Clunk. That's the sound of me dropping the ball, I'm afraid. Today's my birthday, I'm at work, and in my spare moments, I spend a lot of time debating how much plot I really need to describe for a review of Marvel Apes. Unfortunately, those spare moments have disappeared as the workday has heated up, so the Apes have as well--I only have reviews for two books for you today. I may or may not get some short reviews next week, depending how the birthday weekend goes and how chicken I am about diving into revisions to my novel, but someone will pick up the slack by then, I'm assuming...

Behind the jump: two books, no apes.



IMMORTAL IRON FIST #19: I haven't checked out any of Duane Swierczynski's Cable stuff because I really don't care about Cable much (and, frankly, as a cranky fanboy manbaby, I was annoyed that Fabian Nicieza's perfectly fine Cable & Deadpool--which if I remember correctly was one of the few books that, while not selling like gangbusters, held its audience month after month--got screwed up so Cable could end up back in the X-books proper). But his Iron Fist is a perfectly acceptable substitute for the Frubaker team--in fact, it's an astonishingly good simulacra, right down to some too-clever dialogue that bugged me a little in exactly the same way some of Fraction's too-clever dialogue bugged me a little. The art suffers by not being by David Aja (but the art was suffering by not being by David Aja before the first team left), but Travel Foreman and his Jae Lee-influenced art (to my eye, anyway) is fine--occasionally striking, occasionally muddy. If there's a problem, it's that this arc feels a bit *too* safe, but that's not a bad problem to have in a book. And it means that Swierczynski's earned some trust from me--I'll be curious to see where he goes from here. Good stuff.

SUPERMAN'S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN #1: Upping the ante in the game of Continuity Hold 'Em he and Johns and Morrison have going on, writer James Robinson brings back Code Name: Assassin, another 1st Issue Special forgotten hero. (He also brought back Atlas in Superman #677, I guess. Thanks, Wikipedia!) My inner ten year old, who never forgot CN:A, recognized the costume on the cover of this book while perusing the racks the other day and I gotta admit, it put a goofy smile on my face.

The story covers not only CN:A, but the Cadmus Project, Vigilante and even tosses in a new idea (as far as I know) about a border town filled with illegal immigrant supervillains. (It's not as terrible as it sounds, but it's not that great, either.) While the layouts, art, and some of the scenes are really well-done, the story suffers because at the core of it you've got...Jimmy Olsen.

Robinson dutifully gives Jimmy a quest and something to prove, but it's paint by numbers--this could've been a Steve Lombard one-shot and it would've had the same punch. I don't think Robinson has read the last four or five attempts to make Jimmy Olsen interesting (apart from maybe a bit of Countdown) and, honestly, who can blame him? But, really, one gets the sense Robinson doesn't give two shits about Jimmy Olsen (and, again, who can blame him?) except to the extent he can use Jimmy as a hook on which he can hang his stylish ensemble of characters and concepts.

Olsen is one of those characters that's been written and rewritten, and spun and respun, such that the palimpsest of the DCU has just completely worn through: I can't read three pages of the character without seeing through the hole in the tapestry and watching a team of professionals doing their best to squeeze some blood from DC's register trademarked stone.

It's highly Okay--I'll go with Good, in fact--and I think new readers and older readers will find different things to enjoy in it. If this is what a good DC superhero comic reads like in 2008, I really worry how such a creature will evolve by 2013--I don't think you're gonna get more obscure than the 1st Issue Specials--but let's get double-crossed by that bridge when we come to it. Click Here to Read More...

Change of plans! Guess what I swapped out for Marvel Apes #1 and 2?



FINAL CRISIS: RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS #1: You know, what this reminded me of, and not in a particularly good way? Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1. (There's a good way to be reminded of Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1?) It's trying really, really hard--too hard, in fact--and yet the only parts that really stuck with me were the clumsy bits.

First off, Rage of the Red Lanterns is kinda funny, because it sounds enough like Raise the Red Lantern as to get images of Sinestro screwing Gong Li, who's one his five wives. Second, I know Geoff Johns has had a lot on his plate these last twelve months, but I'm sorta shocked the Red Lantern oath is such weak sauce:

"With blood and rage of crimson red,
ripped from a corpse so freshly dead
together with our hellish hate
we'll burn you all-- that is your fate!"

Really? That's what you've got? Like I said, I know the dude's been busy but you'd think half the fun of launching a color spectrum of lantern corps would be really sweating out the details of your oath, particularly since Green Lantern's oath, while not being mistaken for T.S. Eliot anytime soon, at least has an elegance to it. This really seemed like Johns went: "Hmm. Red...dead. Hate...fate? Eh, why not?"

Third, the Red Lanterns, like, vomit blood or hate, or (more likely) blood-hate on the green lanterns, destroying them. So you've got guys who can create anything they can conceive of, versus a bunch of pissed-off bulimics. Despite that set-up, the fight scenes are incredibly dull.

Fourth, around the main Red Lantern, Atrocitus, there's usually (but not always) a 'BaBUM' sound effect that the character describes as a beat like a war drum, but which I'm sure, what with all the blood-barf, is the beat some giant heart. It reminds me of the jungle drums onomatopoeia which were overused in McF's Spider-Man #1: it is supposed to be ominous, but it's really just impressively annoying.

Fifth, there's double page-spread in this where all the Red Lanterns vomit blood. There is a cat Red Lantern, puking blood. There is a jellyfish Red Lantern. It is not shown puking blood. I spent more time thinking about the jellyfish Red Lantern and what it must be puking instead of blood, or how it could in fact puke, than any other piece of information in this issue.

Sixth, a Blue Lantern shows up at the end and his name is Saint Walker. He recharges Green Lantern's ring to 200%. (Unfortunately, we do not hear his oath.)

I have three theories. The first is, that this comic was written by Geoff Johns with the specific goal of making Alan David Doane suffer a brain-exploding stroke, and we're watching the first-ever attempted murder by comic. The second is, Geoff Johns is a very, very busy guy and someone needs to sit his shit down and tell him he's overextending himself. He knows where the big beats are supposed to go, but something's short-circuiting when he goes to put those beats in place. The third is, this comic is awesome and I am now completely inured to what is awesome, and my grasp on what is awesome was always somewhat shaky to begin with. (Because Spider-Man #1 was, in fact, awesome.) That could certainly be the case but in any event I found this to be a surprisingly Awful comic.

GHOST RIDER #27: I've been picking up Jason Aaron's run on this title for a few issues now, and find it frustrating in how close to being incredibly awesome it is. It reads like a book written by a guy who loves the character, the idea of a dude who rides a motorcycle and has a flaming skull for a head, and knows an an aesthetic to go with it--unapologetic pop trash, specifically the just-passed revival of a '70s drive-in culture with its strong roots in unapologetic Southern trashiness. (I mean, the first page of this issue has kung-fu nuns, for Christ's sake.) I think this is a frankly brilliant choice.

And yet it has yet to gel for me. If nothing else, the artist Tan Eng Huat is going in an entirely different direction. For one thing, Huat's tendency to draw every male character with a gaunt elongated faces undercuts the visual punch of a hero running around hanging skull. I know some people dig Huat's work (I think Tucker Stone wrote recently it's the only interesting thing about the book) and with Villarrubia doing the coloring, the book has a sumptious, vibrant appearance but it's the wrong kind of sumptiousness: you don't want Vittorio Storaro doing the cinematography for Two-Lane Blacktop.

That's not entirely the reason, mind you. For whatever reason, Aaron's work really hasn't clicked with me (short from that one admittedly spectacular story about Wolverine in the pit being shot full of bullets 24/7) and it's probably more my fault than his. I feel like we both have an appreciation for vulgar panache but somehow I just can't get my taste in line with his. It's vexing. This should be better than OK for me, I keep thinking.

HELLCAT #2: Hellacat #1 is around my apartment somewhere but I can't seem to find it, so I figured I'd dive in with issue #2, thinking, you know, how lost could I possibly get?

The answer: lost, lost, lost. I have a general sense of the who, the what, and the why, of course, but the specificity of why Hellcat and a group of shaman bicker for that majority of the issue I wasn't able to entirely entangle. The art is so damned lovely I don't really care, mind you, and Immonen has such a confident swagger to her dialogue I'm sure the fault is all mine. In some ways, the book reminds me of the first few issues of Finder (or, if you want to get even more old school, Thriller), where not getting everything that is going on somehow seems to be part of the fun. I don't think that means we'll see an uptick in readers by the end of the mini, however. Good stuff, though. Maybe even more so. I'll really have to find that first issue and see.

(Oh, and it's kinda shameful the way Immonen, a relatively new writer, is so easily able to beat Wolfman in portraying an impulsive character who doesn't want any help while avoiding making that character come off like a jerk. While Supergirl in Brave & Bold #17 was incredibly annoying, Hellcat in a slightly similar situation is much more justifiably impatient yet still charming. On the other hand, Wolfman has been writing comics since I was ten or so--just the fact the guy can turn in something that doesn't smack of exhausted hackery is an accomplishment.)

Tomorrow: Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen one-shot for sure, and maybe Iron Fist #19, Marvel Apes #1 & 2, and Wolverine: Roar.

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I'm back. I'm sure many of you read this in Google Reader or Bloglines, but just in case: don't let my senile meanderings cause you to miss Jog's thoughts Unknown Soldier #1, below.

This weekend, Edi and I put up these Ikea shelves in the bathroom--that woman likes her creams, and I require an inordinate amount of trimming, shaving and de-stinkifying just to maintain my typical appearance of a guy who looks like he spends the nights in bus terminals. But the walls in our bathroom are miserable wretched things--like they were constructed with the cast-offs from some third grade class's first experiements with paper mache--that the second shelf proved impossible to mount, leaving us with one embedded useless screw and one wretched screw that stuck out a sixth of an inch or so.

So, the other day while I was at work, Edi covered that with this:

From CE

And this is why although I swore long ago that I would not engage in that loathsome blogger trick of talking about how awesome my wife is, I find it occasionally unavoidable.

Reviews of what stuff I promised in that there title at top, after the jump.




BRAVE & BOLD #17: As a San Franciscan, I appreciated Phil Winslade's more-or-less accurate use of San Francisco landmarks and references. And as a comic book reader that's been reading these damn things for the majority of my life, I appreciated that Marv Wolfman is still getting work. But, holy shit, was this god-damned dull. At least in the old days of Marvel Team-Up, it'd be over in one issue. But here everyone natters on and on, and by the time we get to the set-up, the issue is over. Sub-Eh at best.

CRIMINAL #5 & #6: I like the ambiguity Brubaker is setting up here--is Jacob repressing grief, or the fact he killed his wife?--but it'll probably play out better in the trade than in the single issues because the lag allows someone as slow as me to catch up with the inferences. (I say "probably" because Brube usually has an extra twist for slow dumbasses like me who think we're on to him.)

I do worry a bit about Icognito killing off the momentum Criminal has been working toward, and, depending on how the current arc, "Bad Night" wraps up, I might write more about what I think is unique about Criminal, and why it'd be a shame if that happened. But now's probably too soon for that, so lemme just mention how consistently entertaining the back matter is, and how much it gives extra value to the singles.

It seems to me that the most 'successful' alternative books on the market (this, Walking Dead, Fell, and Powers) have, at the very least, a substantial letters page and, at most, an extra dash of bonus materials like essays and art. I can't say it's the only reason why I'm still picking up the singles instead of waiting for the trades for all those titles, but it's certainly a contributing factor. Considering part of the thinking on the part of creators is that it's also cheaper than paying an artist for the extra four or five pages (although they can if the particular issue calls for it), I'm really at a loss why the mainstream books don't have bring these back on a more consistent basis.

Anyway, this arc is on that cusp between highly Good and Very Good, depending on where it pans out and how you feel about smartly done genre material.

CORALINE: Neil Gaiman seems like a sweetheart of a fellow and, when considered purely at the line-by-line quality of his work, is certainly one of the best writers to ever work in comics. But I've always found him a tremendous puss of a storyteller: I bailed on Sandman long before its finale because he seemed to regard the idea of catharsis the way a hemophiliac regards a rooomful of scissors.

I'm sure this is because I missed the point of the whole Sandman blah-blah-blah, but I gave it something like forty full issues before giving up and in that whole time (along with 1602 and The Eternals), I felt I was watching bout after bout by a boxer I knew would always take a fall in the fifth. With the possible exception of Mr. Punch, in which Gaiman uses his reluctance to nicely sketch the limits to which children can understand the business of adults and the way in which what lurks beyond those limits becomes haunting myth, I'm not sure if there was anything of Gaiman's longer work I've truly enjoyed: liked, yeah, but never loved.

All of which is my fucked-up and backhanded way of saying I think the novel Coraline may be the best thing Gaiman's ever done. His essential foppishness serves children's stories well: knowing in advance that the end result of such stories is usually the return of the status quo--hair mussed and shirt untucked, maybe, but really no worse for wear--gives a writer who finds the prospect of truly violent or disturbing resolutions uninteresting or vulgar, license to break out all the considerable tricks they've never gotten around to using, safe in the knowledge they'll have no true repercussions in the story.

And so Gaiman's story of a bored little girl who finds a secret door to the abandoned flat next door and finds her Other Mother--delightful meal in hand and buttons sewn over each eye--welcoming her into a strange world eager to entertain, is genuinely creepy but also genuinely witty. When Coraline asks one of the characters of the other world if Other Mother truly loves her, the character thinks for a moment and then replies, "Yes, or maybe she's just hungry."

If you're like me and have never been able to hop on the Gaiman love train as it choo-choos every few years or so around the tiny toy kingdom of comics fandom, try giving Coraline a read. I found it really Very Good stuff.

CROSSED #1: To further give you reason to doubt my critical judgment, I liked this first issue more than Jog (or, well, anyone else I read on the Net, for that matter). Mind you, I liked it better before I found out there was an issue #0 that apparently sets everything up, and I kinda hope there's a later issue that lays things out so I don't feel like an asshole for assuming that in picking up a book labeled as #1, I'd be getting the first part of the damn thing.

Um, other than that, what can I say now that it's been several weeks since I read it? I guess it's very easy to conclude from reading the issue that, if you identify at all with the guy who plays Magic: The Gathering and/or have ever harbored any heroic fantasies whatsoever, Garth Ennis hates you. I can't really say for sure that's the case, but I found it refreshing that not only did Ennis put it right out on the table but he didn't draw out the rather violent repercussions of his contempt: whatever else is going to happen in the next eight or so issues, it's not going to be the awful end of Magic The Gathering guy. That's already out of the way.

And for what it's worth, considering the narrator talks about an ex-marine having more or less the same fantasy and coming to more or less the same end, and considering ex-military dudes are the standard choice of Ennis protagonist, I think there's a very good case to be made the gruesome end of Fanboy and his family isn't Ennis ladling on the hate (or just ladling on the hate, if you prefer): like Richard Laymon and a generation of splatterpunk horror writers (well, the ones that weren't just horrible gore fetishists who'd read too much Harlan Ellison, anyway), Ennis is curious to see what remains once all heroic fantasy is stripped from the core of horror fiction. Hopefully, he'll have more to find there than titties and rape fantasies. (If ever there was an author whose oeuvre made a convincing case for the chemical castration of horror authors--and I'm sure he was probably a lovely, lovely guy--it was Richard Laymon.)

Before my knowledge of the zero issue, I thought this was Good. Now, I'd give it an OK. If you are anything like everyone else on the Internet, you will probably disagree.

Tomorrow: Ghost Rider #27, Hellcat #2, and (maybe) the first two issues of Marvel Apes.

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Unknown Soldier #1



This is the newest ongoing series to come out of Vertigo, a reimagining of the Robert Kanigher/Joe Kubert concept as a saga of violence in Uganda, circa 2002. It's bloody, tense and not a little pulpy, something a bit more bombastic than what we've been getting lately from the publisher. It does bring to mind an older Vertigo project, though, and I'm not talking about the 1997 Garth Ennis/Kilian Plunkett take on the same property.

No, this thing really brings to mind Congo Bill, as in the 1999-2000 miniseries from writer Scott Cunningham and artist Danijel Zezelj. It was also an Africa-set revival of an old adventure comic -- specifically the late '50s/early '60s Congorilla iteration of the older Congo Joe jungle feature -- also filled with guns and toughness and grit and suspense and angst and people who kill. Hell, both projects even sport Richard Corben cover art, although he's on variant duty this time, I think only for issue #1; the very welcome Igor Kordey provides standard covers.

I sort of liked Congo Bill; it was one of those comics that, through its black ops storyline, sought to say things about violence and politics. Granted, it was also one of those updates of a fantastical comic wherein the fantasy elements are avoided as much as conceivably possible, and treated mainly as elements of a charged metaphor - I think colonialism and its legacy was an active concern, though it's been a while. There was a grudging feel to the series' eventual use of the Congorilla tropes, like everyone probably could have come up with a neater means of getting the point across if not beholden to using the stuff of older corporate holdings, although some work is done to fit it all in.

This new comic is far more direct. It's got a guy with a messed-up face who hates the abuse of human rights and fights alone, so far. It's probably going to try and go deeper - after all, one of this issue's key distinguishing features is a backmatter essay in which writer Joshua Dysart frets madly over the implications of his updated concept:

"As for the rest of it, well, any way you slice it, there's something inherently immoral about crafting a sensitive, exciting, anti-war piece of pop entertainment that claims a love for a people while using the worst aspects of their lives to create drama."

Or, more to the point:

"Sometimes I feel like a socio-political Russ Meyer, aiming my 'camera' at the giant tits of atrocity (atrocititty?)."



I enjoyed Dysart's work with Mike Mignola on the recent B.P.R.D.: 1946; it teased out some of the human suffering inside the Hellboy world's Nazi-fighting roots, explicitly raising notions of horrible experimentation behind all those horror and sci-fi devices, without overwhelming the flavor of the thing.

Here, the real-world connections are necessarily firmer. Lwanga Moses is a doctor whose parents managed to flee Uganda in the closing months of the rule of Idi Amin Dada. He returned in 2000 to aid the distressed and displaced, though he's plagued with violent dreams, which often seem to conclude with his snapping the neck of his beloved wife.

Much background is doled out as the issue moves forward, and soon Our Pacifist (Ha!) Hero is leaping into action to defuse a terrible situation, one that prompts visions of himself as a shirtless, wild-eyed, blood-spattered macho man super-killer, plus a voice in his head urging him to use his deadly talents to murder the hell out of some nasty people. Blazing gunfire, mutiliation and an ongoing comic book series ensue!

Not a novel setup, fusing the classic trope of a peaceful man... pushed to the edge with that of the mild-mannered man... with a dark and forgotten past so as to create a sense of inevitability; it kind of saps the drama, really, since Dr. Moses winds up coming off like something was bound to set him off eventually. But then, the nearly off-handed presentation of the moment of truth that sets our man to action suggests that Dysart realizes this; as a result, the book becomes full of potential energy, as we wonder how this poor guy came to be. A creation of strife? Politics? Might his American upbringing figure in? Could violence possibly beget more violence? Signs (and conversations! and dreams!) point to yes on that last one!

It's OKAY as an introduction, full of little suggestions tucked away inside decent-enough thriller mechanics. Artist Alberto Ponticelli (with colorist Oscar Celestini) does a fair job of establishing settings and making the violence hurt, although I couldn't say much stands out. It's straightforward work for a straightforward setup, with the real interest coming from deft bits of writing like Moses' encounter with an American celebrity humanitarian, prone to couching Ugandan issues in US concerns.

Dysart's 'soldier' is from both places, as much as he considers humself "fully, wholly Ugandan," and how he'll act behind blurry lines of combat forms the most intriguing unknown among this comic's shadowy pasts and killer instincts; I hope this issue forms less a status quo than an action comic skeleton to support more confident inquiries, or maybe a set of bandages to be peeled off, so that we might see the face of the matter.

Labels: Jog

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Dude.

I'd like to say I've been off acting as an agent of chaos which is why I've been too busy to post, but the fact is I've been a victim of chaos: since SDCC, so many oddball opportunities and possible opportunities have come my way that I've been almost too busy to read comics, much less review them. All the while, possible epic posts keep taking up small bits of valuable space in my brain--I've got this idea for comparing/contrasting Bottomless Belly Button to Chiggers stemming from the way they both use sound effects--making me balk at just reviewing the damn things and getting some entries out in the world.

A real shame, because I think I'm more excited about online comics criticism than ever before: the recent Noah Berlatsky flap, the Tucker Stone interview, Abhay posting pretty much anything on the Internet, the guys at Mindless Ones, Funnybook Babylon, Jog as always...there's a bunch of truly interesting stuff out there and a number of comics reviewers who are producing the most consistently interesting criticism since the heyday of The Comics Journal. It's a great time to be reading, and it makes me all but itch with the desire to jump back in and be part of the dialogue.

But to do that, I'd have to read more books, and read them more closely than I should, and maybe read them in a more timely fashion, too. I mean, Bottomless Belly Button came out in, what? 1984? 1985?

Anyway, I started a mega-super post of stuff I've been reading, but Hibbs made a pretty good case (in his own special, quasi-socialized way) that it'd probably be better to chop that post up and get some kindling into this sputtering fire of a website than one big smothering lump of thick oak. If I work this right, I'll have an entry every day for the rest of this week...and some of the comics may even be from recent memory, to boot.

Behind the jump, my first two reviews, in alpha order:



AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574: Does anyone remember that article Jan Strnad wrote for the Comics Journal, "My Brilliant Career at Marvel"? (Issue #75, according to Google.) In it, Strnad talks about the frustration of trying to craft a dramatic done-in-one for Daredevil (as I recall), where the big problem was...Daredevil. Every time Strnad brought in the guy in tights to whatever conflict he'd set up, it ended up seeming really, really dumb. Issue #574 is probably the first superhero comic I've read where I felt as Strnad must've: everything about this issue is pretty damn good, except the parts where Spider-Man appears, and then it's pretty damn stupid.

(Actually, that's not true. I love that cover, but then I've always had a weak spot for "omniscient giant-head Spidey.")

Honestly. Every time Spider-Man popped up (in isolated panels, as illustrations of where Flash Thompson finds his morale and courage during a firefight in Iraq), I cringed. Flash's story, while presented clumsily, is more than engaging enough on its own, but every few pages--to make sure the fans don't feel too rooked, I guess-we've got Spider-Man fighting the Kingpin or tackling the Sinister Six (OMG, just like the six guys pinning down Flash in a firefight!) and making the whole thing feel more cynical than it needs to.

I can see how you can make a case for it. As recounted on Stephen Wacker's editorial page, there are obviously guys fighting in our armed services who've been inspired by fictional creations like Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, George W. Bush, etc. But it's not quite as cut-and-dry as "I was in a killzone, and I wasn't afraid because Spider-Man once punched a fat, bald guy," and the inelegance of the presentation reinforces how jaded I feel about this whole enterprise. Because everyone involved at every level of this book undoubtedly believes they're providing a tribute to the hard-working men and women of the U.S. services, but this isn't a free issue--unless I missed some notice of donated profits, this issue is taking money from my pocket and putting it in the pockets of people at Marvel, just like every other issue. And every panel ol' web-head pops up in is a visual reminder of that.

If that doesn't come up for you, then you'll find this a pretty Good issue. It was better than any other "relevant" Spider-Man comic I've ever read, certainly. But next time, they should just leave Spidey on the cover, suck up any complaints from the fanboys, and let the story speak for itself.

BATMAN #680: 'Batman, R.I.P.' should really be the subject of one of some epic post from me, as my feelings about it are tremendously conflicted--it's the first thing I read on the weeks it's out, it's one of the few mainstream superhero books I'm at all current on, I think about it quasi-obsessively, and yet it feels like a perpetual disappointment. It reminds me, unfortunately, of my reactions to the first few times I saw pornography--how can I be so obsessed about something so appalling and kind of dull?

A clear sign I've all but checked out of the story was when I finished the end of this issue and then had to go on the Internet to see what happened. Yes, Jezebel Jet is clearly shown putting on black gloves; yes, there are those red and black falling petals; yes, there is the Joker's word balloon shouting (somewhat insultingly) "Now do you get it?" But, in fact, I didn't get it at all. Morrison isn't really insisting that I believe that Jezebel Jet--the dullest, dumbest and least convincing love interest ever set up for Batman--is actually The Black Glove, is he? I had to go online to see if that's what I was really supposed to believe. And until Batman #681 comes out, I guess it is.

Well, fair enough. If I'm being generous with Mr. Morrison (and like many comics reviewers on the Internet, I find it all but impossible *not* to be), my disappointment to this point with Batman R.I.P. may stem from poor Tony Daniels being so far in over his head, I can't think of him without imagining two cartoon feet waggling from a sump hole. Morrison is trying to tell a richly dark Batman tale and he gets a guy who fucks up the storytelling on a double-page spread and doesn't have time to correct it (I'm thinking here of the scene where Batman is crouching on the Arkham gate and the arc of the gate leads the eye to the next page, instead of to the panels below).

But when I'm not being generous, I remember that Arkham Asylum was a big, expensive bat-fart of a story that also failed to do the trick for me, and the artist on that was Dave McKean.

In fact, of all the major comic book writers, I'm hard-pressed to think of one that's had more consistent misfires with his artists than Morrison. He's done consistently great work with Quitely, Jones, Jimenez, arguably Mahnke--there was that Williams story on the first Black Glove story and in Seven Soldiers--and then after that, it seems the best you can hope for is competence. (Sorry, Richard Case and Doug Hazelwood.) At first, I thought this was just bad luck on Morrison's part, or perhaps a disinclination to personally woo top-drawer artists, but now I think it's a symptom of some essential dash-offedness to which Morrison subscribes (or succumbs).

That dash-offedness (and jesus, can't I come up with a better term than that?) is exactly one of the problems for me with Batman R.I.P. If Rucka had pulled a similar reversal with Sasha Bordeaux in his Detective Comics arc that Morrison does here with Jezebel Jet, for example, my heart would've been in my throat.

Maybe the end will be so utterly mind-blowing I'll change my mind about the whole thing, but I can't seem to get beyond OK, despite how obsessed I am with the whole mess.

[Oh, and in case you're interested: I believe it'll turn out to be Alfred as The Black Glove, but it'll be okay because he'll turn out to also be, much later down the road, the White Glove, and this whole thing is a complex shamanistic ritual of destruction and rebirth that only Alfred can administer because Batman's other attempts at purification (in 52 and in the drug trials that got him partially into this mess in the first place) have failed. But, if I'm right, it's gonna be a year down the road before we see any of that later stuff.]

Tomorrow: Brave & The Bold, Criminal, and Coraline.

Labels: Jeff, MIA

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It must be the last week of the month, here's a ginormous shipment!

A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #92 (A)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #575
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1
ARCHIE #590
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #193
ASTONISHING X-MEN GHOST BOXES #1 (OF 2)
ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN #9
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #18 SI
BEYOND WONDERLAND #3 (OF 6)
BLOOD BOWL #5 (OF 5) KILLER CONTRACT CVR A
BOYS #24
CAPTAIN ACTION #1 MYCHAELS CVR
CAPTAIN AMERICA THEATER OF WAR OPERATION ZERO POINT
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #50
CHECKMATE #31
CHUCK #5 (OF 6)
CRIMSON GASH MEETS DEMI THE DEMONESS #1 (A)
CTHULHU TALES #7 CVR A
DC UNIVERSE DECISIONS #4 (OF 4)
DEAN KOONTZS FRANKENSTEIN VOL 01 #5 (OF 5) PRODIGAL SON
FERRYMAN #2 (OF 5)
FINAL CRISIS RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS #1
GARTH ENNIS BATTLEFIELDS NIGHT WITCHES #1 (OF 3)
GUERILLAS #2 (OF 9)
HELLBOY IN THE CHAPEL OF MOLOCH ONE SHOT
I WAS KIDNAPPED BY LESBIAN PIRATES OUTERSPACE #5 (OF 6)
IMMORTAL IRON FIST #19
INCREDIBLE HERCULES #122
JACK OF FABLES #27 (RES)
JAZZ COOL BIRTH ONE-SHOT
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #26
KICK DRUM COMIX #2 (OF 2)
KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND NEW PTG
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #144
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #47
MADAME XANADU #5
MARVEL 1985 #6 (OF 6)
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #41
MARVEL APES #4 (OF 4)
MARVEL SPOTLIGHT ULTIMATUM
NO HERO #2 (OF 7)
NORTHLANDERS #11
NOVA #18 SI
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #7 (OF 7)
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS VOL 02 THE SUPREMACY #0
PROOF #13
RANN THANAGAR HOLY WAR #6 (OF 8)
RED SONJA #38
REIGN IN HELL #4 (OF 8)
RESURRECTION ANNUAL #1
REX LIBRIS #13
SAVAGE #1 (OF 4)
SAVAGE DRAGON #139
SECRET INVASION THOR #3 (OF 3) SI
SECRET INVASION X-MEN #3 (OF 4) SI
SKAAR SON OF HULK #4
SOLOMON KANE #2 (OF 5)
SPAWN #185
SPIKE AFTER THE FALL #4 (OF 4)
STAR WARS LEGACY #29 VECTOR PART 10 OF 12
STREETS OF GLORY #6 (OF 6) (RES)
SUPERMAN #681 NEW KRYPTON
SUPERMAN BATMAN #53
SUPERMAN BATMAN VS VAMPIRES WEREWOLVES #2 Of(6)
SWORD #12
TEEN TITANS #64
THOR #11
TRINITY #22
ULTIMATE CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL #1
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #3
WAR THAT TIME FORGOT #6 (OF 12)
WASTELAND #21
WOLVERINE FIRST CLASS #8
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #29 XOS 3
WORLD OF WARCRAFT #12
WORLD OF WARCRAFT ASHBRINGER #2 (OF 4)
X-FORCE #8
X-MEN FIRST CLASS GIANT SIZE SPECIAL #1
ZERO G #2 (OF 4)

Books / Mags / Stuff
ARCHIE AMERICANA SER TP VOL 09 BEST OF 90S BOOK 1
ART OF ALEX NINO SC
BAT MANGA SECRET HISTORY OF BATMAN IN JAPAN SC
BATMAN DEATH MASK COLLECTED EDITION
BAYBA LADY BROWN (A)
BERNIE WRIGHTSONS FRANKENSTEIN HC
BIONICLE GN VOL 03
CRYPTICS TP
CTHULHU TALES TP VOL 02 WHISPER OF MADNESS
DNAGENTS INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH ED TP
EMPOWERED TP VOL 04
ESSENTIAL MARVEL HORROR TP VOL 02
EXTREME CURVES PHAT GIRLS SC (A)
G FAN #85
GEEK MONTHLY VOL 2 #11
GHOST OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
GIANT ROBOT #56
GREEN LANTERN IN BRIGHTEST DAY TP
HEAVY METAL FALL 2008
HELLBLAZER FAMILY MAN TP
JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #51
JAYSON GOES TO HOLLYWOOD GN
JEWS IN AMERICA CARTOON HISTORY UPDATED ED
JIM BUTCHERS DRESDEN FILES HC
JOKER HC
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA THE NEXT AGE TP
JUXTAPOZ VOL 15 #11 NOV 2008
LOEG BLACK DOSSIER TP
LULU & MITZI BEST LAID PLANS TP VOL 01
MAGENTA COLOR OF SEX GN (O/A) (A)
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED PREM HC ILIAD
NEMI HC VOL 02
NO FORMULA STORIES FROM THE CHEMISTRY SET GN VOL 01
NOTES OVER YONDER HC
OJINGOGO GN
OR ELSE #5
POPEYE HC VOL 03 LETS YOU AND HIM FIGHT
PREVIEWS VOL XVIII #11
PRINCE VALIANT TP VOL 01 KNIGHT ERRANT
RAY HARRYHAUSEN FLYING SAUCERS VS EARTH TP VOL 01
ROADKILL JIM KOWALKSI ADVENTURE GN
SFX #175
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL HC
SPIDER-MAN PREM HC WITH GREAT POWER
SPIDER-MAN TP A NEW GOBLIN
STAR TREK MAGAZINE #14 NEWSSTAND ED
SUPERMAN BATMAN SEARCH FOR KRYPTONITE HC
TICK THE COMPLETE EDLUND
TOKEN
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #171
TRAVEL SC
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR TP VOL 11 SALEMS SEVEN
VIOLENT MESSIAHS TP VOL 01 THE BOOK OF JOB
WILL EISNER SPIRIT POP UP GRAPHIC NOVEL
WIZARD MAGAZINE #206 SECRET INVASION
WORLDS OF DUNGEONS & DRAGONS TP VOL 02
X-MEN TP MESSIAH COMPLEX

What looks good to YOU?


-B

Labels: Brian, Shipping Lists

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The choice seven months ago was either to do this essay series for SECRET INVASION or to do this essay series for FINAL CRISIS. With it becoming more apparent than ever that FINAL CRISIS has run off its rails or might not have been on rails to begin with, production-wise… I think it behooves me to begin this, the penultimate SECRET INVASION essay by respectfully acknowledging that I win again, suckers. Let’s just say that I picked the right series, and let’s just say that a lot of you comics bloggers didn’t, and let’s just say that means that I won at blogging about comics, everybody!

I know those of you who aren’t sore losers will wave while the sun shines on me in victory lane— I might even wave back. In the meantime, let me assure you that victory tastes pretty sweet. Here’s a photo of some kung fu guy chopping some bricks with the side of his hand:



***

Here’s a summary of issues 1 through 6: what if a ship came to Earth with a bunch of 1970’s Marvel Characters on it? Answer: it doesn’t matter because they’d all be Skrulls, so we’d kill them. Nothing left to do for the remaining two issues of the series but to set up the next status quo in the Marvel Universe, CHOCOLATE RAIN.

What’s the over/under on CHOCOLATE RAIN? I think most people have been betting on “bad guys take over the Earth somehow or another,” but that doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t seem like a premise that can sustain itself for very long—or like a premise that will be easy to explain to audiences reading CAPTAIN AMERICA or DAREDEVIL in trades.

Let me just say this, though: I hope it involves superheroes growing goatees. Goatees, soul patches, maybe one or two porn-staches. I think it’d let people know that the CHOCOLATE RAIN Marvel Universe is a much more dangerous place. Because it’s been filled with awful hipsters. The new Black Panther is a self-facilitating media node; with breasts.

***

This last issue’s just going to be a big fight scene. We all know it-- nothing remotely interesting is going to happen. Maybe there will be some kind of interesting cliffhanger-- but experience with prior issues tells us there won’t be.

What the hell am I going to talk about?

***

A number of people are enjoying SECRET INVASION, and that’s great. Last time… you know, last time I might have gotten a little mean, and I don’t like that because my starting place for this series of essays was a very genuine affection for CIVIL WAR, for the recent Marvel crossovers, for old Marvel comics, and for the current crop of Marvel creators. I like the writer, artist and characters, but you know: everything isn’t for everybody.

So, let me try to be less snotty about it, and just say: look, it’s not what I wanted. We can all be angry people and throw around hurtful words like “mediocre” or “horrible” or “terrible” or “padded” or ‘slow” or “snail-paced” or “perfunctory” or “generic” or “unoriginal” or “vapid” or “empty” or “boring” or “dreary” or “unimaginative” or “shallow”. Where does that get us? SECRET INVASION, it’s just not what I wanted; that’s all. Someone else, it’s what they wanted, and good for them. And sure, we can throw around words like “bad” or “uninspired” or “uninteresting” or “un-good” or “stinky” or “dregs” or “dispiriting” or “illogical” or “malignant” or “poo” or “doo-doo” or “ugh” or “blech” or “yuck” or “nauseating” or “brain-dead” or “witless” or “deficient” or “laughable” or “undercooked” or “half-baked” or “pointless” or “aloha” or “swill” or “pablum” or “crappy” or “shitty” or “shit-for-brains” or “shit-from-an-ass” or “fart-faced” or “rotten” or “decrepit” or “thesaurus.” But-- what’s, that’s not, you know-- instead, let’s, uh... let’s not.

SECRET INVASION’s been sort of a bizarro version of CIVIL WAR, a series which I’d enjoyed. Oh, they have the same main character, Iron Man. Iron Man revealing the Skrull corpse launched the series; the Savage Land stretch turned on Iron Man; Iron Man reuniting the Avengers was the climax of the series to date. But beyond that:

CIVIL WAR was thematically about the Organization triumphing over the individual; SECRET INVASION tried to be about the triumphant Organization succumbing to corruption (uh, like, for one issue before focusing on external threats instead of true corruption). Bizarro. CIVIL WAR ends with Iron Man’s benevolent facism taking charge of the Marvel universe; SECRET INVASION unleashes the CHOCOLATE RAIN, if the promo materials are to be believed. Bizarro. The climax of CIVIL WAR is the Marvel Universe fracturing; the climax of SECRET INVASION is the Marvel Universe uniting. Bizarro. CIVIL WAR’s spin-offs explored different avenues that there wasn’t room to cover in the main series; SECRET INVASION’s spin-offs have been mostly pointless— my favorite are the ones where they go “Guess what the Skrulls were doing during the House of M? Nothing much. Just chilling.” Bizarro. CIVIL WAR didn’t rely on negativity towards foreign people who have a different color skin and a weird religion; SECRET INVASION… Bizarro.

With CIVIL WAR, the fun part of that series for me was that it was fundamentally about the Marvel characters making decisions. Instead of something just happening onto them, and them just lying there, like a cold fish, staring at the ceiling, half-heartedly trying to hold back a yawn, waiting out the twenty/thirty seconds it usually takes for me to be finished, politely ignoring my trembling and crying... Wait, what were we talking about again?

CIVIL WAR was 100% decisions. Iron Man decides this, Captain America decides that, Spiderman decides to take off his mask, Reed Richards decides to build a Clor. But with this series, they’ve totally abandoned that. None of the characters have made decisions. We know as much about every single character in this series as we did when we started because there’s been nothing at stake for any of them dramatically. The invasion’s just something that happened to them, like a car accident.

The only exception right now, that I can think of at least, is the Maria Hill jetpack scene-- still, in my opinion, the best scene in this series. But, shit, when Maria Hill’s the best thing about your Marvel crossover… you know you’re a redneck?

Git ‘er done, Issue 7!

************************************************
************************************************
************************************************

So…

This issue was certainly published. On paper. Big long fight; nobody that isn’t a Skrull dies. That's... nice...?

Lots to talk about with this issue. Just lots and lots. Lots and lots and lots. Any moment now, I’m going to figure out just so many things to say about this comic. Watch out for that.

...

[Ed. Note: Two days pass, in awkward silence…]

...

[Ed. Note: Sweat coming out of pores.]

...

[Ed. Note: It’s 3:00 a.m. I just want to go to sleep.]

Uhm: The Watcher shows up—and he’s wearing eyeshadow…? That’s sort of interesting; Jack Kirby characters in lady’s make-up.


Why doesn’t that happen more often? Nothing else they’ve ever done with the Fourth World characters has ever worked; why not turn the NEW GODS into a burlesque revue? It can’t get any worse for those characters.

I like the Watcher; I like him in comics; I like when he shows up on that mediocre TV show FRINGE; I’m pro-Watcher. For me, “It Started on Yancy Street” (FF #29) is as good an issue of the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR as you could ask for.


It has that wonderful snowball quality where the adventure starts small and gets grander and grander as it contorts itself: it starts with someone throwing a head of lettuce at the FF, and ends on the moon, with plenty of stops along the way. I sometimes wonder if that's something the screenwriters or the manga-raised mainstream artists even know how to do anymore, if it isn't just something that's been lost.

***

It’s not that the fight scene offers no pleasure. I happen to like action comics. But not like this, not like this: It’s the Lord of the Rings idea of “action”. In those horrible, horrible Lord of the Rings movies, they’d just locked some nerd in a basement with a Macintosh and told him to generate 5 million Skeksis and Gelflings on top of each other. And then they’d just put that on screen for 4 hours at a time. That’s not action; that’s just a nerd with a Macintosh.

Part of my problem might just be as simple as I don’t usually enjoy an epic battle scene. There are obvious exceptions: SHAKA ZULU, say, or the Naval battle from BEN HUR. But I don’t sit around thinking fondly of BRAVEHEART, say; I never saw ALEXANDER or KINGDOM OF HEAVEN or the ALAMO. I didn’t make it a half-hour into TROY, though the parts I saw were very, very funny.

That having been said, here are 7 things that I typically like and look for in a superhero action scene-- with examples that... aren't the greatest action scenes I've ever seen, but just the ones that occurred to me, that had been memorable to me for some reason or another:

1. A Sense of Geography


Here’s a page from my favorite action comic when I was a kid, the San Francisco X-men vs. Marauder fight in the UNCANNY X-MEN #222. In this page, Wolverine’s healing factor is on the fritz, so in order to avoid getting shot to death—he risks falling to his death by jumping off a bridge. I like how this page is all about where the three different characters are in relationship to the bridge. You can map it in your head; you can imagine it happening that much easier.

SECRET INVASION #7, on the other hand: the characters don’t interact with their environment. Are the Skrulls to the North or the South? Are they trying to get somewhere strategically important, and the superheroes are trying to stop them from getting there? Or visa versa?

2. Bad Guys


These are two different pages combined, but: this sort of dopey villain named Roxxas versus the LSH from V4, Issue #10. Not a well-dressed villain or a very cool villain but-- this one bad guy systematically dismantles an entire team of superheroes over the course of an issue, and for me, it was memorable. It's better when the villains are the equal if not obvious superior to the good guys. If they have their own powers and abilities-- I'd like to see them being used against the good guy's powers. Or at least let them do something.

Another area where the X-MEN scene above succeeds, that fight with the Marauders: the Marauders end up looking like the cooler team. As a kid, I wanted to read the Marauders’s book instead by the time that fight was over. Every issue of X-MEN that didn’t feature them was a disappointment.

SECRET INVASION, on the other hand, suffers from the same problem as the MATRIX sequels. In the first MATRIX, everyone ran from the Agents; in the sequels, doughy, off-his-diet Larry Fishburne was destroying them left and right. Similarly here, early in the Invasion, one or two of the Skrulls were a serious problem for the heroes.

This issue, none of the Skrulls manage to make any impression at all despite being able to simulate all sorts of powers. Why? What changed? There’s no reason why the Skrulls shouldn’t overwhelmingly win this fight, but for no noticeable reason, that’s not the case.

There’s a scene suggesting that Marvel Boy somehow has come down and changed the tide of the battle, but they only show the part where he comes down and not him doing anything ... anything.


I'm willing to accept that Howard the Duck can kill a Skrull, though.

3. Superpowers.


From AVENGERS ANNUAL #16: the Avengers versus the Legion of Unliving; an undead Hyperion flies into Wonder Man, drives him through a planet, out the other end, and into a sun, killing them both.

Fights between superheros should be cool because you get to see them use their super-powers. That's sort of the whole point of the exercise, no?

SECRET INVASION has Mr. Fantastic stretch a little. The Hank Pym Skrull grows once. And… that’s about it.


Iron Fist doesn’t even use his fist-y power.

4. Clear Goals


Over the summer, I tried revisiting the DC Silver Age— most of it wasn’t very good; Marvel had the better Silver Age. This is from one of the big exceptions to that, though. While I prefer Nick Cardy to Neal Adams, I particularly enjoyed this sequence from Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil’s BATMAN #243. I like how it’s thought out; they don’t just rely on Batman magically appearing somewhere. They let you go on the adventure with him back then, instead of holding him at arm’s length. And the goal is so simple: Batman needs to infiltrate the enemy stronghold without alerting the guards. Clean simple goal.

Are there any goals in this SECRET INVASION fight other than genocide? Well, unfortunately--


If prior experience guides us-- I think they want to rip her bra! Oh noes! (Did I get that joke right? I didn't pay much attention to the whole Tigra thing since it was so stupid but... should it have been rip her blouse? Eh...)

The entire issue revolves around all of the Marvel superheroes uniting to kill a lady (?), but in order to accomplish what exactly? Keep in mind, while all this is going on, that there are spaceships hovering over New York. That could, you know—drop BOMBS theoretically, if the Skrulls changed their mind abot being evil socialists who want to bring evil-ass socialism to the United States, or whatever...

5. Clear Obstacles

The best action in a superhero comic this year is THE BOYS #21, the Bridge issue. I don’t think I should quote a page since many people might be reading it in trades still, but what makes it such an enormously satisfying action sequence is it’s all about superheros struggling with an increasingly problematic set of obstacles. And how the superheroes use their powers to deal with those obstacles, and what that means is all rooted in and reveals character. If I quoted something, it’d be the page in which the word balloon “Don’t Let Her Go” appears.

With SECRET INVASION #7, the only obstacle is presented by the Hank Pym Skrull, whose eyeball mysteriously explodes for … no apparent reason. They hint that Bullseye might be trying to work at cross-purposes with the other Earth combatants but don’t meaningfully play that out in any way.

6. Cinematic Progression or Escalation


This is on the line of being a superhero comic and being something else, but I love me some Nth MAN THE ULTIMATE NINJA. Larry Hama and Ron Wagner tried to create their own version of AKIRA in 1989; Marvel pulled the plug on it after 16 issues, forcing the creators to jam the final act of the series into a jumbled, nonsensical three issue finale. But issue #3 has this sequence which is a particular favorite. Comics aren’t cinema, but a little bit of cinema to an action scene is appreciated.

There’s one sequence which works in this way in issue #7-- the Hawkeye sequence. I can’t say I have a problem with any of that; I thought that was well handled. But the rest— I just felt like it was at one volume the entire time. I think they were plainly trying to convey a jumbled, chaotic battle, a "donneybrook" and that's a valid choice —- but for me, movement, physical movement, is a big part of why I enjoy action scenes.

7. The Real World Factor


Here’s the first page of an extended sequence from Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Oeming’s POWERS, issue #18. Zora and some villain are having a fight; Walker and Deena chase after them in a car and watch the superhero fight through their car windshield. The fight escalates from a distance, as a passing news helicopter gets involved to disastrous consequences. I like that it presents superhero violence in a logical way from a human point of view. I like that it asks "What would it really be like?", and provides an original answer.


Another example might be this stretch of panels from ASTRO CITY Volume #1, Issue #4: it’s a superhero fight from the perspective of people in a stairwell, rushing out of a nearby building.

You can see a building in the distance in SECRET INVASION #7 occasionally. That’s as close to the world as the fight ever gets.

***

We should close this one out classy for a change by raising up a glass for Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Yu, Mark Morales and co. for getting this out in a timely fashion, at least. While FINAL CRISIS struggles to get out, the Marvel team’s put out 7 timely issues, and this one – it doesn’t look shabby. With all the talk about FINAL CRISIS this week, and some of the anger about that that’s out there (thankfully and deservedly, most of it directed at DC and it editors, and not entirely at J.G. Jones, whose apology was admirable/kind-of-sad)… I thought it’d have been nice to pause and acknowledge the hard work of the SECRET INVASION team to get this thing out on time.

So... yay them? After all of this bitching? Really? I'm going to try to pull that off? That-- yeah: oh man, that was a disaster. That didn't work at all. I don't think my attempt at sincerity there was well timed, no. Sort of like a story about Santa drunkenly finger-banging one of his reindeers, let's say Blitzen. It tugs on your heartstrings a little because it reminds you of Christmas and Santa and finger-banging, all good things on their own, but put them altogether, during the holiday season, at Sunday School, and suddenly, you're in a room full of crying children. So... SECRET INVASION #7 is a lot like that.

Labels: Abhay

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Two Big Events, done COMPLETELY differently.

This may or may not be a fair comparison between the two, as neither are finished: SECRET INVASION still has 13% left, while FINAL CRISIS has 43% remaining, but I sorta feel like I've seen enough to be at least in the general neighborhood of "fair"

What's interesting to me, from the top, is that these two series are really opposite as can be: SECRET INVASION seemingly takes place in a day (or two) of the Marvel Universe, ties into each and every book (with a small handful of exceptions), while at the same time not really conveying much information in most of those tie-ins, and doesn't really appear to have any higher theme than "punchfighthit!"

FINAL CRISIS takes place over what has to be weeks (if not months) of the DCU, while at the same time barely tying into the regular production of DC whatsoever. The ties ins that exists, however, seem to largely be crucial ones. And of course, it is rich with theme.

Both works are also the culmination of years of build-up from one of the "primary architects" of the respective universes -- Brian Michael Bendis, and Grant Morrison.

*****

SECRET INVASION purports to be huge in scope -- after all, there's only as few books that don't have direct tie-ins -- but the actual core event/series appears to be really very very small, and absolutely misnamed. The invasion comes, heroes fight in the Savage Land, and in New York, the end.

There's been seven issues of punching and hitting and fighting now, and virtually nothing has happened. Further, said invasion is just about the opposite of "secret" -- loud flashy spaceships filled with colorful and obvious warriors arrive, but there's very little stealth or infiltration going on once the series begins. In fact, some of the infiltration that occurred is confusing to me: so they swapped out Hank Pym and Jarvis, but there's not a lot that they appear to be actually DOING once the series gets going.

While this may have made the heroes off-kilter a tiny bit, it's not how *I* would have run an invasion. Yes, by all means, replace some of the heroes, but where's the real world in all of this? Shouldn't you be replacing heads of state, community leaders, media conglomerates, all of that? Wouldn't that have the greater long-term impact? Rather than living up to the title, which could have been fascinating in an "Invaders" (TV)/"V" kind of way, and pointed to some interesting long-term consequences, it all seems to hinge on 'splody fight scenes.

In fact, at this stage in the proceedings, I'm not sure how the (clever!) "Embrace Change" ads can possibly play out at the end of this -- if you're trying to win Hearts and Minds, you don't visibly blow the shit out of everything. Sure this may be commentary on the execution of the War on Terror, but for an ancient, spacefaring race with the resources to blanket the entire planet, it just seems like the wrong way to go -- and most importantly, it appears to me to be this way in order to give the comics readership their quota of 'splody.

There have been a LOT of tie ins to this -- most of which worked pretty poorly, but there's been a few I've loved. Despite the fact that the Avengers comics haven't actually, y'know, featured the Avengers for six+ months now, I've found the "backstory" issues of MIGHTY and NEW AVENGERS to have been really good. The only minor problem is that they're mostly looking back, instead of looking at the present. But that's where the "secret" part of the Invasion happened.

At the end of the day, it looks like Luke & Jessica's baby will be the Deus Ex Machina that puts the toys back in the box, plotwise, possibly with some sort of "No More Skrulls!" twist. One does not get the sense that there will be any significant Skrull presence in the world (or at least America) at the end of this -- the Skrulls haven't (seemingly) seized anything of particular value, so getting rid of them would seem to be (in comic book terms, at least) a fairly easy process.

One small note on this week's salvo: the latest issue of THUNDERBOLTS expands on the brief Norman Osborn scenes in issue #7 of SI, and does it in a much more focused and compelling manner. In fact, I'd maybe call TBOLTS #125 as SI #7.5, in terms of "importance to the Marvel U" (if what we're thinking "Dark Reign" means is actually what it is)

I like Bendis' writing, but after the second of these, I really don't think he's got the "right" chops for writing Big Superhero Epics. He's got a great ear for dialogue, and a clever mind for twisting expectations and plot points, but he's mediocre at best on action, and pacing a "big" hero story. In a way, it's like if, say, Quentin Tarintino directed a STAR WARS movie -- there'd be moments of sheer brilliance, I'm sure, and some cracklin' dialogue, but tonally, the pieces wouldn't match up to what the audience really wants.

Overall, I'd give SECRET INVASION (the series) at the 7/8ths mark an EH; I'd give the MIGHTY and NEW AVENGERS tie-ins at least a GOOD, and I'd be positive (in general) about the setting up of the NEXT new status quo for the Marvel Universe (though, again, I think the Skrulls are, at best, a blind for that new state)

The last thing I'll say is that it does look like Bendis "played fair" in his multi-year build-up towards this.


*****

FINAL CRISIS is a trickier thing to discuss rationally, one that has AT LEAST AS MUCH to do with how DC Editorial was spinning the build up to it as the comic itself.

Clearly FC is "bigger", more "epic", and possibly even more relevant to the DC Universe than SI is to the Marvel U, but DC Editorial has COMPLETELY screwed the pooch on this one. Not JUST from a wrong/inappropriate build-up via COUNTDOWN (as well as AMAZONS ATTACK/SALVATION RUN/Whatever that they insisted were relevant and important), but also from scheduling stories like BATMAN RIP and SUPERMAN NEW KRYPTON and the build up to DARKEST NIGHT in and around FC.

This makes FC feel "weightless" and irrelevant to the DC Universe itself, when it SHOULD be the spine and centerpiece of that fictional world.

Let me tell you a little story about my audience: I was, for the LONGEST time there, the prototypical "DC store" -- DC comics ALWAYS sold better than Marvels for us. This has ABSOLUTELY changed in the wake of "One Year Later" and COUNTDOWN. New DC series are largely non-starters for us, with anything that isn't "A-List" having the lowest rack sales I've ever seen, including my first month of business 19 years ago! Things like RANN/THANAGAR WAR or DC DECISIONS are having rack sales of ONE OR TWO copies for us. I could stop racking 80% of the DC line today, and I don't think it would have a significant negative impact on my sales. That's really painfully ugly. If it weren't for Morrison and Geoff Johns, DC would have nothing at this stage. That makes me deeply sad.

Nor do I have any great sense that things are going to turn around. When I read the DC house organ page a few weeks back where Didio was trying to get excited about post-FC, one of the bullet points was something like "What will happen to Black Lightning's Daughters?!?!"

...

Really?

Now, on one hand, it's not even SLIGHTLY FAIR to judge FC upon Didio and co's mistakes, but the strength of a fictional universe is on how all of the moving parts move and mesh together, and by how believable the "sales pitch" is. If you're trying to get people excited about a b-list character's family (which didn't even EXIST like five years ago?), then you've got nothing in your hand.

This can't HELP but play into reaction to FC. Since FC doesn't actually seem like it's taking place IN the "DCU" (it could be on Earth 59, for all the impact it seems to be having within/around the "mainline" books), it loses buckets of its impact. This wouldn't be SO horrible if the machine was running correctly, but with FC catastrophically off-schedule (and finishing with a different artistic team than the start), it just heightens the sense of distance.

Unlike SECRET INVASION, FC is tight and focused -- it's a quarter or less of the number of books feeding into it? That's a plus in a way -- how many times has the readership complained about having to buy "too much" stuff? -- but it feels distant and walled off to me.

The latest issue (#4) takes a jump of a few weeks. How many? Well, at least enough time to have new factories, to change all of the billboards in the nation, and the theater marquees. That would seem (to me) to be a significant amount of time, possibly months. That feels more like a (secret) invasion to me, at least.

A "ragtag bunch of freedom fighters" is left, though the choices aren't (to me) all that plausible -- Wonder Woman and Batman have fallen, but Black Canary and Green Arrow avoided it? Babs Gordon "turned off the internet", without having been converted by it? How does any of that work?

Relax, turn off your mind, and float upstream, I guess?

Still, I like what Morrison's doing here, and my customers seem to as well, FC #2&3 sold better than SI #2&3 (SI #1 kicked FC #1's ass, however) -- but person after person is saying "how does this tie into [insert storyline]?!?!" So it might be, for us, that my customer's haven't abandoned the DCU as much as the DCU abandoned THEM.

I'd give FC, to this point, a very high OK (maybe even a low GOOD), but there's no sense anywhere from anyone that the DCU is heading anywhere in particular in the post-FC game. That's going to be a major problem -- I don't for foresee a good 2009 for the DCU.


****

As always, what do YOU think?

-B

Labels: Brian

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It's a field trip report for those of you who care about such things... find it under the jump... (with some cute pics, as well!)



It was just Ben's birthday, and is my wont, I took him for a trip. Theoretically, these are "father/son" trips, but this year Ben wanted Mama to come along as well, and since it's HIS birthday, we went along with his plan.

Like last year, we headed south for Disneyland (but I'm not set on this being a Disney trip every year... taking ideas for next year already, folks!), but because Mama was with us, we made it a little more of a production number than last year.

Last year it was a "day trip" -- we went in the night before, went straight to bed at a motel, then spent the whole day at the park. THIS year, we left butt-early on Sunday, and came back on the last flight on Monday night, giving us two full park days.

Also, because Mama was with us, we decided to not stay in the cheap motel across the street (I liked the Park Vue Inn... it is a clean place to sleep, about 1/3 of the price, AND it is actually physically closer to the front door of the park), and instead stayed at the Disneyland hotel. The only real advantage there is that the Disneyland hotel has a MUCH nicer pool, with a huge model of Captain Hook's pirate ship, and some water slides (which, uh, Ben can't actually use because he doesn't KNOW how to swim [yet], and we can't slide down in tandem). We made a point of getting in an hour or two at the pool because of that... but it really isn't worth the triple price by itself.

I've noted Ben's affection for Ariel from THE LITTLE MERMAID, which, can I say, it sorta surprises me that she doesn't have a bigger Disneyland presence, as she appeals to both boys AND girls, and she basically single-handedly saved Disney animation in the 1980s...

But she's got a little statue by the (heated!) little kid's pool, so here's the first of the cutie-pie pics....

From CE

(let's hope that worked... thanks to Jeff Lester for putting the pic up and giving me the HTML...)

Anyway, we started the first day at the California Adventure park, the newer of the two parks on the complex. We did this because, mostly, we'd never been there before (either together, or singly). It's alright, and it looks and feels a lot more like a "traditional" amusement park -- it sure felt to me that there were longer walks between rides, and it doesn't have that super-compact feeling that, say, Fantasyland has.

We started the morning by beelining to the... well, I don't remember the proper name, it's something like "Grizzly Mountain White-water rafting", and it's your basic water-coaster, except that it spins a bit, like a whitewater raft. It's fun, but we probably should have done the "Flying over California" ride first thing, because by the time we got back there at the end of our day, the line was WAY too long to wait through. Oh well.

We went over to the pier area, and no one was willing to go on the Sky Wheel with me (chickens!), not even with the non-moving cars. Bah. We did some sort of rise-and-drop ride, which Ben liked, but I was bored with, and Ben couldn't go on the big coaster (height reasons), so we opted for standing in line for the "hot new ride", Toy Story 4-D. That took nearly an hour (ugh!), but it was nearly worth it, as it is a really clever updating of the Buzz Lightyear Astro-Blasters in dland proper. With a 15 minute wait, we'd have done it several times, it was that cool, but the line was really hellish.

Then Ben wanted to go on the Merry-Go-Round, so we did that (it was King Triton themed, about as close to Ariel as we could get), and the ride operator decided, unprompted, that Ben should be "Prince Ben", and he got a little crown and was announced to all of the other kids on the ride. That was nice for the boy, though I noticed when he repeated the ride (no line for a carousel!) that the operator wasn't naming a prince or princess on each go round, so not sure what the thinking was there. Still, nice surprise!

By then we're hot and tired, so its food time. Ugh, this is the real difference in staying two days -- you're basically eating three meals a day on dland property, and they are EXPENSIVE. Yikes, brutally so...!

(I thought Tzipora's burrito was horrific, but my Chinese Chicken Salad was pretty decent)

We then wandered over to the "Bug's Life" area (so much space devoted to such a minor movie!), which is okay-ish, but is really aimed at teeny kids. Ben will be too old for that next year, but this year he was fine with the gentle rides, and the joke of a bumper cars, and especially the "sprinkler park" (which purported to teach you about how irrigation worked in large scale farming, but was mostly an excuse for kids to get SOAKED). It was a hot enough day that by the time we walked to the next section, Ben was mostly dry.

I quite liked the "Hollywood" area, which has this GIANT illusion of a summer day, and a street receding into infinity down it. Must be 60 feet high, and Ben and I talked about how they do that kind of visual trickery for film, so it was almost even educational. Had we more time, I kind of wanted to go into more of the exhibits in the Hollywood area (how animation is done, that kind of thing), but the day was quickly creeping closed, so we limited ourselves to the Monsters Inc ride (a classic "Dark ride", which like all of them, doesn't make a ton of sense if you haven't seen the movie) (Ben hadn't... but wants to now), and the Muppets 3-D thing which is AWESOME. Seriously, that one alone is worth the price of California Adventure admission, and if we had more time, I would have gone through it a few more times. It was both hysterically and injokey, but it also had some of the best 3-D I've ever seen anywhere, as well as environmental things happening in the theater. Great great stuff.

I wanted to do the Twilight Zone "Tower of Terror", but neither Tzipora or Ben did, and I got outvoted, so we headed back to the hotel for some swimtime. Overall, the Hollywood area was the only part of the CA park that I actually *liked*. the rest was fun, but not stellar.

After swimming for a while, the family was bushed. We ordered in some room service (ugh, expensive!), and Tzipora and Ben crashed, hard.

I was still awake enough (it was barely 9!), and Disneyland was open until midnight, so I left them sleeping and went on the prowl with myself. It's fun walking around by yourself in a park at night with your iPod giving you your own soundtrack, I have to say!

I tried to hop back over to CA, to do the TZ thing, but that park closes at 9. Um, OK. Dland it is, then!

Since I knew he was too small for it (4 more inches to go!) I made for the Indiana Jones ride. The first pass through was about a 30 minute wait, but after that a staffer said to me that the ride had a "single rider" option, and I could skip the line if I wanted to do it again. Which I did. Three more times.

Here's a good place to note this: most of the rides (in both parks) SUCK for three people. Why? Because most of the time most rides only seat two across, which meant one of us rode with Ben, while the other was stuck alone. And, OF COURSE, Ben wanted to do most of the rides with D-A-D-D-Y, leaving Tzipora as the third wheel. Not fun for her.

(Indy seats 4 across, which is why they can do single rider to fill in the holes)

So: go to Disneyland in multiples of two if you want to have the best time, is the lesson!

(And, ask for "single rider" on Indy, instead of standing in the line the first time!)

I also did the Haunted Mansion solo (twice), since I just love the Nightmare Before Xmas decorations this time of year.

I missed the fireworks, though, because I was waiting for Indy...

Anyway, we get up early on Monday to pack as much in as we can. Monday was the first time I'd ever personally experienced the Santa Ana winds. HOLY COW. Now I understand how those SoCal wildfires happen. Especially standing at the monorail station in "downtown Disney", it was like being inside of a shotgun, the wind was blowing so hard!

Once in Disneyland itself, it wasn't too bad, but man that monorail station was a rare form of torture!

Last year we went mid-week, and the lines were all pretty small -- except for last year's "hot new ride" (The Finding Nemo Submarine ride), which was at least an hour, and we skipped) -- nothing took more than, say, 15-20 minutes. THIS year we went during Columbus Day, so lines were AT LEAST twice as long. Another lesson learned! We did about 20-25 rides in '07, but this year I think we made a dozen?

Knowing my boy's taste, we stuck mostly to the Jungleland/New Orleans Square area in the morning -- Haunted Mansion (twice!), Pirates of the Caribbean (this is where Tzipora started to say "Wow, this is amazing!"), then Ben and I climbed around the Tarzan treehouse while Tzipora used the Single Rider trick to do Indy. (She was GLOWING after that one!)

Tzipora still wasn't done with indy when we were ready, so I talked the staff into letting me and Ben "do the line" for Indy. The line area is at least as cool as the ride itself, going through an "archeological dig", with runes on the walls, and spike traps and stuff, and even Indy's office in the back, where the normal line doesn't actually go (that's where singles and Handicaps line up). Technically, they were breaking the rules, but we got a personal tour of the Dig, and Ben was happier than a pig in shit, even without being able to do the RIDE. We got through it at about the same time as Tzipora did the ride, so we exited as a family which was nice.

It was hot then, and definitely Sit-Down time, so we did a no-line "Jungle Cruise" (Which Ben adored more than I would have imagined), and also did the Enchanted Tiki Room. It's easy to dismiss those kinds of rides as an adult, but 5 year olds really do seem to love them, plus they rested and refreshed us.

Off to Tomorrowland, where we did Star Tours, and Buzz Lightyear (twice!), and Space Mountain (Tzipora vows she'll NEVER do a coaster again, but Ben loves the mountain just like his Daddy, yes!). If the lines hadn't been so long, all day long, I probably would have tried to do Honey I Shrunk the Audience and the World of Tomorrow, but we were beginning to run short on time.

Tzipora, for some reason, was dead-set on doing Nemo, so I let her and Ben do that while I took a little chill-out time for myself, hurray. They said it was worth the 45 minute line, but I doubt that, myself.

Then it was the big one: Jedi Academy.

This is an outdoors, in-the-round kind of show, where a "Jedi Master" picked 10 or so kids to be "Padawans", and taught them how to use a lightsaber. They do this maybe 5 times a day, so only about 50 kids a day get to participate, out of the 10k+ that go through the park. Last year, I steered around it, but this year Ben was eager to try.

What's cool is that the floor opens up and Darth Vader (and sometimes Darth Maul?) comes out, and "fights" the kids.

Long story short, Ben was lucky enough to be one of the kids picked (it prolly helps that he looks like a young Luke Skywalker... and that his dad was standing behind him waving HIS hands as well!)

Let me tell you, as an American male who was 9 years old when STAR WARS was released (and I saw it 2 weeks-ish pre-release, too, with the print we watched having the Biggs-on-Tatoonie scenes), there was nothing NOTHING that's given me as much as a thrill since seeing Ben BORN, as watching him fight Darth Vader! Yah, boyeeee!

Now you can thrill as well...:

From CE

Our day was approaching done, but we had time for ONE more ride, and we picked a (probably THE) classic Fantasyland ride: Peter Pan. I wanted Tzipora to see a "classic" Dark Ride, and I think we picked well.

Then it was time to start heading back (already?!?!), with us still not making it back to Toon Town for the second year in a row.

FOR SURE *if* we go back again it will be midweek (I'll pull him out of school, if I need to) for the smaller lines mean being able to do a WHOLE lot more rides.

I'd say we had a great time -- Ben certainly did, which is the important thing, and he got to be a Prince, speak to Jack Sparrow, and fight Darth Vader, which was more than was on his agenda in the first place.

Bringing your wife, staying on dland property, staying for two park days, all of that QUADRUPLED expenses from last year, but I have no problem working a little harder to give the little guy that much fun. Next time (IF), we definitely go back to doing it CHEAPLY, however.

That was my trip, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it.


-B

(oh, and Virgin airlines? Very nice carrier. I'd take them again anytime, for sure)

Labels: Ben, Brian, Disneyland

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I'm nearly caught up, honestly -- and this week has both FINAL CRISIS *and* SECRET INVASION, so I think it will be time for the compare-and-contrast I've been threatening to Graeme for the last few weeks....

2000 AD #1605
2000 AD #1606
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574
ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #13
BART SIMPSON COMICS #44
BATMAN GOTHAM AFTER MIDNIGHT #6 (OF 12)
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ORIGINS #11
BETTY & VERONICA #238
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #165
BIRDS OF PREY #123
BLUE BEETLE #32
BROTHERS IN ARMS #4
CAPTAIN AMERICA #43
CRIMINAL 2 #6
CYBLADE #1 MAYS CVR A
DAREDEVIL #112
DC UNIVERSE HALLOWEEN 08
DEAN KOONTZS FRANKENSTEIN VOL 01 #4 (OF 5) PRODIGAL SON
DMZ #35
FAMILY DYNAMIC #3 (OF 3)
FEAR AGENT #24 1 AGAINST 1 (PT 3 OF 6)
FINAL CRISIS #4 (OF 7)
FINAL CRISIS SUBMIT #1
GHOST RIDER #28
GHOST RIDER DANNY KETCH #1 (OF 5)
GI JOE A NEW BEGINNING #0
HELLBLAZER #248
HULK #7
INVINCIBLE #54
LADIES MAN (NET) (A)
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES #4
MS MARVEL #32
NEW AVENGERS #46 SI
NEW EXILES #13
NEW WARRIORS #17
RUNAWAYS 3 #3
SAMURAI LEGEND #2 (OF 4)
SCALPED #22
SECRET INVASION #7 (OF 8) SI
SECRET INVASION AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #3 (OF 3) SI
SHE-HULK 2 #34
SONIC X #38
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF OLD REPUBLIC #34 VINDICATION PART 3 OF
SUPERMAN NEW KRYPTON SPECIAL #1
TANGENT SUPERMANS REIGN #8 (OF 12)
TERRY MOORES ECHO #7
THOR TRUTH OF HISTORY #1
THUNDERBOLTS #125 SI
TINY TITANS #9
TRINITY #21
TRUE BELIEVERS #4 (OF 5)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #127
UNKNOWN SOLDIER #1
USAGI YOJIMBO #115
WARHAMMER CONDEMNED BY FIRE #5 (OF 5) CVR A
WILDCATS #4
WOLVERINE MANIFEST DESTINY #1 (OF 4) MD
X-FACTOR #36
X-MEN LEGACY #217 XOS 2

Books / Mags / Stuff
ABC WARRIORS THIRD ELEMENT ROBOT WAR TP
AMERICAN PRESIDENTS SC
CATWOMAN CRIME PAYS TP
CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #74 HAVOK
CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #75 FALCON
CORRECTIVE MEASURES GN
DUNGEON MONSTRES TP VOL 02
EVIL DEAD TP
HAUNT OF HORROR LOVECRAFT PREM HC
HEAVY LIQUID HC
I LIVE HERE HC
JIM BUTCHERS DRESDEN FILES HC VOL 01 PX WELCOME JUNGLE
JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES TP VOL 11
MAN OF ROCK BIOGRAPHY OF JOE KUBERT SC
MIGHTY AVENGERS TP VOL 02 VENOM BOMB
MORESUKINE GN
NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER TP VOL 17
NORTHLANDERS TP VOL 01 SVEN THE RETURNED
SHOWCASE PRESENTS WORLDS FINEST TP VOL 02
SKY DOLL PREM HC
SPIRIT FEMME FATALES TP
SSHHHH GN (NEW PTG)
STEVE NILES OMNIBUS TP
STRONTIUM DOG KREELER CONSPIRACY TP
ULTIMATE X-MEN TP VOL 19 ABSOLUTE POWER
VENICE CHRONICLES HC
WARREN ELLIS AETHERIC MECHANICS GN
WEAPON OMEGA TP
X-MEN LONGSHOT PREM HC
Y THE LAST MAN DELUXE EDITION HC VOL 01


What looks good to YOU?

-B

Labels: Brian, Shipping Lists

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Go read the newest TILTING AT WINDMILLS on CBR!

-B

Labels: Brian, Tilting

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Just got back from Disneyland for Ben's 5th birthday party. Sheesh, I'm WRECKED.... and I have to spend today lifting and toting boxes of comics, hurray.

I'll have a report sometime soon, I think -- I have to get through New Comics Arrival, and Selling, then I have to write a TILTING, and somewhere in there I need to sleep, too, and get caught up on email, etc (68 mostly real emails just over the weekend, ugh)...

I'm getting too old for this shit!


A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #91 (A)
AGE OF SENTRY #2 (OF 6)
AIR #3
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #573 NWD
ARCHIE DIGEST #248
ASTONISHING X-MEN #27 MD
ATOMIC ROBO DOGS OF WAR #3 (OF 5)
BATGIRL #4 (OF 6)
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #12 RIP
BOOSTER GOLD #13
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #18
CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI 13 #6
CASEY BLUE BEYOND TOMORROW #6 (OF 6)
CHARLATAN BALL #4
CHRONICLES OF DR HERBERT WEST #1 (OF 6)
CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #4
DARKNESS #6 KEOWN CVR A
DC SPECIAL CYBORG #6 (OF 6)
DC UNIVERSE DECISIONS #3 (OF 4)
DOCTOR WHO FORGOTTEN #2
DYNAMO 5 #17
EPILOGUE #2
FABLES #77
FINAL CRISIS LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #2 (OF 5)
FINAL CRISIS ROGUES REVENGE #3 (OF 3)
FLASH #245
FOOLKILLER WHITE ANGELS #4 (OF 5)
GHOST RIDER #28
GHOSTBUSTERS THE OTHER SIDE #1
GRANT MORRISONS DOCTOR WHO #1
GREATEST HITS #2 (OF 6)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #31 (C: 0-0-1)
GUARDIANS OF GALAXY #6 SI
HAWAIIAN DICK #5
HERESY #1 (OF 4)
HULK MONSTER SIZE SPECIAL #1
I WAS KIDNAPPED BY LESBIAN PIRATES OUTERSPACE #4 (OF 6)
IRON MAN DIRECTOR OF SHIELD #34 SI
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #19
MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #11
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #29
MERCY SPARX #1 (OF 3) BLAYLOCK CVR A
MIGHTY AVENGERS #19 SI
MOON KNIGHT #23
NYX NO WAY HOME #3 (OF 6)
PHANTOM #25 CHECKMATE PART 5 (OF 5)
PUNISHER MAX #63
PVP #41
RASL #3
RED SONJA VACANT SHELL B&W ED
ROBIN #179
SCOOBY DOO #137
SECRET INVASION FRONT LINE #4 (OF 5)
SIMPSONS COMICS #147
SKRULLS VS POWER PACK #4 (OF 4)
SPIRIT #22
SQUADRON SUPREME 2 #4
STAR TREK ROMULANS HOLLOW CROWN #2 (OF 2)
STAR WARS CLONE WARS #2 (OF 6)
STEPHEN COLBERTS TEK JANSEN #3 (OF 5) (RES)
STORMWATCH PHD #15
STREET FIGHTER II TURBO #1 CRUZ CVR A
SUPER FRIENDS #8
SUPERMAN BATMAN VS VAMPIRES WEREWOLVES #1 Of(6)
SUPERMANS PAL JIMMY OLSEN SPECIAL #1
TITANS #6 (RES)
TRINITY #20
ULTIMATE ORIGINS #5 (OF 5)
UNCANNY X-MEN #503 MD
WELCOME TO HOXFORD #3
X-MEN WORLDS APART #1 (OF 4)
YOUNG X-MEN #7 MD
ZORRO #8

Books / Mags / Stuff
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST TP BOOK 01
ART OF HEAVY METAL 2009 WALL CALENDAR
ART OF LUIS ROYO 2009 WALL CALENDAR
BATMAN CHRONICLES TP VOL 06
BREAKDOWNS PORTRAIT OF ARTIST AS YOUNG HC
CLASSIC MARVEL FIGURINE COLL MAG #76 MS MARVEL
COMIC FOUNDRY MAGAZINE FALL 2008
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE #1648 DEC 2008
COMICS JOURNAL #293
CROSSING MIDNIGHT TP VOL 03 SWORD IN THE SOUL
DEAR DRACULA HC
DOKTOR SLEEPLESS TP VOL 01 ENGINES OF DESIRE
DREAMLAND CHRONICLES TP BOOK 01
EX MACHINA TP VOL 07 EX CATHEDRA
GRANT MORRISON SC EARLY YEARS
ILLUSTRATION MAGAZINE #24
JLA THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW TP
JONAH HEX LUCK RUNS OUT TP
LEES TOY REVIEW #192 OCT 2008
LOST OFFICIAL MAGAZINE #19 PX ED
MAGIC TRIXIE GN VOL 02 SLEEPS OVER
MARVEL ADVENTURES THE AVENGERS DIGEST VOL 07
MORESUKINE GN
ROUGH STUFF #10
SCALPED TP VOL 03 DEAD MOTHERS
SENTENCES THE LIFE OF MF GRIMM TP
SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 01 BRAND NEW DAY
WALKING DEAD 2009 CALENDAR
WAR IS HELL FIRST FLIGHT PHANTOM EAGLE MAX PREM HC
WILL EISNERS SPIRIT ARCHIVES HC VOL 25



What looks good to YOU?

-B

Labels: Brian, Shipping Lists

Click Here to Read More...

Crossed #1 (of 9)



I wish I was 12 again so I could beg my beloved great aunt to buy me this comic solely on the basis of its cover. She'd go "oooh, that's a scary one," and purchase the hell out of it, because that's just how we rolled in that wing of my semi-immediate family. One of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics she bought me was the start of the Michael Zulli run, where Splinter is puking up mystic rock totems and having a psychic war with Shredder while the Turtles -- snarling, indistinguishable monsters all -- literally rip Foot ninjas to pieces left and right. Sure beat Saturday morning.

But I am older now, and I have my own money to spend however I see fit. Careful, mature considerations go into my every purchase, subtle tumblings of value that led me, perhaps inevitably, to a different economic decision, befitting an adult of my age and social position:



It looks like a boy being thrown out the door at first, but then you can open the comic and see all the things happening on the rest of the airplane! Note the young child being hanged from an oxygen mask cord way in the back; it's the little details that win my variant cover dollars, provided nobody's doing anything silly like charging extra money. I'll settle for the axe under those circumstances.

Anyway, this is the start of the new Garth Ennis/Jacen Burrows series from Avatar, in case the covers weren't clear enough on that. One thing might be tricky, though - despite that issue #1 marking, the true beginning of the story actually showed up in a shorter and less expensive issue #0 from a while back, as is Avatar's current practice.

That actually led to a decent little visual trick: the colorist for issue #0 -- depicting the start of a mysterious, zombie-like onslaught of smirking living people with cross-shaped scars on their faces, relieved of any sense of morality or restraint -- was Avatar mainstay Greg Waller, who depicted everything in his characteristically shiny manner, with the gore in particular taking on a too-bold H.G. Lewis sort of Grand Guignol texture. In contrast, issue #1 is colored by 'Juanmar,' who (which?) takes a much dimmer approach, rendering all the world as in perpetual sundown and all the blood as mucky and browner; even the flashback bits are faded, like issue #0 and Waller got to be the shock of the new, and all the rest of color could do was respond.

I don't know if that was planned, but it's there, you know?

Unfortunately, there's not a lot else of interest going on in this comic. I do think Burrows is good for the material; he has this uninhibited passion for the grotesque that he matches with a cartoon-clinical visual approach in a manner that borders on droll. It's fitting for a comic about lots of people going nuts in a world that still sort of has the facade of ours, and Ennis tosses in a recurring motif of people staring at things from a distance for that extra touch of detachment.

It also means, however, that the comic isn't much for immediate shocks; a bit with a scary woman popping up on one side of a fence is about as dispassionate as I can imagine (granted, Ennis doesn't help by having the character spout some dialogue before going "WAAAAHH!!"). Burrows also lacks distinction in his character designs - the main characters are fine, but the various grinning hordes have a way of looking less like people with similar facial expressions than people with similar faces, if you catch my drift.

Still, what's really indistinct right now is Ennis' plot, which is almost entirely a by-the-numbers survival horror-styled zombie(ish) thing, relayed to us via many narrative captions by an observant good-man-hanging-on sort of writer character. It's middling setup stuff (there's no medical services! life is hard! unafflicted survivors must band together, personality clashes be damned!) spiked only by the writer's total disdain for frilly mysticism and nerd naiveté; when a huffing fantasy gamer pops up ("Dungeons and Dragons, do you even know what you're talking about? It was Magic the --") the page all but drips with contempt, and the story goes on to show what awful things happen to such losers and all the doomed fucks that rely on his bullshit in a hard, dark world.

It's a particularly nasty gore scene that takes that one, a double-page spread given Burrows' full, chilled attention. I notice that the book takes some pains to avoid depicting genitals or sexual penetration, this in spite of panels like that of an infected woman being squished under a truck's tires, guts spilling out as she screams "JESUS I'M FUCKIN COMIN" from a mouth pouring blood. Funny that you can see the invisible threshold beyond which the book would maybe have to go in a plastic bag or get racked way beyond where my great aunt would have ever bought it for me, external signals meaning everything.

EH right now, though all the cross images (and, er, the title) suggests that Ennis may be gearing up for another look at the old religion; I don't know if that'll be any more intriguing, but it'll at least add another element on top of literalizing the bottomless hunger within that's plain from most any surface look at the zombie subgenre, to say nothing of the foibles of packed-in survivors.

Labels: Jog

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THE ALCOHOLIC by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel; Published by DC-Vertigo, $19.99.

I.

I’d like to talk about the book design, for a moment. We’re a couple years after the point where smart, contemporary design is still surprising, but—but, still, great googly-moogly, the book design for THE ALCOHOLIC is glossy.

Sepia-tinted author photos. A liberal use of Futura. The pages of the comic are book-ended by dark brown paper of a heavier stock. Taking off the slipcase reveals a carving of a bottle, with the book’s title for the bottle’s label. Every other odd page combines into a map to Bluebeard’s Treasure. Bluebeard’s Treasure is friendship.

And the pull-quotes: a couple are from fanboy-world luminaries like Brian Vaughan and Neil Gaiman, but there’s also Sarah Silverman, Anthony Swofford, Bret Easton Ellis, John Hodgman, Kirkus Reviews, Jerry Stahl, Thomas Beller. Readers, be assured: whoever wrote this book is friends with celebrities! What could a more important thing in America to know than that?

And the back cover text: THE ALCOHOLIC is hilarious yet heartbreaking. Dean Haspiel’s art is gritty yet poignant. My balls are wrinkly yet succulent.

So: so, shit in my shoes, if this isn’t the damn hippest-looking comic. In April of this year, Vertigo announced its intentions to significantly increase its focus on original graphic novels. THE ALCOHOLIC’s book design, for me, is a little window into the future, or a possible future at least. A name author from the world of books; a slick modern design; celebrity endorsements assuring the reader that the author is socially well-connected; stylish fonts; back cover text promising poignance. Poignance!

I was looking forward to and ultimately bought THE ALCOHOLIC because I'd heard of Ames, because I’d heard of his last novel, Wake Up Sir. I knew that it had been well received. But… well received by who? I’m not really sure. By the World of Books. I don’t know who that is, though; I’m not exactly in Michiko Kakutani’s rolodex. There’s a very strange argument that sprung up on the comics part of the internet in the last couple of days (that I don’t particularly understand to be honest) about avoiding nameless, faceless “mediocre” comics. But: very little seems to have been said as to how one goes about doing that exactly. How do you know what to buy? At $10-20 a trade, what’s a safe bet? Who can you trust? How much will packaging and popularity and buzz from unknown people matter? Risks abound in the future.

I took comfort in the “SUGGESTED FOR MATURE READERS” hiding in the small print on the book’s back corner. It’s comforting to know that comics have a past, and the past left fingerprints. I especially like how it satisfies only the letter of some vestigial corporate policy, but not in any way, that policy’s spirit.

II.

I guess point #2 should be that the book itself is decent. I think it’s alright.

In its particular way, at least. Of the book’s 136 pages, about 125 pages feature Ames’s first person narration in caption boxes, multiple caption boxes that dominate page after page. Of those remaining 11 pages, 3 feature the narrator addressing the reader directly in expository monologues overstuffing word balloons, instead.

It’s an illustrated personal essay with a comic book in the margins. If your dream comic can be understood without ever looking at the words, look elsewhere. Ames’s story isn’t particularly surprising or unique; some might find the book “boring” as a result, that dull, perennial insult for memoir comics (or pseudo-memoirs). But I found the book enjoyable enough for other reasons—- the details Ames selected, the timing of events, the choice of digressions, the book’s particular sense of humor, the clever framing sequence. If it’s an essay, I thought it was an okay essay.

Dean Haspiel’s contribution in making this essay work visually can’t be understated, though. The book whiplashes between comedy and drama; the main character goes from pathetic to sympathetic to loathsome in the space of panels—- without Haspiel being able to handle that variety, and provide some visual moments of interest along the way, it’s hard to imagine THE ALCOHOLIC having worked as a comic. I’d use the phrase “steady hand on the tiller” here but I don’t have a fucking clue what a tiller is. Maybe I don’t want a steady hand on a tiller; maybe, I want a hand that caresses the tiller gently, bringing it gradually but sensually to climax. I don’t really know, my friends.

Also: I don’t know how to describe Haspiel’s style here. This isn’t the unrestrained Haspiel of the BILLY DOGMA comics; any of DOGMA’s enthusiasm for Kirby, bold shapes, immediacy—none of that is particularly noticeable in THE ALCOHOLIC (nor does it seem to have been requested, I suppose). I suppose the emphasis here is more for clarity, for an easy transition for the audience from Ames’s novels to comics. More visually inclined readers are urged to consider FEAR, MY DEAR instead.

With Haspiel, I think again we see a little hint of the future. Haspiel working with Mr. Ames, Jim Rugg working with Ms. Castellucci, Farel Dalrymple working with Mr. Lethem; at some point, the reward for cartoonists who successfully create a particular kind of independent comic became a gig chaperoning World of Books writers on comic book holiday. I guess I think that’s probably more of a good thing than a bad thing. As rewards go, this seems like a good one. But I guess what I find interesting is… when I grew up, comic book artists were the super-stars of comics. And writers were just… well, you know, writers.

With THE ALCOHOLIC, consider again the evidence presented by the book design.

The back cover’s only reference to Haspiel is in a smaller font, in a subordinate clause. Look at that! What is that??

It’s not for lack of space. No: he’s just the artist.

III.

THE ALCOHOLIC is a portrait of a man who has a substance abuse problem and his struggles with addiction, from his teen years to the days after 9/11. The narrator is sort-of obnoxiously named Jonathan A., I guess to titillate stupid people that some unknowable portion of the book is based upon the real life of Mr. Ames. Why would anyone fucking care? But after all, I suppose we live in an age of completely fictional autobiographies; tawdry voyeurism became worthwhile to authors and important to reading audiences-- oh, well.

There’s not much of a shape to it. Are addiction memoirs generally known for their dramatic tension? Initially, the book adopts a framing sequence involving lengthy flashbacks, but it abandons that structure mid-way through, though “Jonathan A.” continues to incessantly narrate even past that point. But maybe substance abuse is enough of a shape; with substance abuse comes depravity, sex, sexual dysfunction, horny senior citizens, death, fist fights, vomit, puke, barf, shit, orgies, and chase sequences. Everything a good comic book needs.

The 9/11 portion was my least favorite part of the book. I think it’s supposed to reflect his shame over the petty grief that had driven him to drink in comparison to this greater horror; to humbly acknowledge the inconsequential nature of whether he drinks or doesn’t; or to add to the feeling of the last third of the book of things spiraling out of control both internally and externally.

But: I think there’s an inherent danger with fiction and 9/11 of ... clichés not only become offensive because they’re clichés, but because they become... I don’t know, like, offensive because it’s grief porn? Jonathan A. spends the day with a young woman who has just lost her husband in the attack-- she maybe has three or four lines in the book total, none memorable. Because who she is doesn’t matter; all the book seems to say is “I was reminded what really matters through her! I was there for her! I was the witness of her grief! I learned from her grief! I failed to learn from her grief! Me Me Me.” I think there’s a desperation to remember that day as the day Americans “came together”, and I wonder if that isn’t its own way to avoid experiencing grief or fear, to make it still about us, endlessly us.

To some limited extent, this is all to the book’s benefit, as the portrait the book paints of the main character is ultimately of a selfish and self-obsessed man-child. But... I guess it just makes me uncomfortable seeing it as a thing being used clumsily, even if that clumsiness can be justified or explained, regardless of reason or context.

It’s funny, though: while I was reading Ames’s depiction of 9/11, all I was thinking about was a different disaster. Like the good Mr. Hibbs, like many people in this country probably, I’ve been obsessing over financial news lately that I don’t half understand. It’s a lot of Bloomberg.Com. It’s a lot of “What does Nouriel Roubini have to say about that?” It’s a lot of Roubini and Mish’s Global Economic Trends and Federal Reserve conspiracy theories. It’s a lot of naked Tai Chi in front of an open window, to cheer up the poor people huddled outside. It’s a lot of writing and drawing Care Bear pornography-- you know, Care Bears spraying one another with those rainbows that come out of their bellies, giggling. Care Bear Belly-Rainbow Bukkake? You know, for kids.

Time spent thinking about our economy, thinking about America, asking the big questions like “Is our way of life sustainable? Can you put off paying the piper indefinitely? What is it like when a country addicted to cheap oil and easy credit has to detox? Did any of those Care Bears have drawings of erect wangs on their bellies?” And here, we have THE ALCOHOLIC, a book very much about someone living a lifestyle that’s unsustainable, that won’t work out so hot in the long term, that probably won’t end well. It felt, I don’t know, timely.

I think one of the reasons I like the book was how Jonathan A. got more and more pathetic as he got older. Too Much is a pretty great strategy when you’re younger, but by the end, A.’s got a lousy haircut, wearing an ugly suit, he’s barely wiser, he’s all alone, and he’s as much a danger & pathetic disappointment to himself and others as ever, if not more so. I’m pretty fatalistic when I read the news, and my guess for the last, well, couple decades is things in this country are about to get really fantastically worse; so, I guess that ending struck a chord with me in more ways than one. We're all going to end up in shambles, huh? See you in the shambles! We'll share some toast.

IV.

But: the future, huh? Vertigo not just getting an author from ye' old World of Books, but releasing a book in the hot genre du jour: the fake addiction memoir.

If the future is books aimed equally for bookstores, who are the people in bookstores, what values do they have, what kinds of books will people create for them, and how will we know which to buy? Oprah? Will Oprah get involved? Nicholas Sparks?

I’m confused as to how I feel about that entire genre of the addiction memoir, especially; it’s not a genre I’ve ever sought out before in a book. There’s something troubling about the genre but I don’t feel qualified to say what that is since I’m, you know, I’m not educated enough about the program or the twelve steps or any of it; I have concerns whether writing a book like THE ALCOHOLIC is a healthy or recommendable thing to do for someone struggling with that disease since there’s an inherent element of romanticizing the substance abuse portion that struck me as, I don’t know, risky. But I don’t know what the experts say on that topic. I guess I could say: if he’s subverting the genre in some way, I’m not well read in the genre enough to notice how; I couldn’t say how or if this addiction memoir is particularly noteworthy as compared to any of the many, many others. Do they all have wise old recovering addicts that are roommates in rehab? Or foxy lady rehab employees that the main character wants but ultimately can’t have? Because in my head, I guess I imagine they all might.

I guess the genre makes me especially queasy because – what do readers want out of this genre exactly? I don’t typically spend time in my daily life rooting for an addict to fall off the wagon, but if I’m reading an addiction memoir? Look, if I’m reading an addiction memoir, I know that if the addict falls off the wagon, then the Crazy Drug Madness Haha time can resume and I will benefit from that as a reader.

I rooted for Bubbles to stay off the heroin on The Wire, as much as I ever rooted for anything on a TV show to happen. But… you know: this book? There’s 30-ish pages where the main character stopped drinking and the story got boring, and to be honest, I started thinking how nice it’d be for that boring Jonathan A. boy to start drinking again.

That made me feel a little weird and more than a little fucking dirty.

And it took bathing in a lot of Care Bear rainbow ejaculate to feel clean again.

Labels: Abhay

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Birthday parties for 20 five-year olds are amusing! But very very tiring....

Here's what's what for this week:

100 BULLETS #96
ACTION COMICS #870
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #25
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #2
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #124
AVENGERS INVADERS #5 (OF 12)
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #22
BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #188
BIG HERO 6 #2 (OF 5)
BOMB QUEEN V #4 (OF 6)
BPRD THE WARNING #4 (OF 5)
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #30
CROSSED #1 (OF 9)
CTHULHU TALES #6 CVR A
DARK TOWER TREACHERY #2 (OF 6)
DEAD OF NIGHT DEVIL SLAYER #2 (OF 4)
DEADPOOL #3 SI
DETECTIVE COMICS #849 RIP
DRAFTED #11
DRAGON PRINCE #2 JOHNSON CVR A
END LEAGUE #5
ENDERS GAME BATTLE SCHOOL #1 (OF 5)
FALLEN ANGEL IDW #30
FERRYMAN #1 (OF 5)
FINAL CRISIS REVELATIONS #3 (OF 5)
GALAXY QUEST GLOBAL WARNING #3
GEARS OF WAR #1
GEN 13 #23
GEORGE R R MARTINS WILD CARDS #4 (OF 6) HARD CALL
GIANT SIZED RED SONJA #2
GOON #29
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #13
GREEN LANTERN #35
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #29
HELM #3 (OF 4)
I KILL GIANTS #4 (OF 7)
I WAS KIDNAPPED BY LESBIAN PIRATES OUTERSPACE #3 (OF 6)
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #6
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #144
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #143
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #19
LONE RANGER #14
LOVE AND CAPES #8
MAD MAGAZINE #495
MAN WHO LOVED BREASTS
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #16
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #44
MARVEL ZOMBIES 3 #1 (OF 4)
NECRONOMICON #2 (OF 4)
PRESIDENTIAL MATERIAL BARACK OBAMA
PRESIDENTIAL MATERIAL FLIPBOOK
PRESIDENTIAL MATERIAL JOHN MCCAIN
PULP TALES CVR A
REX MUNDI DH ED #14
SECRET INVASION INHUMANS #3 (OF 4) SI
SECRET SIX #2
SIMON DARK #13
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #193
SPAWN #184
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE SEASON 2 #3 (OF 5)
STAND CAPTAIN TRIPS #2 (OF 5)
STAR TREK MIRROR IMAGES #4
TRINITY #19
TWELVE #8 (OF 12)
TWO FACE YEAR ONE #2 (OF 2)
UNCLE SCROOGE #380
VOYAGES OF SHEBUCCANEER #3 (OF 3)
WALKING DEAD #53
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #695
WE LOST THE WAR BUT NOT THE BATTLE
WONDER WOMAN #25
X-MEN MAGNETO TESTAMENT #2 (OF 5)
X-MEN MANIFEST DESTINY #2 (OF 5) MD
X-MEN ORIGINAL SIN #1 XOS 1
YOUNG LIARS #8

Books / Mags / Stuff
ALMIGHTY GN
BABY SITTERS CLUB SC VOL 04 CLAUDIA & MEAN JANINE
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS TP VOL 01 THE CHRYSALIS
BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE TP VOL 02 NEW EDITION
BIRDS OF PREY METROPOLIS OR DUST TP
CHARLEYS WAR HC VOL 05 RETURN TO THE FRONT
CHIAROSCURO IDW ED TP
DAREDEVIL TP CRUEL UNUSUAL
DC COMICS GOES APE TP
DC VAULT MUSEUM IN A BOOK SPIRAL HC
EMIKO SUPERSTAR
GRIMM FAIRY TALES PIPER TP
GRIMM FAIRY TALES TP VOL 04
HELLBOY LIBRARY ED HC VOL 02 CHAINED COFFIN & OTHERS
HI FRUCTOSE MAGAZINE QUARTERLY #9
HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY GN WHAT A WOMAN WANTS (A)
IMMORTAL IRON FIST PREM HC VOL 03 BOOK OF IRON FIST
IRON MAN TP THE DRAGON SEED SAGA
LABOR DAYS GN VOL 01
LEGENDARY GN
MARSHALL LAW ORIGINS SC
MERCHANT OF VENICE SC
OWLY GN VOL 05 TINY TALES
PUNISHER MAX TP VOL 10 VALLEY FORGE
RICHARD MATHESONS HELL HOUSE TP
SERENITY BETTER DAYS TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS BLACKHAWK TP VOL 01
SIZZLE #39 (A)
SPARROW ASHLEY WOOD HC VOL 00 SKETCHES & IDEAS
STAR WARS OMNIBUS EARLY VICTORIES
SULK GN VOL 01 BIGHEAD & FRIENDS
TEZUKAS BLACK JACK TP VOL 01
TOYFARE #136 NECA GEARS OF WAR CVR
VIDEO WATCHDOG #144
YOU AINT NO DANCER GN VOL 03
YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS TP


What looks good to YOU?

-B

Labels: Brian, Shipping Lists

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So... does anyone remember Ye Olde Days when Issue #1 meant a start, rather than a restart?

Yeah, me neither.

TERROR TITANS #1: As is usually the way with DCU titles, I have absolutely no idea what's going on here, so strictly in terms of the grade I'll go with NO RATING. What I can tell, based on the content, is that we're looking at more evidence of Embiggened Bloodening - teenage superheroes are abducted by teenage supervillains (who seem to be descendants of previous villains, which I'll admit is a nice twist on the original Titans), drugged and thrown into an arena where they fight to the death. Why? Damned if I know, though it's connected to FINAL CRISIS (I know, what a shock, right?). But more to the point, the thing that really got me about this issue is something I've seen pop up more and more often in DC books: the sense of brutality for its own sake. TERROR TITANS #1 isn't as bloody as, say, a Geoff Johns comic, but it's not much fun to read either. And what's more, it feels tacked-on somehow, like there's a sign over Dan DiDio's office door that says "Your Body Count Must Be This High To Write This Comic."

TOP 10: SEASON TWO #1: Okay, so BEYOND THE FARTHEST PRECINCT didn't happen? I can live with that. Even though the original TOP 10 was one of my favorite miniseries, it's been a while since I read it, and I had to go back and refresh my memory because Zander and Kevin Cannon pick up pretty much exactly where Alan Moore left off almost eight years ago - the mess with Commissioner Ultima is referred to as "recent trouble", Irma is still grieving for her dead partner Sung Li, Smax and Toybox are still on Smax's homeworld. I had my doubts about this one - conventional knowledge says it's never a good idea to follow Alan Moore on anything unless you're Neil Gaiman or possibly Jamie Delano. But I'm very pleased to see that the Cannons have captured the spirit of TOP 10 perfectly: at its core, it's a series that takes human problems and pokes fun at them by applying superpowers, so you get "crossover-dressing" where superhero Top Flight secretly dresses up in a different (very, very scary) costume and calls himself Green Bolt; an old man is selling Shazam-esque Magic Words to kids; and, of course, we have the Big Picture murder mystery, much like the Sentinels case in Moore's run. Now, based on all the comparisons I've made, it's easy to see how SEASON TWO could be considered derivative, but changing the basic formula isn't necessary here: it's enough that the Cannons come up with new concepts (like the aforementioned Magic Word peddler) that run along the same lines as the Galactapuss/Cosmouse Secret Crisis War of times past - that's the sort of clever game that makes this issue a VERY GOOD sequel.

NO HERO #1: You might think this doesn't belong in a post about #1's that aren't really First Issues, but so help me, if I have to play another round of Spot That Ellisism, I'm going to scream and vent my rage like the guy on the cover. Look, a bunch of "superheroes" wearing gas masks! And they fight crime! Violently! And they got their powers through DRUGS! And there's a bunch of historical quotes so it all looks So Very Relevant and Important! And our protagonist is So Damn Mad about the State of the World that he punches out his litterbox! That's how mad he is! And there's a Super-Suicide Girl who prefers texting to talking! AWFUL, because I've seen Ellis do this routine so many times it's not even funny anymore. It's like perpetual deja vu by now.

Labels: Diana

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I think one of the reasons the economy is in trouble is because banks have started calling themselves "stores", while the financial instruments they facilitate are called "products".

-B

Labels: Brian

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Besides the time pressures lately (once we get used to this Kinder schedule, things should be smoother), I've been kind of unimpressed with most of the comics I've been reading lately. Its not even that I hate them or anything -- that's always worth a few inches -- but just that I've been feeling "Meh" about most stuff I'm reading.

It could be the lack of sleep, or it could just be me getting (more) jaded, I dunno.

So I'm really happy that in the last week or so I've read two things that fill me with enough love and joy to actually sit down and write!

We've received both of these books from Baker & Taylor, so I couldn't tell you if they've made it through Diamond's system yet, but both are well worth seeking out:

BURMA CHRONICLES HC: This is Guy Delisle's third "travelogue" book (the previous two are PYONGYANG: A JOURNEY IN NORTH KOREA and SHENZHEN: A TRAVELOGUE FROM CHINA). I quite liked the first, but thought the second was kind of flat. Maybe because North Korea is more mysterious than China? Maybe because there's more dramatic tension (such as one can get in an autobiographical comic!) in the repressive dictatorship than the less-repressive China? Maybe more interesting incidents happened in the first than the second?

Hard to say, but BURMA CHRONICLES, Delisle has a big return to form, with my enjoying this even more than I liked PYONGYANG.

This time through, incidents are often more fragmented from one another, and with a significant portion of the book being one-page relations, Delisle perhaps acts more like a cartoonist, and tries to find a punchline in each vignette.

Delisle's cartooning is deceptively simple, but there's a few places where his mastery of craft is really clear -- especially in comparison to some of the "bad panels" he shows (from lack of proper ink to draw with, or tendinitis at one point)

What I like best about these books is they both teach me something new, as well as being entertaining in their own right. Delisle comes off as an extremely entertaining person who'd you'd love to be seated next to at a dinner party while he regales you with stories of his trips. This is EXCELLENT stuff, and I highly recommend it.

My one complaint: the book is in a different format than the previous two (no dust-jacket [which I actually prefer] and just a little physically shorter), and isn't going to look as nice on the bookshelf.


TAMARA DREWE: Posy Simmond's new book isn't exactly "new" -- it's been out in the UK for at least a year, maybe more, but it is just coming out in the US now.

What a masterpiece!

It's sort of 1/3 prose, from three different characters thoughts, with a mix of panel narrative and single piece counterpoints to the text. It is bold, it is supremely assured, and I think it is the best piece of comic-ing that I've read this year.

The story sounds a little dull on summary -- it is about a writer's retreat and the characters that live in and around it, and how they react to return to the area of the book's title character, but it is sharp and expressive and extremely rich and vivid in detailing that world and the characters in it. I also liked how the book is ABOUT Tamara Drewe, but that the narrative focuses mostly on characters around her orbit.

I got lost in some of the British slang in a few places (thankfully, they explained what "paps" were a few pages on), and I think the TWO deaths at the end of the book lost some impact being piled upon each other, but otherwise I absolutely adored this comic, and give it my strongest possible recommendation. EXCELLENT!


What did YOU think?

-B

Labels: Brian

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I'm off the school hook this morning as Tzipora is taking Ben in, so hurray I can babble for a bit!

Some old business first, before I say anything about comics...

1) The Bendis/Kirkman debate thing. They're both right (as such things usually go) -- it is EXTREMELY difficult to solely do creator-owned material and make a proper living from it, but when it works, it works amazingly well.

In a way, there are two kinds of comics shops, which for the purpose of this conversation, I'll call "leaders" and "followers". Leaders are always on the make for new voices and new ideas, and are pretty active in trying to identify new talent and to support them. Followers aren't interested in a work (and/or creator) until AFTER it's already broken elsewhere, so their risk is minimal. Getting through those first few ugly months of sales (Bendis' three-issue drop) is nearly entirely a function of the Leaders. I've long suggested that the real trick is making through your first 9-18 releases (largely depending on both how good you are, as well as your production schedule), until the Followers figure out there's something going on there, and that's the point you can start to profit from your creator owned work.

Doing "mainstream" Marvel/DC work generally does very little for your creator-owned profile, with a couple of rare exceptions where your first "notices" are coming from the M/D work. Mark MIllar might be a fairly OK example of that -- prior to his M/D work, there was very little "head turning" indy work from him. Sure, he got a little attention for SAVIOUR, but that never lasted long enough (or finished the story, even) to make much of a real mark. It was through doing increasingly higher profile material at M/D that got eyes on him for creator-owned material. But it is a rare creator that can do that because what you bring with you are associations from your M/D work.

See, generally speaking, in today's market (pretty much from the 90s on) any "base" you build from M/D work comes from the characters first, and the creative voice second, unless there's something strikingly different about that voice. Not a lot of guys really have that special thing, or rare alignment of circumstances to make it all work.

What I always tell creators is to build their own brand, a brand of themselves, rather than hoping that the M/D brands will rub off upon them. Bendis, for example, became hotter than sin as a M/D guy, to the point where he's one of the prime architects of the Marvel U. His sales on POWERS, meanwhile, haven't had any appreciable bumps, relative to the book being published by Image -- at least not the kind you'd hope for when you can say "FROM THE WRITER OF SECRET INVASION!" (or whichever) on the cover, y'know? Either way, "his" brand is inextricably tied with Marvel's brand right now.

Very generally, when a creator makes a reputation from M/D books that is translatable to creator-owned work, it isn't from the Big Books, but from the Quirky stuff. The audience for Spider-Man and X-Men or whatever isn't portable to your creator-brand recognition. The audience for the books/characters that people have written off can be.

Dunno if this is making any sense, it's too early in the morning.



2) The MINX thing. One thing to consider is that the "teen" reader devouring all of that Manga really really seem to be attracted to series, rather than titles or creators -- what they appear to be looking for is something they can read for a good long time, that comes out on a fairly regular basis to fill that jones. One-off titles don't show any great evidence of being popular in that demo. While some of the Minx books did eventually develop (or at least start to develop) sequels, the line was positioned very much as stand-alone books.

Spurgeon mentioned that he thought some of the demise might have come from the spending they did at the launch, and not getting the return they wanted from that, but that doesn't really sound like a DC thing to me -- they're usually pretty good at the Long Game.

In the DM, Minx looked like it was doing pretty well, to me -- probably enough to carry the line for a good while longer, so I think it's fair to think the problem is the bookstores.

I don't KNOW if any of this is right, but here's my educated guess. In the DM DC offered some big incentives to get stores to stock the books, so I suspect they did the same in the bookstore market. Bookstores, however, are a returnable market. My guess is what happened is that they way front-loaded copies into the bookstore market, and that most of them came back. I suspect that the Minx books had decent sales, relative to similar work from say, Vertigo (the OGN line, I mean), but that the big returns coming back made it so that any profit there, as well as the profit from the DM, was wiped out. Further, Vertigo-style OGNs launch first as a $25 (ish) HC, followed by $15 (ish) PB -- Minx books were only $10. The smaller trim size would make them a little cheaper to print, but probably not 1/3 less.

Retailers, in any market, fear the Stench of Death from a line. Once you're on our "bad producer" list (be that from quality, or policy), it's really hard to get off of it. Sometimes that designation comes from PERCEPTION, rather than reality. That is to say, you might not be looking at the number of copies that you sold as much as the number you SENT BACK. "Oh," you think, using imaginary and made up numbers, "normally I return 5-10%, and I've been returning 30-40% here; wow this line has the Stench of Death, let's cut back my orders to be REALLY tight"

It doesn't matter so much that you sold a modest and sustainable number of copies -- you THINK the line is a flop. In the DM you can see this sometimes in stores that don't do cycle sheets, where they "eyeball" the rack for sales -- if you see too big of a stack left over, you THINK a book isn't selling, and tend to cut it below it's actual market value.

My guess (and purely a guess) is that the actual sales of the line were probably good enough to keep it going on its own, but that the perception of the line meant that it needed to be a "hit" in order to keep going, and that the initial wave of returns were too high because the expectations for line were oversold...


Frack, I've been writing for 90 minutes? Got to jet over to the store to open. Back with some actual reviews in a few hours (it's a small enough week for comics that I'm sure I'll have time to bat them out)

Be right back!!

-B

Labels: Brian, retailing

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