dealing with mighty fish gods. Way to undercut the potential pretention problem, after all.

The second - and, to be honest, larger - reason that I got turned around on the book was Oeming's artwork, which is far, far more impressive here to me than anything he's done elsewhere - There's a clarity and immediacy to his linework that throws together influences from Mignola to Disney to McKean; there's even some Hewlett in there, but I have no idea whether that's intentional or not. More than Bryan Glass's script (co-plotted by Oeming), which drags in places as it takes too long to get us to somewhere that the reader knows pretty early is the destination, it's the art that sells the story, giving a visceral "in" where the dialogue and plot fail, and a reason to care about the characters (They're cute cartoon mice, after all).

I'm not sure where the story is going to go next - nor am I particularly sure that I'm going to stick with it, to be honest - but I am sure that if people want to look at one of the more visually impressive books of the week, this is a Good book to choose to spend your time with.

Labels: Graeme

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LOCAL #10: There's two separate things that I left this book with. One was that it was a strange, uncomfortable comic, and not necessarily for the reasons that its creators intended it to be. While this is an undoubtedly interesting comic - and one that tries not only to portray a particularly male rage that you don't often see identified as such in comics, but also tries to analyze its origins and show its destructive qualities - I'm not completely sure that it's a successful one. Part of that is due to the silent, uncertain misanthropy (misogyny?) of its lead, which doesn't lend itself to storytelling particularly well; you get that he's a dick, sure, but do you get why he's such a dick, or even care...? Another part is that, in order to bring the chapter to some kind of closure, the emotional epiphany of the last couple of panels doesn't really ring true - Yes, I can buy that a lot has happened, but why does that one thing in particular cause that reaction, other than it being the second last page of the story? - which may be more my fault as a reader (Expecting there to be a particular reason, when the point may be that there is no real reason; he just snapped... which does, in fact, tie back to the earlier issue in this series where two brothers talk after the death of their father; one of them snapped, as well, albeit in a more violent way) than anything else.

That said, there's a lot to like about this issue - not least of which is the quiet morality and humanism of the whole thing (The unnamed guy in the second last and last page? Bless 'im) - and if you've been reading this book and not become a massive fan of Ryan Kelly yet, this will be the one to push you over the edge. Just in terms of whether it's worth reading or not, consider this a flawed but worthy Good.

The second thing that I came away from the comic with (Remember I said that there were two, back at the top?) had to do with Brian Wood's text piece at the back of the book, where he talks about reader reaction to Megan, the main character of the series. Now, I'm used to being at odds with overall audience reaction to things - Hey, I loved the Monkees film Head - but I really don't get the idea that people think that Megan's obnoxious or deserving of being punched in the face. I mean, ignoring any part of the whole "protagonists are meant to be flawed and make the wrong decisions, to drive the story" thing, I'm concerned because I've gone through the entire series sympathizing with Megan and seeing a lot of my former mistakes and decisions in her. Now I'm convinced that half of Brian Wood's fanbase would punch me in the face given the chance.

Time to stay off the streets of America, I feel.

Labels: Graeme

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I keep on seeing people online complaining about THE LAST FANTASTIC FOUR STORY. That it's not respectful to the characters, or that the story is kind of dumb. That the dialogue is melodramatic and over-written, or that the Watcher looks like he's been gaining some weight recently. And to all of those people, I have just one thing to say:

Stan Lee is eighty-five years old. We're lucky that the entire book wasn't more of a drooling incontinent mess, much like Who Wants To Be A Super-Hero?.

Don't get me wrong; this isn't a good book in any objective reading. All of the above criticisms are true - the dialogue in particular has moments where you're convinced that editor Tom Brevoort was too scared of Stan and his legacy to actually, you know, fix things (The back of the book reprints what looks like Stan's initial pitch, and parts of that made it verbatim into the finished book) - but there's some kind of weird charm to it nonetheless. As he's grown older, Stan's lost the ability to mix the melodrama and sarcasm that created the initial Marvel formula, and both sides have grown stronger and more at odds with each other, but that just makes it more interesting (and amusing) to read his writing, in a way. There's something funny about seeing heroes appearing and announcing things like "The true test of a warrior is fighting when there seems to be no hope!" "There is ever hope whilst hope endures!" and "What better way to die than to do so for a cause!", as the Avengers do in a single panel - it's so straight-laced and upright that it reads impossibly sarcastic - but at the same time, Lee still manages to get the characters right when it counts - the scene where Reed Richards tells the Thing to go see Alicia when they think all is lost may be corny as all hell, but... it feels right in a way that JMS's FF run never did, for example (His Doctor Doom is also awesome: "How dare anyone try to destroy the human race - - before I can conquer it!").

Similarly, in a book which starts with the FF complaining that they're not getting rich from their adventures, the heroes still manage to act like heroes - fighting against impossible odds, even though they know it's useless, coming up with extreme solutions to extreme problems, and so on, with Lee's "they may be schmucks but they'll be there where it counts" idea turned up to 11 but still potent. Maybe John Romita Jr.'s art - which is, outside of the context of the story it's illustrating, very good, although Scott Hanna's inks don't mesh with it as well as Klaus Janson's, over on World War Hulk. Morry Hollowell's colors are great, though - adds to the problem for some readers, playing what's essentially a comedy too straight, making it look like a regular Marvel Comic, instead of whatever it really is, but I can't help but feel that to dismiss this book out of hand without acknowledging its (admittedly off-kilter) charms is to miss out on a strangely Okay book...

Labels: Graeme

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Man, Batman's only been around 26 years? Seems longer.

Batman Annual #26: What we have here is a warm-up book, designed to get the reader ready for bigger, related stuff down the road. Sometimes it seems a lot of superhero books do this constantly on a grand scale, but this one’s more specific - it serves to give the reader a quick refresher on the highlights of Ra's al Ghul's origin, since the villain will soon be headlining a two-month Bat-crossover. It's not so much a prologue as the stuff some other author might tell you about in the Forward, but I suppose it wraps itself into an Annual neatly enough.

I suspect it’ll work better the more you already know about the villain; jumping around events and highlights in the character's history, writer Peter Milligan (in straightforward superhero mode) doesn't manage to convey much of the tragic sweep it’s apparently poised to suggest, although enough facts get out to keep things comprehensible. These exploits are being recounted to dear lil' heir Damian by mother Talia, at the behest of the White Ghost, a director of the Demon who has a nasty plan in mind. Meanwhile, Batman wanders around the Australian outback investigating some disappearances, and amusingly fails to grasp much of the larger plot swirling around. David Lopez and Alvaro Lopez provide efficient art. Nothing much is resolved. Hey: crossover coming.

There are some fun details, though. Milligan characterizes the White Ghost as a sort of ultimate Ra's al Ghul fanboy, so determined to carry on his hero’s story that he’s possibly moving into the realm of fanfiction. Combine that with Damian’s near-total disinterest in old grandpa stories -- a life-saving instinct, it turns out -- and you’ve got a strangely conflicted subtext at work. It doesn’t make this more than OKAY, but it adds needed spice to the summary.

Labels: Jog

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