I stand up next to a mountain: Graeme finishes off his 8/8 haul.

Before I launch into a bunch of things written very, very early morning today, I have to ask: Has anyone else been having a really stressful and strange last few days? At work, I've had maybe the oddest series of (bad) coincidences in a short period of time since last Friday, and in attempting to calm me down from climbing the walls and looking for the Graeme Voodoo Dolls, people have been telling me that everyone seems to be having a weird time of it lately. So abuse the comments section below and comfort me.

CRIMINAL #8: It's got to be dull for you to keep reading that each issue of this book is solidly Very Good, so instead I'll skip over the wonderfully noir dialogue ("It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him like that...") and artwork that reminds you of Toth's simplicity with scratchier personality, and instead point out that this book also contains the best recap page in comics these days.

DAREDEVIL #99: Continuing the Ed Brubaker love, things are coming to a head emotionally here, and it still works even if I have no idea who the supervillain at the end is - some kind of Scarecrow rip-off? - purely because of the melodramatic intensity that the creators manage to sell you on. Despite the whole "part five of five" thing when you start the issue, this is very, very clearly an old-school "Next issue is #100!" one, and Good for that.

GREEN LANTERN #22: According to the cover, this is The Sinestro Corps War Part 4. According to the third page of the issue, it's Sinestro Corps Chapter Two. And while, sure, it can be both (fourth part of the crossover, second chapter in this particular series), there's something about that kind of sloppiness that makes me want to make cheap jokes about Countdown, just because. Nonetheless, the story itself is full of high stakes and tough-guy dialogue ("It's ironic, isn't it, Jordan?" "What, Amon? Me about to use your father's ring to break your nose?" Oh, Hal. You're so macho jerk) and rompiness and, even though not that much actually happens, it manages to skate just under the line of Good thanks to my goodwill about the larger story and Ivan Reis's artwork.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #109: Emphasizing just how much last issue was a last-minute fill-in, this issue picks up directly from the ending of #107 and continues WWH #3's turn towards the Hulk turning out to be an unjustified bastard after all. It's sad to admit that the more the actual plot kicks in and replaces people getting beaten up, the less I find myself interested in World War Hulk, but I guess I'm just a simple lad with simple tastes. Eh.

THE NEW AVENGERS #33: If you melded recent superhero novel "Soon I Will Be Invincible" together with "Invasion of The Body Snatchers" and a complete lack of attention to Dwayne McDuffie's Fantastic Four run, then you'd come up with this Eh issue. The supervillain stuff is pretty generic - and isn't the Wizard currently in Fantastic Four and, um, nothing at all like he's being written here? - and seriously bogs down the issue, which at least offers a healthy dose of Luke Cage being unhealthily paranoid now that the Skrull plot is happening. More of that and less of everything else, please.

THE NEW AVENGERS/TRANSFORMERS #2: Crap, and worth mentioning only because of that cover - with such a terrible Wolverine and such a great Transformer - and the sad sight of Todd Klein's computer lettering.

NOVA #5: I keep expecting it to zig, it keeps zagging. Color me happily surprised to see the fill-in Nova story explained so quickly and this particular cliffhanger. Sure, both events will surely be undone within the next two issues, but I'm enjoying the irreverence with which Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning are treating their material. Good, and just saying that makes me pause and thinking "Huh," in a surprised manner.

OUTSIDERS: FIVE OF A KIND: KATANA AND SHAZAM! #1: Or, as it should really be renamed "Katana, with a guest shot by Shazam that really doesn't matter one way or another." When the best thing about a comic is that you're happy to see the writer (Mike W. Barr, in this case) still getting work, then you know that it's pretty Crap.

THE UN-MEN #1: What's good about this issue: The logo and Tomer Hanuka's cover art. What's not so good: Everything else. Another bad-mood-book that replaces originality, wit and intelligence with world-weary faux-cynicism and shallow social commentary, this is the kind of Eh thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a longing for when Vertigo launched and was the place where anything could happen. Ah, to be young and naive again...

Usless Information, tons of Useless Information: Graeme counts down from 8/8.

Something that becomes immediately apparent as soon as you start reading COUNTDOWN #38 is the way that it's incredibly like the comics that Dan DiDio and the current DC braintrust probably grew up reading. It's not just the incredible number of coincidences that Brian's already pointed out - a throwback to days when audiences were younger and less demanding - but also the dialogue. The third panel in the comic has the following exchange:

"Superman, any idea what's going on?"
"I'm not sure, Powergirl, except for the obvious..."
"Oracle said something unleashed a global computer virus."

It's exactly the kind of self-identifying thing that people have made fun of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths for; all you need to complete the set is for Hawkman and Green Arrow to walk on and have a fight about Reaganism while mentioning each others' names every second page. Similar, too, to those 1980s stories is the sense that everything is part of some larger story - although, unlike the comics that they're clearly modeled after, there's nothing in this issue that makes you want to run out and pick up back issues to understand what's going on, because there's no sense of excitement and urgency in anything that happens here - Characters appear and die, and other characters watch from behind the scenes and give melodramatic speeches to themselves, and it's all rather dull.

It's also rather nonsensical; the Question and Batwoman find two supervillains who everyone is looking for, and just let them go because the Question thinks they're too dumb to kill the person they're supposed to have killed? And none of the other characters think that that's weird? Or, for that matter, no-one seems to want to stop the mysterious being that murdered the Deep Six in front of their eyes (And good job introducing the Six there for readers unfamiliar with Kirby's Fourth World, guys. This series really needs, if not an editor who's really trying to make each issue easier-to-understand for new readers, then a website that'll explain the minor characters slightly better...)? Other than because it doesn't suit where the plot's supposed to go, there's no reason for either of these things to happen and neither really makes the characters involved look intelligent or capable.

In my weaker moments, I kind of wish that I was doing some kind of 52-Pickup for Countdown. Not because I want to try and replace Douglas - my arcane knowledge is nowhere near as good as his - but because I want to see someone really dig into this book on a regular basis and talk about the strangeness of plots being developed by the Dan Jurgens back-up, or the way in which the story is propelled as much by the future solicitations and interviews as much as what's in the comics themselves. But then I realize that something this Crap, which fascinating, probably isn't worth the time...

Let's see if this image posting thing works: Graeme also reviews something from 8/8.

What is it about Grant Morrison and JH Williams? The two of them get together, and all of a sudden, the pop thrills get dosed with feelings of dread and portentiousness. Take BATMAN #667, for example; up until this point, there's been a devil-may-care feeling about Morrison's Batrun - the idea that, no matter what death-traps may show up, it's not to be taken too seriously and everything will end up fine in the end. But now that Williams has appeared for the first of three parts of "The Island of Mister Mayhew," it all seems much more dangerous and grim. Which isn't to say that it's not enjoyable, because it is - but there's such a change of tone that it's somewhat disconcerting to the few of us who were enjoying what we'd previously seen...

The real star of the show here, though, is JH Williams and the amazing work he puts in here. Even if you can somehow ignore his sense of design - which is pretty tough, considering some of the pages he puts in here (His old school opening double-page splash, with the logo contained within a Bat-icon isn't even the most eyecatching one on the issue - the hand-shaped panel with exploding plans gets my vote, instead) - this would still be one of the most visually impressive mainstream books of the year based on the different art-styles Williams appropriates for the different characters; seeing him do perfect versions of Chris Sprouse's line, Howard Chaykin's, or Ed McGuinness's would be worth-seeing on its own, but to see him manage to mix those styles not only into the same story, but the same panel is pretty damn great.

Don't get me wrong - This would still be worth reading even if Andy Kubert or whoever was drawing it, but it's the artwork instead of the writing that raises it from a "If you like Batman, sure, go ahead" to a Very Good must-see.

Becoming More Like Alfie: Graeme goes Cass from 8/8.

The first thing you'll notice about CASANOVA #8 is that it's very, very blue. The shift in color palette is initially completely overwhelming - writer Matt Fraction's said online that it's pure Cyan, and given the way that it practically glows on the page, I believe him - and it was only after a second read-through that I realized how smart a move that was, pulling the reader away from the change in artists from Gabriel Ba to Fabio Moon so that, by the time your eyes have recovered from the blue, you're already used to Moon's less-Mignola-esque, prettier, artwork (As much as I love Fabio's stuff, it's still awkward to see him draw characters that I'm so used to Gabriel's take on; I think I like it, but there's such a sense of "That's not the way they look!" that I'm not sure. Having a few pages of Fabio in your system while you try not to be distracted by the color choice helps, though).

The second thing you'll notice is that Fraction's a smart writer - It's not the way that you're dropped right into the story and only given the exposition midway through (It's just like Mission Impossible, if Tom Cruise wasn't, you know, Tom Cruise!), but the way that the story's structured so that the reveal at the end both comes as a surprise but also makes complete sense within what you've read up until that point that convinces you that there's something worth paying attention to happening here. Which isn't to say that this second series isn't as playful or unexpected as the first (to the point where it seemed as if it was unexpected even to the creators, sometimes), because it is; the sense of "anything can happen" is, if anything, amplified by the time you get to the last page of the story, with the introduction of an element that almost seems too fantastical for a series that's made its mark by being full of spectacle and the fantastic.

This issue pulls of the trick of being both a reminder of, and reinvention of, what you enjoyed about the series the first time around. It's both familiar and unknown, full of confidence (arrogance?) in knowing what it can do and wanting to find out what else its capable of at the same time. Pretty much Very Good, then.

Archie as RIAA Shill

Archie #577 tries to tackle a modern issue, but the presentation is so one-sided and ignorant that it fails even as brainwashing. The Archies, it seems, are ready to record a song that's been popular when they've played it live. (The lyrics we see are "RU the 1 4 me", which suggests that they've been listening to an awful lot of 80s Prince.) They scrape together money for studio time and decide to sell the record on their website, only with no physical CD "to reduce overhead". But boo hoo, their fans make copies for each other instead of buying, so they don't make any money.

There's so much wrong with this story in terms of internal logic that it's hard to know where to start. We're supposed to believe that they're savvy enough to have a website and conduct a financial product analysis, but they've never even thought about downloading until it prevents them from getting rich? And there's little incentive to want to support such spoiled kids. Instead of asking each other "hey, have we made enough money to cover recording costs yet?" they brag about how their ship has come in and use the term "fortune" in their plans.

The exaggerated ending has the kids working at Big Burger in order to replace their lost savings. Why don't they play a few more gigs? They presumably get paid for those. Or sell signed physical CDs at shows, for an experience the kids can't get online? If they refuse to create an object for sale, why are they complaining that people aren't willing to give them the money they feel they deserve? Kids are drawn handing each other CDs, so that suggests (whether the creator intended or not) a desire for something physical.

Not to mention that we're talking about an Archie comic, where every other ad is for an Archie logo bag or Archie cartoon DVDs or different kinds of collections or subscriptions or packs of back issues. The publisher has obviously figured out a lot of different ways to make money off the same material, giving the audience choice.

But what do you expect from a writer who has one character ask another, in terms of determining how their website downloads are doing, "how many records have we sold so far?" And yeah, there's only so much you can do in six pages, but I think this one should have been double-sized if they were serious about handling the subject.

I've been told that a review isn't "real" unless it discusses the art, so here: the faces are sometimes squished in odd ways. Since most of the panels are talking heads with various arm motions, this is a detriment, but it's made up by the variety of expression shown.

There are three other stories in this issue. Archie and Veronica go canoeing, which always ends badly because Archie is a klutz. (So why does Veronica keep agreeing to go?)

Betty and Veronica go to the beach together, where they argue over Archie. This is a poor story, because there's no reason to it other than pointing out that the triangle among the three is ridiculous, especially given how long-lasting it's been. It's questioning one of the basic premises of the series in a way that leaves the reader unsatisfied. If the reader agrees with the characters, then they feel silly for even reading the comic. If they disagree, there's nothing else to the story.

Last, Archie takes a Boy Scout-like group on a hike where Jughead brings the food. Amazingly, Archie is competent in this story, perhaps because he actually doesn't do much but stand around.

Rating this issue doesn't seem like fair play, because it is what it is. It's formulaic, as are many superhero comics, but that's comfortable for its target audience of younger readers. If I have to, I give it an Eh.

If I Don't Finish Before Sunrise, Dust Takes Me Back: Jog and 8/8 creatures of the night.

At 4:00 AM, my funnybook reviewing powers at their peak. The good never sleep while there's funnies to be reviewed!

Batman #667: The secret to J.H. Williams III’s success in superhero comics isn’t that he produces the most thought-through visual work around; with superhero comics there’s a risk of over-thinking things, missing the immediate appeal of the genre while pursuing an inappropriate sophistication. But Williams absolutely grasps the beauty of primal costumed impact, and infuses his relentless experimentation with the joy of direct aesthetic assault. I kind of squealed every time he shaped an evil panel like THE BLACK GLOVE, iconographic villain of the piece.

Williams’ approach here differs from his recent(ish) Detective Comics issue, which got a simpler, campier version of his Desolation Jones style; here, Williams produces an overview of superhero designs, with each of the many characters detailed in their very own homage-powered style, indicative of their discreet worldviews and developments. This is appropriate for Grant Morrison’s story, plus his run on this series. Always, Batman is confronted with alternate visions of himself: Damian, the three evil Batmen, and now many Bat-variants.

It’s the same approach with Morrison’s All Star Superman, though Superman and Batman are opposites - while Superman’s confrontations with his alternate selves inevitably lead to a certain peaceable education, Batman must always bleed and grit his teeth. Also: while ASS contains itself to simple, digestible issues, Batman sprawls across jumpy storylines, making review of a set-up issue like this tricky. I do wish the conversations between the many heroes had been insightful; when a fat Roman hero stumbles to his death, a symbolic tapestry in the background mocking his stumbling death throes, it seems merely banal.

Yet Williams adds a unique level of depth to his projects, and it is he that’s most compelling here. Plus, that last page is one of the nicest Batman pages I’ve seen in I-can’t-remember, and it’s GOOD to behold.

Blade #12: Howard Chaykin is one of the artists whose style Williams adopts, actually. Remember when Chaykin’s art was kind of hard to come by? This here is the second of three Marvel books he’s drawing this month, two of which are double-sized. And boy… parts of The Punisher MAX #50 looked rough (book three will be Wolverine #56). I presume Chaykin’s current style gets things done much quicker than before, but surely there’s such a thing as too quick! This comic, luckily, is a lot tighter; Blade has consistently been the best forum for Chaykin’s latter-day airy superhero style, affording him lots of opportunities to indulge in elaborate costuming and swooping, dancing midnight fight concepts.

But he doesn’t have Blade anymore, since this is the final issue. I’ve really grown fond of the book over this year; sure, writer Marc Guggenheim never did quite get a grasp on keeping the ‘individual’ issues, er, individual, but it turns out he’s pretty adept at layering plot strands into a big, slobbering narrative - this’ll make for a decent hardcover, if one is planned. The book also had a nice sense of absurdity about it, happy to mix up Count Dracula and Doctor Doom and Spider-Man and Civil War into a big, loud Marvel Universe thingy, albeit a thingy occurring on the fringes of more weighty stories.

This concluding issue characteristically mixes ancient prophesies with corny jokes and fairly affecting characterizations, while still taking setting aside a panel to assure us that the Yellow Kid joke vampire from the Civil War tie-in is still alive, I guess in case he’s needed for World War Hulk. It’s a charmingly square thing, pleasingly non-slick, with an oddly satisfying denouement. OKAY all around. The best sort of series to stumble upon in a bargain bin.

Diana dances with the Devil by the pale moonlight, 8/8

I have mixed feelings about DAREDEVIL #99.

On the one hand, Ed Brubaker's decision to gradually move away from the Frank Miller paradigm is commendable; it's always nice when writers remember there's more to Daredevil's history than the Kingpin, Bullseye and Elektra. And if, when he first started out, Brubaker relied on some of those familiar icons, he's now making a point of using new characters, and old-timers who never really had a chance to dominate the page while Miller's definitive A-listers were around. Spotlighting these less-popular individuals puts some variety and unpredictability back into the equation.

Of course, the flip-side of that decision is that once you start bringing in villains and supporting characters who haven't been around in any meaningful capacity for a while, reintroduction is necessary. You can't just assume that your readers will peg the Enforcers on sight, or that they'll recognize the significance of the name "Cranston" without any context. This issue marks a rare misstep for Brubaker, in that he ends the issue (and the arc) on a cliffhanger that doesn't work if you don't know who you're looking at. No one explicitly identifies this character, whose appearance is very similar to another Marvel villain... it's kind of a mess.

But all that really does is downgrade the issue to GOOD rather than Very Good; Brubaker's a master at this sort of slow-burn criminal conspiracy thing, and the consistency of Michael Lark's artwork lends an appropriately dark and murky quality to the story. I also like how our expectations are being toyed with in very subtle ways - I'd grown so accustomed to Milla being an annoying prat that I never thought there might be a deeper reason behind her latest string of freak-outs; and while Lily Lucca seems to fit the "femme fatale" archetype to a T, she might actually be telling the truth when she says she's not interested in disrupting Matt's marriage. It's these little things, as well as the more grandiose unveiling of master plans, that make DAREDEVIL worth a read every month.

Not Comics: Jeff Reviews The Bourne Ultimatum

The first moment in The Bourne Ultimatum I truly loved comes about fifteen or so minutes into the film, when Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is about to meet with reporter Simon Ross (Paddy Considine) about articles Ross has been publishing about Bourne and his mysterious past. Seeing what's about to go down, CIA uber-clench Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) places a call to have both men eliminated. The call reaches a man (Edgar Ramirez) sitting on a bed in a nondescript room, his bag on a chair nearby, and when he gets the call, he takes the bag and exits without hesitation.

 

This shot of Paz, the man in the room, is indicative of the rest of the film: it happens very quickly; it relies on your knowledge of the previous films to convey meaning (Paz, like Bourne, is a hired killer for the CIA but unlike Bourne he still does whatever he's told without hesitation); and it seems so straightforward as to lack any deeper subtext.

 

If there is subtext to The Bourne Ultimatum, it stems from precisely that scene and others in the film like them. The Bourne Ultimatum is, from what I could tell, a fetishized love letter to the assassin, to lonely men in empty rooms and the things of which they're capable. Bourne himself is one of these men; a trained killer who, after losing his memory, finds himself locked in near-constant battle with the CIA as he struggles to find out who he is (first film), take revenge on what was done to him (second film), and find out how he was created (third film). As Bourne becomes more and more unstoppable, the films cannot help but create a greater appreciation for this man without a history, without a place, who lives forever on the run and five steps ahead of anyone else. His only real threats are other men like him--similarly streamlined men with backpacks and furtive steps, capable of entering anywhere, killing anyone with anything. The Bourne films take the figure of Lee Harvey Oswald--the nobody with the gun believed to have done the work of mysterious men--and turns him into a superhero, and I find that both alarming and oddly comforting.

 

The alarm, I would think, is easily understood: no one would like to see a upswing in the number of blank-faced young men breaking into apartments and killing people with magazines, textbooks and Hummel figurines. But I hope the comfort is too: cities are filled with lonely men in empty rooms the world over, and the Bourne movies are made for them, flatter and woo those lonely men with no lives as if they were prettiest girls on their blocks. The Bourne Ultimatum, in fact, makes the connection between lonely men and cities manifest, as the camera frequently zooms in and out on the facades of one international city after another--London, Madrid, New York--similar to the way it does on Bourne's guarded face. And, of course, no matter what city, Bourne and his kin can dash about in ultimate confidence, able to maneuver through it with a speed and ease native policemen cannot. Even more than they celebrate the magic and mystique that surrounds the assassin, the Bourne films romanticize the global, post-industrial urban worker: rootless and without community, appearing in any city to do any job asked of them, these men appear to own nothing but their own specialized skills and yet can do anything better than anyone else. In The Bourne Ultimatum, the non-Bournes are men of color, played by Edgar Ramirez and Joey Ansah, and they are presented as Bourne's equals in every way. When battling Bourne to the death, their fights aren't charged with the fear of the Other, but by a strangely liberating feeling of equality: in the world of this film, all of God's childrens got the skills to kill with a bathmat, a candlestick and a Peugeot.

 

Now, like its predecessors, The Bourne Ultimatum is so well-made and so satisfying I'd hesitate to link the movie's success to this subtext. Director Paul Greenglass and screenwriters Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi create a movie shorn of any unnecessary detail, and allow viciously unrelenting momentum to take the place of character, theme or meaning. At times, the viewer is one split-second behind what's happening onscreen and then, without warning, there'll be a pause and the viewer will have a second to appreciate what's coming next, and then things accelerate again. It's completely exhilarating, although also a little depressing if you think about it a little bit afterward: part of why you're able to follow what's happening is that so little of it is new. The films play like classical variations on each other and, as well, the man on the run genre. But they're made with so much intelligence and clarity of vision you leave the films feeling both smarter and more clear-eyed after seeing them.

 

It'd be lovely if this intelligence and clarity was joined to something morally or spiritually edifying, which is probably where my temptation to bemoan/praise/pick at the film's possible subtexts comes in. Still, the Bourne trilogy (almost certain to be a quadrilogy, considering Bourne's monstrous opening weekend) has proven to be a surprisingly sharp series of action films, the kind that Hollywood burns to make more of but by and large lacks the skills to do so. If you haven't already, check them out.

None More Black: Graeme's second 8/8 book.

"From the pages of 52 and Countdown" announces the cover of BLACK ADAM: THE DARK AGE #1 - although those last three words are missing entirely from the cover, for some reason - and what's interesting about this first issue is the way that it feels very much like an uncomfortable mash-up of those two books' styles. From Countdown, there's the immersion in continuity without setting out what that continuity is for new readers, and from 52, the unexpected twist that makes sense if you do understand the continuity.

Which isn't to say that the book approaches either of their levels of quality; there's nothing here that approaches the fun and sense of anything-can-happen of 52, nor the oppressive crush of editorial edict that runs through Countdown; instead, you get something that misses both the highs and lows of both books - This is an entirely Eh piece of uninteresting continuity which somehow manages to offer some detours on the way to its known conclusion. Congratulations, then, to Peter Tomasi, even if I have no desire to see Teth-Adam get himself beaten up to avoid being recognized or see yet more supervillains-as-terrorists stylings.

One of the genuine sadnesses about the book (When you expect very little from a book, it's almost comforting when it gives you very little after all) is that Doug Mahnke's art feels less like his work than usual - Maybe it's Norm Rapmund and Christian Alamy's inks, or a move towards a new (and slightly more generic) style? - which removes one of the more obvious selling points of the series. The overall effect, when paired with the writing, is a firmly mid-level book that's intended only for a die-hard pre-sold audience. Which seems rather fitting for a contemporary DC superhero book these days, really.

Not Gold, etc: Graeme thinks too much about Andi Watson's 8/8 book.

You know what's been completely bastardized? The term "charming". Used to be, if you called something charming, then people knew what you meant - that is was (to quote dictionary.com) something that was "pleasing" or "delightful." It was a good thing to be charming, back then. And then, somehow, irony and sarcasm got in the way and calling something charming was suddenly a backhanded compliment, a snarky way of saying that it lacked excitement or didn't wow you for some reason. Charming became this kind of cursed word.

Fitting, then, that GLISTER #1 is something that I found completely charming in the earlier sense of the word. Pleasing and delightful are two other good words to describe the book, mind you, but what’s interesting to me is that I love it in completely the wrong way (Well, maybe not completely the wrong way; I mean, I’m not wrapping it in saran wrap and taking it into the bathroom for extended periods of time or anything). I realized this after writing an earlier version of this review, and thinking about what I actually liked about the thing – I started thinking that, yeah, Andi Watson’s writing is gentle and familiar, like a bedtime story with its expositionary narration and safe sense of the absurd, normalizing ghost stories into friendly capers, but it wasn’t really the story that sold me on it, and as much as his art is attractive and simple and tells the reader what’s happening well, it was more the stylization that sold it for me, and the way that it went together with the cover colors and design and and and oh right, I love it because it reminds me of an idealized kids’ book of my youth that never really existed.

And I kind of feel guilty about that, to be honest. I mean, taken on its own terms, it’s still Good; the story may be slight, but it’s well-done and entirely enjoyable, and there’s something to be said for people who can do this kind of all ages book that’s actually made for all ages, and not just children. But for some reason, I can’t stop myself looking at the whole thing in some bizarre art object way, and considering how the paperback size and retro colors of the cover remind me of the books from the 1970s that were lying around the libraries of my youth, or the way that the artwork reminds me of Edward Gorey even though it doesn’t really look like Edward Gorey’s work at all (One of you, I’m sure, will be smarter than me and able to tell me who I’m really thinking of instead of Gorey). I bring all these other things to the book that it maybe doesn’t deserve, and end up fetishizing it (again, not in the saran wrap way) into something that I want to call Very Good, even if only for people who think too much and are design and packaging geeks like me.

So maybe the best way to think of this book is charming, as ruined as that word may be, and let you all make up your own minds beyond that.

Back to it: Hibbs considers the countdown

(Honestly, I wrote this yesterday, but blogger wouldn't let me post it then...)

OK, lets see how dusty my muscles have become...

COUNTDOWN #38: I was actually starting to think that this was getting at least a little better -- there was some plot movement in the last couple of weeks, and the return of Giffen to the breakdowns helped the storytelling a little. But, no, I read this issue and was left with another horrible taste in my mouth.

Part of it is just the sheer sloppy nature of the book. Maybe its that there's too many things going on in the DCU, and the traffic managers can't get it right; maybe its that books aren't where they are supposed to be, and there are fill-ins all over the place, and the cover was mocked up 12 weeks ago... but I knew there was a problem when I saw that cover with "The First Appearance of Mr. Action!" on it; and the burst-logo "Collector's Item!"

Neither is true (though the second is far less true than the first), and if you can't get your cover right, what else can you do wrong? I don't know... maybe they're trying to be Ironic? Maybe even Sarcastic? But, either way, it just don't work.

This sloppiness continues inside in a couple of places: there's the "the rogue's are stated again and again to be bumbling idiots, yet they keep escaping from deathtrap encounters versus people out of their weight class" or "The Calculator tries to black out cities, and drop airplanes from the sky to distract Oracle, but doesn't think to send some simple muscle to her place... at the same time Karate Kid and No-Powers Girl effortlessly break in" (Sure, he's from the future... but I dare you to go back in time to 1007 AD and effortlessly find... well my History-Fu is weak, come up with the appropriate comparison)

(Plus, you know, if you're DYING, I'd be kind of interested to understand why you're going to a computer specialist, really -- wouldn't a prominent DOCTOR, say a Midnight, or even a Fate be a much better decision? Jes' sayin')

But I think my favorite sloppy-ass Howler was the sequence on the boat with Zatanna where she casts a spell on the crowd of onlookers in danger. That spell? It is something very much like "teg dniheb em!", or, really, the equivalent of "watch out!" -- it's not a spell, its a warning! (now, of course, if the art showed the crowd magically teleporting behind her, then, sure, spell... though I would think that "snailivic to ytefas!" would have been a better phrasing in any case)

That was basically the moment I looked at the comic and though, "Man, they really don't care, do they?"

Everyone and everything in this story is dancing to dictates of the Plothammer -- but the plotting doesn't really make much sense, or come from a place that is especially interesting, and none of the individual storylines seem to have much thematic connection to the others. Plus, there's way too many Big Coincidences -- the threat to Oracle JUST HAPPENS to occur when KK shows up; A random ship in the ocean where Z and MM are JUST HAPPENS to be the one where more Kirby Kharacters die; and so on.

And all of this serves to make everything occurring seem to be weightless and unmoored to the universe around it. WHEN are events happening? I mean is "Amazons Attack" OVER at this stage? All of the characters in the first part of the book seem focused on Oracle's issues. Clearly "The Sinestro War" isn't happening concurrently with this -- there's Hal on Earth on page 2. In fact, why are the Monitor Corp so hung up on the Joker's Daughter and Donna Troy when Superxxx Prime and the frickin' ANTI-Monitor are wandering around out there?

I don't know, I'm almost certainly over thinking this all.

Things are probably still redeemable -- certainly LOST got infinitely better in its latest eight episodes or so, fixing a lot of the meandering problems it had in the 20 episodes before that, and steering straight towards a visible (if not understood) conclusion -- and maybe Mike Carlin can fix this mess in the back half of the title... but I wonder if the audience is going to care... or, if they even care whether they'll come back. Comic readers (esp mainstreamy superhero focused ones) are often very pedantic about their "collection". It is hard, if not impossible to entice people back into a mini series they've already sampled and dismissed. Its not like an ongoing monthly, people will leap on and off of those at will -- but minis just "feel" wrong in the collection if you don't have them all. There's an "I'll wait for the trade" moment if there is one at all.

Also: for the record, my FOC (Final Order Cutoff) for COUNTDOWN #35, I adjusted my number downwards yet again, and it just hit half of _52_ -- we were ordering about 75 copies of most issues of _52_, and my order for COUNTDOWN now stands at 37. I suspect this week's "Mr. Action" cover will chase more people off, and next week will be 35 copies or below. I don't think, at this point, it is going to stabilize until it gets to the 25-30 copy range. Which, ugh, is going to be really bad for the hassles of dealing with a weekly comic.

Either way, this individual issue of the series, as a single use of your $2.99, is pretty AWFUL.

What did YOU think?

-B

My Life is Choked with Comics #4 - The Naked Cosmos

Greetings, children of the cosmos! Today's column is going to cover one of my favorite topics: mind-expansion.

And I can think of no better way for us to start off than expanding our minds away from comics, and toward the filmic arts. It’s a natural progression, really; as widespread media coverage of the San Diego fiesta teaches us year in and year out, the true excitement in comics is actually excitement in movies, whether through direct adaptations of comics, or maybe just general ‘geek-friendly’ pictures, which are apparently just as good. Now, I may not have actually watched any of those things since Superman Returns and its concluding three reels of people weeping into their shirtsleeves, but I do know what side my bread of anticipation ought to be buttered on!

Oh, but I think I may have unwittingly revealed my tragic secret, folks. The thrill is gone for me, personally. I mean, the announcement of a new comic-book movie used to have my hairs standing on end. The two-fisted gallantry of Ghost World, the blood and thunder of American Splendor - I couldn’t wait to burst into the theater lobby cosplaying as Joyce Brabner. But these days, mere adaptations just don’t get my ass into a nine-dollar seat. Iron Man? The Dark Knight? In the Valley of Elah? Feh. Wake me when someone’s got Bratpack up on the screen. These days, I need something stronger to get me perked up. Like, say, a more potent fusion of funnybook something-or-other and movie-like presentation or thereabouts.

Yep, what really does it for me these days, is comic-book creators actually making movies themselves.

My anticipation for The Spirit is running wild, of course. But, you know, I kind of like these things better on a shoestring. No big money. No heavyweight movie talents. Just a person from one medium venturing out there and getting things done in another. For example, there’s Mike Allred’s 1996 feature Astroesque, the film layer of his multimedia Red Rocket 7 project of the time. I don’t know if you’ve seen Astroesque; it’s on a dvd with the Christopher Coppola-helmed Allred adaptation G-Men From Hell, and it’s mostly footage of Mike Allred running away from (or perhaps toward) people in a ditch, with extra added fart jokes and guitar strumming. I can’t even look at Madman Atomic Comics today without thinking “that Mike Allred guy sure knows how to run.” It’s 100% true.

Or how about Sam Kieth’s 2000 feature Take It to the Limit, which I believe originated as a horror project for Roger Corman, and ultimately ended up as a family-friendly rock-climbing movie? Hell, let’s not even be recent; the IMDB denies this exists, but Neal Adams totally directed a 1987 kiddie flick titled Death to the Pee Wee Squad, starring his kids Jason and Zeea (take that, Robert Rodriguez), and no less than Troma Entertainment has a poster to prove it. Haven’t seen that one.

Now, you may have picked up on a slightly facetious tone thus far. But I genuinely do admire these attempts to make films -- complicated, troublesome, life-shortening things they are -- with little money and maximum enthusiasm. And I do think it’s fascinating to watch seasoned comics professionals branch out into this rocky territory.

But the most fascinating one I’ve seen hails from 2005, and it doesn’t even resemble a movie so much as episodes from a public broadcast show gone incurably mad. Yet it's funny, and surprising, and altogether recommended. Directed and written and starring and partially scored by none other than the great Gilbert Hernandez. You’ve heard of Hernandez, I’m sure. As co-creator of Love and Rockets and a general comics legend, Beto needs no introduction, yet it’s worth noting a few things about his body of work for our purposes.

While best known for his tales of the Latin American village Palomar, Hernandez has explored many varied genres and subject matters. His comics reflect a great appreciation for soap opera, fantasy, sex, and various species of low-budget film. Sometimes his works mix and match tropes to the point of tonal incoherency; his 1996 Dark Horse miniseries Girl Crazy veered from cheesecake superhero spoof to gore-spattered will-to-power fable without ever slowing down. He also has a love for intuition and improvisation, which sometimes leads him down odd paths; while somewhat underrated, his 2002 Vertigo miniseries Grip: The Strange World of Men did wind up spending an awful lot of space bending over itself with flashbacks for the purposes of explaining things the reader has been shown. But, at his best, all of these elements combine to form comics of uncanny poise and worldview, all of it transmitted through his often stunning command of the primal elements of the page, the viewpoints and the location transitions and that beautiful illusion of movement. Few do it better.

Most of these elements are also at work in The Naked Cosmos, Beto's grand foray into shooting actors and scenes with a video camera. I can't quite call it a movie, since it's structured like a quartet of episodes of a television program. Indeed, some sources claim that these episodes actually aired on public access television in the Las Vegas area, although my own searches indicate that this is merely the concept behind the work, a simulation of various episodes that actually builds and climaxes as a singular thing. Regardless of what it is, rest assured that it's very funny, very eccentric, and prone to lapsing into wonderfully jarring zones of melancholy and violence. From a filmmaking standpoint, it certainly represents a level of forethought as to how to cope with the project's obvious monetary limitations. Hell, a strange television show needs to look low-budget, and director/writer/star Hernandez more than rises to the challenge.

Also, by 'star,' I actually mean 'performer of all adult male roles.' Yep, Beto plays a whole lot of characters in this thing, and his wife, Carol Kovinick, plays nearly all the rest (so, all adult female roles). Daughter Natalia Beatriz Hernandez plays all children, regardless of gender. There's also exactly one scene in which Beto shares the screen with another male character, his face obscured. I have unilaterially decided that this is Mario Hernandez, although I have no proof to back that up, nor do I actually know what Mario Hernandez looks like.

The plot concerns a fellow named Quintas (an effeminate, black-garbed Hernandez with lipstick, eyeshadow and a blonde wig), who's the host of the show we're watching - The Naked Cosmos. Quintas only wants to urge his viewers, the children of the cosmos, to harmonize with the astral plane and stuff like that. He's very weird, and somehow sad, prone to pondering the existence of a mysterious purple disc that seems to take everyone away for fun and memorable rides except for him. Sometimes he needs an injection, which momentarily causes his facial veins to pop and foam to pour from his mouth. Beto completely freaks out with the character at least twice per episode, including several episode-closing exhortations to look to the skies, howled at the top of his lungs.

Quintas also wants to have an entertaining show, but he's often interrupted, especially by Kalisto (Hernandez with a thin felt mustache, a Zorro mask, and a purple cloth around his head), his clone, and the rational, scientific blowhard yang to his spacey, gentle yin. Catchphrase: "You have the mind... OF A CHILD!!" Both clones pine for Mistress Velda (Kovinick in a blonde beehive), a perky researcher of some sort, and both seem to answer to the Chief (Kovinick wearing a leopard mask and speaking only Spanish), for seemingly little reason. Rounding out the cast is Ego (Hernandez in a long blonde good ol' boy wig with a shaggy mustache), who has the power of teleportation, Mr. Mims (Hernandez with glasses, in hyper-nerd overdrive), the show's meek aide, and Zansky (Hernandez standing upside down with his face pressed through a black screen, with little eyes and glasses and hair pasted to his chin), a naughty Ninth Dimensional entity who introduces educational film clips that are actually random bits of various public domain movies pasted together.

Basically, each 'episode' consists of bizarre sketches and routines, broken apart by still details from some astrological map, and that old public tv standby of footage of high-tech equipment set to spooky space music. Most scenes take place in front of a simple background, although sometimes characters wander out into the desert, and occasionally there's a special bit like the aforementioned films or a runtime-padding exploitation-style travelogue scene set to narration (the setting: Las Vegas, of course!). The humor is deeply, deeply odd, and only rendered more surreal by Hernandez's wildly devoted performance(s), joyfully blurring the line between a character in a show nervously reading off of cue cards and Gilbert Hernandez reading his character's lines off of cue cards, although sometimes he seems to be making his lines up as he goes along. There's even a bit where Quintas narrates a story, which is visually depicted via Gilbert Hernandez drawings.

It's actually quite tempting to draw parallels between this madness and Beto's comics work. There's plenty of comics references, including some sanctum sanctorum dialogue and a scene where Quintas reads a copy of Amazing Adult Fantasy #11. But even Hernandez's structural approach to the film, small half-scenes breaking off into different ones in different locations that eventually add up to a cumulative impact rather than a directly narrative one, are reminiscent of some of his page layouts as of late, with bits and burbles of talk snapping off, the reader's eye careening from location to location (I found the Beto bits from the new Love and Rockets #20 to embody this style nicely). Granted, Beto also layers his film with an added coat of concept, it being a type of formulaic television program, but the likenesses are still interesting.

Hernandez also includes a full-length 20-page comic book with the dvd, for even easier comparison, but he opts to use that forum to fill in the lives of the characters outside of the show, melding the tragic(!) saga of Quintas and Kalisto into a two-fisted, blood-spattered superhero epic, complete with a double-page center splash of war against a horde of mutants. It both serves as prelude to and summary of the actual film, in that Quintas' and Kalisto's rivalry ultimately leads to a (literally) show-stopping battle in the desert, Gilbert Hernandez flailing madly in two costumes at an off-camera opponent as the visuals cut from Quintas to Kalisto to Quintas to Kalisto. Needless to say, only the innocents are hurt when opposing forces of the human condition meet, leading to a burning action figure and Gilbert's many characters flailing in sadness before vast desert vistas, as if the latest episode of Jack Horkheimer's Star Hustler has ended with Jack shooting a man while looking him in the eye and lamenting before his video background.

It's bananas. Yet, it's a wholly Gilbert Hernandez type of bananas. Honestly, this may be one of the most emphatic translations I've seen of a comics artist's 'feel' from sequential art to another medium. Consider my head in the stars! You can still order this dvd (region-free, though NTSC) from Bright Red Rocket, its publisher, and I think Beto's admirers will probably enjoy it. Hell, you might enjoy it if you just enjoy weird stuff, like a comics legend prancing around in silly costumes and bugging his eyes out at everything. Part of the joy of culture, I think.

Abhay-- 8/7/7 MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1: Just a Quickie Review; 8/5/8/9/8/3

So-- I'm in a hurry this week-- please forgive me if this is dull as a result as I think it might be; Jog and Graeme both review this book already, but I want to attempt to talk about MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1 by Brandon Graham (via Oni Press)— it feels a bit early to talk about the series though. I’d read KING CITY, but I never read Brandon Graham’s ESCALATOR: I had bought ESCALATOR at a San Diego Con two or three years ago on a Sunday morning. I was feeling horrible that day—I’d had a bad lunch, or I’d eaten something the night before that had gone down profoundly wrong. So I’m miserable—absolutely fucking miserable, all day long. Evening comes, and I’m walking past a hotel, when it all reaches a climax: I put the books down and proceed to begin violently vomiting into the nearest bush. I finish, and… the book is gone. (Just ESCALATOR and some mini-comic, luckily).

If you’ve never been to a San Diego Con before, I always thought “they stole my comics as I was vomiting” was as perfect a one-sentence description of, like, the entire experience as you’ll ever hear. And that was back before it got really crazy.

Anyway, MULTIPLE WARHEADS… Let's get that stupid, boring "reviewing" business out of the way, first: I agree with Jog and Graeme that this is a totally fun comic. Now, armed with the knowledge of my opinion, venture out into the world of Men! Men in Italian Suits, who drink Cappuccino, and wear Cufflinks! You are ready!

It seems like comics have got this younger generation of cartoonists, blasting out these comics that aren't just heavily influenced by junk culture but unquestioningly embracing junk culture. It's some of my favorite stuff going right now, actually. One thing I’ve noticed: there’s a tendency towards these bizarre affirmations of comics. Not the content of comics, or the object-ness of comics, so much as just comics gratia comics: as a lifestyle choice or a destination in and of itself. "OH MY GOD, COMICS CURED MY ACNE!"

Examples: TEENAGERS FROM MARS featured a Comic Book Liberation Army. Fabio Moon, Gabriel Ba, Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos and Rafael Grampa released a gnarly comic at the San Diego convention called 5, which featured, among other things, one story concluding with Cloonan happily chaining herself to a drawing table, and another with Lolos smiling and happily drawing comics while alone and in TRACTION(!). CASANOVA Volume I, Issue 7, Page 6, Panel 6: "I love comics!" Brandon Graham concludes the first volume of his terrific Tokyopop graphic novel KING CITY with a one page comic essay on Drawing Comics, featuring exhortations like "You could steal pens and paper and make the best comic ever sitting on a dumpster."

MULTIPLE WARHEADS has a good one: it goes from a sex scene to characters post-coital, in bed, vulnerably discussing the latest issue of BARBARIAN REVENGE.

(For fun with generational shifts, compare that for a second to the following passage from Ivan Brunetti's SCHIZO #4: "I have reached the October of my enthusiasm. I don't think drawing cartoons is a moral thing to do. I should be mopping the AIDS ward at the county hospital. I hate everything I've ever done. Every night when I go to bed, I pray for death." Or to page 25 of the ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY Library of Novelty collection entitled Ruin Your Life: Draw Cartoons and Doom Yourself to Decades of Grinding Isolation, Solipsism, and Utter Social Disregard. Or to any panel in Dan Clowes's PUSSEY, say.)

MULTIPLE WARHEADS mostly skates along on Graham's considerable cartoon energy, with a little maybe-from-real-life relationship energy sometimes peeking out from under the surface. Watching him spread some of that around isn’t a bad way to pass time. Graham’s worlds are built through an accretion of seemingly random details. I guess I'm used to that from Grant Morrison comics, where there can be crazy surface details, but it's just sugar-coating for whatever Morrison's really talking about. A lot of newer work uses a similar principle, but it's not coated to much by way of a philosophy or discernible themes yet so much as exploring purely personal concerns: heartbreak, friends, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, etc. KING CITY is a wallop of fun and one of the books I've most enjoyed this year for it, but I couldn't tell you what I took away from it. Similarly, MULTIPLE WARHEADS is more pleasurable at seeing an obviously talented cartoonist let loose than for any theme or observation being conveyed, say. Maybe there’s something there about relationships but it hasn’t really crystallized yet.

Which is sort of a worrisome thing for the future: that the tangible results of all that enthusiasm from all these promising cartoonists sometimes do little more than reproduce the emotional state of eating pixie sticks. My favorite Cory Lewis comic to date is about kickball…? Joss Whedon just launched a webcomic (with totally pretty art from Fabio Moon & the so-so-so-great Dave Stewart) entitled SUGARSHOCK. It’s… it’s about a rock band of young girls…?

SUGARSHOCK …? Uhm, dude, I liked it and all, but: Joss Whedon is 43 years old.

Joss Whedon doesn’t lie awake worrying about whether a rock band of young girls will make it happen; he worries about his house payment. Or the rattling sound his Lexus is making. Or whether his daughters get into Vassar.

I enjoyed MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1, and I think you would too, but would it be unseemly to acknowledge that sometimes I look at it and its contemporaries, and experience a minor slice of existential terror? I don’t know about you, but on this end of the screen, shit, I’m not getting any younger over here. Getting older has positive qualities, more than I expected, but, Jumping Jesus Crap, I’m terrified of it anyway. I’m not sure what the theme of MULTIPLE WARHEADS is, but is there kind of an unspoken thing to all these books of … “Look! Look at our Youth before it fades!” I'm terrified of being old and hearing kids blather incoherently about video games and anime; or even worse, infinitely worse: being old and hearing kids blather incoherently about video games and anime and UNDERSTANDING WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT! You are the Ghost of Christmas Future, Joss Whedon!!!

But like I said in sentence #1—it’s too early to say. Maybe Corey Lewis will end up doing comics about spikey-haired 38-year olds who, ZOMG, get the most awesomous prostate exams of all time. Scott Pilgrim: Deadbeat Dad. The Pirates of Coney Island sick with worry about what will become of their children if they were to die unexpectedly. Guy with Inexplicable Werewolf Penis (?) from MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1 struggling to meet a decent woman on Match.Com. Maybe they’ll keep the energy and have their themes evolve, without succumbing to the despair of ... without becoming SCHIZO #4, basically. Maybe? Maybe that’s possible…?

In the meantime, you could do worse than to give MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1 a look.

When good tastes go bad: Graeme wants the wrong book, 8/1.

It's the end of the comics week, which can only mean one thing - Essential Dazzler comes out tomorrow. Is it wrong of me that I kind of want to pick that up? I mean, sure, there are good comics appearing as well - Casanova #8! - but... Essential Dazzler. How bad can it be?

FANTASTIC FOUR #548: I'm sure that I should feel as if the tension is building and the story is headed towards some grand climax at this point, two issues from the big anniversary issue, but... I don't. Which isn't to say that this fight issue is bad, exactly, just kind of Eh; yeah, the team is back together (which is to say, Reed and Sue have rejoined the action), and yeah, they're fighting the Frightful Four which is kind of retro-cool and all, but when the cliffhanger ending is that they have to fight Klaw, then you're somewhat lost in the Had-To-Have-Been-There-o-Verse.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #8: Color me entirely torn on this one - On the one hand, there's an attempt at a character arc being pushed into a done-in-one spotlight on Liberty Belle here, which is both ambitious and somewhat welcome (One of the problems with JSA is that there are too many characters for the book, if y'ask me, and it's nice to see some attempt at fleshing out some of the lesser-known ones), but on the other, it's all handled rather poorly, tying in to and relying a little too much on your knowledge of other books and other characters... A good effort, I guess, but just barely Okay, and that's mostly because of Fernando Pasarin's art.

NEW WARRIORS #3: Oh God, from the cliched - and hardly contemporary - "Usual Suspects"-ripoff cover down to the generic dialogue, lackluster plotting and entirely gratuitous guest-appearance by Wolverine, this is so close to the very definition of Awful that I'm saddened to say that I thought Paco Medina's art was kind of groovy, in a bloated-Terry-Dodson way. Still: Best avoided.

SHE-HULK #20: Well, if nothing else, it's novel to see writers - in this case Dan Slott and Ty Templeton - work so quickly to tie up every possible loose end they can in such a small amount of space. The result, mind you, is still an Awful mess of rushed and unfulfilling resolutions that end up making you wish that they'd tried to leave somethings open, but you can't have everything. That said: After the fourth-last page of the story, now do you believe me that this takes place post-World War Hulk, Charlie...?

SUPERGIRL #20: On the plus side, Renato Guedes really does draw a very good Supergirl. On the minus side, it's a shame that the art is wasted on such a flat, crossover-driven story as the one Tony Bedard supplies. Given that next issue guest-stars Karate Kid from Countdown, I have the feeling that all of Bedard's short run is going to be crossover-centric... Eh, overall, really.

THOR #2: There's something to be said about the deliberately slow pace of the revival of Stan Lee's favorite classical mythological figure. Exactly what that something is, I'm not so sure, but there's definitely something - we're two issues in, and what I'm getting is possibly that JMS doesn't really have much of a plot lined up but can definitely do "quirky" characters. As with the first issue, the best thing about the book is definitely Oliver Copiel's artwork, which is clean, clear and the star of this Okay show.

WORLD WAR HULK #3: The Hulk! He's broken Dr. Strange's hands in the psychic realm! Hulk is apparently the hardest thinker there is! Or something. Ignoring the weak "Strange Smash!" cliffhanger, this is continuing to be the event that doesn't disappoint - in the main book, at least - although I'm worried that the gladiator turn of events is going to change that for the last half of the series, as the attempt tat moral ambiguity ("He wants revenge on those who exiled him and accidentally caused the death of his family! He may be wrong - - Or he may be right! Which side are you on, true believer?") gets replaced by "He's turned Madison Square Garden into a superhero gladiator arena where he gets mind-controlled superheroes to fight for his pleasure! He's very clearly insane and must be stopped!" A low Good.

What did the rest of you think?

Superfast: Graeme digs the slowness of 8/1.

Gah! Busier than the average bear today, so excuse both the lateness and shortness of my love letter to Kurt Busiek and dislike of Dan Didio. Or something... But, somehow I missed part one of the story that continues in this week's ACTION COMICS #853 - Was it in the Superman issue I didn't read from the week before? Or is my Countdown-lethargy causing blindness to comics that cross over with it? - not that that stopped me from understanding what's going or enjoying the issue. As much as I want to snark that this is because Kurt Busiek knows how to write comics that don't rely on you reading seventeen other comics to understand them unlike the Countdown team, there's enough truth in that for me to take it more seriously than your average throwaway cheap shot. I mean, surely there's something wrong with Countdown if I have to find out that Jimmy Olsen's sudden knowledge of Robin's secret identity from that series is actually a plot point (as opposed to an unexplained arguable editorial oversight) in a crossover as opposed to the main book...?

Whereas COUNTDOWN #39 stumbles along in its own Eh way, with Jimmy's superhero career as comedy relief in the middle of what is essentially filler (Oracle's defenses can be beaten by punching them a lot, apparently...? She should work on that. Also, now that we're a quarter of a way into the series, shouldn't we have passed the teases for the series by now? Instead, we still don't know why "Jimmy Olsen Must Die" - indeed, no-one's even demanded that in the series at all yet - and Eclipso hasn't even appeared in the book, never mind seduced the innocent Mary Marvel as one particular teaser ad promised. I'm all for weekly pacing being different than monthly and all, but by this point in 52, there had been major movement on all the core plots as well as the introduction of many new characters - The Great Ten, Isis, Supernova and Batwoman by week Thirteen, I seem to remember. Not to get all, "Why, in my day, weekly comics had lesbians and plot development" or anything, but Countdown just seems slow by comparison, something that seems all the more obvious with issues like this), Busiek uses this Good tie-in issue to add some mystery and, well, action, to the basic concept. He also offers plain old good writing complete with not only characterization but also foreshadowing (Jimmy gets upstaged by a dog at the start of the issue, only to get saved by Krypto at the end of it, etc.), in-jokes (Clark's yawning as the television talks about an all-night mission by the JLA), and the invention of the evil internet. You know, fun dumb superhero stuff.

World-building from the Busiek school - in service of the story, as opposed to being the entire point of the story, which is what Countdown feels like too much of the time - is just one thing that Kurt has been a king of in his Superman writing in the last year and a half, and it'd be nice for him to be recognized for keeping the flagship character's books as strong as they have been (including essentially bailing out Geoff Johns more than a few times) by the powers that be. Given the fact that he can do solid superhero storytelling like few others can - with a sense of humor that doesn't overwhelm the story, with a sense of drama that doesn't tend towards needless grittiness or false danger, and with a sense of what other writers are doing in other books without appearing to be an advertisement for them - maybe he can be the showrunner for next year's weekly spectacular...?

Today We Sail to the Exotic Nation of Japan: Jog travels between 8/1 extremes.

Well, I said I'd have more than one review this time. Didn't say it'd all be comics. It's sort of all comics-related, right? Also, I bought the new issue of Otaku USA (my anime review came from its free sampler dvd) at a bookstore this week, so it counts as 8/1 on Planet Jog, although I think it got put out a week early. Anyhow.

Mushishi Vol. 2: Not a quick release here. Mushishi is a popular manga in Japan, a fan-favorite that’s spawned a beloved anime series (and a less-beloved live-action film), but Del Rey has seen fit to bump its English-language release back to a twice-yearly schedule, which probably isn’t a good sign financially.

Too bad, because Mushishi is an often superb comic, each volume stuffed with five standalone tales of Ginko, a Mushishi, a wandering, cigarette-puffing magician/doctor/shaman, seemingly stepped out of a forgotten Hayao Miyazaki guest issue of Hellblazer. Ginko can manipulate Mushi, tiny organisms that embody primal attributes of the natural world and tend to affect human moods and perceptions.

Of course, Mushi really serve as a means for writer/artist Yuki Urushibara to craft exquisite little stories of, say, Mushi as an extended metaphor for human wanderlust - Ginko encounters a man chasing Mushi rainbows, and torn between following his irresponsible father, or following dad’s wishes to be a grounded person. Symbolic images of flowing rivers and dams abound. Ginko also gets caught up in the case of a fellow Mushishi, a man like a god who’s weakened by human foibles, plus a mysterious girl who lives and dies every day, and a family desperate to love the doppelganger Mushi children that killed their real son.

The very best story sees a young woman driving out the deadly Mushi inside her by transcribing tales of the Mushishi, literally transforming her sickness into living words, plucked off her skin and out of the air. But all the tales are of heroes vanquishing evil, until Ginko promotes a harmonious style, which benefits girl and ‘sickness,’ and provides a hugely inspired parable of counternarratives sapping human fear of the Other. EXCELLENT work, popular manga loaded with mythic and literary heft, and I absolutely recommend it.

Witchblade (the anime) Episode 3: Horrible. Anime studio GONZO put out 24 episodes of this in 2006, and pretty soon it’ll be slithering onto R1 dvd. Maybe the new Otaku USA dvd just had an especially bad episode, but it was such a dreadful, pandering mess that I doubt any amount of backstory could redeem it.

The story is original to the anime (which isn’t to say it’s original). Endearingly clumsy anime character type Masane and her comically large boobsock-hugged breasts are just trying to get by in post-cataclysm Tokyo, while raising a helpless, mysterious little girl of the type that must appear in 65% of all yearly anime or someone gets fined.

But Masane is also the current bearer of the Witchblade, which turns her into a lip-smacking wanton for violence (sex), her thong vanished so deeply between her cheeks the animators are content simply to draw a bare ass. Confronted with a menacing tank, she murmurs “come… you big thing… I feel you…” before slicing off the machine's phallic gun in a splash of goopy white stuff, which I'm sure is completely different from semen. Female empowerment, but still pleasureful for men! There are two such skeevy fight scenes this episode, executed in a swift, cost-effective manner. The rest of it is minute after grueling minute of the most banal Bubblegum Crisis knockoff corporate intrigue imaginable, capped with some unbelievably pandering I-LOVE-my-child!! sentimentality. It's a celebration of maternity! Hooray!

I’m forced to wonder if, for some Japanese audiences, this sort of thing really is an encapsulation of what contemporary American superheroine comics are. Like, this is the image we project, and what another culture deems ‘correct’ to beam back. But then, I’m probably thinking too hard about a stupid cartoon designed for sad men to watch with their pants off. CRAP.

Range Mash: Douglas vs. the Marvels of 8/1

How do you solve a problem like Dr. Strange? There's something about him that doesn't quite seem to work these days--he can't sustain a series of his own, his supporting cast is the same tiny group of characters it was 30 years ago, and even though everyone seems to like him enough that he's always positioned as one of Marvel's big guns, he keeps generating narrative dead-ends or appearing in big stories only to be written out of them in short order.

The difficulty with making a Dr. Strange comic work is twofold. One of them is that his stories need to look absolutely gorgeous and sort of surreal or there's no point, and nobody's really stepped up to give him the kind of visual splendor he got in his prime from Steve Ditko and later Marshall Rogers and P. Craig Russell and sometimes Gene Colan. (I can imagine J.H. Williams III doing a perfectly terrific Dr. Strange, but who knows if he's got any interest in the character? From my conversation with him at Comic-Con, it sounds like he's already got a very full plate for the near future. And somehow I can't imagine Paul Laffoley would be all that interested in doing comics.)

The other is that nobody's ever been able to define or even suggest what he can and can't do--which works fine when you're doing a story that's entirely within the realms of the mystical (or "imaginary solutions to imaginary problems"), but falls apart when you're working in a setting where physics applies. Dr. Strange's powers are, literally, hand-waving. I don't even know if he belongs among the Illuminati, frankly. He worked in the context of the Defenders because the point of that series was that the group's characters had nothing in common--he and the Hulk don't operate within the same frame of reference. (It's the same principle, in a way, as the Grant Morrison Seven Soldiers, where e.g. Klarion and the Manhattan Guardian may cross paths but understand what they're experiencing in completely different ways.)

This brings us to New Avengers: Illuminati #4, which exemplifies the Strange problem, because he has to be present in it even though he has nothing to add to it--and even though, if Bendis and Reed wanted to make him solve the problem by waving his hands, they could easily have done so. The opening scene, with the cabal chit-chatting about their love lives, is a really good example of bad Bendis--maybe the dialogue's actually Reed in a Bendis-imitating mode, but it certainly seems Bendisesque. It's not just that they're talking about things they wouldn't talk about, it's that their dialogue is intermittently way off from their established speech patterns. (Charles Xavier would never, ever say "Plus--if, listen, if I did do this...") And four of the five characters on the cover don't even appear in the issue, which wouldn't bug me if they had a symbolic presence in the body of the issue, but the Marvel Boy stuff that makes up the bulk of the plot has nothing at all to do with the women-problems business from the first few pages.

The plot, yes--I like Graeme's phrase "unnecessary continuity implant." Two huge flaws with the story here. First, it requires a working knowledge of the Morrison/Jones Marvel Boy miniseries and the entire Kree/Skrull narrative to make sense. (I've read Marvel Boy, although not lately, and I can't even remember what happened in it or how this would fit in.) Second, if you're going to do a continuity implant, it has to change the meaning of what was happening in the original story; this doesn't, and I don't see how it can be meaningful to future stories, either, unless Noh-Varr ends up becoming the next Captain Marvel, which would mean 86ing the entire point of his character. An Awful issue.

I was afraid World War Hulk had gone way off course with last week's also-unnecessary issue of Incredible Hulk--in case you missed it, the point was that Rick Jones and... was it Miek? The insect-thing... are, you know, Two Sides of the Same Coin. (Plus have we found out yet what happened with Amadeus Cho and his Legion of Hulk-Helpers? I'm pretty sure we haven't, and that's the part of this story I want to read most. I keep thinking that Cho is basically Peter Parker in the part of the story between where he gets his powers and where Uncle Ben dies: a very powerful, very arrogant kid who thinks he knows how everything works and is heading for a major fall.) With World War Hulk #3, though, I'm back on board, particularly since he's figured out how to make Strange work in as physical a context as there could possibly be.

This is a massive, gleeful crank-it-to-11 action comic, and it works because Pak and Romita don't try to get around the potentially corny bits--they just charge full-speed-ahead into them: "No, Doctor, you can't." "I can. And must. Now bring me the box." Pak's got a bad habit of repeating sequences and catchphrases--how many times do we need to be told how the ship blew up and Caiera died? or read someone saying "may he who dies die well"? But he's very much in control of his characters thematically. The way he gets around the Strange-in-the-physical-world problem is to make Strange's part of the story about his most physical attribute as a character: his hands, which are the instruments of his failed caretaking in his origin. (Strange reaches out his hands to Bruce in friendship, and has them crushed by the Hulk; at the end of the story, they're replaced by immobile weapons.) Lots of great visual touches from Romita, too: the '70s Sal Buscema-isms of General Ross's flashback, the reversed-out linework when Strange drinks the Zom potion, the crinkly, extra-Janson-y artwork on the flashback inside Bruce's mental landscape. A Good issue, elevated by what's hands-down the best final page of the week.

In the non-Strange division, over in the corner, there's poor cancelled Irredeemable Ant-Man #11--when a "fan-favorite" creator like Robert Kirkman can't sell a Marvel Universe series for beans, there's a problem. (The first comics store I went to this week didn't even carry it. The second had two copies of this issue peeking out from behind an Essential Amazing Spider-Man TPB.) Next issue is the final one, but this one seems to have been plotted as the wrap-up, oddly enough--most of the dangling plot threads are brusquely dispatched here (I think the only ones left have to do with Eric's love life), it's called "Redeemed" for that soothing full-circle sensation, and it ends with the status quo of the beginning of the series mostly restored.

I've really enjoyed the formalist tricks of this series, especially the sixteen-panel grid Phil Hester's given it--there aren't sixteen panels on many pages, but the panel borders are always more or less where they would be if there were. Honesly, though, I don't know how much longer Kirkman, Hester and Parks could've sustained it: the series is built around one joke, which is that Eric O'Grady is a weaselly jerk who keeps doing the right thing more or less by accident. His victory here consists of lying through his teeth to save his own skin, then selling out the person who's come to rescue him--all of which is funny in theory, and only sort of works on the page. It's an Okay issue of a series that's generally been more impressive in its ambition than its execution.

Gutwrenching meh-taaaaaaahhhhl (2) and other stories: Graeme looks through his SDCC haul, still.

Part two of the things I picked up at SDCC last weekend, because it's either this or continuing to be completely fascinated by "Survivorman" on the Science Channel (Why would anyone do what he does on a regular basis? WHY?)...

BEESWAX BOUND: Much to my embarrassment, I didn't realize that the person I was talking to at the AdHouse table was Joel Priddy until after I'd left, and looked at the minicomic he'd given to me - Sorry, Joel. Although even if I'd realized who you were, I would've been too shy to say that I really like your stuff, including this collection of sketches and expanded blog posts (Read Joel's own take on the mini here). There's enough material and promise here for three or four full-length books ("Fracas" alone could fill a couple), and the way it sparks the imagination of the reader more than makes up for any slightness you might feel about the minicomic format. Very Good.BB

BLACK METAL: This kind of feels like the first post-Scott Pilgrim book in a lot of ways - definitely the first thing I've read that seems to learn from what Bryan Lee O'Malley does well without reading like an obvious attempt to copy it. It's a very enjoyable book, gloriously dumb and reveling in it, and the speed with which it moves somehow shunts it past the the self-consciousness I normally find in Rick Spears' books (and also makes me want to revisit his Pirates of Coney Island, for some reason). Chuck BB's artwork is attractive enough and ready-made for Cartoon Networkization, which seems fitting; this is pretty much an Adult Swim show that accidentally came out as a Good book.

MULTIPLE WARHEADS #1: Jog talked about this last week, and he's spot-on with how good it is - Pretty much a continuation (in terms of stylization, not plot) of his King City book, this confirms Brandon Graham as one of the most interesting creators out there right now for me - he manages to mix the sublime and mundane in a way that feels both new and familiar, even as it's in a very specific world. Very Good and enough to make me want Graham to magically put out new work every week.

THB: COMICS FROM MARS #1: Going along with my born-again love of Pope post from yesterday, this sealed the deal. What was a pleasant surprise here was the gentleness of the writing - I could tell from Pulphope that Pope is someone who believes in people, but the sweetness of the final story here was a really welcome surprise. Excellent, and on a tangent, anyone from DC who read this and didn't think that Pope should just be given Kirby's Fourth World characters and be allowed to do whatever he wants if he ever wants to do anything with them is insane.

(This isn't the place for it, but with news of Marvel turning Kirby's Eternals into an ongoing title coming in quick succession to DC's announcing that Jim Starlin is killing off the New Gods, however temporarily that lasts, just made me think that what's wrong with the Countdown-centric direction of DC's superhero line right now is that it's so reductive and willing to eliminate what doesn't easily slot into Dan Didio's idea of what makes good comics. Grr, bah, etc.)

12 REASONS WHY I LOVE HER: Yeah, I know, this came out ages ago - It's one of those books that I meant to pick up when it came out and somehow forgot. What tempted me in the first place, and turned out to be the best thing about the book, was Joelle Jones' artwork, which is graceful and cartoony in the best ways, letting the characters act in ways that support (and, in some cases, gloss over rough patches of) Jamie Rich's dialogue. The (admittedly slight) writing feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure due to the out-of-chronological way the story is told (I choose to believe that things end as well as they could), but that adds to the book, I think; you can take it as a romance or anti-romance as the mood takes you. Good enough to make me want to check out Rich's other books, finally.

Tomorrow, back to the books from last Wednesday, if only because I want to point out why Kurt Busiek is still winning after all these years.

Corny, I know, but you'd better believe it: Graeme starts his SDCC haul.

So here's the pull-quote part of this whole review: In a year that's really been full of some pretty amazing books so far, Paul Pope's PULPHOPE is not only the most impressive release to date, but a book that everyone who has an interest in creativity owes it to themselves to read. And here's the most amazing part about that statement: I mean it completely.

(For a second's digression, this year really has been pretty damn good for graphic novels, hasn't it? This past month alone, I've read three that I really have to get around to writing about purely because I loved them so much: Robot Dreams and Laika, both from First Second, and Clubbing from the pretty-impressive-even-if-no-one-else-seems-to-be-saying-so Minx imprint over at DC. Add to that things like The Homeless Channel or Garage Band, and it really seems like a pretty good year, all things considered.)

I picked up Pulphope partially because I was at SDCC and felt as if I could get away with spending $29.95 on something I was only randomly curious about ahead of time - I'm cheap, what do you want? I wasn't the biggest Pope fan ahead of time, I have to admit; I'd thought that he was an interesting visual stylist, but didn't really have much of an opinion beyond that. What I got for my money was a book that owes a lot in terms of design to people like Tomato and Julian House (As a particular and somewhat random example, anyone remember House's designs for the Primal Scream single "Miss Lucifer"? It's like that, kind of), filled with not only some beautiful - and warning, kids, some potentially pornographic depending on where you draw your particular lines - images that come so close to visual overload but never go overwhelm. It's stunning to look at, from its abstract (logoless, wonderfully) cover - reminiscent of Pollock but cleaner, a shiny pop version - onwards, but that's not where its real value for me was.

Y'see, this book has essays by Pope. They're similar in style if not content to his posts on his blog, which are insightful and distractedly conversational, but his writing here is more focused in intent - each essay deals with Pope's creativity, whether it's particular influences, his past, where he sees his work and himself in context with contemporaries and history - and kind of inspirational, to be honest; you can't help but feel the passion Pope feels not only for his own work but for the creative impulse in general. It's wonderful writing, even if you have absolutely no interested in Pope's art and design (which, by the way, would mean that you have no taste after the 228 pages of awesome herein), and essential, compulsory, reading for creative people of all stripes. You might not agree with what he writes, you may not even like what he writes, but you'll end up inspired by it nonetheless.

Pulphope is a book that engages you emotionally and intellectually; it's something that doesn't fail to impress on a visual and visceral level, and - if you're anything like me - will get things bouncing around in your head for days afterwards. I've been talking about it to people for days after reading it, and continually going back into it and discovering new things to think about and admire. Really, it's that good. It's downright Excellent.

A Quick One Before I Leave: Jog's first dance with 8/1

I'll have more than one review next time, but until then...

Garth Ennis' Chronicles of Wormwood #6 (of 6): In which the writer whose name is in the title concludes this tour of a spiritual cosmology in an appropriate place: the End of Days. Ennis has been pretty consistent with using the anything-goes attitude Avatar exhibits around their ‘name’ writers to write some genuinely idiosyncratic comics, stuff that might not fly at more guarded publishers for reasons beyond more-gore/more-sex/more-nasty. And this series has read like a particularly personal little thing, the religious manifesto of a man approaching 40, and becoming all the more convinced that there’s nothing willing to help people besides themselves.

The notion’s carried fairly smoothly through the series, from the idea of heavenly religious characters tossing away glory and wandering on Earth, to protagonist Wormwood’s inability to keep a relationship going, despite being the Antichrist and miraculous and all. I’ll confess to getting bored with the midsection’s tour of Heaven and Hell, your typical afterlife portrait of a cosmos inclined toward maximum irony (the terrorist was expecting 40 virgins, but got 40 little babies with dirty diapers - good one, Paradise!), although it does give artist Jacen Burrows some enjoyably ugly scenes to draw. But ironically, Burrows’ visual style has developed to the point where the particulars of his character art are more affecting than his ‘big’ pages, and so the book does best when kept intimate.

Anyway, this issue’s the Apocalypse, and it’s little surprise that Ennis sees such a planet-quaking threat as little more than state-of-fear hi-jinx wielded by the powerful to keep the people scared and easier to rule. Certainly Wormwood’s ultimate decision seems inevitable, given the book’s theme (helpfully spelled out via narration at the end). But this has been more a sorting-my-head-out comic from a prominent talent than anything else, and a highly OKAY one, with a GOOD conclusion.