Comic Reviews

Adventures of Superman #3: Got this as more of a protest buy, to support a more classic take of Superman. The art looked passable, if over the top and definitely over-computer colored. 30, 20 years ago, this story might have been considered pretty good. It's exploring some of the same ground that Alan Moore used to do and Busiek does regularly, but unfortunately it fails miserably at it. The conceit is that it is a look in the day of life of Superman, talking about how other people dream of flying, which of course he doesn't.

One of the problems is that it is setting up a false premise in order to turn it on its ear. In this case, to explore how Superman is not like us, only to make him all that human at the end. Except, the whole set up does too good a job at alienating us from Superman. He's too super, too beyond human concerns for the twist at the end to pay off.

The other is conflicting themes. Again and again, it talks about flying. But, the story is really about how FAST Superman is. He flies to an inhabited world under his own power, he does all these various big epic adventures in under an hour, he can hear super-fast, move so fast to be invisible, etc. If taken place on Earth, it would be a Flash story.

Last, there's just a lot of stupid writing going on. It would be invisible to a kid reading it, but keep in mind this is a "serious" story, it's meant for us to THINK about Superman and what it would be like to be Superman. He can hear things we can, and thus pick and choose what he responds to. He hears a call from an alien Green Lantern and flies across millions of miles in minutes. Then, he doesn't wait for an explanation but just does his own thing. Why she calls him and not a score of Green Lanterns that might be closer? Who knows.

He then stops a war on an alien planet. Here the writer shows Superman acting with complete naivete in his approach to stopping the war. Not to mention that it raises the ugly head if he can do that on an alien planet, why can he not put an end to wars here? Because, the reality is war cannot be stopped or resolved in that simple of a manner. Plus, Superman is lucky in that he can recognize what alien libraries look like, can decipher their language and styles instantly and that this advanced race still uses books with pages!

Then he's basically kidnapped to Apokolips. This section isn't really written badly but it does show shortcomings of the artist. He gets the characters to look more or less on model, but nothing about Apokolips looks Kirby-esque. You'd think most artists would leap at the chance to design a couple of alien worlds and races on their own AND be able to riff on Kirby, but nothing there. Then he gets back to Earth to save some un-named man from being shot and Lois from being blown up (another badly drawn scene as the action of that panel moves from right to left while we read left to right so it takes a second look to actually read the scene correctly).

What's really funny is how this comic could be lampooned. Superman constantly acts, but is too busy to stop and analyze, too busy to talk to anyone. His walking Lois Lane to work takes precedence over actually talking or taking time to think. It results in almost disaster at several points and makes Superman seem more of a Super-prick know-it-all busybody butt-insky. By the time, I was done I had in my head comments being made by all the other characters, of how he actually screwed everything up and made things worse, not better.

A good idea and germ of a story... sloppy execution on every front though.

Astro City So good to have this back as part of my regular reading material. Busiek does a good  job at updating, acknowledging that time has passed for characters, especially after the really long arcs. The first issue is an interesting look at Gaiman/Morrison-esque weirdness and meta-fiction and followed by a two parter looking at the support staff for Honor Guard, who fields the phone calls asking for help. Solid storytelling by Busiek and Brent Anderson, again the weakest part being the coloring, often too dark or working too hard to make faces and things look 3-D or realistic which only competes with line-work.

Buck Rogers Ok, this comic is pretty much complete crap. See, on Free Comic Book Day, they released a free comic featuring a classic Buck Rogers story. While a little primitive in style, that story was amazing complex, creative and dense. I can only assume that it was released to show that it's 180 from the direction they were going. Knowing Chaykin was involved, knew it was going to largely depend on which Chaykin showed up. The Chaykin that likes pulp related stuff or the one that cannot resist in twisting it, making it adult and somewhat sleazy.

While Chaykin at least gives Buck a perm so that he looks differently from American Flagg/Dominic Fortune/Blackhawk/Nick Fury, his Buck is the same prickish thug that he normally writes. Actually, that's not fair. Buck is a fanatical Communist prickish thug who even actually calls someone "comrade". Not making this up.

On the very first page we have swearing. Nothing extreme, very moderate, but to not even get past a first page... Then on the second, we have a nice blood splatter from a breaking nose. A little more swearing and a couple bloody exploding heads later, the writing is pretty much on the wall. I'm not a prude, swearing and blood & gore is fine if you're doing a comic like The Walking Dead. When it's applied to Buck Rogers, it comes across as superficial, trying to be edgy without providing content of substance to justify it. What's funny is that some words are more acceptable than others as when this version of Black Barney swears while using a current day exclamation it gets symbolized: What kind of chicken#%*s outfit is this? Seriously, that's where you draw the line?

The plot is a bit back to basics, but it is not only simplistic, instead of making Buck different from Flash Gordon, it makes him MORE like him by taking his storyline: that the various gangs of people left over from America are too busy fighting each other that they will not unite against their common foe and it's going to take Buck to do so. Now, the original stories you did have the Han taking over America and the people existing in small groups called orgs or gangs. But, the problem was of disparity of technology, strategy and tactics. It was Buck's knowledge and experience as a veteran that made him into a leader able to organize the groups into effective fighting units not the groups fighting amongst themselves.

The comic has the honor of being one of those that I really wish I could return and ask for my money back.

Captain Midnight Another return of a really old character. Fairly solid story dealing with the man suddenly yanked from his past and discovers a complex world. Because of a secret mission he was on and the time travel involved, he's sorta wanted by the Government because of stuff he knows. Of course, he apparently doesn't trust people because of what he knows as well. It's a bit Captain America crossed with Nick Fury and James Bond and an enjoyable comic. The only really stupid part is when some of the agents go rogue, they gain glowing green skulls and no one reacts to this. They are shocked that the men are traitors, but not by the glowing green skull heads?

Five Ghosts The book often feels as if being written backwards, constantly giving information or story developments that should have probably occurred earlier in the book. In this case, we get a major revelation in the last issue just how unsympathetic and criminal of a character that Fabian was before his curse as he's shown to willing betray a partner and shoot him in the back over a treasure. The art and its storytelling continues to be top notch, but as a mini-series it reads like a rough draft. Trying to be clever with its structure and doling out secrets but not really organic or doing so in the best possible way. The announcement at the end promises it to continue from this mini as an ongoing and I really want to like it as it is full of potential. But, the writer needs to actually write, get at the meat of the story and not rely so much on the art.

Half Past Danger Another mini-series with a great high concept: WWII, island of dinosaurs and an Irishman, a super strong Yank, a British woman and a Japanese Ninja go to it and fight the dinosaurs and figure out what the Nazis want with them. Sadly, the writing isn't quite up to par. The first issue alone, we have the Irishman leading a platoon on the island. His squad gets eaten and he comes back but it seems as if he's not believed and so he's drinking himself to death until he meets up with the Yank and Britisher and a bar room brawl begins. It gives us the set-up and the major points of the plot, but what it doesn't tell is the STORY. We don't get to know the individual soldiers, they aren't drawn or written in any distinctive way to tell them apart or to care for them or their relationship with the leader. The author needs to go back and read some of those old war comics by Robert Kanigher and see what he actually did in so few pages. Just because it's a multiple part story doesn't mean that the individual issue shouldn't have its own story to tell, that you should care for the characters beyond laughing at the kewl bits of attitude. And, someone should kick the colorist in the butt and tell him to stop doing color knockouts on a blond person's head but nowhere else. It makes his hair look like it belongs to a different sort of reality than the rest of his head and body and the hair of everybody else.

Overall, it is a fun comic mini in that it's a bit like a roller-coaster ride. But, it reads like it's being written or developed for hopes for a film offer such as a SyFy Channel movie.

Dynamite Comics After watching Masks slowly circle the drain and go down the tubes, really wanted to bail on them, but they followed up with some intriguing comics, doing a bit more right than wrong for a change.

Lords of Mars Tarzan goes to Mars. Ugly cover as it looks like Ross has been taking lessons from Jusko and delivers such muscular men that one can only wonder how they move. Whereas, the insides has a pretty competent and clear artist drawing characters with lean muscular bodies. For comics these days, the heroes almost look emaciated, especially compared to the cover! There's great character moments introducing the main characters and there is some story contained here. It's decompressed, Tarzan doesn't end on Mars by the last panel. However, there is good groundwork and mystery that's established, to let you know that more is going on than readily meets the eye. The decompression is not to stretch out a thin story, but to tell it and fill it. Now, if it can keep that clarity in art and storytelling and not peter out by the end like the Gulliver of Mars and John Carter team-up in Warriors of Mars.

The Owl Yet another old hero that finds himself coping with the present day. Here, they show that they've learned from the Black Terror series in that we see Nick Terry aka The Owl dealing with personal issues. He's trying to get a job and figure out his place in the modern world. He is dealing with real ramifications of having everyone and everything he knows being gone, having moved on without him. There are some hiccups in the writing. Apparently, the writer has never applied for a real job beyond retail as he seems to think that someone would turn in a resume and get an interview if the company wasn't looking to fill a position. Not to mention that getting a job as a policeman is not the same as getting a normal job. As the Owl he seems to have purpose, but when he finds a modern Owl-Girl who is far more violent and keeps the money she takes from the crooks, he has to wonder how much the world has changed and not for the better. It's a bit of a false premise. The 1940s comics and heroes were NOT the sanitized ones from the mid 1950s and 60s. This isn't necessarily something that would be so abhorrent to him, even if he disagreed with it.  And, the redesigned costume and powers/tricks aren't really an improvement.  But, these days I'll settle for a simply average superhero comic where the hero is about being better than the bad guys and wanting to do the right thing.

Shadow - Green Hornet: Dark Knights Ignoring that they met in Masks, this series presents them as meeting again for first time. Written by Michael Uslan, it starts off strong as far as the writing is concerned. He knows the history of the characters and the time period and works a lot of it in without resorting to simply name dropping (and notes in the back explaining some of those bits). You have to deal with the fact that apparently the Shadow's ring is some super-power source/weapon maguffin for the plot. He does an admirable job at presenting the Green Hornet/Britt Reid as being a peer of the Shadow/Lamont Cranston and juggling the similarities and differences of the characters. There's the Shadow suspicious of Kato's loyalties while Shiwan Khan thinks a crook like Green Hornet with an Asian side-kick would make him prone to team up with him (in the 1940s, there were a few issues where the Green Hornet does pretend to team-up with a Japanese spy leading the Black Dragon Society).

The artwork is detailed but often dark, confusing and inconsistent on people and is the weakest part of the book.

Then, there's the implied lesbian relationship between Margo Lane and Lenore Case. Apparently, knowing each other years before when their men leave them to make excuses to each other to cover their secret identities, they decide to talk about the "bad old days" over wine. When we next see Margo, it's when Harry is calling on her at her hotel room and there's some naked buttocks going by in the room behind her. Nice cuckolding the men heroes there that is completely purposeless. And, that sexual fantasy attitude that women are just a bottle of wine from enjoying a lesbian encounter.

Disturbing trends.

It's been awhile. A confluence of events forced a little break: on the road a bit due to some health and family matters and amidst that, trying to avoid the April Fool's computer virus resulted in a week of hell trying to fix what the solution did to the computer.

Twenty years ago and some change, Jim Shooter had an idea of a story and had founding Avenger Hank Pym suffer a breakdown, slap his wife and betray the team. Today, the character still routinely suffers from that storyline, not the betrayal of the team so much as him slapping his wife. Writers were unable to just let it go and move past it and instead kept revisiting it, trying to explain it away or to further mire the character.

Just a year or two back, Black Canary punched Green Arrow during a spat. Barely anyone made a comment. Black Canary is a trained martial artist, one of DC's top fighters. And, she lost her temper enough with Green Arrow to punch him. Not slap him. Balled up fist and punch to the jaw. This month, she does so again, both in JLA AND Green Arrow/Black Canary with even less provocation than before. Neither story gives any solid reason why Black Canary should be angry enough to even slap Ollie much less haul off and punch his lights out. And in the latter we actually see some spittle of blood from the punch. Again, this passes by with little fanfare, little outrage. I'm cancelling both of these titles from my pull list. Not just because of these scenes. They're just indicative of the bad writing that has plagued the books.

I had high hopes with a new writer for Green Arrow as Winnick seemed to just be spinning his wheels, as if he really didn't know what to do with a married Green Arrow. The new writer sets out to create a few new villains. Good. However, he does so by having Black Canary be a loose cannon with her powers, injuring innocent bystanders. He also commits the sin of building up his Mary Sue villain Cupid at the expense of other characters. This character who couldn't even defend herself in an abusive relationship, has the resources and abilities to track down various bad-guys and KILL them and even go toe-to-toe with Black Canary? Lazy and bad writing. And, while Green Arrow doesn't have the most impressive gallery of villains, it's a complete waste of characters to just kill them off panel instead of trying to find ways to make them interesting.

JLA has been suffering for awhile. And, I tried to give McDuffie a chance. After all, he inherited a whole bunch of subplots from a previous writer who had no intention of following up on any of the mess he made and then obviously editorial making the book a vehicle for introducing various characters and storylines to be continued elsewhere. It has gotten so bad, that Hal Jordan (and Green Arrow agreeing) has decided to appear in a different JLA book under a different writer that is at least promising the team will be doing things. This too is probably editorially driven, but WE JUST HAD THE TEAM BREAK UP AND REFORM! It's too soon to just all of a sudden announce another break up, with another reforming of a new team with new team members. Instead of giving us a whiny issue reaffirming what a load of crap the book and the team basically has been since the relaunch, actually write a god-forsaken story where the team is doing something, facing a huge threat. Ultimately, the only reason why the book has been floundering is that the storytelling has been lacking. The two-parter with the Milestone characters made little to no sense, it did a poor job with setting up the characters and explaining who they were and how they fit in. Their inclusion into the JLA may have been an editorial decisision, but it doesn't mean that there couldn't have been a good story to do so. Even the worse JLA-JSA crossovers made more sense and at the very least, told a complete and coherent story (even if you suspected the writer eating some bad mushrooms). Instead of Black Canary whining about the loss of Superman and Wonder Woman, show her be a person of strength. Have her a) be understanding about the concerns and issues that have made a bunch of the team leave or b) basically fire them for being undependable and seeking members to replace. Even with the wholesale slaughter of secondary and tertiary characters of the DCU, there are still bound to be enough characters left to draw upon, especially with MILESTONE and MLJ being folded in. It's not as if the whole team left, she is left with a good core group consisting of Vixen, Dr. Light, John Stewart, Hawkgirl, Zatanna. And, it's only McDuffie's writing that insists on having Red Tornado unavailable. Go to teams past and recruit the original Hourman (who stays out of the picture mostly in the JSA anyway), Lionheart, Maya, Major Disaster (in his old costume please), Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, Connor Hawke.

Flash: Rebirth. Dead at the starting line. Starting off with a graphic murder scene, Johns delivers a mopey and dark comic. He doesn't tell us why we should be excited that Barry is back. He shows us why the characters in the book are excited for his return but not why we as readers should care. If McDuffie used Hal Jordan as a mouthpiece to express just how lame the JLA book has been, Johns uses Barry Allen to show how depressing comics have gotten as he ruminates about his rogues and the villains and things that have happened since. Len Strazewski did something similar in his JSA series, where various characters had recognized how much darker and dangerous the heroes and villains had become since their day. The difference being that he had the heroes recognize this and choose to be something more, to show a better way. Barry Allen on the other hand chooses to be the wet blanket on everybody's parade. This is supposed to be interesting enough to make me want to come back to a second issue and read about this character? The only hopeful thing about the storyline, if Savatar was able to escape also from the Speed Force (and Bart elsewhere), can we hope that Johnny Quick and Max Mercury nee Quicksilver won't be too far behind?

I will give props to Van Sciver's art. It has dramatically improved. It is still as detailed as ever and a merger of the similar styles Perez, Bolland and Jimenez. His storytelling is better though, his setting the scenes and letting each panel tell its story without the detail obscuring the message. His figures are more dynamic and natural.

Recognize the dapper fellow to the right? That's Deadshot in his first appearance. The Secret Six misses a chance to acknowledge the character's past for the sake of the humor of Floyd Lawton not having enough social skills to even recognize a decent suit (he was going to wear a Johnny Thunder reject of a green plaid jacket). Whatever suaveness the character has had, he is now just a plain sociopath. As much as I like Gail Simone's writing, I realize that comics have gotten to the point (especially with my economy), that I just don't care enough about these characters to really continue. It's a funny and often insane book with creative characters and concepts and wild action. Yet, the characters are for the most part ones I don't really care to spend money and time with each month. It's a sad decision to have to reach for what is one of the best written and best drawn books out there. It's just not my cup of tea.

Similarly, I've decided to draw to a close with Guardians of the Galaxy. In this case though, it's because while I normally would like these characters fine, I just don't identify with any of them, they are all too greatly changed in both looks and demeanors from previous incarnations. I don't care for the structuring of the stories around the de-briefings. Once in a while would be fine, but it is proving to be the rule and not the exception. And, there seems to be an illusion of stories happening. What we've had was events and subplots progressing and unfolding, but the big storylines seem to have been hampered by them and the various little cross-over stories happening. By dropping it, I don't even have to pretend to care what's going on with the War of the Kings crossover-itis.

Interestingly, in Captain Britain and MI:13, the illogic of the vampire base on the lighted side of the moon is actually brought up (don't really recall what their answer was other than "magic"). Think they may read this blog? Nah, probably not. It's an otherwise well-crafted tale, really setting Dracula up as a master planner and threat with logical goals for an undead vampire living on the moon. A pity that Spitfire has to be made just a bit more pathetic of a character.

Looks like the Sci-Fi channel has decided to go the same route with the Phantom as they did Flash Gordon. With probably about as much success. Arbitrary changes to the character (new names for him and his love interest) and a costume that is similar to the original in only that it is purple. You can change everything (such as their Battlestar Galactica) but it's an uphill battle from there. You have to make sure that what you are producing is so good that the changes are accepted (such as hot Asian Grace Park in the role of Boomer instead of an overweight guy). Let's face it, the Batman movies succeeded and failed despite the suit. In fact, once the stories became noticeably bad, the jokes about the suit became more prominent. The recent Batman movies would have been just as good if not better with the more iconic suit. The internet video of Batman vs. the Predator actually shows that the suit DOES work and makes all the efforts of Hollywood second-guessing and showing they know better than the creators of the character just look completely ridiculous. Likewise, the problem with the Billy Zane Phantom movie wasn't the suit. Although the scenes of him with the mask showing that he clearly has black grease paint on underneath that seems to magically appear and disappear when he puts on and removes the mask was annoying for its stupdity. And the movie had a good cast of actors. The problem was a story that erred too much on being campy and over the top with a supernatural menace that came off more ludicrous than threatening. It's possible to treat subject matter in both a fun and respectful manner, that takes itself seriously without being too serious or pretentious. Look at The Rocketeer and The Iron Giant for examples. Or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Dynamite is doing something similar to Buck Rogers. Granted, Buck never really had a costume per se other than being associated with jet packs. And he's been away for awhile, so I can guess some upgrading can be forgiven. However, he also has the problem that now plagues DC's Legion of Superheroes. He's been "updated" several times now. This gets to be a problem when it starts diluting the concept of the character, that readers are never sure how much of the characters they know are actually "true." It's why for 40 years, most characters were invisibly rebooted, there were changes in the backstories but with readership changing and continuity not meaning then what it does now, people were never really aware that the Superman or Batman they were reading was substantially different than before. The Blondie strip today just doesn't make mention of the fact that Dagwood was rich and disinherited and that Blondie herself was a flapper in those pre-WWII days. Invisible reboot as opposed to a story that tells us a whole new backstory, that they no longer have any kids and are now newlyweds, etc. Invisible reboots are generally concerned with what was the status quo last month, and continue on from there as opposed to just chucking everything and starting over. However, in the 80's, thanks to the fallout from Crisis on Infinite Earths, the latter style of reboots became the norm. For every one that worked, there were multiples that didn't. And, once you started that precedence, it became the norm to just do a reboot with little to no provocation. And, because you could just reset things, then it was ok to deviate from the median as much as you wanted, because the odds are that a writer or editor after you wasn't going to like what you did and reset it anyway. However, as I noted, this weakens the characters and concepts. It's difficult to impossible to hold to the semblance that these characters are in any way "real", that they exist outside of their reality (which is ironically the whole point of why you have continuity).

Buck Rogers already has this problem as he's a multi-media property and has been re-translated a couple of times. There was the original pulp story, the comic strip (which had some steady evolution of styles ie invisible reboots over the years), the Gil Gerard series which completely recast the character, and then the selling of the character to TSR which resulted in a novel with a new origin by Martin Caidin alongside an updating of the character for paperbacks, comics and RPG's by TSR themselves. All I can say is that 1) I've been less than impressed with Dynamite overall as a publisher and their heavily decompressed storylines that seem to sap the sense of wonder and fun out of their characters for the sake of "realism" and 2) with all the changes of the character, it might be time to take the character a bit more back to his actual primal roots. Everybody knows the name, present the characters in a manner that befits that iconic nature. I'm not really clamoring for something nostalgic but classic, not something that looks merely like the flavor of the month. A big step, would be not re-inventing the wheel. Don't start from the very beginning; just give a brief synopsis of the character, the history and status quot and introduce the new/old threat (such as bringing back Killer Kane to bedevil him).