With Great Power...

Streams of Consciousness: Stan & Jack, Podcastin’, and Looking Ahead

2011-08-03T09:50:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the last month of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby reviews as much as I did! I could probably do a whole year (or more) on those two, to be honest, but in the interest of not boring everyone else to tears, I’ll be back to reviewing other things this month. But before that, I just wanted to take this chance to share a few things with you.

First of all, for the last two weeks I’ve had the pleasure of serving as a guest on the fledgling Spoiler Alert podcast – so if you’d like to hear me and a few of my friends talk about all things comics, I encourage you to give the most recent episode a listen at the official Spoiler Alert blog. We’ve had a lot of fun doing the podcast so far, and if you have any kind of feedback feel free to leave a comment on the blog or send an email to spoileralertpod@gmail.com!

I also wanted to mention that I’ve noticed a decline in the number of comments around here for the last few weeks, and I’m trying to come up with more ways to get people involved and discussing comics. As much as I enjoy the review-writing process in and of itself, I enjoy it a lot more when I get feedback from you guys. So if you have any ideas, or if there are particular creators, characters, or series you’d like me to write about in the future, I’m 100% open to suggestions. I haven’t fully decided what I’m going to be reviewing for the next few weeks yet, so if there’s something you’d like to see just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

I think that’s about it for now. Please check out Spoiler Alert and let us know what you think, and I’ll be back later this week with another review!

Maximum Fantastic Four

2011-07-31T23:50:00.006-05:00

Writers: Stan Lee, Walter Mosley, and Mark Evanier
Artist: Jack Kirby
Collects: Fantastic Four #1 (1961)
Published: Marvel, 2005; $49.99

There’s probably little to say about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four that hasn’t already been said by people more knowledgeable and more eloquent than me. Still, I feel like I’m constantly reading comments from people who have never read a single page of their work, and I find that terribly saddening. If you’re one of the many people who haven’t experienced this seminal run at least in part, I encourage you to pick up the first Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four trade paperback, which collects the first ten issues of the comic. For those already initiated, though, Maximum Fantastic Four is a truly amazing presentation of the series’ first issue, one that fully lives up to its name.

Conceived by the novelist Walter Mosley as a “visual exegesis” of Fantastic Four #1, the book provides perhaps the most innovative reproduction of a single comic book that I’ve ever seen. Nearly every panel is blown up to extraordinary size and devoted its own entire page, with some of the pages even folding out to give certain panels an even more dramatic flair. Segments of dialogue and narration are occasionally pushed off the page in order to give more room to the artwork, placing the emphasis on the utter spectacle of Kirby’s artwork rather than the plot itself.

That being the case, Maximum Fantastic Four certainly isn’t the way to read this issue if you’ve never read it before, but if (like me) you’ve already read it a dozen times or more, the presentation here is more than a breath of fresh air; it’s a release, a chance to marvel at the sight of super-powered men (and one super-powered woman) doing the spectacular things that we only wish we could do. Indeed, this book suggests a way of reading comics completely different from that which many readers today are accustomed to – one in which each and every panel is a work of art unto itself, and worthy of individual attention.

It’s a way of reading that I’ve embraced, albeit unknowingly, ever since I started reading comics by Lee and Kirby as a kid. Over the years, you see, I’ve often puzzled over why I seem to take longer to read my comics than a lot of people do. The answer, it’s clear to me now, is that while I often pause to admire an artist’s work, many readers simply let their eyes fly across the page without taking the time to truly absorb what they’ve experienced visually. In many cases, especially when the artwork is subpar or even average, there’s not much fault to be found in that; but, as Mosley reminds us with this book, the rewards for taking our time with artists like Kirby are nearly limitless.

The main content is supplemented with wonderful essays by Mosley and Mark Evanier (author of Kirby: King of Comics). In addition to explaining Mosley’s reasons for creating the book, the two writers also contextualize the comic within its time and provide the reader with a deeper understanding of its enduring influence on American popular culture as a whole. If you don’t already believe that it was pure magic flowing from Lee’s typewriter and Kirby’s pen when they created the Fantastic Four, these pieces, in combination with the unique presentation of the material itself, will make you one. In the end, Maximum Fantastic Four is truly an affirmation of the genius of two creators at an artistic peak, one of the many peaks that each would experience throughout his long career in comics. And even more importantly, it’s an affirmation of why we read comics – of that sense of exhilaration and wonder that draws us back again and again to the medium we love.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Marvel Masterworks: Rawhide Kid, Vol. 1

2011-07-25T22:55:00.003-05:00

Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: Jack Kirby
Collects: Rawhide Kid #17-25 (1960-61)
Published: Marvel, 2006; $49.99

Rawhide Kid was one of the earliest Silver Age collaborations between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but for whatever reason it’s also one of the least talked about. Beginning just one month before the premiere issue of Fantastic Four, the Lee/Kirby version of the Rawhide Kid was actually what we might call a “relaunch” or a “reboot” today. Sixteen issues of the series, written by Lee and illustrated mostly by Bob Brown and Dick Ayers, had been published from 1955 to 1957, when it was cancelled. It wasn’t until 1961, four years after Kirby had rejoined the ranks of Marvel, that a 17th issue finally saw print. It might as well have been the first issue of a completely different series.

Much like Atlas’s short-lived Black Knight series in the 1950s, Rawhide Kid is surprising in its resemblance to Marvel’s early superhero comics. Like Spider-Man and the Hulk (and unlike the traditional heroes of Silver Age western comics), the Kid is a hopelessly misunderstood, even hated, figure. Branded a murderer and hunted by the law, he’s actually a good-hearted young man who does his best to help out in whatever town he happens to find himself in, no matter how untrusting the locals may be. Some of the best stories in this collection end with the Kid actually playing into his bad reputation to save the day – a gesture that both ingratiates him to the townspeople and necessitates his swift departure into the sunset at the tale’s conclusion.

Lee’s success at shaping the Kid into such a tragic character, and in such a short time, is pretty impressive, especially given that there’s not much of a supporting cast for him to play off of. The lack of recurring characters is the book’s only real weakness, since it leads Lee and Kirby to constantly fill space with scenarios that get somewhat repetitive after a while. In the one that grows most tiresome, a generic desperado challenges the Kid to a shoot-out in the hopes of proving himself the fastest gun in the West, only to be shown up by the Kid’s dazzling speed and accuracy with a pair of Colts. This being a mostly bloodless era in comic book history, the Kid’s enemies are always defeated the same way, with their guns harmlessly shot out of their hands.

It’s this basic formula, however, that makes the more unique stories really shine. One of my favorites, in which the Kid vows never to use his weapons again, reminded me of the excellent Bruce Lee film The Big Boss – a fitting connection, since Stan Lee was a professed fan of the martial arts actor (but also an interesting one in that the comic came out ten years before the movie). Kirby’s artwork here is excellent, and for whatever reason, it’s actually significantly better, from a technical standpoint, than the first few issues of Fantastic Four. The reasons for this difference aren’t clear, but perhaps Kirby felt a simpler style was befitting a comic about superheroes (a genre which he hadn’t drawn regularly for a number of years at this point), while a more detailed one was better for westerns.

Either way, Kirby made the right decision; Rawhide Kid legitimately evokes the feel of a classic Hollywood western, and the characters of Fantastic Four stand out, as superheroes arguably should, in colorful, iconic, pop art style. But more on the Fantastic Four next time – for now, Rawhide Kid is a great example of a Lee/Kirby work that straddles two eras of comics, one in which storytellers still clung to the familiar tropes of the Golden Age and another in which they pushed comics to a place the medium had never gone before. It was a time of emerging awareness, playful experimentation and reluctant ambition. It was a time when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby stood on the edge of greatness.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Black Knight / Yellow Claw, Vol. 1

2011-07-20T21:00:00.001-05:00

Writers: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Al Feldstein
Artists: Joe Maneely, Jack Kirby, Fred Kida, John Romita Sr., Syd Shores, Werner Roth, George Roussos
Collects: Black Knight #1-5, Yellow Claw #1-4 (1955-57)
Published: Marvel, 2009; $59.99

One of the more unusual releases in Marvel’s long-running hardcover series, Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Black Knight/Yellow Claw is both a peculiar mash-up of two very different series and a true gem of 1950s comic book storytelling. Make no mistake, there is absolutely no connection between Black Knight and Yellow Claw – one is medieval in setting, while the other is a contemporary spy thriller – aside from their both being short-lived series with art by Joe Maneely. But it’s a nice way of packaging the two titles nonetheless, since neither is long enough to have warranted an individual release.

I went into the book expecting Black Knight to be a little dull, to be honest; Errol Flynn’s depiction of Robin Hood aside, I’m not that interested in the 1940s and ‘50s Hollywood version of the Middle Ages, from which this comic very obviously takes its influence. After only a few pages, though, it became clear that writer Stan Lee was also influenced by, of all things, Golden Age superhero comics. In fact, there’s a lot more to the Black Knight than the average medieval protagonist. Although he spends most of his time as King Arthur’s mild-mannered nephew, that’s really just his secret identity; whenever the king’s life is in peril, he pretends cowardice and steals away to become the Black Knight. In his daily life he’s despised by the court, especially by the woman he loves – who, in the typical fashion of superhero stories, is infatuated with his mysterious alter ego. The formula isn’t at all unlike the one used in the early appearances of characters like Superman, Captain America, and Spider-Man, but seeing it transposed into medieval times gives it a unique spin.

Yellow Claw is a fascinating read as well, albeit for completely different reasons. Although the first issue, like the majority of Black Knight, is drawn by the excellent Joe Maneely, the writing leaves a little to be desired. Penned by Al Feldstein (the former head writer for EC Comics, which had closed shop for good two years earlier), the Yellow Claw character is essentially just a clone of Fu Manchu, an evil Chinese mystic bent on world domination. Despite the formulaic structures of this first batch of short stories, Feldstein does do an admirable job of dodging the racist undertones that have plagued most literary works featuring Fu Manchu and characters modeled after him – and he does so in large part by giving the stories an Asian-American protagonist, in the form of FBI agent Jimmy Woo.

Interestingly, though, Yellow Claw is less remembered for the positive (and progressive) portrayal of its Asian-American hero and more for the fact that it heralded Jack Kirby’s return to Marvel Comics. Kirby picked up the book’s reigns starting with the second issue, from which point he both wrote and drew the comic for three full issues before its cancellation. This was the first work Kirby had done at Marvel since his departure from the company in 1941, and the energy he brings to the page is pretty exciting, even if the stories themselves are a little too short to afford the breathing room they probably could have used. Still, with its off-kilter plots and bizarre-looking bad guys, it’s a weird and wonderful comic in that special way that just screams “Kirby.”

As good as Kirby’s work is, it’s also worth pointing out what a brilliant and imaginative artist Maneely was as well. His work on Black Knight succeeds at making the reader feel he’s been thrown into some early MGM Technicolor spectacular, and his one issue of Yellow Claw is notable for the sheer breadth of convincing facial expressions throughout. Sadly, Maneely was killed in a car accident (at the age of only 32) just three years before the beginning of Marvel’s 1960s superhero revival. It’s fascinating to think of how much different the comics industry might have been if he had lived to contribute ideas to the Marvel Universe, and I’m looking forward to learning more about him in Michael Vassallo’s upcoming biography (which is essentially previewed in a lengthy essay by Vassallo at the end of this volume).

As wildly different as Black Knight and Yellow Claw are, this book turned out to be a really great read. This is a fun book for continuity buffs, too – Jimmy Woo continues to run around with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Agents of Atlas today, and it was revealed at one point that the modern Black Knight is directly descended from the medieval one depicted here. Between the quality of the stories and the fact that it features the work of two truly excellent artists, it’s an incredibly nicely done package.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby

2011-07-17T09:00:00.001-05:00

Writers: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Artist: Jack Kirby
Collects: Red Raven Comics #1, Marvel Mystery Comics #13, Captain America Comics #1, Yellow Claw #3, Rawhide Kid #17, Amazing Adventures #1, Strange Tales #94, Hulk #3, Amazing Spider-Man #8, Avengers #4, Sgt. Fury #6, Fantastic Four #48-51 & Annual #5, Thor #134-136, Amazing Adventures (vol. 2) #1-2, Captain America #200, Eternals #7, What If? #11 (1940-1978)
Published: Marvel, 2004; $29.99

Much like the Stan Lee volume of the Visionaries series, Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby takes an approach to the career of one of Marvel’s greatest creators that’s more befitting of the term “catch-all” than “greatest hits.” But while that worked well for Lee, I’m not sure it works as well for Kirby, whose work at certain points (especially during his third prolonged stint at Marvel, during the 1970s) occasionally misses the mark. Thankfully, most of the comics in this volume are great reads, with only a few falling into the “subpar” category.

There are more Golden Age stories in this book than in Marvel Visionaries: Stan Lee, and it’s especially nice to see a story reprinted from Red Raven Comics – a series that lasted only one issue before its cancellation in 1940, and which fans have been patiently waiting to have collected in its entirety for several years now. In a rather nice touch, this collection also includes a Captain America story from every era that Kirby worked on the character. Unfortunately, though, Cap’s Golden Age origin story suffers from a pretty bad restoration job. It’s readable, but having seen much better reproductions of the same issue in other collections, it’s hard for me to look at this one for more than a few seconds at a time. Kirby’s latest Captain America story (from 1976) is underwhelming too, but for different reasons; while the artwork is great, the plot and dialogue both fall kind of flat.

I found the three issues of Thor collected here to be a little disappointing too, although I think that has more to do with personal taste than the comics’ objective quality. Kirby’s linework is somewhat hindered by Vince Colletta’s inking job, to be sure, but the trouble for me had everything to do with the story. It features the first appearance of the Knights of Wundagore, a group of super-evolved animals that behave like the Knights of the Round Table – suits of armor, broadswords, the whole bit. The simple fact is that I’ve never liked them, and I probably never will. But if the concept sounds it’s like your cup of tea, then I imagine you’ll find the story perfectly satisfying.

The early to mid-1960s are my favorite period in Kirby’s career, and the one in which I think he first began to reach truly exceptional artistic heights. It’s the one most represented here, and the centerpiece of the collection is made up of four stand-out issues of Fantastic Four from 1966. The first three issues detail the coming of the world-eating alien Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer. On the most basic level, they’re not that different from most alien invaders you’re likely to see in comics from this time: viewing the human race as completely insignificant, their aim is nothing short of the total destruction of Earth. The difference between this and most invasion stories, however, is that Lee’s writing and Kirby’s artwork combine to instill such otherworldly gravitas to both Galactus and the Surfer that, much like the Fantastic Four themselves, you can’t help but be mesmerized by the cosmic goings-on in each and every panel. This is Lee and Kirby firing on all cylinders, and it’s truly something to behold.

If the three-part Galactus story is the archetypal Lee/Kirby superhero masterwork (and trust me, it is!), then the fourth issue is absolute Silver Age perfection. To describe it in any detail would be to spoil it for those who haven’t read it, but suffice it to say that this issue has no less than four entire pages which remain, to this day, among the most recognizable and iconic in the history of superhero comics. I honestly can’t find the words to articulate how much I love this comic and the three issues that precede it, other than to say that they’re some of the most emotionally affecting and beautifully illustrated stories I’ve ever encountered in this medium. Stories like these are what make me want to read comics.

There’s plenty else to discover in Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby, but telling you any more at this point would just be spoiling the surprise. Although it’s not as well-rounded overall as the Stan Lee volume, a handful of the stories are superior to anything else collected in either book. In fact, the Fantastic Four issues are absolutely four of the best comic books of the Silver Age, and they number among my personal all-time favorites as well. They’re worth the price of admission alone – not that they’re the only enjoyable comics in this collection, by any means.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Marvel Visionaries: Stan Lee

2011-07-12T20:30:00.001-05:00

Writer: Stan Lee
Artists: Jack Kirby, Al Avison, Joe Maneely, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Marie Severin, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Gene Colan, John Romita Sr., Gil Kane, Barry Windsor-Smith, Darick Robertson
Collects: Captain America Comics #3 & 16, Suspense #29, Amazing Adult Fantasy #11, Amazing Fantasy #15, Fantastic Four #11 & Annual #3, Daredevil #7 & 47, Silver Surfer #5, Thor #179-181, Amazing Spider-Man #96-98 & Annual #5, Marvel Premiere #3, Spectacular Spider-Man Super Special 1995 (1941-1995)
Published: Marvel, 2005; $29.99

When Marvel launched its creator-focused line of oversized Visionaries hardcovers in late 2004, it only made sense to start with the two most prominent figures in Marvel history: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. For both books, the process of selecting which issues to include couldn’t have been an easy one. Perhaps it’s wise, then, that instead of trying to create “best of” collections for either, Marvel opted to create volumes that simply give the reader a feel for the sheer range of these creators’ talents. Indeed, Marvel Visionaries: Stan Lee excludes a fair number of stories I would have numbered among the writer’s “greatest,” but that’s quite all right – after all, you would need multiple books to collect all of those stories, and the ones they did choose do just as good a job of demonstrating the sheer diversity of Lee’s talent.

The book opens with a great biographical introduction to Lee, written by longtime Marvel writer Roy Thomas (who was himself the subject of his own Visionaries collection); it’s a great crash-course on the writer’s history at Marvel, especially if you haven’t read anything else by or about him. Lee’s first-ever published work, from the pages of Captain America Comics, occupies the first few pages. While it’s fairly primitive in comparison to Lee’s later work, the stories are still interesting to see – and hey, you have to start somewhere, right?

The years between Lee’s first work in the Golden Age and the debut of the Fantastic Four in 1961 make up the most underrepresented time period in this collection, with only a few short stories from the mid-1950s. They’re nothing to write home about, really, although “The Raving Maniac,” a commentary on the public outcry against comic books going on at the time, is kind of amusing. The real meat of this collection comes in the form of Lee’s Silver Age superhero work, and this book delivers a great variety of characters and artists. It would have been easy for Marvel to include a ton of origin stories in this book, but luckily, they only include one – Spider-Man’s, which is arguably Lee’s best.

From here, the superhero stories range from an early issue of Daredevil, featuring an unlikely fight between the title character and the Sub-Mariner, to some of Lee’s final work as a regular writer at Marvel, including a Bronze Age Dr. Strange comic drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. Along the way, the book showcases Lee’s ability to tell short, self-contained stories (such as a quick FF tale answering some of readers’ most frequently asked questions), in addition to well-developed, multi-issue arcs. The first arc in the collection is a three-part Thor story in which Loki tricks the thunder god into switching bodies with him. Unaware of Loki’s evildoing, Odin banishes Thor (in Loki’s body) to Mephisto’s realm, while the actual Loki runs rampant in Midgard. The story is actually more notable for its art than its writing – it features Jack Kirby’s final work on Thor, and some of Neal Adams’ first at Marvel – but it’s a good example of the overblown, faux-Shakespearean style Lee was fond of using in comics dealing with gods and god-like characters.

Taken by itself, the Thor story might lead someone new to Lee’s writing to believe that he’s simply a cheesy writer. However, the book follows this story with an extremely well-grounded story arc from Amazing Spider-Man, which features Harry Osborn’s battle with drug abuse and the return of the Green Goblin. The drug subplot is a notable one in comics history, as it made Amazing Spider-Man one of the first mainstream comic books to be published without the Comics Code Authority’s seal of approval. Lee had actually been personally asked to do a story dealing with substance abuse by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the backlash resulting from the Code’s refusal to approve it led to a loosening of its restrictions and a more progressive era in comics in the years that followed. But the thing that’s most impressive about the story is how subtly it gets its message across and how intricately Lee weaves it into what otherwise simply would have been a tale about the return of one of Spider-Man’s old enemies.

The book ends by reprinting a number of vintage pages containing Lee’s famous “Stan’s Soapbox” column, and these are a real treat. The column was his way of connecting with readers on a regular basis and letting them know what was going on behind the scenes at Marvel (remember, these were the days before Twitter!). They make me eager for a complete collection of these pages; and yes, it’s true that the Hero Initiative published a book with just the text of the columns themselves, but I’d love to see a book consisting of scans of the pages in their entirety.

Whether you’re a new or old fan of Stan Lee, this book is a great read. It represents a huge variety of his work, some of which is a far cry from the sort of thing we’re used to seeing reprinted again and again in these types of collections. There are relatively few duds, too, the only real one being a short Spider-Man story (reflecting on the 1995 death of Aunt May) that Lee wrote long after he had stopped working in comics on a regular basis. Even despite its weakness relative to his other work, though, it contributes to the collection’s goal of showing that Lee is a writer unafraid to tackle any kind of story – not to mention one who almost always delivers a fun and entertaining experience in the process.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Kirby: King of Comics

2011-07-08T23:55:00.007-05:00

Writer: Mark Evanier
Artist: Jack Kirby
Published: Abrams, 2008; $40.00

Kirby: King of Comics was a pretty big deal when it came out a couple of years ago. It had been nearly fifteen years since the death of Jack Kirby, and finally, it seemed, the definitive biography of one of the best (if not the best) artists in comic book history had arrived. And although there are certain parts of it that could have been improved, I’m happy to say that for the most part, it delivers on expectations.

Writer Mark Evanier is really the perfect fit for a biography of Jack Kirby – having worked as Kirby’s personal assistant starting in the late 1960s, and having written hundreds of comics and TV show episodes himself (including every single episode of Garfield and Friends, for example), he not only understands the craft involved in telling a story, but he also probably knew Kirby better on a personal level than most people did. He certainly knew Kirby better than anyone on an artistic level, having witnessed firsthand the many ways in which Kirby’s style evolved over the years.

Evanier begins the story of Kirby’s life with the artist’s rough-and-tumble childhood. Raised in New York City during the Great Depression, Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) spent much of his youth getting into trouble with a gang of neighborhood kids – a group that would serve as the archetype for a number of Kirby’s creations, including the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and, much later, the Yancy Street Gang, with whom the Thing has a comedic ongoing rivalry in Fantastic Four. From the start, Evanier does an excellent job of demonstrating the ways in which Kirby portrays various aspects of his youth in his work.

As we follow Kirby throughout his early career, we come to see him as a young man dedicated to the art of comics but struggling to land assignments that would stick. By providing information and artwork for every major Kirby creation (and plenty of lesser-known ones, too), Evanier paints a nuanced picture of Kirby’s personality, values, and work ethic, as well as his love for the medium. He also makes it clear that Kirby’s career was defined in a big way by two major partnerships: one with Joe Simon that lasted from 1940 to 1955, and the other with Stan Lee from the late ‘50s to the end of the following decade. In both cases, Kirby was able to take his work to new heights, eventually setting him up for an explosion of creativity on his own at DC that would follow him through the rest of his life.

One of the biggest draws of this book is the sheer amount of original artwork presented, much of it never before seen, and the fact that the pages are so large is a huge plus. There are covers, preliminary and finished interior artwork, sketches and commissions, you name it. My favorite thing reproduced in the book, though, has to be a letter that Kirby sent to his wife Roz during his stint in the Army during World War II. Not only do the words border on absolute poetry, but the bottom of the page contains a beautiful depiction of faceless, trenchcoat-laden soldiers running through the night – not in panic, you can tell, but in patriotic duty and brotherhood. It’s pure Kirby, and in the best way possible.

I only have a few complaints with the book, and although they’re largely eclipsed by everything it does right, they’re still worth mentioning. One is that Evanier devotes barely any attention to the various inkers who worked with Kirby. In particular, it would have been interesting to know more about what Kirby thought of Vince Colletta, who has come under heavy fire in recent years for the many alterations he made to Kirby’s linework during his inking process. Evanier does devote a few pages to Joe Sinnott, who in my opinion was the best inker Kirby ever had, but it would have been nice to hear about some of his more controversial artistic collaborators as well.

My other main problem with the book is that it’s simply too one-sided at times. In the past, Stan Lee has been depicted as a villain in respect to his role in Kirby’s late-‘60s departure from Marvel. Evanier doesn’t take that exact approach but he doesn’t do much better either, arguing that Stan was little more than a corporate stooge who was “jockeying for his own place” in the company at Kirby’s expense. But as Evanier himself admits earlier in the book, Kirby was never a very apt businessman; in the early days, it was Joe Simon who did all the heavy lifting as far as getting assignments and ensuring that he and Kirby were always able to put food on the table. I think the likelier scenario here is that Kirby wasn’t as business-savvy as he should have been, and he simply paid the price for it. Evanier also sort of takes for granted that Kirby was the best comic book artist who ever lived, and while I’m certainly tempted to agree with him, I think that many people who don’t will feel that certain parts of the book (especially towards the end) border on hagiography.

However, the issues I have with Kirby: King of Comics aren’t so major that anyone with a love of Kirby or comic book art in general should avoid reading it. It’s essentially a biography and an art book rolled into one, packed with astounding images and written by the person who’s undoubtedly most qualified for the job. It’s easily the kind of thing I see myself pulling off the shelf again and again.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee

2011-07-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

Writers: Stan Lee and George Mair
Published: Fireside, 2002; $14.00

The general outline of Stan Lee’s career in comics is well-known to many of his fans. Starting out in the early 1940s as a gofer for his uncle Martin Goodman’s publishing company, Timely Comics (later known as Marvel Comics), young Stanley Lieber quickly finagled his way into more and more writing assignments on titles like Captain America Comics, Mystic Comics, and USA Comics. After the departure of Jack Kirby and his partner Joe Simon in 1941, Lieber (under the pen name “Stan Lee,” and only 19 years old at the time) was made temporary editor-in-the-chief – a position that Goodman apparently wasn’t in any hurry to fill, as Lee would hold onto it for the next thirty years. During that time, he would modernize, humanize, and revolutionize the way that superhero stories were told.

In Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee, the writer relates all of this information (and much more) in his own inimitable way. Along the way, we learn about Lee’s personal life – his childhood and initial (usually hilarious) attempts at finding a job, his brief stint in the Army during World War II, how he met his wife, and the creative processes behind some of his most beloved stories and creations. The stories about how he came up with heroes like Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four will be familiar to many fans, but it’s nice to see them all in one place and with new details, along with Stan’s always thoughtful and amusing commentary sprinkled throughout. This is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive and definitive record we’re likely to ever get from Lee himself on just how the Marvel Universe began.

You might expect Lee’s autobiography to be somewhat one-sided, but I was surprised at how honest he was, especially when it came to his relationships with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko – both of whom ended their association with Lee (and Marvel Comics in general) with considerably hard feelings. He’s very fair to both artists, fully acknowledging their tremendous contributions to the field of comics and admitting that he wishes things hadn’t ended so unpleasantly. He claims not to know the full reasons for either one leaving, and I believe him; neither artist was ever very good at expressing frustration in a constructive manner, and Lee has never been the kind to ruffle people’s feathers on purpose. He does go into some detail about the problems he was aware of (Kirby was upset that Lee got more attention in the press for Marvel’s success than he did, for example), and about the lengths he went to in order to try to amend them.

Less familiar to fans, I expect, is the story of what Lee did after he resigned as Marvel’s editor-in-chief in 1972, and this was actually the most interesting part of the book for me as a result. As a matter of fact, he was still working for Marvel as much as ever, but in a completely different capacity – first as a public speaker on the college circuit (where Marvel Comics had become incredibly popular), and later as Marvel’s head honcho in Hollywood. One area I would have liked to see discussed in more detail is the Stan Lee Media catastrophe of the late 1990s, which involved Lee’s declaring bankruptcy and the arrest of his business partner for stock manipulation. Lee makes the whole thing seem pretty cut-and-dry, and perhaps he’s to be admired for that (I’m sure the finer details are more convoluted than I could possibly comprehend), but it just seems a bit glossed over. Still, if I had a choice between more on Stan Lee Media or having as much information as he included on his early life and the creation of the Marvel heroes, I would take the latter. The book doesn’t contain any information on the last ten years, since it was published in 2002, but perhaps someday soon Fireside will reissue the book with an additional chapter or two at the end. It would be especially interesting to get Lee’s thoughts on the current ongoing legal battle between Marvel and Jack Kirby’s heirs.

Excelsior! is a fairly quick read, partly because of the large font, but mostly because it reads in the same narrative voice that Lee spent years cultivating in his comics and in his “Stan’s Soapbox” column – a voice beloved to his many fans, and one that new readers, I’m sure, will find just as captivating. And that’s ultimately what makes it so worth the read: as much as you may think you know about the history of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics, absolutely nothing compares to hearing it straight from “The Man” himself.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Welcome to Stan & Jack Month!

2011-07-01T01:15:00.001-05:00

Some readers may remember me mentioning a while back that I wanted to take a month during the summer and focus my reviews on a specific creator or creative team. Well, that month is upon us, and I’m excited to announce that this July is “Stan & Jack Month” at With Great Power! This month I’ll be reviewing a number of books that spotlight the talents of Stan “The Man” Lee and Jack “King” Kirby, who together made up one of the greatest and most innovative duos in the history of comics. You can expect old favorites and lesser known titles alike to show up throughout the month, as I take a look at classic superhero epics, unique genre tales, and even some of the biographical material that has been published on both creators.

But why a whole month on Lee and Kirby, you ask? Well, first and foremost, they’re two of my favorite comic book creators of all time! To this day, the words of no other comics writer have touched me as deeply as Stan’s, and the raw energy of Kirby’s pencils has in many ways never been surpassed. Both were foundational to the medium in a way that few other individuals have been, and their work (both separately and together) is continues to be highly influential while entertaining in its own right. On top of that, both Lee and Kirby tried their hands at telling so many different types of stories over the years that you can find something for just about everyone in their work.

The fun begins tomorrow, as we kick off the first week of the month with a biography of Stan Lee – written by none other than “The Man” himself! And after a look at Kirby’s recent definitive biography (written by his longtime assistant, Mark Evanier), we’ll get right into the heart of their work with a look at some of their finest contributions to Marvel Comics. As for what’s in store after that, you’ll just have to see – and I hope you’ll come along with me for the ride!

Hulk: Beauty and the Behemoth

2011-06-26T12:00:00.003-05:00

Writers: Stan Lee, Steve Englehart, John Byrne, Peter David
Artists: Jack Kirby, Herb Trimpe, John Byrne, Todd McFarlane, Dale Keown, Adam Kubert
Collects: Incredible Hulk #1, 169, 319, 344, 372, 377, 466 (1962-1998)
Published: Marvel, 1998; $19.95

Much like X-Men: Road Trippin’!, the trade I reviewed last week, Hulk: Beauty and the Behemoth was one of Marvel’s earliest modern collected editions. However, the two books lie at very different ends of the same spectrum: whereas there’s very little tying the stories collected in the X-Men trade to one another, the contents of Beauty and the Behemoth were obviously chosen to push a very specific agenda forward. In short, Marvel wanted readers to accept both the recent death of Betty Ross (Bruce Banner’s longtime girlfriend, and later his wife) and the sudden departure of writer Peter David, who had been writing the series for over a decade.

The death is featured in the final issue of the collection, which was published just a month before the trade came out. It’s obvious from Marvel’s haste to release the collection that they wanted to give the story as much weight among readers as possible – if the story appeared in something as seemingly “permanent” as a trade paperback, the editors must have thought, readers would be more likely to accept such a radical change to the status quo. It’s really hard to take the rest of the trade seriously, in this light, since it’s obvious that it was just slapped together to have something to fill up space before the death issue.

Some of these preceding stories are, admittedly, pretty good. I actually haven’t read much of Peter David’s long run on the series, so it was nice to see a few of his better issues collected here. The issue featuring a therapy session involving Doc Samson, Bruce Banner, and the two versions of the Hulk (Green and Gray) that make up Bruce’s subconscious is an especially good one. There are a few decent non-David issues too, including the John Byrne story in which Bruce and Betty are finally married. Only one story doesn’t seem to fit the theme of Bruce and Betty’s relationship – a bizarre 1973 issue by Steve Englehart and Herb Trimpe, in which Betty has been transformed into a giant green harpy.

As for the death story itself, it’s fairly absurd. Betty becomes sick on the first page (presumably from some sort of radiation poisoning, although it’s never really explained), and by the last page she is dead. The main story has Bruce and Thunderbolt Ross (Betty’s father) watching over her in the hospital, and this is interspersed with flashbacks as the wife of longtime Hulk sidekick Rick Jones reads Betty’s recently published autobiography. Unfortunately, it all reeks heavily of ridiculousness and sentimentality, proof that such major shake-ups in comics need to be earned over a period of time, not simply dumped into readers’ laps in a single issue.

It’s obvious from David’s comments in the introduction and afterword that he was not at all happy with the decision to kill off Betty, one that was made by his editor. In fact, after having written nearly 150 consecutive issues of the series, the one after Betty’s death was his last, and the writer doesn’t shy away from saying that his departure had to do with “creative differences.” The whole situation reminds me of the “One More Day” controversy a few years ago, when J. Michael Straczynski was forced by Marvel editorial to write a story dissolving Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson. Like David, he had been writing the same title for quite a few years, and he was quick to leave it for good when the decision was forced on him. It just goes to show, I guess, that the more things seem to change over the years, the more they really do stay the same.

So while there are a few good stories in this trade, the fact is that Marvel’s agenda behind releasing it was a pretty disagreeable one; even if Betty’s death has since been undone in the actual comics, the fact remains that this trade is little more than a testament to an act of blatant disrespect for one of the company’s best and most popular writers. Instead of reading it, then, I would suggest simply picking up an early volume of the Hulk Visionaries: Peter David series. After reading several worthwhile stories from his run in this book, that’s certainly what I’ll be doing.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

X-Men: Road Trippin’!

2011-06-18T23:45:00.011-05:00

Writers: Scott Lobdell, Chris Claremont, John Francis Moore, Larry Hama, Mary Jo Duffy
Artists: Chris Bachalo, Marc Silvestri, Rob Liefeld, Bryan Hitch, Adam Pollina, Adam Kubert, John Byrne, Ken Landgraf
Collects: Generation X #5, X-Force #71 & 75, Wolverine #78, Marvel Treasury #26, Uncanny X-Men #138, 244-245 & 323 (1980-1998)
Published: Marvel, 1999; $24.95

Published in 1999, X-Men: Road Trippin’! was one of Marvel’s earliest efforts in what would eventually become a fairly comprehensive collected editions program. Like a number of Marvel’s other “greatest hits”-style trades from around this time, though, it suffers from a complete and utter lack of focus. The only thing supposedly linking the issues collected in this trade is that they all involve X-Men characters “hitting the road,” taking some time off, that sort of thing. I say “supposedly” because that’s only the case for a couple of these stories – really, this trade is just a cobbling-together of random issues that span the range of Marvel history from Chris Claremont’s celebrated run in the 1970s to the time of this book’s publication in the late 1990s. Furthermore, only half of the issues are actually about the X-Men; the others feature either Wolverine going solo or ancillary X-teams like Generation X and X-Force.

The first issue collected is Generation X #4, the first issue of the series to be published after the “Age of Apocalypse” crossover that swept through the X-titles in 1996. It’s not necessarily a bad story, but nothing of much consequence happens: Jubilee, Skin, and Synch head to New York City, fight some random mutant, and then the issue ends on a cliffhanger. (Oh, and Chamber broods in his room while Husk gets drunk by herself at the X-Mansion, for some reason.) It’s clear that this issue was only included because someone at Marvel thought the NYC aspect made the story fit the “road trip” bill, but seeing as the characters barely interact with the city itself (not to mention the fact that Generation X is already based in New York to begin with), the connection is a tenuous one at best. No context is given for the story either, making it all the more frustrating. In fact, even though I recently read the first three issues of the series in Generation X Classic, Vol. 1, I still felt sort of lost here.

The Generation X story is followed by two late-‘80s issues of Uncanny X-Men, both written by Chris Claremont but drawn by different artists. The first one, penciled by Marc Silvestri, focuses solely on the team’s female members – Storm, Psylocke, Dazzler, and Rogue (well, Ms. Marvel possessing Rogue’s body, technically…but that’s a long story). The ladies decide, on Dazzler’s suggestion, to relieve some stress by hitting up the mall. Again, I’m not exactly sure how going to the mall qualifies as a “road trip,” but that’s the least of this story’s problems. The women transform into materialistic airheads the second they arrive, and Dazzler in particular is almost unbearably annoying at times. They also run into Jubilee (in her first appearance) and fight the M Squad, a group of bumbling mutant-hunters who serve as a thinly-veiled Ghostbusters parody. Their “hijinks,” unfortunately, aren’t all that amusing; although perhaps I was too distracted by the fact that Dazzler, who in every other appearance she has ever made has been Caucasian, appears to be African-American throughout this story.

The second issue of Uncanny X-Men seems to aim for humor as well, but again, Claremont’s writing simply falls flat. The story revolves around a group of moronic aliens who try to take over the world but are put to a stop by the male members of the X-Men, who are all drunk after going to a bar. Rob Liefeld handles the art, and while it’s not as bad as some of his later work, there are some truly cringe-worthy moments as he tries to sneak characters like Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and Alf into the alien invaders’ ranks. A Wolverine/Chewbacca throw-down would actually have been pretty cool, now that I think of it, but alas, all we have is this lame waste of paper instead. (I would be remiss not to point out that this issue also shamelessly sets up Wolverine/Havok: Meltdown, a 1988 miniseries which is a far better story if you’re looking to read a comic featuring those characters.)

The next story, taken from a 1995 issue of Uncanny X-Men, has little to do with the trade’s supposed theme either. As far as I can tell, it was included because it contains five pages of Iceman and Rogue talking as they drive cross-country (where they’re going is never fully explained). The rest of the issue isn’t bad, and the art by Bryan Hitch is fairly impressive, but taken out of context from what was going on in Uncanny X-Men at the time, the story has little real impact.

Next come two issues of X-Force (issues 71 and 75), and to be honest, these were the stories I was least looking forward to reading. I’ve never read much of New Mutants (the series that became X-Force in the early ‘90s) or of X-Force itself, so naturally I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Much to my surprise, though, these issues ended up blowing me away. They are by far the best thing about this trade, and might even be reason enough alone to pick it up. The first issue follows the team as they hitchhike across the country in the wake of having left the X-Mansion for good. By the second issue, they’ve made their way to a Woodstock-esque desert festival, which ends up giving way to unexpected romantic developments and a fight with a mysterious enemy. The character development in these issues is so fantastic that, despite my previous unfamiliarity with the series, I felt entirely invested in what was happening to the cast by the end. If Marvel ever sees fit to collect this creative run again (call the series X-Force Visionaries: John Francis Moore, perhaps?), I’ll be first in line to pick up the trades.

The X-Force issues are arguably the most in keeping with the “road trip” theme, but the final two issues – one a 1994 Wolverine story, the other an issue of Uncanny X-Men from 1980 – really don’t fit at all. The Wolverine issue sees the title character being chased by the vampire known as Bloodscream across the snowy wastes of Canada, while the X-Men issue is simply one long flashback retelling of the team’s history up to that point, ending with Cyclops informing Professor X that he’s leaving. In other words, there’s no “road trip” to be found anywhere in these stories at all! And then, of course, there’s a ridiculous six-page story about Wolverine and Hercules fighting each other in a barroom brawl…but honestly, it’s probably best if I don’t go into any more details on that one.

Although most of the stories don’t fit with the theme of the trade, the X-Force issues are so good that it’s hard to write the entire thing off. That being said, you might be better off just buying those issues separately – they can’t be more than a dollar apiece these days. Heck, you could probably buy John Francis Moore’s entire run on the title for less than the cost of this trade. Come to think of it, why not just do that, and leave X-Men: Road Trippin’! in the discount bin where it belongs?

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

X-Men: The Origin of Generation X

2011-06-14T21:45:00.000-05:00

Writers: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Todd DeZago, Larry Hama
Artists: Joe Madureira, Andy Kubert, Jan Duursema, Roger Cruz, Tony Daniel, Ken Lashley, Steve Epting, Adam Kubert, Steve Skroce, Chris Bachalo
Collects: Uncanny X-Men #316-317, X-Men #36-37, X-Factor #106, X-Force #38, Excalibur #82, Wolverine #85, Cable #16, Generation X #1 (1994)
Published: Marvel, 2001; $24.95

As I mentioned in my review of Generation X Classic, Vol. 1, “The Phalanx Covenant” was a mid-’90s X-Men crossover consisting of three smaller parts. The first, and the most important in terms of overall Marvel continuity, was “Generation Next,” which followed Banshee and Emma Frost in their attempt to free the future members of Generation X from the clutches of the techno-organic alien race known as the Phalanx.

This story was recently collected in the first volume of Generation X Classic, but left out were the other two parts of the crossover. The entire crossover (along with the first issue of Generation X) has only ever been collected once, in the trade paperback X-Men: The Origin of Generation X. The book is subtitled “Tales of the Phalanx Covenant,” and to be honest that’s probably what the trade should have been officially called, since half of it has absolutely nothing to do with Generation X at all. Inaccurate branding aside, though, it’s a pretty good crossover for the most part, and the trade is worth seeking out if you’re interested in getting the entire story.

“Generation Next” is certainly the best of the three parts (and I’ll avoid talking too much about it here, since I discussed it at length in my last review), but “Life Signs,” featuring X-Factor, X-Force, and Excalibur, is a solid read as well. Considering there are three mutant teams involved, the writers do a pretty good job of giving each character a purpose and at least a little bit of face time. For the most part, though, the story focuses on Cannonball, Wolfsbane, Forge, and the mysterious Douglock as they take the fight to the Phalanx’s home base.

Douglock is a particularly interesting character – having first appeared just a few months earlier (in the pages of Excalibur), he’s a sort of combined reincarnation of Doug Ramsey and Warlock, two X-Men characters who had been killed off some years earlier. Through him we learn a great deal about the nature of the Phalanx – as it turns out, they were artificially engineered from DNA harvested from Warlock’s ashes after he died. Techno-organic in nature himself, Douglock imbues the Phalanx with a level of humanity not seen in the other parts of the crossover.

“Final Sanction,” the third and final part of “The Phalanx Covenant,” is far less subtle and much more action-oriented than the others. In fact, “dumb” might not be an inaccurate way to describe it. Reading it, I felt like I was watching a Michael Bay movie; there’s simply so much going on in each panel that I was left constantly wondering about what exactly I was looking at. I usually enjoy Adam Kubert’s artwork, but here I just felt as though he was trying to do too much in too little space.

The story in “Final Sanction” is the most straightforward of any part of the crossover. It mostly revolves around Wolverine, Cable, Cyclops, and Jean Grey blowing things up because, for some reason I never happened to catch, doing so is integral to saving the rest of the X-Men (who have been captured by the Phalanx). None of it is very logical, and although it’s only two issues long it definitely begins to drag towards the end. However, I do have to admit being intrigued by the intense hostility between Wolverine and Cable in these issues, which is something I don’t remember ever seeing in more recent comics featuring the two characters. The origins of their feud aren’t explained here, but I would be interested to read more about it at some point.

The trade ends with the first issue of Generation X which, as I’ve mentioned before, is one of my favorite comic book series of the 1990s; it’s definitely worth reading in some format, whether it’s in this book or in Generation X Classic. Which trade is “better” is really just a matter of preference: are you more interested in the characters from Generation X, or in reading “The Phalanx Covenant” in its entirety? If it’s the former, then you’re better off with Generation X Classic – which, on top of including an additional issue of Uncanny X-Men, also has better paper quality and better presentation overall.

The Origin of Generation X, on the other hand, in the style of most Marvel trades from the early 2000s, uses an inferior dot-based coloring method and relegates issue covers to the back of the book. Since it’s the only trade to ever collect “Life Signs,” though, it’s not a bad purchase if you can find it at a good discount. It’s entirely possible that Marvel will eventually release a new collection of “The Phalanx Covenant,” perhaps in a nice oversized hardcover (as it has for other early-‘90s crossovers like “X-Tinction Agenda” and ¬“X-Cutioner’s Song”), but for now, The Origin of Generation X is a suitable enough way to read it. It’s just not, as the title would have you believe, the best way of reading up on Generation X.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Generation X Classic, Vol. 1

2011-05-21T23:55:00.006-05:00

Writers: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza
Artists: Joe Madureira, Andy Kubert, Roger Cruz, Chris Bachalo
Collects: Uncanny X-Men #316-318, X-Men #36-37, Generation X #1-4, Generation X Ashcan Edition (1994-95)
Published: Marvel, 2010; $24.99

“The Phalanx Covenant” was the first modern comic book story I ever owned in its entirety. I still remember, at some point in the late ’90s, randomly stumbling across the issues (along with some of the earliest issues of the Clone Saga) buried amidst a stack of other books in the back corner of a KB Toys. The store gave them to me at some insane discount since the comics didn’t have a price tag, and I was instantly hooked. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the crossover was my gateway drug into superhero comics – not long after reading it, I went to the local comic store and started my first monthly pull list.

For that reason, as you can probably imagine, “The Phalanx Covenant” holds a special place in my heart. So does Generation X, the series that spun out of the crossover (which, not coincidentally, was also the first series I ever actively sought out in back issue form). So when Marvel announced the first volume of a Generation X Classic trade series, I was a lot more excited than I imagine the news really warranted. Still, I was a bit apprehensive about revisiting these stories – we can all come up things we enjoyed when we were younger that don’t exactly withstand the test of time (The Goonies, I’m looking at you!), and I didn’t want this to be another one.

For the most part, though, my fears were unwarranted. The issues of “The Phalanx Covenant” collected here actually hold up really well, and while they’re not perfect, they’re worlds better than most early to mid-’90s X-Men comics. For those unfamiliar with the story, it was unlike most other line-wide X-Men crossovers at the time in that it didn’t require you to read every single tie-in issue – in fact, “The Phalanx Covenant” was really a grouping of three separate but interrelated mini-crossovers, all of which address different (but related) events that happen to take place at the same time.

Just one of these three mini-crossovers, “Generation Next,” is collected in Generation X Classic, Vol. 1, which I think is actually a pretty smart decision on Marvel’s part, since it’s the only part of “The Phalanx Covenant” that really has any relevance to the beginning of Generation X. (All three parts do appear in the out-of-print trade X-Men: The Origin of Generation X, which I’ll be looking at in much more detail soon.) The four-part story, taking place across two issues each of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, features the sonic-screaming Irish mutant Banshee and former X-villain Emma Frost in their attempt to track down a group of kidnapped teenage mutants. They’re also joined by Jubilee and Sabretooth – the latter of which, perhaps because he isn’t one of the story’s main focuses, actually doesn’t annoy me here.

The young mutants’ captors are the Phalanx, a group of techno-organic beings that share a collective consciousness and a hatred for all purely organic forms of life, especially mutants. Their motivation in this part of “The Phalanx Covenant” is to experiment on young mutants in order to determine why the Phalanx are unable to absorb people with mutant DNA into their hive-mind, the way they can with normal humans. Artists Joe Madureira and Andy Kubert draw a number of great fight sequences, but the story isn’t wall-to-wall action and that’s what I really like about it. Since the majority of the X-Men are out of the picture (they’ve also been kidnapped by the Phalanx, but their rescue is detailed in a different “Phalanx Covenant” mini-crossover), there’s plenty of time to be spent developing Banshee, Emma, and all of the newly introduced young mutants. The story ends on a heart-breaking but hopeful note, setting the stage for the new mutants to form the team Generation X, with Banshee and Emma serving as their mentors.

Immediately after “Generation Next,” we get a never-before-collected issue of Uncanny X-Men that serves as a bridge from “The Phalanx Covenant” to the first issue of Generation X. It’s the kind of rare “quiet” issue that I tend to enjoy quite a bit in team books, with characters just talking to one another and trying to come to emotional grips with recent events in their lives. In this case, the story focuses mostly on Jubilee as she prepares to leave the X-Men behind to join up with Generation X. Although it probably would have been more moving had Wolverine been present, given his role as a mentor to Jubilee over the years, the issue is still a fitting coda to her time with the team and a welcome inclusion in this trade.

Next, we finally enter into the Generation X series proper. By this point, we’ve already been introduced to the main cast of characters: Husk, a Southern girl with the power to shed her skin; Synch, who has the ability to emulate the powers of those around him; M, a super-strong girl with a big brain and an even bigger ego; Skin, an angry Mexican-American with a shady past who can, fittingly, stretch his skin (sort of like a less versatile Mr. Fantastic); and Jubilee, the former mall rat who can emit biokinetic fireworks.

Over the course of the first few issues, the team is also rounded out with Chamber, a moody British telepath who has been horribly disfigured by his near-uncontrollable energy powers, and Penance, a mute girl with razor-sharp red skin. (Mondo, another young mutant who will joins Generation X fairly early on, appears only fleetingly in this volume.) The team even gains an archnemesis right off the bat in the form of Emplate, a genuinely menacing villain with a penchant for draining the life from young mutants, and who seems to have a mysterious connection to several of the main characters.

Before the first issue is even halfway through, the essence of each character’s personality has already been incredibly well defined. In fact, I doubt it’s possible to make it through the first half of this book without having already chosen a new favorite character or two. For me, it wasn’t actually one of the kids on the team (though I like them well enough), but Banshee, who takes up the role of headmaster at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Lobdell has a great handle on the many different aspects of the character, portraying him on the one hand as a sort of father figure to Generation X, and on the other as a man unsure of his abilities as a mentor and role model.

In terms of production value, Generation X Classic is by far the nicest presentation I’ve ever seen for this material. The paper stock is less glossy than the old Origin of Generation X trade, and as a result the colors are softer, warmer, and more true to the look of the original issues. Marvel seems almost to have tailored the book to emphasize how truly amazing Chris Bachalo’s artwork is in Generation X; whereas the “Phalanx Covenant” art is certainly better than average for its time, Bachalo’s attention to facial details (I can’t remember a time, before or since, when Jubilee has appeared so emotive) and his innovative panel layouts clearly place him several years ahead of that time.

There are some great extra features at the end of the book too, including the Generation X Ashcan Edition, a preview comic for the series featuring character sketches and black-and-white pencils for a number of scenes from the first issue. Also included are a series of character timelines that were published as fold-out mini-posters in the original “Phalanx Covenant” issues, and while they’re not reprinted at full size, it’s still great to see them here.

Overall, Generation X is both one of the best comics that Marvel published in the 1990s and a great addition to Marvel’s “Classic” line. This volume ends at the perfect point, since the series was taken over by the “Age of Apocalypse” crossover for several months after the fourth issue. With any luck, Marvel will publish a second volume collecting more of the main series from the fifth issue onwards – heck, I’ll probably be the first in line to buy it if they do!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Blade: Black & White

2011-05-13T21:45:00.003-05:00

Writers: Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont, James Felder, Christopher Golden
Artists: Tony DeZuniga, Rico Rival, Gene Colan, Ladronn
Collects: Vampire Tales #8-9, Marvel Preview #3 & 6, Marvel: Shadows & Light #1, and Blade: Crescent City Blues #1 (1974-76, 1997, 1998)
Published: Marvel, 2004; $15.99

For fans of the Blade movies or the character’s other recent depictions in various animated series, video games, and even a short-lived live-action TV show, Blade: Black & White is likely to be a bit baffling. Collecting a rather strange hodgepodge of issues from throughout the decades, this book sticks with stories that portray a more “classic” version of the character than most people are probably used to seeing these days. Unlike the movie and TV versions, the original version of Blade was an afro-sporting, goggle-wearing, occasionally jive-talking black British vampire hunter. In other words, Wesley Snipes in a trench coat and sunglasses this character is not.

And while I’m sure I could appreciate such a “far out” character under the right circumstances (in fact, I do enjoy Blade’s 1970s appearances in Tomb of Dracula), the stories in this volume just didn’t really do it for me. One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is that the writers don’t play up Blade’s inherent wackiness nearly as much as they should. Especially in the first few issues (a multi-part story that takes up the first half of the book), written at first by Marv Wolfman but then taken over by Chris Claremont, the mood is simply too gloomy for its own good. Blade’s first solo outing after a handful of guest appearances in Tomb of Dracula (a title which Wolfman was also writing at the time), the tale follows Blade’s adventures in London as a coven of vampires attempt to take over the city.

Here we see Blade’s origin recounted for the first time, albeit so confusingly that I didn’t even realize (until I had done some research) that this story wasn’t simply recapping some other comic that I hadn’t read. The story drags on for much too long, pulling in a variety of useless characters, including Blade’s exotic dancer girlfriend Safron and a barely-clothed female cop, who serve as little more than vampire food and/or hostages for Blade to rescue. It’s unbearably formulaic at times, with each fight between Blade and the vampires playing out in almost exactly the same way. Even the vampires apparently realize this partway through the story and, deciding that it would be too much trouble to keep trying to kill Blade, they settle on framing him for a child murder instead. (At least it’s original, anyway.)

The worst part, though, is that the reproduction for this first storyline is simply awful. As the title makes clear, this trade is a collection of black and white comics, and in this case the stories come from several issues of Marvel’s ongoing B&W horror magazine Vampire Tales. (A big chunk of the story also comes from an issue of Marvel Preview; I suspect these chapters were shunted out of Vampire Tales when someone at editorial realized how extraordinarily dull they were.) The standard practice for black and white collections like this one is for the company to reproduce the art from the original pencils and/or inks, but here it looks like Marvel has decided that poorly xeroxed copies of the original magazine pages will do instead. The linework is so washed out in places, in fact, that the action becomes utterly incomprehensible.

The second half of Blade: Black & White fares a bit better than the first. Immediately following the Wolfman/Claremont issues is a Wolfman-written issue of Marvel Preview with absolutely beautiful art by Gene Colan, who has been called the master of depicting shadow and light in comics, and not without good reason. Freed from Claremont’s penchant for overwriting and melodrama, Wolfman delivers a pretty interesting story here in which Blade comes face to face with a group of child vampires; sadly, the story is only six pages long.

The next story, a 12-page inventory piece published in the 1997 one-shot Marvels: Shadows & Light, is another success. James Felder’s plot follows Blade as he teams up with a local priest to infiltrate Dracula’s castle to finish off his archfoe once and for all. Although Ladronn’s style is much more akin to the likes of Mike Allred than Gene Colan, he manages to pull off an incredibly atmospheric feeling nonetheless. The setting is regal and spooky at the same time, and reminded me in a lot of ways of Castlevania (which just so happens to be my favorite video game series!). Strangely enough, the story ends on a horrifying cliffhanger, one that I don’t believe has ever been addressed since.

Colan returns on art duties for the trade’s final issue, a 1998 one-shot entitled Blade: Crescent City Blues which finds Blade and his old friend Hannibal King pitted against their old enemy Deacon Frost. The vampire directly responsible for the death of Blade’s mother, Frost is now leading his undead legions in an attempt to take over organized crime in New Orleans. (I can’t remember exactly what the rationale behind his plot was, but whatever it was, it didn’t strike me as particularly compelling.) Colan’s artwork, while not bad by any means, unfortunately isn’t as well-done as his earlier story; that, plus the fact that the story requires a bit of outside knowledge regarding some of Marvel’s lesser-known supernatural characters (including King, Frost and Doctor Voodoo), placed this one in the slightly-below-average category for me.

So, in the end, there were only 16 pages of Blade: Black & White (out of 144) that I legitimately enjoyed. But although I can’t recommend it at full price, it may be worth noting that I frequently see the book listed online for about the same price as a standard comic book issue. If you do come across it for that price, it’s probably worth considering – after all, if you end up liking Crescent City Blues more than I did (and really, I didn’t think it was too bad), that’s another 40 pages of potential enjoyment. If melodramatic Marvel vampire comics don’t sound like your bag, though, I’d have to say skip it.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Wait, it’s been HOW long??

2011-05-08T09:35:00.000-05:00

Apparently, time flies when you’re incredibly busy. I just realized that it’s been almost a month since I last posted, which means it’s more than high time for me to pop in with an update. First of all, I apologize for not having had the time to post more than one review last month. I should have a lot more time for reading and writing reviews very soon, though, so I hope to be back in form within a couple of weeks.

Second, as you may have already noticed, I’ve completely changed the look of the blog. I had felt for some time that the old layout was boring and pretty hopelessly dated, so it feels good to have finally done something to change it up. That said, feel free to let me know if you hate it, or if you think it’s taking too long to load. I’m not married to the background picture by any means – if it’s too large a file or it’s just too distracting, I can replace it with another one or even just with a solid color. What I’m most happy about is the change to what I think is a more easily readable font, which I think should come in especially handy for browsing the timeline.

That’s about it for now – I just wanted to check in and let you know that I’m still breathing, and I’m still very much devoted to this blog. See you back here soon!

Sabretooth: Back to Nature

2011-04-09T18:00:00.001-05:00

Writer: Jorge Gonzalez
Artist: Frank Teran
Published: Marvel, 1998; $5.99

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I’m not the biggest fan of villains who are psychopathic killers, or ones who are just straight-up evil. I’m much more interested in the complexities of a character like Magneto, who sincerely believes that he’s doing the right thing even when people are dying as the result of his actions. Characters like these give us the opportunity to reassess the heroes – to ask what reasons the “good guys” have for fighting, and thus to either affirm their actions as truly “heroic” or to recognize them as being more flawed than perhaps we initially thought.

Not so for a character like Sabretooth. Here is an individual who relishes in murder and depravity, for no other reason than that some people seem to think that makes him a good foil for Wolverine. And while I suppose he does occasionally work on that level – that is, as an external manifestation of the “man vs. beast” conflict constantly being played out in Wolverine’s mind – as his own character, Sabretooth is one-note and, quite frankly, boring. (One exception is Frank Tieri’s depiction of Sabretooth in the short-lived ongoing Weapon X series, in which the character takes a supporting role and is depicted as being slightly dynamic. Not coincidentally, this is one of the few comics where I find Sabretooth tolerable for more than a few pages.)

I’m the kind of person who’s always open to reevaluating these kinds of things, though, and I thought an original graphic novel starring Sabretooth might be just the thing to change my mind. However, Sabretooth: Back to Nature is every bit as dull as I’ve made the character out to be in the preceding paragraph. In the end, the book is really just a vehicle for a plot point that will later play itself out in X-Factor (more on that later). It’s a story that should have been told in a normal comic book – like X-Factor itself, for example – rather than thrown between two cardstock covers and slapped with a higher price tag.

Anyhow, the book begins with Sabretooth attempting to escape from a restraining collar designed to control his homicidal impulses. The collar is the handiwork of X-Factor, which at this point was basically a government-sponsored branch of the X-Men. At this point in Marvel history, Sabretooth was essentially the team’s captive, and he was regularly brought on missions with them. Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time the X-Men had attempted such a plan to “reform” Sabretooth, and it wouldn’t be the last either. Needless to say, it has yet to work out.

Unable to break free of the collar, Sabretooth resigns himself to tagging along with X-Factor member Wild Child on the latter’s quest to find the serial killer who murdered his ex-girlfriend. This might have been a more engaging set-up if Wild Child had at any point ever been an even slightly compelling character, but alas. This leads to the first of many instances in which Sabretooth possesses far more knowledge than he possibly could given the immediate situation. The killer, we learn, likes to chop his victims up into little bits, and from just this one shred of information, Sabretooth intuits that the killer is none other than his old (previously unheard of) foe, the moronically named “Chop Chop.” I’m fairly certain that more than one serial killer in human history has used a similar modus operandi, so how Sabretooth is so confident is a mystery. So is the full psychological workup of Chop Chop that Sabretooth rattles off on the following page, sounding more like a psychologist than the homicidal nutjob he is.

The story from here on out is almost too predictable to even go into details: the characters go after the killer, they all fight, and (shockingly) Sabretooth kills Chop Chop and his brother Yuri. There’s a subplot involving Wild Child’s inner struggle over whether it’s acceptable to kill people, but it’s rendered fairly impotent by the fact that the bad guys in this story are hardly portrayed as human beings at all. As I said, though, the main point of the story is to plant a seed that will later play itself out in X-Factor, and that happens when Sabretooth figures out a way to overcome his restraining collar in order to kill the bad guys.

So how does he do it? He steals some painkillers from Chop Chop and Yuri, then downs a few fistfuls of them so he can’t feel the electric shocks administered by the collar. Now, let’s think about this for a moment. According to writer Jorge Gonzalez, X-Factor has equipped Sabretooth with a collar that inhibits both his mutant powers and his killing instinct…but not the effects of painkillers? Seriously? Somehow, I think he could have come up with a better explanation for returning Sabretooth to his mass-murdering status quo.

I was going to describe how bad the art is in Back to Nature as well, but I think at this point I’ve already made my case against the book (rest assured, though, the art is pretty awful). Instead, I’ll just say that even though I was able to get this book for a mere fraction of its already low cover price, it wasn’t even slightly worth it. You may appreciate it a bit more if, unlike me, you actually enjoy reading about Sabretooth as a solo character – but, to be perfectly honest, I really doubt it.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Happy Anniversary, True Believers!

2011-03-29T03:20:00.001-05:00

I can hardly believe that it’s already been a year since I started this blog! If the timestamps are to be believed, though, it was indeed one year ago today that I posted my first review, in which I spotlighted one of my favorite collected editions, The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1. Since then I’ve written and posted an additional 40 reviews, begun an annotated timeline of Marvel’s collected editions (more on that in a minute!), and made some great friends in the online comic book community. I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to this blog in some way over the last year, whether you’ve read a review, left a comment, or browsed the timeline. I never imagined that I would accomplish so much at With Great Power in only a year, and I owe it to you guys.

But enough with the sappy stuff. It wouldn’t be an anniversary if we didn’t celebrate somehow, right? So in honor of the occasion, I’ve made the biggest update to the Marvel TPB Timeline ever. The timeline now begins with the first issue of Marvel Comics in 1939 and goes all the way up to the start of the Secret Invasion crossover in 2008. I’ve done my best to make the information provided on big storylines like House of M and Civil War as understandable as possible, so I hope you enjoy those sections. (On the other hand, if you think I could do better, feel free to let me know – I’m always looking for new ways to improve the timeline!)

I didn’t ignore the period of time (1970-2005) that had already been covered, though. It’s been overhauled with new and more accurate annotations for many books, information on a variety of out-of-print collected editions (including the original Onslaught and Kurt Busiek Avengers trades), and books from Marvel’s most recent batch of solicitations. In other words, pretty much everything published in Marvel’s first 70 years is on the timeline! Of course, that doesn’t mean my work is even close to being done – the next step is to get the timeline totally caught up to the present day, and beyond that, I have a few other cool ideas. They’re a little too far off to talk about in much detail yet, but I’m pretty sure you’ll like ’em!

So that’s what you can expect in the immediate future in regards to the timeline, and it’s exciting stuff, to be sure. What about reviews, though? As you’ve probably noticed, those have been a bit less frequent in recent months than they used to be. The simple reason for that is that I’ve been so busy lately that it’s been hard to find the time to read, much less review, very many comics. For the next month, at least, the reviews will probably continue at a rate of about one every other week, although I may occasionally be able to post a review on off-weeks. In May, though, I hope to really get back into the reviewing groove and to make up for lost time with extra reviews on top of the planned weekly ones. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be doing a creator-focused month during the summer, which I think will be a lot of fun. Who will the creator (or creators) be, you ask? That’s still a secret… although I can tell you that the books have already been picked out!

That’s about it for now. Thanks again for stopping by, and as always, if you have comments, questions, or feedback of any kind, you can either leave a comment here, email me at marveltimeline@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter (@Dief88)!

Some Thoughts on Collecting Venom

2011-03-13T00:15:00.001-06:00

While I haven’t been an avid buyer of individual comic issues for a few years now (other than Amazing Spider-Man, which I still follow religiously), today I decided to pick up the first issue of Marvel’s new Venom series, written by Rick Remender and penciled by Tony Moore. It’s a pretty decent comic, as it turns out, although I don’t know that I’ll continue to buy it in single issue form. But this post won’t be too concerned with the actual content of that comic – instead, I’d like to talk about something interesting I noticed on the letters page, which for this first issue is simply a column written by the book’s editor, Stephen Wacker.

He begins by discussing a bit of Venom’s publishing history, emphasizing that Venom #1 is the 90th issue to star everyone’s favorite brain-munching alien symbiote. (In other words, you can expect the book to change its numbering for a “100th issue extravaganza” in just under a year!) Then – and this is what I find most interesting – he recommends several collected editions for readers who would like to learn more about the character:

What’s so interesting about this, you might ask? Well, of the seven trades Wacker recommends, four of them are actually out of print – and I don’t mean recently out of print, but for more than ten years in some cases! Let’s take a look at each of the trades in Wacker’s list, starting with the first one; throughout, I’ll discuss some of the list’s problems and end with a few suggestions on how Marvel might address them.

Spider-Man vs. Venom was an extremely popular trade in the nineties. Originally published in 1990 and collecting a handful of issues written by David Michelinie and penciled by Todd McFarlane, it went through at least six printings and was even named one of Wizard Magazine’s top 100 trade paperbacks in 2006. It was out of print by the early 2000s, though, and in 2007, Marvel collected the full contents of Spider-Man vs. Venom (along with the contents of the out-of-print trade Spider-Man: The Saga of the Alien Costume) in Spider-Man: Birth of Venom, a trade which is still in print today. Although Birth of Venom is a little expensive, I would still recommend it – although that’s mostly for the Saga of the Alien Costume issues, which come from one of my favorite eras in Spider-Man history. But since Spider-Man vs. Venom is included in full in Birth of Venom, Wacker is essentially repeating himself by listing both.

Spider-Man: Venom Returns collects the next two storylines to feature Venom, written again by Michelinie and penciled this time by Erik Larsen. Published in 1993, this trade is also out of print, but unlike Spider-Man vs. Venom, its contents have never been re-collected. Priced originally at $11.95, a new copy of this trade will run you over $30 today, if not even more; one Amazon seller is currently charging $115. That makes Venom Returns pretty much the opposite of “accessible” for people interested in reading up on Venom’s history.

Venom: Lethal Protector collects the 1994 miniseries of the same name, written by Michelinie with art by Mark Bagley and Ron Lim. This trade is out of print too, and even less affordable than Venom Returns. I had to do a double-take when I saw it mentioned, to be honest, because this trade is known for being notoriously difficult to find at a reasonable price, even used. Amazon has used copies ranging from $25 to over $150, and one new copy for sale at $85. Why such high prices? I imagine it’s because the trade had a fairly low print run (collected editions weren’t always as popular as they are today, remember), plus it collects what is undoubtedly the best Venom miniseries from the nineties. It’s worth reading if you can get your hands on it affordably, but it’s definitely not worth the exorbitant price that many sellers are currently charging.

The next two trades that Wacker mentions, Venom vs. Carnage and Venom: Dark Origin, are collections of fairly recent miniseries and are still in print. I wouldn’t expect Venom vs. Carnage to be easily available for much longer, though, being the older of the two and having been released at a fairly low price point. I could very easily see Marvel re-releasing it as a Marvel Premiere hardcover for twice the trade’s price in a year or two.

This brings us to the final trade on Wacker’s list, Venom: Carnage Unleashed (which Wacker mis-identifies as “Venom/Carnage: Unleashed”). Written by Larry Hama and penciled by Andrew Wildman and Art Nichols, this is one of the better Venom miniseries to come out of the nineties, but it’s still a bit on the mediocre side. It’s also the second-most difficult trade on the list to find, behind Lethal Protector. The lowest price currently listed on Amazon for a used copy is just under $20, with other used copies at closer to $100; the only new copy listed is priced at $60.

As we can see, then, Wacker’s list of Venom trade recommendations is pretty problematic, not because of the quality of the books themselves, but because most of them haven’t been available at a reasonable price for years. That isn’t Wacker’s fault, though, and I certainly don’t mean to seem like I’m attacking him. The fact that this is the best list he could come up with actually speaks more to a failure on the part of Marvel’s collected editions department than anything else. You would think, with a brand-new series coming out starring a character as popular as Venom, that Marvel might take a bit more initiative in making sure that more than two or three trades starring that character were readily available.

I do have to give the trade department some credit, though. Just this month, Marvel released Venom by Daniel Way Ultimate Collection, which collects the entirety of Way’s eighteen-issue ongoing Venom series from the early 2000s. It was also announced last month that Marvel would publish an Omnibus edition collecting the entire Michelinie/McFarlane run on Amazing Spider-Man (during which Venom made his first appearance, in the issue pictured at right). Strangely, though, neither of these books appears on Wacker’s list; nor does Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage, an important Venom-related story which, unlike many of his recommendations, is actually in print.

With the exception of the Daniel Way trade, all of the books I just mentioned collect Spider-Man comics in which Venom happened to appear. But what about the 89 comic books starring Venom that Wacker talks about in his column? Much like what’s happened with the Clone Saga over the last few years, I think a good deal of nostalgia for these comics has built up lately and that there’s a viable market for reprints of these issues. I, for one, would certainly be interested in buying a series of Venom Classic trades collecting the character’s various series from the mid-nineties. After all, if Gambit, War Machine, and the Danny Ketch version of Ghost Rider are worthy of Marvel’s “Classic” line, why not Venom?

So what do you think? Has Marvel really done a poor job of collecting Venom over the years, or am I giving them the short shrift? And while we’re at it, what are your favorite Venom storylines, and which ones would you like to see collected (or re-collected)? Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at marveltimeline@gmail.com with your thoughts!

Harry 20 on the High Rock

2011-03-08T00:15:00.002-06:00

Writer: Gerry Finley-Day
Artist: Alan Davis
Collects: 2000 AD Progs 287-307 (1982-83)
Published: Simon & Schuster, 2010; $19.99

Harry 20 on the High Rock is the first full story arc I’ve ever read from 2000 AD, a black-and-white British anthology comic which has been published weekly since the 1970s. While not as popular in the United States as it is in the UK, the comic has nonetheless produced internationally recognizable characters, such as Judge Dredd, and has served as a launching pad for a number of prominent comics creators, including Alan Moore, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, and Grant Morrison, to name just a few.

There’s no overarching plot in 2000 AD; rather, each issue is comprised of a few five- and six-page stories, each of which is usually a part of some longer narrative that unfolds over several weeks, months, or even years. And while I picked Harry 20 as my starting point, it’s possible to dive in virtually anywhere. Approaching the comic for the first time, though, I was skeptical of just how good such a heavily segmented story could be. Would half the comic be spent recapping earlier plot points? And what exactly can a writer accomplish in just five pages, anyway? These were the questions I had as I began to read Harry 20 on the High Rock.

Luckily, I had nothing to fear. In fact, the short length of each chapter is actually one of the book’s greatest assets. Aware of what limited space he has, writer Gerry Finley-Day doesn’t waste a single panel, propelling the story forward at incredible speed even as he develops the central characters with surprising finesse. But I’m getting ahead of myself – I haven’t even explained the premise of the story yet. (I’ll just chalk that up to being a side effect of the book’s breakneck pace!)

Harry 20 on the High Rock takes place in a future where the worst criminals are jailed not on Earth, but on an orbiting satellite known as the High Rock. And, as we learn on the first page: “The High Rock is Hell!” Tormented by sadistic guards and stripped of their surnames (which are replaced by numbers, reflecting the number of years each man is to be imprisoned), the High Rock is not at all a happy place for its prisoners. It’s also where our protagonist, Harry Thompson, is sent at the beginning of the book to serve twenty years for a crime he didn’t commit. His one goal, from the moment he arrives? Escape!

It won’t be easy, however, and Harry wastes little time in gaining the trust and help of his cellmates: Genghis Eighteen, a Mongolian imprisoned for refusing to sell his family’s land to the military, and Ben Ninety, an apparently crazy old man who may very well have been on the High Rock since it was built. Incorporating the best elements of all the greatest prison films and TV shows – camaraderie between those wronged by the system, rivalries with other inmates, a cadre of inhumanly evil guards led by a maniacal warden, and a truly wild escape plan – Finley-Day crafts a suspenseful, unpredictable story that also happens to be paced perfectly.

Not really knowing what to expect of Finley-Day’s writing before I began reading, though, the main draw of this book for me at the outset was that it features the earliest professional comics artwork by one of my favorite artists, Alan Davis. Since it comes from such an early point in his career, I had expected the art to be a little rough. But remarkably enough, Davis is at top form in these pages. Most impressively, it’s obvious that he put a great deal of work into the design of the High Rock itself. In fact, schematics that appear throughout the story show that Davis actually mapped out the entire prison from top to bottom, inside and out. The effect is that when the prisoners despair that there’s no way to escape the High Rock, it’s not a mere plot contrivance; instead, it’s the visual nature of the place Davis has created that makes us believe in the hopelessness of Harry’s situation.

As much as it may sound like an overstatement, I feel quite confident in saying that Harry 20 on the High Rock is one of the best self-contained comic book stories I’ve ever read. The story and the artwork are perfect individually, and put together, they make for something truly awe-inspiring. If this book is at all representative of the quality of the rest of 2000 AD, I can’t wait to read more. Consider me converted!

Rating: 5 out of 5

Superman: Earth One

2011-02-21T23:45:00.004-06:00

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist: Shane Davis
Published: DC, 2010; $19.99

From the moment it was first announced, and nearly every time I’ve heard mention of Superman: Earth One since, one word has come to mind: “baggage.”

Because that’s what almost every person who talks about this book seems to bring to the table, right? Baggage. Most of the comments I read online about this book before its release had to do with whether or not J. Michael Straczynski should even be writing Earth One in the first place, rather than the main Superman series, whether or not the world really “needed” another version of Superman’s origin, and whether or not original graphic novels are a thing of the past or a bold new approach in our current “Golden Age of Reprints.” For whatever reason, a great many people believed they had some kind of stake in this book, and they shouted it from the proverbial rooftops.

Personally, I think most of the debates that have constellated around this title are downright silly. That anyone should feel entitled to having Straczynski write this or that Superman comic rather than the one he actually wants to write is ridiculous, as is the argument that stories taking place outside of standard continuity are “unnecessary.” If anything, between books like All-Star Superman and Superman: Red Son, Superman is actually the poster child for characters with relevant and worthwhile alternate-universe stories. But these are arguments that were settled, at least by rational comic book readers, long before this particular book was even conceived of. Call me crazy, but I read comics for personal enjoyment, rather than with a cynical eye for the latest way comics and their creators have supposedly screwed me over.

Of course, it’s quite possible that someone reading this may be only vaguely aware of the central conceit of Earth One, in which case I apologize for what must have seemed a puzzling introduction to this review. To give it a more proper introduction, the book is an original graphic novel (the first in a projected series) written by J. Michael Straczynski and penciled by Shane Davis. It presents us with an alternate version of Superman’s beginnings, while at the same time striving to match the “real” version of the character both tonally and thematically. In Earth One, though, Clark Kent is a confused young man who has just arrived in Metropolis, and just like the traditional version of the character, he possesses the ability to do nearly anything he sets his mind to. This is evidenced in a series of amusing scenes in which he “applies” and is “accepted” for a number of different jobs, ranging from professional football player to think-tank research scientist. Straczynski is careful not to play for too many laughs, though, emphasizing Clark’s sense that his powers keep him constantly isolated from the rest of the world.

The main question he faces is what to do with all the power he possesses. Unlike they do in the main DC Universe, Clark’s adoptive parents don’t actively encourage him to be a superhero – instead, they simply want him to find whatever it is in life that will make him the most happy. When hostile aliens attack the planet in search of the last survivor of Krypton, Clark is thus put into an incredibly difficult position. He doesn’t want the world to know how different from everyone else he truly is, but at the same time, exposing his true nature may be the only way to save the world from destruction.

It’s rare these days for alien invasions in comic books to really carry any weight or suspense, but Straczynski pulls it off tremendously here (even if the aliens’ leader does sort of look like a reject from The Cure). In a twist on Superman’s traditional origin story, Krypton didn’t just explode – it was assassinated, and the aliens are more than willing to give Earth the same treatment if they don’t get what they want. Perhaps needless to say, Clark does ultimately end up donning the blue and red, and once he does, Davis treats us to a truly breathtaking and action-packed climax.

Along the way, Straczynski does an excellent job of reminding us what Superman has always stood for, but in a way that breathes new life into old characters and concepts. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen both play pivotal roles in the story, for instance, but not in the capacity you might necessarily expect. Straczynski clearly remembers that the reason we love Superman, as a culture, is that he represents the best in all of us, and the story reminds us of that in its unique take on these characters, particularly Jimmy.

The ending of Superman: Earth One sets the stage for possible sequels, but it works perfectly well as a self-contained narrative as well. I have to admit that, despite not coming to the book with any preconceived notions, it still far exceeded my expectations. This is easily one of the better Superman stories I’ve read in recent memory, and certainly the best one to be published since the turn of the decade. My only complaint, as clichéd as it is to say this, is that I wish it had lasted longer – not because it was too short, but simply because it’s not often that I have the pleasure of reading comics this good.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Streams of Consciousness – “NFL Superpro Appreciation Day” Edition!

2011-02-06T14:53:00.005-06:00

It’s that time of year again: the day when we all pause for a moment of silence to remember the greatest hero and sports legend ever to star in his own Marvel comic book. That’s right, ladies and gentleman. Today is NFL Superpro Appreciation Day.

Okay, so I’m just messing around a bit (even though I really would like to see Marvel release an NFL Superpro collection one day!). I hope everyone is enjoying Super Bowl Sunday; personally, I’m pretty excited. As a proud resident of Wisconsin, you can probably guess who I’ll be rooting for, but I honestly think both teams are pretty evenly matched and that it will be an exciting game, no matter who comes out on top (must…resist…Roethlisberger joke).

But you didn’t come here for my thoughts on football – or at least, I certainly hope you didn’t! I sort of fell off the two-reviews-per-week schedule I had intended for last month, but on the bright side, I did manage to post more reviews than if I had been doing them once a week. I’ll make up the ones I missed with extra reviews at some point in the future, I promise. At least for this month, though, I’ll be doing my best to keep to a weekly schedule.

In other news, I’ve updated the Marvel TPB Timeline yet again with over 150 new books. The 1980s are now finished, and so is 2005 (aside from House of M, which goes at the end of the year and will be part of the next update). There have been a lot of requests for me to add material that takes place after Avengers Disassembled, so hopefully this will satisfy people at least until the next update!

Stay tuned for more timeline updates and for a new review sometime this week!

Ultra: Seven Days

2011-01-31T20:15:00.006-06:00

Writer: Joshua Luna
Artist: Jonathan Luna
Collects: Ultra #1-8 (2004-05)
Published: Image, 2005; $17.95

As I read the first few pages of Ultra: Seven Days, my initial reaction was this: “Sex and the City, meet superheroes. Superheroes, meet Sex and the City.”

It wasn’t exactly a fair comparison – I’ve never seen an entire episode of Sex and the City, so I don’t know for sure whether this book is really the superhero equivalent. However, its premise, at least at first, seemed very similar to my impression of what Sex and the City is about, in that both the show and this comic book focus on a trio of women who spend their time looking for love and spouting raunchy one-liners at each other. The main difference in Ultra, it seemed, is that those women happen to be superheroes.

The book begins by introducing us to Pearl Penalosa, the superheroine also known as Ultra. Out for a night on the town with her two best friends, known in costume as Aphrodite and Cowgirl, Pearl stops to see a fortune-teller who predicts that she will find true love within the next seven days. Skeptical at first, Pearl eventually starts to believe her fortune may come true – perhaps largely out of desperation, since she’s had little luck with men since breaking up with her superhero boyfriend several years earlier.

You can probably see the parallels to Sex and the City already. As the story progresses, though, it moves away from those initial similarities fairly significantly. In fact, it probably has more in common with America’s real-life obsession with Hollywood than anything else. You see, in the world of Ultra, superheroes are celebrities. They appear on magazine covers and billboards, they advertise lingerie and cigarettes, and their romantic lives are front-page news on tabloids across the country. They even have a highly competitive, annual superhero award show which, much like the Oscars and the Golden Globes in real life, draws just as much attention for what its participants are wearing as for their actual achievements.

The parallels to real-world celebrity culture are fairly obvious, but they’re also quite funny in their utter ridiculousness. More importantly, they don’t steal the spotlight from Pearl’s emotional conflicts – which, by contrast, the book treats very seriously. To say much more about the plot would be to spoil much of the pleasure that comes from actually reading the book, but rest assured, it’s a very satisfying and unpredictable journey from beginning to end.

Ultra is the first comic book written and drawn by the brothers Jonathan and Joshua Luna, who have since gone on to much wider popularity for their series Girls, The Sword, and a handful of other titles. Based on the fact that Ultra was their first published work, I was expecting it to be pretty rough around the edges. As it turns out, it’s one of the best surprises I’ve had reading comics in the last year. The art is simple, but sleek, polished, and pleasing to the eye. The dialogue is tight and witty, and I love the way that the Luna brothers resist what could very easily have been a run-of-the-mill, conventional ending.

In the end, my initial reaction towards this book was wrong, and I’m glad. I honestly hope some of you who read this review will take the same chance on Ultra that I did – I think you may be just as pleasantly surprised.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

It’s Not Quite a Review, But...

2011-01-22T23:50:00.001-06:00

I know I said I would be posting two reviews a week for January, but alas, I just don’t think that second review is going to happen this week. But just to make it up to you, I’ve posted yet another big update to the Marvel TPB Timeline! This one isn’t as noticeable as previous ones at first glance, since I haven’t added any new years to the timeline. Instead, I’ve added TONS of books that were missing for 1984-2004 – and while I didn’t count how many there were, I think it’s safe to say that there are over two hundred new books in the timeline. Heck, a couple dozen books were added featuring the Punisher alone!

Some other titles that have been added include Squadron Supreme, Star Comics, The ‘Nam, Women of Marvel, the New Universe books, JLA/Avengers, various inter-company crossovers, more anthology and “Best of” trades and hardcovers, a handful of upcoming trades, and well over a hundred original graphic novels. I’ve added new links and information about out-of-print versions of many trades and OGNs, and I’ve also updated and corrected the annotations for too many books to even begin to list. I owe a big debt to Ian at Trade Reading Order for his help in pointing out several resources that contained details on many of the books I was missing.

The next step is to go through the years 1984-2004 one last time to add a few other things I missed (I should add some information on the original Age of Apocalypse and Onslaught trades, for example). Once that’s through, the updates should come a bit more fast and furious. The next update will finish up the 1980s by adding the first few years of the decade, as well as add some post-“Avengers Disassembled” material, probably up to the “House of M” crossover.

As always, if you have thoughts or suggestions (and especially if you spot any errors!), feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at marveltimeline@gmail.com. Thanks for stopping by!

Iron Man/Captain America

2011-01-17T21:00:00.000-06:00

Writers: Stan Lee, Mark Waid, Denny O’Neil, David Michelinie, Mark Gruenwald, Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, James Robinson, Kurt Busiek, and Roger Stern
Artists: Don Heck, Ron Garney, Luke McDonnell, Mark Bright, Bob Layton, Kieron Dwyer, Jim Valentino, Colin MacNeil, and Patrick Zircher
Collects: Tales of Suspense #58, Iron Man #172 & 228, Captain America #341 & Annual #9, Tales of Suspense #1, Iron Man and Captain America Annual 1998, Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty #5-6
Published: Marvel, 2010; $24.99

With such a boring title, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that Iron Man/Captain America is probably a pretty run-of-the-mill book. As it turns out, though, it’s actually pretty unique as far as “best of” collections go, in that it maintains a specific theme across the entire book beyond simply “stories that happen to feature the characters in the title.” While not every story is exactly perfect, this does make for a nice, unified reading experience overall.

We start off with an early Iron Man tale by Stan Lee and Don Heck, in which a case of mistaken identity (involving Kraven the Hunter and the Chameleon, apparently on loan from the Spider-Man comics) leads Iron Man and Captain America to duke it out in a construction site. This issue is classic Marvel at its best, with solid action scenes by Heck and some nice character drama involving Iron Man supporting characters Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. While it’s been reprinted plenty of times elsewhere, its inclusion here is more than welcome.

Next, we jump forward nearly fifty years (in terms of publication date, that is) to a two-part story from Mark Waid’s Captain America: Sentinel Liberty series. It actually takes place shortly after Captain America is discovered by the Avengers, though, which explains why it’s positioned here in the book. In essence, this is meant to be the characters’ first non-Avengers team-up and the real start of their friendship. It begins with Iron Man assuming that Captain America has lost his edge after being trapped in ice for so long; however, Cap is the one to save the day when alien robots take control of Tony’s mind and send him on a rampage through New York City.

The next two issues come from a period of Marvel history that I’m not quite as familiar with, especially when it comes to the Avengers’ corner of the universe. The first story, reprinted from a Denny O’Neil-written issue from 1983, actually features Jim Rhodes as Iron Man – at this point, Tony’s alcoholism had apparently so consumed him that his friends deemed him too much of a risk to allow him to continue suiting up. Even Captain America is in the dark as to who’s under the helmet, which makes their interactions all the more interesting as the two heroes scour some of NYC’s seedier locales for a drunken Tony.

The second issue, written in 1988 by David Michelinie (with art by Mark Bright and Bob Layton), sees Tony back on his feet as Iron Man, but facing even greater problems than his own inner demons. Terrorists have somehow gotten hold of his Iron Man technology, and in an effort to prevent even more of it from falling into the wrong hands, he resolves to take out the Guardsmen, a group that guards a super-villain prison using Stark technology. Personally, I don’t understand why he didn’t just try talking to the people who run the prison and come up with some alternative security measures, rather than waging all-out war on the security guards and accidentally freeing a handful of super-villains in the process.

Captain America doesn’t see the logic in Tony’s plan either, and the two friends end up coming to literal blows over it. A short follow-up written by Mark Gruenwald, originally published as a back-up story in Captain America #341 sees Cap trying to arrest Iron Man for his actions and coming up empty-handed when Tony flees his own apartment. Between this and the other ‘80s stories, I get the impression that Tony Stark spent most of that decade being a grade-A jerk.

Another story, taken from Captain America Annual #9 and written by Roy and Dann Thomas, is the first part of “The Terminus Factor,” a plotline that ran across several different characters’ Annual issues in 1990. The other four parts aren’t collected here, but if the first part is any indication, that’s probably a good thing. The story is about Cap dealing with a town that turns into a horde of zombies after eating bad trout at a fish-fry – among them, Iron Man. Yes, that’s really the plot: zombies and a fish-fry. There’s even a bear that turns into a zombie after eating one of the fish. The less said about that, the better, I think…

The next story, by far the longest in the book in terms of page count (though it’s a pretty quick read), comes from one of those standalone original graphic novels that Marvel seemed overly fond of putting out in the 1990s. Written by James Robinson (who at the time was just beginning his legendary run on Starman), it’s a fairly boring story about Captain America and Iron Man teaming up to fight an old enemy from Cap’s WWII days who plans to assassinate a Japanese politician. Since this is the ‘90s, there’s also a generic cyborg assassin who fails to come off as even slightly menacing.

I actually found this story to be a pretty annoying read since Robinson writes almost exclusively in one-word or two-word sentences. I get that he wanted the dialogue to be “punchy” or “powerful” or whatever, but after a while I just felt like I was reading a comic about cavemen in robot suits. The artwork is standard fare for these OGNs, in that it’s much more stylized and elaborate than the story warrants. Colin MacNeil is a good artist, to be sure, but his painterly style in this comic just seems self-indulgent when paired with Robinson’s mediocre script. Still, I guess it’s nice to see the OGN reprinted here, since it’s not worthy of its own trade and I can’t think of anywhere much better to put it.

The final issue collected in Iron Man/Captain America is the characters’ joint Annual issue from 1998, which is plotted by Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern and scripted by Mark Waid. Whereas the 1990 Captain America Annual was substandard (and zombie-filled) fare, this one hits the mark dead-on. It’s also quite important in terms of Marvel continuity, as it’s the issue where Iron Man essentially wipes the knowledge of his secret identity from every mind on the planet.

Cap is predictably angry when the truth comes out, leading him into a major moral dilemma when he’s faced with a similar situation during the characters’ fight with MODOK later in the issue. This story marked the first time in Iron Man/Captain America that I could actually see some logic to Tony’s argument, although in the end I still had to side with Cap. The art in this issue is by Patrick Zircher, who brings the same clean (if not entirely remarkable) style he did to Iron Man: Deadly Solutions.

I think Iron Man/Captain America was published in large part to be a vehicle for this last story – since Marvel seems intent on collecting the two characters’ solo series from 1998 onwards, this was an important issue that had to be placed somewhere, and putting it here prevents Marvel from having to collect it twice. While I don’t think too much knowledge of either solo series is required to enjoy this particular issue, I would recommend reading it if you’re following the other late-‘90s collected editions for either character, since the 1998 Annual is unlikely to be reprinted elsewhere.

What I like about this trade is that it’s about more than just the characters’ partnership through the years – in fact, it’s more concerned with the fact that Tony Stark is constantly putting that relationship to the test with his actions. With such a specific theme, it’s hard to see why Marvel didn’t slap some kind of subtitle on the book to separate it from the pack a bit (even if it was a completely lame one…a little individuality never hurts). I also can’t help but wonder why the editors of the book didn’t choose issues that portray Iron Man in a better light, but I’m not complaining; the stories they did choose, with only a few exceptions, tell a surprisingly cohesive story, one worth a look by fans of either character.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Simpsons Comics Extravaganza

2011-01-13T23:45:00.001-06:00

Writers: Steve Vance, Cindy Vance, Bill Morrison, Dan Castellaneta, and Deb Lacusta
Artists: Steve Vance, Bill Morrison, Tim Bavington, and Sondra Roy
Collects: Simpsons Comics #1-4 (1993-94)
Published: Bongo Comics, 1994; $11.95

I am a huge Simpsons fan. Heck, I’ve probably seen more episodes of The Simpsons than I’ve read Wolverine comics – and as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’ve read more Wolverine comics than any other person alive. As much as I like the show, though, I never really gave the comics a chance before reading this trade. I always assumed that the comics were made by people with little or no relationship with the people who make the show, and that the stories in the comics were of the more childish, slapstick variety that the show itself has devolved into since the late 1990s. And since the trades don’t have volume numbers, I also assumed that they were poorly organized and/or didn’t reprint the comics in any kind of order – not that I thought there would be an ongoing story or anything like that, but I’m a stickler for reading things in publication order whenever possible.

Well, you know what they say about assuming. In fact, I was wrong about Simpsons Comics on pretty much all counts. The comics are published, as it turns out, by Bongo Comics, a company formed by Steve Vance, Bill Morrison, and show creator Matt Groening for the specific purpose of making comics based on The Simpsons. (They’ve since expanded to doing Futurama comics as well.) Furthermore, the comics have actually been collected very systematically in trade form, even if there aren’t specific volume numbers.

Vance (along with his wife Cindy, who serves as co-plotter) writes the world of Springfield far better than I would ever have expected from any format other than the actual show. He really nails each character’s voice, so much so that I could actually hear the show’s cast in my head as I was reading. Nearly every significant supporting character makes an appearance too, from Principal Skinner to Sideshow Bob. Some of the stories in this trade, which collects the first four issues of Simpsons Comics, are actually just as entertaining as some of the better episodes of the show. Much like the TV writers, Vance makes full use of his knowledge of popular culture by crafting plots that make intricate reference to Cool Hand Luke, The Maltese Falcon, and other great films, novels, and comics.

This makes for a very self-aware comic book, one filled with in-jokes pertaining to the medium. This comes through most clearly in the short back-up stories at the end of each issue, which serve as intelligent parodies of other comic book genres. There’s a 1950s-style romance story, for example, in which Marge believes Homer is cheating on her with her sister Selma. There’s also a spot-on EC horror send-up starring Homer as “the Collector,” a self-centered man who hoards – what else? – comic books!

The best of these parodies is “Krusty, Agent of K.L.O.W.N.”, a parody of Jim Steranko’s popular 1960s Nick Fury comic series, which I found absolutely hilarious. Interestingly enough, it’s written by Dan Castellaneta (who voices Homer, Grampa, Krusty, and other characters on the show) and his wife Deb Lacusta. Rather than try to explain what makes the story so great, I’ll just let you take a look for yourself at the scan to the left, which should bring a smile to anyone with a fondness for comic book history. (If the reference doesn't ring a bell, take a look here!)

There’s not a lot to say about the art in Simpsons Comics Extravaganza (though I’ll try anyway), since it looks exactly as you would expect it to look – that is, each panel essentially looks like a freeze-frame from the show. Vance does the layouts for almost every story, with the finished art being completed by either Bill Morrison or Tim Bavington, or both, depending on the story. The only exception is the “The Collector,” which features art by Sondra Roy. The art looks pretty consistent throughout the book, though, no matter who’s credited for the story in question.

I’m really happy that I gave the Simpsons comic book a chance, and if you’re a fan of the show, I would highly recommend checking it out. It’s surprisingly intelligent, and while it may not reach the heights of some of the TV series’ best episodes, it’s still very funny and well worth the affordable cover price.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Chronicles of Conan, Vol. 2: Rogues in the House and Other Stories

2011-01-10T15:30:00.003-06:00

Writer: Roy Thomas
Artist: Barry Windsor-Smith
Collects: Conan the Barbarian #9-13 & 16 (Marvel, 1971-72)
Published: Dark Horse, 2003; $15.95

At the end of my review of the first Chronicles of Conan trade, I worried that, going forward, the story-telling patterns I was beginning to notice could potentially grow stale within a few issues. Luckily, my fears weren’t at all justified in that respect. This second trade in Dark Horse’s effort to collect the original Marvel series from beginning to end is everything I could ask for story-wise, although it has some crippling issues in terms of presentation (more on that later).

In Rogues in the House and Other Stories, writer Roy Thomas continues to use Robert E. Howard’s original Conan prose stories as the primary basis for the comics. However, he also adds a great deal of his own flavor by filling in the chronological gaps with stories of his own, as well as with adaptations of Howard stories which originally didn’t feature Conan at all. As with the first volume, Thomas’s stories fit so nicely into the Conan mythos that it’s hard to tell which stories are his and which are Howard’s (at least for those of us without a huge reservoir of Conan knowledge).

Each issue could theoretically be read on its own without much confusion, but Thomas’s attention to chronology is beginning to make for a very interesting overarching plot. That’s what I liked most about this book – seeing the story progress and the character of Conan develop from issue to issue. A significant portion of this trade takes place in the same city and features an impressive number of recurring characters, with one adventure leading directly into the next.

The highlight of the book is the double-sized story “Rogues in the House,” in which Conan must find his way out of a monster-filled, booby-trapped palace along with the city’s corrupt ruler and the leader of the ruler’s rebel opposition. It’s really interesting to see Conan forced to interact with characters so unlike himself (without fighting them, that is), and for a few minutes the story almost made me wish I could see how Conan would fare on a superhero team like the Avengers or the Justice League, as ridiculous as that may sound.

There isn’t a bad story in the book, to be honest, but among my other favorites are “The Garden of Fear” and “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.” In the former, Conan must rescue his female companion Jenna (who joined up with Conan at the end of the first trade) from a winged, man-like creature in a tower surrounded by deadly, man-eating flowers – and he ultimately does so, with the help of a pack of woolly mammoths. In the latter (which is based on one of the few original Conan stories I’ve actually read), Conan is the last man standing at the end of a vicious battle, and when he sees a beautiful young woman, he begins to chase her through the frozen wasteland – but is she real, or just a figment of Conan’s battle-wearied imagination?

As you might have picked up, there’s a surprising amount of variety to the stories in this trade. Unfortunately, all of that is rendered almost moot by the patently awful job that Dark Horse has done in “restoring” these comics. Honestly, in all the time that I’ve spent reading comics over the years, this is one of the very worst treatments of older material I have ever seen in a collected edition. First of all, the original colors have been thrown completely out the window – instead, digital colorists have applied a repulsive “airbrush” style to Barry Windsor-Smith’s artwork, complete with pedestrian-looking color gradients that could only ever be created with a computer program like Photoshop. The result is a book that looks nothing like any comic would actually have looked in the 1970s – nor, for that matter, how any sane person with the gift of sight would color a book today.

Furthermore, Dark Horse’s colorists didn’t even follow the original color guidelines. Clothing, hair color, backgrounds, etc. – almost everything has had its color changed for this collection, without any explanation. They’ve even changed the thin black lines that Windsor-Smith occasionally drew on his characters to indicate streaming blood to a bright, garish red hue – something that never would have been acceptable in a Code-approved comic book at the time of Conan’s original publication. Nonsense like that not only betrays the original integrity of these comics, but it’s somewhat insulting to the reader. I appreciate the trouble, Dark Horse, but I really don’t need to see bright-red blood spraying everywhere like a Mortal Kombat game in order to understand that this comic has violence in it.

Worst of all, the colorists have inexplicably decided to actually erase portions of Windsor-Smith’s linework. It’s most obvious in the “Rogues in the House” issue, but it occurs throughout the rest of the volume as well. It absolutely baffles me to see such a heinous job done with the presentation side of this book, especially when the colorists who worked on the first trade were perfectly adequate and respectful of the source material. I hope future volumes in this series will return to that first batch of colorists, because if I find out that any more of them feature the work of this coloring team, this will be the last book in the series that I read.

There’s no denying that the stories in this volume are excellent, but this is one case where the abhorrent art reproduction simply can’t be ignored. As much as it pains me to tell anyone to pass up these great stories, the truth of the matter is that I think anyone truly interested should wait until Dark Horse gives this collection a properly re-colored second printing.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Deadpool Classic, Vol. 3

2011-01-05T14:45:00.004-06:00

Writers: Joe Kelly, Stan Lee
Artists: Ed McGuinness, Shannon Denton, Pete Woods, Walter McDaniel, and John Romita Sr.
Collects: Deadpool #9-17 (1997-98) and Amazing Spider-Man #47 (1967)
Published: Marvel, 2009; $29.99

It’s taken three volumes now, but I think my patience with the Deadpool Classic series is finally starting to wear a little thin. The main reason for my frustration is that while writer Joe Kelly clearly has an idea of where he wants to take the story, he doesn’t seem to know how to properly get there. This book takes us up through the 17th issue of Deadpool’s ongoing series – a point by which I think it’s reasonable to have expected the main plot to have progressed a lot more than it actually has. Unfortunately, the nine issues collected here do little aside from meander as Kelly seemingly goes out of his way to portray Deadpool as a genuinely unlikeable human being.

Picking up on one of the main plot threads from the previous volume, Deadpool Classic, Vol. 3 concerns itself mostly with the main character’s struggle to determine whether he’s ultimately a hero or a villain. While the folks at intergalactic law firm Landau, Luckman & Lake maintain that he’s some sort of “chosen one” meant to restore balance to the universe and whatnot, Deadpool’s actions consistently speak to the contrary. This was the case in Vol. 2 as well, but at least in that book I got the sense that Deadpool legitimately wanted to become one of the “good guys.” Here, he talks a lot about wanting to change for Siryn, the woman he loves (who only appears in one issue, sadly – I think she’s a great character), but doesn’t seem to be motivated by much else – least of all, his conscience. In fact, he spends so much time being self-centered and actively resisting LL&L’s attempts to help him be a hero that I had a hard time believing he really wants to change at all.

Overall, I think I get what Kelly is trying to do. He’s trying to bring Deadpool to such a low point that he the only way for him to go is up – thus justifying his eventual shift from anti-hero to hero. (Of course, at the rate the story is going right now, I can’t imagine that shift taking place for at least another two volumes, and even then I don’t expect for it to last long.) The thing is, Deadpool was already brought to a sufficient low by his fight with Typhoid Mary at the end of Vol. 2 – the fact that he acts like a jerk for most of this volume doesn’t get him any lower, it just forces us to wallow along with Deadpool in a weird state of limbo created by the character’s alternating feelings of denial and self-pity.

In other words, Kelly isn’t actually developing the character or his situation at all here; instead, he brings Deadpool to his lowest point and then spends nine issues rubbing the reader’s face in it. The worst part comes when Deadpool locks up Blind Al and Weasel, his only friends, in a torture chamber for absolutely no reason. (Even more troubling is that when Deadpool finally offers an apology four issues later, Kelly apparently means for the reader to accept it.) Kelly still (annoyingly) doesn’t reveal the exact nature of Deadpool’s relationship with Al, an old woman he’s been keeping prisoner since the series’ first issue. I think we’re supposed to be amused at the bizarre Stockholm syndrome thing going on between the two, but at this point it’s really just creeping me out.

And maybe it’s just that I’ve read too much Deadpool lately, but the character’s sense of humor (at least, the way Joe Kelly writes it) has become just plain annoying to me. It’s extremely repetitive, for one thing – I counted at least three jokes involving the word “duodenum” in this volume alone, and just as many involving people having their butts “kicked so hard they can taste their breakfast.” I imagine I would have had a much easier time enjoying the dialogue if not for seeing the same verbal tics repeated over and over.

The one highlight of this book is a double-sized issue in which Deadpool travels back in time and uses an image inducer to impersonate Peter Parker throughout the events of the classic Amazing Spider-Man #47 (which is reprinted in its entirety as well). Artist Pete Woods does a good job of imitating John Romita’s style for the scenes taking place in the past, and of inserting Deadpool into a number of actual Romita-drawn panels taken from the original comic. Plus, the framing story features the Great Lakes Avengers (who call themselves the Lightning Rods here, after the Thunderbolts), a group that never fails to entertain me.

Aside from Woods, the art in this book is handled by a variety of artists. Ed McGuinness only handles the book’s first issue, but he’s followed by Shannon Denton, whose style is very similar. The final four issues are drawn by Walter McDaniel, whose style is more realistic and less manga-influenced than either McGuinness’s or Denton’s; I’ve never come across his work before, but it’s very reminiscent of what Bryan Hitch was up to in the late ‘90s. All of the artists featured are a decent fit for the book, even if none of them are mind-blowingly great.

Despite the time-travel issue and the artwork, though, this book failed to impress me on the whole. The series has slipped into a formula that, while not intrinsically bad, has grown pretty tiresome in being dragged out over this much time. I’m not writing the series off entirely, since I think it could reclaim some of its former glory if it gets out of its current rut and Deadpool finally embraces his “destiny” to become a hero. Still, it’s got a pretty steep mountain to climb to make me forget this disappointing volume.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Streams of Consciousness – New Year's Edition!

2011-01-03T11:45:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! Having reached the end of our first calendar year here at With Great Power, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone who’s been reading, commenting, and following the blog – especially over the last few months, which I know have been a little touch-and-go at times. My New Year’s resolution is to get things back on track with a regular reviewing schedule, starting this week. And to make up for the infrequency of my posting over the last two months, I’ll be posting two reviews each week in January! On top of that, you can expect a major update to the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline in the near future as well.

The beginning of 2011 also provides a nice chance to look back at my own reading and blogging habits over the last year. It would be difficult for me to do a “year’s best” list in the traditional sense because, taking a look at my posts since starting the blog in March, I really didn’t read many comics published in 2010. So instead, I’ll just ramble on for a bit – and if the lack of a “top ten” or any other kind of formal structure causes you to tune out, I’ll understand!

It’s been over two full years now since I left the world of single issues behind, and since then (especially in this last year), my focus has been on reading the kinds of comics that I never felt I had the time for as a weekly comic buyer – that is, a lot more historical material and independent titles. This has been reflected to some extent on the blog in my reviews of books like The Doom Patrol Archives, Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years, The Muppet Show, and Monkey vs. Robot, but given the choice, I usually stuck to reviews of superhero titles.

This year I’m hoping to be a little more balanced, although I’ll still probably review more superhero comics simply because I’d like to one day have reviews posted for the vast majority of the books on the Marvel timeline. I know it’s a tall order, but I feel like someone should do it, and since no one else has attempted anything like it for the Marvel Universe yet, I figure I might as well give it a shot.

Aside from working on the timeline, there are a few other blog-related things I’m looking forward to in 2011. At some point (probably during the summer), I’d like to try a creator-themed month focusing on the work of one particular comic book writer or artist. I’m also planning to post at least a couple reviews of comics-related non-fiction – I read a lot of it, so it would only make sense to start writing about it from time to time. I had fun doing something different with my review of the movie Creepshow back in October, so I’m looking forward to expanding my horizons even more this year.

Well, I think that’s about it for now. As always, feel free to leave me a comment – hearing your thoughts is what reminds me that people actually care about this blog and that I’m not just tossing words into the void! See you tomorrow for the first of this week’s reviews, featuring a character who has already made his presence known several times on this blog... Can you guess who? :)

Marvel Holiday Special

2010-12-24T14:15:00.001-06:00

Writers: Tom DeFalco, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Shaenon Garrity, Jeff Parker, Mike Carey, Roy Thomas, and Chris Claremont
Artists: Takeshi Miyazawa, Roger Cruz, Duncan Roleau, Roger Langridge, Reilly Brown, Mike Perkins, Ross Andru, and John Byrne
Collects: Marvel Holiday Special 2004 & 2005, Marvel Team-Up #1, and Uncanny X-Men #143 (1971, 1980, 2004-05)
Published: Marvel, 2006; $7.99

Every year, both DC and Marvel typically release some sort of special holiday-themed one-shot, usually at some ridiculously high price point. The stories in these issues, at least in my experience, are usually of middling to slightly-above-average quality, mainly featuring younger or lesser-known writers and artists. Perhaps needless to say, events in the holiday specials are for the most part light-hearted and largely inconsequential as far as “main” continuity goes. That said, I almost always bought Marvel’s holiday one-shots back when I still actually purchased single issues, simply because they provided a nice opportunity to get away from the doom and gloom of whatever other stories were being told in the characters’ main series.

A few years ago, Marvel did something sort of interesting by packaging a few of their holiday one-shots into an inexpensive, digest-sized trade paperback, titled simply Marvel Holiday Special. The trade collects the 2004 and 2005 one-shots, along with a few classic tales from years past, for only $7.99 – a few cents short of the combined cover price of the two one-shots, making the book a pretty good deal. (If you shop around, you can find it even cheaper…I actually paid just $2.50 for my copy!)

Of the modern stories, the best is probably “Jonah’s Holiday Carol,” a re-telling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with the curmudgeonly J. Jonah Jameson stepping in for Ebenezer Scrooge. As you might imagine, the “ghosts” that help him see the true meaning of the holidays are all prominent figures in the Marvel Universe, although I won’t spoil the fun by going through who all of them. Another solid story involves a New Avengers Christmas party that gets broken up by Santron, an Ultron robot reprogrammed to eat cookies and deliver toys to good little boys and girls – and to kill the Avengers, of course! This story also features Gravity, my absolute favorite lesser-known Marvel character, which automatically boosts its appeal for me.

Also decent, if not exceptional, are a pair of Fantastic Four stories – one starring Reed and Sue’s son Franklin as he tries to figure out the meaning of Christmas, and the other about the team’s efforts to determine why the Mole Man’s henchmen have been kidnapping shopping-mall Santas. The latter has art by Roger Langridge (writer/artist of The Muppet Show), whose cartoonish style, for lack of a better word, lends the story a lot of humor.

There’s also a Fantastic Four story written by Mike Carey and drawn by Mike Perkins (probably the two most well-known creators to contribute to these one-shots), which is told in the form of a poem. The art is a departure from Perkins’ usual style – in fact, it looks like he read a little too much Perry Bible Fellowship before setting to work on it – and the rhyming aspect of the narration and dialogue can get a little hokey, although it does have the advantage of making the story stand out a bit from the others.

Less interesting is a story about Cyclops, Emma Frost, and Wither (a young mutant whose “power” is that everything he touches dies – good thing he’s not on the bad guys’ side, right?). It’s basically just about the two X-Men trying to cheer Wither up, since he doesn’t have a family to go home to over the school’s winter break. There’s nothing wrong with the story, but it’s not all that interesting either, especially for people (like me) who have never even heard of Wither before.

The two one-shots are followed first by the 1971 debut issue of Marvel Team-Up, in which Spider-Man and the Human Torch track the Sandman throughout New Jersey and New York City on Christmas Eve. This issue has been collected in a few different trades over the years (and will be collected once again in the much-anticipated first Marvel Team-Up Masterworks edition in just a few months), but this is undoubtedly the most affordable way to read the story in color. Written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Ross Andru, this issue is a fun classic with a nice mix of action and introspection from Spider-Man, the Torch, and even Sandman.

The final issue collected in this trade is a 1980 issue of Uncanny X-Men, written by Chris Claremont and penciled by John Byrne. It follows the team’s newest recruit, Kitty Pryde, as she’s chased around the X-Mansion by a horrifying demon (clearly inspired by the creature from Alien), again on Christmas Eve. I’ve commented before on Claremont’s unfortunate inclination towards stories featuring “strong” female leads, but this one is actually pretty good – probably due in large part to the fact that Kitty is simply a more interesting character than Claremont’s usual subjects.

Overall, Marvel Holiday Special is a pretty solid mix of new and old holiday-themed superhero stories – even if none of them can really be considered truly outstanding. Sometimes “not outstanding” is perfectly acceptable, though, especially when those stories are so far removed from the norm (and as cheaply collected!) as these ones.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore

2010-12-05T13:45:00.007-06:00

Writer: Dennis O’Neil
Artist: Curt Swan
Collects: Superman #232-238, 240-242 (1971)
Published: DC, 2009; $39.99

The year was 1971, and things at DC Comics were changing. Longtime Superman editor Mort Weisinger had retired and been replaced by Julius Schwartz, the man who had revamped Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash, among other characters, for a new, more modern age. What Schwartz found upon taking up his new position was that Superman had somehow resisted the changes that the rest of the comic book industry had undergone over the previous decade. While other superheroes (Batman, especially) had all but completely shed the sillier, less realistic trappings of the Silver Age, Superman was still flying around with an entourage of Super-Pets and coming up against every color of Kryptonite in the rainbow – each of which seemed to possess some increasingly ridiculous physical property and/or influence over Superman.

To top it off, Superman had become so ridiculously overpowered by this point that, as writer Dennis O’Neil once put it, he “could destroy a galaxy by listening hard.” That being the case, it only makes sense that writers were coming up with so many different kinds of Kryptonite; it was the only thing that could pose an actual threat to Superman anymore. Kryptonite had become a story-telling crutch, the only means by which writers could inject Superman’s comics with any real sense of conflict.

Schwartz brought on O’Neil as the new writer of Superman, and the two came up with a solution that was fairly radical for the time: get rid of Kryptonite altogether. Fittingly enough, the first issue of O’Neil’s run (and the first issue collected in Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore) features Superman literally breaking free from chains made of Kryptonite. It’s not just for show, either: within the first three pages, O’Neil has rendered every last bit of Kryptonite on Earth harmless to Superman, by means of a science experiment gone awry. From here on out, the story focuses relatively little on Kryptonite at all – although it does lead to some rather funny moments in which criminals attempt to use Kryptonite against Superman, only to have Superman basically laugh in their faces (see above).

But as is the case with all radioactive testing in superhero comics, the outcome is hardly just a bed of roses for the main character. The experiment also brings a strange duplicate of Superman into existence – one that can’t think or feel, but which possesses all of Superman’s powers. When the two are close to one another, the duplicate saps Superman’s strength and becomes more powerful itself; if the two were to come into physical contact, furthermore, the Earth would be completely destroyed. O’Neil wisely uses this as a means to permanently weaken the character, eschewing the problematic, “all-powerful” depiction of Superman that had reigned supreme over the two previous decades. The duplicate isn’t necessarily evil; it’s just mysteriously drawn to Superman, and it seems to follow him everywhere. As a result, Superman often loses his powers at the most inopportune times, leading him to use his head in situations where he might otherwise have used his fists. The resolution to this plot at the end of the collection is a satisfying one, complete with a nice fake-out of an ending by O’Neil in which it appears that Superman and his duplicate have destroyed the world in their final battle.

The reduction in Superman’s powers is just one of a number of changes O’Neil imposes on the character. The biggest is undoubtedly Clark Kent’s shift from newspaper reporter to television news anchor, a peculiar switch demanded by new Daily Planet owner Morgan Edge – a man who, as we see in a few scattered interludes, is secretly working for the villainous Darkseid. (That subplot doesn’t come to fruition in this collection, though, and for the most part it’s incidental to the main story.) Superman soon finds that being on TV is much different than writing for a newspaper, since he now has to be careful to keep his identity a secret from millions of viewers in addition to the people he works with at the Planet. Equipped with a “portable television transmitter” (a television camera that, conveniently enough, doesn’t require a cameraman), Clark travels all over the world for his new job – curiously, though, no one ever seems to ask how he gets around so quickly without ever catching a plane.

For the most part, I found the stories in this collection to be very entertaining, and a nice change of pace from the more traditional Superman formula. The character still faces some hilariously ridiculous, Silver-Age-style threats (a pair of giant ants, for instance), but these are mixed with more contemporary villains, like a group of “bandits” – terrorists, really – who kidnap Lois in the South American jungle.

There’s only one legitimately bad story here, involving a group of angels who convince Superman that he’s gone to Hell. As it turns out, the “angels” are actually just fugitive aliens who happen to look the way that people on Earth imagine angels. (How convenient!) If nothing else, this story reminded me of how much more prevalent Christian imagery used to be in comic books, and in popular culture in general, than it is today. I wasn’t bothered by it on any level other than the plot itself being a mediocre one, but I can’t imagine a story like this one being met without some controversy today. Of course, I might just be overestimating the sensitivity of comic book readers; people seem to be wholly accepting of rape and murder in their superhero comics these days, so who knows, maybe DC could get away with this too.

Speaking of controversy, though, DC has made an extremely controversial choice in its coloring for this book. Rather than re-coloring the original artwork the way Marvel and DC usually do for their “classic” collections, the art here seems to replicate what the original comics must have actually looked like. That is to say, the colors are faded and washed-out, and often have something of a yellowish hue to them. Some will almost certainly hate the book for this reason alone, but personally, I love it. The coloring made me feel as though I was reading the original comic books – a feeling helped, no doubt, by the fact that the art is handled by longtime Superman artist Curt Swan – and I think the decision to refrain from “cleaning up” the color is a bold decision on DC’s part.

It’s interesting to read stories like these, in which it’s clear that the writers and editors at DC are beginning to try to retool the aspects of their characters that just don’t work anymore. In fact, as sort of a revisionist take on the character, the stories collected in Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore can be seen as something of a precursor to comics like Crisis on Infinite Earths, which would shake up and modernize the characters of the DC Universe in a much more blatant and lasting fashion. Even in its own right, though, this book provides an entertaining glimpse at a largely-forgotten era of Superman comics, especially for those who can appreciate the quality of the reproduction.

Rating: 4 out of 5

9/11 Heartbreaker

2010-11-21T13:30:00.001-06:00

Writer/Artist: Craig Staufenberg
Published: 2010; $4.99 (print), or $2.99 (digital)

I think September 11 meant something different to my generation than it did to others. That isn’t to say that how some people feel about it is more valid, or more consequential, than what anyone else feels – just that, among the different ways it affected people, many of those differences seem to play themselves out along generational boundaries. Looking back, I often feel like I’m in the peculiar position of being one of the youngest people to remember – to really remember, I mean, with some burgeoning sense of maturity and of how the world really works – the difference between what it was like before and after that day.

Everyone has their own story, their own memories, about September 11. For me, it was the year before I started high school. My history class watched in horror as the second plane hit on live television. We were afraid – not for our own safety, as some of the younger students were, but because I think a part of us knew there was no going back. We were getting older, and had all but left our childhoods behind. The past had been slipping away from us for years, but we didn’t realize it until a huge piece of it was literally destroyed before our eyes on TV.

It may sound self-centered to frame national tragedy in terms of the everyday, adolescent struggle of coming to grips with the world. But in the end, I think that’s exactly how it affected a lot of people; after all, we were young, and we were self-centered, and that’s how young, self-centered people tend to think. Perhaps ours was a special case, too – we grew up believing that our world was one kind of place, and in an instant it forever became an entirely different one. It was the ultimate bait-and-switch. For many people my age, September 11 was an “end-of-the-innocence,” “coming-of-age” experience.

What I’ve just discussed is my own truth, and it’s different from my father’s and my grandfather’s truths, even though it lies rooted in the same factual events. Our sense of understanding is subjective like that, and so is memory. So perhaps it’s fitting, then, that Craig Staufenberg, author of the original graphic novel 9/11 Heartbreaker, titles his personal website “Memory is Fiction.” And perhaps it’s also fitting that Staufenberg, who began the book as a means of exploring our generation’s memories and feelings about September 11, has created one of the most poignant and thought-provoking reactions to the events of that day that I’ve had the pleasure of encountering in any form of media.

At just 28 pages, 9/11 Heartbreaker is a fairly short book. But it’s packed with meaning, and with an entire generation’s own subjective truth. For people like me who were around high-school age at the time of September 11, it will ring perfectly true; for those who weren’t, I imagine it will offer a fascinating alternative perspective on that day.

The story follows a young woman who in the first few pages meets Peter, a man who records young people’s memories of September 11. The stories our unnamed main character encounters through Peter’s website (which were culled from real-life stories collected by Staufenberg) are so gripping that they incite her to action. Realizing how important it is to remember our history – the various subjective truths of everyday people, if you will – she set out to record them in her own way, just as Peter has.

There’s no plot twist, no loopy postmodern narrative techniques; it’s all about the mental journey the main character goes through as a result of hearing these stories about an event which, until now, she hadn’t thought of so intensely. The artwork is fairly uncomplicated, and it brings to mind the simple beauty of artists like graphic novelist Danica Novgorodoff (Slow Storm and Refresh, Refresh). The story is more heavily driven by its prose – as it should be, since much of the book is made up of personal testimonies about September 11.

What I like most about 9/11 Heartbreaker is that it works not just as a means of preserving one specific perspective on one isolated event; it also shows us how we might learn from it, and more generally how we might strive to record and remember the things that are important to us. We can do that in any number of ways, from taking pictures to writing down our thoughts about the world to simply learning about our cultural heritage. After all, if something happened that no one remembers, then in a way isn’t it almost like that thing never happened at all?

In many ways, I feel as though the effects spiraling out from the main character’s meeting with Peter run parallel to the effect this book had on me. Much like her, I hadn’t given much thought prior to reading the book to the unique effect September 11 had on people of my own age group. Maybe five or ten years from now, I’ll look back on some of the conclusions I’ve drawn here and scoff at my own ignorance for thinking that I’ve sort of figured things out. But if I’ve taken anything away from this book, it’s that the very act of recording your thoughts is an important process, and perhaps looking back on these ones again will lead me to reach even more definitive conclusions one day when the time comes.

I think that’s what this book is about, in the end: the importance of being able to accept our own subjective truths as well as those of others, and of doing our best to preserve them. Those truths can be about September 11, a first love, even our own reflections on a book that makes us think about our world in a new way. If memory is indeed fiction, then it’s important for us to try to remember as much as we can, as best we can, in order for us to learn and move forward from those memories. As long as we keep doing that, I don’t think we can ever truly forget about the things that are most important to us.

[9/11 Heartbreaker is available for purchase in either print or digital form. For the time being, people who order the print version can receive a digital version for free by contacting Craig Staufenberg personally. For more information on the book, including other reviews and interviews, feel free to visit his website, Memory is Fiction.]

Don’t Worry, I’m Still Here!

2010-11-19T20:45:00.000-06:00

As you may have noticed, I didn’t post a review last week. The reason for that is that I’ve been impossibly busy for the last few weeks, and I haven’t had the time to read any comics, much less write about them. I’m hoping to have a review up this weekend, though, and hopefully there won’t be any more hiccups between now and the New Year, which is when I foresee myself having a decent amount of free time again. And if for some reason I do miss posting any more reviews, I’ll make up for it with extra reviews in either January or February. Sound good? Thanks for sticking things out with me, and as always, thanks for reading!

A Huge Marvel TPB Timeline Update!

2010-11-07T16:00:00.004-06:00

I have some good news and some bad news today. First, the bad news – I won’t be posting a new review this week. But the reason why is actually the good news! This week I used the time I normally would have spent on a new review working on the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline, which has now been updated to cover everything – and I do mean everything (so far as I can tell, at least) – that Marvel published from 1984 to 2004. In terms of Marvel continuity, that’s everything from the original Secret Wars to Avengers Disassembled! I also added a Table of Contents to the top of the page for easier navigation.

As always, any and all feedback is welcome. If you think I’ve made a mistake somewhere (which is more than likely, given the number of books now on the timeline), please let me know! Feel free either to leave a comment on this post or to send me an email at marveltimeline@gmail.com. Thanks for stopping by!

Movie Review: Creepshow

2010-10-31T23:50:00.001-05:00

Director: George A. Romero
Screenplay: Stephen King
Released: Warner Bros., 1982
Available on: DVD, Blu-ray, and Netflix Instant Watch

I thought I would do something a little different this week and talk about a film that doesn’t typically come up on lists of great comic book movies, but which deserves the attention of comic fans nonetheless. I imagine the reason that Creepshow is so often overlooked is that it isn’t an adaptation of a specific comic book, but rather an homage to EC’s line of horror comics from the 1950s. As a huge fan of EC Comics myself, I found a lot to love in this movie.

The movie begins with a father scolding his son for reading a horror comic book called Creepshow, and then throwing it in the trash. A thunderstorm is approaching, and as the wind and rain pick up, blowing the comic open, we get our first look into its pages. Much like Tales From the Crypt, it’s a horror anthology hosted by a strange, supernatural character – the Creepshow Creep in this case, rather than the Crypt-Keeper – with all the trappings of a classic EC comic (even the letters pages look the same!). From this point onward, the movie itself follows the same format, presenting the viewer with five distinct, unrelated horror tales.

The stories are vintage EC for the most part, featuring off-kilter characters and shocking, yet satisfying, endings. The violence and language are considerably rougher than anything EC ever published, of course, but the overall tone is the same in its subtle mix of horror and comedy. The screenplay is by Stephen King, who had already made a name for himself despite having published only seven novels at this point (he had written several others as well, but under pseudonyms). He based several of the stories on short fiction of his own, while others were written specifically for the movie. King even appears in a starring role in one segment, playing a farmer who is transformed into a plant-like creature by a radioactive meteor.

It’s hard to describe the stories without giving too much away, but I’ll give it my best shot. The first segment, “Father’s Day,” follows a group of rich, snobbish people as they gather for their annual celebration of the murder that resulted in their inheritance; it also features an early performance by Ed Harris. The second story (mentioned above) stars Stephen King, who plays the part of an over-the-top southern hick surprisingly well. The next segment, “Something to Tide You Over,” stars Leslie Nielsen as a psychotic husband who sets out to revenge himself upon his wife and her lover by burying them up to their necks on the beach just before the tide comes in. By far the best story, in my opinion, is “The Crate,” in which a college professor (played by Hal Holbrook) uses the appearance of a mysterious monster as a means of getting rid of his emotionally abusive, alcoholic wife. This is followed by the weakest (and also definitely the most disgusting) story of the group, “They’re Creeping Up On You,” in which an evil man receives his just desserts when swarms of insects invade his apartment.

Between each story, we’re treated to bits of the comic book’s artwork as well as brief glimpses of the Creep himself, who is rendered in smooth-looking, traditional animation. The comic book pages are really quite beautiful, and I often found myself pausing the movie to take a closer look or to read some of the text and word balloons that I would have missed otherwise. In a nice touch, the art is by Jack Kamen, one of EC’s top illustrators.

The special effects in Creepshow, created by Tom Savini, are quite good for the time the movie was made. The way the undead are depicted here shows a remarkable technical improvement over Savini’s efforts in the 1975 horror classic Dawn of the Dead – not that there’s anything wrong with the zombies in that movie, but they simply weren’t as impressive in their individual goriness as the dead are in this movie. (In fact, it seems to me that it was only in the decade after Dawn of the Dead that the cinematic portrayal of zombies began to shift from pale, vacant-eyed, but otherwise fairly normal-looking people, to the sort of brain-munching, maggot-filled corpses we’re used to seeing today.) Even the less believable aspects of Creepshow, like the monster in “The Crate,” simply lend to the movie’s horror-comedy tone with how hokey they look.

Of course, the true responsibility for Creepshow’s success lies with director George A. Romero. In fact, the reason I was enticed to watch this movie recently is that I’ve been catching up on some of the director’s movies that I hadn’t already seen (others I’ve watched in the past few weeks include The Crazies, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead). I’ve found it interesting to watch Romero refine his directorial skills over the course of these films, and I would certainly place Creepshow among his best work.

If you’re interested in EC Comics but don’t have the disposable income to spend on the original issues or on Gemstone’s EC Archive collections, Creepshow is a pretty good way to sample just what it was like to read an EC horror comic book. The Tales From the Crypt television series is excellent as well, since most of the stories on that show were taken directly from the comics, although obviously the anthology format is lost. Interestingly, Wikipedia tells me that a 64-page graphic novella version of Creepshow was published around the time the movie came out. I haven’t been able to procure a copy yet, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout for one, and I’ll let you know what I think of it when I get the chance.

So until next time... Happy Halloween!

The EC Archives: Tales From the Crypt, Vol. 1

2010-10-24T18:45:00.005-05:00

Writers: Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein
Artists: Al Feldstein, Johnny Craig, Graham Ingels, Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Jack Kamen, and George Roussos
Collects: The Crypt of Terror #17-19 and Tales From the Crypt #20-22 (EC Comics, 1950-51)
Published: Gemstone Publishing, 2006; $49.95

Hard as it may be to believe today, there was a time in comic book history when horror reigned supreme. That time was the first half of the 1950s, when EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines and his top editor, Al Feldstein, set out to create a completely different kind of comic. With what was surely the most talented stable of artists working in the comics industry, and with almost every story written by Feldstein (with Gaines’s frequent input), EC’s bimonthly horror anthology Tales From the Crypt quickly became one of the best and most consistently beautiful-looking comics being published at the time. This first volume in Gemstone’s series of Tales From the Crypt archives collects the comic’s first six issues, which contain some of the greatest and most influential horror stories ever conceived.

The history of EC Comics is so intertwined with the actual content of its comic books that it’s worth dwelling on, at least for a moment more. Gaines was more than just an idea man; he was also a shrewd businessman. He inherited the company (then called Educational Comics) from his father, who had published a range of wholesome, if not utterly bland, comic books, including Picture Stories from the Bible. But within three years of his father’s death, Gaines had transformed the newly-christened “Entertaining Comics” – EC, for short – into something altogether different, not to mention exponentially more successful. Originally called The Crypt of Terror, the company’s flagship title (in addition to Weird Science, a science-fiction comic) began with issue 17, inheriting its numbering from another EC title, Crime Patrol. At the time, it would have cost an additional fee to start a new comic magazine with a new first issue, although ironically, the U.S. Post Office grew wise to EC’s scheme and made the company pay the fee anyway. With its fourth issue, the series changed its name again, this time to Tales From the Crypt, the title it would retain until its untimely end in 1955.

Each issue contains four stories, which are typically six to eight pages in length apiece. The first story (and sometimes the second) is narrated by the Crypt Keeper, who basically acts as the comic’s “host.” The Crypt Keeper is a creepy old man whose exaggerated dialogue is filled with morbid puns that are so ridiculously campy it’s hard not to chuckle along with him. The actual stories take themselves a bit more seriously. What’s really interesting is that, at least in the early issues, the stories rarely delve into supernatural territory. While some of the characters do seem to encounter ghosts and werewolves and what not, the strange things they see are usually explained as being the manifestation of some inner guilt rather than actual paranormal activity.

This has a great deal to do with one of the defining traits not just of Tales From the Crypt, but of EC’s comic book line in general. In fact, a better way of describing the company’s comics, rather than calling them horror or science-fiction comics, might be to call them morality tale anthologies with a horror or science-fiction twist. Most stories, in the end, involve the meting out karmic justice, while those that don’t derive their rhetorical effect from the very absence of that justice. Each story also ends with a twist of some kind. Sometimes the twists are obvious and can be seen a mile away; other times, they come totally out of left field. Even in the former case, though, the stories for the most part end satisfyingly and leave you excited for the next one.

So exactly what kinds of stories can you expect to see in this volume? First of all, there are graves and dead bodies – lots of them. In “The Hungry Grave,” for example, a case of mistaken identity leads a man to bury his mistress alive, rather than her husband; in another story, a graveyard prank by a group of rich, spoiled, and bored students leads to disaster. And then there’s the excellent “The Thing from the Grave” – the ending, in which a dead man seemingly pulls his killer with him into the grave, is pictured on this collection’s cover.

In several stories, men kill their closest friends in order to steal their wives, only to meet horrible and fitting ends themselves. Others are more unique – in “Terror Ride,” a couple of newlyweds find themselves on a death-filled Tunnel of Love ride. That’s not the only story to feature an amusement park, either; in “Death’s Turn,” two greedy amusement park owners cut corners while building the fastest roller coaster ever, leading to predictably ghastly results. Many of the stories reach backward in time to play on common folklore and urban legend, while others lay the groundwork for horror classics that would come many years later. One of my favorite stories in the book, “The Maestro’s Hand,” anticipates Sam Raimi’s brilliant Evil Dead 2 (one of my favorite horror movies) in its depiction of a disembodied hand that skitters about almost comically before achieving its chilling, murderous end.

There is one major problem with this collection, one that, admittedly, may not bother other people as much as it bothers me – every story in this collection has been re-colored using modern technology. In general, the argument for re-coloring older comics is that the original creators simply weren’t able to produce the range and quality of colors they wanted due to technical or budgetary limitations at the time. On the final page of this collection, Gemstone publisher Russ Cochran tries to justify the re-coloring process by arguing that coloring in comic books prior to 1950 was primitive and generally handled by non-artists. The problem with this argument, though, is that Tales From the Crypt was published after 1950, and was in fact colored by Marie Severin, one of the single best colorists in the industry’s history. The new coloring does a huge disservice to the original artists, whose beautiful linework looks strange and unnatural at times in this book.

Another minor complaint is that this book is interspersed with advertisements for other books published by Gemstone, including other EC Archive editions. This comes off as a pretty tacky move, especially for a book that costs as much as this one does. I find it unlikely that most people who buy this book would be unaware that other EC Archives exist, and even in that case, it’s not a problem that a one-page list of other Archives at the end of the book wouldn’t solve.

While the presentation isn’t ideal, the fact still remains that this is the only way to see these stories in print without buying the original issues, which can be quite expensive these days. Perhaps one day another company will gain access to this material and present it in a better format – I certainly hope so. But until then, if you’re a fan of horror stories or even of great storytelling in general, this collection of Tales From the Crypt is, even despite its flaws, a must-read.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Melvin Monster, Vol. 1

2010-10-17T18:20:00.001-05:00

Writer/Artist: John Stanley
Collects: Melvin Monster #1-3 (Dell Comics, 1965-66)
Published: Drawn and Quarterly, 2009; $19.95

John Stanley will almost certainly be forever celebrated as one of the greatest and most prolific creators in the history of children’s comics. He’s best known for Little Lulu (one of my favorite comic book series from the 1950s), but he created comics based on a wide range of other well-known characters too, including Alvin and the Chipmunks, Krazy Kat, Nancy, and Woody Woodpecker. One of his most original efforts, Melvin Monster was a short-lived series – ten issues long, the last issue being a reprint of the first – but also one of the creator’s most critically-acclaimed. This first installment in Drawn and Quarterly’s “John Stanley Library” collects the series’ first three issues, reprinted on nice, thick paper from high-quality scans of the original comics.

The concept of the series is essentially that Melvin is a little boy monster who looks and acts like a cross between Frankenstein’s Monster and Tubby from Little Lulu. He lives in Monsterville with his parents “Mummy” and “Baddy,” whose physical appearances (as you might imagine, since this is a fairly humorous children’s comic) are reflective of their names. The overall tone is in keeping with the comically inverted moral sense of shows like The Addams Family and The Munsters – both of which were popular at the time that Melvin Monster was being published – in which behavior that we would think of as “good” or “normal” is considered strange and unnatural by the characters. As a result, Melvin’s parents encourage him to play hooky, throw rocks at windows, and generally cause mischief whenever and wherever possible.

Melvin is an interesting case, though, in that he would rather go to school and be nice to people than get into trouble. He doesn’t have quite the same sense of moral uprightness as a character like Casper the Friendly Ghost, but he’s just as charming in his naiveté. This comes through most clearly when he’s transported, on several different occasions, to our own world (which is alternately called “Human Being Land” and “Humanbeanville”). Despite the best of intentions, Melvin manages to annoy quite a few people through such peculiar activities as running across the middle of a busy street and eating a man’s shoe right off his foot. When the people he’s offended attempt to do him harm (one man actually tries to run him over with a car), the always-innocent Melvin believes they know he is a young monster and that they’re simply trying their best to make him feel at home.

The first two issues each tell a full story from start to finish. The first sees Melvin unintentionally blowing up the monster schoolhouse, getting lost in the human world, and being captured by a duplicitous old man for display in a zoo; the second has Melvin discovering that a door in his parents’ basement leads into a subway tunnel, leading him into even more misadventures in the human world. The plots unfold much like they do in Little Lulu, beginning with a fairly straightforward situation (Melvin wanting to go to school in the first issue, for example) which quickly spirals into ridiculous and hilarious territory. The third and final issue is the weakest of the group, being composed of a series of shorter stories of about three to five pages each. It does have some of the most hilariously bizarre imagery in the book, though, including a corpulent French mouse armed with a meat cleaver.

Aside from Melvin and his parents, other recurring characters include Damon the Demon (Melvin’s useless and negligent “guardian demon”) and the family’s pet crocodile Cleopatra, who mirrors the frenzy of the crocodile in Peter Pan in her constant attempts to eat Melvin. The main character’s utter obliviousness to the fact that everyone else seems to have it in for him is a near-constant source of humor – at one point, for instance, a witch feeds him an entire barrel of poisoned apples, to no avail – although if you read enough in one stretch, his stupidity can get a bit tiring. That small disclaimer aside, Melvin Monster is pretty enjoyable reading.

I do have a fairly significant complaint about the actual collected edition itself, though, which is that it lacks any kind of introduction or afterword explaining the material’s significance or context. In archival volumes like these (see anything published by Fantagraphics, or under IDW’s “Library of American Comics” banner), it’s become customary for book editors to present at least some information about a comic and its author(s). Books like this one present the opportunity for seriously investigating the cultural and historical significance of comics, and it’s sad to see that squandered in this case.

That’s not necessarily a reason to avoid Melvin Monster, but for those approaching it in the hopes of learning more about John Stanley and his work, it’s something to keep in mind. If you’re really interested in Stanley, or in children’s comics from this era in general, Little Lulu is a much better bet; but if you’ve already familiarized yourself with Lulu and her pals, or you’re simply looking for classic comics more in the Halloween spirit, this isn’t a bad book to look into either.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Torso

2010-10-09T17:45:00.000-05:00

Writers: Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko
Artist: Brian Michael Bendis
Collects: Jinx: Torso #1-6 (1998-99)
Published: Image, 2000; $24.95

Torso is a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time. It seemed like a perfect fit for me since I find a lot of Brian Michael Bendis’s early work pretty enjoyable, and since the story is tangentially related to one of my favorite movies, Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. The movie follows federal agent Eliot Ness (played by Kevin Costner) in his efforts to bring down the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone, and ends with Capone being convicted of tax evasion, the only charge Ness and his team could get to stick. Torso is based on the actual story of what Ness did afterward, which was to take over as Safety Director for the city of Cleveland. Before long, though, the city is struck by a series of bizarre murders committed by a serial killer known as the “Torso Killer.”

The real-life story here is pretty fascinating, and it’s clear that Bendis and co-writer Marc Andreyko did a lot of research for the book. Unfortunately, an interesting concept and solid research don’t necessarily make for good writing or artwork, neither of which are to be found with any consistency in Torso. The story follows not just Ness, but two detectives who have been assigned to the Torso Killer case. None of the characters are very easy to sympathize with – the detectives are interchangeable and bland, and Ness comes off most of the time as little more than an arrogant jerk. The writing is pure Bendis, and if you’re at all familiar with his recent work then you know exactly what I mean: the book is full of ridiculously talkative characters who ask and answer far too many rhetorical questions in as choppy and stilted a fashion as humanly possible.

But what kills the book more than anything else is the art, which is quite possibly the laziest I have ever seen in a comic book. Each character has no more than five different facial expressions, which Bendis simply copies and pastes for every single panel, changing their sizes and their positions in relation to each other as the situation warrants. Think of it like trying to tell a story with an industrial-sized box of the same five stickers. Perhaps in an effort to make the book “dark and gritty,” almost every expression in Bendis’s limited repertoire is heavily shadowed, even when the characters appear in settings that should be considerably brighter. For scenes in which something other than an extreme close-up is needed, the characters usually appear simply in silhouette. It’s worth noting too that text at the beginning of each of the book’s six chapters claims that Torso was “created and written” by Bendis and Andreyko, and “executed” by Bendis. I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a pun; if it is, I’m not laughing.

If the book were only 30 or 50 pages, I probably wouldn’t have minded the repetition in the art so much – but at nearly 300 pages, I was sick of even looking at Torso about a third of the way into it. In fact, I think it was around that point that I realized I would rather have just read the actual script than the comic itself. It’s not just that the art is boring; it’s that it actively works against the story. The ending in particular is an incomprehensible mess, due mostly to the fact that everything and everyone in the last few pages looks exactly the same. I honestly have no idea what happens in the final scenes, although I’ve determined that it involves multiple decapitations (with one character somehow being decapitated twice, as far as I can tell) and at least one character being alive for some reason after having died in a fire just minutes earlier. Does that sound confusing? It should, because it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. In fact, in the process of writing it down I very well may have actually made it sound more coherent than it really is.

As I’ve already mentioned, the true story that Torso is based on is undoubtedly an interesting one. Don’t let that fool you into reading this disappointing comic, though – it will only frustrate you and leave you with more questions than you had before you started. If you’re really that interested in the subject matter, picking up a history book seems to me like it would be a much better bet.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Deadpool Classic, Vol. 2

2010-10-02T20:00:00.003-05:00

Writer: Joe Kelly
Artists: Ed McGuinness, Kevin Lau, Aaron Lopresti, Bernard Chang, Shannon Denton, and John Fang
Collects: Deadpool #2-8 and #-1, and Daredevil/Deadpool Annual 1997
Published: Marvel, 2009; $29.99

Now this is more like it. While the first trade in the Deadpool Classic series was an odd hodgepodge of some of the title character’s earliest appearances, the second one, thankfully, is a much more cohesive package. It begins where the first volume left off, with the second issue of Deadpool’s 1997 ongoing series – and while I still think not including the first issue in this book is a cheap ploy on Marvel’s part to sucker readers into spending more money on these trades than they reasonably should, it’s hard to fault the actual stories for what’s clearly a boneheaded decision on Marvel’s part.

The issues collected here are all written by Joe Kelly, whose Deadpool run I had heard a great deal about but never encountered personally until I read this book. Many people consider his work with the character to be better than anyone else’s by far, and even having only read these early issues, I’m inclined to agree. Tonally, Kelly strikes the perfect chord: Deadpool’s dialogue and the situations he finds himself in are often funny, but at the same time Kelly presents the character (and the reader) with moral dilemmas that one simply won’t find in the majority of superhero comics. My favorite moments in this book came when Deadpool’s sense of humor fell completely away and we were able to see something of the man behind the mask – a deeply disturbed man whose actions and worldview heart-wrenchingly reveal to us the real depths of human existence.

In the book’s first story arc, we learn from Killbrew, the scientist who essentially “created” Deadpool (and who I could have sworn was referred to as “Killebrew” in the first trade), that Deadpool is dying. The search for a cure leads our main character to team up with on-again/off-again love interest Siryn, come face-to-face for the first time with future rivals T-Ray and Taskmaster, tear things up in a surprisingly brutal fight with the Hulk, and even work reluctantly with Killbrew, the one man he despises above all else. Seeing as Deadpool is still around today, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he doesn’t actually die in this story, although Kelly does take the opportunity to permanently weaken the character – in the years since his initial appearance, he had grown to be ridiculously powerful and virtually un-killable.

Rather than a life-and-death struggle, then, Deadpool is faced with one of those poignant existential dilemmas I mentioned above: does Killbrew really deserve to die, and even if he does, is Deadpool the man who should kill him? Siryn, acting as the proverbial angel on his shoulder, doesn’t think so – but then again, can she ever truly understand someone like Deadpool? The ending to this story is one of the best endings I’ve read in a superhero comic in quite a while, as it really makes the reader think about who the main character is and why he does the things he does. It also sets the record straight (well, straighter) on Deadpool’s relationship with Siryn, who quickly grew on me as a character over the course of these issues. She doesn’t feature much in the trade’s second half, unfortunately, but I definitely hope to see more of her in future volumes.

The first story arc is followed by a “Minus One” issue starring Zoe Culloden, a woman last seen at the end of the first Deadpool Classic trade, who has been monitoring the mercenary Wade Wilson as a potential recruit for some sort of mysterious program. The story takes place long before Wade ever became Deadpool, and in fact we barely even see him at all; Kelly focuses instead on the character’s then-girlfriend, who Zoe befriends in an effort to learn more about him. It’s an adequate story, and I’m sure its events will play an important role as the series goes on, but its serious tone feels a little removed from the quirky nature of most of the rest of the book.

The book’s second big story arc has Deadpool taking on two new jobs: one being to break a woman out of a mental asylum, and the other being to kill her. Making things even more confusing, the two jobs were ordered by the same person – the mental patient herself, who turns out to be Typhoid Mary. All of this leads directly into the extra-sized Daredevil/Deadpool Annual 1997, which ends up being little more than an excuse to throw those two characters into the same comic while retconning some details from Frank Miller’s Man Without Fear miniseries, in order to tie the origins of Daredevil and Typhoid Mary more closely together.

I wasn’t too hot on these issues, to be honest. It’s not that they’re poorly written or anything, they just didn’t draw me in like the first few issues did. Typhoid Mary just isn’t one of my favorite villains – I’m much more interested in characters like Magneto and Dr. Doom, who are often misguided but firmly believe that their actions will ultimately benefit the world in some way. Straightforward psychopaths like Mary (and, to a lesser extent, Bullseye) who simply kill people for the sake of killing just aren’t as compelling to me, since there’s no bigger moral, social, or political issue at stake in their actions.

But while the final part of Deadpool Classic, Vol. 2 isn’t much to write home about, the trade’s strong first half more than makes up for it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the story that begins in the final issue of the first Deadpool Classic trade and continues into the first four issues of this collection is one of the best Deadpool stories I’ve ever read. If you even think you might be a Deadpool fan, this is a book well worth reading.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Streams of Consciousness – 9/30/2010

2010-09-30T23:55:00.009-05:00

Hey everyone, just a few things to share with you today. First of all, I’ve done quite a bit of work on the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline over the last couple of weeks. When I first posted it, the reading order covered the years 1998 through 2001. It now covers 1998 through 2004 – or, in terms of Marvel continuity, from Heroes Return through Avengers Disassembled. Furthermore, from what I can tell the timeline is totally complete for those years, even including a number of trades that haven’t been solicited yet. But if you think I’m missing something or that I need to shuffle anything around, please let me know! And if you have any other feedback at all, feel free to leave a comment or email me at marveltimeline@gmail.com. (And speaking of reading orders, Ian at Trade Reading Order is back to working on his site after a brief hiatus, so head over there and leave him a comment!)

That aside, this blog reached two other milestones recently. The first is that Gambit Classic, Vol. 1 marked the blog’s 25th review, and while I’m not sure the honor should have gone to such a terrible book, I’m really happy to have been able to keep this going for so long. And that brings me to the second milestone, which is that yesterday marked the blog’s six-month anniversary! So thanks to everyone who’s been following the blog, either in terms of commenting, being an actual “follower” on Blogger, or even just reading my ramblings every week; your comments and feedback are what keep this enjoyable for me.

So I think that’s about it for now. There should be a new review either Friday or Saturday – see you then!

Channel Zero

2010-09-25T17:15:00.003-05:00

Writer/Artist: Brian Wood
Collects: Channel Zero #1-5 (Image, 1998)
Published: AiT/Planet Lar, 2000; $12.95

Before Demo, DMZ, Northlanders, and a handful of other wonderful comics being written today by Brian Wood, there was Channel Zero. If you didn’t know better, though, you might be hard-pressed to pick out Wood’s first graphic novel as having come out so long before what he’s done recently; it fits in that well, stylistically and thematically, with the rest of his body of work. Although he actually created it as part of a final project for graduation from design school, it shows the same depth and polish as his comics today, proving that Wood is an artist whose intimate understanding of his craft extends all the way back to his beginnings.

Channel Zero is set in an alternate near-future in which America is controlled by government corporations and freedom of expression has been all but completely suppressed. The media has been taken over by the government as well, due to Congress’s passage of the “Clean Act.” Wood writes that the law was spearheaded by the extreme right and that most of the population went along with the change, being “either in support of it, or too lazy to do anything about it.”

Enter Jennie 2.5, a young, self-described “uber-geek” whose dream to be an investigate journalist met an early death in the wake of the Clean Act. She’s an angry, rebellious young woman, as evidenced by her heavily tattooed body and penchant for hacking into various government-controlled computer systems. You can think of her as sort of a cross between Aeon Flux and Neo from The Matrix, except without that’s movie’s rampant slow-motion effects or its crash-course approach to college freshman philosophy.

Jennie is one of the few people actively seeking to bring the Clean Act down, and she sets out to do it by broadcasting her own pirate television program. Over the course of the book we see her rise from techno-punk revolutionary to widespread cultural phenomenon, both from her perspective and from the perspectives of everyday people living in New York City. This is actually one area where the book falters a bit, in that it spends a little too much time (in its second half, especially) focusing on the lives of people other than Jennie. One section, for example, tells the story of a “cleaner” whose job is to eliminate people who speak out against the government, even if their crimes are as minor as posting anti-government flyers. While it’s effective in building on the backstory of the world in which Channel Zero takes place, it does fairly little to advance Jennie’s story, which I think is by far the most crucial aspect of the book.

The art has a strong graphic design element to it, which makes sense since given Wood’s background – although he worked in comics off and on for a few years around the time of Channel Zero, he was actually a graphic designer first and foremost until 2003. You’ve probably seen a good deal of his pre-comics work without even realizing it; he designed the box art for a number of video games, including Grand Theft Auto 3 and Max Payne. Elements of that style are definitely apparent in Channel Zero, with its mix of photorealistic and sketch-like art, all in stark black and white.

Wood’s background in design also shines through in the form of fake propaganda posters which frequently intercut the main story, almost like advertisements in a traditional comic book. Taking the propaganda theme even further, Wood often hides the catch-phrases and buzzwords from these posters (i.e., “evolve and revolve,” or “make them understand”) in the artwork of actual story pages, effectively creating mock subliminal messaging. Some parts of the book are even more overt in satirizing the media – for instance, one lengthy scene actually has an ongoing ticker tape running along the bottom of the pages. The end result is a comic that ridicules the media for using certain techniques as tools for social manipulation, even as it subverts those very techniques for its own purposes. It’s a neat effect, and one I’ve never seen attempted in this medium before.

As you can probably tell from everything I’ve said about this book so far, Wood’s politics in Channel Zero aren’t exactly subtle. It would have been predictable and easy for him to end the story with Jennie leading the people to some glorious, government-toppling revolution, in which case I think I still could have called this book a good, if not great, first graphic novel. But its ending is actually quite unique, in that it paints a realistic picture of one person’s inability to change society, no matter how popularly known that person is. Jennie isn’t devoid of the same flaws and selfish desires that any other person possesses, nor does she have the power to command social influence by force of will alone.

Wood’s purpose, I think, is to show that in order to oppose a system, one first has to acknowledge its existence; and that in the very act of acknowledging it, one enters into dialogue with and therefore becomes a part of it. In Channel Zero, Jennie does just that. Although she wants to be a “woman of the people,” she also wants to be a celebrity, in her own way, and unfortunately for her it’s impossible to be both in her world. By becoming a part of the “mainstream,” Jennie also becomes a cog in the wheel, another tool to be manipulated by the powers that be. In the very act of rebelling, she has played into the oppressor’s hand.

Some have suggested that Channel Zero is a traditional “government vs. the people” story set in a hyperbolic extension of Giuliani’s New York. If that were the case, the book would be little more than an angry political statement by an up-and-coming comics creator; but it’s more than that. Jennie’s recognition of her failure as a revolutionary and activist seems to represent the author’s own frustrations: Wood clearly yearns for social change, but at the end of the day the best he can do about it is to write and illustrate a comic book story – and aren’t comics themselves just a part of the mass media system that Wood so despises?

Like Jennie 2.5, it would seem that Wood too has become a part of the system. By the same token, though, I think he also shares in her optimism and in her hope for the future – a hope that the next generation will learn from the mistakes and limitations of this one, and that their world will be a better one than ours as a result. And what can we do to ensure that this better world comes into being? If we believe Brian Wood, it all starts with turning off the television.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Gambit Classic, Vol. 1

2010-09-17T22:30:00.001-05:00

Writers: Chris Claremont and Howard Mackie
Artists: Bill Jaaska, Mike Collins, Jim Lee, and Lee Weeks
Collects: Uncanny X-Men #265-267 (1991) and Gambit #1-4 (1993-94)
Published: Marvel, 2009; $24.99

As I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before, I think Gambit is an incredibly stupid character. It’s become strangely fashionable lately for comic book creators to claim there are no bad characters in comics, just bad stories – but that’s a lie and everyone knows it, especially if they’re ever read a comic featuring Gambit in any capacity whatsoever. So why, of all things, do I now find myself reading and reviewing a book called Gambit Classic? I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe I was hoping to be proven wrong. Or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment – and punished, I truly was.

The story begins with Storm (who has for some reason regressed mentally and physically to childhood) robbing criminals in Cairo, Illinois. Since the character originally hails from Cairo, Egypt, I guess this is supposed to be ironic or something. I’ve never found Storm particularly interesting as a solo character, and the amnesiac child angle in these issues is exceptionally boring. The story is written by Chris Claremont, who has always seemed to think (incorrectly, most of the time) that he excels at writing strong female lead characters. He also has an unfortunate tendency to reuse certain villains to the point that they’re no longer the least bit menacing – in this case, Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, two characters who are about as dumb as you might guess based on their names alone.

At this point, you may be wondering: where exactly does Gambit fit into all of this? The short answer is that he doesn’t, really. He just happens to show up as Storm is getting a beat-down courtesy of the minions of the Shadow King (another incredibly lame character), and he helps her escape. He doesn’t speak too much, other than to exert his “Cajun charm” to try and persuade the Shadow King and his mind-slaves to let him and Storm go. Aside from that, he mostly just chain-smokes and occasionally blows things up. At the end of the third issue, he and Storm (who is no longer amnesiac, but still a child) head off to join the X-Men.

Now, here’s where Gambit Classic becomes really frustrating. Instead of reprinting the issues where Gambit becomes a member of the X-Men and we actually get to know something about his character, there’s a page of text explaining his activities over the next few years before the book skips ahead to the four-issue Gambit miniseries from 1993. I suspect the reason that his appearances in X-Men and Uncanny X-Men were omitted is that many of them have been reprinted elsewhere (namely, the out-of-print trade paperback X-Men Visionaries: Jim Lee), whereas the ones with amnesiac-child Storm have not. But while I understand Marvel’s desire not to collect the same material a hundred times over, this book is still the first volume in a series called “Gambit Classic.” To my mind, that means it should collect the character’s early appearances rather than being some sort of career-spanning “greatest hits” compilation.

This leads me to the same fundamental problem I had with Deadpool Classic, Vol. 1. In both that book and this one, so many of the character’s early issues are omitted that I felt out-of-the-loop by the time I got to the later stories. That’s an even bigger problem with Gambit Classic, since the 1993 miniseries is basically a sequel to a crossover story that took place in two issues of X-Men and another two issues of Ghost Rider – none of which, of course, are collected here. (Interestingly, those issues were collected in a trade called X-Men & Ghost Rider: Brood Trouble in the Big Easy – a book which has been out of print for nearly twenty years.)

Even if those issues had been included, though, I doubt they could have salvaged my lack of enjoyment for the miniseries. The story is so mundane, it’s barely even worth summarizing; all you really need to know is that the Assassins’ Guild and the Thieves’ Guild are at war in New Orleans, and Gambit is the cause of it (sort of). The Thieves’ Guild apparently has some deal with a perpetually half-naked immortal French woman named Candra, who supplies them with an elixir each year that gives them longer life. But now the Assassins want the elixir, and so does Gambit, and so do some other people, etc. – you get the picture.

The story isn’t so much bad as it is astoundingly boring. I suppose that’s sort of a compliment when you’re talking about anything written by Howard Mackie, but I’d like to think my taste in comics is exponentially better than even Mackie’s least offensive work. The miniseries’ only (slightly) redeeming quality is that it’s drawn by Lee Weeks, an artist whose work I normally like very much. Even that doesn’t save it from mediocrity, though, since Weeks’ art is only occasionally good in this series; most of the time, it’s mired in over-the-top, vein-popping ‘90s ridiculousness.

It’s worth noting that even by 1993, it’s clear that no one really has any idea of how to write Gambit. Half the time he sounds like he’s auditioning for Hamlet, and the rest of the time like he has some sort of speech impediment; the animated X-Men show was the only time I think anyone has ever gotten his accent quite right. It’s also fairly obvious that Gambit’s “mysterious” past is just a cover for the fact that the writers have no idea where he came from or what to do with him. Readers at the time were apparently eating him up, though, so I guess it’s hard to blame them for trying to capitalize on that.

In short, don’t be like me – don’t read this book, for any reason. I can’t even think of a single nice thing to say about it, honestly. I just hope that Marvel never releases a second volume, if only because of the remote chance that my curiosity may get the better of me again.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Green Lantern: No Fear

2010-09-10T15:50:00.001-05:00

Writers: Geoff Johns and Darwyn Cooke
Artists: Darwyn Cooke, Carlos Pacheco, Ethan Van Sciver, and Simone Bianchi
Collects: Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005 #1, Green Lantern #1-6 (2005)
Published: DC, 2008; $12.99

This first volume collecting Green Lantern’s most recent ongoing series picks up soon after the events of Green Lantern: Rebirth, beginning with a story from the Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins one-shot. Written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke, this issue is by far the best part of the book. It’s essentially a series of flashbacks framed by a present-day sequence in which Hal Jordan begins to forge a friendship with Kyle Rayner, the man who served as Green Lantern in his stead for several years. In the flashbacks, Cooke explores the complex emotional history of Hal’s relationship with long-time love interest Carol Ferris; it’s a really touching story, and the beautiful colors in these scenes evoke some of Tim Sale’s best work (Superman for All Seasons and Spider-Man: Blue, in particular).

Geoff Johns writes the book from this point forward, and he begins by reworking bits and pieces of Hal’s past in a story set firmly in the post-Rebirth universe. Before long, Hal has rejoined the Air Force as a fighter pilot (restoring one of the character’s Silver Age trappings) and begins fighting the Manhunters, a group of robots constructed in the ancient past by the Guardians of the Universe, before they created the Green Lantern Corps. The new plot elements all feel so natural that I didn’t even realize some of them were new until after I had done a bit of research. Carlos Pacheco’s pencils, in combination with the bright, vivid colors of W. Moose Baumann, are effective at capturing Hal’s joy at being back both as Green Lantern and as a pilot.

Johns follows this story with several issues revolving around the classic Green Lantern villains Shark (a mutated tiger shark who can walk on land) and Hector Hammond (a giant-headed telepath with no physical control of his own body). These issues are drawn by Ethan Van Sciver, whose style marks a drastic change from Pacheco’s. He’s certainly a proficient artist, and his talents are put to use just as well here as they were in Rebirth; but to be quite honest, I’m beginning to feel that the way his work is typically colored is just too dark for the Green Lantern franchise. The character has always been more about “brightest day” than “blackest night” for me, which I understand probably puts me somewhat in the minority given the recent success of DC’s Blackest Night crossover. Even with that being the case, there’s still no denying that the artistic differences between the stories by Pacheco and Van Sciver are pretty difficult to reconcile.

No Fear comes to a grinding halt in the final story, an issue penciled and inked by Simone Bianchi. His artwork tends to be either hit or miss for me, often, ironically, within the same comic – in Wolverine: Evolution, for instance, his characters will look stunning on one page, but like amorphous blobs on the next. His character renderings are actually fairly consistent here, but the problem is that he doesn’t seem to have any concept of lighting. Characters and objects are often lit from two or three intense light sources in a single panel, and then from two or three entirely different sources in the next. The art is so disorienting, and the characters’ physical actions match the dialogue so rarely, that it actually makes the story itself seem pretty disjointed at times.

Colorist Nathan Eyring is partly to blame as well, as his tendency towards plain white backgrounds gives the issue an incredibly unfinished feel. This change is probably the most jarring aspect of the story, especially in comparison to the rich blues and blacks, respectively, which serve as a backdrop to the Pacheco and Van Sciver issues. It strikes me as I write this that I’ve talked quite a bit about color in this review, more than I think I ever have previously. I suspect that has to do with the fact that the best superhero comics today strive to maintain at least some sense of visual continuity, even if its various parts are drawn by different artists. Captain America, for example, was drawn until about a year ago primarily by Mike Perkins and Steve Epting, and their styles were largely unified by the consistency of Frank D’Armata’s colors. Even New X-Men, with its infamously huge roster of artists, maintained a fairly consistent color palette until the end, when the story and art both took a darker turn.

So when I read a book like Green Lantern – a comic that people consistently praise as one of the best on the market – and it contains such wildly different-looking art from issue to issue, some of it quite bad, I can’t help but stand up and take notice. It just seems to me that a book that garners as much attention and sells as well as it does would have some level of artistic consistency in common with something like Captain America (again, just as an example), a book that does similarly well in terms of sales and critical response. There are other factors that contribute to how people respond to a comic book, of course, but I think it remains an interesting observation.

Aside from its inconsistent visuals and terrible final issue, I found No Fear disappointing in one other respect: it barely addresses the events of Rebirth – aside from that series’ most overt implication for the franchise, of course, which is that Hal Jordan is back in the role of Green Lantern. I understand that Johns wanted to get away from the damage DC had done to the character over the preceding years as quickly as possible, but I’m not sure ignoring the past completely is the best way of accomplishing that. I’m not terribly interested in seeing writers rehash the same one-dimensional characterizations that have been around since the 1950s, and by the end of this book, I feel like Johns is dangerously close to falling into that trap.

First of all, there are plot details like the fighter pilot plot device which, while interesting for a little while, don’t add anything to the story in the long run aside from the nostalgia factor. Much more troubling, though, is Hal’s flat characterization, which similarly hearkens back to the character’s earliest adventures. There’s a point at which having “no fear,” as the book’s title puts it, simply makes a character un-relatable and uninteresting, and too often while reading this book I felt that Hal was simply stoic to the point of arrogance. Johns seems to have used Rebirth as a vehicle not just for resetting the character’s status quo to one more in line with the character’s Silver Age origins, but for imposing on Hal a more simplistic and less dynamic personality – one that gives him the ability to conveniently ignore the moral quandaries which he should by all rights be dealing with in the wake of what’s happened to him.

Johns’ version of Green Lantern isn’t lacking in so much depth that you should necessarily avoid the series – not yet, at least, and I hope the writer doesn’t allow future stories to reach that point. So while the overall package is somewhat of a mixed bag, I think No Fear is still worthy of a mild recommendation, if mostly for the strength of its first half and the excellent Darwyn Cooke issue, which is a definite must-read for any fan of the character.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Avengers: Supreme Justice

2010-09-03T22:20:00.003-05:00

Writers: Kurt Busiek, Len Kaminski, Mark Waid, John Ostrander, and Joe Edkin
Artists: George Pérez, Sean Chen, Andy Kubert, Derec Aucoin, and Carlos Pacheco
Collects: Avengers #5-7, Avengers/Squadron Supreme ’98, Iron Man #7, Captain America #8, and Quicksilver #10 (1998)
Published: Marvel, 2001; $17.95

“Live Kree or Die” is a storyline that’s been collected rather confusingly over the years. As a result, I’ve sort of tiptoed around it in my reviews of Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1 and Iron Man: Deadly Solutions, since neither of those books actually include the story in full. As of this writing, Avengers: Supreme Justice is the only book in which the middle two parts of the story, originally published in issues of Captain America and Quicksilver, have been collected.

Before I continue, though, there’s something fairly significant I should mention: I took another look on Amazon this week at the new softcover version of Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1 coming out at the end of the year, and it appears that unlike the hardcover, it actually will include “Live Kree or Die” in its entirety. Although that makes this review a bit less significant than I originally thought it would be, it doesn’t make it irrelevant in the least. Even with the extra issues in the softcover, the hardcover still has a significant edge, simply for the fact that it has bigger pages. When you’re talking about the artwork of someone as talented as George Pérez, page size would be a huge factor even if the missing issues were of pretty decent quality. As we’ll see a little further along in this review, though, that just isn’t the case here.

The vast majority of what’s collected in Supreme Justice is also collected in Avengers Assemble, although interestingly, the issues are placed in a different (and better) reading order in the former. In Avengers Assemble, the Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual comes directly after Avengers #5 and #6, the issues in which the team does battle with the Squadron Supreme and tensions begin to rise between Warbird (Carol Danvers, also known as Ms. Marvel) and her teammates.

Since the Annual features the Squadron as well, it’s clear that the book’s editors wanted to group all of the issues featuring those characters together, which I suppose makes sense on some level. But here’s the problem: the Annual takes place after Warbird has left the team and Justice and Firestar have become active members, which means that it must take place after the final part of “Live Kree or Die” in Avengers #7. The Annual doesn’t refer to specific plot points or even mention Carol by name, so it’s not exactly debilitating to the overall story; however, it certainly wouldn’t be unwarranted for someone reading Avengers Assemble to be confused at Warbird’s sudden absence or the appearance of two new team members without any explanation.

Supreme Justice, on the other hand, places the Annual where it belongs, after the events of “Live Kree or Die.” What I find most fascinating here is that this book was actually published before Avengers Assemble; that is, Marvel got the reading order right the first time around but then screwed it up in later collections. As far as the new softcover version of Avengers Assemble goes, it’s impossible to say at this point whether Marvel will reprint the stories in their proper order or not. There’s nothing stopping you from simply reading the issues of the book in any order, of course, so perhaps I’m making a bigger deal of this than I should. Still, it’s a bit annoying to see such a major continuity error in a book which is otherwise quite excellent.

The “Live Kree or Die” crossover begins with Iron Man #7, is also collected in Iron Man: Deadly Solutions. I discussed it a fair amount in my review of that book already, but just to recap, it’s a pretty solid issue, and it does a good job of propelling the plot of Iron Man’s own series forward while still contributing to a larger story involving the rest of the Avengers. The highlight of the issue comes when Iron Man confronts Warbird about her alcoholism, which she tries to explain away throughout a series of flashbacks that give the reader a great understanding of the character’s history, as well as the sense of loss that defines her personality.

When Tony gets into a bit of a sticky situation afterward, Warbird makes things even worse by bursting onto the scene completely drunk. In the process, she inadvertently exposes a splinter cell of Kree extremists, who have resolved to turn the entire human race into fellow members of their own blue-skinned species. Due to her connection to the deceased Captain Marvel (who himself was half-Kree), Carol is for some reason an integral part of the Kree warriors’ plan. As a result they try to lure her into their clutches, which proves none too difficult in her inebriated state.

It’s a rather convoluted set-up, but it gets the job done, I guess. The second part of the story, from Captain America #8, is kind of similar in that it’s just Warbird and one other hero fighting against the Kree. The issue takes place shortly after Captain America: To Serve and Protect, and it deals with some plot threads from that story in a brief scene at the beginning. With art by Andy Kubert, it’s a very good-looking twenty-odd pages. But in the end, the plot is nothing we haven’t already seen, with Captain America standing around looking incredulous while Carol generally acts like a drunken moron.

The story continues into Quicksilver #10, which is by all accounts an absolutely terrible comic book. First of all, the fact that Quicksilver ever had an ongoing series of his own is astounding to me, since I’ve never seen him portrayed as anything more than an unlikeable jerk. That aside, the actual script, by John Ostrander and Joe Edkin, is stilted and emotionless (and conspicuously devoid of contractions). See the picture at right for an especially painful moment, in which the Scarlet Witch robotically summarizes what’s been happening in the story so far.

I could go on and on about how awful this issue is, but in the interest of time I’ll give you just one example. There’s a positively ridiculous scene about halfway through in which a weakened Carol comes across a random vat of liquid in the Kree’s secret moon base and, somehow sensing its alcoholic nature, guzzles it down and regains her powers. It makes no sense at all: first, why would the Kree leave a huge, open container of alcohol just lying around? Second, how would Carol even know it was alcohol (or, for that matter, that Kree alcohol wouldn’t be poisonous to a human being)? And third, why would drinking it suddenly give her back the super powers she had lost? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s now how alcoholism works. Bizarre leaps of logic like this one are just one more reason why this issue rubs me the wrong way.

The final part of “Live Kree or Die,” from Avengers #7, is the only issue from the entire crossover that you actually need to read; the others just give it a bit more context, is all. It summarizes everything as competently as it can (given how ludicrously bad the Quicksilver issue is), neatly wraps up the Kree plot threads, and sees the expulsion of Carol from the team. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel quite as tragic as it probably should – it’s hard not to want Carol gone after all the stupid things she’s done over the preceding issues.

In short, then, the two issues that are exclusive to Supreme Justice – Captain America #8 and Quicksilver #10 – aren’t at all worth the price of this book, even if you can find it at a significant discount. They’re not a good reason to choose the softcover version of Avengers Assemble either, which I would only recommend if you can’t find the hardcover for a good price. Everything you need to know about “Live Kree or Die” is already present in that book, and it’s not as if it’s a wonderful story (even in concept) anyway. So, to be even shorter this time: just avoid this book.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1

2010-08-31T17:45:00.014-05:00

Writers: Kurt Busiek, Len Kaminski
Artists: George Pérez, Carlos Pacheco
Collects: Avengers #1-11, Avengers/Squadron Supreme ’98 (1998)
Published: Marvel, 2004; $29.99

Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1 collects the first eleven issues of the series’ 1998 reboot, which began the same month as the Iron Man reboot and the month after Captain America’s. Writer Kurt Busiek had been working in comics for over a decade at this point, but had really only gained wider recognition in 1994 with the epic miniseries Marvels, illustrated by Alex Ross. Still, he was fairly untested when it came to the ins and outs of writing a major monthly series, and it was on Avengers that he got his first shot. (While it’s true that Busiek was writing Thunderbolts at this time as well, I would argue that it hadn’t yet exploded into the hugely popular series it would later become.)

The other major creative force behind the relaunch was George Pérez, one of the true modern masters of comic book art. Pérez is probably best known for his work on the 1984 DC miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which he famously rendered almost every single one of the company’s enormous pantheon of characters. Whereas most artists would likely balk at the thought of drawing so many different characters in a single issue, Pérez does so with enthusiasm and aplomb. In Avengers, it’s not at all uncommon for him to cram dozens of characters into as many as twenty panels on one page, and in a way that, amazingly enough, keeps the action flowing smoothly and at breathtaking speed. His artwork is so dense, in fact, that a single page of his can look incredibly daunting when viewed as a whole – but taken piece by piece, each panel becomes a totally comprehensible, self-contained work of art in its own right.

The first three issues see the reformation of the Avengers, who had disbanded while most of the team was trapped in the alternate Heroes Reborn universe. As always, they unite to face a common threat – this time it’s the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, who captures the Scarlet Witch and uses her magic-based powers to remakes reality as a medieval society under her own rule. This gives Pérez the chance to do what he does best, drawing tons of characters and designing brand-new, medieval-themed costumes for each of them.

What I like most about this storyline is that it takes something which has always been somewhat of a sticking point between me and the Avengers – the fact that it’s a team whose ranks include an overwhelming number of no-name characters – and it turns that into something fun and almost self-effacing by throwing every single person who’s ever been an Avenger into one big adventure. The emphasis is kept on the most prominent team members (Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor), but even the parts without them are so well-written that despite not knowing anything about characters like Living Lightning or the Swordsman, I felt completely up-to-speed whenever they showed up. It’s a set-up that could never work for the long haul, though, and the third issue ends, fittingly enough, with Morgan Le Fay defeated and the Beast asking the one question that’s sure to be at the front of the reader’s mind: “What are we gonna do with 39 Avengers?”

The team is whittled down to a permanent – and, in the long term, much more manageable – roster in the next issue. The team consists of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, Warbird (Carol Danvers, also known as Ms. Marvel and Binary), reserve members Justice and Firestar of the teenage New Warriors, and the Vision (whose android body has been destroyed, so he exists only as a sentient hologram in the mansion). From the beginning, the character drama takes precedence over the Avengers’ actual exploits as a team, and Busiek executes this side of the story perfectly.

Most of the melodrama revolves around the team’s lesser characters – after all, the “Big Three” each have their own ongoing series already. The most important subplot is the Scarlet Witch’s inner conflict over her sudden ability to resurrect Wonder Man from the dead in times of need. Since the Vision’s thought patterns and personality are actually based on Wonder Man’s, an interesting conflict arises as Wanda develops romantic feelings for the dead Avenger: Vision is alive and in love with her, but he can’t touch her, while Wonder Man is dead and he can. (I think it’s worth mentioning that the Scarlet Witch has incredibly strange taste in men: her first husband was a robot who somehow conceived children with her, and here she’s in love with a dead man made out of pure energy. And then there’s the borderline-incestuous relationship some writers have portrayed between her and Quicksilver, her brother...but let’s not even go there.)

Ms. Marvel (sorry, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to call her “Warbird”) is a huge source of drama too, at least for the book’s first half. Over the first few issues, it becomes increasingly apparent that something is really wrong with her; the cosmic-oriented powers she possessed as Binary have suddenly stopped working, and she almost always seems to be drinking. This leads into the “Live Kree or Die” crossover discussed in last week’s review of Iron Man: Deadly Solutions. While that book collects only the first issue of that story, Avengers Assemble collects just the last one. This isn’t nearly as detrimental as it might sound, since Busiek does a great job of summarizing what has happened in the other three parts, although reading the fourth part by itself, you still certainly feel as though you’re missing some of the story. There’s more to be said about “Live Kree or Die,” but I’ll save that for my review later this week of Avengers: Supreme Justice, the only trade in which parts two and three have ever been collected.

The other intra-team conflicts are fairly conventional, but Busiek pulls them off well. Hawkeye is miffed at no longer being a team leader, paving the way for him to leave the Avengers and take command of the Thunderbolts. Justice and Firestar, who are comparatively younger than the rest of the team, are the obligatory rookies – Justice the overeager one who’s dreamed of being an Avenger his entire life, and Firestar the more reluctant one who isn’t sure whether she even wants to be a superhero at all. They don’t join the cast on a full-time basis until after Ms. Marvel is booted off the team in “Live Kree or Die,” but their presence helps to lessen the occasional sense of erudition which, for better or worse, has come to be associated with the Avengers over the years.

The final issues bring some closure to Wanda’s mysterious ability to resurrect Wonder Man while at the same time telling a story very much like Blackest Night, in a thematic sense at least, only it does so much more succinctly and coherently. I won’t spoil how it ends, but it does bring about some pretty big changes which I look forward to seeing play out in the next volume.

Also included in the first Avengers Assemble collection is the 1998 Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual, which is co-scripted by Busiek and Len Kaminski. This done-in-one story builds off of the two issues just prior to “Live Kree or Die,” in which the Avengers and the Squadron Supreme duke it out when the Squadron manages (for what must be the hundredth time) to get itself mind-controlled by a totally inconsequential villain. The two teams actually work together in the Annual, which is a welcome change, since by this point I was fairly tired of seeing them fight for no good reason. Aside from Mark Gruenwald’s miniseries in the 1980s and J.M. Straczynski’s reimagining of the team in the 2000s, I’ve never been a big fan of the Squadron, and the average quality to this story didn’t do much to change my mind. The art is by Carlos Pacheco, an excellent artist in his own right who nevertheless pales in comparison to Pérez. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad story at all; it just doesn’t match the same level of excellence as the rest of the book.

Avengers Assemble was originally published as an oversized hardcover, and although it’s out of print now, it’s still pretty easy to find online. On the other hand, if you’d prefer to wait and pay a bit less for it, Marvel is printing a new softcover version in just a few months. The pages won’t be oversized like they are in the hardcover, which is unfortunate, but I’m sure Pérez’s artwork will still look amazing even at standard size. Either way, as the start of what can easily be called the definitive Avengers run of the last two decades, the first volume of Avengers Assemble is a book wholly deserving of a place on your bookshelf.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Iron Man: Deadly Solutions

2010-08-27T11:15:00.005-05:00

Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artists: Sean Chen and Patrick Zircher
Collects: Iron Man #1-7 (1998)
Published: Marvel, 2009; $24.99

Just as it was for Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and a number of other prominent Marvel heroes, 1998 was a significant year for Iron Man. With the much-maligned Onslaught and Heroes Reborn crossover events now firmly in the past, the character was given a new series, a new writer and artist, and a new thematic direction. Iron Man: Deadly Solutions collects the first seven issues of that creative effort, and the result is, for the most part, a success.

The book is composed of one- and two-issue stories, all of which are fairly self-contained but also contribute to a larger ongoing plot that involves, among other things: a mysterious villain known only as the Arms Merchant; the takeover of Stark Industries by another major tech corporation; and Tony Stark’s seeming return from the dead, now that he has suddenly reappeared after several months spent in an alternate universe. That’s what I like about this era in the Marvel Universe – the feeling that you can read and enjoy any one issue by itself, but that when read together with the rest of the series, it builds towards something more substantial. It’s a nice balance between the “any issue could be someone’s first” mentality and the extreme decompression that would come to characterize many superhero comics just a few years later.

That being said, in some respects Busiek doesn’t make as much of his opportunity for a fresh start as he could have. The series still operates under the ridiculous pretense that the world believes Tony Stark and Iron Man are two different people – a lie that’s been exposed and subsequently explained away more times than I care to count. You would think, with both of them suddenly returning from the dead at the same time, that the world would finally have figured things out this time.

Practical issues aside, I’ve never understood why Tony even bothers maintaining dual identities in the first place. Is it to protect himself from Iron Man’s enemies? Or is it to protect Iron Man and (by association) the Avengers from the constant controversy that surrounds Tony Stark? The first explanation makes even less sense than usual in this particular story, since Tony himself, not Iron Man, is the target of the Arms Merchant’s kidnappers and assassins. The second doesn’t work either, since Iron Man publicly aligns himself with Tony – at one point even going on television to dare Tony’s enemies to come after him – essentially taking on a corporate-lackey image that’s even worse than the one he would have if he were just to tell the truth.

As much fuss as I’ve made of it, though, the secret identity aspect isn’t too detrimental to the story. Busiek makes up for it in other ways, most notably with the strength of the inner conflict Tony experience throughout the story. Whereas later Iron Man comics would depict the character as a man with a plan for every situation, here Tony is shown less as a trailblazer and more as a constant victim of circumstance. He doesn’t act, he reacts, constantly, and the conflicts that result from that always seems to be over what exactly his next move should be.

Busiek also does an excellent job of involving Tony’s traditional supporting cast (Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, and Black Widow), an important part of the character that even some of the most notable Iron Man writers often ignore. With plenty of character-driven moments sprinkled between the action scenes – a walk on the beach with future girlfriend Rumiko Fujikawa, for instance – it makes for a more well-rounded portrayal of the character than we typically see.

There are few recognizable Iron Man villains in these pages, but that’s okay. The mystery behind the Arms Merchant is compelling enough to sustain interest while Tony fights a host of new villains, all of whom seem to be answering to some unseen higher authority. A particularly interesting new foe is Firebrand, a man apparently transformed into living plasma who uses his power over heat energy to awaken a volcano on a tropical island resort.

Chen’s art shines throughout the book, and while it isn’t quite as stylized as it would become just a few years later in this series and in Wolverine, it’s still very distinctive. Patrick Zircher draws an issue as well and does a capable enough job, although his action sequences are a bit cluttered at times. The colors are done by Liquid!, my favorite coloring group from this time, which gives the Iron Man’s armor the perfect metallic sheen.

The final issue collected in Deadly Solutions is the first of a four-part crossover called “Live Kree or Die,” the inclusion of which is sort of puzzling. The other three issues in the story (which took place in the pages of Avengers, Captain America, and Quicksilver) are not collected here, but rather summarized in a one-page text piece at the end of the book. With no less than four editorial notes referring to other series in the first two pages alone, the issue is significantly heavier on continuity than the preceding ones. It’s definitely best read after the initial half of the first Avengers Assemble hardcover, since Ms. Marvel’s actions in Avengers directly precipitate the encounter between her and Iron Man in this issue. (The entirety of “Live Kree or Die” is basically the story of Ms. Marvel’s battle with alcoholism and what it means for her status as an Avenger.)

However, if you’ve read the lead-up issues in Avengers, the final issue of Deadly Solutions actually provides some good payoff for the increasing tension between Ms. Marvel and the rest of the team. And rather than letting itself be totally commandeered by the “Live Kree or Die” crossover, the issue drives the plot of Iron Man’s own title forward as well: Tony is still on the trail of the Arms Merchant, and there’s still plenty of drama between him and his supporting cast. Overall, it’s a good beginning to a story arc – but like I said, the fact that the other three parts are missing may be a bit confusing.

Perhaps Marvel intends to eventually reprint the entirety of Iron Man’s third ongoing series from start to finish; that’s the best explanation I can come up with for the story’s inclusion, and if it is the case, it’s probably better to put this issue at the end of the first book than at the very beginning of the second one. Although no more collections of this series have been announced so far, I really hope they continue, since Busiek continued writing the title for another dozen or so issues after this point, and Chen stayed on through issue 30.

With strong characterization, excellent artwork, and an ability to tell complete, satisfying stories within a larger narrative, Iron Man: Deadly Solutions is a fine balance of old and new trends in comic book storytelling. Even despite the few shortcomings I mentioned, it’s a book that I can easily recommend.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Action Heroes Archives, Vol. 1

2010-08-20T10:30:00.001-05:00

Writers: Steve Ditko, Joe Gill, and David Kaler

Artists: Steve Ditko and Rocke Mastroserio
Collects: Space Adventures #33-40 & 42; Captain Atom #78-82 (1960-66)
Published: DC, 2004; $49.99

No one knows for sure why Steve Ditko left Marvel in the mid-1960s. It almost certainly had something to do with his negative feelings toward Stan Lee and the direction in which the popular series he co-created, Amazing Spider-Man, was headed – but since Ditko simply quit without giving an explanation to Lee or anyone else, it’s impossible to tell whether there was something more to it, or, if Lee himself was indeed the reason, which straw it was that finally broke the camel’s back. There are two things we do know, however. The first is that his reason for leaving had little to do with money; when he returned to Charlton (one of his first employers), he was making far less than he had been at Marvel. It also certainly wasn’t to make better comics, as the first volume of The Action Heroes Archives shows us.

Now, that isn’t to say that Ditko specifically set out to make bad comics after he left Marvel. What he wanted more than anything else was creative freedom – something he’d never felt he truly had under the aegis of Stan Lee, who at the time was Marvel’s top writer, editor-in-chief, and publisher, all at once. And creative freedom is what Ditko got at Charlton, a company known less for the quality of its comics than for its ability to churn out vast amounts of mediocre product each month. (In fact, Charlton’s comics division was a mere sideshow to their magazine and songbook departments; the company published comics only because it was cheaper to keep the printing presses running than to turn them off and on repeatedly.)

Ditko had worked for Charlton before, at the beginning of the decade, and his first act upon returning was to revive Captain Atom, a character he had co-created for the company in 1960 with writer Joe Gill. The original, Gill-written stories are all reprinted in this first Action Heroes Archives collection; in fact, they comprise more than half of the book. From an artistic standpoint, they’re fairly good – in the issues where he inks his own work, Ditko is at his pre-Marvel peak – although the small page count allotted for each story (usually just five or seven pages) easily puts paid to any attempts at character development whatsoever.

Gill and Ditko give us the bare essentials – namely, an origin story and an alter ego – and not much else. Captain Atom is, in reality, military scientist Captain Adam (clever, right?); his power set is vague, he has no recurring love interest, and no apparent motivation to do good aside from blind patriotism. Most of the stories involve some Soviet threat or another, almost always in the form of deadly nuclear missiles bound straight for the U.S. of A. And I do mean always.

There were a few times, as I approached the end of a story, that I breathed a sigh of relief in the false belief that there would be no missiles this time around, but then – nope, there they were again in the last few pages or panels. Kids reading these stories at the time must have felt incredibly safe knowing that Captain Atom was out there single-handedly destroying the world’s nuclear arsenals at least twice over. There are occasional bright spots, though. One story, in which a little boy’s dreams transport him to a distant galaxy where he rides giant green space-birds, is a fun, space-age homage to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. For the most part, however, the comics from before Ditko’s pre-Marvel days just aren’t very impressive.

The real highlight of this book is Ditko’s work from 1965-66, around the time that he left Marvel. Finally free from editorial influence, he really cuts loose with these stories, which are now long enough to support at least some form of character development. Whereas the early stories mainly had Captain Atom fighting communists and the occasional alien invader, the later ones are much more straightforwardly super-heroic. Atom soon gains an archenemy in the form of Dr. Spectro, a mad scientist who uses color and light as his weapons. Later, he teams up with the super-heroine Nightshade in what borders on a full-out espionage story. Their target, a villain called the Ghost, is an unabashed rip-off of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange in the visual department, even if his characterization is quite different from either of those characters.

The stories aren’t bad, but they don’t hold the slightest candle to Ditko’s work on Amazing Spider-Man. Most of them are inked by Rocke Mastroserio, whose brushwork actually stifles some of Ditko’s signature charm. But if you’re a Ditko enthusiast like me, then you’ll probably enjoy these comics on some level anyway, just as I did. When you love the work of a particular creator or artist (whether in comics, film, literature, music, or anything else), even their lesser works are interesting in their own way, and that’s certainly the case with the first volume of The Action Heroes Archives. In other words, it’s worth looking into, but only if you’re already a fan of Steve Ditko; otherwise, there’s probably not too much to see here.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Friday the 13th

2010-08-13T12:00:00.001-05:00

Writers: Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti
Artist: Adam Archer
Collects: Friday the 13^th #1-6 (2007)
Published: Wildstorm, 2007; $14.99

Halloween is one of my favorite horror films of all time, but (as I wrote in a post at my first blog almost two years ago) it has yet to be equaled, and I doubt it ever will be. That’s because not only was Halloween the first film of its kind, but it was so deftly crafted that even watching it today, it elicits the same reaction as it did the first time – a time when “horror” meant more than simply “blood and gore.” Something about it still hypnotizes and frightens me, despite all of the films that have turned its plot into a stale formula in the years since.

I can’t say the same about the Friday the 13^th movies. Even the first one smacked of creative theft, and aside from an admittedly brilliant penultimate scene, there was little to set it apart from the cadre of other Halloween rip-offs glutting the film market in the early 1980s. The original wasn’t scary, or even really suspenseful, for that matter; it was funny, although probably not intentionally so. It spawned even more sequels than Halloween, none of which were remotely scarier or less unoriginal, and by the early 2000s it had descended almost completely into self-parody. One sequel actually has Jason, the mass-murdering, hockey-mask-wearing central character of the series, awaken from a cryogenic freeze to chase astronauts around a space station with his signature machete.

So what, then, inspired me to read this trade paperback collecting Wildstorm’s recent Friday the 13^th comic book miniseries? No, it’s not just that today is Friday the 13^th (that turned out to be a rather funny coincidence, actually). Despite my negativity towards the franchise in general, the fact is that I’ve always thought it’s a concept that should work – I mean, what exactly about a man in a hockey mask killing people with a machete wouldn’t be terrifying in real life? It’s never really worked on film, but perhaps, I thought, it might fare better in a different medium, especially when written by people as talented as Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti.

Sadly, the comic book version of Friday the 13^th didn’t quite meet my expectations. It’s not a total debacle, though – it’s certainly no worse than any of the innumerable sequels, and it’s actually probably better than most of them. Gray and Palmiotti are extremely aware of the world in which their story takes place and all of the baggage that comes with it, which in a way is sort of refreshing. In case you’ve ever wondered just why on earth people keep coming back to Camp Crystal Lake (Jason’s stomping/killing ground) despite the hundreds of unexplained murders that have taken place there, this book offers an explanation, not so much in words as in characterization.

Several characters in the book are familiar with the legend of Jason; a few, in fact, are strangely obsessed with it. They’ve come to Crystal Lake, I would imagine, for the same reason that we ourselves enjoy horror stories – for the thrill that comes with feeling close to death and danger, and with ultimately escaping from it at the story’s end. The difference, of course, is that the characters in this story actually are in danger, and that most of them won’t survive to the end of the book.

The setup is precisely what you would expect: a handful of teenagers are hired to clean up Crystal Lake so the camp can be reopened again, although this time as something of a tourist trap (complete with T-shirts emblazoned with the words “I Survived Camp Crystal Lake”). Come nightfall, however, the characters are running for their lives and being killed off by Jason, one by one. In an interesting twist, it turns out that one of the girls isn’t entirely mentally stable, thus giving us reason to question at times whether Jason has even really returned at all. Unfortunately, this subplot isn’t used quite to its full potential; in the end, actually, it becomes a fairly thin excuse for the character to spend a good portion of the book running around completely naked. It wouldn’t exactly be Friday the 13^th without an unhealthy dose of sexual exploitation, I suppose.

Adam Archer’s artwork here is pretty much the definition of “middle of the road.” It gets the job done and he’s decent enough at drawing spurting blood, which I guess is probably how he got the job. Speaking of that, something I’ve always enjoyed in slasher movies (even the bad ones) is the originality of the death scenes. Unfortunately, the kills in Friday the 13^th are pretty boring – Jason mostly just stabs people and/or chops their heads off. That’s kind of surprising, considering Palmiotti inked Steve Dillon on Garth Ennis’s Punisher, a book replete with totally bizarre deaths. The ending is a bit less predictable, in that it seems to aim for comedy much more than the rest of the book. Whether the writers were successful in this case is really in the eye of the beholder, but for my money it’s far too over-the-top, even for a Friday the 13^th story.

If you’re a big fan of the slasher subgenre or of the Friday the 13^th series in particular, then there won’t be much in this book to prevent your enjoying it. It’s better than the movies, but of course that means next to nothing considering how awful the movies really are. I think it should matter, though, and the fact that this book couldn’t raise my already extremely low esteem for the series is what frustrates me about it more than any of its other failings. Perhaps that’s too much to ask of one tie-in comic book miniseries, but still, it makes me wonder: if writers as talented as Gray and Palmiotti can’t turn this franchise around, is there anyone who can?

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

A Timeline Update

2010-08-11T11:15:00.002-05:00

If you’ve arrived here by way of another website, then welcome! My thanks go out to the Collected Editions blog, Chris Marshall at the Collected Comics Library (who mentioned the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline in this week’s podcast), and others who have linked here. Feedback about the timeline has been great so far, and I’m glad that everyone seems to be enjoying it. Again, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please leave a comment (either on this post or the previous one) or send me an email!

Last night I made some small, but significant, changes to the existing timeline. One of the aims I initially had was to clear up some of the confusion around the many trade paperbacks that have had their contents later repackaged and reprinted in other books – oftentimes, either in oversized hardcovers or Marvel’s massive Omnibus collections. With that in mind, I’ve added additional information (and Amazon links!) for a number of books, including Daredevil: Guardian Devil and Amazing Spider-Man: Coming Home, which have been re-collected in hardcovers or in bigger “Ultimate Collection” trades. I hope this will make it easier for people to find exactly what they’re looking for on the timeline itself, without having to do a ton of outside research just to find out what’s collected in some of these books.

This is also probably one of the last major posts you’ll see about the timeline here in the main blog at With Great Power. I’ve always intended for this to be a review blog, and that’s what it will continue to be first and foremost. At some point I may set up another, smaller blog for the purpose of posting updates about the timeline, in which case I’ll post a link here. Either way, you can be sure that I’ll continue to update and expand the timeline as time goes on, and that I’ll do my best to keep up with all of your comments and emails about it.

Well, that’s it for now – I’ll see you again on Friday for another review. Until then, have a great week!

Introducing the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline!

2010-08-09T00:00:00.008-05:00

It all started some time in April. Having scoured the Internet for a Marvel-themed list in the vein of the Collected Editions blog’s wonderful DC Trade Paperback Timeline and turning up relatively nothing, I decided to work out a proper reading order for Marvel’s trade paperback and hardcover collections. At first it was just something I was doing for myself, but as my list grew longer and more comprehensive, I realized that if I was confused – me, a person who’s generally pretty familiar with Marvel’s collected editions and publishing history – there must be many more people out there with the same, if not even more, questions. And so the idea of creating a fully annotated Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline for this blog was born.

Today I’ve posted the first part of that timeline, starting with the nearly line-wide relaunch that took place in 1998 (following the events of the miniseries Heroes Reborn: The Return) and extending to the beginning of J. Michael Straczynski’s tenure on Amazing Spider-Man in 2001. As I mentioned in my review of Captain America: To Serve and Protect, the first book currently listed on the timeline, this is where the “current” Marvel Universe really got its start. While many titles obviously have roots going back to the early 1960s, I think the shift in editorial direction (and overall quality) that took place in the late 1990s makes this as good a demarcation point in Marvel’s publishing history as any. It’s also the time period that first got me interested in making this timeline – Marvel has been reprinting a great deal of material from this era lately, much of it for the first time.

In the near future, the timeline will be expanded to cover books taking place both before and after the ones listed currently – ideally, it will eventually cover everything from 1939 (when Marvel Comics #1 was first published) to the present. The offline version of the timeline is nearly finished, although there are several sections that require a good deal more reading and research on my part before they can be sufficiently completed. I wanted to start by posting just one part of the timeline so that I could get your feedback and suggestions as well as deal with any necessary formatting changes now, rather than later. I truly hope this timeline will help other people as much as the process of creating it has helped me. If you have any questions or comments (any at all!), please feel free to leave a comment on this post or to send an email to marveltimeline@gmail.com.

Before signing off, a few acknowledgments are in order. Both Comic Book DB and Trade Paperback List have been invaluable resources in making this timeline so far. Thanks as well to Ian from Trade Reading Order, where he’s created an excellent reading order for DC’s collections that complements the one at the Collected Editions blog quite nicely. He’s also working on a Marvel reading order which I think will similarly complement the one I’ve started here, when we’re both finished!

So, I think I’ve probably rambled on long enough. Feel free to check out the timeline (either by clicking here or on the link in the sidebar) and tell me what you think!

The Muppet Show Comic Book: Meet the Muppets

2010-08-06T10:30:00.001-05:00

Writer: Roger Langridge
Artist: Roger Langridge
Collects: The Muppet Show #1-4 (2009)
Published: Boom Studios, 2009; $9.99

I’ll be the first to admit that when I heard Boom Studios was planning a comic series based on Jim Henson’s legendary franchise, I thought it was a terrible idea. I’ve been a huge follower of the Muppets since childhood, from Sesame Street to Fraggle Rock to feature films like A Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island. And although I never watched the original version of The Muppet Show on television, I’ve familiarized myself with it by way of the excellent DVD sets that Disney has been releasing for the last few years. No matter where or in what format the Muppets appear, they always bring with them the same contagiously fun and energetic spirit.

Luckily, Langridge understands that completely, and his writing and drawings perfectly capture the essence of the Muppets. Each of the four issues collected here plays out like an episode of the actual TV show, with a series of brief skits and comedy sketches that revolve around a central, offstage plotline. Langridge spotlights a different character in each issue, with Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, and Miss Piggy each receiving their own story. Kermit’s is by far the most emotionally resonant, with the character’s feelings of homesickness for life in the swamp giving way to a genuinely moving song at the end. It’s worth mentioning, in fact, that there are quite a few songs and poems throughout The Muppet Show Comic Book (much like the original show), all of which are exceptionally well written.

The Gonzo issue is a bit of an oddity: it centers on the question of what exactly Gonzo is, the same question that was answered over ten years ago in the Muppets’ last theatrical movie, Muppets from Space. Langridge could have any number of possible reasons for ignoring that story, not the least of which is that it’s one of only two Muppet movies (the other being The Muppets Take Manhattan) to which Disney does not have the rights. Anyhow, it’s not really a criticism so much as an observation.

I also really enjoyed the Fozzie issue, in which the hilariously unfunny bear finally realizes that the audience can’t stand his jokes. This leads to him trying out a number of other acts, including a Shakespearean performance and a vaudeville number, all of which manage to go horribly wrong. The Miss Piggy story is decent, but far less memorable; it has to do with her becoming angry with Kermit after a bogus psychic leads her to believe Kermit has fallen in love with someone else. It’s territory well trodden, and since Miss Piggy isn’t one of my favorite Muppets anyway, I probably would have preferred to see a different character in the lead role for that issue.

The sketch sequences translate surprisingly well into comic book form, and they include such long-time favorites as “Veterinarian’s Hospital” and “Pigs in Space.” Langridge’s typical method is to cram an entire sketch into one page, sometimes two, as if it were its own extremely short, self-contained story. Even the really corny sketches (such as a pun-filled conversation between the houses on a neighborhood block) benefit from this method, and are done so self-consciously that they’re still quite funny. Statler and Waldorf – the two old hecklers in the balcony – do wonders to salvage otherwise lame scenes as well by frequently breaking the fourth wall to point out the relative stupidity of their own comic book.

Included at the end of the book is Langridge’s original proposal for the series, in the form of around a dozen pages of fully penciled and colored pages that were originally intended for the children’s magazine Disney Adventures. The art style is a bit sketchier and more off-model than the one used in the main series, and I think I actually like this initial version better. Both styles are excellent, though, and the one that Langridge opted for in the end is undeniably the slicker and more commercially viable one.

If you’ve ever enjoyed the Muppets, you have every reason to buy this book: it’s just as fun and funny as any of their movies or TV shows, and it’s only $9.99. Boom Studios has followed this collection up with several more by Langridge, as well as a few that adapt classic children’s stories and fairy tales (Muppet Peter Pan and Muppet Robin Hood, for example). Best of all, none of these books cost more than ten dollars, an exceptional achievement in a world where four-issue collections released by most other comics companies rarely retail for less than fifteen. In short: highly recommended.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Solicitation Commentary for October 2010

2010-08-04T19:15:00.003-05:00

Marvel was a bit late with their solicitations this month, but now that they’re here and I’ve had time to go through them, it’s time to take a look at some of the graphic novels and collected editions that have been solicited for October 2010. Titles are in bold for easy skimming!

Marvel Comics

The biggest surprise from Marvel this month is probably the Atlantis Attacks Omnibus, collecting yet another mediocre crossover from the 1980s. As I’ve said before, I don’t have a problem with collections like this one or the Acts of Vengeance Omnibus in principle, but it does annoy me that Marvel is doing things like this before releasing Omnibus editions for classic material like Avengers or Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita. It seems like they’ve settled into a pattern of just two or three “classic” Omnibus editions per year now – still, I guess that’s better than nothing.

Far less of a surprise is the Captain America Lives! Omnibus, which follows up on two previous Omnibus editions collecting Ed Brubaker’s run on the character. I doubt I’ll be getting this, just because I made a conscious decision a while back not to buy anymore Omnibus collections of recent material, but it’s still nice to see.

One book that I have the feeling will pass under most people’s radar is Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Battlefield, Vol. 1. This will be the first book ever to reprint material from Marvel’s massive catalog of 1950s war comics, which is really exciting. Personally, I’m curious to see how the stories in this book stack up against the war comics done by EC Comics around the same time.

I’m also really happy to see Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty, collecting the entire twelve-issue series written primarily by Mark Waid. These comics come from the same time as the material collected in Captain America: To Serve and Protect, which I reviewed a few months ago. Hopefully this will open the way for more collections of the late-‘90s Cap!

As wary as I am about the new Thor movie coming out next year, one good thing about it is that we’re bound to see a lot more Thor collected editions in the immediate future. One of those is a new hardcover edition of Thor: Worldengine, which was released in trade a number of years ago but has been out of print for almost as long. It’s written by Warren Ellis, and it’s only $19.99!

DC Comics
I could not be more excited about this next release: The Green Lantern Omnibus, Vol. 1, collecting Hal Jordan’s earliest appearances in Showcase #22-24 and Green Lantern #1-21. For years now I’ve been waiting for DC to finally start releasing their Silver Age comics in oversized hardcovers, the way Marvel has been doing since 2005, and it seems they’re finally catching up! And they couldn’t have picked better subject matter to start with, since Green Lantern is my absolute favorite DC comic from that era. On top of that, it’s only $75 – a full $25 less than what Marvel’s Omnibus editions usually run for. This book is a complete must-buy for me.

Interestingly, DC is also releasing a new edition of Showcase Presents: Green Lantern, Vol. 1, which collects virtually the same material as the Omnibus (Showcase #22-24 and Green Lantern #1-17), except in black and white. Along with Showcase Presents: Superman, Vol. 1, this book was originally released for $9.99; however, this new edition is $19.99. As I mentioned last month, I think this new price point is absurd, and the fact that this book is coming out only a week before the Omnibus is baffling. Perhaps DC is putting them both out at the same time to see which one sells better; I just hope they don’t end up cannibalizing their own sales and unintentionally bringing their new Omnibus program to a quick end.

Finally, one of the very best comic books being published today is receiving its final trade paperback collection with Ex Machina, Vol. 10: Term Limits. I have extremely high hopes for this one, and I sincerely doubt it will disappoint.

Dark Horse Comics

The recent death of Frank Frazetta was something of a shock to his legions of fans, and it seems Dark Horse has taken notice. They’ve announced a new series collecting his longest comic-book run with The Classics Comics Archive, Vol. 1: White Indian. I don’t know much about it, to be honest, but I’m certainly interested in seeing what it’s all about.

Image

Another classic story receiving a new printing is Mage, Vol. 1: The Hero Discovered. This is the first in a trilogy of comic book series by Matt Wagner, of which only the first and second parts have been released so far. It’s been quite a few years since the second installment at this point, and I wonder if this new printing is any indication that the third is finally under way.

And that’s about everything that caught my eye in this month’s solicitations. Feel free to click the links to check out the full solicits for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and Image at CBR. What are you looking forward to in October?

Streams of Consciousness – 8/2/2010

2010-08-02T13:30:00.002-05:00

Hey, everyone! I have quite a few things to share with you today, so I decided to cram it all into one giant, scatter-brained post. Enjoy!

First of all, thanks once again to the folks at MOMB Comics for the very nice mention they made of this blog on their most recent podcast, which you can check out here (it’s MOMBcast #45). This is one of my absolute favorite comics podcasts week in and week out – please go and check it out!

I’d also like to thank Ryan Lindsay and everyone else at Thought Balloons for featuring a single-page Punisher comic book script I wrote last week in a guest post on Friday (mine is the second one, "Dangerous"). For those unaware, Thought Balloons is a site where a handful of writers each write a one-page script about a particular comic book character (a new one every week). Reader-submitted reviews are encouraged as well, so feel free to try your hand at any time – this week’s character is Gamora.

And for those who have been following the comments sections here for the last few weeks, I’m happy to report that my move was a resounding success and that although there are still unpacked boxes as far as the eye can see, I’m settling into my new place quite nicely. Most importantly, there shouldn’t be any hiccups in the weekly review schedule, as I feared there might. I’ll also try to post some comments on the October 2010 solicitations soon – I would have done so much sooner, but Marvel was extremely late in releasing theirs this month, I think because of SDCC a couple of weeks ago.

You may have also noticed that I added a Review Index to the blog. There may not very many reviews here at the moment, but as more are added I think this will become extremely helpful. The link is in the sidebar right now (between the links and followers sections), but I may move it to the top of the page at some point.

And now, for probably the most significant item on the docket: yes, I am working on an annotated reading order for Marvel’s trade paperback collections, which is very much in the vein of the DC timeline at the Collected Editions blog. I alluded to this project (albeit somewhat secretively) in a post way back in May, but until recently it hasn’t really been in a state worthy of publication. It will be posted very soon, though, at which point I’ll be talking about it in a lot more detail. I’m also hoping to work in conjunction with Ian at the excellent website Trade Reading Order to get his Marvel collections database up to date. So stay tuned, exciting things are on the way!

That’s it for now – have a great week, and I’ll see you back here on Friday (if not sooner)!

X-Men: Mutant Genesis

2010-07-30T00:00:00.002-05:00

Writers: Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, John Byrne, Scott Lobdell
Artist: Jim Lee
Collects: X-Men #1-7 (1991-92)
Published: Marvel, 2006; $19.99

No matter what you think of comics in the 1990s, it’s impossible to deny the influence of Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men. The pair had been working together on the Uncanny X-Men series for several years already by 1991, but the launch of a second ongoing X-Men series was, in itself, something altogether revolutionary – as hard as that is to imagine today, with there being certainly no fewer than a dozen X-titles published each month. X-Men #1, with its five different covers (ooh, collectible!) and its darker take on everyone’s favorite team of mutant heroes, was in many ways the springboard for the franchise’s proliferation in the years that followed.

But as much as it was a time for new beginnings, the series also ushered in at least one significant ending. The ‘90s are often seen as a time when comic book artists rallied to exert more control over the actual stories of the comics they were drawing – and when they began to feel their efforts being proscribed by writers and editors, the most popular artists abandoned DC and Marvel to found their own companies. X-Men is a case in which the opposite happened, at least at first. That is, with artist Jim Lee increasingly doing whatever he wanted without consulting anyone else first, it was the writer, Chris Claremont, who left the franchise that he had been writing for the previous seventeen years.

It’s a shame, really, because the first three issues collected in Mutant Genesis – the only ones written by Claremont – are by far the best in the book. These issues comprise a storyline in which Magneto declares Asteroid M a sovereign state and a haven for Earth’s mutants, sparking an international incident that brings with it the threat of worldwide nuclear warfare. While it’s not the best thing Claremont’s ever written, it still provides one of the single most fascinating glimpses into the mind of Magneto – quite possibly ever. Although he’s an antagonist to the X-Men in the conventional sense, with Claremont writing him it’s difficult to view him simply as a “villain.” In Mutant Genesis, Magneto is a deeply disturbed man who sees the course he has taken as the only way of bringing about peace between humans and mutantkind. It’s really a question of means rather than ends, since his goals are ultimately much the same as Professor Xavier’s.

Like I said, though, the story isn’t perfect. There’s a ridiculous subplot in which it’s revealed that Moira MacTaggert tampered with Magneto’s DNA to try to make him a “good guy,” which leads Magneto to question every decision he’s made in the years since he was in her care. (Of course, if he thought for even a second about his own actions, which include the sinking of a nuclear submarine and its entire crew, he would realize that neither Moira nor anyone else has been even marginally successful at curbing his violent actions and mental state over the years.) In the end, Moira’s DNA-tampering/brainwashing process turns out to be little more than a plot device for turning some of the X-Men temporarily to Magneto’s side, leading to a predictable fight with the other half of the team.

Speaking of which, it’s probably worth mentioning who exactly the X-Men are at this point in their history. The first issue opens with the division of the team into two groups, the Blue Team and the Gold Team. Although both are involved in the first story, issues four through seven mainly feature the Blue Team: Beast, Cyclops, Gambit, Jubilee, Psylocke, Rogue, and Wolverine. (Shockingly enough, Wolverine was only an active member of one group of X-Men at this point!) If you ever watched the animated X-Men television show that ran throughout the ‘90s, then you essentially know these characters.

Forge and Banshee (two personal favorites of mine) also appear in supporting roles, although Banshee’s part is minimal after the third issue, in which Gambit breaks his jaw. It’s not too long before Gambit’s presence starts to get really annoying, actually; he’s a stupid character, pure and simple, and what I’ve found over the years is that most people who think otherwise are working from fond memories of the animated show. In reality the character is an unlikeable jerk, and I wouldn’t mind if I saw him in the pages of a comic book again.

Fortunately, Gambit’s role is pretty minimal in the second half of Mutant Genesis, a Wolverine-centric story that pits the team against Omega Red – a multi-tentacled Soviet super-soldier who’s been in suspended animation ever since he fought with Wolverine thirty years earlier. These issues are plotted entirely by Jim Lee, with John Byrne and Scott Lobdell simply writing the scripts. The story and writing suffer as a result, although the comic never descends into anything near the depths of idiocy the entire X-Men franchise would be reduced to in just under four years’ time. I’m actually tempted to say that this is the franchise at its ‘90s peak, which is entirely true, but I’m afraid of that coming off as too much of a compliment; instead, let’s just say that things only went downhill from here.

In fact, you can already see things turning sour in the Omega Red story. In addition to the plot, which is fairly by-the-numbers (although it does introduce Maverick, a character I’ve always been strangely captivated by), the art too shows signs of slipping. Perhaps it’s just that Lee was more rushed for these issues, but his work seems less like his own and more like he’s trying to channel the influence of other popular artists from the time. As a result, you can expect about ten times as many neck-popping arteries and constipated-looking facial expressions.

The back of Mutant Genesis includes a cover gallery and some sketch pages by Lee, as well as some truly awful art by Jeff Matsuda that was commissioned to balance broken spreads in earlier printings of the trade. I can’t even imagine how jarring it would have been to see these pages in the middle of the story; Matsuda would go on to design characters for such animated shows as The Batman and Jackie Chan Adventures, which should give you a pretty good indication of how poorly his art style would mesh with Lee’s.

A new hardcover edition of Mutant Genesis came out just this week, and its page count is slightly higher than that of the trade paperback. Since the issues collected are the same, though, I can’t imagine the differences amount to anything substantial – probably just a few pages of original pencil art and a couple of additional covers. Either way, you’re essentially getting the same product. And it’s a product worth looking into, if you’re interested in seeing the passing of the torch (or, to be more accurate, the dying of the flame) in regards to the X-Men franchise, or even if you just want a better idea of the slippery slope the comic book industry in general was treading in the early 1990s. But if you’re coming at it simply with the expectation of being entertained, rather than learning something about a period that was (like it or not) crucial in comic book history, I recommend you approach with caution.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four, Vol. 1: Family of Heroes

2010-07-23T09:30:00.001-05:00

Writers: Jeff Parker and Akira Yoshida
Artists: Carlo Pagulayan and Juan Santacruz
Collects: Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #1-4 (2005)
Published: Marvel, 2005; $6.99

The first volume of Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four is fortunate enough to avoid the biggest pitfall of Marvel Adventures Spider-Man’s earliest issues – that is, it tells brand-new stories rather than simply rehashing old ones. Sadly, Jeff Parker doesn’t ever hit the same groove that he did in the one issue of Marvel Adventures Spider-Man that he wrote (which, by contrast, was a lot of fun), and parts of this book are actually pretty boring. The fact that Parker only co-writes the first two issues – with Akira Yoshida, whose writing typically falls somewhere between average and mediocre in quality – is probably a big part of the problem.

There are a few bright spots, though. Parker comes up with some pretty clever ways for the Fantastic Four (especially the Human Torch) to use their powers in the fourth issue, which is by far the best of this collection. But even so, the pacing is off and emotional development throughout is shallow at best. Most of the book consists of the team getting their butts kicked by whatever villain they happen to be fighting, and their means of ultimate triumph in each situation don’t seem very well thought out. In one of the stories, there are a couple of completely random panels where Dr. Strange comes out of nowhere to fix everything that’s gone wrong before disappearing just as quickly.

I might be able to look past the underdeveloped stories to some extent if the action scenes themselves were well-done, but they’re really not. The bad guys chosen for the book aren’t all that exciting – in the book’s four stories, we get Annihilus, Diablo, a group of mischievous Skrull kids, and a renegade Sentinel robot (on loan from the X-Men, apparently). There’s no Dr. Doom, no Sub-Mariner, no outer space or time travel adventure. If this had been my first Fantastic Four book as a kid, I doubt I could have summoned the interest to read the next book in this series.

The digest format doesn’t do the art any favors either. The pencils are fine, if nothing extraordinary, but the coloring is just awful. Everything looks incredibly dark, which is a serious problem when you’re trying to decipher art that’s already been greatly reduced in size. Making things worse, most of the stories take place inside dark, drab buildings, which isn’t in keeping at all with the bright, generally cheerful atmosphere I associate with the Fantastic Four. Overall, it makes for a pretty dull reading experience.

Although this book didn’t impress me, I’ll probably give the next one a chance the way I decided I would for Marvel Adventures Spider-Man. Future volumes in that series look to be a significant improvement on the first, and with Zeb Wells and Fred Van Lente eventually coming on as writers for this title, I still have some hope. Writing for children and adults at the same time is no easy task, and any series aiming to do so is bound to face some growing pains; my hope is that by the next time around, this series will have gotten past them.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years, Vol. 1

2010-07-16T20:15:00.006-05:00

Writers: Robert P. Thompson and Gaylord Dubois
Artist: Jesse Marsh
Collects: Dell Four Color Comic #134 & 161, Tarzan #1-4 (Dell Comics, 1947-48)
Published: Dark Horse, 2009; $49.95

Tarzan first appeared in print in the pages of All-Story Magazine in 1912, with author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Tarzan of the Apes following just two years later. The character proved to be so popular that he was already appearing in movies by 1918, which would continue to be released almost yearly through the 1960s. Tarzan made the leap to newspaper strips in 1929, but even then, almost two decades passed before he began starring in his very own original comic book stories, which were published by Dell Comics. Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years, Vol. 1 reprints the inaugural issues of Dell’s series, and the book is an extremely welcome addition to the ever-growing number of archival comics collections that a range of companies have been publishing over the last few years.

The reason I begin this review with a recounting of Tarzan’s history in popular culture is that his first comic book series is built heavily on the character’s various representations over the preceding decades. Furthermore, it could easily be argued that the comic draws more from the cinema than it does from its own medium. The plots are well-structured and progress more like short films than typical comic book stories from this period, and at around 40 pages each, they’re fairly long for their time. The dialogue is a bit wooden, but as Mario Hernandez writes in the book’s introduction, it works perfectly for the subject matter. Reading Tarzan, I constantly felt like I was watching an old B-movie or film serial – and I mean that as a compliment. As cheesy as some of those movies were, they were pretty darn entertaining, and they obviously had a pretty lasting effect on popular culture – how many people can you think of who have never heard of Tarzan?

Other cues are taken from the films as well. Most prominently, artist Jesse Marsh draws Tarzan as a hulking, barrel-chested, strikingly handsome man, a nod undoubtedly to Johnny Weissmuller, who was the actor most identified with Tarzan at the time. But a number of aspects are drawn from the books as well, including the character of D’Arnot, a French naval lieutenant who serves as an occasional companion to Tarzan. The writers, Robert P. Thompson and Gaylord Dubois, also make frequent use of words from the ape language invented by Burroughs; they even devote a few pages in each issue to an ongoing “Ape Dictionary,” which features intricately detailed artwork by Marsh.

It’s worth dwelling on Marsh for just another moment – after all, Dark Horse did see fit to put his name in the title of this collection. A veteran of both illustration and animation, Marsh depicts the jungle and its inhabitants with a lush detail that was simply unparalleled at the time. Lions crouch and pounce with sinewy leaps, apes swing from the trees and land into a lumbering gait, and the jungle’s dark foliage exudes an almost overwhelming sense of mystery and foreboding. Truly, the 1940s were a “golden age” not just for masked heroes, but for the portrayal of the strange and exotic in a way that was both fantastic and beautiful.

Although the stories are pretty well-structured for the most part, the one thing that did bother me about them is that Tarzan’s ultimate goal is almost always to save a white person being held captive by jungle savages – often referred to as “Go-Mangani,” or “blackmen.” In fact, at certain points it’s almost as if the character can’t be bothered to do much of anything if it doesn’t involve saving white people. In “Tarzan versus the Black Panther,” for example, Tarzan sets out to save a white woman from a slave trader; freeing the dozen or so black slaves the trader has captured seems to be little more than a secondary goal. It seems a bit peculiar that Tarzan, a man raised in complete isolation from the rest of the human race, seems to draw so many racial distinctions (subconsciously or not) among other human beings.

Still, I do give Tarzan some credit for its sympathetic portrayal of Muviro, Tarzan’s African ally who appears at some point in almost all of his adventures. And in case I’ve been making the comic sound worse than it actually is, I should point out that it’s never overtly or intentionally racist – as “products of their time,” some of the stories are just a bit ignorant. Actually, when you compare it to a good deal of other comics and even animated films that were being released at the same time, Tarzan seems like a regular civil rights manifesto.

Of course, Tarzan’s racial sensitivity, or occasional lack thereof, is more of a reflection on the particular writers of this collection than on the character himself (although Burroughs’ original novel espouses its fair share of troubling notions about race as well). Tarzan is really a lot like Conan or even the Hulk in that sense – his intelligence, as well as the extent of his physical capabilities, vary from story to story depending on how each writer interprets the character. This is no more apparent than in the last few stories in the book, in which Marsh and company change things up in a big way with the introduction of Tarzan’s wife Jane and their son Boy.

In these stories, Tarzan isn’t so much an uncivilized nomad as he is a family man concerned primarily with teaching his son how to survive the dangers of the African jungle. One story even features Boy as the protagonist, with Tarzan showing up as sort of a deus ex machina at the end to save Boy from the clutches of a strange tribe of pygmy warriors. I’m curious to see whether subsequent Tarzan comics from this era will continue to be as experimental in their plotting, or if this was just a one-time attempt to see if a different kind of story would still resonate with young readers.

It would certainly be fair to call Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years one of the better archival series being produced right now, and with five volumes already released in less than a year and a half (and a sixth one due next month), it’s clear that Dark Horse is committed to seeing the material through to its end, and in an extremely timely fashion to boot. So much the better for me, since I will certainly be reading the next volume, and possibly more after that – even if it’s more for Marsh’s brilliant artwork than for the stories themselves.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Monkey vs. Robot

2010-07-09T23:10:00.003-05:00

Writer: James Kochalka
Artist: James Kochalka
Published: Top Shelf Productions, 2000; $14.95

I’m not actually sure how or where I first heard of James Kochalka. It may have been from a short guest-penciling job he did in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, which was one of my favorite comic books about ten years ago. It may also have been from his four-page cartoon “Hulk vs. the Rain,” which appeared in an Incredible Hulk Annual around the same time. Either way, I’m fairly confident that my first exposure to his work was in some sort of superheroic venue, which is ironic considering Kochalka is one of the most well-regarded voices in the medium for reasons completely unrelated to mainstream comics. At the time, I had little idea that there were comics worth reading outside the worlds of Marvel and DC, so his unique style caught me off guard – in the best of ways.

I’m not sure Kochalka was the specific “gateway drug,” so to speak, that led me to first explore comics written and published outside the mainstream, but reading his work was certainly a stepping stone in that direction for me. So it was with a bit of a guilty conscience a few days ago that I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had read one of his books. It was only fitting that I go back to the beginning, I thought, and read one of his early graphic novels, Monkey vs. Robot.

The book is exactly what the title suggests: monkeys fighting robots. But it’s also much more than that. There are several different subtexts at play here, the most potent one being a condemnation of technology’s effect on the natural world. You see, the robots have set up a factory smack in the middle of the jungle, and the toxic sludge it produces is killing the monkeys. You can imagine why they might be a little upset.

The environmental theme pervades every aspect of the book, especially the monochromatic art (I hesitate to call it black and white, because the brushstrokes look more to me like a deep, dark jungle green). Of course, that’s out of necessity for the most part, since there are very few words in Monkey vs. Robot, aside from the occasional sound effect. The robots have a few lines (“Attack,” “Begin extermination,” etc.), but they really only serve to deepen their total lack of emotion. Their faces are fraught with metallic indifference, even in death – that is, if it’s possible for a nonliving thing to actually “die” – while the monkeys exude fear, anger, and hope without so much as a word.

The story works on another level too, one that I completely missed on my first read-through. Toward the end, one of the monkeys escapes into the robots’ factory and comes face to face with “the Mother,” a terrifyingly inhuman master computer of sorts that rants almost incoherently about “crystalline perfection” and “metal futurity.” The monkey stands transfixed for several pages, and the spell is only broken when he is discovered and mercilessly attacked by one of the robots.

For one brief moment, though, both the monkey and the reader are seduced by the apparent beauty of the Mother’s words. Then, in an instant of utter horror, Kochalka demonstrates the ease with which seemingly benign words like “progress” and “future” can also be synonyms for “death” and “extinction” – with the Mother’s message rejected by reader and monkey alike, the factory and the jungle both erupt into flame.

Even if Monkey vs. Robot lacks strong individual characters in the vein of some of Kochalka’s later work, the emotions it invokes are just as powerful. Reading this book, I felt despair as the final battle turned hopelessly against the monkeys, fear at the sight of fire burning uncontrollably against the night sky, and finally, joy at the cleansing, hopeful rain that brings the story to an end. In a word, this book made me feel, and if there is any higher praise I can give it than that, my only regret is that I can’t find the words to express it. On the other hand, though, as Kochalka so beautifully reveals in this book, perhaps words aren’t the answer to all our problems.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Wolverine: Not Dead Yet

2010-07-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Leinil Yu
Collects: Wolverine #119-122 (1997-98)
Published: Marvel, 2009; $19.99

I have read more Wolverine comics than any other person alive.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration – there are a ton of Wolverine stories, even a ton of Wolverine collected editions, that I haven’t read, but still, I feel like I must have read at least a few dozen of them over the years. It’s kind of weird, actually…Wolverine isn’t my favorite character in comics (see: the title of this blog), but he’s one of my favorite characters to read about, if that makes any sense. There are so many different facets to his personality, so many different roles he’s able to assume, and of course there’s that mysterious, mostly untold past of his. It all makes for a wide variety of story possibilities, some of which are really interesting while others are utterly forgettable.

Unfortunately, Wolverine: Not Dead Yet falls more into that second camp. Even though, as I’ve just said, there are tons of possibilities for Wolverine stories, there are certain angles that writers tend to take with the character over and over again, and if you’ve seen a story from that angle once, you’ve basically seen them all. It’s that sort of “been there, done that” feeling that leaves me a bit cold towards this particular collection, although it’s not without its merits.

The main draw of Not Dead Yet is that it features artwork by Leinil Yu, who has gone on to become a comic book superstar over the twelve years since this material was first published. His work here is strong, and I actually like it better than his current style. I think that has mostly to do with the fact that until recently, Yu did not ink his own work – here, he’s assisted by not one but two inkers, Edgar Tadeo and Gerry Alanguilan.

Even at this early point in his career, Yu’s work is sleek, yet detailed. It’s the little touches that make him stand out to me, from the dense texture of the hair on Wolverine’s arms to the slow, visceral way blood drips from the character’s claws (which are made of bone in this collection – Wolverine would get his adamantium skeleton back about a year after this story). This was a style that Yu would perfect a few years later in Superman: Birthright, and it’s interesting to see it in its infancy here.

As much as I like the art, though, I simply can’t bestow the same praise on Warren Ellis’s story. There really isn’t that much to say about it, to be honest: it follows Logan as he hunts down a man from his past who’s seemingly come back for revenge, which is pretty much as formulaic as you can get when it comes to stories about this character. The main plot is intercut with flashbacks to conversations Logan had with the man in Hong Kong ten years earlier, which are much more interesting than anything going on in the present. Ellis tries to create a sense of mystery as to whether the man is still alive or if it’s really someone else who’s after Wolverine, but a few badly executed twists too many in the final act bring that subplot to a pretty dissatisfying conclusion.

The story is only four issues long, with the last twenty or so pages of the collection consisting of a Leinil Yu cover gallery (he was a fairly regular cover artist on Wolverine both before and after Not Dead Yet). The art is pretty good, and it’s certainly better than Marvel including script pages, but it’s obviously just padding to boost the book’s cover price. I also found myself a bit annoyed by the book’s introduction, which was written by Ellis in 1998 for the first paperback edition of this collection. Couldn’t Marvel have commissioned something a little more recent from either Ellis or Yu?

The relative slimness of this book and the formulaic nature of its story combine to make Wolverine: Not Dead Yet a pretty tough sell, in my opinion. If you’re a Leinil Yu enthusiast interested in taking a closer look at his early work, I guess this isn’t the worst thing you can buy; as I’ve already mentioned, though, Superman: Birthright is a far superior choice in that vein. And as for Wolverine, there are countless other collections better than this one – many of which actually dare to do interesting and novel things with the character.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

The Doom Patrol Archives, Vol. 1

2010-06-25T12:00:00.001-05:00

Writers: Arnold Drake and Bob Haney
Artist: Bruno Premiani
Collects: My Greatest Adventure #80-85 and The Doom Patrol #86-89 (1963-64)
Published: DC, 2002; $49.95

The Doom Patrol is a team of superheroes perhaps best known, sadly, for supposedly being ripped off by Stan Lee when he created the X-Men. However, that idea does an incredible disservice to both Marvel and DC, who both deserve more credit; furthermore, it simply isn’t true. Yes, both teams star a group of super-powered social outcasts led by a man in a wheelchair, and their mortal enemies have similar names: the Doom Patrol fights the Brotherhood of Evil, while the X-Men fight the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. But that’s where the similarities end, quite frankly, and with X-Men #1 hitting the stands only three months after the Doom Patrol’s first appearance, there is literally no way that Lee could have known about the Doom Patrol’s existence before writing his new, mutant-based comic book series.

Still, it’s a myth that’s been perpetuated for well over forty years, to the point that it’s almost completely overshadowed the Doom Patrol’s original five-year run (from 1963 to 1968), which was handled from start to finish by writer Arnold Drake and artist Bruno Premiani. (Bob Haney also receives co-writing credit on the first two issues, although his influence was actually pretty minimal.) Even the people who put this particular collection together belabor the “rip-off” argument on the inside of the book’s cover jacket, which I think is kind of petty on DC’s part. Luckily, Drake doesn’t bring it up in his introduction, which details how the book came about creatively and editorially.

Removed from the controversy and taken purely on its own terms, though, Doom Patrol is an incredibly unique comic book, one that I find much more interesting than other team books DC was publishing around the same time. Unlike Justice League of America, for example, which featured characters who all starred in comics of their own, the characters that make up the Doom Patrol are unique to this book and actually have some room to develop. That potential isn’t utilized to its fullest in this first Archive edition, but the stories do start to mature considerably about halfway through the book, when the title of the series officially switches from My Greatest Adventure to The Doom Patrol.

So who exactly are the Doom Patrol? The first issue introduces us to all four of the book’s main characters: Elasti-Girl, who has the ability to stretch her body and to expand and reduce her size; Negative Man, a heavily bandaged individual (think of the Invisible Man) who can release a being of pure radio-energy from his body, but only for 60 seconds at a time; Robotman, a former stunt daredevil whose brain now resides in the metal body of a robot; and the Chief, the ingenious but mysterious wheelchair-bound man who has brought the team together.

The Chief is by far the most interesting member of the Doom Patrol, with Drake constantly teasing at the nature of the character’s secret past and true identity. In one story, the Chief even propagates multiple versions of his own “origin” (much like the Joker does in The Dark Knight) in order to confuse the other members of the team and to weed out which one of them has been leaking information to the press. And perhaps it’s that I’m projecting something onto the story that simply isn’t there, but I couldn’t help but question the Chief’s motives at various points throughout the book – why did he assemble this team? How does he know so much about the other members, and why won’t he even reveal so much as his own name?

Even when the Chief’s backstory is partially revealed in one of the last issues of this collection, I’m not sure I entirely buy it. I still think there’s something he’s hiding – but again, maybe that’s just me. (For the record, though, it’s my understanding that Grant Morrison felt basically the same way, giving the Chief some more explicitly villainous qualities in his 1980s run on the title.) Either way, it makes me anxious to read the other four Archives in the series, if only to see how the mystery of the character plays out.

The other team members aren’t quite as interesting, but they’re still strangely compelling. Labeled as “freaks” by society at large, all three are extremely angry – not a quality you tend to see dominating an entire team in superhero comics from this time. “Edgy” is perhaps a cliché word to use when describing angry comic book characters, but it fits here, and at times it’s actually pretty difficult to tell why the team even stays together. Interestingly, they don’t even begin to wear the costumes pictured on the cover until the last issue of this collection; prior to that, Elasti-Girl fights crime in a skirt and high-heeled boots, and Negative Man wears what appears to be a dark green sweatsuit. (Needless to say, the costumes are a welcome change!) Robotman and Negative Man are by far the angriest members of the team, and they take out their frustrations on one another by hurling insults over the fury of battle.

And what battles they fight! Almost every story involves humorous pseudo-scientific twists (humorous from today’s standpoint, anyway) and clever new uses for the Doom Patrol’s powers. The team faces a number of fantastically weird villains, including a brain in a jar, the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (guess what three things he can turn into?), and a talking, French gorilla. The stories are surprisingly varied too, going beyond the simple superhero vs. supervillain formula – in one of the final stories, for instance, Elasti-Girl goes to Korea to solve the mystery of a missing-in-action American G.I.

All of these things work together, in my mind, to set the Doom Patrol significantly apart from the majority of other super-teams that populated the 1960s. My only complaint with the first Archive edition is that the art reconstruction goes too far in some cases, and there are more than a few panels where it’s clear that there were more lines in the original pencil art. The colors too, especially in the shading of Negative Man’s bandages, are a bit anachronistic in their sophistication. Such is the case with all of the color reprints that Marvel and DC put out, though, and the restoration in this case isn’t any better or worse than what they typically offer.

Overall, The Doom Patrol Archives, Vol. 1 certainly has my recommendation, and with the entire series being done by the same creative team, I’m confident that it will only improve with subsequent volumes in the series. Its cult status today is unsurprising given its more unique aspects, and I would encourage anyone looking for a strong dose of Silver Age weirdness to give it a look.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Superman: Red Son

2010-06-18T00:00:00.003-05:00

Writer: Mark Millar
Artists: Dave Johnson and Kilian Plunkett
Collects: Superman: Red Son #1-3 (2003)
Published: DC, 2010; $24.99

What if Superman’s rocket had landed on a farm in the Ukraine rather than one in Smallville, Kansas? What if he had been raised not in the spirit of “truth, justice, and the American way,” but had been molded instead into the poster child of communist Russia under Stalin? These are the questions to which writer Mark Millar seeks answers in Superman: Red Son, and with the help of artists Dave Johnson and Kilian Plunkett, he pulls it off tremendously.

Millar’s first and most resounding success in this book is that he doesn’t take the story in the course that you would probably expect based on the premise alone. This isn’t some super-patriotic, down-with-communism propaganda piece in the vein of Red Dawn or any of its brainless ilk. Rather, Millar uses Superman’s eventual role as leader of the Soviet Union as a platform from which to explore an even more basic question than the ones that opened this review: what would Superman do if he ruled the world?

Tying into that question, of course, is the issue of whether or not Superman should rule the world – something the character struggles with throughout the book. He’s not a villain, at least not in his own view and not from the story’s perspective. In fact, he initially has the same unselfish, non-political goals that Superman does in the main DC universe. In his mission to achieve world peace, though, he becomes what amounts to a world dictator, even going so far as to have his dissenters essentially lobotomized. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes, and that’s certainly where the world has gone by the end of the book.

The main character’s role as authoritarian leader results in some interesting inversions of classic DC concepts. In the world of Red Son, Lois Lane is married to Lex Luthor (brilliant inventor and, later, president of the United States), Hal Jordan wields his Green Lantern ring as a military weapon, and Batman is a terrorist trying to subvert Superman’s regime. The evolution of Luthor’s character is particularly interesting, and it begs the question: what kind of man could he have been in this reality if not for Superman’s existence?

The fact that there are significant differences from regular DC continuity doesn’t come as a huge surprise, in and of itself. Many of DC’s Elseworlds (alternate universe) stories focus almost solely on how they differentiate themselves from the main universe, relying on the “clever” ways they shuffle around basic concepts to entertain readers. (Sarcastic example: wow, Robin is a woman in such-and-such reality? How original!) Admittedly, there’s a bit of that in Red Son – in one scene depicting a Daily Planet office party, for example, we’re treated to some embarrassingly “hey kids, look at me!” appearances by Oliver Queen and Iris Allen.

Millar keeps those kinds of moments to a minimum for the most part, though, and his focus is less on making a spectacle of the tweaks he’s made to ordinary continuity than it is on giving his universe the room to live and breathe in its own right. Luthor’s determination to destroy Superman, for instance, is developed in an entirely believable way that makes him distinct from the main universe’s Luthor. Most importantly, his motivations make sense without relying on the reader’s preconceptions about the character simply being “evil.”

But as good as the main story is in Red Son, the book’s ending is what really blew me out of the water. To compare the book (once more) to the vast majority of Elseworlds titles, this one doesn’t simply pack up and go home once it’s used up all its tricks, leaving us to wonder what happens to the characters after the story ends. Instead, Millar closes with one of the most intelligent and self-reflexive surprises I’ve ever seen at the end of a superhero comic, one that’s sure to bring a wide smile to new and long-time readers of Superman alike.

The art in this book is quite good, and the best way I can think of to describe it is as a mash-up of sorts between Paco Medina and early Leinil Yu. Penciling duties are handed over about halfway through the book from Johnson to Plunkett, neither of whom I was familiar with prior to Red Son. I’m not sure of the specific reasons for the change, although some handwritten comments on one of the bonus sketch pages at the end of the book lead me to believe that it has something to do with Johnson being a fairly slow artist. It isn’t a detriment to the book, though; in fact, the shift is so seamless that if you weren’t paying attention, you might not even notice.

As far as purchasing Red Son (which I heartily recommend doing), the Deluxe Edition is in my opinion the best way to go. The book is of a decent size – it’s three issues long, but each issue is about twice the length of a standard comic book – and, as I mentioned earlier, it has a few pages of sketches and concept designs at the end, including several by Alex Ross. It’s a pretty nice package, overall, which is only befitting of one of the best Superman stories, alternate universe or not, published in the last ten years.

Rating: 4 out of 5