Posted by Graig on January 16, 2009
Raided: Spider-Man Noir #1 (Marvel- $3.99) by Jeb
[Raided] Warhammer: Crown of Destruction #3 (of 5) (Boom Studios – $3.99) by Graig
Raided: Thor: God-Sized Edition #1 (Marvel– $3.99) by Jeb?
[Trade Winds] The War At Ellsmere (SLG Publishing - $12.95) by Graig
Hellblazer #250 (DC Vertigo- $3.99) by Adam?
[Raided] Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #5 (of 5) (Red 5 - $2.95) by Graig
The Remnant #1 (Boom Studios - $3.99) by Graig
All can be found starting here.
Posted by Graig on December 1, 2008
A little delayed for the third column in our return to CHUD, but better late than never some might say. A bit sparse this week, but low in quantity does not mean low in quality. In fact, these are some pretty spectacular reviews.
Last Week:
JSA Kingdom Come Superman Special #1 By Jeb
Thunderbolts #126 by Jeb
[Trade Winds] Lulu and Mitzy: Best Laid Plans by Graig
Posted by Graig on November 20, 2008
Well, this site’s not getting it’s mojo back any time soon due to this administrator’s time commitments elsewhere, but fret not Rack Raid reader for our devilish cast of sequential art sommeliers have come together to form yet another thunderin’ Thor’s Comic Column over at CHUD.com.
This week:
[Raided] Detective Comics #850 by Graig
[Raided] Nightwing #150 by Graig
Batman: Cacophony #1 by Eric
The Cleaners #1 by Max, in sadly his swansong for the column
Gauze #1 by Jeb
The Dreamer #1 by Jeb
[Raided] Green Arrow/Black Canary #14 by Graig
[Raided] Gigantic #1 by Graig
Posted by Graig on November 13, 2008
Rack Raids was originated as Thor’s Comic Column at CHUD.com many, many years ago by Sean Fahey and company, and once again it returns, by Sean Fahey and company:
This week:
Sgt. Rock #1 (of 6) review by Sean
Joker hardcover Trade Wind by Eric
Scarlet Veronica #1 review by Max
Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #1 (of 2) Raid by Jeb
Ultimatum #1 (of 5) Raid by Jeb
Posted by Graig on November 7, 2008
In the meantime, our regular cast of reviewers can be read over at Thor’s Comic Column @ CHUD.COM.
Posted by Adam on October 27, 2008
It’s hard to describe the appeal of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World books to people who haven’t read it. Hell, it’s sometimes hard to describe it to people who have read it. At a glance, it’s tempting for the modern superhero fan to think “Well, Kirby may have been the King, but he was clearly starting to lose it at this point.” Indeed, that was the reaction from many quarters back when it was first released in 1971. The Fourth World is a mishmash of often utterly bizarre, frequently silly concepts, wrapped in extremely awkward dialogue written by a guy known for his artwork, all of it presented fearlessly as an Important Work of Significance, and with the pomp and self-importance to prove it. The thing is, though…if you’re patient with it, and you read it as a whole rather than in parts, you slowly start to realize that the Fourth World really is a significant work of comics, and not just in terms of the art. Among other things, it’s a (n extremely) fictionalized autobiography of Kirby himself, a daring narrative experiment (originally meant to have an ending and be collected in trades as a complete work—what a concept, eh?), and a blueprint for what could be done with the concept of an interlinked comics “universe”. While the meta-series itself was prematurely cancelled, the ideas it put forth have been echoing throughout the world of superhero comics ever since.
So it’s not surprising to see, finally, the Fourth World forming the basis for a big intracompany crossover in the form of Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis. That Morrison would be drawn to the Fourth World isn’t surprising, since he seems to be on the same whacked-out wavelength that powered the King. What’s more, he actually seems to “get” the themes Kirby was trying to convey (not always successfully, it’s true) in the Fourth World, as has been made clear by the latest issue of Final Crisis and now the one-shot spinoff, Submit.
In the most recent issue of the main series, the forces of Apokalips have unleashed The Anti-Life Equation, the evil holy grail for which Darkseid had been searching throughout the original series and beyond. One way or another, it seems, ol’ Stony Lonesome has finally gotten hold of it, and his minions have unleashed it as a meme/virus throughout the internet and every broadcast medium. The Equation has instantly transformed everyone who sees it into a mindless zombie, slaves to Darkseid’s will, with a specialized warrior class known as Justifiers. However, the superheroes are fighting back in the way they do, having retreated to a series of Watchtowers across the globe and…delivering newspapers.
Yes, really. One of the key stratagems of the remaining superheroes is to deliver The Daily Planet, now being printed on a press located in the Fortress of Solitude, as a subversive form of information dissemination and a hedge against Darkseid’s lethal signal. This leads to the amusingly bizarre image of Black Lightning, the star of SUBMIT, outrunning a pack of Apokoliptian Dog Cavalry with a mailbag around his shoulders. Trapped in the wreckage of Metropolis and surrounded by Justifiers, BL has an encounter with supervillain Tattoed-Man and his family, and they have to work together to escape with a crucial circuit pattern that may help turn the tide for the heroes. It’s a surprisingly slight tale from Morrison, one that focuses more on action and explosions than Big Concepts, but it works well enough. Meanwhile, in issue #4 of the main series, we’re seeing a broader picture of the world transformed into an Orwellian hellscape as Darkseid struggles to incarnate in the body of Detective Turpin.
As I said, Morrison “gets” the Fourth World, and especially Darkseid. He’s often written simply as a Machiavellian would-be tyrant, but Kirby had something more chilling in mind. Darkseid is, simply put, the ultimate solipsist. He literally wants to be alone in the Universe, not to have to deal with other thinking and feeling entities. The Anti-Life equation isn’t literal death—it’s spiritual death, the death of will, the removal of freedom, and the transformation of all humanity into mindless tools of Darkseid. Chilling stuff, and rendered most effectively in the final page of issue #4, as we view the cold, dead eyes of the ultimate tyrant giving the thumbs-down to humanity. Darkseid has never been this terrifying, not even when Kirby was drawing him. (Well, “terrifying” wasn’t something Kirby really did well, so perhaps that’s only natural.)
In Kirby’s final Fourth World story, The Hunger Dogs, Darkseid triumphed over his enemies…and found himself diminished and pathetic for it. Now that he’s finally come close to attaining his ultimate objective, what will the results be? I’m anxious to find out where Morrison will be taking Kirby’s ideas next.
FINAL CRISIS: SUBMIT
3 out of 5 Vikings.
FINAL CRISIS #4:
4 out of 5 Vikings.
Posted by Graig on October 24, 2008
(DC/Minx)
The penultimate book in the all-too-short-lived Minx line of comics for young women, Emiko Superstar isn’t the highlight of the line but another fine example of what Minx was all about. As Johanna Draper Carlson succinctly put it “[Emiko Superstar] is just like the rest of them: the story of a significant (and visual) event that teaches a girl more about what she wants from life, forces her to stand up to her parents, and gives her the possibility of a boyfriend.”
Now, I have to say, this isn’t a bad thing. The rhythms of this story may feel familiar, especially when placed beside the other Minx books, but the voices are always different, the characters stand out on their own with different experiences, different habits, different friends, family and lives lead separating them. But key to it all is they’re identifiable, if not immediately so, then in an empathetic way.
There are many paths to growing up, discovering life and possibly finding love, and the Minx line has been a good (sometimes great, sometimes merely passable) at exploring them with young female protagonists. Now, I’m not a teenaged girl, nor was I or will ever be, but the experience of finding yourself is never ending, and even something like this, directed at a complete other audience than me, can still resonate. It’s a shame that the Minx line has been pulled, a result of low sales (for reasons which I can only speculate about, but likely due to lack of awareness in its target audience) because I think it was an important venture. There’s hundreds of comics every month for guys, which aren’t always at the exclusion of female readers, true, but so very few are constructed with them in mind.
Set in Toronto, Emiko Superstar feels unusually comfortable, more like an extension of Scott Pilgrim’s Toronto than something I actually recognize as the city I live in (probably the same way New Yorkers feel about the comic book NYC when they see it in, say, Spider-Man or Fables). The book’s teenaged protagonist, Emi, is a self-described geek trying to redefine herself. She’s failed at her coffee franchise summer job, and has started babysitting for the new (American) next door neighbors (it’s a truthiness representation, where we Canadians know we aren’t that different from our “neighbours” to the south but there’s still something alien about them), earning some nice money while being stuck in the middle of their relationship drama. She discovers an underground performance art scene, and finds the venue to reinvent herself… but breaking into the group isn’t going to be easy. She finds help from an apparent suitor, though oddly knowing of the scene, he too seems an outsider. She also needs to find the right clothes, the right style, the right attitude, and the right art to make her way in.
Emi does break into the scene, where she finds that the ideal of make-up and fairy wings she’d constructed isn’t nearly as glamorous as it first seemed. It’s a community of people who, though united under a similar purpose, have some of the same issues, insecurities and as everyone else. Though our story’s protagonist, Emi is often a conduit for observing the the stories of others like the neighbours or exploring the people and terrain of an underground art scene.
Writer Mariko Tamaki, a bit of a Toronto scenester herself, constructs a tangible, realistic life for Emi to live, tapping into insecurities, improprieties and far from atypical teenaged drama. It may not be your life, but you could envision it being someone’s. It does venture into twee from time to time, but it avoids TV melodrama nicely.
Vancouver native Steve Rolston handles the art chores and for many non-teen, non-girl readers will be the key draw. A veteran of Queen and Country and his own creator owned works like Pounded, Rolston’s cartoonish style lends itself nicely to simplistic but distinctive characterizations. Emi is drawn like many young women, still growing into their skin, mannerisms often awkward. Rolston is great with physical and facial emoting, helping carry the story forward when the words don’t.
I have to agree with Draper Carlson that the story of the neighbors - of a mother struggling with living in a new country, of being a new mother, while also struggling with her marriage and her sexuality and her husband who tries to be oblivious to it all - is a far more fascinating story, which hopefully Tamaki can expand on elsewhere.
There’s nothing quite explosive about Emiko Superstar, just a quiet, light drama about suburban coming-of-age. When you envelop yourself in superheroes, sci-fi and horror (you know, “boys comics”) as much as I do, this kind of thing, despite its conventions, is refreshing, even more so when it’s well done.
3 and a half out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Graig on
(DC)
I’m a man divided. I’ve been tremendously enjoying Geoff Johns’ run on Action Comics, but I wasn’t too keen on James Robinson’s start on Superman, and I really have no affinity for the current incarnation of Supergirl (my Supergirl will forever be wearing a headband). So the fact that new Johns, Robinson and new Supergirl scribe Sterling Gates are starting to weave their titles together, starting with the “New Krypton” storyline, has me wracking my brain… no it’s not keeping me up at night (that level of geekiness left me long ago) but do I forge ahead adding two new titles of suspect enjoyability to my pull every month, or do I drop the one title I heartily enjoy? I was going to let the Superman: New Krypton Special guide my answer, but now I’m even more perplexed.
To recap, after triumphing in a grueling battle with Brainiac, Superman has experience his greatest loss, with Pa Kent suffering a fatal heart attack. In the wake of Brainiac’s defeat, Superman managed to free Kandor from it’s bottle confinement, restoring it to actual size near his Arctic Fortress. There Superman learns exactly how alien the people of his home planet are to the Earthlings he was raised amongst. While their attitudes may not be as Zod-like, they certainly aren’t interested in adapting themselves to the ways of humanity, instead observing and exploring their new terrain with their new powers, despite Superman’s protestations otherwise. Meanwhile, Supergirl reunites with her parents, and a covert operation attempts to mine Brainiac’s mind for all his data on Kryptonians, in anticipation of eliminating the perceived new threat to humanity.
Sharing writing duties, Johns, Robinson and Gates all provide a lot good story meat here, which actually eliminates my original tentativeness about picking up each of their books. This is the dawn of a new era of high-concept Superman storytelling, harking back to the post-Crisis revamp of the character in enthusiasm and energy (if actually reverting back to pre-Crisis high-fantasy Superman ideas). Hey, I noticed even the “Superman Triangle” is back on the cover to tell you what order to read the books in. The art, with Gary Frank, Pete Woods, and Renato Guedes is aces, terrific stuff really complimenting the high-caliber status these titles should have. So what’s the problem?
A city of Kryptonians roaming the Earth, that’s what.
I want to enjoy this story. With my issues surrounding Robinson placated for the moment, and the promise of less tarty Supergirl stories, I should be embracing this epic story, but somehow I can’t shake the feeling that all three of these writers just don’t get it. “Last son of Krypton”, remember? I can put up with Superman’s cousin, I can get behind the Phantom Zone villains, I can even deal with the super-dog, but hundreds (thousands) more? Way to suck all the “super” out of Superman. I get it, it’s highlighting that it’s not the powers but what’s inside the man that counts, what makes him special, but still, it just doesn’t feel right. This isn’t Top Ten where everyone’s got superpowers. Is there a good story to tell here, the conflict between humans and superhumans…? Sure, it’s comic book staple, time tested, but this just doesn’t feel right for Superman.
Having seen Kandor still active 1000 years in the future in an issue of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes published a few years back, these Kryptonians aren’t going anywhere, meaning there’s constant homeworld possibilities to plague Mr. Kent and company for a millennium to come…
I can see this playing out one of three ways: 1) I keep reading and come to accept and enjoy the situation; 2) I keep reading that the situation increasingly annoys me; or, the most likely 3) I stop reading now and spare myself the struggle.
If you don’t find this “New Krypton” idea off-putting, it’ll likely be a hell of a story, recommended even. For me though:
2 and a half out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Jeb on October 23, 2008
(Marvel)
The end… of the beginning… of the end.
Someone once remarked that the British empire had been created in “a fit of absence of mind.” Bit of a stretch to extend the analogy to Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, but in a way it fits: Marvel didn’t set out to create what they ultimately (so to speak) wound up with.
When Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada conceived it, the Ultimate Universe was going to be the non-comic-store universe. Leave decades of continuity and crossover to the D-and-D-playing nerds at the local comic shop: the Ultimate Universe would start over with Marvel’s most popular characters, brought up to the present day, with a limited number of titles, and minimal overlap between them. They’d be rack-jobbed, just like the good old days, and would pop up in bookstores, drugstores, supermarkets, toy stores-all the place kids used to buy comics.
Which is probably why, instead of turning to established veterans of superhero storytelling, Marvel handed over this new project to a rising creator of indie crime comics, and a Scotsman best known for getting The Authority into censorship problems that not even Warren Ellis had managed. So Brian Michael Bendis took Spider-Man back to his roots, this time as a late-90’s teenager, and Mark Millar infused the freshness of discovery into the X franchise.
It’s hard to say whether it’s down to the talents of Bendis and Millar, the purity of the concepts, or some combination of the two, but while Marvel had mixed success getting their books into places like Toys R Us and Target, there was one place that the books were a resounding success: with the D-and-D-playing nerds at the local comic shop. The one thing most people at Marvel had pretty much taken for granted was that, in what was a declining comics market, the last thing you were going to get established readers to do was buy into a new set of books featuring versions of the same characters they were already reading in monthly comics form. It was a groundswell at first, with Ultimate Spider-Man winning praise from comic critics and shifting huge numbers of trade paperback collections; the dam broke with Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s reimagining of The Avengers as The Ultimates: a tighter, funnier, even more outrageous, and more satisfying version of The Authority. Despite the absurd delays that plagued the book during Millar/Hitch’s tenure, and beyond, it became a massive seller, riding the upper region of the Direct Market sales charts, establishing beyond doubt that the Ultimate Universe was a commercial force to be reckoned with.
But reckoned how? How to market what was supposed to be a set of stand-alone books without seeming to dilute either them, or the core universe of Marvel books? The answer seemed to be to shrug, add another category to Previews, and let things just sail along.s
But nothing in superhero comics is more certain than attrition, both in sales and reader and critical interest. At a time of rising comic sales, the Ultimate Universe has remained flat-apart from the sporadic issues of The Ultimates, sales of the line haven’t moved much over the last few years, and sales figures that once had Ultimate books in the top ten now have them nestling somewhere near the bottom of the top 50. And though Marvel made some belated moves to capitalize on the virtues of a shared universe (Kitty Pryde as Spider-Man’s girlfriend was an inspired stroke), they’ve seemed unwilling to make a long-term commitment to the idea (Kitty was quickly relegated to just another ex going to school with Peter and MJ).
As a consequence, heading toward the end of the 21st century’s first decade, the Ultimate Universe had become a bit stale, and almost irrelevant by comparison with the main Marvel line. To the extent that anyone still cares about monthly superhero comics, the main Marvel U has always moved forward with a sense of urgency, that you DARE NOT MISS this month’s Spider-Man/Hulk/DD/X title. Having achieved its first success just as the trade paperback was emerging as a major revenue stream, the Ultimate Universe has always seemed geared to those who want to absorb six months’ worth of story at a sitting, and who might go another six months without reading the next installment.
So if the Ultimate Universe was to remain a going concern in the monthly comics biz, a change of direction was indicated-but in which direction? Rumors have flown for months, with the complete demise of the Ultimate line being predicted (this despite the fact that Marvel’s most successful writer has continued to insist that he’s writing the Ultimate version of Spider-Man for the foreseeable future). Doubt turned to despair for many readers of Jeph Loeb’s critically-savaged version of The Ultimates when it was announced that Loeb would be overseeing whatever the Ultimate Universe morphed into.
And in that atmosphere of uncertainty, in Ultimate Origins, Bendis and penciller Butch Guice promised to pull back the curtain, show us where the Ultimate Universe came from, and point to where it’s going. And it would be fair to say that’s what they did… for better or worse.
Here we have it, then– the beginning of the end of the Ultimate Universe as we’ve known it. And Marvel has an interesting opportunity here: while “earth-shaking” changes are the stock in trade of superhero comic “events” (Cap is dead! Batman RIP!), the necessity of keeping the licensed commercial properties in play means that the reset button must always be kept close at hand.
Not here. Marvel can unmask Spider-Man, blow up The Hulk, or REALLY get rid of all the mutants without slowing the flow of lunchboxes or Underoos, since the original versions of all those characters still exist,
And there’s some indication in this climactic chapter that they’re pretty serious about it. Speaking through Sue Storm, an Ultimate Watcher lays things out for the besieged of earth: in typical Rod Serling fashion, these interstellar wiseguys have watched humanity bumble along for eons, developing powers (super and otherwise) that we’re not capable of managing responsibly, and that our inevitable doom approaches, On top of that, we get ultimate (both lower-and-upper-case) badassness from Nick Fury (flashing back to the eponymous Origins) and Magneto, taking his argument to Charles Xavier with a final persuasiveness that typically eludes his regular Marvel U counterpart.
In short, this series completes the transformation (begun, many would argue, with volume 1 of The Ultimates) of the Ultimate Universe from a place of new-reader-friendly superhero spectacle, into the sort of dark and doomed place that appeals so much to today’s superhero comics reader… who, we should note, is basically the same comic-shop specialist that Marvel thought the Ultimate line was going to leave behind, if not outright transcend.
And the ending… well, I suppose you could argue that there might be five issues’ worth of interest or value in this “prelude” series, but to me, it just looks like little more than the introductory chapter to “Ultimatum” (I suppose they had to get around to using that title someday). There’s a new uber-cosmic herald introduced, with lashings of nostalgia for old-school Kree-Skrull fans. But we have to wait for the next series to see him actually do anything.
Even for a Bendis comic, this issue is fairly static; while Fury and his boys make some tough decisions with the open end of their guns, most of the rest of the book consists of Sue channeling Ultimate Uatu while Magneto and Xavier do the psychic phone-call thing. It certainly doesn’t play to Guice’s old-school strengths. He does get a nice splash page of Ultimate Universe headshots, with the old-school flavor of a Buscema or Romita Sr.: like them, Guice centers a male character’s power in his expressions and actions, not his pectorals, and a woman’s beauty in her face and hair, not boobs and butt. But there’s just not enough in this comic that will remind anyone of just how good the guy can be.
There’s a good chance that you already know more about the new Ultimate Universe than I do, since I’m something of a spoiler-phobe, and don’t even read Previews much. It’s possible that Marvel’s deck-clearing will pave the way for something genuinely new and different. But I doubt it. Fond though I am of Ultimate Spider-Man and The Ultimates, the continued presence of Bendis, and the return of Millar, sounds more like a grab at past glories than a new direction. Adding Loeb into the mix doesn’t do much for me, either, particularly since it’s hard to figure just where he fits: Bendis and Millar may use him for a sounding board, but I don’t get the feeling that either of those guys is likely to tailor his work to someone else’s vision.
As I say, Marvel’s got a unique chance here to really shake up the sandbox, and find new ways to play with these decades-old toys. They’re a pretty canny bunch, though: if they miss the opportunity, it will likely be because not enough of us voted with our wallets for them to do so.
Two and a half out of five Vikings.
Posted by Graig on October 22, 2008
(Vertigo)
Loving rap music was far from the norm in middle-class Northern Ontario, where I was born and raised in a city of predominantly northern European-derived ethnicities (Finnish, Italian, Scandanavian, Polish, etc) during the 80’s and 90’s. There, I was raised amongst peers who enjoyed “banger” music and top-40 hits, my father enjoying Randy Travis/Garth Brooks-style “new country” and my mother a big ABBA and Neil Diamond fan. I grew up feeling an outcast, for no other reason than my own insecurities, and I found hip-hop to be suitably outsider-ish. What started with a fondness for commercial hip-hop (DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Run DMC, Young MC and the like) made an entryway for “consciousness hip-hop”, from De La Soul to BDP to Public Enemy to Das EFX. From the late-1980’s to the mid-1990’s that was my only music, and virtually nobody else I knew shared my passion for it. To be clear, I was never one of these white kids pretending he was black (which was a big issue back then)… I never wore the baggy clothes or the African colors. I never wanted to rap. I just found the music, the rhythms, the messages stimulating. It wasn’t that I could always relate (rarely I could) but I’m not without empathy, and I’m not without the capacity for trying to understand. Afterall, that’s what’s storytelling is about, experiencing things through the observations and insights of others. Just like the funny-hat-wearing outsiders of the alternative comics crowd like R. Crumb embraced jazz, I too embraced the black experience through hip-hop.
I did, however, always draw a line at gangsta. Back in the day Ice-T, Ice Cube, NWA, Dr. Dre… they weren’t a part of my play list. I didn’t like the aggressiveness of the music, I didn’t like the anger, and I didn’t like the message. What I wasn’t willing to listen to was, essentially, their truth (albeit filtered through media image marketing). Where KRS-One or Chuck D would speak of their experiences as young black men, identifying systemic oppression and urging brothers and sisters to rise above it, embrace their roots and be proud, Cube and Dre would speak of their altogether different experiences, living in a society where the only law is the code of the streets, telling tales of succumbing to every temptation, and embracing what the streets have to offer, with only occasional regret. In the years since, gangsta has been marketed as “black culture”, glorified and spread well beyond the streets of L.A., into the homes of Germans, Japanese, Brits and beyond. The thing is, the message of getting paid, pimping, doing drugs, gunfights and partying is embraced, fad-like, by the suburban community kids longing for something other than a boring existence. But for many inner city kids of all different races and religions, it’s a half-truth: all-glory, no warning.
For all my knowledge of rap music (which arguably isn’t as strong as it once was), MF Grimm never entered my radar until now*. Originally published in hardcover last year, the award-winning Sentences is the abridged life story of MF Grimm, aka Percey Carey, which details the the key events in his life, starting with his time as, literally, a kid growing up on Sesame Street (for four years he performed alongside Big Bird, Oscar and company). Though he speaks of his tough, strong-willed mother, a caring stepfather, a loving grandmother, and two doting sisters, his family are nominal players in this tale. Carey speaks much more of the people who became his street family, partners in music and partners in crime. Though not proclaiming he was in a gang, he does mention the territorial divides in New York City and its boroughs, and how he found a taste for violence.
Though a horrible student, getting kicked out of schools due to his tendency to not put up with anything and getting into fights, Carey was also a voracious reader, something he notes was rare amongst his peers. His love of words segued into a love of wordplay, leading him to the most verbal of music mediums. He breaks down the rap game that he got into during it’s boom years, noting where stars could be made and where swollen egos constantly get in the way. Yet to establish himself firmly, Carey made many friends in the business, taking him on tour and eventually winding up in LA where he witnessed the tension of real gangland, Crips and Bloods, for the first time. In LA, Carey landed numerous ghost writing gigs for major talent, making some respectable money, but it wasn’t enough. As he did in New York, he got into the drug scene (more as a player than a user), and wound up getting run out of town.
For all the friends he made, he made enemies as well. He explains the code of the streets - revolving around respect, ego, and money - which he wound up adopting. Making money through drugs was easy, he claims, all too easy, a nasty temptation that continually drew him in. In the drug business and in the rap game, people are trying to make a name for themselves, trying to be somebody, one way or another. As Carey found out, a name just makes you a target. On an early winter’s day, in a car with his stepbrother, Carey wound up getting shot seven times, his stepbrother killed. After a grueling recovery period, crippled and confined to a wheelchair, with revenge on his mind but still a target, Carey booked it out of town into suburbia where he once again succumbed to temptation, eventually getting arrested and incarcerated before turning his life around… really turning his life around.
Sentences isn’t so much a comic book as an illustrated narrative, a story that is told from the first person perspective with imagery providing the visual impact of the events described. Carey’s story is about himself, about a likable person who made bad decisions that cost him his legs, years of his life, and the lives of some of his friends. Carey writes with a casual pen, his narration conversational and confessional, filled with the language he learned on the street rather than the prose out of a book, but almost always remaining accessible (only a shorthand referring to the rap scene of the time may throw some for a loop).
The black and white art from Ronald Wimberly is exceptional, visually stimulating and often awe inspiring. There’s a rough-hewn edge to his work that feels partially inspired by graphitti, much like Jim Mafood, but his shadows and inking the overall feel more noir-ish, Frank Miller meets 100 Bullets’ Eduardo Rizzo. Just as the structure of the story is a jump-point narrative, his visuals are free from the typical sequential panel confinements, flowing with the narrative, leaving a sense of openness in each scene rather than trying to nail it all in one boxed-in image.
While Carey doesn’t go the route of glorifying the trouble he got into, he also doesn’t serve strongly enough his story as a warning. He tags on at the end how he hopes his story can keep at least one kid from following that path, and I suppose without getting preachy or hammy “Scared Straight” about it still achieves that aim. The story itself is one of an intense, harrowing journey, full of loss and lack of self-control, which itself does have a powerful impact on me, if only because it’s so alien to my reality. Percey’s various “sentences”, from his money-making rhymes to his wheelchair confinement and time in prison, show such a difficult and unlikely route to gaining success that it’s hard to believe people would want to follow in that path, and yet there are so many that try. If anything is missing from this story, it’s Carey’s insight. He expresses regret often, which is insight in its own right, but as an obviously intelligent man I was expecting a little more commentary on the nature of the communities he was brought up in, what leads kids to trouble with drugs, the law and each other, and maybe even thoughts of what could have helped keep him out of . Since his days as a youth in New York, things have only gotten worse with gangs, drugs, and the sense that the only option for these kids is music or sports, and the only way to get out is to be on top. Checking out some tunes of Grimm’s on youtube it’s obvious that he has that message within him, so it’s just a little perplexing why it’s not included in here. It’s a remarkable read that could have been even more profound with just a little bit more of what’s on Carey’s mind.
4 and a half out of 5 Vikings
* actually, looking at some MF Doom records on my shelf, I see that I’ve encountered Grimm before, just never actually maintained awareness of him.
Posted by Adam on October 21, 2008
(Marvel)
You know, I really love comics, and I think that they’re in the middle of a particularly exciting and intellectually stimulating phase right now. The bar has been set very high of late, and when a comic is great, it tends to be really really great. The intellectual discourse surrounding comics is particularly compelling right now, thanks to a number of great comics blogs and the more cutting-edge publications beginning to acknowledge comics as a legitimate art form. Comics are hip! They’re smart! They’re serious!
But the flipside to all this recognition is that our expectations for comics have changed. Superheroes in particular are required to carry an intellectual burden that the genre was never meant to bear, and it skews our perspective on these books. It’s getting so that if a superhero book doesn’t tap into the zeitgeist, provide metacommentary on the medium itself, or find some innovative new mode of storytelling, I tend to think of it as a failure. But that’s just not right. Sometimes you need to loosen up and enjoy some mindless superhero fun. Sometimes…you need to see a guy punching a giant flying bear commanded by a dude with three brains.
“The Age of the Sentry” is one of those kinds of books, a retro pastiche of both classic Marvel and silver age DC. I knew little or nothing about The Sentry before picking up this series, but from what I understand he was marketed as a “lost” Stan Lee-created character (he isn’t, really, that’s just the concept) who’s been retconned into Marvel continuity. Sentry’s origins apparently involve him having been erased from the world’s memory, which is why he didn’t appear until the 2000s; the premise of this series is that it retells Sentry’s original adventures in the style of a 1960s Marvel comic, complete with campy dialogue, bizarre plots, and loving recreations of the artwork of Kirby and co. by Nick Dragotta and Michael Cho.
The idea behind the Sentry seems to be “what if Superman existed in the Marvel Universe”, and true to form, the Sentry, as he’s presented in this comic at least, is a straightforward square-jawed do-gooder with immense power. He also has a teen sidekick, Scout, a faithful super-pet, Watchdog, and, interestingly, a romantic relationship with Carol Danvers…who seems to be going by the name “The Sentress” for some reason. The story in the first issue was goofy fluff, and so it is here, as well, but writers Paul Tobin and Jeff Parker are starting to tease out larger mysteries that seem to link the story with the present-day Marvel U. Danvers’ hitherto unknown (as far as I know) relationship with the Sentry isn’t the only one of these; there’s also a moment where reality seems to give way and hints that these aren’t simply benign flashbacks. It’s a clever way of building a larger story behind what was otherwise promising to be a fun but one-note romp. The comparison between this series and Alan Moore’s “1963” and “Supreme” are unavoidable, and like those series, Age of Sentry gains an intriguing intensity by placing the old-fashioned hijinx in the context of the modern era. Old-school comic romps are fun and all, but Parker and Tobin understand that tastes have changed, and you need that extra something to really hook your audience. The message is clear: much as we comics fans love our old-school superheroes, the fact is that you can’t go home again.
3.5 out of 5 Vikings.
Posted by Adam on October 20, 2008
(Arcana Studios)
The idea of a “superhero universe” crept into comics gradually, but once it took root (thanks, as is generally the case with superhero comics, to Stan & Jack) it became the source of endless debates among comics fans. There was the obvious “Could Thor beat up the Hulk” stuff, of course, but eventually there were more practical questions, too—who, for instance, cleaned up after those city-block-leveling melees? Where did superheroes go when they retired? What would the legal system look like in a world where “my evil parallel-dimension duplicate did it” was a legitimate defense? Now, as a comics writer, you could just say “stop taking this stuff so seriously”, but since these are superhero comics nerds we’re talking about, that’s not really an option. Besides, exploring these ideas is, when you think about it a little, a great source for story ideas, and so it’s not surprising to have seen all the rhetorical questions above be answered in comics form over the years. (The first two form the premises for Damage Control and Welcome to Tranquility, respectively, and the third has been explored in Astro City and She-Hulk, and possibly elsewhere.) WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Graig on October 17, 2008
(IDW)
Pulled from Dr. Who Magazine circa 1986 and ‘87, this reprint collection features two stories from Grant Morrison’s pre-Animal Man days as a little-known struggling writer in the UK. True to form, however, Morrison pulls off a pair of stories, which in the Who-pantheon at least, stray from the norm. Not being a huge Who fan myself (I’ve quite enjoyed the long-lived series over the years, but only sporadically), it’s only through a little research that I find out the Tardis-exploring “Changes”, wherein the Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher chase a dangerous changeling through the folded-space interiors of the time-jumping ship. Apparently, “they go further into the [Tardis] than has ever been visually depicted before or since, in any medium”, which, if you’re a who fan, must be something a bit mind blowing. At sixteen pages, “Changes” is slight, a Dr. Who vignette if you will but some decent art from John Ridgeway gives it an eventful feel that similar era Who’s production budget couldn’t handle. The follow-up story, “Culture Shock” (with art by a young Brian Hitch) finds the Doctor encountering a microscopic society on the brink of eradication at the hands of a virus. At eight pages, it whips by, but again, it’s typical Morrison, thinking outside the confines of what’s common for the show and using the medium to its fullest to bash out a sharp little story. Though neither reach the Morrison craziness that he’s become so revered for, it’s still an good display of how the man worked outside the box, even then. Great for Morrison completists and avid Doctor Who fans.
3 out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Graig on October 16, 2008
(DC)
In his second issue handling the wild West Family, Animation writer Alan Burnett (Justice League Unlimited) is proving himself capable of the job, creating an interesting story about the Flash’s power failing and a new (or returning?) adversary that may require more than what Wally West is able to give in order to triumph. But it’s a good thing Wally has friends. This issue, the Justice League stops by to assess Wally’s decreased powers and scratch their head as to what’s affecting him (my guess: Barry Allen’s return), while Wally takes a trip down memory lane. One of the aspect I like about the Wally West Flash is he lives in his head, and some writers get in there and know how to work the controls, others do not. Thankfully, Burnett has a solid grasp on what makes the man tick, and this issue takes us on an insightful trip down memory lane to Wally’s time as Kid Flash and a member of the Teen Titans (which nicely gels with animation writer Amy Wolfram’s Teen Titans: Year One mini-series from earlier this year). As a fan of the Flash, this is a good book, but as one of those comic book geeks who spends too much time reading stuff on the internet, this feels too much like a build-up to a swansong before Uncle Barry takes over again, which casts a dark cloud overhead. The art by Paco Diaz and Drew Geraci, though, is dynamic, energetic, and emotive… top notch comic book fare.
3 and a half out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Graig on
(SLG Publishing)
One flip through this new original graphic novel from alternative cartoonist Derf and I was preparing to hate it. It wasn’t specifically the illustration, which is odd but not unappealing, or the cursory glance at the subject matter, which seemed full of potential, but the combination of the two. Punk Rock and Trailer Parks appeared to be yet another loser-outcast-nerd-rebel-hero drawn in underground comic style, and while I do try to read and enjoy all types of comics in all different genres, the subgenre of agony-humor featuring “angry and/or ignorant geek protagonist v. the world” (typically semi-autobiographical), from even top-talents like Jeffrey Brown to Chris Ware (well over three years later and I’ve yet to finish reading Jimmy Corrigan) is one I have the most difficulty sustaining interest in. I’ve been through my awkward stages in life, and I’ve grown from them, and while I can relate to all different kinds characters, the redundancy of the stunted man-child incapable of resolving their past and facing the real world without hostility or fear of rejection wears predictably thin, and is, quite frankly, something I can’t relate to. Within 20 pages of Derf’s new book, however, I realized this wasn’t the same old story.
Set in the turn-of-the-decade 1980’s in Akron, Ohio, we’re introduced to Otto, a towering geek, replete with nerd glasses, bad acne and a tragic sense of style. Otto is the prototypical rebel; having been branded the outcast he’s embraced his role. He does things to his own tune, like recording every fart on tape for his senior project, and doesn’t really care what people think of him anymore. Instead of hanging his head he looks up to the sky. Though the sense of inferiority has been, literally, beaten into him, he’s come to the realization that maybe in his school he’s the bottom of the food chain, but he’s one of few who can actually escape the food chain altogether, which in a sense makes him better. An optimist and dreamer, Otto devises the guise of “The Baron”, a persona which he refers to always in third-person that lets him be tough, hyperintelligent, sexual, and uber-geeky all at the same time.
Two sophomores befriend Otto, primarily to get a ride around time, and through them he’s introduced to the punk scene in Akron, which at that time was “the” punk scene in the country. Otto quickly feels a kinship with the music, it’s rebellious attitude and it’s do-your-own-thing mantra, and a series of events winds up placing him smack in the heart of the scene, getting a job at “The Bank” as bouncer/courtesy ambassador to the bands that come through town (like the Ramones or Joe Strummer ). Otto winds up becoming a legend in his own right throughout the punk scene, eventually joining a band himself, and actually enjoying the dichotomy of his dual life as both loser and icon. His relationship with his junior friends grows as he exposes them to his life in the trailer park and his philosophies, varying between the absurd and the all-to-real.
The book is more romantic about the past than it is nostalgic, with exuberant highs and some pretty gut-wrenching lows. Though not a true story, Derf obviously draws upon his own experiences and his own knowledge of the punk scene in Akron to craft the tale, and deftly recreates the atmosphere for the reader to vicariously experience what it was like to be there. Otto’s life as a teenager is obviously not one of great joy, but by the end of it he found a way to cope and a way to live that didn’t conform to all the other people who would put him down.
There’s very little that’s typical about Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, I found from one moment to the next that I had no idea what would happen, which is to say that Otto is unpredictable, yes, but also that Derf is never out to get him. Too often in underground comics, the writer/artist hates their character (or themselves) and puts them through shame after shame in attempts to break them. With Otto, Derf doesn’t. He admires his character and has him triumph even when he fails, which seems to be another punk philosophy (where getting arrested is a good thing).
If I were to sound byte the book, I’d say it’s Freaks and Geeks by way of James Kolchaka, illustrated in a style that alludes to a theoretical offspring from a cocktail of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Robert Crumb and Don Martin, but it’s so much more. It’s funny, smart, and insightful, and presents something different but not so different as to be off-putting (except that there is punk rock, sex, nudity and language, which obviously may not agree with all audiences). There’s no South Park-style extremes here, the book isn’t out there to push buttons. It’s creator has a story to tell and he tells it with a style all his own.
4 and a half out of 5 Vikings
4 out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Graig on
(DC)
Being set 1000 years into the future, one of the Legion of Super-Heroes’ biggest advantages is it can use and avoid the larger “DC Universe” continuity at a whim. With a thousand years of distance between the team and “today’s” events, how much should what’s going on in Teen Titans affect something in the future. In other words, how much relevance do the events of the 10th century affect our daily lives today? Exactly.
Over 50 years of publishing history, the bulk of the Legion’s stories have forged their own path, defined their own continuity, only occasionally dipping into terrain like “are there still Green Lanterns?” and Darkseid’s continued threat. That’s not to say that the Legion hasn’t had problems. There have been numerous revamps and reboots, which means the internal consistency that was the Legion’s forte for 35 years was thrown out the window. But even still, the isolation of the Legion from the “ongoing” DCU makes them suitable for such measures. If then there’s a major fault with Legion of Three Worlds it’s that it’s attempting to resolve (or rationalize) the different Legions that have existed, and tie them into the “today” events of the DCU.
That’s not to say that I’m not readily enjoying this mini-series, as it is epic in scope and feels even more like an event comic than Final Crisis has, and already is faring better as such than Infinite Crisis ever did. But having a major to-do with three different iterations of the same characters is indeed confusing and if you’re not familiar with the Legion at all, the series will no doubt be a wash. If you’ve ever been into the Legion, though, the geek receptors will tingle away.
Geoff Johns has picked and chosen his legion iterations, which seem to be his revised Paul Levitz team (thus ignoring the Giffen 5-years-later iteration), the Abnett and Lanning Legion Lost from the late 1990’s and the current Mark Waid-created Legion. Of course, Johns has been building his post-Levitz Legion for a few years now, with the “Lightning Saga” in a Justice League/Justice Society crossover a while back, and a recent story in Action Comics, so it’s no surprise where the focal point of the book is. The first issue only featured the Legion of one world, and it’s late in this issue that the two otherworldly Legions arrive on the scene, and artist George Perez is obviously having a ball drawing them all, the pages are awash with vibrant superheroes and villains (and the artist is even managing to reign in Johns’ typical bloodlust to off-panel events).
What makes this book so entertaining but also so challenging is Johns’ weaving nature. He’s stringing together events from his other books, Justice Society of America, Action Comics, Green Lantern, Infinite Crisis and more, creating a complex structure that pays off for readers of the other series but will leave new readers lagging behind. As entertainment for insiders, fanboys, whathaveyou, it’s top notch, but there’s no doubt headaches ahead for recent hopalongs.
3 and a half out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Jeb on October 14, 2008
(Wildstorm/America’s Best Comics)
Top Ten was a perfect little gem of a miniseries, possibly the best thing to come out of Alan Moore’s ABC imprint, and given that that group includes The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Promethea, that’s really saying something. But Top Ten was one of the most tightly plotted and elegant 12-issue arcs I’ve ever seen, packed to the brim with innovative characters and concepts, along with enough plot material to support dozens more issues. However, the story was more or less wrapped up, with the exception of a couple of dangling plot threads that were continued in the Smax spinoff series, and a since Moore bailed on ABC shortly after that was finished, that would have seemed to be that. As much as I would have liked to have seen more, I wasn’t hugely upset—let the original series stand alone, I say. (OK, there was the aforementioned Smax, and The 49ers “prequel” series, both penned by Moore, but as far as I’m concerned those are both sufficiently different that it didn’t really feel like they interfered with the self-contained nature of the original.)
So it’s a little puzzling that we’ve now had two attempts at continuing the franchise without Moore. The first, “Beyond the Furthest Precinct”, came out a few years ago, and while it wasn’t awful, it felt a bit off—Moore’s twisted humour was a big part of the original series, but it also had heart, something that BtFP seemed to lack. I actually bailed on it after a couple of issues, not feeling like I was missing anything.
Now, even more strangely, we’ve got an official “Season Two” that seems to be completely ignoring BtFP ever existed. The pedigree is pretty good this time around: Moore may not be involved, but original series artists and co-creators Zander Cannon (with his brother Kevin) and Gene Ha are the writers and artist, respectively, so you’ve got to figure that’s the closest we’re going to get to recapturing the magic of the original, right?
The plot appears to be set during the same timeframe as “Smax”, with only a short period of time separating it from the events of the final issue of Season One. The betrayal and death of police commissioner Ultima is still in the very recent past, and a new commissioner has been brought in, a by-the-book sort who promises to make life miserable for the Tenth Precinct. Tough broad Irma Geddon is still mourning her old partner, Girl One, and of course, Smax and Toybox are taking a vacation in Smax’s home dimension. A new character is also introduced: Slipstream Phoenix, a boy scout with the look of King Tut’s sarcophagus, who causes immediate resentment among the Top Tenners. And, naturally, there’s a shocking crime that kicks the overarcing plot (the sudden discovery of a load of bodies in the fountain in front of the precinct), plus lots of smaller stuff, both significant and mundane.
There’s no denying that the Cannons get the feel of the characters better than Paul Di Fillipo and Jerry Ordway, the team that did BtFP, and the continuity is a lot less jarring, since we’re following directly from the first series. But, surprisingly, Cannon & Cannon miss the mark on a crucial aspect of the storytelling: Moore modeled the original Top Ten on Hill St. Blues, with the same fractured, complex plot arcs, and the same resolute refusal to tie everything up neatly. The comic did a terrific job of capturing the feel of a complicated, chaotic world where there were always dozens of things happening at any given moment, and the story didn’t always have time to slow down to give them all equal weight. Important plot points and emotional arcs would often be resolved in passing, shoved to the background, or even moved completely off-page, which is what made the series so dense and rewarding. In contrast, this new series feels far more narratively conventional, attempting to weigh in on a handful of plotlines and, as a result, pushing a lot of the more memorable characters of the first run into the background–Hyperdog and King Peacock only have cameos, and I didn’t see Joe Pi at all.
To be fair, the Cannons don’t completely miss the boat on this—there’s still a feeling of bustle and lives intersecting—but it’s hard to picture the original series giving space to Slipstream’s moaning about his daddy issues. The whole point of the original series is that cops don’t usually get a lot of time for emotional resolution—they’re too busy doing their jobs.
Still, this is undeniably a good fit for anyone who was desperate for more Top Ten. But when the bar has been set so high, sometimes continuing to climb isn’t a great idea.
3.5 out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Graig on October 9, 2008
(DC)
“Brainiac, Part 5″. Oh boy… Metropolis has been shrunk into a bottle city, Brainiac has Superman on the ropes both mentally and physically, Supergirl’s her usual ineffective self, and the odds are looking grim for them making it out of this one. Of course the aggressive marketing over the past two months for the follow-up story, “New Krypton”, foreshadows our hero’s success, but it’s still an interesting pickle Geoff Johns has put the Man of Steel in, and it’s intensely pleasurable to watch him get out of it this issue. Of course, the triumph of the last son of Krypton over the renegade Coluan is undercut by another important event in Clark’s life, and not the restoration of the Bottle City of Kandor, but rather the death of a major supporting cast member, which has been telegraphed from the beginning, and punctuated by the last two covers for the series. This bait-and-switch of important events isn’t necessarily unwelcome, but it leaves the conclusion to the “Brainiac” storyline feeling abrupt and incomplete. Where an epilogue should be in order - a transition issue before the next big storyline - instead we’re told to purchase the extra-sized New Krypton Special in two weeks which launches right into it, making the whole affair, which to this point was some of the best “in continuity” Superman comics in decades, seem cheap and unrewarding. I’m a little peeved, mainly because I was undecided on purchasing the “New Krypton” crossover, and now it feels like the decision is being made for me. Yes, DC should be allowed to have their big Superman universe crossover, but they should also allow for one storyline to finish properly before they launch into another. This is marketing strategy overriding good storytelling, and it’s not for the audience’s benefit. Ranting aside, this was 95% of a pretty damn good story.
3 and a half out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Graig on October 8, 2008
The latest pillaging of fond childhood memories made its broadcast debut this past week (broadcast in Canada at least). I managed to avoid the big screen production of the new Clone Wars animated series, primarily because I’d taken a half-oath to not spend any more money on Star Wars again, but also because I couldn’t bring myself to watch it.
As my wife will tell you (with a shake of her head), I’m a Prequel apologist (although the the latter half of Attack of the Clones is still a crime against cinema) which puts me well above pedophiles and Nazi sympathizers, but below fans of boy bands and watchers of sitcoms starring Jim Belushi on the list of reasons to dislike people. So it’s not that I’m completely disillusioned by George Lucas’ monstrous cash cow, but I’m also just worn out. My fandom was stretched to its limit in 1999 and ultimately broke in 2002, and has never fully recovered.
But the main reason I didn’t want to watch the animated feature was that it didn’t seem true. Star Wars movies take place with big spans of time between them, not just in terms of release dates, but story time as well. Clone Wars is all about filling in some gaps, gaps that can be filled entertainingly but ultimately don’t mean a lot because the end result is what’s been deemed important.
The premier episode of the series was entertaining enough, but reaffirmed my decision to not see the film. The CGI animation, based off the maquettes built for Genndy Tartakovski’s traditionally animated Clone Wars cartoons from a few years back, aren’t very attractive on a TV, nevermind a 40-foot screen. There are a lot of hard lines, which with Trtakovski’s 2-D cel-animation comes off as stylistic, but in 3-D animation, it looks blocky and stiff… faces don’t move well and hair is wedged shaped, as if carved from wood or stone.
This episode, Yoda arrives on Toydaria (Watto from Episode 1’s home planet )with a small fleet of clone troopers to negotiate a deal with the Toydarian king, but the Sith have arrived and proposed a wager with the Toydarian king: if the jedi can make it through their gauntlet, they can proceed with negotiations. If they fail, the Toydarians switch allegiances. A trait of the species, the King can’t resist a wager and thus ensues some Yoda versus robots action, the odds seemingly overwhelming.
Despite the look of the characters and somewhat clunky design of the show, the action and movement is fluid, and quite entertaining. There’s not a tremendous amount of drama, or intrigue, and it seems that the intent is for the show to be younger-audience accessible with minimal amount of plot to bog it down.
Each episode is intended to be stand alone, a mini-movie, but the first winds up being more of half an act of a movie, notably the climactic action sequence. Character development is even more non-existent than the plot but with a projected slate of 100+ episodes it’s not inconceivable that there’d be an overarching story.
Generally amusing and entertaining, it’s not mandatory viewing or enough to whip up a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, but it’s enjoyable viewing when you can catch it.
Rating: 3/5
Posted by Devon on October 7, 2008
(DC)
Wonder Woman, one of the oldest and best characters in comics, doesn’t necessarily need albino warrior monkeys to make her interesting but that’s a whole other story.
Supergirl, over the past few years has suffered “albino warrior monkey syndrome,” meaning too much back plot and background detail and backstory has been used in order to make her “interesting.”
Does Supergirl need to have been trained in the ways of The Amazon by warriors on Paradise Island? Not really.
Does Supergirl need to have formed a bond with Batman while here cousin Superman, wrings his super-powered hands while worrying about how best to approach his little cousin? Not really.
Does Supergirl need to be “the daugther” of The Trinity? No, not really.
This all anyone need know: child, rocketship, Krypton, Earth.
Thank God for Supergirl #34, on sale now.
Supergirl’s life as Supergirl has been in shambles. When not bringing down Air Force One in an ill-advised attempt to talk sense to The President, she’s been trying new and ill-advised ways to cure cancer and the citizens of Metropolis are a bit sick of it and Daily Planet reporter Cat Grant is fanning the flames. Supergirl is at a crossroads and just when things look their bleakest, a very good friend from Superman’s past shows up, offering her a chance at redemption, one simply involving the donning of a pair of glasses.
Writer Sterling Gates pulls together all of the threads laid down in the previous thirty-two issues and presents them as a simple base to build upon. What he smartly does next is simply move on and advance his own agenda and that seems to simply make Supergirl fun again. He does and the last page proves he’s the right person for the job.
Artist Jamal Igle is the perfect choice for this book. There’s no argument here that Supergirl has been hyper-sexualized in her appearance. There’s none of that here. Under Igle, Supergirl owes more to Hannah Montana than Britney Spears. Igle excels at simply drawing what’s needed. From the first page to the last, Igle infuses his characters with an identity. The minute you meet Clark Kent you know who he is by what he does with his glasses. The minute you meet Cat Grant her body language lets you know that this woman’s gonna be trouble. Supergirl, literally, is in good hands.
Supergirl is back on track and infinitely readable again. Albino warrior monkeys need not apply.
4 out of 5 Vikings
Posted by Adam on
(DC)
All the while Grant Morrison’s been dazzling us with his run on All-Star Superman, he’s also been doing something rather more challenging and bent in his run on Batman. In the process he’s attempted to synthesize and redefine the history of DC’s two most well-known superheroes, and he’s done so by specifically referencing the Silver Age. This is perhaps an easier task with Supes, whose goofy but imaginative adventures from the late 40s through to the 60s provided a lot of fodder for the character’s mythology even when re-imagined in the 1978 movie or the post-Crisis relaunch. As silly as some of that stuff is, it does seem to cohere to a consistent theme of optimism and imagination that fits the character of Superman, and besides, even the stuff DC tried to strip away from his history has slowly been creeping back in. As long as it’s all handled with a certain degree of intelligence, the way-out aspects of Superman’s mythology—multi-coloured Kryptonite, Bizarro, Krypto the Super-dog, and so on—all seem natural. They work, and they’re inextricably linked with the character.
Batman’s trickier. Much more so. That’s probably because, ever since the late 60s, the character’s been slowly redefined through a more natural process that culminated with stuff like The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke: Batman as noir on speed, a grim avenger facing off against twisted, monstrous villains whose candy-coloured silliness has become the very thing that makes them creepy rather than juvenile, with the Joker as the apotheosis of this concept.
All well and good, but as we all know, there are aspects of Batman’s history that cause the average fanboy to cringe. If they see Bats as “dark” and “serious” and “gritty”, a supposedly realistic, intense, and badass superhero, then it surely doesn’t help that image to bring up the Adam West TV show. The 50s and early 60s comics are even goofier, often sending Batman off to outer space, saddling him with a weird array of costumes and identity changes, and tormenting him with an imp from another dimension. Yet, here’s Morrison, bringing up these aspects of the Bat-mythology in the same year that gave us The Dark Knight, and introducing (or reintroducing) them into the current, ultra-dark continuity of the books. He’s even doing so in a storyline that features one of the most freakishly skeezy incarnations of the Joker we’ve ever seen. Morrison’s goal is apparently to somehow reconcile these two sensibilities…and while it’s too early to say for sure if he’s succeeded, he’s certainly created something unique here.
It helps that, in this issue, everything seems to be finally falling into place. Morrison’s Batman run has been a lot more jarring and dense than his take on Superman, or even (and this may be a controversial opinion) his scripts for Final Crisis. Morrison’s tossing out a whole bunch of interesting ideas that tie into Batman’s history, but in his usual style, he often doesn’t bother to develop them in a coherent fashion–or so it’s seemed for much of this run. An issue away from the climax, however, things are suddenly snapping into place. Much of Batman’s 50-era adventures, we’ve learned, took place in his mind during a bout of psychological reprogramming involving sensory deprivation. The current storyline has been centered on “The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh”, a Batman doppelganger from outer space who Batman encountered in the 50s; we’ve now learned that this story was a hallucination meant to create another, emergency backup persona for Batman in the event of a psychological attack. Zur is a sort of positive version of the Manchurian Candidate, a “Batman without Bruce Wayne” who can keep fighting even when everything he cares about has seemingly been destroyed. Likewise, the Bat-Mite, who’s been dogging his footsteps for the last two issues, is revealed as a personification of “the fading voice of reason”, one who’s forced to abandon him completely as Batman enters the inner sanctum of the Black Glove.
We also finally get a better idea of who the Glove and his attendant Club of Villains may be—they’re basically a bunch of rich socialites gambling on Batman and his ability to survive this psychological attack. Almost every plot thread Morrison let loose is suddenly coming together in an extremely dramatic way, and the climax of this issue really packs a punch. Batman goes symbolically deeper into madness than he’s ever gone, entering a David Lynch-style arena to do battle with the Joker and learn a twist that you probably saw coming, yet works pretty effectively anyway.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comic storyline take this long to really pay off, and then to do so all at once, so near the end…it’s both impressive and a little frustrating. As I said, this has been a far more jarring, disconcerting run than Morrison’s other DC contributions, but that fits the character, after all. If All-Star Superman transforms the Silver Age trappings of his book into something noble and stirring, it’s only logical that Batman’s should wind up in a darker, more psychologically charged place. Whatever you think of the results, the simple fact that Morrison’s actually done something new and interesting with Batman after all these years warrants a thumbs-up. That the book is suddenly firing on all cylinders dramatically is just the icing on the cake.
4 out of 5 Vikings
