I love you so much, Daleks.

Here is the beginning of my post.
And here is the rest of it:

Tor #1: I enjoy Joe Kubert’s war comics but I don’t think I’m the audience for his barbarian comics. I’d particularly enjoyed the Sgt. Rock comic that Kubert did with Brian Azzarello a few years ago, but I can’t seem to find a barbarian comic that’s the right fit for me.

What I found interesting about this comic:

There are only 10 panels in the comic which are silent. The overwhelming majority of panels contain insulting narration which explain in obtuse detail what Kubert’s drawn. I haven’t seen issue #2, but there isn’t a panel in issue #1 that needs any narration whatsoever— not a single panel-- and yet only 10 are silent.


This is an amateur hour technique being done by someone I think we’d all call a legend. Why is it there? Without it, what a fine example of a silent comic; with it, it's no longer a fine example of anything-- it's just another comic. I’d hate to be the guy trying to sell a serialized silent comic in today’s market, but hopefully, the collected edition will expect more of the audience.

I guess I’m more interested in who was responsible for the decision to add it in, Kubert or DC editors, than any of the contents of the book itself.

Logan: I think one or two of us on this website mentioned not caring for the writing after the first issue, but I don’t know if anyone checked in on this series after its conclusion with #3. I kept with it because I so love Eduardo Risso’s art.

But I did not enjoy this comic's story, no. To be fair, I’m not a Brian Vaughn fan. While I certainly respect his accomplishments, I tend to avoid his comics. I think the problem I had with this one is it’s about Wolverine at Hiroshima, but it turns out the problem with Hiroshima? It interferes with white guys fulfilling their creepy Asian fetishes. That’s about as bad as it ever gets for Wolverine. After surviving Hiroshima.

Where’s post-Hiroshima Japan? Where are people being vaporized? Where are the dead bodies? Where’s the Barefoot Gen shit, you know? Instead, it’s some nonsense about how wonderful a docile and subservient Asian woman can be. Dudes and their weird, silly fetishes are creepy, sure, but not as creepy as, I don’t know, A NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST. This jut felt like a wasted opportunity, especially with Risso— no slouch with violent imagery— behind the wheel.

Also:

The Grave of the Fireflies shout-out aside, I just found that line ghastly and clunky, though I’m having a hard time articulating why. Something about how he's trying to anthropomorphize the Bomb gives me the willies. You could argue it’s a double entendre, referring both to the bomb and the country making it... I just think that’s a fantastically stupid way of thinking about the United States’s actions during WWII, especially the decision to drop the bomb.

All that having been said, Marvel’s decision to make this available in black and white, as well as color, is maybe the best decision that company’s made in the last 500 years. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Pretty Baby Machine #1: This is historical fiction by Clark Westerman and Kody Chamberlain, published by the Shadowline division of Image, about Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly teaming up to fight Al Capone.

That’s a solid enough premise for a comic book, I guess. Chamberlain’s got a menacing chiauroscuro noir style that I’m a sucker for, but the problem with a style like that is it requires especially strong character designs so that the reader can tell people apart. Here, it seems like the character designs might be based on historical photos; personally, I had a devil of a time telling characters apart. Westerman doesn’t help the reader any by referring to Machine Gun Kelly as, uhm, “George”. Which, yes, was his name, but: I would argue that clarity should have trumped accuracy. At least, I’m confused why he didn’t go with “Kelly.”

Confusion aside, no one’s going to go too wrong with me by doing a comic involving tommy guns. Any comic involving gangsters or crime shit will have something there for me. Chamberlain draws old cars and other period details in a way I enjoyed. However, a gunfight cribbed from Millers Crossing and a later scene involving a match going out and another match being struck both felt like they were written for the movies, not for the comics page, and not for Chamberlain. Big points, though, for a completely gratuitous page involving a stripper. I approve!

Ordinary Victories—What is Precious: This is part two of the Eisner nominated, Angoulême prize-winning graphic novel; it came out a week or two ago, I think. I bought part two by accident (whoops!); I never read part one, but according to the back cover, it’s a novel about “banal sadness”. I don’t think I missed anything too important plot-wise. Very little happened that I didn’t understand; very little happens period, though I unfortunately may not have had the full emotional experience of the book.

It’s about a French guy who smokes cigarettes, has trouble with his woman, sometimes is an asshole. I’d greatly enjoyed a graphic novel with the same premise a year or two ago: Dupuy-Berberian’s way-more-comedic Get a Life collection of Monseur Jean stories had been one of my favorite books of that year, whichever year it came out. I know it’s not true but I like to imagine in France, stories about Frenchmen smoking cigarettes and having trouble with their women is their equivalent of Spiderman comics. That people go to Angoulême, dressed up as Monseur Jean. Massive Multi-player Online Games where characters run around complaining about their nosy landlords, and having wistful flashbacks to their childhoods, and oppressing Arabs. “Science fiction, westerns, romance, mysteries, and Abrasive Frenchmen” – a world where that’s one of the pillars of genre, you know? That’s the world I want to live in.

Anyways: Ordinary Victories #2 is actually not a very funny book, but a meditation on the passage of time, the journey into adulthood, dealing with parents, children, and then at the end, it swerves into this lengthy digression about modern French politics.

It’s the kind of comic that a lot of fans online might want to call boring: “I get enough banal sadness in my life, buddy; when I read a comic, I want to read about lesbian werewolves who use dildos made of silver to kill-fuck one another. The banal sadness I can get for free, buddy. I’m going to call you buddy.” The whole "there's too much minimalist slice-of-life hoo-hee in comics" crowd. I can see the argument. I just don’t get how you can want one flavor of thing all the time, whether that flavor’s sad or crazy or whatever. I don’t get how this existing takes away from or prevents something else existing. Beats me. Anyways, this, it caught me in the right mood. I think a point in favor of the book though is it’s not completely dour and “life is all 100% horrible shit” like the American equivalents that might come to mind for most people.


Anyways, I was enjoying the banal sadness before that swerve at the end. There’s no story to speak of, but the moments of banal sadness are convincing. A favorite moment for me involved the main character watching his infant daughter be bullied by a young boy who she’s infatuated with and pursues, and the father’s reaction to that. That sort of thing.

Larcenet’s art is a pleasure, deceptively loose, but with a strong sense of lighting-- that's a bad scan above; my scanner's dying, the colors are way more muted than that. Anyways: I like how Larcenet draws people. Their noses overwhelm their faces—he takes a delight in wrinkles. Why are other countries so much more comfortable with the idea of funny drawings than we are? But the swerve into modern French politics threw me. The last chunk of the book is a depiction of the night of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election; I mostly know Sarkozy from having spent a few minutes—well, hours-- looking at photos of his super-hot lady. Why are other countries so much more comfortable with the idea of hot, naked first ladies? DAMN YOU, MAYFLOWER!

Anyways, I felt very put out by that portion of the book because I’m sure there were subtleties to what was happening that I didn’t appreciate. But: there’s a moment in Goddard’s Band Apart where Anna Karina starts babbling about politics on the subway. I’m not a huge Goddard fan; that’s probably my favorite Goddard movie. But I was okay with that moment because it was more so about the Anna Karina character’s youth than what she was saying. Similarly, here, I could at least appreciate that it was about the characters’ aging, that we all try to grasp for something to hold onto as we pass through.

Angry Youth Comix #14: A lot of people profess not to get Johnny Ryan, or not find him funny, but I really just don’t see how that’s possible. Especially in light of issue #14 of Angry Youth Comix. I love how the cover is almost like a brown paper bag, like the contents were the comic equivalent of a homeless man’s liquor.

A lot of people’s Top Ten Favorite-est Comics of the Year lists this year will involve comics about Israel or the exquisite sadness of being an Asian man who likes blondes, all that stuff; mine will involve cheeseburger-flavored semen...? I got dropped on my head a lot as a baby.

Labels: Abhay

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The first act of BLUE BEETLE winds to an end between issues #7 and #12.

I: CREATIVE CHANGES

BLUE BEETLE loses co-writer Keith Giffen after issue #10, leaving screenwriter John Rogers as the book’s sole “pilot”. Artist Cully Hamner leaves the book the same month, ably replaced by Raphael Albuquerque.

Perhaps the most confusing thing about this comic is the fact DC leaves Albuquerque on BLUE BEETLE, rather than promote him to a “higher profile” assignment. Does Marvel transition their stronger artists significantly more often? It seems that way to me but maybe that’s because I pay more attention to Marvel. Anyways, maybe he stays on BLUE BEETLE by choice. I have no idea.

II: THE WORLD TOUR

Two or three boring and inconsequential “adventures” go by, not worth summarizing. A variety of flashbacks answer various minor questions, like “Why does the Peacemaker know Blue Beetle’s scarab came from outer space aliens?” and “What happened to Blue Beetle during the INFINITE CRISIS, eight months earlier?” and “Who would be the wife if Blue Beetle married Captain Atom?”

There are pleasant moments. If you enjoy the wisecracking, you might enjoy a brief appearance by Green Arrow & Whatshername:

Two issues involve a completely pointless team-up between Blue Beetle and NEW GODS characters. DC’s grandest, most epic, most… well, most KIRBY characters once again reduced to rote, supporting cameos in a C-List character’s book.

If you like the NEW GODS, it's annoying seeing those characters treated in such a slapdash way; if you don't, then it's probably annoying to see them at all. So: ellipsis followed by a question mark, yes ...? Then again, Luke Cage once fought Doctor Doom over a couple hundred bucks, and that's a fact everybody (myself included) is pretty happy with so perhaps I'm overreacting.

That’s all part of the World Tour for BLUE BEETLE.

The World Tour’s my pet name for a set of issues that are mostly an excuse to introduce a new hero to some aspect of the DC Universe, rather than tell a story necessitated by the premise or the characters. For BLUE BEETLE, the World Tour includes (i) the time Blue Beetle meets the New Gods, (ii) the time Blue Beetle hangs out with Green Lantern, (iii) the time Blue Beetle meets the Batman, (iv) the time Blue Beetle meets Superman, (v) the time Blue Beetle meets the Teen Titans, (vi) the time Blue Beetle met the Spectre, and (vii) the time Woody Harrelson taught Blue Beetle to retain his ching.

Outcomes vary: for example, the Green Lantern issue felt reasonably necessary to the story. But I personally dislike World Tour issues. It’s time spent away from the supporting cast or from creating a unique point of view for the book itself. And worse, it encourages short-hand characterization of “I’m not like Superman because I ______” or “That may work for you, Green Lantern, but I prefer to ______” or “I can feel you in my _____, Batman; your _____ feels like its tearing me apart; please don’t ______ in my ______ or I’ll become pregnant with your Bat-________.” (Oh, Hentai-Batman, you’re my favorite).


I have an impatience to me. I want to find out what happens next. And a World Tour issue only very rarely says what happens next; it’s typically a distraction away from whatever mysteries or conflicts power a particular book. They're digressions; anecdotes. Look: I hate to brag, but one time, I saw the actor who played Carlton from the Fresh Prince, standing around at JFK Airport. That happened. That’s something that actually happened, for me. I can dine out on that for years to come. But when I write my memoir, (OH SHIT: I'M OLD; Random House: 2012), that’s not going to be a chapter in there. It’ll just be an endnote, somewhere in Chapter 2: “I’ve seen some awesome things; I don’t deserve this shit.” And then “ENDNOTE: One of the awesome things was that I once saw Carlton from the Fresh Prince near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” Poetic license! New York Times bestsellers list ahoy!

There are good things that can be said about a World Tour, but for BLUE BEETLE, during the book’s second act, it ultimately becomes a near-fatal distraction to more pressing elements in the book.

III: AN OUT-OF-NOWHERE DIGRESSION ABOUT STARMAN

I also find the World Tour interesting in how it signals creators oblivious—- if not hostile—- to posterity.

I re-read the DC comic book STARMAN the other day. It had been my absolute favorite comic for the first twelve issues. But by issue #36, I had quit the book, angry, just ... ANGRY, cursing its name.

I’d always wondered if I’d made a mistake, if I'd over-reacted, if I was being silly, so I went and read it beginning to end. Turns out? I got lucky. While the first 18 or so issues hold up beautifully, just beautifully, past that, the book goes into a horrifying nosedive. Story arcs drag on indefinitely; the book’s best feature—- its love of DC history—- becomes an anchor around its neck. The book ends and ends and ends—- it has more endings than some bullshit LORD OF THE RINGS film. Each resolution to one of the book’s mysteries is less satisfying than the next. And Tony Harris’s departure blows open a hole that never gets filled despite some admirable efforts by other artists.

The first 18 issues are such terrific work, though, so exactly and totally what I look for from a mainstream comic, that I’d happily recommend the recent STARMAN OMNIBUS. The main character is both universal and specific; the writer doesn’t pretend only superheroics matter, but is eager to share opinions about art and music, culture; the book is enriched by comics history; the setting, the supporting cast-— here is a world that feels lived in and alive; the DC Universe becomes a fictional world worth visiting.

Re-reading it, I realized I’d been unknowingly and unfairly comparing later books like BLUE BEETLE to that early run. Jack Knight had a personality; where’s Blue Beetle’s personality? Starman reflected its author’s passion for old movies; what passion does Blue Beetle reflect? Et cetera. How much can be done with a mainstream comic!

But… but: STARMAN was another book fond of the World Tour, to its detriment. The book’s unquestionable low point is a 5000 issue-long tour of the DCU’s outer space. And it’s another book oblivious to posterity. A significant chunk of the book relies upon Neron.

You know: Neron.

Neron was the lead villain in UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED, a freakishly awful DC crossover from the 90’s. He’s made minor appearances since but the minutae of the Underworld Unleashed crossover play a notable role in STARMAN. Much like BLUE BEETLE, STARMAN’s creators were eager to incorporate DCU storylines into its plot.

Which is fine: if you expect that no one will ever possibly want to read your comic book months or even years later.

An excerpt from Starman #35 featuring that one super-lame Electric Blue Superman.

Is a disregard for posterity a bad thing? I’m honestly not sure. Orson Welles once said “It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.” On the other hand, after saying that, he promptly ate a live cow, drank a tanker trunk of whiskey, tried to sell some green beans, and performed the voice of Unicron in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE before vomiting all over one of Peter Bogdanovich’s trophy blondes. So, who knows?

IV: PREJUDICES

Blue Beetle acquires a “mentor” figure in Peacemaker, a minor DC hero notable for fighting evil with a bucket on his head. They at least updated him. By taking off the bucket. Which was a good start.

Bucket.

So: we have a screenwriter writing a story about a Mentor Figure tutoring the Chosen One on his Hero’s Journey.

Ugh.

Look, I’m prejudiced. With a few exceptions, when a comic book writer is a fancy-pants Hollywood screenwriter, I just go in prejudiced. Is it as bad a flare-up for my prejudices as, say, when a wannabe comic tries to look like bad manga? No, not even close—- but I have a good sized chip on my shoulder. I have this irrational thing of...

“You’re not worthy of serious attention. This would be a nice place if it weren’t for you tourists. Fucking tourists!”

How crazy is that?? How many screenwriters do I know that are huge comic fans? How are they “tourists?” It’s completely nuts.

Bucket.

There are these screenwriters who sold a movie version of their Oni comic in April 2008; the comic comes out in an unspecified date in 2009. And I read that story, and I know and remember the name of their comic so I can specifically not buy it when it comes out. I’m THAT prejudiced! Why? Maybe they’re good and decent people who love comics more than any of us.

Why am I the petty and angry guy on the Internet? Is it resentment? Is it pettiness? Maybe it's all those things. Maybe I'm a bad person. I don't know exactly what it is.

I think for some fans, Senor Fancypants makes their delusional fantasies that they’ll somehow magically wind up writing IRON MAN that much more improbable. But I honestly don’t think that’s what it is for me. I really, truly don’t.

Marvel editors have argued in the past, something like “These guys really know story structure more than someone who just read comics.” But that ignores every single successful mainstream creator in comics right now, the majority of whom came from independent comics, smaller venues, clawed their way up. People for whom comics weren’t Plan B.

But: does that matter? Well, no, in the abstract, logically speaking: no.

Or I guess I always have the suspicion of … like when you hear someone go “I’m going to come at science fiction fresh because I’m not a sci-fi nerd. So, my story’s going to be about a spaceship where the computer in charge of the spaceship—get this—it goes insane.” I trust a native to know what’s tiresome and know what’s surprising and entertaining. But: again, that’s based on the faulty assumption that these guys aren’t fans themselves, so...

So: how crazy does this all sound? Hello, crazy. I know this prejudice is crazy; if it weren’t crazy, I wouldn’t call it a “prejudice.” I just know I have it and I should be honest about it. I think it’s important to have some degree of self-knowledge. For example, I know, I am absolutely certain, about myself that if I were ever a puppeteer, if I ever worked with puppets, I’d build my puppet with a puppet penis, but then I’d put pants on my puppet, right? Like, human pants, that would always be on my puppet, so no one watching would guess that my puppet had a penis. That way, if they ever fired me, I’d be able to pull down my puppet’s pants and scream “Eat this, Jim Henson!” I know that about myself, and I think it’s important to have that self-knowledge.

Anyways, it’s not like BLUE BEETLE should be congratulated for its clichés either. Watching some screenwriter fill out a Syd Field crossword puzzle is the opposite of entertainment. 34 across: “hero finds companions” (That’d be issue #9). 14 down: “mentor figure/guide died / gets injured and can’t accompany hero on final mission” (There’s issue #20). 18 across: Thing that erupts from my butt, four letters. Nor is the fact that each of these events is handled in a completely perfunctory way-- that the companions (a hacker duo, ala Mr. Ram Ridley from the Mark Gruenwald CAPTAIN AMERICA run) end up being insignificant to the story; that the mentor is "taken off the board" in some dull crossover with the SINESTRO WAR-- to the book's credit, no.


Bucket.

Labels: Abhay

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So: where were we...?

Secret Invasion #3-- the penultimate issue to the halfway point. How exciting!

To date, there has been absolutely no explanation to the question that keeps nagging at me: why would anyone go to a restaurant called Hell's Kitchen and then complain that their food's taking too long? Didn't you watch the previous seasons of the show? But week after week, that restaurant fills up wtih people shocked-- SHOCKED!-- that the food isn't very good. It's in its, like, third or fourth season. What are those whiny people complaining about? Scream at them, Gordon Ramsey. Scream at them...

I wouldn't say I'm losing interest in Secret Invasion, but...

So far in this series, about twenty minutes have gone by. It's been an eventful twenty minutes-- but if the superheros ever break for lunch, their lunch break could very well take 8 issues. 12, if they eat at the California Pizza Kitchen. 6 issues of Wolverine going into a Berzerker Rage saying "How long does it take these people to make a Caesar Salad? If it takes them this long to make a Caesar Salad-- are the people who order pizza waiting all day? How long do these other assholes wait? I wonder if anyone has ever died waiting for a Chicken Fajita Pizza. What a horrible sounding pizza. How is that progress? That's not progress. I bet if you showed a Chicken Fajita pizza to one of my ancestors, they'd cry. This entire food experience is disappointing my ancestors." Berzerker Rage!

I once wrote to the California Pizza Kitchen, accusing their Fettucini Alfredo of causing me feelings of depression and sadness. You know: I was bored. Anyways: they never wrote back to address the depression or sadness I'd accused the Garlic Cream Sauce of having caused-- instead, they just sent me coupons for more food. I really think there's a metaphor there for, like, our entire way of life, man. But I guess that doesn't really have anything to do with Secret Invasion.

As I was saying, Hell's Kitchen is a reality television show in which a pudgy, sassy child-molesty-looking guy and a pudgy, sassy, yelling/crying lady compete to be the best chef, and the best part is the end of the episode when show host Gordon Ramsey kicks someone out of the kitchen and their photograph bursts into flame. It's what I'm waiting for the entire episode-- I know it's going to happen, and when it finally does happen, that's the moment of satisfaction that keeps me coming back, I think.

Or there's a show called House about a sassy doctor - the tension builds the entire episode until the sassy doctor figures out how to cure the sicko-of-the week. That's the moment of satisfaction for House. Or if you enjoy politics-- we're all waiting for Hillary Clinton to show up at the Democratic Convention with dynamite strapped to her pantsuit, demanding that we name her Emperor of Pretty. We all see it coming-- it's the only way it can end-- it's the way we all want it to end. Sass-ily!

So: What are we waiting to see happen for Secret Invasion?

With the DC crossovers-- Final Crisis and Infinite Crisis both had the same thing going on: buy this crossover so you can find out what this crossover is about. At the beginning of both of those, it's entirely inscrutable what the hell the story was / is going to be about. DC fans pay for the privilege of finding out what they're paying for-- the moment of ultimate satisfaction, the happy ending , is when they tell you what the point of what they sold you is.

But Secret Invasion... The comic is titled "Secret Invasion"-- are fans waiting to see how the invasion gets repelled? That doesn't sound like much. If you look at 9/11, people sure seemed to want revenge after that day, no matter how ill-advised-- just surviving an incident usually isn't enough for the narrative people want to tell themselves. So: will people want to see the Marvel Superheros get revenge for the invasion? Do they want to see the Marvel Superheros invade a completely unrelated alien race that wasn't really involved in the invasion? Or do fans want to see the invasion succeed and Skrulls taking over the Earth? There's no particular bad guy that the fans are being asked to hate. The Skrulls so far are literally faceless.

But maybe that changes here so-- time to read the issue:

AFTER READING THE FIRST PAGE OF THE THIRD ISSUE:

The first page is a Dramatis Personae page, identifying the name and appearance of a number of characters.

And wow: I don't recognize half of these characters. There's a character called Stature? ... She get really tall, I presume? There's a character called Wiccan, but it's a guy and not a pudgy lesbian. Annex? His power is to be slightly nicer and newer than the rest of the superheros...? Melee, Sunstreak, Gorilla Girl...? Red Nine, Proton, Batwing, Prodigy, Geiger... Geiger?! Gauntlet? Is he unnaturally good at the video-game Gauntlet? Does he team up with Rampage or Paperboy? That'd be a helpful power, if you were short on quarters.

It's like they gave names to those little tiny characters you see floating around in the background of some DC crossover, after George Perez had too many cups of coffee, and let them into the Marvel Universe. Let DC have the coffee people!

AFTER READING THE ENTIRE ISSUE:

What just happened to this comic?

In this issue: all of the Marvel superheros you know and like go away for 22 pages, and, like, these other characters I've never heard of come along instead. The big, hyped-up summer crossover series just put an issue-long spotlight on Geiger and Friends...!

And then Nick Fury shows up at the end, but with these other D-List characters I've never seen before, who...

I think this comic just turned into the Skrulls versus a mid-1990's Image comic! Nick Fury has a gun so plainly about compensating for a small penis-- that gun would make Codename Strykeforce blush. And there's a minority lady, a lady with a robot hand, a guy with his shirt off, Dave Navarro holding a chain, a little kid-- the Marvel universe just got invaded by the 5000th WildC.A.Ts revamp.

Chap Yaep's going to sue somebody.

Seriously though: who are any of the characters in this comic book? ... Maybe this isn't a valid thing to say, but: What happened to Spiderman or the Wolverine? Didn't Marvel used to publish comics with Spiderman or the Wolverine in them? (Though god, speaking of which-- I've been following Spiderman for a couple issues just because I like Marcos Martin's art. The writing though... Jesus Christ! Is that, like-- why is Marvel... Did someone lose a bet?)

I suppose Marvel wants fan reaction to focus on the Iron Man scene, in which it is teased that Iron Man might be a little green man. But... come on: they're not revealing that Iron Man's a little green man a month after his movie comes out. It's just not plausible. What's more interesting is that Iron Man brings the number of characters with a moustache in this comic book to a total of five. Five men with moustaches. One girl who looks like she waxes it... I went to a party once where there was a girl with a moustache. She didn't wax it, and it'd actually grown into, like... like, a full-blown moustache. Regular girl, a little thick, and a moustache. Never occurred to her to wax it. It really blew my mind. Anyways, five moustaches in a single, non-period-piece comic book? That's something, at least. Maybe that's where Secret Invasion is headed-- towards an invasion of guys offering moustache rides? I for one welcome the Mighty Marvel Moustache Rides!

My favorite character I've never heard of before and don't care anything about is definitely Annex. FYI. I hope Hulkamaniac survives though. Or that other character... with the hair...? Who ... seems like he likes good more than he likes evil. I hope he wins in the end. I'm rooting for that guy. Granted, Final Crisis revolves around Terrible Turpin, but... I prefer a DC comic about obscure minor DC characters . Personally, I like the Marvel A-list and the DC D-List, and I don't like the Marvel D-List or the DC A-List. Maybe I'm weird that way, though...

Yeah, nothing really happens in this one. Here's the plot summary for this issue: "Nick Fury shows up." That's about all that happens. I understand why it's plotted this way-- they wanted the issue to be yet another "shit hits the fan" issue, showing how overwhelmingly the Skrulls are winning up until the Nick Fury arrival which they end on. They want to show how the Skrulls really had this invasion planned out, and how it would have worked but for ______. But 9 pages of Skrulls beating up D-listers...? I suspect they've overestimated their audience's patience on this one. Given how little "happened" last issue, and again this issue... I would be surprised if most fans are okay with the pacing... I would guess that'll be the focus of fan reaction far moreso than reacting to that lame Iron Man scene.

I like how a Marvel comic has an advertisement for Batman in it. There are two ads of the Incredible Hulk encouraging an aging douchebag to do his laundry or something. I don't really understand those. For example, why is the aging douchebag wearing that awful belt? Am I right? He's wearing a gray shirt and gray pants, with a gray belt and a gray jacket... Did someone boring die? How about that men's fashion, huh?

Oh, and speaking of douchebags: there's a giant closeup photo of Will Smith smirking on the back of the comic. It's advertising a movie or something, but really, it's only a matter of years before photographs of Will Smith smirking are placed strategically throughout this country just to numb and placate the public. They'll drop photos of Will Smith smirking down onto our food riots to calm us all down. I'm expecting the food riots in November incidentally-- high price of heating during the winter, $80 a gallon gas by then, truckers striking, banking crises, mothers abandoning their babies, nature reclaiming the cities, a madman rising in the East. Basically: photo of Will Smith on the back cover of Secret Invasion #3 reminds me of a rapidly impending apocalypse. But photos of Will Smith have been doing that for me since the music video for Miami... humanity muddles through, I guess.

Also: the Vision gets his head blown off, which would be moving if I knew he was alive before this comic. Didn't he get killed already? I thought that character was dead...

So: that wraps the issue. The plot has advanced another 10 minutes, which-- if the life expectancy of the average American is 77.8 years, assuming this pacing holds, according to my rough calculations, one human lifetime is the equivalent of 408,968 issues of Secret Invasion. A comic telling the story of a single human life at this rate would thus take 34,080 years to be published. Not including annuals.

I hope next issue has the for-real Marvel superheros in it, though. I prefer them.

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Aaah, lazy Saturday, reading my Secret Invasion…

Before Having Read the Comic:

I really enjoyed reactions to issue #1 around the internet. My favorite criticism is from a Mr. Stahl at Newsarama which pointed out that Skrulls revert back into Skrulls when they die:

“Detecting impersonators is trivial: Take a live tissue sample from a suspect, and see if it reverts, immediately upon being removed from the body or after the cells in the sample die. There’s no plausible way for a Skrull to retain control over the sample, especially after cell death.”

I’m not being mean—I think that’s a great reaction. It’s a completely valid, logical solution to the logistical problems that extraterrestrial Skrulls would face in mounting an invasion of the planet Earth from their outer space hives.

My only way of arguing it is a cop-out: I don’t care about logic—I just want to see 2008 Luke Cage fight 1978 Luke Cage, and logic be damned. Logic be damned! Which… that’s how we ended up in the Iraq War, if you think about it. Which I haven’t.

I really enjoyed the reactions, but... I think a lot of times people complain about big crossovers—and with good reason. Very good reason. But I think what gets lost in all of that is… you know, a lot of people like these things. They’re not all bad people. So: what are they getting out of them?

I’m reading my first China Mieville book right now, Perdido Street Station. Mieville is an avowed Marxist and international law specialist who writes these very odd novels about monsters. I guess he's the cutting-edge guy in fantasy right now-- I don't usually read those kinds of novels anymore so I wouldn't know. I saw a quote of his from an interview the other day:

Well I think part of the problem with the modern 'liberal' novel is that it often tends not to conceive of the totality of social life: instead it abstracts one element (stereotypically the middle-class family), and universalises it. By contrast, fantastic fiction that 'world-creates' creates a world - a totality. So whether or not it explicitly spells it out, there's a sense that an economic problem conceived of as background and the romantic plot foregrounded are part of the _same universe_.

Maybe there’s an analogy we can draw to the big crossover. A specific series can only cover so much geography—an issue of The Fantastic Four can talk about family, an issue of Captain America can talk about patriotism. But the daily lives of readers are rarely just one thing—life can often be a series of collisions between disparate elements, between balancing family and work, social responsibility and private needs, etc. People eat dinner with their families, then turn on TV and hear about crazy shit happening on the other side of the world. Everything collides together. Everything’s colliding faster and faster—try and follow the news anymore. One day, the Bush Administration’s corrupt, the next day they’re incompetent, the day after that, they’re back to corrupt—who can keep up? The same machine you’re reading this on, brings you pornography and music, you know? The pornography is sometimes about innocent schoolgirls who get caught cheating on their college geography exams, and have to pleasure their way out of trouble. Sometimes there are moustaches involved; sometimes there aren’t. Sometimes the performances stops in the middle for the two lovers to kick open a piñata, and inside of the piñata are sex toys, and then the porn stars resume their lovemaking on top of the lust-piñata. Sometimes a young pistelero arrives upon the scenes and says “Madre de Dios! You have destroyed my lust-piñata with your naughtiness. I shall teach you both a lesson.” And then he does, sexually, and it’s horrible, and you want to look away, and you want someday to forget what you see, forget what happens next. But it’s border justice, and you learn to live with that.

Usually there are tattoos.

I think a big crossover can speak to that sense that beyond our own limited human stories or what have you, we’re part of a larger social organism, in a way that I don’t know of or can think of any other mainstream comic that can. So: maybe that’s something…?

After Having Read Issue #2:

Not much "happens" this issue, so I don’t have much to say about any of it. This issue’s mostly just follow-through on the events of the first issue-- fight scene, cliffhanger, and done. I thought it was nicely balanced between the big fight scenes, and bringing key events down to a level of how specific characters react to the situation. I've read a number of crossovers which have failed dramatically at the latter.

Mostly, I suppose I liked this issue because there were three double-page splash pages of things going nuts. The hero of the issue to me is inker Mark Morales: having seen Leinil Yu without him, I have to say I’m happy he’s around. I liked each of the double-page splashes so I liked the issue. People who don't enjoy that sort of thing probably enjoyed the issue less, I'd guess.

Unfortunately, the issue hints that maybe the Sentry will figure prominently in this series. I don't think that's a very interesting character, so I'd rather he didn't.

The only part that jumps out at me as being especially interesting is the “cliffhanger” involving Captain America. Basically, a new Captain America pops out and the issue suggests New Cap is real and Old Cap was a Skrull for the last ___ years. I think that's something, but not because anyone is going to believe the cliffhanger for a second and believe that Old Cap could have been a Skrull. Readers have seen his dead body, seen his funeral, etc. Having him be a Skrull would be a horrible take-away on readers, and would badly derail the work done on the regular series. I think it'd very obviously be a huge, huge mistake.

But I still think it’s an interesting cliffhanger because it poses the question that… the Old Cap managed to rally half the characters behind him in Marvel’s Civil War; what kind of damage is the fake New Cap capable of? I think that’s a fun, solid question to end an issue on.

Labels: Abhay

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This is part two of an irregular multiple part series of essays looking at the first 25 issues of the BLUE BEETLE comic book series, recently published by DC Comics. Part One-- a statement of intentions and a look at the first issue of the series-- can be found HERE.

This installment will look at BLUE BEETLE issues #2-6.



I.

The first full storyline of the comic is about Blue Beetle's confrontation with his first set of antagonists. Blue Beetle's "secret identity" is a Mexican-American teenager. So... the first challenge he has to face? A street gang. Named the Posse.

Race is a motherfucker. It’s a tough issue to deal with in any capacity, and I appreciate that the writers are on a tightrope—put in the street gang and you get the “oh, why must we see the street gang” crowd; leave out the street gang and you get the “why’d you white-wash the Mexican-American hero”; have him get a B in Spanish and you get Cheech & Chong fans excited but everyone else gets confused. That damned-if-you- do bind is a reason I think other creators might want to shy away from writing those characters—but also a reason they shouldn’t.

The Posse, though? The same name as the Jamaican bad guys from the Steven Segal epic, MARKED FOR DEATH?


Unfortunately, unlike MARKED FOR DEATH’s Posse, BLUE BEETLE’s Posse are neither Jamaican nor super wicked awesome-est street gang ever; they kind of suck. Luckily, they aren’t featured in the comic very much beyond this arc.

Per the classic shonen fight-comic formula, as the arc progresses, Blue Beetle ultimately teams up with the Posse (who in these issues suddenly include his best friend) to face off against a greater threat—the lady crime boss, La Dama! (Who he will later team up with to face the greater threat of so-and-so, and so-on, as the formula dictates). So although the Posse are the bad guys of issue #2, by issue #6, they’ve become the good guys.

Which… is kind of weird. Because fun-fact about the Posse:


They’re engaged in narco-trafficking.

About 400 tons of cocaine enter into the United States every year. That’s not counting the tons of heroin, meth, etc. So… you know, statistically speaking, if Blue Beetle’s friend ever looked in the back of a truck, chances are he’d discover a big mountain of ye’ old yayo. But on the bright-side, maybe it’s sex slaves—- 15 year old child-brides for our professional ballplayers, if that’s the sort of thing that makes you feel better. Or guns intended for child-soldiers. Or a dirty bomb.

Statistically, though—come on, read between the lines: he’s engaged in narco-trafficking.

The first issue has the main character not caring if one of his friends being physically if not sexually abused by her father— now in issue #5, we have the main character not caring that his best friend is engaged in narco-trafficking. Thank god the space aliens show up in a few issues and change the trajectory of this comic—otherwise, it was really just a matter of time before Blue Beetle’s dad would’ve had a couple baby skulls mounted on his cock, and Blue Beetle would be holding pom poms and cheering him on, and that’d be the cover. “This issue, Blue Beetle’s polygamous first cousin makes a flesh necklace from the ears of his many Vietnamese war-brides, while Blue Beetle eats a delicious French Apple pie.”

There will be readers who’ll insist that the trucks might be carrying pixie dust or robot apes, since this is the DCU and the DCU is built on top of a frothy cake of whimsy and bullshit. Their argument would go: “because the DCU is built on top of a frothy cake of whimsy and bullshit, we can suspend our disbelief and believe it’s possible that a street gang involved in illegal smuggling operating out of EL PASO, TEXAS, is smuggling something that is illegal but does not offend our sense of right and wrong the way smuggling drugs, guns or people might.”

Fine, fine, eat your cake. But the comic still has a street gang in it. And is specifically stating that they financially support themselves by operating in an extra-legal way. And those characters are the positive characters. The negative characters? La Dama’s big crime in the arc is taking a baby away from… a street gang whose engaged in operating in illegal behavior.

Uh, that exists outside the DCU: it’s called Child Protective Services.

II.

La Dama is taking super-powered children from out of the barrio or away from the street gangs, and is keeping them in a safe, structured environment in which they’re provided with an education. The arc ends on a bizarre note where the characters who had been “kidnapped” are urged by the head of a street gang to return to the barrios. They’re urged to abandon the safety of Child Protective Services and to return to the bosom of the societal institutions provided by extra-legal street gangs.


You don’t need white institutions to protect you because now the Mexican-Americans have their own superhero! Gangs ahoy! At least Blue Beetle looks embarrassed by all this, I guess, but it’s hard to tell if that’s the character reacting to the speech, or the artist reacting to the writing.

I think we can all agree at least that La Dama is in the wrong for having been engaged in kidnapping children from their parents in order to raise an army of magical Latinos in the hopes of someday conquering the world. But the rest? Well, at the risk of repeating myself: race is a motherfucker. Sometimes things sound different ways to different people. The arc was perfectly fine to most people who read it. Perhaps most people read the “safety versus freedom” aspects as a commentary on the civil rights situation in this country following this country’s botched response to 9/11. And not the way I read it which is, you know: “minorities should avoid the social support or interference of white institutions in favor of their own institutions—no matter how criminal or decrepit or involved in the narco-trafficking business-- even if it means their friends get beaten by their dads.”

I’m sure fans could angrily argue that the bad guys can’t be a metaphor for white institutions because La Dama is a minority character herself, but—- well, I wouldn’t find that a very convincing argument, and they would, and there’s the impasse. But say a fan argues that “La Dama is the bad guy and she’s a minority, so everything you just said is wrong.” Here’s the thing I don’t get then: Blue Beetle only defeats this threat by exposing La Dama’s wrongdoing to … a higher authority, specifically a cameo from The Phantom Stranger:


So even if you set aside everything else, in the first arc, the minority heroes haven’t really changed anything, but have only created the conditions necessary for a magical White Guy to step in and rescue the minorities from themselves. The arc says a Magical White Guy is the necessary solution to keep the evil minorities and the good minorities in a proper bargaining relationship. If bad minorities act out, the good super-minorities rat them out to the Magical White Man.

Uhm, yeah: no.

But look, we all have our different perspectives, and hey, that plus refracted light is what makes us a rainbow.

III.

The 2nd issue continued to have a “future storyline” taking place after the previously published Infinite Crisis miniseries, along with a “past storyline” taking place before or contemporaneously with said miniseries.


At the end of issue 2, the series adds in the "twist" that the "future" storyline (and the rest of the series) takes place exactly one year after the crucial events of the "past" storyline. Why? Because it's DC and that means... EDITORIAL FIAT! Yay!

At or about the publication of the second issue of BLUE BEETLE, DC's latest EDITORIAL FIAT! du jour was "all of our books take place one year later than the last moments of INFINITE CRISIS." So, BLUE BEETLE, like the rest of the DC line (I guess…?), jammed in a “one year later” subplot.

One Year Later? Really? Even if it's a new book, launching a new character, that doesn't need any added confusion? EDITORIAL FIAT! Even if it damages the compact between a reader and a book that a comic is a window into another world with its own people and geography and rules, by reminding us of the bizarre, haphazard creative forces that go into that world's creation? EDITORIAL FIAT! Even if it damages the relationship between a reader and a creative team by reminding the reader that the creative team includes a bunch of fucking editors? EDITORIAL FIAT! Even if Kyle Mclachlan reached into a kangaroo pouch and pulled out a severed ear, and the kangaroo punched him in the skull, and the ear was on fire, and the kangaroo was on fire, and our loins were on fire, and the whole world was on fire? DRUGS!




Earmuffs, Blue Beetle! Earmuffs!

IV.

The arc isn’t very meaningful long-term. I don’t know if that matters. The Posse plays hardly any role in the rest of the series— red herring.

Blue Beetle’s goal is to meet one particular member of the Posse so she can explain his powers to him. She never does or explains anything of any value, and is never seen again— red herring.

The arc sets up an archnemesis for Blue Beetle, La Dama, who doesn’t really ever do anything I remember being especially evil for the rest of the series— red herring.

The arc sets up a third nemesis for Blue Beetle, a magician henchman for La Dama who never really ends up mattering very much— red herring.

The entire arc is about magic in the DC Universe, and Blue Beetle learning about magic, and coping with magic. The rest of the comic is a space opera sci-fi adventure— red herring.


The most interesting bit is the series sets up a dilemma: should Blue Beetle save his friend from her evil Aunt and save himself the hassle of having his secret identity exposed, or should he allow her to be raised by a crime-lord for his own convenience?

Guess which option he chooses. Also: who ultimately resolves the moral dilemma? Not Blue Beetle— it’s resolved for him by external events. So, I’d personally categorize that under “herring, red.”

V.

Something this arc got me thinking about is Blue Beetle’s relationship with his power.

The Marvel characters-- the nature of power is split for a Marvel character. You either achieve your powers (e.g. Tony Stark builds his Iron Man suit) or you’re victimized by them (e.g. whoops: Hulk). Power in a Marvel comic is not something to be merely enjoyed ala a DC character like The Flash or Superman— there’s more to it than that.

Captain America? Victim: a man out of time. Iron Fist? Achievement: learned kung-fu. Spider-man? Both: achievement-- built his webshooters, but also victimized by how his powers force him to be responsible. The X-Men? Victims. Daredevil? Uh: handi-capable. The Fantastic Four? Both victims and achievement-based heroes! And so on. The Marvel characters … there’s a certain fission element built into their DNA. Their relationships with power defines a lot about how or why those characters work.

The big DC characters are not as interesting in that respect. Sure, there’s Batman (both victim and achievement), but more of them were just sort-of handed their powers. Green Lantern is literally just handed a power ring—end of story.

How about our boy? How about Mr. Beetle? In the first issue, he learned that he had superpowers, and after that—he just goes off and uses them.

In this arc, he’s never really victimized by his powers— he’s more than happy to use them willy-nilly. No, he’s victimized by the unhappy situation of being a part of the DCU. He’s victimized because he was taken away from his family for a year due to the One Year Later stunt event-— that has nothing to do with his powers. He’s victimized by DC editors, which… get in line.

He certainly didn’t achieve his powers-- a magical rock crawled up his ass. He was sodomized with superpowers— wee. The only achievement was on the part of his sphincter.

Anytime I watch a James Bond movie, I want to know how to play Baccarat (it's an absolutely retarded card game). James Bond is all about achievement. James Bond fans want to dress like Bond dresses; smell like he smells.

Who’d want to smell like the Blue Beetle? Or his sphincter?

Not me, sister.

Not me.

Labels: Abhay

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This is the first part of an irregular, multipart series on issues #1 to #25 of the Blue Beetle series published by DC Comics.

The John Rogers "era" of BLUE BEETLE ended recently with issue #25. Keith Giffen had left his position as co-writer of the recently launched book more than a year earlier. Artist Rafael Albuquerque is staying with the book, apparently-- he'd replaced Cully Hamner, the artist who'd launched the series before moving on to some bigger, better deal, if I can accidentally quote the 1984 USA Up All Night shit-fest, HARDBODIES.

The overarching origin story that Rogers-Giffen started in issue #1 and drove the first two years of the book also concluded in #25. I hadn't picked up the book until recently. It seems like the book generated a bit of an internet cult for itself-- the DCU's "Best Book You're Not Reading" book. I guess that attracted my attention.

So, I gathered together the first 25 issues the other night, start reading it and blah blah blah: I wasn't that into it. I kept reading for the art; inertia. But then, something changed: issue 22 kicked in-- and the story the creators had plainly wanted to tell the entire time drops.

It's a beaut. The last arc is a goddamn beaut. There's some big-ass, audience-pleasing, fan-service, stomp-Tokyo shit in that arc. It's Return of Barry Allen; it's Rock of Ages; as I believe The Game put it once, "I'm BIG, I'm Cube, I'm Nas, I'm 'Pac, this ain't shit but a warnin' til my album drop." It's not my song, and I'm not a fan of The Game, but the quote seemed apropos.

I'm going to start with some background which I'll mark out, in case anyone who reads this site somehow isn't aware of why the BLUE BEETLE comic exists to begin with. Pretty skippable for most of you, I figure.

BACKGROUND:

The last Blue Beetle character, the second character to bear the name, was a creation of Spiderman co-creator Steve Ditko. He was featured in Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMattheis's light-hearted, character comedy JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL alongside other not-fan-favorites like Fire (aka Green Flame), a deranged violent Green Lantern named Guy Gardner, and most notably, Booster Gold-- Gold and the earlier Blue Beetle formed a comedic duo for the DCU. Following that series, Blue Beetle also had a recurring role in the BIRDS OF PREY series.

Then, in this last decade, DC comics were competing poorly with competitor Marvel Comics-- Marvel had better creators and better characters. DC opted to compete by jolting their readership with a series of short-term "shocks" tied into a series of "must-read-to-understand-the-universe", editor-written crossovers. One of those shocks was having Blue Beetle-- remembered by many to be a comedic character-- having his brains splattered against a wall, as a signal that the DC "universe" would no longer be light-hearted or comedic, but would be... brain-splattery, instead. To assuage the fanbase that this was somehow "meaningful", they arranged for a brand-new Blue Beetle character to be a pivotal character to the concluding crossover in a suite of crossovers (which suite of crossovers preceded the subsequent suite of crossovers, or.. something).

DC's strategy worked for a little while until (a) Marvel followed suit with a series of crossovers that were enormously better, (b) DC seemingly over-invested in a strategy involving weekly comics, (c) the appeal of all this wore off with fans to some nebulous extent, and (d) the overall economy went fucking pear-shaped -- gas costs me $4 goddamn dollars a goddamn gallon, are you fucking kidding me, $4 goddamn dollars a goddamn gallon, goddamn. As of recent reports, DC may be back to where they were before they started all this nonsense, lame second fiddle to a creatively and commercially dominant Marvel Comics (at least by the highly limited and weird standards by which these sort of comics are judged).

END OF BACKGROUND

So, then-- consider the likely goals of the creators at the outset of the series:

(1) Tell a single two-year meta-story that was comprised of smaller story arcs (what TV fans might call the "Buffy" model); (2) launch a new superhero character in a marketplace hostile to new superhero characters; (3) launch an ethnic character to an audience that never supports minority characters; (4) tie into the shitty, oppressive meta-story of the "DC Universe"; (5) remain independent enough of the shitty, oppressive meta-story of the “DC Universe" to convey the book’s own meta-story in a comprehensible way; (6) service a meta-arc while satisfying the demands of monthly fans-- e.g. having a superhero fight every issue; (7) tell a superhero origin story as well as telling a teen coming-of-age story; (8) juggle a superhero cast-- heroes, villains, mentors, etc.-- with a sizable supporting cast for the teen coming-of-age story; (9) place the brand new Blue Beetle character into some kind of larger context visa vi earlier iterations of the Blue Beetle brand name, without angering fans of previous iterations by suggesting those earlier versions were somehow less than the new version, while still allowing said fans to see the new characters as being a worthy inheritor of the brand name;and (10) present an all-ages book that's friendly to new fans looking for a new character to latch onto but also friendly to DCU otaku.

SPOILER WARNING: they fail.

Sales of the new BLUE BEETLE series are in the fucking toilet; BLUE BEETLE chocolate kisses the toilet once a month. Initial orders for issue #22 of BLUE BEETLE were at 15,256 copies (NOTE: the significance of initial orders are a subject of a debate that I completely don't care about). Despite a dedicated internet fan-cult, and two artists producing work superior to most of what the DCU publishes, the series is one of the lowest selling books in the DCU.

The first 25 issues constitute not only a single entire story, but possibly a window into a number of different goals, successes, failures, so... My plan is to re-read the entire series, and see if I can think of anything interesting-ish to say.

Questions to consider: Why have fans rejected this series? What went wrong? Or if nothing went wrong, was there something that had to go "right" that didn't happen? What goes into the crafting and selling of a new superhero character? What goes wrong with new superheros, that so dramatically few catch on with fans? And most of all, why did the ending work? All of these reviews of nerdy shit that gets written week after week-- what do I read for an explanation of why nerdy things work?

Why does the ending work if the beginning so, so didn't? Because it sure doesn't start well...

BLUE BEETLE ISSUE #1:


Je-sus.

This inaugural issue juggles two time-lines: a fight between Blue Beetle and the Guy Gardner Green Lantern in the "present", and a lengthy origin sequence set in the "past", setting up how the character received his powers, as well as the character's "secret identity" and supporting cast.

It's a strange place to have to start a new series, where one of the biggest moments in a new superhero comic has been taken away from the creative team. The big "Hello, Blue Beetle; meet the rest of the DCU" moment already happened, and it happened in a different comic. Or if you think about it, the creators were to some extent forced into the dual time-line structure-- an entire issue set prior to the events of the earlier-published crossover comic would have forced them to find a way to play "catchup" with the time-line of the other 900 books DC contemporaneously publishes. The dual time-line's inelegant, and robs the issue of any suspense or momentum, but it's probably preferable to whatever they would have otherwise had to do to keep current with the rest of the publishing line. Especially because DC was about to launch another stunt where such-and-such month was ONE YEAR LATER month, where all the books advanced a year-- something that comes up and causes some pointless havoc in later issues.

But look at that awful scene...

The rest of the scene is a comedy scene, establishing the new Blue Beetle's two best friends, a wisecracking young lady and a wisecracking pudgy friend. Also, Blue Beetle? Wisecracking. Everyone in the Blue Beetle comic sounds like they'd rather be in a Joss Whedon screenplay. For example: wisecracking! But betwixt all the wisecracking, in the midst of the wisecrack, the scene lurches into the following panel...


As the punchline to a comedy scene.

Jesus Crap, look at it. No matter where you are in a room, its eyes... its eyes just follow you. You know, you watch a Joss Whedon thing and you can at least say to yourself, "No one talks like that in real life, but I wish they did. While sitting on my face." But... I don't think you can say that here. I'm personally kind of glad that in real life, people don't make snappy wisecracks about the ritualistic child abuse that they suffer. I like a good snappy wisecrack; I'm pro-wisecrack; I'm just anti-ritualistic-child-abuse. That's what makes me a better person than you.

It's "laying pipe" according to Mr. Rogers's blog-- which is apparently a writer's expression meaning "writing and delivering the onerous dialogue which provids backstory and the plot facts needed to support the weight of the funny (or interesting). Exposition, kids, and it ain't fun." The fact the young lady's dad hits her is very-slightly meaningful to the series later (right this second, I don't even remember the dad ever being seen on-panel).

But: I would rather read a metal pipe. There's good reading on pipes. Hell, I would rather fuck a metal pipe, than... Well, I'd rather a fuck a metal pipe in general. Say goodbye to apologizing for premature ejaculation, and say hello to metal pipes. I have a teddy bear-- that's what it says on its t-shirt. That's why people say "pipe down" when they want you to be quiet-- that expression came from pipe fetishists like me. Because you don't talk dirty when you're fucking a metal pipe. That'd just be weird. "Oh, you're so cylindrical"-- that'd just be creepy. Fuck a pipe in silence. I have a teddy bear-- that's what it says to me when it's not telling me to impress Jodie Foster. Anyways...

Everything about these three panels is wrong.

First, it turns a comedy scene into an afterschool special.

Second, we've known the main character for all of two pages at this point, and the first thing they're telling us about him is that he doesn't care if his friend is getting physically abused by her father. "Oh, your dad savagely beats you? Does he molest you too? That's nice. Well, I'm going to just stand over here and pop my collar and quote The Game lyrics to the sidewalk." Let's read about that guy every month. Look at him-- "my father beats me"-- and he's rolling his eyes!


"You're talking about the physical abuse again? YAWN." Oh, we could explain it to ourselves-- they don't trust child services, say, so they don't report his abuse despite her obvious pleas for help-- but nothing that supports our explanation ever makes it to the page from what I remember.

Third, it doesn't work on a "does this make sense that character X would say Y" level of -- what, does she want him to punch her, too? Why? Can't she just have her dad double-down on the child abuse, if she's aiming to get punched...? If she wants to get punched, couldn't she just hide his whiskey or sass him during Leno's monologue or...? Or how about a scene where she teaches the other kid how not to leave bruises on any areas where school administrators might see them? How about that?

Fourth, while I love Cully Hamner's art and have since Green Lantern: Mosaic, and his work on this comic is as strong as ever, he doesn't really quite land the "dust the debris off" hand-move in that last panel of the sequence--

"Oh your dad beats you. Let me play my imaginary turntables. Air DJ competitions are in a week at the Civic Center, the week after Motocross."

It took no small amount of effort to keep reading this series.

What's interesting about the moment to me, though, is how it immediately positions the character as being morally compromised. Whatever explanation you can come up with in your head as to why he's not doing anything to help his friend is ultimately a compromise. I think maybe comic fans don't enjoy Figures of Compromise. For most of their history, superhero characters are these power fantasies about not having to compromise-- the X-Men fight for a dream; you can't compromise on a dream. Spiderman-- "great responsibility" and compromise, to some extent, seem incompatible to me. Compromise-- most of the recent events which have gotten fans the most upset have been compromises. Iron Man compromises and he's considered a villain to comic fans. Spiderman compromises that one time, and fans freak the fuck out.

Or not just comic fans, but people in general-- consider the Great Heroes of Western Civilization. Not a lot of compromise gets celebrated.

Winston Churchill: "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

Or Mike Tyson: "I'll fuck you till you love me."


The issue then concludes with, inter alia, this bit. The second panel, assuaging the otaku that Blue Beetle connects to some greater whole, is a reference to the character's introduction in the earlier crossover. Just an incomprehensible chunk jammed into the second-to-last panel without any explanation provided to any potential new readers, even a "See Issue ___" editorial caption since those are out-of-fashion. You know: probably not the best choice, that.

What's interesting to me about this scene is... you know, the great superheros, you can kind of boil down the appeal of that character to one word. Spiderman: perseverance, say. Hulk: anger. Captain America: patriotism. Thor: mythology. Iron Man: technology. Tinky-Winky: gayness. That's what those characters are fundamentally about.

What is this new Blue Beetle character about? Fundamentally about?

After the first issue, could a reader answer that question?

It's not about BEETLES. The above panels perhaps suggests its about alienation, but the rest of the comic doesn't support that idea-- the Blue Beetle character has friends and a family that he loves. He's hardly alienated.

I suppose... The 25 issues as a whole are a coming of age story-- like any coming of age story, it's about a young boy becoming a man, and entering the larger, cooler, scarier, world of adulthood. Same as Star Wars or whatever. Hell, the first issue even ends with him on a cliff looking out into that world-- it's not subtle. But that's...

First, I don't really think that's effectively communicated in the first issue. It's jammed into a few panels in the last page of the first issue. Second, it's a limited story-- at the end of 25 issues, that story is done. It's not enough to hang a series on, or at least-- I think it's got a time limit on it. Third, it answers the question for the series, perhaps, but not for the character. When Thor fights Iron Man, that's mythology and technology clashing regardless of which book it's happening in. How much does that matter? It's hard to say. Fourth, well ... I don't know. "Blue Beetle is about liminality." Thanks, college boy. You know? It's not obvious on its face, the way the appeal of other superhero characters often is (e.g., Doctor Strange, you just need to hear his name and the appeal is apparent).

So: not an auspicious beginning no, but it does get better...

Labels: Abhay, Blue Beetle

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Not a well-kept secret, I know...

I am honestly, no-joke, no-irony, without hesitation, over-the-top excited to read SECRET INVASION #1, the kick-off of the big summer mega-uber-crossover from Marvel Comics which is sitting on the couch next to me.

This whole megacrossover mania is bad. They're typically unfriendly to new readers, wear down the existing audience, hurt smaller books, tend to be shallow short-term cynical cash-grabs, etc. Awful, horrendous things that no one should look forward to. But I've been looking forward to this one, anyway. Looking forward to it!

I really wanted to run into the comic shop and throw confetti from a bucket, like Rip Taylor. Run around with sparklers, barbecue hot dogs, have a sing-a-long of America the Beautiful. Only not in a sad way like that time when Congress sang it after 9/11, but like in a happy Ray Charles way. But not like in a "oh, wow, he's happy even though he's blind, what am I so fucking neurotic about" way... goddamn, America the Beautiful's kind of a downer any which way you cut that son bitch.

I think a lot of people have rejected the premise on a one-word basis: "Skrulls? NO! YOU SUCK."

But this one-- look, if they're going to make crossovers, if they're going to have Creator Summits where they put all their brainpower behind one series, and spend some budget putting together this "event"-- if this is the game now, then I want to read the biggest, dumbest, loudest, stupidest, crassest, fan-angering, everybody punch everybody, punch-a-bunch crossover there ever was. If I'm a Roman, I want to live in Rome.

Skrulls? It's got a shot at the belt.

I've liked the last two Marvel crossovers because they've had a simple, great formula: inappropriate politics plus insane dumbness = Boner-town, population: me. This one? It's this incredibly loud noisy event where characters are going to die and cry and shmy, all built on the following: trust, identity and religion issues (POST-9/11!) plus little green men invading from outer space (DUMB!).

It's the dumbest they've ever DUMB!-ed and the most POST-9/11 they've ever POST-9/11'd, and if the title with the word "Invasion" doesn't promise some punching, then I don't know what does. Shot at the fucking belt, dude.

Having the bad guys be Skrulls means the focus is squarely on characters the audience cares about already, and asking questions about why those characters work for the audience. That feature is what made Civil War so much fun for me. That's why World War Hulk worked for me, too. That's why most crossovers don't-- because they focus on a bunch of "who cares" and "who gives a shits". Secret Wars 2 was about a white guy with a jeri-curl. DC hinged a massive crossover involving dozens of comics series around Maxwell Lord (!) and an ornery alternate universe version of Superboy... who the hell cares about Superboy and where do I buy them a comically large lollipop?

Or- or-- here's the nice thing I'll say about crossovers: if part of the entertainment of comics for you is watching crazy crazy c-c-c-crazy fans react to them, then what a delight this will be. Put on your crazy pants and let's dance, Mongo. Make me feel better about my Asperger's with how severe yours is, Mongo! The time is now; the sweatiness is yours!

So: I'm going to put on that one Neutral Milk Hotel album, kick back, relax, and pull the trigger on this thing. I'll check back when I'm done with #1.

*** SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP


And we're back...

I liked it! It's the Marvel Universe versus Islam. What's not to like about that? And the Marvel Universe doesn't have to go to heaven to know where to find 72 virgins! This is one crossover I'm not going to say "I divorce you" to three times! (I know, I know: it's more complicated than that...).

So, this issue is all about the New Avengers squaring off with the Badly Written Avengers, when WHAM, the little green not-reflective-of-true-Islam boo-boo-makers, or whatever the politically acceptable term is these days-- they do their whole 9/11 thing. That one scene, of everything all ape-shit? Let's just do that for the next, like, 5 or 6 years.

"What are the Cylons blowing up this week in the Marvel Universe?"

"That character Solo. Remember him? He's blowing up real pretty. He's got a pretty mouth on him. Solo gonna do some prayin' for me, boy. And he better pray real good."

It's a nice cliffhanger, though: this is how Keith Giffen was going to end his v4 Legion run originally, right? DC fired him when he tried to pull this off; it's funny what time does. More importantly, I like how they're calling Marvel Boy the "Current Master of the Cube" now. That's what I call it when a guy puts his fist into my ass, and I manage to "solve" Rubik's... well, the rest is pretty personal.


Incidentally: if a dinosaur doesn't eat one of the little green men next issue, I will want my money back but be too much of a pussy to actually ask for it back from anyone. FYI.


I like the weird red-green thing they're doing with the LEDs throughout the issue, too. If I'm right, this is all an elaborate hint that Tony Stark's airplane is a Skrull!! I'm on to you, Marvel!

That's the best part of the premise is every time a squirrel or chipmunk or kitchen blender is on panel, you get to sit there and go "Watch out, it's a Skrull, girl! Get out of the house, girl! Oh, you're dead, girl." I wish I could read this comic at the stereotypical movie theater from a bad Def Comedy Jam routine, basically. Because I'm a bigot. Who enjoys getting fisted, apparently...? This review is going well.

Anyways, the issue ends with a Stan Lee interview which... is sort of like when you see that show of Hefner and the three desperate blondes. Hefner doesn't still want to be with these sad women-- he wants to be curled up with a cup of hot milk and a rerun of Becker, like a proper old man.

But still: does this issue mean Newsarama people are going to start debating Radical Islamic Fundamentalism now? Oh mama! Bendis just bought you a pink cadillac, Mongo!!!

Labels: Abhay

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I don't have anything interesting to say, but I noticed the other people who write for this site— they were all having busy weeks; I thought I'd try to chip in with some quickie reviews before work. Here’s what I’ve read lately…

Incredible Hercules #116: I was flipping through the latest issue at random-- I like Khoi Pham's art, so I was glancing at it for that when I noticed this issue has this sweet detail: the bulk of the action takes place on the Hellicarrier from the 24-issue Doug Moench Godzilla comic book Marvel published in the 1970's. Shit, man, I never even read those comics, but I just liked that detail so I read the rest of the issue.

It's a big ridiculous fight comic-- I guess the book shares the same creative team as World War Hulk, which also succeeded with me by focusing on things punching / getting punched. With this Hercules comic, I didn't really understand what people were talking about in-between punches but maybe more attentive fans found those bits pleasurable. Near the end it turns into some strange mythology thing; lessons are learned; morals are taught; Blossom learns why she's bleeding; etc. But I want to look on the bright side, and on the bright side? On the bright side, some guy grabs a missile from out of the sky and hits another guy with it. I approve.

It's a nice detail, the thing with the Godzilla Hellicarrier, though. I'll have forgotten 21 pages of this comic in a week, but that page where they mention the thing about the Hellicarrier is probably what'll stick with me. Its just a nice piece of nerd archaeology. It creates a sense of the "Marvel Universe" being its own place with its own history -- even the decommissioned hellicarriers rusting away in junkyards have a history to them!-- without being a "This will only make sense to you if you read issue #8 of DAZZLER (i.e. "Hell... Hell is for Harry") in 1981" type thing, like out of some DC comic. The rest of the issue doesn't depend on understanding the significance of the particular hellicarrier, at least that I could tell. For me, it's just marshmallows in a cup of hot chocolate.

Plus, it's a shout-out to one of the too-few series to star one of my favorite Marvel characters: Mr. Dum Dum Dugan.


He just seems violent! SHIELD is a massive international, multinational counter-espionage organization, outfitted with the most advanced technology, manned by the best and the brightest-- and one of the guys in charge is a violent Irish nonagenarian in a bowler hat...? I think that services a potent theme: all the fancy technology or well-trained people can get you so far, but you still need to have a couple guys handy who seem willing to kick some ass and wear hats while doing so. I think that’s a way better theme than the thing about responsibility or whatever—a better theme for practical living. Dum Dum Dugan – there’s just a lot of unrealized upside to that character.

Nijigahara Holograph: I re-read this scanlated manga the other day. I'm surprised I didn’t see Nijigahara Holograph end up on more best of the year lists; it was in the top 10 of that lengthy Journalista list; it was on mine and I didn't even like it that much last year. I guess a lot of people may not be cool with the whole scanlation thing though.

If you missed it, Nijigahara Holograph is a fractured comic that alternates between a group of young students and those students in their early adulthoods, both mired in a seemingly endless cycle of abuse and violence. The story unfolds like a puzzle. After my first read through, I'd mistaken a lot of the imagery for surrealism-- I don't really like surrealism so I didn't rate the comic as I highly as maybe I should have, though I was still very impressed with it for technical reasons, for the mood of it. But having read it again recently, I think my earlier reaction was wrong. There's more of an underlying logic to the series than I'd picked up on the first time through. I think I got more out of it the second time because I got to read it faster, so I was able to connect fragments that I'd missed before.

I feel like I've read essays by people who think comics can't be scary, because the static imagery of comics aren't conducive to horror-jolts, because the ability of the reader to control the flow of the comic undercuts the ability of a work to take over and frighten the reader, etc. But Nijgahara Holograph to me is ... it's at least spooky, though not because of some cinematic effect. If a comic tries only to recreate cinema or recreate horror literature-- it's leaving a lot off of what comics can do off the table, and spooky might be out of reach. What I think Nijigahara Holograph is a good example of... What's happening in the panels isn't scary-- but the choice of panels, the selection of images in the panels, and their juxtaposition, those all make me think, you know, "Who the hell is the guy that made this thing? What was going on with that guy? Why'd he draw this thing? What was going on that day that he put that image next to that image?" I think it's at least spooky when a comic gets you asking those questions. Why do I keep using the word "spooky?" It's altogether ooky.

What else... Ghost Rider and Iron Fist: I liked the latest issue of both of those. I thought both of those were fun. Art on both had good pages and bad pages, or good panels and bad panels, but … has Iron Fist ever punched Ghost Rider in the skull? I have no idea; I never really read either character’s book before on account of both characters being pretty crappy. I’m always confused when I read other people talk about Iron Fist, what they’re getting out of it since it seems like they’re getting more out of it than I am. It’s a nice kung fu comic—it’s pleasant to follow—there’s nothing wrong with it. I feel like other people are getting way more out of it than I am, though.

Oh, classic comics… I read Tintin in the Land of the Soviets a couple months ago—December? I thought I’d try reading all the Tintin books in order, but Tintin in the Land of the Soviets put the kibosh to that. That’s sort of Tintin before Herge had figured out what the hell he was doing. It’s not very good. Tintin wanders around a fake, propaganda version of Soviet Russia, and has an incessant number of dumb, improbable, and usually boring adventures. It’s a long book which overstayed its welcome-- I don't think it was intended to be read all at once. If you like seeing comics before they’re good, or artists before they figure out their style, it’s an option, I suppose, but I'm not sure what you'd get out of the experience. I also read a Carl Barks comic the other day, too. The Fantastic River Race from 1957. That was fantastic, but I don’t… you know, I just don’t have anything to say about it. This page was fun. The duck characters get in a steamboat race with the dog characters, and cause so much craziness that they lose the race but win the day…? How the hell do you review that? If you hate dogs or love steamboats, that’s the comic for you. I assume you don’t have an opinion on ducks. Who has an opinion on ducks? Well, to eat, I suppose—I don’t think duck is particularly tasty eating. I guess when I read a comic about ducks, though, I usually don’t think about what it’d be like to eat the main characters. Maybe I should. Maybe that’d make the reading experience more pleasurable. Couldn’t hurt.

Someone once told me they test jet engines by shooting ducks into them. I don't know if that's true, but I suppose you could have an opinion of that. I don't think Carl Barks ever made a comic about that, though.

So...

Oh, wait, I also read the new issue Iron Man: Is this arc still not over yet? It’s an extremely long storyline—I don’t dislike it but I’m just sort of surprised it’s still going. The latest issue is all about how Iron Man can built a fancy armor suit with repulsor rays in it, but he’s too cheap to put a camera in his helmet. So Iron Man has this fight last issue, but this issue, everyone’s like “We don’t believe that actually happened.” Iron Man doesn’t have one of those cameras (like the ones cops keeps in their cars) in his suit somewhere, or a webcam or …? Why didn’t he film that shit? He doesn’t even build a Kodak into that thing?? Most people have cameras in their cell phones; how is a cell-phone better than Iron Man armor? Maybe the camera got broke when Iron Man had the big fight with that one asshole, back whenever. I guess that would explain it. Incidentally, how is this arc not over yet? It doesn’t even feel half over! Maybe the plan is for it to never be over… This comic also featured Dum Dum Dugan, though, so again, points for that.

I like this page from Strange Tales #151—layouts by Jack Kirby, illustrations by Jim Steranko. I saw that the other day, though I didn’t read the issue. That’s early in Steranko’s career—the first issue of Strange Tales he did, the first Marvel comic he did from 1966. I guess I like the bit with the grenades. I think that makes the page for me. In real life, I don’t think that would work though. Please be careful with grenades. I didn’t read the issue though so I can’t really talk about it—sometimes, old comics are just for looking at and not for reading.

This comic also featured Mr. Dum Dum Dugan. Let’s start a fanclub.

Labels: Abhay

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So, this last week, I've been really into Conan and Octopus Pie, I guess...?

They're both sitcoms-- situational comedies? Somehow, sitcoms became a bad word among educated people, but they’re great in theory: characters get into situations, and then the comedy is seeing how the particular character chooses to get out of them. A comedy that arises out of the observation of character? Well, hell, that doesn't sound so bad.


On the other hand, Mama's Family.

Oh god, Mama's Family.

Why, Vicki Lawrence? WHY?


You don't put Mama below the jump. You don't put Baby in the corner, and you don't put Mama below the jump. That's just common sense.

OCTOPUS PIE:

Octopus Pie is an Odd Couple sitcom created by Meredith Gran, a 20-something year old Brooklyn animator, about a pair of barely post-collegiate Brooklyn women who somehow end up as unlikely roommates. (Barely Post-Collegiate was my favorite Hustler magazine). One is high strung and angry; the other is a pot-smoking nudist.

Swearing, pot smoking and topless women.