This Place Is Killing Me: Graeme reviews 4/16

Was it just me, or were this week’s comics kind of… bad? Not even enjoyably so, just very run of the mill and lacking in joy. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m reading the wrong comics (And somewhere, Alan David Doane cheers in agreement), but still. Where are the smiles, people? Where is the awesome?

Be warned: I spoil Captain Marvel’s big reveal under the jump, and the end of Countdown #2. Don’t come complaining to me when you find out what happens to Darkseid.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #12: With the news that Mark Waid’s leaving the book with #16, I kind of despair about the lack of success of such a straight-ahead, basic fun superhero book as this. Sure, it might be missing alien invasions or evil gods winning and crushing humanity’s spirit, but surely there’s got to be something to say about good old fashioned superhero action…? Maybe not; this issue, while still Good, lacks the lightness and ease of earlier issues, feeling more like a rush to hit plot points than a coherent story in its own right. Yes, it’s still old school, but in the sense of an average Justice League of America issue that Tom Katers would make fun of instead of the updated Silver Age-y quality of previous issues in the series.

CAPTAIN MARVEL #5: Huh. I can’t help but feel that the reveal that Captain Marvel is just a Skrull sleeper who ends up going rogue is going to piss as many fans off as it will please others. It feels like a “Having cake and eating it” ploy – You get to have the character back without undoing the death, and all by doing a variation on the clone idea. Beyond stringing along Mar’Vell fans, I can’t see the point of this series in retrospect; pulling the bait and switch right at the end may set up Secret Invasion, but it feels as if a lot of the earlier work was invalidated as a result. Eh.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #2: Well, now we’re getting somewhere. It’s just that the “somewhere” is so clearly not going to stick (Ignoring that Darkseid is the main bad guy of a series starting next month, this is, what, the fourth time that he’s died?), and the journey took so long that very few people even really care anymore. Scott Kolins’ art gets appropriately Kirby-esque in scale despite the rushed feel to the inks, and would’ve been the high point of the issue if not for Ryan Sook’s artwork on the two page secret origin of Darkseid at the end of the book. Someone get him on a New Gods series immediately, please. Eh.

DC/WILDSTORM: DREAMWAR #1: Someone needs to tell Keith Giffen that it’s one thing to start a story with a lot of confusion, but you need some kind of grounding and explanation for readers to buy into it. While I get that the DCU characters are appearing in the Wildstorm world without explanation, there’s not really any introduction to the Wildstorm characters or status quo for me to grab onto to understand why I should be bothered… Instead, it’s so clichéd with the “Heroes clash!” scenes that it kind of reads like a parody of a superhero crossover. I’d say that this Crap comic was a wasted opportunity, but I’m not really convinced that there was that much opportunity here to begin with.

IRON MAN: LEGACY OF DOOM #1: Talking of old school (Admittedly, that would’ve worked better if I’d put this after the Brave and Bold review), this is a curious throwback of a book, but an enjoyable enough one if you wished that it was still the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. I’m not enough of a fan of Micheline, Layton, Ron Lim or Iron Man for it to be more than Okay to me, but somewhere out there, fanboys are probably very, very happy about this series.

X-MEN: DIVIDED WE STAND #1: From a business standpoint, this book makes perfect sense – It’s a grab for shelf-space, capitalizing on the revitalized X-Books and buzz that “Messiah Complex” generated. On every other level, though, it’s just confusing; stories that are too short to have any real impact, mired in continuity that makes them confusing for people who haven’t been following the entire franchise for years, and acting as poor showcases for the talents involved (Compare Jamie McKelvie’s wonderful Suburban Glamour to his work here, even with the Matt Fraction script, and you’ll see what I mean). It reads like lots of filler stories all grouped together just to clear out someone’s drawer; Crap, then.

This week: Countdown finishes, and my fingers are genuinely crossed for some kind of climax that makes me re-evaluate the entire series… I won't get it, but there's some value in hoping, nonetheless.

WHY DO NERDY THINGS WORK? ABHAY REREADS BLUE BEETLE, EPISODE I

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...

Diana Goes Digital #5: You Spin Me Right Round

Sorry for the hold-up, but I've been locked in a cosmic battle between good and evil for the past few weeks (I'll let you guys decide which side I was on). No quarter was asked, none was given, and mark my words, I will get Vista off my computer. If I made it through Rob Liefeld's heyday without having my eyes poked out by Cable's pointy feet, I can beat my husband's fascination with transparent windows... Anyway, I thought we'd take a look at spin-offs today. It's hardly a foreign concept in the biz: every X-MEN eventually begets a NEW MUTANTS (though, like Pringles and Lolcats, it rarely stops with just one). When they're done properly, spin-offs are a welcome extension/continuation of a great story - of course, that concept is problematized in a mainstream where most stories never actually end (case in point: you have to wonder what would've happened if NEW MUTANTS had supplanted X-MEN rather than supplimented it).

But webcomics can be - and often are - finite, which leaves the door open for the question Peter Milligan put best in ENIGMA: "And then what?" Aeire's QUEEN OF WANDS was an early favorite of mine; I discovered it during its second crossover with SOMETHING POSITIVE in 2004. It was an easy jump to make; QUEEN OF WANDS had a similar tone in its heavily-cynical approach to geek culture, and if Aeire wasn't as vicious as R.K. Milholland, the guest appearances by Charles Darwin and the Grammar Nazi still amused. QUEEN OF WANDS also had a much smaller cast, allowing Aeire to create a consistent focus on her protagonist, Kestrel, and the people around her.

My memories of QUEEN OF WANDS are mostly GOOD: the art was eccentric, but enjoyable, with marked improvement over the years. And if Aeire had an occasional tendency to overdo the flashbacks within flashbacks and the melodrama, she balanced it out with plenty of light-hearted moments. But what I remember most about QUEEN OF WANDS is the way it ended - in a medium where stories can just stop cold when the writer loses interest, it was a real treat to see Kestrel's journey of maturation and self-discovery come to a kind of natural conclusion. And the day after QUEEN OF WANDS ended, Kestrel appeared in SOMETHING POSITIVE, where she became a recurring character in typical Milholland fashion. And that's a sort of spin-off there, because Kestrel's story goes on after the last panel of QUEEN OF WANDS, even if she's now in the hands of another writer.

Two years later (an eternity in net-time), Aeire teamed up with Chris Daily to produce PUNCH AN' PIE, a QUEEN OF WANDS spin-off featuring the hyperactive, childlike Angela in the lead role. It's a very different webcomic, not just artistically but also in terms of the story, and to be totally honest, it hasn't quite clicked for me. I realize that rehashing QUEEN OF WANDS would've been completely derivative, but at the same time, PUNCH AN' PIE takes a long, long time to start "moving" (as opposed to that oh-so-fitting first page of QUEEN OF WANDS, which pretty much sets the tone for the entire series), and six months in, I just wasn't feeling the same kind of energy that had made QUEEN OF WANDS so enjoyable. That's not to say it doesn't have its moments, but... well, part of the problem might be that I never really liked Angela to begin with, and that's crucial when it comes to spin-offs: it's the same reason why, despite my deep appreciation of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, its sister show ANGEL never held my interest for more than a few episodes at a time - I wasn't fond of Angel (to say the least), so the prospect of an Angel-centric series had me about as thrilled as a diabetic trapped in Willy Wonka's factory. And that's likely why PUNCH AN' PIE just didn't rate beyond OKAY for me.

Having sung the praises of Shaenon Garrity's NARBONIC, it should come as no surprise that I'm recommending LI'L MELL AND SERGIO, a spin-off featuring the irrepressible Mell Kelly in first grade, with brainy nerd Sergio replacing Dave Davenport in the "straight man" role. I don't know why it surprised me to see how perfectly Garrity captured the essence of Mell's character - she did create her, after all - but it's as funny and unpredictable as its parent series. Unlike the QUEEN OF WANDS/PUNCH AN' PIE schism, LI'L MELL AND SERGIO does feel like an extension of NARBONIC in some capacity, and it's especially fitting that Mell is the star, given how perfectly the story of Helen and Dave ended.

Let's move on to the works of K. Sandra Fuhr, an interesting case study in how the malleable nature of webcomics can work to one's advantage. Fuhr's first comic was UTOPIA, a sci-fi comedy which featured, among other characters, a trio of vampires: Mikhael, Harley and Tybalt. They were eventually spun off into their own series, THIS IS HOME, by all accounts the biggest maelstrom of teen angst, rape, murder and melodrama since Laurell K. Hamilton. And when that didn't work, Fuhr took her lead characters, stripped away the pseudo-Gothic trappings, and BOY MEETS BOY was born.

Then she deleted UTOPIA and THIS IS HOME. Poof, not a trace of it left anywhere online. And believe me, I've looked.

The reason I find this so interesting is because you don't have that kind of total dissolution in mainstream comics: even the most massive reboot I know of, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, was never able to completely excise everything that had come before it. That pre-history may not have been in continuity anymore, but it still existed, people still talked about it and - most importantly - they could still access pre-Crisis material on a regular basis. Eventually, DC had no choice but to acknowledge pre-Crisis history again. But with webcomics, you push a button, and as far as the average reader is concerned, the comic never existed. Fuhr was essentially able to retcon her own bibliography. And if traits belonging to earlier versions of the characters bled through... well, how would you know?

Getting back to the actual comics for a bit: BOY MEETS BOY is pretty much your textbook yaoi manga, with an added dose of pop culture that, unfortunately, has become a touch dated by now. The premise can pretty much be summed up in a single page. Still, it's cute enough that I appreciate it on its own terms: for example, you have the gag and its requisite counter-gag, various breakings of the fourth wall and so on. GOOD stuff, all the moreso for being unpredictable with its storylines: you may think you know where the story's headed, but there's usually a twist just around the corner.

A year into the series, Fuhr imported Fox and Collin, formerly of UTOPIA, into the story. Introduced as college misfits and nemeses to Harley and Mikhael, they ended up becoming rather dominant characters, to the point where entire storylines revolved around them. I don't think it came as any surprise to Fuhr's readers that when BOY MEETS BOY ended, Fox and Collin were spun off into their own series, FRIENDLY HOSTILITY, which kicked off with a storyline that fleshed out the wacky Maharassa clan.

I should note that both Fuhr's writing and her artwork undergo a massive evolution as time goes on: if BOY MEETS BOY has some awkward aspects and the art can generously be described as rough and inconsistent, FRIENDLY HOSTILITY hits the ground running with smoother artwork, stronger dialogue, and less of a reliance on the histrionics native to the yaoi genre. In fact, I'd argue that FRIENDLY HOSTILITY leaves yaoi and its conventions behind altogether: it's much more realistic (the occasional demonic cameo aside), more in the vein of a romantic comedy than the out-and-out chaos of its predecessor. It's only right that FRIENDLY HOSTILITY be graded VERY GOOD, in recognition of the author's vast improvement over a relatively short amount of time.

And finally, technical notes:

* QUEEN OF WANDS ran from July of 2002 to February of 2005, followed by a "rerun" of the series from March of 2005 to November of 2006 with commentary by Aeire. Full color. The series archive has a "Storyline" option but it only goes up to 2004; you're on your own after that.

* PUNCH AN' PIE is ongoing, in black and white. The series started at the end of February 2007, and updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Unfortunately, the archives are woefully out-of-date, making navigation a real challenge.

* LI'L MELL AND SERGIO is ongoing, in black and white. Girlamatic used to charge subscription fees to read the series, but it's now free of charge. It updates on a weekly basis, featuring multiple artists.

* BOY MEETS BOY ran from September 2000 to January 2004, in black and white. The very last page featured Fox and Collin inviting the readers to check out FRIENDLY HOSTILITY...

* ... which is ongoing, in black and white; the "Problematic" storyline began concurrently with the end of BOY MEETS BOY, while the series proper started in August of 2004.

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Nineteen

Enough of the creator shelves for a while, how about we move on to "Art instruction and comics careers"

Here's one where I AM going to go with the "obvious" pick. There are some terrific books on "how to draw" or even "how to approach a comics page" -- Burne Hogarth's DYNAMIC... (ANATOMY, WRINKLES & DRAPERY, FIGURE DRAWING, etc etc) series, Will Eisner's COMICS & SEQUENTIAL ART or GRAPHIC STORYTELLING, and so on, but there's one book that I think that each and every comics reader in the world, whether or not they have the SLIGHTEST interest in ever drawing a single comic ever, really should have on their bookshelf:

UNDERSTANDING COMICS by Scott McCloud.

McCloud's book is just as great for the casual comics reader as it is for any creator, laying out a tremendous amount of practical theory about comics layout, storytelling, nomenclature, style, and so on.

I don't know if I agree with each and every theory that McCloud posits (and, really, I'm not even sure that Scott agrees with it all any longer), but there's enough "Oh fuck, I never thought of it THAT way" in there that will probably blow your mind.

What's great about UNDERSTANDING COMICS is that it IS comics, and it is eminently readable AS a comic as well.

Regardless of this feature, I'd place UNDERSTANDING COMICS as one of the MUST HAVE books in your collection! Go go buy it now!

-B

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Eighteen

And today's "Creator shelf" is Grant Morrison.

(I don't know if this image link thing will work -- first time I've tried it, but I'm linking from our own site, so I'm guessing it will?)

(That was a Thanksgiving window display we did several years ago. The art is by Christopher Hsiang)

But, actually, like most of the previous "creator shelf" entries, I won't go with the obvious choice of DOOM PATROL (or ANIMAL MAN or THE INVISIBLES)(though if FLEX MENTALLO was in print, that would probably be the one...) for multi-volume series or THE FILTH or WE3 for single-volume picks, though each and every one of those is really excellent comics work!

No, trying to stay on the "obscure" side, I'll side with THE MYSTERY PLAY, his graphic novel with Jon J. Muth.

A lot of complaints get levied against Morrison for being "obscure", and, really, I get that too sometimes. Many is a time I read one of his books and I don't QUITE get what's going on, or what he's trying to say or whatever -- but I find THE MYSTERY PLAY (ironically) to be quite straight-forward and readable by nearly anyone.

It all starts with when an actor playing God in a small town play is murdered, and the detective investigating has a set of secrets of his own...

Saying anything more probably spoils the whole thing, but I found it eminently readable and clear, even though it has several different levels it is working on.

The art by Muth is absolutely lovely (though what of his isn't?), and keeps the book absolutely grounded.

Want a GN you can pick up, read in an hour, and walk away thinking about for days? Here ya' go, pal, THE MYSTERY PLAY.

-B

Conformity 4/9: Jog obeyed every law in the course of obtaining this comic

Criminal Vol. 2 #2:

Things are coming together pretty nicely. And if that sounds like I'm treating this issue as more of a chapter in a continuing serial than another standalone tale of crime, rest assured that I'm only putting it in the context of its strengths.

Sure, you can take this particular book as a one-off thing - there's a beginning, middle and end, and whatnot. The plot concerns Teeg Lawless, #1 Dad, and his thrilling adventures in the city after getting back from Vietnam in '72. He can barely look at his wife, the drink has sent his mind flickering, he's deep in debt to some bad characters, and the big score he's counting on is bound to turn out bad - he's the sort of guy this happens to. But the story isn't titled "A Wolf Among Wolves" for nothing, and Teeg just might be able to pull through with his special mix of disarming forthrightness and killing the hell out of lots of people.

It's fine that way. A haunted, dangerous man comes back to town, and proves to be more dangerous than haunted. Sean Phillips & (colorist) Val Staples make it look hard and ruined as filthy, well-trodden concrete, as usual. Ed Brubaker can (presumably) set down how Teeg's blackouts work in script form, but it's inspired visuals that combine, say, the passage of time via panel width with judicious use of black to convey Teeg's mental state. I like how panel #3 below continues the blackout for a bit into the alley where Our Hero and his pal are stumbling, only for them to hit another small wall of nothing.

The arrangements can even seem sort of musical, keeping beat between waking life and vivid memory, the latter marked with brighter, more indelibly violent color. Indelible for Teeg, I mean.

But that's not quite how I read this issue, and not why I think it's VERY GOOD; if Brubaker shows only one thing in Criminal, it's that isolation is a hopeless illusion.

Obviously, this issue overlaps with last issue; if you've been reading the backmatter, you know that the first three books in this second pamphlet-format 'volume' will center around the same crucial, bloody rip-off. And Brubaker gets some impact from the conceit - not only are certain plot points from issue #1 clarified, but series crime lord Sebastian Hyde is seen in selective enough a light that he seems to truly embody the image he desired to create for himself prior. There's connections between the the two issues, like similar images of each story's protagonist laying beaten on the ground at their change-of-path low point, as well as some amusing contrasts, like a character seen wielding a club in issue #1 getting thrashed with that same weapon in issue #2. Simple.

But the real impact comes from taking the whole Criminal enterprise as what it's acting like: a decades-spanning saga of ad hoc families, and fathers passing pain down onto their sons. You'll get what Teeg means when he says that he'll learn to hate his children from this issue alone, but I think it'll only register as effective when taken with the earlier Lawless storyline, starring the grown Tracy Lawless in the present day. Only then can you appreciate the irony of both series' similar endings, or the telling nature of subtler bits - watch how Teeg bides his time by knocking off gas stations with both his partner and the young Tracy. The partner doesn't come to a good end.

And neither does any son in this series. Tracy, Sebastian and Leo (from the Coward storyline) all eventually become their fathers in some awful way, even if they try to escape. It's been said that 'family' is the core theme of Brubaker's body of work, and it's maybe getting its richest airing here, albeit in a damned, noir manner. I find it striking that only Gnarly -- star of issue #1 and force behind the 'neutral' Undertow -- is able to escape this type of growth (thanks, grievous bodily injury!), and that Brubaker has paired him with a daughter in poor lil' Angie. Maybe she'll turn out better?

I don't know if we'll find out, but I expect further variations on this theme will cohere as we go further into the hard world of these bitter little tales, growing more concentrated in their sourness by the issue; I'm grateful. This book shares a war preoccupation with Marvel's other top crime series, The Punisher MAX, but Brubaker's noir fascination fittingly sees a broken and cruel society for soldiers to come home to. And what's more social than family?

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Seventeen

Continuing the creator racks, we're on Frank Miller.

Again, there's some stupidly obvious choices here: SIN CITY, BATMAN: YEAR ONE, DAREDEVIL (though much of it is OOP), DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, but I'm going to go with a slightly less obvious one here:

HARDBOILED

Created with Geof Darrow in 1992, HARDBOILED is a masterpiece of over-the-top detail and carnage. Really the star here is Darrow, with more detail-per-square-inch than any five other comics combined. There are pages here you can stare at for five minutes each, pulling out details.

There's a level of outrageous here that I'd never seen before in a comic before this -- where crazy background details do more for world-building than anything previous. And there's a crazy level of kinetic cartoon violence going on.

I wouldn't say the story is particularly DEEP, but any comic that works out as ROBOCOP-meets-WHERE'S-WALDO is AOK in my book!

-B

Why can't these things be more Secret?

The strangest thing about SECRET INVASION #1 actually had very little to do with the book itself. I mean, sure, it’s Okay, it does the job relatively well and Mark Morales’ inks bring a nice shine to Lenil Yu’s pencils that I haven’t seen before, but reading it after having read all the spoilers about it online, I was kind of surprised that not one plot point had escaped being revealed ahead of time.

The feeling of déjà vu wasn’t helped by Marvel having previewed half the book online ahead of its release, either, but I’m not really complaining about that (DC did it first for Countdown’s first few issues, didn’t they? It’s obviously the way to get people talking about your book); at least that déjà vu was earned by actually having read the thing before. But reading the rest of the issue, with all of the intended-to-be-surprise events, after having had every single one of them spoiled ahead of time was a weird experience. It kind of took you out of the story and made you focus on the execution, instead, and… well, that’s not the best thing to think about on a book like this.

Don’t get me wrong. Like I said earlier, the book looks great – the cleaner Yu art, along with Laura Martin’s colors, works a treat, Morales’ inks filling in for some of Yu’s traditional shortcuts and making it look more… well, more mainstream, really, the kind of muscley, glossy thing that you’d expect to see in a Marvel crossover book. But the writing works on the momentum of plot more than anything else, and when you remove the intended “oh shit” moments, all you’re left with are choppy scenes of characters given no real introduction doing things that are given no real context within the book itself other than “aliens are attacking” (Mind you, how much more context do you need?). As the first issue of a series that’s intended to draw in readers who haven’t been reading Marvel books for years up to this point, it’s terrible.

That said, as the first issue of a series building on the recent Marvel Universe exploits? It does the job you expect it to. So, overall? It’s Okay. I’ll just make a point of avoiding spoilers for the next few issues, I think.

Other comics! Quickly!

ACTION COMICS #863: By this point, Geoff Johns has worked out how to play almost entirely to the existing fanbase while making everything so basic that anyone can understand what’s happening – “Superman is in the future with his childhood pals fighting for tolerance? Sure, that makes sense.” As a complete Legion fanboy, I loved this storyline as much for the optimism of the heroes as they dealt with the dystopic future as for the nostalgia of the whole enterprise, and the “Legion of 3 Worlds” tease at the end make me stupidly excited. Good stuff.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #555: Hey, Steve Wacker? Here’s how you solve the continuity problem you ask about in the letter column: Ignore the complaints. Zeb Wells writes a fun script that, unlike all the other Brand New Day writers so far isn’t too retro, and Chris Bachalo’s art is clear and chunky and fun. Pretty Good, surprisingly.

CASANOVA #13: Post everything exploding, Fraction takes a step back for an issue of exposition, surprising reveals (Me, I’m sad that he isn’t dead, myself), and flashbacks showing that Casanova Quinn was kind of an awesome influence on those around him for a self-professed asshole. As we hurtle towards the end of the second album, it’s the small things in this issue that shows once again why this book is Very Good on a continual basis.

(And, on a side note, Fraction, Brubaker and Aja leaving Iron Fist? Very sad news indeed.)

KICK ASS #2: Mark Millar knows what he likes, and part of that really is some strange lowest common denominator stuff. It’s as if Millar really dislikes his audience but on some level recognizes that he is that audience, the way that he writes down to them but with such love. This book is entirely Eh to me; it feels as if it’s being written for an audience entirely alien to what I’m used to. Nice art, though.

YOUNG X-MEN #1: Talking of being written for an audience entirely alien to me, I can’t help but wonder what the thinking is behind this latest version of the New Mutants/Generation X/New X-Men idea: “They’re young heroes in a dangerous world! So they have to become soldiers… who kill!” What, really? There’s something so depressing and hopeless about that idea – and about the fact that the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are the original New Mutant team – that I can’t help but hope that there’s going to be some “surprise” reveal some time soon that shows that everything isn’t as oppressive as it seems. As it is, this first issue was Okay; written fairly generically, but with some nice art.

This week: Surprisingly, no Secret Invasion books. You do all that hype and then let momentum drop the very next week, Marvel? What’s that all about?

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Sixteen

Continuing on the "creator racks", we'll move on to Warren Ellis.

This one is kinda hard, actually, because it would be really easy to default to TRANSMETROPOLITAN. Which is great and awesome, no doubt, but it seems too easy.

One of Warren's greatest strengths as a comics storyteller is his love of telling a complete story in a single unit. You can see this on display in FELL or GLOBAL FREQUENCY (both which also could easily make the cut), which are collections of single-issue stories bound up as part of a larger narrative, but I think that for this pick, I'm going to edge myself over to PLANETARY v1: ALL OVER THE WORLD AND OTHER STORIES (which is, actually, a pointlessly long subtitle, isn't it?), which is as much about stories and storytellers as anything else.

It opens with a war between the Pulp Heroes and the Super Heroes, moves to Gojira and Monster island, ghost detectives in Hong Kong, and has the best rethinking of the Fantastic Four and Hulk that modern comics have done. All wondrously self-contained, yet each moving the overall story a bit forward.

You can sum the book up with this line from issue #1: "It's a strange world; let's keep it that way"

Yes.

There's also lovely lovely art by John Cassaday.

If there's one single complaint I could make it's that there's STILL one more issue to go (and we're getting on 2 years now... my computer says the originally solicited shipdate of the last issue was freakin' 2006) -- Although the story proper is done, and the last one is just an "epilogue" -- which means the final collection of the series can't come out until that happens. Hope they get that done soon!

Anyway, great great stuff, and well worth being in your collection.

-B

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Fifteen

The next few days we'll focus on the "creator" racks, since those are easy to bat out (and I need easy since our bathroom is being remodeled, so I'm living at my parent's house and have maybe 20 minutes of not-between-customer's-computer-time each day)

We've already done the Moore and Wagner shelves, so let's move on to another one of my favorite writers: Garth Ennis.

This one is super-double easy, actually. If I had to pick one SINGLE Garth book to hand you, there's really only one choice: PREACHER.

You've got a disillusioned Preacher from Texas, his hit-woman ex girlfriend, and an alcoholic Irish vampire who go on a quest to find God, and to make him answer for the state of the world. Pure fuckin' gold.

And that's just the START of it.

Here's the thing: PREACHER is vile, profane, offensive, sacrilegious, foul-mouthed, and perverted. Yet is is also one of the most moral stories you're every going to read. It's about love, and about faith, and about friendship, and about standing up for one's own. It is an amazing masterpiece, made all the more poignant for it's potty-mouthed flipping off.

The series (nine books) wobbles a bit around v6 or 7 (but don't they all?), but it has a great end worthy of its start, and if you want to have a proper comics collection, this here is a book that belongs in it, pardner.

-B

Abhay Asks "Will Secret Invasion invade my Secret Vagina?" Abhay Certainly Hopes So!

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!!!

Around the Store in 31 Days: Day Fourteen

I still feel pretty cruddy, but not so cruddy that I can't write a little.

So, let me babble about my history of comics collecting.

Like many people, I'm started and stopped collecting comics more than once. From childhood to, dunno, 12 or 13, something like that, I kept myself a comics collection; then I discovered girls and decided comics were just for kiddies, and got rid of them all.

I started collecting again a year or two later (about 15, I guess), trying to rebuy all of the comics that I had gotten rid of. Smart, eh? I also, at that stage, since I now had some kind of an allowance, started buying stuff that long pre-dated me (we'll get to that in a minute)

Somewhere around 19 I decided I needed cash (probably for weed, is my guess), so I sold a bunch of my back issues, then somewhere around 20 I bought a bunch of them back YET AGAIN (what can I say, I was stupid)

Finally, when I was 21 I opened the store, which means I took pretty much ALL of my back issues and used them as my starting stock.

What this means is there are some comics that I bought 2 or 3 times, at various points in my life, sheesh!

Where this is leading is that I have learned to completely and totally adore the super cheap huge-ass black and white collections of classic comics like the Marvel Essentials, or the DC Showcase volumes.

One of my favorite runs of all is the original LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. At one point, I had something approaching 95% of them (just missing the first half-dozen appearances in ADVENTURE, I guess), so today's recommendation is SHOWCASE PRESENTS: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES v1 -- I would have totally saved HUNDREDS of dollars in buying those issues again and again (and that in 80s dollars!)

What I love about the Legion is the wide-eyed optimistic vision of the future that it presents -- it is all uptopia, baby, with teenagers from dozens of worlds, with dozens of mad and fantastic powers, all coming together to protect their shiny, fin-covered future.

And there's something over 30 different stories in this book, for like $17 -- what a damn deal!

I love this stuff, and you should too!

-b

In Which We Return And Start Again: Graeme picks out the last of March.

April at last. After the endless slog that was March, it’s time for a new month of optimism, happiness and… Wait, what’s that you’re saying about Jim Mooney...? Oh, crap. Comic reviews and only one April Fools reference under the jump.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #10: As if he’s been holding back for the last few issues, Grant Morrison gives us the perfect Superman here, one who’s so in love with humanity that he spends his dying days making sure that we’ll all be okay without him. I can’t help but compare this to “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?” and this, I have to admit, seems better to me in almost every way - This is the “End of Superman” that I want to read, one that’s… well… more kind, really. And now all the Alan Moore lovers will come to my house and beat me up. Sorry, but this was really Excellent.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #5: Yeah, yeah, I get it: It’s the secret origin of Kamandi. And yet, done in such a way that it’s really, really dull. What was the point of destroying another Earth with a plot that doesn’t seem to connect to anything? Will Final Crisis answer this question? Am I a patsy for even caring at this point? Crap.

GANGES #2: This, despite appearing in the same week as both All-Star Superman and the fourth Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus, is easily the comic of the week. Despite my normally going on and on about his writing – and I’d happily do so again, based upon the evidence here; a wonderfully wistful, melancholic short story that feels true and familiar in the best ways – it’s the impact of the opening pages, a silent sequence all about design that introduces iconography to follow in the rest of the book, that sticks with me days after reading. Kevin Huizenga remains a creator unlike most, with an eye for the little things that don’t have any names, but are important nonetheless. Really, incredibly Excellent.

GREEN LANTERN #29: From the sublime to the… Well, not ridiculous, but, man, do we really need another chance to read Hal Jordan’s origin? It feels like this is one of the more traveled parts of Green Lantern history, and even though it’s being done well – Taken on its own merits, this is easily a Good book – it still feels tired and unnecessary. That said, I prefer “Secret Origin” than “Year One” as a brand name for this kind of thing, just because, so there’s that.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #11: Finally, this series meets its potential, with a well thought-out issue that mixes old school action and characterization with a plot that makes sense and doesn’t rush between nonsensical events as if there is a race to put everything in place before the next big crossover. Oh, wait. “April Fool.” This is not just the lesser of the two Avengers books, but just a mess of a book on any level – I just don’t get what this story was all about, because it kept switching plots without any rhyme or reason like a hyperactive child: “Okay, so the ‘vengers are fightin’ lots of Venoms! No! Wait! They’re fightin’ Doctor Doom! No! They’re going back in time! No never mind, it’s Doctor Doom again!” Here’s hoping that Secret Invasion brings this book somewhere back to coherence. Crap.

NEW AVENGERS #39: Meanwhile, over with the other Avengers, there’s an issue of filler that only would be interesting if Doug’s theory about it turned out to be true. Part of it is that Echo hasn’t really been shown to be an interesting character in this series yet, so having Wolverine and Hawkeye both flirt with her seems Mary Sue-ish, but the other part is… the Skrull thing just wasn’t that interesting here. Worth looking at for all the art “homages,” though. Eh.

POWER PACK: DAY ONE #1: See, Geoff Johns, this is the way you do origin retells. As much as I loved the Louise Simonson/June Brigman originals, this new version has a much friendlier, faster tone and makes me want to see an ongoing book from the creative team. A Good start, even if Jack is now a Skrull imposter.

This week: Is there any doubt that it’s all about the Skrulls? Secret Invasion starts, and we all get to see just how much of it has already been spoiled online. Personally, I’m holding out for those Luke Cage rumors to be 100% true...

Does the Fish Have Chips?: Douglas meets Glenn, Kal & Peter

This has been an incredibly good week for comics, I have to say. Under the cut: GANGES, ALL STAR SUPERMAN and MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN.

I have no idea why two of the biggest comics stores in NYC didn't get Kevin Huizenga's GANGES #2 (they weren't sold out, it wasn't even on their new-arrival lists)--I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope there was something wrong with the shipment. But this is a thoroughly Excellent issue, the kind of thing I want to hand to people who ask "what kind of comics do you like?" It starts with another of the wonderful "Fight or Run" abstract-combat stories Huizenga was doing in Or Else--they're totally idiomatic to Huizenga and totally unlike any other current comics I can think of, and this one frames the central conceit as a video game. (The combat isn't just a conceptual abstraction, it's a visual abstraction.) As it turns out, it is a video game in the context of the issue's second, longer story, "Pulverize," which is about Glenn Ganges working at a dot-com in 1999 and spending all his time after hours playing a first-person shooter with his co-workers. It's a fantastic, hilarious, perfectly observed piece of cartooning, and almost every panel has some great detail: the grayscale, black-line-less, vector-graphics Himalayas; the way we never see Wendy's face when she's awake, even on the back cover; the little explanation of the origins of abstract combat as video games; the description of "Yipper Yap World," a nonviolent game involving a "native tribe of Rasta-ostriches"; the motto of the useless dot-com, "we don't know... and that's a good thing"; the ultraminimal way Huizenga draws Fritzi, and the enormous amount of facial-expression and body-language mileage he manages to get out of, like, five lines...

Jog has already sung the praises of ALL STAR SUPERMAN #10, but I'm going to chime in and say how much I adored this issue, both despite and because of its implied punch line: if Superman did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. I love how compact Morrison's writing is here--he keeps using the late-Invisibles trick of the single panel that stands in for an entire sequence, and he gets better and better at it. (The panel with Superman mapping his own genetic code, circles with increasing magnitudes of magnification radiation from the back of his hand, would be the best panel in pretty much any superhero comic right now; here, it's just another hit-and-run.) And I'm happy seeing Morrison bring more of his personal obsessions into the story--the infant universe of Qwewq from JLA: Ultramarine Corps (not to be confused with Italo Calvino's Qfwfq, of course...), the cube-forms that signify so much in Seven Soldiers and Invisibles, "matters of scale," and metafiction. Excellent stuff.

The oddest and most welcome surprise among this week's comics, though, was MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #39, which I'd never even have picked up if a staffer at Midtown Comics hadn't seen me hovering over that Amazing Fantasy hardcover and pointed it out to me. The surprising part isn't the lead story, a fun but pretty par-for-the-course Spidey/FF team-up: it's the backup feature, a little eight-pager about Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin, dialogued by Kevin Marlow and plotted and drawn by somebody credited as Tod Keevits. I say "credited," because one glance at the artwork makes it easy to figure out what that's an anagram for: I'm pretty sure this is the first Spider-Man story Steve Ditko has published in upwards of 40 years.

That's "published" and not "drawn," because looking at it it's not clear to me when he drew it: it's much more tightly rendered than the more minimal, gestural style I associate with the Ditko of the last decade or two. (Unfortunately I'm on the opposite side of the country from my scanner right now, and as usual, none of the usual online suspects even bother scanning the MARVEL ADVENTURES stuff.) The story ends fairly abruptly, and given the Goblin connection, I'm wondering if it was actually an abortive stab by Ditko at Amazing Spider-Man #39 that somebody found in a drawer; it's very weird to see his distinctive style with new-school modeled color, though. A Good curiosity on its own, but it's definitely worth seeking out for historical reasons, and if you're interested I'd snap it up before tomorrow.

Papa Don't Preach: The Toughest Review Diana Ever Wrote, 3/26

During my (admittedly short) time as a comic book critic, I've reviewed comics that made me happy, or sad, or violently ill; works by writers I can't stand, or admire, or wish would try just a bit harder because they're capable of so much more (you know who you are). But there's one comic I've never talked about, and likely never will:

WATCHMEN.

To be totally honest, WATCHMEN intimidates me. It's too great a work for me to discuss, and it's such a central part of comics discourse that I doubt there's much I could say that hasn't been said before, by greater critics than myself.

And I'd be content to let sleeping dogs lie, except the comic I'm about to review can't be discussed outside the WATCHMEN context, and that puts me in a rather uncomfortable position. So I'm just going to take a deep breath and see where things go from here. More after the jump. One of the perks of being a Savage Critic, aside from the company, is that we occasionally get advance copies of comics that have either just been solicited or, on very rare occasions, haven't actually been announced yet.

So when I got a PDF from DC Comics titled MINUTEMEN, I figured it was some colonial-era historical drama, perhaps with some dinosaurs and time-travel thrown in just so we wouldn't forget it was a comic book.

I certainly wasn't expecting a 48-page WATCHMEN prequel by Leah Moore and Dave Gibbons, due for release in July.

Needless to say, I ended up having some deeply conflicted feelings about this comic. So let's start with the positive aspects first: the most obvious pro, of course, is that this one-shot constitutes a return to a world that had been previously self-contained. Granted, it's a prequel, and Alan Moore had already covered most of this the first time around, but the effect on me as a reader is like opening a favorite book for the twentieth time and finding a whole new chapter that I'd never seen before. A sense of the new and the familiar, all the more powerful because WATCHMEN changed the way I read comics.

And Leah Moore delivers a good story, for the most part. Her previous project, ALBION, had left me rather indifferent, but here she really shows a knack for small, silent, understated scenes that drive a huge emotional spike through your heart: Ozymandias handing Mothman his first glass of bourbon with a knowing grin was absolutely chilling, because there's no dialogue, no narration, and yet you just know what Moore's trying to imply.

Obviously, it's the artwork that sells these sequences, and Gibbons deserves a huge round of applause here for sticking so closely to WATCHMEN's character designs. It contributes a lot to that feeling of connection I mentioned - that this really is an organic companion to its parent text.

However, I can't help feeling like the whole project is unnecessary on some level. Part of WATCHMEN's appeal is that it doesn't spell everything out, and we don't necessarily know every detail of what happened in that world Moore and Gibbons created all those years ago. We knew Silhouette and her lover were murdered - did we really need to see it happen? Doesn't that take away from the mysteries of the original, the things left in the shadows? A lot of what Leah Moore does is basically confirm, explicitly, the things her father left to our imagination: yes, Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis were lovers, and the Comedian found out, and Dollar Bill thinking about adding a cape to his costume comes with all the ominous foreshadowing you'd expect...

And when she does add to the mythos, the contributions are questionable at best - nothing in MINUTEMEN technically contradicts anything in WATCHMEN, but there's a hint of that familiar "everything you know is wrong" vibe that annoys me on principle these days (so you can deduce my feelings towards SECRET INVASION too).

Still, in lieu of the Great Bearded Warlock making a comeback, I could settle for this. In short, I'd give it an OKAY if it weren't an early April's Fools' joke.

...

...

Gotcha!

The Super-Spoilers of 3/26: Jog has found God at last

All Star Superman #10:

As expected, this issue starts to wrap things up for the series, and it's sort of a relief. I did like writer Grant Morrison's suite of confrontations between Superman and various doppelgängers, Our Hero pressing to understand himself on the road toward the end of all things (er, keep in mind, I'm the one who thinks the second Bizarro issue is the best of the whole series), but it's high time a little payoff should develop, and that's what happens here. Given that Morrison tosses in an amusingly brief encounter with yet another Authentic Man of Tomorrow, I think even he's gotten antsy.

Over the course of one big day -- events relayed out of chronological order for maximum impact -- Superman sets about accomplishing a lot of big super-challenges. He's very godly (in more than one way... more on that later), but he realizes that he needs to collaborate with others in order to affect lasting change: curing cancer, fixing every bridge in the world, getting the people of Kandor out of that bottle. When put together, the story forms a neat little sequence of Superman helping people out, from the lil' folk in the jar to The Only Girl With Facial Piercings in Metropolis, and getting helped in return, if sometimes in very removed ways. Wholesome fun, this.

Oh, and Superman's pretty sure he's gonna die soon, so he's also trying to prep humanity up for a world without him as much as possible; bathetic as the Girl w' Piercings part is, "You're much stronger than you think you are" is surely the key line of the issue. This leads to some odd implications.

Look! Up in the sky! Morrison may rank Superman highly, but he's revealed to be an impotent deity in important ways, one that needs the input of the not yet quite so powerful to really get things done. And that's nothing compared to the issue's loopiest twist: playing with the Infant Universe of Qwewq, seeking to create a model of what a world would be like without him at all, Superman creates... us.

Yes, Morrison presents Superman quite specifically as our God, the literal creator of each and every one of our human lives, thus handily topping the Superman-as-Jesus metaphor of Superman Returns, and taking his own admiration of the character to dazzlingly ridiculous heights. Ah, but Morrison isn't one for too much worship - not only does our God never directly help us, but the peeks we're granted into 'our' world only reveal moments when humanity looks to the best in themselves. As his Superman seeks diplomacy with others, Morrison emphasizes both how Superman is a man, and how we're all men together, regardless of sexual organs or funny jumpsuits or anything.

VERY GOOD work on this one, particularly considering that the whole Qwewq-as-our-universe idea is recycled wholesale from Seven Soldiers, just as the notion of lil' folk waiting inside us seems a nod to The Filth. The All Star books have always been homages to their own writers as much as their title characters, but it's to Morrison's benefit that he mixes the stuff back in with such intuition.

I suspect it also doesn't escape him that several tens of thousands of added readers will be around for this spin, much in the way that the first issue of Final Crisis will no doubt outsell every issue of Seaguy 2: Slaves of Mickey Eye combined. Yet the end of Superman (and the Crises) may mean more and newer ideas from different sources; speaks to the pleasure of frail mortality in comics series...

Spy vs. Spy, Spy vs. Nature, Spy vs. Himself: Douglas on Kindt and Bendis/Mack

SUPER SPY and NEW AVENGERS #39. Below the cut lurk spoilers (well, a plot summary, really) for the latter. Hence, the cut. For those who care about such things.

Tom Spurgon wrote the other day in his you-must-go-read-it best-of-2007 roundup that " I have a selfish reason for wanting to bring more people to the conversation on [Matt Kindt's] Super Spy: I think the book is good, but I can't figure out how good, and I'd love to see a range of writers and thinkers muse on it in public to help me along. It's the most confusing book of 2007 to me, and for that one of the most compelling."

I read it at last yesterday, after it had been on my shelf taunting me for months, and... well, I'm confused too. I think it's Very Good, but that's kind of a split decision between the elements that work beautifully and the ones that don't work at all. It's one of the most formally grand comics I've seen in a while: 37 interrelated stories about espionage in World War II, each one written and drawn with its own distinct formal guidelines (not necessarily a specific style, but particular drawing and writing techniques, POV, etc.). They form one kind of story in the order they're printed, but that's not chronological order; they can also be read in chronological order by the "dossier numbers" printed at the beginning of each one. They're mostly black-and-white with a single tone color (which changes from time to time), except when they erupt into full-spectrum color in a few passages, generally for pastiches of old comic strips. But the whole book is actually in full color: its pages' blank space is mostly the mottled color of yellowed WWII-era newsprint, with crumpled corners and other marks of age and abuse. There are stories within stories (with the inevitable reference to the 1,001 Nights); there are hidden messages everywhere--everyone seems to be a spy, sending secret information and desperate requests to other spies while trying to act natural--and anything that looks innocuous in one story is inevitably revealed in another to be the vehicle of a hidden message. (A facial mole is actually the mark of an espionage mole: it's a dot of microfilm!)

Cool, yes? Yes, and as somebody who is inordinately fond of complicated formal structures in art in general, I do like it an awful lot. But the places where it falls down are some of the more old-fashioned, prosaic virtues, like character and figure drawing. The story is populated by a whole lot of characters, all of them spies trying to advance their personal and political agendas at any cost--but I found when I'd finished it that I only remembered the name of one of them, Sharlink, "the Shark," a classic femme-fatale type. The espionage material is standard-issue coded-transmission stuff, and characters are broad central-casting types; people discover that their lovers are spies for the other side and betray each other in a strangely facile way; an exotic dancer's desperate, unusual movements are Morse code: "my cover is blown, they're waiting for me, must escape tonight." (And he telegraphs a lot of the "secrets," too: one character explains how he's going to hide a message in every fifth word of a comic strip, and not only do we see every fifth word of the strip circled, but we subsequently see someone picking out those words.) Kindt's artwork is really lovely as cartooning-based drawing (line, tone, composition, abstraction), but it's a little bit off in the context of a story: characters are awkwardly different-looking from panel to panel, facial expressions are vague approximations. I definitely want to read his future comics, but like I said, I'm confused about what I think of this too.

NEW AVENGERS #39: Now, this is a Very Good and very interesting espionage-fakeout narrative--nowhere near as formally impressive as SUPER SPY, but a terrific piece of Bendis serial writing. The plot (SPOILERS like I said) is that Echo and Wolverine have a strange and slightly flirtatious conversation, and Echo heads to Matt Murdock's law office, where she encounters Daredevil; when she asks him a question he should know the answer to and he tries to cover up for the fact that he doesn't know what she's talking about, she realizes something's wrong--and Daredevil reveals himself as a Skrull, who attacks her. But Wolverine's followed them, and fights the Skrull, who gets away. The injured Wolverine explains that "if I was a Skrull looking to sink their claws into our little team, you'd be the one I'd go after," and Echo realizes that "they were going to kill me and replace me." Back at their HQ, Maya seduces Hawkeye; when she wakes up, she looks through her fingers at him.

There are three ways to read this story. The first is to take it at face value. The second, which I suspect is the case, is that Echo has in fact been a Skrull for a good long while--that she's already been killed and replaced, long since, and that her fight with the Daredevil/Skrull this issue is a game to clear her in Wolverine's eyes, since Wolverine is convinced that she's the most likely target. (And then what's going on with her and Hawkeye? Well, he's a Skrull suspect as an unlikely returnee-from-the-dead, but it's still a little confusing.)

And the third is that not only is Echo a Skrull, but Wolverine knows it but doesn't want to let on that he knows. (That "does he know about our past?" routine at the beginning of the issue may be the same kind of leading question as Echo's "Why did you send Captain America to me?" I know Echo and Wolverine worked together in the past, but can anybody who knows her history better than I do tell me if they were ever romantically involved?) Which means--after all the times in this series when Echo has responded to what someone's saying even though her back is to them--that when Wolverine's lying behind her and says "(She can't hear me...)," he knows she can hear him, and is saying it for her to hear and be deceived...

Or, you know, maybe everything is what it seems to be. But how much fun would that be? I have no idea how this will read once we see the whole story (Mack, certainly, is drawing much more straightforwardly and less inventively and attractively than he has with his other Echo material), but for now I'm delighted.

Because I can't skip two weeks in a row...: Graeme reads some superhero books, writes some stuff about them. You know the drill.

Between sickness, work craziness and deadlines for everything under the sun, it’s surprising that I’ve had any time to read comic books. Add in the fact that Brian Hibbs got me addicted to Death Note, and it’s even more surprising that I have anything to write about under the jump apart from “Light Yagami is messed up, dude.” And yet, commentary about superhero books await you if you click that “Click here to read more”...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #554: Now that we’re three quarters of the way through Brand New Day – it stops having that branding after all the writers have been introduced, right? – it’s worth noting that we seem to have established this quality level that could best be described as Okay And On Time. None of the BND issues have been stunning when taken on their individual merits, but there really is something comforting about the almost-weekly nature of the book and the fact that it’s not that bad, really. Bob Gale somewhat overdoes the knowingly-retro flavor in this issue (Overall, Marc Guggenheim’s been the most satisfying of the writers so far, but I’m hoping for more from Dan Slott’s second go-around, when he doesn’t have to introduce a status quo), and Phil Jiminez’s art just doesn’t really seem Spider-Man-ish enough for me, but at the same time, it swings by in a completely inoffensive manner, so it seems good enough, if that makes sense…?

CAPTAIN AMERICA #36: Call me irresponsible, but I’m really hoping that the reveal at the end of the issue lays groundwork for a return of Steve Rogers. Captain BuckyCyborg is a much more interesting character, and it’s a lot more fun seeing him try (and fail) to live up to the legacy of an icon than seeing the icon in action. Which is, in a way, my way of saying that this was a Good issue, and yet more proof that Ed Brubaker doesn’t need his characters alive to write compelling stories about them.

DEATH OF THE NEW GODS#7: There may be something wonderfully old school about the melodramatic “You didn’t expect this!” nature of this issue’s cliffhanger, but seriously, what actually happened at the end there? Starlin’s writing has a great old school crassness about it that really fits on this project, but his art just feels out of place – It doesn’t have either a modern look or the sheer graphic power of Kirby’s work – making this book even more of an oddity than it would be otherwise. It’s like a strange guilty pleasure, but the guilt comes from not really knowing why I’m enjoying it.

FLASH #238: Well, that’ll teach me to have high expectations for a book. As a big fan of Tom Peyer’s Hourman as well as his blogging, I was pretty excited about the idea of him stepping up to take over the Flash following Mark Waid’s too-soon departure. Finally, I thought, a writer who will be able to bring back the Silver Age weirdness of the book and also bring some humor with bite… and, to be fair, he’s done both of those things, but at the price of characters seeming out of character in service of plot, and jarringly so. Wally’s non-sequitur about feeling stressed because of lack of money to a reporter at a disaster site may have gotten the story moving, but was enough to stop the reader in their tracks in terms of “Doesn’t he, you know, know better?” Maybe there’ll be something later in the story to explain suddenly-grumpy Wally, but right now, this was a fun-but-flawed Okay first issue to Tom’s run.

FX #1: Hey, suddenly it’s 1986 again! Considering the incredibly generic script, the lazy John Byrne artwork (and, really, it’s very very lazy) and the pricetag, there’s really only one thing to recommend this Crap: John Workman’s lettering. Now there’s a creator who never lets you down.

TANGENT: SUPERMAN'S REIGN #1: Is it wrong of me to have really, really enjoyed this, especially Ron Marz’s back-up about the history of the Tangent world? There’s nothing particularly new about it, after all, and it’s not like DC isn’t already full of alternate Earths, but stil... Something (Perhaps Matthew Clark’s artwork, even though the series was trailed with Jamal Igle attached?) clicked for me, and I ended up wanting to read more to the point of almost buying the Tangent Comics trades. Luckily, I stopped myself before going too far, but still; who could’ve expected this to be so enjoyably Good?

This week? Man, if you’re not picking up the Fourth World Omnibus with remixed Hunger Dogs, then you hate life. It's that simple.

Abhay Hurried Out Some Reviews This Morning

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.

Hell: Marvel didn't need to tell me, on 3/19

War is Hell: First Flight of the Phantom Eagle #1 (of 5):

I thought there was something odd about this book the whole time I was reading it. But it wasn't until I checked the credits box and saw Todd Klein's name that I realized what was going on: There's no sound effects in this thing.

And the reason that feels odd to me is because prolific Howard Chaykin is doing the drawing, which naturally made me wonder how Klein might handle those famous webs and strings and walls of letters that Ken Bruzenak used to do with Chaykin back in the day, the ones various parties have provided since then.

Well, no luck.

There's plenty of possible reasons. This is a realistic, ostensibly hellish war comic from Marvel's MAX line, after all, and cutting out the sound effects has long been a handy comic book shortcut to sophistication. V for Vendetta is the most obvious example of this approach, although there were several works before it that took the same route, including Chaykin's own 1978 original graphic novel Empire, written by Samuel R. Delany and most eager to distance itself from the sequential arts pack.

Actually, Empire is also the earliest comic I can think of that devoted whole pages to horizontal 'wide' panels, so as to amplify the action, a technique that didn't become popular until decades later and is now impossible to escape. Ironically, Chaykin didn't seem all that comfortable with the style; it always struck me as a bit inert, like all of those solid images were kin to the novel and album covers Chaykin was illustrating around that time.

Which does bring me to another possible, maybe even simpler reason for the state of War: Chaykin is changing, for whatever reason. But it's not a sudden thing, when you look at it.

I mean, the Howard Chaykin of today is different from the Howard Chaykin of, say, Blackhawk (just to keep it in the air). Chaykin '88 could be counted on for a lot of specific visual acts; expanding our view from those letters -- which could always be counted on to act as fitting, oft-geometric design elements as per the page as a whole -- there was a certain compression to his pages, a tight-wound cohesion that had a way of holding the eye on the page and dragging it in the appropriate direction.

It didn't hurt that Chaykin was (and is) a wordy writer, which had a more obvious way of slowing things down, but the density of his overall visual scheme gave the reader pause in more ways than one. And sometimes he'd poke at elements of the form for specific effect, or just exploit his command of the form. I don't have pictures, but surely everyone who read Blackhawk remembers the bit with the empty word balloons, or the finale that ratcheted up the tension by dividing things into tiny panels, skipping from face to face to object to face etc., only to release the tension in a splash image?

Don't look for that in here.

But Chaykin began to decompress way before now. I'd say 1993's Midnight Men was the first of his post-American Flagg! works as a writer/artist to seem appreciably 'lighter' in style, although the 1990 graphic novel Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection (written by Archie Goodwin) is also notable, maybe in suggesting a deliberately stripped-down approaching to working with another person's script, something he hadn't done much since the '80s began.

If anything, the big surprise is that there was little shift in style between 1996's Batman: Dark Allegiances and 2003's Mighty Love, despite Chaykin's lack of comics output in the interim. Following that, his visual works became increasingly airy, and fascinated with symmetrical or repeating page designs, and floating sound effects - lots of those. I think there is a difference still between Chaykin's recent work as a writer/artist and his art-only projects, in that the former exhibit (naturally!) a tighter command of the page. I'm not that interested in Chaykin's writer-only work; his 'writing,' to me, has always been primarily visual, his words read at least partially as their own especially intuitive visual elements.

Meanwhile, his increasing art-only works have become delighted with computer textures, hugging his increasingly haggard, grimacing character art; I suspect he works closely with his colorists. The sound effects have been gradually disappearing, as if all the panel-exploding might of one interest is fading against an in-panel fixation on clothing detail and tactile buildup. Moving inward.

Or hell, maybe the editors or someone shouted WAR COMICS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS and he left the BLAMs out. I don't know.

Anyhow, this is an OKAY start for a WWI-set aviation thing. Garth Ennis is the writer (in case you were wondering), and, like a good math student, he's intent on showing his work. There's a lot of talking in his account of a worn-down RFC base and the booming Yankee hotshot that fakes his way in and accidentally doesn’t get massacred in the sky (yet) - period terminology and slang flows freely across several broad character types, like the American that tries awfully hard to act and sound British, or the drunkard Captain that stumbles right into a propeller and gets chopped to bits. I guess that's gallows humor?

Ennis does manage a fairly compelling take on the start-and-stop chaos of early air warfare, which covers a bit for the lack of character, as does Chaykin's extra-disheveled character art; the protagonist in particular is no more than a grinning, strutting symbol of American romantic adventurism all but begging to get crushed by reality. This is a mostly serious war comic written by Garth Ennis, so bank on the dark, killing heart of good, bleeding men to make an appearance later on. And expect more pale, silent air from Chaykin, continuing his own flight.