Some reviews and the Green Hornet director mouths off

Recently got married, moved to Greensboro and got a laptop computer. Means I have some hard choices ahead of me. Or maybe not so hard after all. My wife's place is smaller than mine (I moved because she has a good, steady job, I'm still looking). There's just no room for 23 or more boxes of comics and looking at things with my mom and my grandmother, I wonder at the need for that many comics, comics I'll never read again. I had posted them for sale at Craigslist at one time but only got a few nibbles and I'll probably post it again. But, as I started going through the comics, I realized that out of all those boxes and thousands of comics, I could probably whittle it down to two boxes. Almost all of the works by George Perez, Walt Simonson, Mignola, and John Byrne have been collected so I don't need all the individual issues of Avengers, Thor, Fantasatic Four, Hellboy, Next Men, etc. All of the JSA and appearances by individual heroes of Earth-2 have been collected, so no real need for all of those All-Stars, JLA-JSA crossovers, etc. I don't even need Ditko's Charlton work as those have likewise been collected. Trades and hardbacks are so much more easily manageable and readable. And, there's a lot of critically acclaimed comics that I just don't re-read though I'm glad I got them at the time: Morrison's Animal Man, Gaiman's Sandman, Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Top Ten. The stuff I'd keep is probably the stuff that is almost worthless to most people but the most fun to me: the various Doc Savage comics (before the current stuff), Gerard Jones' El Diablo and Shadow Strikes. Roy Thomas' All-Star Squadron (not collected). Aparo's Phantom Stranger. My Phantom comics, especially those by Newton and Aparo. At least until a publisher gets around to reprinting them. Giant-Size Superheroes pitting Spider-man against Morbius and the Man-wolf. Tom DeFalco's run on FF, Thor, Thunderstrike, and Spider-Girl. Various comics by Butch Guice, specifically Micronauts and Resurrection Man. My Rom comics. Uncollected works of Gil Kane. But, it's getting so that I don't even expect to see those uncollected forever. After all, we're seeing other publishers publishing reprints of Marvel's past licensed titles.

I don't buy that many more new comics, and I get fewer all the time. I mostly get minis, but those have been souring on me as well as more than half seem to drop the ball in the last issue (see Shadowland: Blood on the Streets for the most recent example or Union Jack, Agents of Atlas, and Sable and Fortune for past ones). Waiting for the trade seems to be the best course on those unless by proven creators and talent. Case in point, I'd really like to get the Dead Avengers mini that is spinning out of Chaos War storyline. It features art by one of the best and under-utilized superhero artists out there, Tom Grummet. But, I've seen how this usually pans out, and with the price, I decided I'd just wait until it gets the inevitable trade. Meanwhile, I am getting DeFalco and Frenz's Thunderstrike.

The prices, decompressed storylines and increasingly unrecognizable characterizations further distance me from the various ongoings. One of the few that I never thought I'd seriously consider dropping was the main JSA book. Putting Scott Kolins on as artist almost did the job, but the recent revelations that Blue Devil and Manhunter were being added to the team hammered that final nail. Manhunter is one of the few characters I cannot divorce from the ego of the creator, whose approach to writing is so diametrically opposite my own philosophies, I am not able to buy a book with her in it (Bucky-Cap is another). I find, if I can drop the JSA book, it's easy to say adios to the rest. I'll stick with odd minis here and there, but the desire to actually "collecting" monthly comics is gone.

Another factor, although small one is the move divorces me from the shop I've long done business with. There's a good store in town, maybe even better in terms of layout and availability of material. And they seem excited about comics, enjoy them to no end. Which is good, but it's an excitement on the stuff and creators I find dreary while likewise they will disparage creators I like, often with ill-founded rumors. Not to me, mind you. They don't know me well enough to make that realization. Just stuff I overhear while they are talking with other customers. They carry tons of classic stuff that you don't normally see, but an actual love over the vast history of comics doesn't come through. I will probably go there for my off and on fixes of the most recent issue of this or that comic, but I'll just make monthly trips to Raleigh for my pulp stuff.

Green Hornet Movie: Read this at the comicbookresources site and just couldn't let it pass without commenting. Apparently, Green Hornet director Michel Gondry complained about comic fans walking out on a viewing at Comi-con, saying, "These ones just reinforce the social rules. Their values are fascistic. All those people marching around in capes and masks and boots. The superhero imagery is totally fascist! When you step into this genre, they feel it belongs to them. They want you to conform, or they won't like you. They want the conventional." He also says the film plays fine for "normal people." Ok. So, comic and super-hero fans equal "Fascist" and low-brow humor, bad-acting and Seth Rogen fans equal "Normal". There are just so many things wrong with his statements. Like many of the modern comic writers, he is basically screaming his disdain for the very characters and concepts he has chosen to work with and the fans of those characters. And, he expects people to like it. Oh, wait, he expects they won't because they aren't "normal". So, anyone that doesn't like it is apparently not normal either. I guess that's one way to shield yourself from any honest criticism or self-evaluation.

Notice all of the inherent contradictions in his statements. On one hand he calls them "fascist", then they dress up in costumes, capes and boots, but somehow reinforce social rules and want conventional, none of which go hand in hand with wearing costumes. Yet because of wanting "social rules" and "conventional" they are not normal (which would be about two of the most basic qualities I'd expect from someone that was "normal").

Yet, it also betrays a very fundamental misunderstanding of superheroes in general, their tradition and history and that of the Green Hornet specifically. It shows us a man that chose to make a film without the least bit understanding the source material beyond looking at the 1960s television show and probably reading Watchmen. How else do you make a blanket statement that all superheroes are fascist? Are cops and soldiers by their nature, also fascist? Private detective fiction? Modern comics have gotten away from their roots a bit, to be sure, but superheroes were originally voices against corruption, complacity, the feeling of powerlessness against the larger injustices of the world. Especially those that came along in the 1930s and 40s, growing out of the pulp movement. They were to serve as voices for justice when the law wasn't enough or when the law was part of the problem due to unfair laws, discrimination, laziness, graft and bribes. They were avatars for the normal people, acting in ways we couldn't.

By his nature, the Green Hornet has in his concept to be every inch a success the way that Nolan's Batman movies are. But, it takes a director that understands a bit more of the concepts of the character, that doesn't attack the characters and fans basic integrities by making fun of them and calling them names.

Reviews: Ironically, the week I decide to cut back on comics turned out to be a "heavy" comic week for me. Although, at one time the money I spent and the amount of comics I got would be a normal or light week.

Archie and Friends #150: Not a title I normally get. But, how could I resist a title that features various and extremely minor MLJ characters such as Kardak the Mystic, Fu Chang, Sam Hill, Inspector Bently, the Midshipman Lee Sampson, and Sgt. Boyle as well as appearances by L'il Jinx, Danny in Wonderland, Suzie, Catfish Joe and probably others I don't recognize? Answer, I couldn't. Not normally my cup of tea, but it's great to see them. Maybe with the failure of the Red Circle line at DC, maybe Archie is looking at the reception of the characters presented in a non-reimagined albeit more cartoony form?

Avengers Academy #7: I got this solely for Hank Pym going back to being Giant-Man. He's had a history of costume and name changes and some of those costumes were badly designed, but his turn of being the Wasp was one of the more ludicrous in a history of bad decisions and bad designs. McKone's redesign manages to echo the classic and iconic with a few modern touches (don't really care for the pin-stripe lines as they don't really seem to add anything to the design other than a desperate attempt to make it not look dated). And, the concept and idea behind AA struck me as the most interesting of the various Avenger relaunches, but I just couldn't accept the Hank-as-Wasp idea.

I wish the writing lived up to the fun aspect of the cover or even the idea of Giant Man throwing down with the Absorbing Man. Like all stories featuring Hank Pym, it just cannot let go of the past and all the bad decisions regarding the character. I haven't read an Iron Man comic in years, but surely not every single writer fashions every important story around him focusing on his arm-dealer days, alcoholism, betrayal of friends in Armor Wars and the Crossing. But, that's what we get here. Instead of actually seeing how powerful a character he is, the writer first has to bog him down by rehashing his "relationships" with Tigra and Jocasta, his history of mental issues, his tumultuous relationship with Janet Van Dyne, psycho-babble of rationales for taking on various identities, etc. Given a few extra pages, I'm sure we'd have seen scenes showing the infamous slap, betrayal of the Avengers, and creating Ultron. By the time we get to the actual fight scene, the writer has done a thorough job of making me not liking the character, I don't really care that he wins the day. He's still a putz.

And, his manner of winning... I am all for characters using their powers in new and interesting ways. But, here we have Pym using his powers in ways that defy logic and any sense of his use of them in the past. One of the traditional differences between Marvel and DC was the scope of the powers. The Flash can run faster than the speed of light, vibrate through solid matter, and use his speed to travel other dimensions including time. Quicksilver doesn't even routinely break the sound barrier. Superman has a host of powers, Thor is strong and has a hammer. Almost every scientist in the DCU is as smart as Reed Richards. Plastic Man can make himself into any shape, Reed Richards merely stretches. Thus, you have the Atom who regularly visits sub-atomic worlds whereas Pym rarely gets smaller than, well, an ant. Likewise, his giant-size growing has always been shown to be as routinely "realistic" in scale.  Lately, he's been depicted as tall as buildings, and as such I have a hard time accepting seeing him going through the city without doing extensive property damage or stepping on someone in a densely populated city like New York. We see that several times in this fight. It's not two men twenty feet tall duking it out, which would be impressive enough with the right artist, but hundreds feet tall or more while leaning on suspension bridges for support. It's stupid. If the battle was at that scale, I'd expect to see dialogue and scenes of the hero trying to control the battle. Then to add insult to injury, Pym gives a speech about their being a limit to the physical growth of a human body, which is in reality much less than what's shown here. Don't bring in an actual physics statement while violating it. But, the statement is to show something never shown before as being part of his power and ability, that at some point, you leave physical reality to one of abstract and conceptual. He can grow so large, that he is able to be in the realm of Order and Chaos, Eternity, the Living Tribunal. How large is that, though? He doesn't just magically immediately go from 6 ft to 12 ft or 100 ft. He grows and  shrinks.  This means to get to 12 feet, he must go through 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 feet tall. How tall would he have to grow to actually change his reality? Two-hundred feet? Five hundred? A mile? Imagine what kind of damage that two such growing bodies would do before they make the transition. It's one of those kewl ideas, but is not thought out and is too extreme of a device to be used so casually and easily.

I went into this comic, preparing to like it. Wanting to like it, especially with how many comics I'm not getting these days, I wouldn't mind having one ongoing title to get from Marvel. But, they blew it.

Captain America: Patriot: There's not much to add to this that I've not said about the previous issues. It ends on a happier note than I would have expected and with un-resolved subplot elements such as what happened with Mary Morgan and was she a spy. Done several years ago, I think this book would have been an excellent read and as such, it might stand the test of time. However, in the context of today's comics that are so bent on giving heroes feet of clay, "realistic" costumes and so on, this book doesn't really stand out. Jeff Mace is portrayed as being dull and luke-warm, second rate in his own title. He's likable but in a girl/boy-next-door way when you really want the bad boy or head cheerleader. The scenes where he exerts his personality and shows backbone are too few and far between.

John Byrne's Next Men #3/1: After a long hiatus, an oft requested title is back after ending its last chapter on a cliffhanger. It doesn't matter if the reader has read the original books or not as Byrne incorporates a summation of the previous plotlines in such a way that it's part of the story. All that has gone before is called in to question as Jasmine/Bounce seems to "bounce" between realities and timelines. How much is her dream and how much is time and reality being flux is left open to question by the issue's end. At its heart, the story has always been a time-travel story, something Byrne has professed to loving to do and many of his best works have been time-travel stories: Days of Future Past, OMAC. The fast-paced transitions serve to leave the reader and Jasmine unsettled as to what is really happening and what really happened and that's a good thing. By the end, both new readers and returning ones are pretty much on the same page as to having insight into the real reality. Of course in the last series, often what I thought was going on was not really what was happening. Making this a good series for those people who actually enjoy television shows like Heroes, Lost, No Ordinary Family. Here is the same thing without actually dragging stuff out.

This is the best artwork that Byrne has ever produced, with the possible exception being the aforementioned OMAC mini-series. It incorporates the best elements from the different periods of his career and make them all work seamlessly together. The only disconnect for me is that somewhere along the way, he picked up a cartooning style of portraying mouth expressions at times. It shows up here where Danny is complaining about his back, while it would work in something like a humor strip, it seems out of place in the relative realism that this strives for. But old Jack's beard on the final pages more than makes up for that, it has feathering and texture and no hard boundaries or outlines. Wonderful stuff.

The colors by Ronda Pattison are wonderfully subdued, often providing just the right amount of shading without looking like it's trying to do the penciler's job for him in providing detail.

Sea Ghost: I recently had the fortune of winning this comic from comicbookcatacombs. I like aquatic heroes in general, and this one has a wonderful old school design behind him. The cover is a neat nod to Bronze-Age Marvel books and the art on both it and the alternate back cover is nicely done. The interior story, style and characterizations have a retro Filmation style to them, deliberately so. Unfortunately, I'm not really drawn to comics drawn in animation style. Partly because it's really a faux or pastiche style. Animation has specific concerns and limitations it has to deal with that have nothing to do with comic books. Adapting that style for a print medium is a deliberate limiting style and usually used to communicate things that weren't really part of the intended message of the animation itself. Such as, when animation style is used in comics, it communicates that it will probably be toned and dumbed down in order to be suitable for kids. The Incredibles movie was suitable for all ages, many adults enjoyed it as much or more than kids. You do a comic drawn that way and it's suddenly aimed solely at 8 year olds.

Yet that style is compromised by the heavy use of computer to color and illustrate it, making it look more like a daily web-comic. So, the end result is feeling like reading a collection of strips of a web-comic that was heavily influenced by Alex Toth's work in animation. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not really what I was expecting when looking at the covers and it struggles in some places trying to mix it all into one style. And, the covers and some background scenes show that the artist really does have a wonderful line along the lines of Guy Davis as well as a strong design and layout skills so some panels are really beautiful where it all works. Give me Sea Ghost in a book with a more conventional style (though can still be influenced by the designs of Toth, just try not to actually ape it) and I think you'd have a winner.

Shadowland: Blood on the Streets: If I had known the mini was going to end the way it did,  I wouldn't have bothered. I wasn't getting the main mini-series, because by all accounts reading it was not required to enjoy the related minis and in this it was true. I was drawn by the inclusion of the Shroud, a long time favorite and the Paladdin who I do find interesting on occasion. Misty Knight and Silver Sable, don't really care one way or the other.

Sadly, most of it really seemed to be from Misty's point of view as the various heroes get drawn into investigating murders by the Hand, controlled by Daredevil. I liked the idea. I liked the idea of a good pulp story mixed in with heroes actually trying to solve a crime and the prospect of heroes fighting ninjas.

As it progressed, it seemed someone was setting the Hand up, using them as a scapegoat. Fine. Maybe not the Hand but some other hidden mastermind using ninjas, or at least well-trained killers, as henchmen. Only that's not where it went. Instead, it went for the cliche, a group of disgruntled cops turning vigilante to kill perps who got off using Daredevil and the Hand as cover. Completely anti-climactic considering the likes of the Shroud, Palladin, Misty Knight AND Silver Sable working on the case. Very little for them to really do and certainly no real physical action or viable threat level from the bad guys to the point that it takes the Hand trying to exact their revenge on the rogue cops that give them a reason for really being there.

It furthers the crime by making the head bad cop be Lt. Scarfe, longtime good cop and supporting cast member of Iron Fist. Another story that chooses to make the bad guy be a formerly good guy just out of the blue with no real supporting rationale. It works for the story being told barely, if he was a character never seen before. That would make the story merely mediocre with nothing to recommend it as it covers ground that other works have done better. But, to take a long-standing if minor character and turn him into the villain screams desperation of trying to make an otherwise dull story be shocking and have real ramifications. The character and the readers deserve better than that. There should be a real story behind it beyond just tired of seeing bad guys getting away.

Spider-Girl: I wouldn't have normally picked this up. It happened to be in my bag since I was signed up for the old series with a different character by the same name. And, I shouldn't like it for many reasons. I was a fan of the other series and hate to see it cancelled just so another character can use the name; while the art was clear, the coloring tried to give everything a sorta faux 3-D pixar feel to it, a popular coloring style these days but not my cup of tea as it just looks false and cold to me; several scenes and just the basic concept that just threw me out of the story; and her and her father's motivation is never explained. Yet, I found myself enjoying it despite that. It had a charm to it that is often lacking in Marvel's comics today outside of something with Squirrel Girl.

I doubt it's enough to make me pick it up on a regular basis. There were too many things just glossed over or ignored. It was one thing with May fighting crime, she had superpowers. But, here we have a teen-aged girl fighting crime but with no motivation beyond being a bit of a superhero groupie. She is supposed to have been trained by the best, but that's not really shown or explained. After all, she also once had powers. How much training since then has she had that really prepares her to take down grown men or mediocre supervillains that cops couldn't handle? It's a fine line between suspension of disbelief of having a teen-aged girl manage to outfight and outwit some minor supervillain and the cops commenting on how they had been unable to do so, you either build her up to be exceptional or make the cops seem completely inept. Sadly, the lame villain made the scene veer to the latter. How does she swing through the city, starting from a sidewalk? Did she somehow snag a nearby helicopter? And, is that Spider-man's webbing she's using, otherwise, where is all that line coming from and how is she shooting it? And, even if she's a capable fighter, what kind of father actually would allow his teen-age daughter fight criminals? It's a tired cliche  of irresponsibility when there's an adult hero at least supervising it, how irresponsible is it to just allow her to do it unsupervised?

While not enough for me to warrant to continually get it, I do hope it's successful. I think a book of it's type is needed in the marketplace and fills an underserved niche. However, it's the same niche that the other Spider-Girl filled and she struggled to find a readership and marketplace. Maybe they are hoping with this one tied to the mainstream continuity, it can get needed boosts by crossovers with the Spider-man books and other titles which the other book could not do. Although in my case it was part of what made it attractive, I didn't have to worry about the book getting highjacked by outside storylines.

Thunderstrike #1: Meanwhile DeFalco and Frenz return with another hero. I enjoyed Eric Masterton's turn as Thor and later Thunderstrike. There was a bit of the well-meaning nice every-man about him, struggling to balance job, family and a sideline business as a superhero. In many ways, he was of the same stripe as Peter Parker. He was a nice guy with a big sense of responsibility, struggling to find his way in an increasingly bizarre world without an operator's manual. And, ultimately it killed him. Ads from Marvel suggested that Eric was coming back, but the art and previews pretty much hinted that it's someone else that has inherited his powers and looks. It's no big surprise as it turns out to be his son Kevin who has struggles of his own. He's a teenager and he's never really come to terms with his dad's death. He resents his dad and almost all adults and their involvement in trying to tell him what the right things to do are, he's seen what doing the right thing gets you. He's a supervillain in the making. But, he's a teenager. That means he's full of contradictions and how he deliberately acts and how he instinctively acts are not always the same thing. It's a great beginning, to see how he grows and which paths he ultimately chooses to follow. And, being a DeFalco book, it means there's plenty of action, before the first issue is done, we see the new hero-to-be and a slam-bang fight with the Rhino. More first issues should be like this: introduction of principal characters, external and internal conflicts, angst, and plenty of action of superheroes fighting supervillains.

Time Masters #5: This mini is nearing its end and about the only thing that would make me get the final issue is I got the other four. It might just be easier to list where the comic goes wrong.

1. The cover shows us the climactic reveal from the END of the book. The final scene is played out as the heroes are being attacked by someone moving too fast to be seen. But, thanks to the cover, we already know who it is. Otherwise, has nothing else to do with the rest of the story.
2. After several issues with Claw and non-Titan Starfire, they are returned home without doing much of anything storywise other than to gripe and complain.
3. Likewise, their villains are taken care of in such a casual manner it makes you wonder what the whole point of it was other than to give the heroes something to do other than looking for Bruce Wayne while giving time to relate the story of the Black Beetle's plot to catch up.
4. What happened to Per Degaton, Despero and the Ultra-Humanite? After being in the book from the beginning, they went from interesting classic time-traveling masterminds to mere henchmen and are now gone, disappearing in between issues.
5. Lastly, the art continues to look as if it's drawn with eyes for the sale on the original art market as Green Lantern continues to face the reader while reacting to things and making constructs behind him or the whole group holds a conversation facing the reader instead of each other. Bad storytelling.

Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula: I bypassed the Sherlock Holmes vs Zombies book, but Holmes is a character I love and with the increasing dearth of comics, a mini I thought I could live with. And, I've read several Sherlock Holmes and Dracula books in the past, so a comic is also going to appeal.

What's great about this mini is it doesn't try to be a pastiche. The art doesn't try to be Victorian illustration and the storytelling doesn't try to do it through Watson's eyes. It is using Holmes, Watson and Dracula as characters and being true to their characters without actually pretending to be done by Doyle or Stoker. Watson is drawn as the cliche'd older man while Holmes looks decades younger and a bit more good looking than he should but otherwise it all looks good. The covers to the first two issues have a great sense of design and color that really stand out, almost like vintage movie posters.

Likewise, the writing provides plenty of space for art and action to move the story, recognizing that it's a modern day comicbook with all the strengths and weaknesses of that vs prose (especially Victorian prose). It tells the story in according to the strengths of its media without seeming anachronistic or out of place. It's been years since I read Dracula, but so far the story seems to follow along the lines of Loren Estleman's Holmes-Dracula book, keeping to the story that Stoker told but telling the previously unrevealed roles that Holmes and Watson played from their point of view, changing very little of the original narrative.

The last mini had zombies and revenants, this has Dracula and vampires, will the next be mummies?

Hellboy, Green Hornet, JSA, Hawkman's war crimes

Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice: One has to give Mike Mignola credit. In creating Hellboy, he has arguably created one of the more significant and successful comicbook heroes created in the modern age. And, he did so by following what interested him. He liked drawing monsters. Big monsters and big fights. So, he created a character that was himself somewhat monstrous and a world that had even bigger and badder monsters. His art-style which was already developing into something unique was well-suited for it. Now, quite a few years later, his creation has developed into an empire and universe by itself. It's spawned two successful big budget movies, a short-lived cartoon series, several novels, a regular spin-off comic in B.P.R.D. and regular mini-series with the main character himself. Mignola doesn't do as much of the art these days, but he keeps a hand in and regardless of the writer or artist so that each book still manages to keep to his vision. In the days of constant retcons, complex continuity and overly ornate and rendered artwork, Mignola has managed to still follow the K.I.S.S. method, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Part of the appeal to Hellboy is his relative simplicity and iconic background and design. While the character has had his status quo change and various things concerning his destiny revealed, and a large supporting cast and world developed, the character himself is still basically the same guy from all those years ago. It is also interesting to note that this was all done by not having a regular ongoing series with interminable storylines, flooding the market with different continuity versions, but through minis, specials and one-shots. Along the way, he developed a storytelling style that incorporates the best of gothic horror, German Expressionistic silent films, Lovecraftian menace and even the Hammer films. His art grows more abstract, but still recognizable. He uses non-storytelling panels interspersed through pages to set mood and reinforce the story's symbols and themes. You have to wonder if the people at Marvel ever look at Hellboy and think about what they could have done if they just let Mignola run amok with Thor, the Thing and their horror books. Would Mignola have been just as happy doing the same thing only using characters like the Living Mummy; Deathlok; Blade, the Scarecrow; the Golem; Frankenstein's monster; It, the Living Colossus; Ulik the troll; Adam Warlock; and Morbius the living vampire?

The simplicity of the character has lead him to be able to fit alongside many other characters. At this time, he's appeared with Batman and Starman, the Savage Dragon, Dark Horse's Ghost, Painkiller Jane, John Byrne's Torch of Liberty, and now a bunch of talking dogs and cats protecting a town from supernatural threats in Beasts of Burden. Which is what this review is really about.

I missed out on the first arc of Beasts of Burden, it was halfway through when I first heard about the series and it looked interesting. Yet this one-shot is not marred by that at all. Ivan Dorkin and Jill Thompson manage to create a group of animals with mostly distinct and yet familiar personality types that even being thrown into the world, it feels like suddenly finding old friends. When revealing the villain and that he is a foe the beasts have met before, enough information is given that as a new reader, I don't feel left out of the story, I'm given all the info I need to continue on without a hiccup. The art manages to make the animals expressionistic without devolving into being cartoony, almost Disney-esque in manner. Their variety in looks and personalities is almost bound to remind a reader of a favorite pet, endearing them instantly. The book is lushly colored in a water-color style that's evocative of many children's books, yet not becoming at odds with the supernatural story or the odd guest-star. Instead, it gives the book a certain level of realism, that allows you to buy into the world of talking dogs and cats fighting undead monsters and such. The animals retain a certain cuddliness and cuteness while the danger and threats seem real and mystical.

Overall, one of the best single issue comics I've read in a long, long time. It makes me want to go out and buy the trade of the first Beasts of Burden mini and continue on reading about them.


Baltimore: The Plague Ships #3 of 5: With this issue, I realize there has been a bit of decompression in the story-telling. We're at the middle issue of the mini, but in reality the plot behind the title is just now getting introduced. The first issue introduced us to Baltimore as a character, the current status quo and his traveling companion. The second issue spent quite a bit of space going over the back-story of the events of the novel, explaining just who Baltimore is and what happened to him. This issue we get even some more back-story of what his mission is, why he does what he does and why the vampires and the plague exist. After a storm with giant sky floating jellyfish, Baltimore and Vanessa find themselves washed up on the shore of a graveyard for German submarines as well as other ships full of plague victims and a strange mold. And, the blurb for next issue reveals that even more of Baltimore's back-story will be revealed.

The trade-off though is that this pacing does help maintain the mood, the sense of ever impending doom, that we're looking at the last days of man even though it's set in the final days of WWI. With the aid of the dependable Dave Stewart on the colors, this is a world of bleakness and depression. The sun never shines and mankind has found itself to be small ineffectual beings in the world, subject to arbitrary rules and events. The average man has gone from fighting on the battlefields at the behest of their nation's leaders for unclear political reasons in a war that encompasses the world, to finding out that even this man-made construct of war must give way to unknown disease and plague, and other dark things that man's science is unequipped to explain. Telling a horror story in comic form that can truly scare and linger with you, needs that feeling of mood and impending doom. It has to take time to develop characters that you care about but also can believe that something truly horrible can happen to. So, despite the decompression, I think overall it works for this type of story and I'm interested to see what new horrors can be visited upon the long suffering soldier Lord Baltimore.


Captain America: Patriot #3: The cover is very strong and could almost serve as a lead-in page for the comic, as this was the climactic moment of the previous issue. Yet,  I cannot help but feel it would have been better as the cover to the second issue, setting up an inexorable fate for the end of that issue. It's not like that  Bucky II's fate is uncharted territory and would thus be revealing some new twist. The cover's power is completely undermined by having the day-glo green Hulk in the box in the corner serving as an advertisement for a cartoon. I grew up when the boxes used to have little thumbnails of the characters' heads or full body shot, so I think it would have been kind of neat to see one of the Patriot there. The Hulk is just a little jarring though.

The book maintains its strange dichotomy of being both well-written and well-drawn in some regards and disappointingly cliched in others. Heck, even on the first page you have it. Mace is a reporter, so it's kinda neat to have the first page be a pseudo mock-up of The Daily Bugle relating the story so far in a couple of articles. Yet, the effect is ruined in the main article as the writing style is clearly just a recap and not a faux news article though the secondary article on the page manages to maintain the illusion of a news article. Kesel delivers on making Mace a likable and stand-up guy with a sense of tragedy about him. Yet, Mace is consistently played as being a second banana to almost every one else, even the second Bucky. He has a few nice moments but at no point does he really come off as a really cool character in his own right. Instead, he seems to be defined by his mediocrity, deserving his obscurity beyond a single defining moment. Kesel gets points though for remembering the second Cap's bullet-proof cloak when he was the Spirit of '76 and was a kewl moment to have Golden Girl to be wearing it. An odd bit of synchronicity trivia: she dyes it green. The Spirit of '76's cloak was blue but he was visibly based on the Fighting Yank who had a mystical cloak that gave him powers including being bulletproof. The Yank's cloak was already green. Kesel also manages to tell a story, a complete in each issue while delivering a longer story, something that is a lost art amongst many more critically acclaimed comic book writers. The heavy handed foreshadowing of the previous issue was indeed meant as a red herring as surmised being possible and that there might be more to Mary, something more mundane and less obvious than just going bad.

The art continues the dichotomy in that the cover is very powerful and there's quite a bit of subtlety in the Breitweisers' colors and pencils. The fighting mad Captain America is very well done. But, the toned down colors keep characters like Golden Girl to really stand out and seem, well, golden. For the sake of realism and a nostalgic mood, we have none of the sense of wonder inherent in the superheroes. Yet, we have the Torches standing around in full flame for no reason, in a hospital no less.

Green Hornet Year One #6 of 6: The mini chronicling the origins of the golden-age Green Hornet draws to a close. Storytelling and artwork holds to much of the standards set by the other issues and there's a neat little nod to the movie serials as the last page of a newspaper headline reveals "Green Hornet Strikes". Yet, I found this all anti-climactic in the end, despite a nice long fight scene. It's an origin storyline and so there's only so much that can be done. The status quo is introduced but the hero cannot be so successful that it renders it senseless for him to continue to fight crime. Hence the problem of tying the hero too strongly to a specific menace or mission, in this case organized crime. Instead of opening the way up for many types of stories, it's limiting and confining. What you are almost forced to end with is the hero successful in establishing a status quo but no strong victory otherwise in order to stay within the character and story's themes and limitations. The main reason this feels flat at the end though was despite all the small menaces and dangers met and overcome over the course of the story, there was no real sense of danger or threat to the main story or menace. There was no Third Act twist that upends the hero's plans, that sets things to a feeling of the real danger of unraveling. No sudden new or unrevealed menace or twist to the villains' plans. We know the Hornet and Kato won't die, but there's not enough of other characters established whose lives we should care and fear for that can suddenly be threatened to up the ante.

JSA #44: It's probably saying something that of all the comics I'm reviewing and reading, this is the only ongoing. And, if it was of anyone else other than the JSA, probably wouldn't be getting it.

Marc Guggenheim is a good writer. As a writer for Law & Order, he knows his way around characters, plotting intricacies and dialogue. I enjoyed his brief stint on Aquaman. I wish we saw some of that writer show up here. Much of what I didn't like isn't what I've seen panned on other reviews. I'm not especially bothered by Mr. Terrific discovering himself losing his intelligence. It seems to be a separate sub-plot and that is the whole purpose of plots and stories, to set up obstacles, trials and tribulations for characters to go through and hopefully emerge from the other side. I thought that was well handled showing a Mr. Terrific losing his intelligence is still smarter than most every one else in the room. Nor was I bothered by a previously unknown villain showing up and handing the JSA's butt to them. We need new villains other than seeing Mordru, Karkull or Solomon Grundy trotted out again. Sadly, the way that was done, not handled nearly as well though. Just as, I don't have a problem with Alan Scott being able to be physically taken out, but it's still done badly for several reasons.

First off, we have the fact that this overall plot is similar to the one-off by Robinson revealing Alan Scott heading up a mystical city on the moon. So, already we are covering the same ground in revealing Jay Garrick is slated to be mayor. The Fourth Reich storyline was kicked off with Alan Scott being killed and the JSA/JLA story of him being taken over by the Starheart. So, again we have him taken out first and with incredible ease and somehow being the blamed for what went wrong. And, while it has been established that he is really mostly an energy being, he has a physical body because mentally he still thinks of himself as being human. So, it's no surprise that a sudden attack could kill him or even break his neck or back. But, by the same token, short of immediately killing him or putting him in a coma, it's hard to injure him in such a way that he cannot come back once he's conscious. So, why is he being treated in a hospital as if he's like every body else and obviously with not Dr. Mid-nite overseeing as a ridiculous diagnosis as being paralyzed for the rest of his life would be ludicrous? Then there's the whole bit about them being somewhat surprised by the idea of super-powered terrorists despite a twelve issue series pitting them against Kobra. At some point, the editor should have stepped in.

The comic starts off with a modern day sequence of Jay being chosen as mayor and then jumps back in time to tell how they got to that point. Yet, the comic doesn't end at closing the loop, it doesn't answer the central and simple question posed by the first page. See where I praised for Kesel managing to tell a complete story that was part of the larger whole, this is where this is falling down. We have a deliberate and awkward storytelling device and it's used badly in terms of the issue. One, such scenes are usually ones of cliffhanger manner, rife with angst, questions and durm and strang. However, this is a very mundane scene played almost comically melodramatic. Second, despite the rather simplistic and mundane nature, it fails to deliver the payoff.

Then, we have the villain. As I said, I don't mind he's a new threat. But, he's a complete cypher. We don't know what his powers are, how he's able to handle the JSA with such ease, what his motivations are. He's being held by the CIA, and yet the JSA is sent to handle him with zero intelligence on the guy. Then, we are asked to believe that he can easily reach through the energy constraining bubble generated by Green Lantern, shrug off the magic by Dr. Fate not to mention the attacks by the others yet Lightning has enough juice to take him out?

It's hard to objectively judge the artwork because traditionally, Kolins' artwork can lead me to drop a book. The heavily painted style manages to sublimate the normally negative physical reaction I have to the point that I look at it and can say "it's readable" and be happy with that. There were scenes that confused me such as when the villain uses a sword to take out the t-spheres. The spheres are so obscured by the lightning effect in the earlier panel that I actually didn't realize it was them hitting the villain with the electric bolts since we have a character with that exact power. So, I was confused to see him swing his sword with what looked like blood streaming off of it and wondering how Mr. Terrific was continuing his cold logic internal monologue while being eviscerated. The villain's taking Green Lantern out was likewise poorly done as it doesn't really portray anything. I'm not asking for a graphic scene of the character getting his back/neck broken, but all we see is the villain reaching out and grabbing Green Lantern by the neck and just tossing him aside. Nothing suggesting the possibility of severe physical trauma. My only gripe concerning Wildcat who's left with not much to do is that the art for some reason makes him look to me like he's wearing Get Fuzzy's Bucky cat as a mask.

Here's hoping that the second issue will prove to be stronger than this initial foray.


Nature of Comics today: Here's a panel of one of the current comics put out by DC, the so-called Brightest Day. In it, we have the superhero Hawkman not merely torturing a villain but actually maiming him and tearing off of limbs. This is what passes for superheroes and the return of heroes? Who actually okays this stuff? Seriously, I see a scene like this and there's no way I could support a new ongoing Hawkman series unless there was some fundamental changes being made to the character and his nature. And, why I feel justified in staying away from the larger DCU in general and these massive continuity driven stories and events. And, I wonder why I don't see people on the comic boards reviewing the comics and interviewing the creators asking these questions. How the mighty and noble JSA have fallen.

Random Thoughts: Costume Design and Telepathy

Here is a pet peeve of mine. One of many I guess. The artwork to the left is from JMS' new series Superman: Earth One. Forget that the concept itself is a bit over-done and only serves to dilute the power of the original and we saw exactly where this kind of thinking and publishing goes with Marvel's Ultimates line. No, my peeve here is about the costume redesign as it illustrates perfectly one of the more inane features of 21st Century costume designs. In ten years or so, we'll be talking about the bad designs of the early two-thousands and this will stand out much the same way we talk about 1990's costumes with mullets, shoulder-pads, bulky pouches on every single body part that could conceivably hold one and over-sized handguns that are in inverse proportion to the size of the hero's wrist holding it. This modern costume feature? Piping. Blow the image up and you'll see it, clearly used to define the edges of the chest and overly rendered sixpack abs. Another bit is on his inner thigh.

The stupidity here is that the piping in superhero costumes come from movies and television shows such as "Who Wants to be a Superhero". There the piping makes a bit of sense as its purpose is to do for real life costumes worn by real people what the comic book artist does for the costumes and characters in the comics. In real life, a person wearing tights, the costume isn't going to show off or delineate his muscles. Depending on the costume and fabric, it's going to wrinkle and be a little bulky looking or it's going to flatten the build and muscles (the difference being the George Reeves Superman look and the Christopher Reeve Superman look). Depending on the person's build and proportions and the costume design, the large areas of flat color with no detail may not be all that flattering a look. Thus, piping makes sense. It generally follows the contours of the human body, highlighting the shape and musculature of the body underneath while breaking up large blocks of flat color/no detail area. It's not needed here because you have the artist already working overtime to render every single muscle as if the hero has been flayed open. Here, the only purpose the piping could serve is to re-assure the reader that Superman is indeed wearing a costume and not just having his body painted blue and big "S" sticker affixed to his chest.

No Ordinary Family: This has been a guilty pleasure of mine. I say guilty because in many ways it isn't really very thought out or well done. Chiklis is a police artist, his job is drawing pictures of suspects, yet he routinely goes out to fight crime without the least care in disguising himself, especially since he is physically very memorable looking. Last week's episode showed the dangers of such and he does attempt a bit of a disguise with a hood, showing they are aware of the problem. This week? Back out confronting criminals with no type of disguise. Julie Benz keeps doing things with her super speed that works fine in comics but when you see it played out on the screen, it just screams that in no way it would work. The son deciding to use his math play football makes sense as a decision that a teenage boy would come up with, but again, the reality of it would play out very different. Knowing the angles and what to do is one thing, being able to physically do it is another. Thanks to this week's episode, I got to thinking about telepathy and mind-reading. It is so ingrained in us through tv, comics, classic sci-fi, and movies, I don't think anyone has really given it that much thought. Even when not talking about telepathy, when we see/hear/read people's thoughts in novels, comics and film, it's almost always in printed form, we get their thoughts spelled out for us in complete sentences. To the point, that we take it for granted, forgetting that the presentation is really a short-hand for something that is abstract and nebulous. We don't actually think that way (or only that way) and thus telepathy would probably work very differently.

Think about this, you're driving down the highway with the radio on. Your mind is doing several tasks at once. One, paying attention to where you're driving. You may be singing to the radio, thus you're also thinking of the song and the words coming up and the tune. You're also processing all the fall leaves and color, reading the signs for your exit. The song itself may summon up images of a childhood sweetheart or a scene it's illustrating. Now, as a writer I spend time driving thinking about things to write, or in this case, telepathy. Otherwise, most times, we don't think in concrete direct complete sentences. Trapped in a secret or to tell a lie, we don't think in sentence about what we're trying to cover up, but often what can we say instead and does the person in front of us believe us. If I look at someone that's attractive, I don't usually literally think, "wow, she's attractive" but is a far more visceral response. If I tell you to think of a Pink Panther, are you thinking the words, the cartoon character, Steve Martin, or Peter Sellers or all of the above. A telepath wouldn't hear sentences, and if they did, most of them would be jumbled, stream of consciousness or one word responses. They should pick up the various stimuli the person is being exposed to and maybe in the varying degrees of strength that those are imprinting on the person's thought processes jumbled with words and abstract thought that the person may be going through. A few times, someone will be shown to be telepathic in such a manner, but in those cases, the thought processes are even more fragmented, to be almost all dream-like and nebulous, as if the person being read is high on some kind of mind altering substance, it's all external stimuli but no reading of actual thought processes.

Imagine what it really would be like being a telepath in high school and not being able to turn it off, able to read the minds of every hormone sexually charged and frustrated teen-ager, of all their insecurities, focusing on class subject matter, dreading tests. It would be a nightmare. And, probably not at all conducive to any kind of linear storytelling.

Halloween equals good comics

I am finding that October and the time of Halloween is a time for some good comics. It's been perfect time in past years for dipping into the back-issue trades and picking up some of the Horror-hero characters from Marvel such as Essentials starring Ghost Rider, Doctor Voodoo, the Living Mummy, and the Scarecrow. This year there is a nice smallish volume featuring some of the b/w magazine stories featuring their various vampires including Morbius (one of my favorites, especially when done by Gil Kane). There is also a hardcover sampling of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein stories, a series that ran the gamut of being straight forward horror, to a supervillain, to an almost cuddly affable monster ala Herman Munster, years before that series ever did it.

Angel vs Frankenstein II: John Byrne returns this Halloween to Angel & Frankenstein. As with the first one, the only real drawback is that it could use another issue or two to really bring out the tension and horror as there is so much for one issue to do. It's a period piece, so it has to establish both the physical place but also the status quo and supporting cast and make us care for them and worry about them. Byrne manages in a few short pages to introduce various characters, some with secrets, relationships and pasts all of their own and make them compelling enough that a one issue story just seems too short for them. His version of the Frankenstein Monster is in keeping with the classic novel. He's bizarre and scary looking and presented as a sociopath and not some misunderstood Romantic Hero. The story presents about as definitive a death scene as you can possibly get when dealing with a creature that seems too tough to die.

Batman: Hidden Treasures: Most new fans think of horror comics and they no doubt think of the likes of the dark fantasy of Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Older fans will think of the works of Tom Sutton, Mike Ploog and the legendary Berni Wrightson. Berni is one of those creators like Steranko, Barry Windsor Smith, Dave Stevens and Neal Adams, men who don't have many lengthy credits or long stretches of work to their name, but the little they have done was game changing and influential on so many levels. Wrightson's name is inextricably linked to Swamp Thing, but he's proven to be a great Batman artist. This book presents two Batman stories, one previously unpublished and one that has been published many times when he and Swamp Thing first crossed paths.

The first story part prose and part pin-ups as Batman investigates a serial killer of homeless people and it leads him to Slaughter Swamp and comic's first swamp monster, Solomon Grundy. The prose of the story is a little confusing at first as the identity of the narrator is kept purposely obscure until the end. However, I spent considerable time in the first two pages trying to figure out the point of view of the story, who the narrator was as it doesn't make it clear that the narrator is not supposed to be a witness to the events of the story. It's only by the tone that you first rule out Batman and then Commissioner Gordon and after that point, I was sufficiently hooked into the story to not care. In fact, when the revelation did come, it just seemed a bit too cutesy and I really no longer cared.

Wrightson's art is excellent and strong enough that Kevin Nowlan's usually overpowering inking was kept to a minimum annoyance. Most of the time I could forget Nowlan was the inker until certain panels with people's faces and his habit of going cubist on straight on head-shots of characters by making their mouths look like they are being viewed by an extreme angle, at odds with the rest of the face. It tends to give all his faces this puckered or constipated expression. Plus, his line is often thin and inorganic, something I wouldn't think to match up with an artist like Wrightson whose art is practically synonymous for being natural and organic. However, for the most part the pairing works surprisingly well.

The second story is the reprinted "Night of the Bat" by Lein Wein and Wrightson from Swamp Thing #7, first series. The story has obviously been re-colored which makes its presence known in several places, such as putting a leaf pattern in Swamp Thing's thought balloons. I miss this version of Swamp Thing, when he really was Alec Holland and before he went all supernatural and elemental.

JSA 80-Page Giant 2010: This is one of those books that if I looked at it first I would have returned it. It was a JSA book so it got put in my bag automatically and I did not realize it was not the regular monthly title since it had the Justice Society of America title logo in the usual place. Instead it's just a big book focusing on the legacy characters in short story bits with varying degrees of lameness. The Obsidian story contained the overpowering and scratchy inks of Bill Sienkiewicz in a story that was little more than the writer recapping Obsidian's lifestory and homosexuality, reinforcing his total misinterpretation of Obsidian's story in the JLA. And, as the plot is about Obsidian and his boyfriend trying to adopt and thus the regaling of his life-story, it's lame in that we don't get a reason they are turned down. Especially as the most logical conclusion of him being a superhero is denied. Told what it's not, but not what it is. The Jesse Quick story was passable with nice art but otherwise unforgettable. Mr. Terrific's story was confusing as it starts with a guy in a coma, I at first figured everything after that was meant to be a flashback on how he got to be in a coma. Instead, it was supposed to be about him coming out of the coma. A pity the artist drew him asleep then. And, we see Mr. Terrific now flying with some kind of jet-boots? Cyclone's story reinforces her contradictory nature. In many ways she's annoying and she's meant to be and yet I find her all the more likable and fresh for that. The best thing about the Wildcat and son story was that for once his son didn't annoy me in a bad way too much and the artwork was far better than I had seen by Williams in JSA All-Stars. Sand and Dr. Fate were just boring, to the point that I kept nodding off in between word balloons in mid panel. Then there's the whole idea that the latter story is telling readers it's ok to commit suicide in order to be reunited with the ones you love.

Magnus #2: A solid comic that updates the future of Magnus for modern sensibilities but still has enough of the style, themes and background to be familiar with the other versions. The artist at times seems a little overwhelmed at times in depicting the action scenes or small things like a character's hairstyle. As the story concerned itself with white slavery and exploitation of women, the comic veers close to being too adult and prurient when it doesn't really need to be.

We get signs that in the future, there are other threats other than just the robots, including cyborgs and what appear to be aliens that consider human meat a delicacy. This brings a needed variety to Magnus' future world. Even more development of that world is needed, though. The book was originally created in the 1960s, we could use a book that is more multi-cultural, with more strong female characters other than Leeja who offers herself up as victim-bait this issue.

Warlord of Mars #1: Calling the book "Warlord of Mars" and I'd expect that ideally, John Carter would be on Mars by the third page. I don't think you need to drag out his past, it's not really that important. However, this is a Dynamite book so I don't really expect to see John Carter get to Mars until the fourth issue, they like their decompression too much and dragging out the origins of the characters.

Surprisingly, it didn't bother me too much with the first issue in that they decided to tell a dual story giving us the backgrounds of both Carter and Tars Tarkas so we see still get quite a bit of Mars. I think the backdrop at least gives us an idea of what kind of man John Carter is, fiercely loyal and quick to fight if the situation demands it. What is missing is the idea from the books that Carter is some kind of immortal with little memory of his past but always finding himself embroiled in conflict and battles.

Sadowski delivers on the art and it's not so colored that the pencils are lost. However, the story is a bit confusing as Union Soldiers are colored to be wearing grays, the short-hand identification of the Rebels. Maybe the colorist didn't know that the bad-guys in the story were supposed to be the Northerners and not the South for a change?

Multiple covers, so I chose the Joe Jusko one myself. Reminded me of when I first discovered John Carter, Deja Thoris and Tars Tarkas and those paperback covers.

Legend of the Guard, Baltimore, and Dr. Solar

Was cleaning up for my girlfriend's visit and came across a few books that I had thought were worth recommending and somehow just fell by the wayside.

Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #3: Mouse Guard is one of the best Independent comics out there and something that is designed to appeal to a wider range of ages and audiences than your typical superhero comic now put out by the major companies. I normally don't get it for a couple of reasons. One, the price on them always seemed a bit high to the actual time it would take to read it. Two, the art which I like on browsing the comic I discovered didn't really work for me in large dosage after I sat down to read one of the trades that I checked out of the library. In small doses, for a page or two, I find the art and print quality striking, but I cannot put my finger on why it doesn't work for me in the longer form. However, Legends of the Guard #3 has smaller stories by other creators such as B.P.R.D.'s and The Marquis' Guy Davis. The other creators in this issue I'm not as familiar with, but the stories are all top notch, most with a humorous bent. "The Ballad of Nettledown" by Nate Pride has a certain Jeff Smith feel in places and delivers a wonderfully whimsical tale. The final story is a truncated adaption of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" with appropriately gloomy art, perfect for reading in October.

Baltimore: The Plague Ships: A while back, Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden wrote the novel Baltimore or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. As a novel, it fits firmly the style of Mignola's original Hellboy comic book tales though it does not take place in that world. Instead, its action is in the final days of World War I, where Captain Baltimore discovers something worse than the War, vampires who are responsible for widespread sickness and deaths that are being passed off as a plague sweeping England. Plus, he earns the personal enmity of one that he had dared to defy and scar during the War and whom he vows to hunt down and kill. Most of the novel, Baltimore is little seen, as it centers largely around several of his friends that are waiting for him in an inn and their sharing stories of horrors and terrors they have personally seen and experienced.

"The Plague Ships" is a mini-series set largely in the missing years of the novel, after Baltimore's experience in the War but before his climactic meeting with his friends and the final confrontation. As such, the mood and atmosphere of a world that is gray, dismal, and claustrophobic in its feel of impending doom is carried over from the novel. The second issue slows down the story to take time to visibly recount Baltimore's war-time experiences and encountering the vampire. The art by Ben Stenback is not as stylized as Mignola's but it grounds the story with a relative down to earth realism that underscores the horrors. Colorist Dave Stewart knows his craft well, how to use color to supplement the mood and atmosphere of the story without being distracting.

Another beautiful book by Mignola and the people at Dark Horse is the slim hard-cover volume The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects. The book collects various one-shot stories and stories produced as part of anthologies: "The Amazing Screw-On Head", "The Magician and the Snake", and "Abu Gung and the Beanstalk" (which is actually re-done and expanded for this volume). To round it out are also a trio of stories done specifically for this book and a sketchbook which are always fun to look at. It is also one of the most affordable buys around, $17.99 at full US price. That's cheaper than many trades and this actually has substantial new material and will look good on any bookshelf.

The only drawback is a backpage of advertising for other books by Dark Horse and collections of Mignola's. Not something I look for in my hardbacks.

Lastly, also from Dark Horse, is the trade paperback collecting the first seven issues of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom. First published in 1962 and 1963, one can see how the title reflects the times but manages also something different. Think of the first issues of Green Lantern, the Flash, and the Justice League. Think of the first few stories of Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers. While Stan Lee talks about how he was trying to write superheroes for a sophisticated audience, Western's take on superheroes seemed to really walk the walk. Doctor Solar was the type of science fiction hero one would almost expect to see on television. His powers had a severe drawback that provided tension between him and his would be girlfriend. The stories themselves were more along the lines of popular spy shows or science-fiction shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. There was something more literary and even more real-world than anything going on at DC or Marvel. While Charlton had the similarly powered Captain Atom whose appearances bracketed these stories, it might be their Peacemaker that came closest to reflecting a real-world superhero. Added to that are early stylistic covers by Richard M. Powers reflecting many of his science fiction covers at the time while the later painted covers by George Wilson was reminiscent of many 1950s lurid paperback covers (I believe he also painted the covers of a few Phantom paperbacks). Wilson painted covers for much of Western Publishing's line, easily separating them visibly from the standard comic book covers of the other companies on the racks. His covers alone are often worth getting the books for, Dark Horse should do an art book just collecting all his various covers, though that may mean working out a deal from the property holders of Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Dark Shadows, etc.

Likewise, the artwork by Bob Fujitani and Frank Bolle are decidedly not flashy as Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, or even Don Heck. This is interesting as in the 1940s, Fujitani was one of the more bombastic and stylistic artists around. Otherwise, the illustrations looked like it belonged more to a slick magazine than one of a superhero. Even when he finally does get in a real costume like a more standard superhero, it's still very utilitarian looking and possessing wrinkles and folds.

Looking back, at least to this volume, the stories might seem a little dull. His powers are ill-defined and powerful yet often leaving him vulnerable to wearing himself out. In fact, that was the biggest danger, no one was really a direct threat. In that way, the stories were not too dissimilar to the adventures of various television heroes in the 1970s where we saw the likes of the Bionic Man, the Invisible Man, and the Incredible Hulk taking on fairly mundane type threats. Yet, it's this grounding that makes the character and stories seem more serious about the science and basic realism that it's going for. It's not the 1950s science fiction and characterization still fueling DC nor the over-wrought teen-age angst and pop culture science fiction storytelling that drove Marvel. Doctor Solar and the rest of their line looked like they were truly offering something for more discriminating readers.

And, this carries over into the trade's appearance as well. With the cover being a reproduction of one of Richard Powers abstract covers on the front and the more pulp-paperback influenced painting by George Wilson on the top half of the back, even the trade looks like it takes itself a bit more seriously than most comic book reprints.

I'm glad to see Dark Horse reprinting these in paperback as well as the Archives, which are just a bit out of my price range.

Todays Comics Looking to the Past

Since I probably won't be getting any new comics this week and I've not talked about comics in a little while, here's my chance to plug away.

Captain America: The Patriot: Two issues have come out and I'm conflicted on the book. General consensus on the web seems to be as well. Most seem to praise the artwork over the writing (I guess because Kesel is not Brubaker) whereas I'm a bit the other way around. Kesel does seem to be writing Brubaker-lite, but I think he does an admirable job at writing the history of a man whose history is generally known. He succeeds in doing so without actually changing known facts and keeping the focus and point of view on Jeff Mace and his view of things. The art is passable in most places and is in keeping in toning down the gosh-wow factor of superheroes and their costumes that passes for good superhero art these days as half the artists seem embarrassed at drawing superheroes.

The second issue is where it really begins to falter. The problem is that while it is telling a good character-centric story and makes Jeff Mace seem like a decent and likable lunkhead, it and the art never get across why the characters are cool characters. The highlight of the whole issue is when he gets fed up with Namor's snarkiness and attitude and punches him. There you see his passion. Otherwise, as soon as Mace puts on the Captain America costume he becomes a second-rate hero in his own book. Every story of the fill-in Captain Americas center around why they were bad Captain Americas. As this is his chance to shine, it would be nice that the focus went the other way, why he was such a good choice for Captain America. Maybe the best choice for the time period. There are little bits where he shines such as the afore-mentioned conflict with Namor, but otherwise it is more about his shortcomings.

Other little things that bug me, Kesel seems to forget that the Bucky he's writing is not the original Bucky, at least in the way he writes him. Bucky comes off as a better fighter and hero and constantly berating Patriot-Cap, even though Patriot would have been a superhero for much longer. And, this Bucky has only been Bucky for just a couple of months longer than Jeff has been Cap, so it seems especially strange for Bucky to constantly be talking and acting as if he has so much more experience.

Kesel also uses the term "blue ticketed" to explain the discharge of a friend of the Patriot's and his subsequent suicide and why Jeff cannot appear as Captain America at the guy's funeral. It is also used to explain why Jeff would never become the Patriot again as his appearance and impassioned speech at his friend's funeral in the guise of the Patriot would make that identity a pariah. However, what Kesel doesn't do is explain what "blue ticketed" actually meant. He gives us the effect, but the closest he gets to the cause is the Whizzer asking if his buddy had a girlfriend. A Blue Ticket discharge was a way to get undesirables ie blacks and homosexuals out of the service without it actually being a formal dishonorable discharge and such a discharge haunted the men back in civilian life. Sure, we don't want clunky exposition, but it could have been handled a little better.

One of the pleasures was seeing the focus on Miss Patriot in this series. Appearing only once in the Golden-Age, here and her identity as a fellow co-reporter of Jeff Mace's she plays a central role. From the start of the second issue, we get the hints of bad things to come, that is if you know the history of Captain America and Bucky. After WWII, there was an explosion of good-girl art and characters. Most of them were jungle queens, but Timely/Atlas/Marvel explored shapely female heroines along the lines of Sun Girl and Golden Girl. Thinking that Captain America might do better with an adult female sidekick, Bucky is shot by a lady criminal called Lady Lavender and Cap recruits the help of Golden Girl who is Betty Ross, a long recurring character and possible romantic interest in the Golden-age Captain America tales.

That's a lot of threads being tied together in this one comic. We see Mary/Miss Patriot several times with a mention of her Lavender perfume each time. One discussion even centers around Jeff accusing her of hoping that Bucky is shot so that she could become his partner. Then you factor in that Jeff is generally oblivious of her romantic feelings for him and that he pretty much ruins her career as Miss Patriot when he destroys the Patriot's reputation. Mary's path is obviously becoming a sad tragic one. And, when Bucky is shot at the end of the issue with the smell of lavender in the air, Cap will get a future female partner but it will not be Mary. What we don't really get is the feeling that Mary has gone over the edge. We see her as being sad, but we don't actually see the bitterness. You feel sorry for her but don't see that final step or sign that she has gone over the edge, it's a huge gap in the portrayal of her characterization. It might be Kesel just trying to be coy for just a little too long, or a sign that she's not really the villainess (after all other women probably wear the same perfume). Either way, it's obviously going to be a story that doesn't end well for Jeff or Mary.

DC Universe Legacies #5: I had sworn off this book, didn't get issue four because the writing had so many holes and internal discrepancies in it that it was a chore to read to try to figure out exactly what the point of it was. However, issue five shows this book's perspective of Crisis on Infinite Earth's and with it, the wonderful George Perez doing what he does best: drawing scores of superheroes on model in big battle scenes. Not only that, we get an appearance by one of my favorite wonky silver-age characters Ultra, the Multi-Alien, who was left out of the original mega-mini. Couple that with a great little back-up with art by Walt Simonson teaming up Space Ranger, Adam Strange, Captain Comet and Tommy Tomorrow. Other than Adam Strange, the others don't have much to do, but it's great seeing them again looking the way they should.

And, as I usually come down hard on colorists, this is a book where the colorist gets it. His skin tones are natural and subtle, no obvious banding to the point that under most lighting conditions, people's skin appears only to have two tones, you generally don't have bright highlights on skin. No blurring of speed lines and edges of super-speed characters, no obvious texture fills, etc. In general, no special effect that actually draws attention to itself, the coloring instead serves to help the art to tell the story, something important in artwork that's dense like Perez.

While the writing still makes as little sense as ever (we have references to Judomaster as a modern day hero and Captain Atom in a costume he didn't actually wear in the DCU other than as part of government cover-up suggesting a career that was longer than it was), it's at least a book that looks good.
JSA #43: It read like a setup issue by a writer who is not the regular writer of either principle character of the story or title with a plot that has similarities to the upcoming story arc by the new regular writer, the JSA take over the running of a town. Just as Robinson's JLA/JSA arc featured heavily Obsidian going bad/being taken control of immediately after a series culminating with Obsidian stating that would never happen again. Serious, what is the editor doing on this book?

I think part of this was to actually give some kind of reason that Robinson's storyline mattered. Because, otherwise, it's no big deal that Obsidian and Jade cannot be in proximity because other than their days as part of Infiniti Inc, they rarely are featured together, each following different paths and teams. And, she's been dead. So, he needed this bit of durm und strang to make it seem like what just happened was this really big deal. However, just how much time has passed between issues? For everything that Alan Scott has done on the moon it would have to be close to a year at least, that he's been able to master talking to different races in their speech patterns, broker truce treaties with various worlds and realms AND research with Fate Obsidian and Jade's condition and the various futures.

Project Superpowers: Chapter Two #12: The final issue of the second series, the big Claw battle seems almost like an afterthought. In many ways it's a retread of the previous battle with Zeus, the heroes fighting a giant god-like being that they don't have the power to kill. The Claw battle has a bit more of a philosophical/moral dilemma in that his body is made up of innocents and thus to defeat him means killing or condemning thousands of people who don't deserve to die, drawing parallels to dropping the Atomic bomb to end the war with Japan. It's an anti-climactic ending though. Part of that was rendering the heroes ostensibly immortal and another that the Claw is such an ill-defined threat. And, you have the heroes apparently readily accepting Dynamic Man and Power Nelson into the folds despite their traitorous crimes.

In Chapter One and the Death Defying Devil minis, the Claw was a terrorist organization and an almost demonic entity that possessed others. It was a storytelling device that could have been used to fuel quite a few different type of stories or a long series in and of itself ala the mostly excellent JSA vs Kobra mini. But, much of that is dropped in making him a more physical threat. He goes from some kind of long plan insidious goals to one of more direct physical confrontation and easily handled. The actual terror of what he is and what he does doesn't really come across as it has been too far into the background of the storyline that focused more on Zeus and the identity of DDD. What could have been a heart and gut wrenching tale is ho-hum. After all, the Claw only absorbed one person we could even possibly care about.

The drawing AND the coloring improve. In a book like this, cannot really separate the two, but for the most part, the two do merge to make single whole. Although, the style has its shortcomings such as a page that has a 15 panel grid of single heroes in battle. The panels are too small, the detail needed too tight for such over done coloring.

Time Masters: Vanishing Point: The mini suffers from not having any clear direction or plot. We know the over-arcing plot, that the small group of heroes are traveling through time to rescue Batman. But, as his return is the focus of another book, that's obviously not the point of this one. So, instead, we have a battle alongside heroes of other times against other ill-defined threats. Meanwhile some classic mastermind villains are exploring the remains of Booster's headquarters, Vanishing Point, for some clues and power to reshape time. Despite these villains each being scientific masterminds, they are give little to do. The Ultra-Humanite is used mainly to being a short-tempered foil and for his brute strength. Jurgens does little to really explain or characterize many of the characters, some of whom who haven't appeared in comics for decades.

With the second issue, I noticed the art looked off. It looked a bit like Jurgens but it seemed to be more of all of his shortcomings and not his strengths, that bodies looked stiff and disproportionate, reminding me of bad Jim Starlin in places. I looked at the credits and saw that Jurgens was only the layout artist and with two different finishers, explaining the inconsistencies. With issue three, we still just have Jurgens on layouts but at least only one guy doing the finished art. However, it still looks like "bad Jurgens" art. One of the big problems is that with both issues, the art is trying hard to have all the principle characters with their bodies facing the reader. Heroes are constantly fighting threats behind them and looking over their shoulders, having conversations while not facing each other, and so on. One panel has Booster and Starfire talking about being surrounded. Not only are they hardly surrounded, but half of their foes are not even looking at them. It looks more like a group of people just milling around than any kind of threat. The one good news is that either the coloring is not as bad with the computerized effects or it just distracts you from it.

And, why is the Black Beetle almost completely red?

The only reason to get this book is the chance to see Bronze-age characters like Claw and the original Starfire, Despero and Per Degaton in their original looks. For that, I'm a sucker.

Peter Cannon, Whereforth Art Thou?
The story goes that shortly after DC canceled his series and he made a couple of appearances in Justice League Task Force, the rights to Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt returned to his creator Peter Morisi, shortly before he died. As such, he was the only character that was part of a Justice League book to not appear in the JLA/Avengers mini. Of course, there was some justification that that the heroes that appeared in Task Force were never actual JL members and so didn't require an appearance, but he is still the sole notable exception. Even Hourman from the same story was in there.

However, we have Thunderbolt appearing in TWO different DC books this past month. One, alongside the other Charlton heroes in DCUniverse: Legacies #5 which admittedly has other problems in the same panel: the WWII Judomaster and Captain Atom appearing in his red, blue and silver outfit when he wasn't really on the scene at this time, in this costume, both being government fabrications. Meanwhile in Justice League: Generation Lost, we have a retelling of the scene in Kingdom Come where the Charlton heroes alongside Magog track down the Parasite who uses his powers to split open Captain Atom and setting off an atomic explosion and is pretty much the kick-off event of that mini. In the comic, Thunderbolt is identified by name and is show in the more GA Daredevil influenced costume.

Makes you wonder what is going on. Do we have two blatant examples of editors just not doing their jobs and allowing the exact same copyright infringement? Is the original story about the character's rights reverting to Morisi just a comicbook legend? Did DC buy the character back? Of the three, I'd say the latter is the most unlikely. Why buy the rights back and debut him back into the DCU in what are largely throwaway scenes where the character does absolutely nothing? Either of the other two are the most likely though it's strange to see him appear in two completely different books out of the blue. But, no love for the Son of Vulcan (I like the name, design and concept of the character, his actual comic though was beyond bad).
Black Terror Canceled. Been seeing references that the Black Terror book has been canceled. A shame but not surprising. The book never gelled, the plotlines and the stories never actually developed the character other than to add kewl pirate motif elements. What could have been a decent book about a super-powered Batman type character fighting super-criminals and bizarre mysteries never became anything more than a book about a perpetually angry and gruff hero. No supporting cast or characterization was developed over just following up plot threads left over from the Superpowers book itself. A shame as I believe Dynamite was right in focusing on him as a character to launch a single character title. He has one of the more iconic costumes, names and storytelling potential. If only they had approached it as they were telling a single character comic and not a "comic universe" comic and actually looked at the source material that made him such an enduring character and concept to begin with and not just the revisionist ill-tempered Black Terror of Superpowers.

The Return of the Originals: On the subject of pulps, I have started my own blog reviewing various pulp novels and characters. So far, two entries. One, a Secret Agent "X" novel and two, the Doc Savage rift Thunder Jim Wade and his final novel. This blog started off as a pulp and comic review site, but it's difficult to do both subjects justice in one place. Plus, the overlap may not be all that great as many fans and readers of pulps don't translate to being fans of modern comics, as we will see below.

Moonstone is getting ready to launch what they call the "Return of the Originals", ie seeing many of the original pulp heroes into their line of comicbooks. They've already been using Domino Lady although the first issue failed to me in any way other than just being badly done and the Spider has been appearing in some illustrated prose "comics". They have also published a couple of really good books, one being radio scripts of Doc Savage written by Lester Dent and an Avenger anthology of short-stories by modern writers, most of whom get the character far better than anyone at DC does (it could have used an editor overseeing the original stories as many centered around introducing various characters from Richard Benson's past).

This website has a host of interviews with people involved in reprinting and writing modern pulp stories and comics as well as many of the people behind Moonstone's upcoming foray (you'll have to scroll down to get to them).

One of the standard questions they ask is how the interviewee feels about DC's take on Doc and the Avenger and modern revisions/reimaginings of the characters. It's almost funny at the spin that each writer gives as they are all doing pretty much the same thing to different degrees. I give Hopkins a break with the Golden Amazon because she did have a couple of different irreconcilable back-stories. Sort of like the Alec Baldwin Shadow movie which tries to combine both the radio Shadow and the pulp Shadow into one character. The creators behind the Green Ghost and the Phantom Detective both talk about using as much of the original published history as possible. But, both decide to give them powers. While the writer of the Moon Man changes the gender of his chief assistant for no good reason (there's already a capable love interest in the original stories).

The Ghost gets his new powers through a new mask and the Phantom Detective gains abilities through using performance enhancing (and mind altering drugs). What's really funny about this is the Phantom Detective writer brings out all sorts of psycho-babble to justify it, that he feels he's being made obsolete due to the explosion of costumed heroes with real powers. This is sorta true meta-fictionally. The pulp heroes did give way to the costumed comicbook heroes. In fact, the Phantom Detective was also in the comics as his publisher was one of the big companies at the time. HOWEVER, Moonstone does not have that superhero-universe. There are no true super-powered heroes bursting on the scene unless this writer creates them. Plus, it's a flawed argument in that the presence of superheroes does not make police, soldiers, firemen and detectives superfluous. It's a writer that truly does not get the character or subject matter.

Likewise, the interview concerning the Black Bat goes along the same lines. The character debuted the same time as Batman with a similar look. More importantly though, his origin was pretty much lifted for both Dr. Mid-nite and Two-Face, at a trial he has a vial of acid thrown at his face which scars him (and leaves him blind). After a secret experimental surgery, he discovers he can see in the day and night and with a small gang of aides, he fights crime. He's not above killing criminals especially the ringleaders beyond the touch of the Law, but he doesn't set out to kill them. Of course in the one online preview, we see him killing drug dealers execution style and driven by voices in his head. Yet, this complete revision of the character isn't seen as being the same as Azzarello's handling of Doc Savage? Maybe it's because they talk about how much they love the characters vs his professed disdain of the source material.

What's sad is that this was not their approach to the Phantom. They wrote the character as he was classically but with modern threats and credibility. The character stayed in keeping with the way he was portrayed in the strips. You could go from their comic to the newspaper to old reprints and still see character as being completely recognizable, that you're obviously reading about the same character. But, their interviews are along Ross' and Dynamite's promos and talking about their Phantom comic. "Here's how much I love the character, so I'm going to change all this stuff about him."

Secret Agent "X" is about the only one we know that's going to be appearing that they haven't talked about. "X" has a lot of potential, especially as his past is a complete mystery so there's plenty that could be developed. However, based on what we've seen so far, I expect a lot to be changed concerning what the character already is.

A little interesting tidbit, the principle characters we know are being used, this is not their first time in the comics. As noted, the Phantom Detective appeared in the Golden-age comics, mostly intact. Secret Agent "X", Black Bat, and Captain Future all had their first stories pretty much straight-forwardly adapted though they all became Phantom Fed "X", the Mask, and Major Mars (the Captain Future id was used by a "standard" superhero). The Moon Man also made it into comics but with a name and costume change to that of the Raven. The Ghost got re-imagined in comics as superhero magician with true magic powers, dumping much of his pulp influences.

The comic store I frequent actually has several pulp fans, about five I think. Plus, he just got one more whose tastes seem to mirror mine own in modern comics only he gets even fewer than I do. However, he's only getting one issue each of these books and it's not going on the shelf. As the longest customer apart from the owner, more than likely I'll get first refusal. But, it doesn't speak well when the books don't even seem designed to appeal to those who should be their most core basic audience. Especially considering that pulp reprints are fairly popular these days and very pricey. If we're willing to spend $12-$16 for a forty year old reprint, we might be very willing to buy a comic for a fraction of that price if it at least played fair with us instead of pulling a bait and switch.