Some first issue thoughts

I finally broke down and bought a couple of DC's new 52 books. Well, that's not entirely true, one of them I was already planning on getting. While I've been going to the store each week, most of the new #1s have failed to have really the right combination of characters, creators, concepts or tones. Such as Batwing sounded like it could be interesting, and I find Judd Winnick a decent enough writer for a series for a year (he just tends to outstay his welcome), but the painted artwork  didn't appeal. Stormwatch's artwork looked cool in b/w online but the over-colored printed version obliterated that. Detective looked interesting a few pages online but the printed version, when leafing through it was just a dense, complicated looking mess of panels and confusing layouts that it was difficult to get a sense of the story (Batgirl had this same problem, I like Simone's writing but just scanning through the book, it looked like it would give a head-ache to try to read. Sadly, Green Arrow, JLI and Hawk & Dove had almost the opposite problem. Clear and easy to read artwork betraying there didn't seem to be enough interesting going on to warrant picking up. Swamp Thing... I had to check to see if Kevin Nowlan was inking but nope, the artist seems to just draw faces in that same constipated or sour-faced way. It's nit-picky to be sure, but it's hard to read a comic when you cannot stand how the faces look. Meanwhile, I must be the only person that sees something fundamentally wrong with Omac, a series that is built upon the names of characters, ideas and concepts by Jack Kirby but doesn't make use of the actual character by Kirby and then it's drawn in a Kirby pastiche style as if to give it some legitamacy. Can you say "rip-off"? I thought you could. And, it's being done by creators who are championing freeing DC up from continuity and supposedly old concepts. Then why aren't they doing something that's truly new than ripping off Kirby without actually trying to get the character right? So they can get credit for "creating" Omac? And, really, you might have a case saying that every story of a character cannot be kept in continuity, but that was never really a concern was it? You can keep five Robins in continuity, the convoluted mess that is now Green Lantern, but a character whose entire publishing history is hardly two dozen stories has it all jettisoned?

So, what made it home was Legion Lost; Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E, and Resurrection Man.

Legion Lost: Based on previews I had hopes for. I liked the idea that some Legionnaires aren't entirely human looking so there's a certain fondness for Tellus and Gates. Dawnstar was always hot and the tragic love between her and Wildfire was always interesting. And, Timber Wolf has long been one of my favorites though he hasn't had a decent costume since the 1980s. But, this story is a mess. These and the other Legionnaires end up in our present tracking a criminal about whom very little to nothing is revealed. The heroes don't do anything more other than complain and vomit and when they catch up to the villain who has destroyed a small town, he's already unconscious. While taking him to the future, something happens and he blows up while two Legionnaires are apparently killed either through their own ineptitude or something else, the artwork is unclear. This leaves the remaining characters stranded in our time. As a first issue, there's no effort given to make readers want to return the next issue. Instead of showcasing the heroes, they are shown to be ineffective and quarrelsome. You aren't made to care about the characters who are killed, and the villain is a complete cypher. Thanks to previews and solicits we know he's returning so we'll probably learn more in the future, but here's the crux of that. It's ok to make a character seem a cypher if it's actually given proper set-up as a mystery or sub-plot that will be explored later. As presented on the page, he just seems a plot device to strand the heroes, set up the status quo and then promptly gotten rid of. Likewise there's no build-up or presentation of the Legion to readers, to give an idea of what the characters have "lost" by being stranded here.


Resurrection Man: It has some of the same problems. I was looking forward to this book as I was a fan of the original series and there's little to no reason that changes in the continuity or history should overly change the series that much. And, it was being handled by the same writers. However, they do much the same with the hero that Legion Lost did. We get the main character's name and powers, but nothing else about just who Mitch Shelley is or how he got that way. It was a big part of the character and mystery of his first series, but it is neither recapped nor presented as being intentionally a mystery to the readers. As such, why should we care about him? It took me a while to figure what else bothered me about the story and then I realized it was because, there actually was none. There are some scenes including a fight where a bunch of people die. What we got was just several set-ups of long reaching plotlines but no story in and of itself. A sequence of events is not a story. Even so, it's confusing. Why was the demonic angel (angelic demon?) on the plane. Was it to cause the crash and deaths of the passengers? To simply insure that Mitch didn't alter things and save those fated to die? To try to kill Mitch and collect his soul? All of the above? Why are the two women torturing and killing people in trying to get a lead on Mitch? Exactly who are they and what abilities do they have?

This is like an episode of Supernatural or other similar show where it is giving you all these hints and teases to the larger season-long plot and down the road pay-offs but forgetting that it still has to deliver a more immediate story and concern as well. These long form plottings are fine for writing for the trade, and some fans like it, but I thought that was something the writers were supposed to be getting away from.

Artwise, I was a little concerned with having to have someone else in Butch Guice's shoes. His scratchy artwork grounded the original series with a level of realness, dirt and grime that the typical super hero comics didn't have. His character had a certain world-weariness, homeless look to him. The book still looks good though. The artwork is a bit cleaner but it still goes for a more realistic look without looking traced in every panel. Once or twice I had to linger to figure out the point of a panel, I still don't understand the handshake panel, the woman is holding out her hand but the text asks if she doesn't know how to give a handshake properly... is it because it's her left hand?

Since I get so few titles and fondness for the original run, I'm willing to give this at least one more issue to prove itself.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E.: This was the surprise hit for me. Not really a fan of the artwork, but the idea seemed appealing enough. It comes across a bit as DC's version of B.P.R.D. with a little more focus on action and no frogs. I liked the Monster Commandoes but wonder just how much supernatural went into their creation. The vampire is listed as being the result of a variant form of the Langstrom (Man-Bat) formula for instance. Which then makes me wish they had actually used Langstrom instead. The time period is a little unclear as it implies that the public presence of Superman and Batman is recent, but the official line is that the events of Justice League and the public debut of the heroes is about five years ago. Still, it managed to live up to the title's premise, introduce the characters and set up a monster-invasion plotline and deliver plenty of action. Definitely picking up the second issue.

Mystery Men: The final issue rushed the ending. There's little to no character fall-out from the events of the last issue making the inter-racial relationship little more than a plot excuse to have the team break-up. After all the build-up, the General is taken out too quickly and then the little twist at the end robs the heroes of a clean-cut victory and makes a supreme sacrifice needless. For once, maybe a story was too compressed, needing another issue to properly fill it out beyond moving from Point A to Point B. Yet, the little touches in the story, such as the almost crossing swords with one of Marvel's big name bad guys make this title still a fun read, worthy of picking up the trade if you hadn't gotten the monthlies. Will we see them ever again?

Kirby Genesis: With no breaking of the fourth wall this issue, the comic moved up a notch. It occurs to me that so far it's still mostly just talking and a travelogue of Kirby characters and concepts with no one really doing all that much. As such, the only way we know the heroes from the bad guys is because we know some of these characters already. The villains haven't done anything particularly villainous yet other than half of them being pursued and shot at by other-worldly bounty hunters and pursuers. One culture's villains may be another culture's Freedom Fighters.

Kirby Freeman almost has a theory that puts everything together before he loses it. The hints laid down make me wonder if it's something akin to Clifford Simak's Out of their Minds. I like the look and feel of the Phantom Continent, but if the U-Boat commander has been there since WWII and the two kids almost that long... where do they get their bullets and cigarettes?

The coloring so far has actually been top notch, given a painted look without feeling computer generated (maybe it's not?) and without overpowering the line-work and robbing it of its energy and vitality.


That ole sinking feeling..
Interest in the new Aquaman series continues to flounder. In the December solicit, we have our hero again stabbing a foe through with his trident and blood going everywhere. This seems to be in keeping with many of the books featuring characters that should be more all-ages marketed. In the Red Lanterns and Green Lantern Corps titles of the Green Lantern family of books, there's dismemberment and gore everywhere. Detective is about a villain who cuts off faces and concludes its first issue with a fairly gruesome sight. The Hawkman book is selling itself on being savage and gory. I expect certain lines of books to be more violent and explicit, especially with titles like "Suicide Squad" and "Deathstroke". But, it seems wrong when it's the mainstream versions of some of the core hero books, characters that people are going to be most familiar with. If their goal is to really attract new readers, shouldn't they aim at not turning their stomachs when they pick up something that is supposed to be a super hero book with characters that are featured in all-ages cartoons and such?

Johns follows up though with heaping high praise on the Peter David run on Aquaman. Don't want to call him a liar, so let's be generous and say it's mostly spin and him throwing David's fans a bone, because otherwise he's just delusional when he says:

Yeah, great book. Peter David's the only one that's gotten Aquaman right, beyond his creator. I don't think anyone's been close to getting Aquaman into a book that's sustainable or very interesting, except for Peter David. I say that because I'm going to go a very different way than Peter David.

Really? David's run was better and the only one to get the character right other than his creator some five decades earlier or other writers the two decades after? First off, David's run was nothing like the character created by Mort Wiesinger and Paul Norris who only did a handful of small stories anyway. Much of what we associate with Aquaman was done by Robert Bernstein (The Tom Curry-Atlantis origin, Aqualad Garth), Jack Miller (Mera, the marriage) and Bob Haney (Black Manta, Ocean Master). With that single statement he pretty much insults all the other writers over the years that wrote Aquaman in his own strip, one-shots and the JLA and kept him in character when David did not: Steve Skeates, Otto Binder, Gardner Fox, Haney, Denny O'Neil, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, David Michilinie. Not to mention the art alone of those decades, Aquaman drawn by Ramona Fradon, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo, Don Newton, Dick Dillin. They all made him look heroic and epic, worthy of standing next to Batman and Superman without having to make him look edgy. It's one thing to say you like David's version better than the others, but to make a statement that he got the character better than anyone else in seventy years of history when his run is predicated on changing everything about the character and grafting on the typical snarky "i play dirty" personality that David tends to give all his leads. That's just wrong.

Much of the success of David's run was that at the time he was one of the hot writers and fans followed him from book to book. The book was sustainable as long as it was David that was writing it. Thus, it's hard to say if what he was doing was really good for the character in the long run or not. Some creators can make something work, as long as they are the ones doing it. But, once they are gone, it's a struggle to build on or even maintain those concepts and readers. It's a reason why resets and reboots at DC are felt like they are needed. Allowing creators to take concepts into extreme directions is often damaging to the long-term viability even though profitable in the short-term.

We can look at the works by the other writers that handled the character from 1959 to the early 80s and say that they did keep the character viable and sustainable. They developed his world and mythos in long-lasting ways from giving him an extended family from sidekick, wife, and baby. He was dealt with as an equal member of the JLA of the likes of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman without needing justification (or acknowledgement of so-called comic fans' jokes). And, post-David, writers and artists have been working over time to getting more back to center. Indeed, if Johns and DC really felt that David's run was all that sustainable, we'd be seeing a take on that. If he really thought that no one else made the character interesting or sustainable, then why is he obviously going for the look and characters of the 1960s run, where he fought human opponents as well as underseas monsters alongside his supporting cast? I think what we're seeing is Johns following David's cue in making the character seem more bad@$$ by giving him a lethal weapon that he doesn't mind using and upping his powers considerably but giving him a silver-age coating of the old costume, inclusion of Mera. And, we can look forward to him expanding Aquaman's family as he seems to want to turn every book into a team book. In other words, it'll be like the 60s run all over again. Just with more blood-shed.

Mighty Fine Comics

Ratfist
If you take Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes), Grant Morrison (Animal Man), Erik Larsen (Savage Dragon) and Michael Jantze (The Norm) and locked them up until they completed a superhero comic, the final outcome would be something like Ratfist. Or a bloody mess as they kill each other but for the sake of the review, we'll go with the former.

Ratfist is a webcomic (http://ratfist.com) by Doug Tennapel (Earthworm Jim) and colored by Katherine Garner who did a fantabulous job. It starts off pretty much as the exact opposite of what I want from superhero comics. First is the artwork which is obviously very cartoony and exaggerated to the point of being completely over the top. Ratfist's ears aren't even attached to his head for goodness' sake! Then there's the story as it starts in the middle of things setting the character up as being not only eccentric (he has a pet rat that he talks to and takes on his adventures fighting crime) but as the typical loser/loner that retreats from reality by putting on a lame costume, taking a lamer name and fighting crime while the creators can sit back and mock the genre and show off how much more intelligent and sophisticated they are, modern day Cervantes with all of their fifth-rate attempts at recreating Don Quixote with less than an ounce of talent.

However, the comic quickly shows that it's not that at all. Sure, he's a bit of a loser, a man-child that has some growing up to do, but his taking on a superhero identity isn't that much of retreat from reality. His reality is one with comic-book science, where people do get bit by strange things and gain powers and put on costumes, or are victims of bad magic mojo or science experiments.  Deciding to be a supehero is that context is less insane than appearing on "Jerry Springer" because you are told someone has a secret to share with you. Or appearing on "Big Brother". It may be stupid, ill-advised, and a tactic to avoiding some problems, but it's not insane in and of itself.

And, Tennapel is actually truly funny, writing and drawing hilarious scenes. He moves from one improbable, absurd scene to another. He's not making fun of superheroes, he's reveling in them and the concepts and scenarios they allow. Notice the creators I listed above? It has Morrison and Larsen's sheer creativity on their good days unbound by cynicism and self-importance, it has Watterson's exuberance and sense of whimy and humor coupled with Jantze's gentle, wry humanity and outlook on the life of the modern adult male.

What makes this truly stand out, though, is the transformation that takes place. As the character goes from one absurd situation to another, there's a point where your point of view changes. You'll recognize it when you get to it. You get to the point that you realize that Tennapel has a real story that he's telling, this is not just random events to merely see what happens next and what corners he can write himself into and out of. Underneath the humor, the absurdity, the jokes, there's an actual story being told here that has real emotion to it. And, you realize Ratfist may just have it in him to be one of the greatest, noblest heroes of all.

Do yourself a favor and don't read the characters tab first. It'll give away some of the surprises in store for you. And if you don't know who Michael Jantze is or "The Norm" comic strip, head over to thenorm.com as well.

Until last night, I would easily have said this was the best comic I have read in a year if not more. But, that's because last night, I read the following book.

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites
This is a hardcover collection of the Beasts of Burden stories by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson with the exception of the Hellboy crossover. Which works out fine for me because that is the one issue I have. When I read that, I promised myself to keep an eye out for the trade when it came out. I was a little put off by it appearing in hardback but the price for it is equal if not better than many trades.

The stories concern a group of dogs and one cat in suburbia who protect their neighborhoods from various strange ie supernatural and increasingly deadly occurrences. Dorkin's writing keeps the animals looking and acting just appropriately animal enough but with distinctive personalities and their own sense of magic, faith and mysticism. Likewise Jill Thompson's watercolors are lush and balance being realistic when need be without sacrificing sense of expression and well placed sense of whimsy.

The look of the book at first glance would lead one to think it's one for kids, but it treats the supernatural and mundane in honest ways. There's deaths by monsters but also by cars on the highways and it treats both with equal somberness and detail. You never forget that as much as the animals act human and they face supernatural threats, some of the biggest dangers are the everyday ones that pets and strays face. The familiar grounds the fantastic and you feel for them.

If the book does stray it's that there's an occasional crude or crass word that seems completely at odd with both the artwork and the characters. It's far less colorful language than in most of today's comics, and only happens three or four times but each time the word choice stuck out like a sore thumb. Probably because otherwise the language was clean and the storytelling was so intelligent, it didn't really need such language to seem adult. Instead, it came off as suddenly trying to sound adult, "look, no one will take this book seriously if we don't add at least one cuss word in here."

The Defenders: From the Vault
Since I ragged on the storytelling of The Canterbury Cricket as to how not tell a one-shot comic, I feel I should lift this comic up as how to properly do it. The CC comic had the hurdle of having to fit into a larger story, a company-wide event. This book had the problem of having to fit into another creative team’s run on a title without seeming like too big of a hiccup. Then there were further problems. Fabian Nicieza plotted the book and Bagley drew the book, but neither could recall what the actual script was to be and copies were lost. Nicieza was also now on exclusive with another company so Kurt Busiek, the writer of the run the comic was to fit in, was hired to basically come up with a story and script that matched the artwork already done.

He does so to the degree that it’s hard to envision the story being substantially different any other way. While it is to fit into the run he and Larsen had on the book, other than a single panel and a few artistic stylings, the story is such that it could have been in any Defenders era. The one panel inclusion actually does a good job at just summing up the purpose of the four heroes as the Defenders for any that are totally lost.

What makes this story really stand out is that despite the characters visibly being the Hulk, Namor, Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer, for the most part it’s a group of roleplaying gamers whose minds are in those bodies and they carry the show. In typical Busiek fashion, he makes the story be one about human emotions and interactions, what ties us together. It’s both a superhero story and a human interest one. Even though we never actually see the four gamers that we know of, we are left kind of wishing to see a short-story that followed up on the events and character revelations revealed here. But, you aren’t short-changed. The plot is addressed and resolved, new characters and concepts were introduced and developed. It runs the gamut of humor and pathos, superheroes and villains and every-day people, science-fiction and magic, love lost and love from afar. An old joke was told along the way (though left out the follow-up joke). When done, you’re left wanting more but not needing more like a delicious meal that satisfies.

Captain America Corps
The premise of this mini-series written by classic Captain America writer Roger Stern is that someone is removing the Avengers finding Captain America across the various timestreams. An Elder of the Universe called the Contemplator seems to be the only one seeing the timelines being manipulated so he calls forth various heroes that have been the mantle bearers of Captain America to make things right. The heroes called are Captain America from 1941-42 (he still has the triangular shield), Bucky when he was Captain America, USAgent from shortly after his stint as Cap, American Dream who is the daughter of Sharon Carter in the MC2-verse, and Commando A who stands about seven feet tall and is from centuries in the future.

The timeline they travel to is one where the heroes are strangely absent and the Americommand, a group of dark reflections of Captain Americas, hold the country in the control such as Americop and his legion of Americops, Major America, the Ameridroid and two women called Broad Stripe and Bright Star who from the get go seem to know more than they let on.

Each issue starts off focusing on one of the Captain America mantle-bearers, what he was doing when called by the Contemplator. Under Stern’s hand, each issue is a dense read, full of story, characterization and action with twists and cameos along the way. Effort is made that each member has their own style and voice. As one of the Americommand is revealed to be a somewhat minor grandiose villain that fought Captain America a couple of times and seems to be behind it all, the question rises are any of the others somewhat familiar faces? Could Major America be this timeline’s John Walker (USAgent) or Jack Monroe (Nomad/Bucky) or even a former Captain America such as Jeff Mace or the 1950s Cap?

A minor quibble or two with the characters Bright Star and Broad Stripe. The former is depicted a little too similar to DC’s Stargirl. Some similarity is almost unavoidable as their costume and name are pretty much from the same source. However, to give her the same hair style, color and mask was something that could have been easily modified. With Broad Stripe, I don’t know if it was meant to be a pun or not, but as “broad” is a somewhat crass slang word for “woman”, the name is not really flattering. And, considering who she is supposed to be, a little uncharacteristic. It’s not a name that a woman would choose for herself.

This is an old-school mini-series. It’s not tied to any mega-event. It uses continuity and plays with it, but everything you really need to know is covered in-story. And, despite playing with an alternate time-line, it’s not really about rewriting present continuity and history to suit the writer’s preferences. The characters are all on model.  It’s accessible to new readers while showing off the rich tapestry of the Marvel U. and the role Captain America plays in it. Most of all, the title is fun, enough so to make me actually enjoy Bucky-Cap for once.

John Byrne’s Next Men
The last two issues didn’t really work for me. The penultimate issue explores the life of Gillian, the Next Man who only exists as a separate consciousness in other people’s bodies. The issue speeds forwards through generations as it shows the different lives (s)he led, usually staying with a body for years until eminent death or circumstances require that Gillian move on. As such, the reader is really only shown two points in each life, the point that (s)he moves in and the point (s)he moves out.
This issue would be the best place to really explore why Gil is obsessed with changing the past, mostly to wipe out Sathanas’ existence. But, it doesn’t do that. In fact, other than a single war, humanity’s future and Gil’s present does not seem that bleak and Sathanas’ impact seems minimal. After doing a great job in past issues of showing bleak and barbaric moments of humanity, the issue is one of relative peace of people living their ordinary lives. Sathanas is not mentioned at all.

The final issue actually mentions Sathanas and touches on that history. There’s a brief aside as Jazz flees to the past to meet with an older Jack and we see Tony one more time. Other than that and Jazz’ ultimate decision to not travel with Nathan and Beth to the past to undo Sathanas’ time loop, there is no actual hiccup to the plan. Everything goes exactly according to plan without a hitch. This makes for a final issue that’s full of great character moments and characters not necessarily making the decisions you’d expect but is otherwise very lackluster and boring in the plotting. There’s no real story twist or even feeling of personal danger or jeopardy to the plan succeeding. Even Jazz’ decision is admitted to not really changing or jeopardizing things as she didn’t really have a role to play. It would be more dangerous if she went and decided at the last moment to not risk non-existence and started fighting Nathan and Beth, trying to prevent changing the past. Instead, she just simply takes herself out of the equation.

Then you have the whole thing ending there, at the moment that time has been changed. Of course this leads into the next series titled “Aftermath” but I still feel a bit cheated as to not knowing even in general terms what any repercussions are for their actions. Does Aldus become Sathanas another way (maybe the whole time loop just made the transition easier and cleaner than his original history)? We know through Nathan’s experiences in WWII Germany the doctor that created the Next Men was already doing research in that area before the involvement of Sathanas and his examination of Nathan may have set off other changes. There’s Mark IV and Cornelius Van Damme to consider. And, poor Jack was just simply wiped from existence. I am content to know that a lot of that may be answered in the next series, but just felt that if the story is going to end with them changing time, we should see some little hint of what that actually resulted in, at least on the personal level.

Everything we’ve seen was to build towards this moment. But, while the first Next Men arc was largely about Sathanas, this one hasn’t been and it’s been too long between arcs. It fails to build the case in the readers’ minds why it’s necessary to stop Sathanas as opposed to Christopher Columbus’ trip to the New World or Hitler or Genghis Khan or World War I. It then fails to show or even suggest any of the fallout of the characters’ actions. And, it fails to provide any twists or real jeopardy to the plan, which might allow for the other shortcomings. If carrying off the plan has significant problems and jeopardy, the success of the mission is a reasonable resolution because the story is “a caper”. But, even though there’s this massive explosion in the end, it ends with a whimper, not a bang.

There’s also problems with Gil’s plan. While Nathan and Beth are given a cover story, it isn’t one that actually will bear up under any kind of scrutiny. This is Antarctica. You don’t have unknown helicopters with unknown persons on board crashing. Every person on the ice or flying over it is known by someone or some agency. Especially two people carrying quite a bit of cash on them. The holes in their story and that much cash would be uncovered before they ever have a chance to leave the continent.

Kirby’s Genesis
This is a schizophrenic book and my feelings are likewise divided. Busiek excels at and delivers the common man feel and characterization of the main viewpoint characters. The Kirby characters are kept mostly intact and delivered in proper grandiose style (although I don’t like the Secret City heroes neon lit black costumes, the premise is this is the characters as Kirby designed them, go ahead and give them to us).

Part of the problem is the plotting. There’s a lot of effort of presenting an everyday world and then all this madness hits at one time. Silver Star is rumored to have existed before but is just now being confirmed. Confirmed sightings of Thunderfoot aka bigfoot. The discovery of the Secret City and its heroes. Space heroes and villains suddenly popping up all over the globe. Etc. I am sure it’s supposed to be part of the plot but it serves as a dividing wall between the reality of the everyday world and the Kirby world. No time is really spent on developing any of the ideas other than to seemingly throw them at the reader as fast as possible.

The viewpoint characters are distractions and annoying (doesn’t help that the central character is visibly based on an actor whose whiny nasally voice and emoting makes him almost as annoying as Woody Allen) especially when they break the fourth wall, thus breaking even the relative realism they already exist in. Characterization and relationships between the characters are great, but it should come through the scenes and the action and the plotting, not through expositional scenes of the characters addressing the reader. Leave those out and get to the actual characters and plots that we are chunking our money down to see.

The artwork carries the schizophrenia through. It’s hard to tell just how much is Alex Ross’ underlying pencil or Jackson Herbert’s re-penciling and slightly too heavy inks. The realistic sections are done well. The grandiose, fantastic parts are done well. But, the two don’t really jibe together well here. It may be because the story itself is already setting up that wall between the real world and the unreality of the superhero world and it just carries through with the artwork.

Kirby drew the epic as if it was everyday stuff. But, he also drew the everyday as if it was epic. Under Kirby’s hand, ramshackle buildings, ill-fitting clothes and garbage was larger than life. There was a consistency of style and approach. Thus, when police officer Dan Turpin battles Kalibak in an effort to arrest him, you believe it and you feel it. I think that’s why this misses when it does. Kirby gave everything the same level of realism and convinced you of the central integrity of his vision and world. The gods talked in grandiose ways but they struggled with love and fitting in. They felt as real as the everyday people. Kirby dealt with the clash of the fantastic with the everyday, but there wasn’t a lot of naval gazing about it, as usually there was some war or cosmic event occurring. So far, this is about the unreality of it all as if there needs to be an explanation for the presence of all these disparate characters, acknowledging the unreality of magic, super-science, etc in a real world situation. That’s not really what I buy superhero comics for.

I’m willing to cut a little slack, because I get so few comics and this is still better than most out there. It’s still with good guys who are good, and bad guys who are bad while being true to the vision of Kirby without simply being a pastiche of his surface style. The characterization is strong, and it’s setting up a world of wonder and possibility without resorting to graphic violence or language. Sophisticated without being crass. And, the book has the hurdle that it is introducing a ton of characters in a very short span of time.  It's better than the dark superhero comics offered by the other companies, and better by far than the decompressed storytelling that plagues most of Dynamite's Comics. If the plot is slow in developing it's in part because there's so many characters and concepts to set up. The chance to see so many of Kirby’s characters and creativity, even if distilled through other hands is too good a chance to simply pass up.

Mystery Men
Another mini-series by Marvel, this one explores several masked men coming together in the 1930s America. As the name implies, this group draws largely from the heroes and adventurers of the pulps. David Liss does a good job at credibly reproducing the time and attitudes and a story that straddles the world of the pulp heroes with that of the Marvel U. and a modern look at the attitudes.

The central character in many ways is the man known as The Operative. Born of wealth and privilege, he carries a certain amount of guilt in the time of the Great Depression. Part of it is knowing what kind of man his father is and him setting out to be the opposite.  So, he steals from the wealthy in order to give money to the needy. But, when he’s framed for the murder of his fiancé, to prove his innocence he ends up teaming up with a group of odd would-be heroes and adventurers: The Aviatrix, inventor and sister of his fiancé; The Revenant, African-American stage-magician turned masked man; the Surgeon, a doctor horribly scarred and driven insane by the actions of the cabal they are up against and who has a case of hero worship of the masked men; and Achilles, an archaeologist hired to find an artifact and discovers himself thrust into the role of hero with fantastic powers but at great cost.
Liss is primarily a novelist and maybe it’s because of that background and writing in comics for almost the first time that the mini-series does have the few faults it does.

The problem is that everything is actually too tight and neat, many things presented in the most obvious and simplistic terms that betrays an artificiality to the world he is setting up as if he is giving us a shorthand version of world creation because there’s not enough space to develop further. First the names. Other than Achilles, all of the names betray the hand of a single creator not giving too much thought to it or used to developing colorful code-names. The pulps gave us the Shadow, the Spider, Doc Savage, Thunder Jim Wade, G-8, The Phantom, The Green Ghost, Domino Lady, Black Bat, Park Avenue Hunt Club, Secret Six, the Green Lama, the Picaroon, the Crimson Clown, etc. What we have here are not names, but generic titles, one word descriptions and not identities. They come across more like names given to serial killers on “Criminal Minds”. Even the title “Mystery Men” becomes the default name of this specific group as opposed to a general term applied to a larger sampling. Keep in mind, this is the Marvel Universe. They have seen masked heroes before, in the Old West and in WWI.

In the case of the Operative, the name doesn’t even make sense. According to the notes, the name is meant to reflect the Continental Op, and in the backdrop of the pulps, the name conjures up the likes of Agent “X”, Operator 5, Secret Agent X-9, G-8 and so on. Only, he’s not a masked spy, freelance or otherwise. He is actually drawn from the likes of characters written by Frank Packard, Frederick Davis and Johnston McCully: a crook who breaks the law in order to serve a greater justice.

According to this story, all cops are corrupt or at best, lazy. Again, this makes the world seem smaller and obviously being viewed by someone writing today. It’s an easy shorthand and able to paint the heroes as being obviously right and not worry about the dangers of fighting cops.

The General, the bad guy is then linked to the Operative. Makes it easy to connect the dots and solve the mystery when the heroes already know the identity of the man behind it all.

The latest issue then has the one white woman hooking up with the single African-American guy who she’s known for just days at best. Again, it’s too easy and obvious to go for that particular race card. And, it just happens without any build-up of any romance between the two, that all happens off panel.

The Revenant himself is a bit of conflicting. It’s interesting to do a reverse-Shadow, an African-American dressed all in white. However the writer of the Shadow and several other pulp writers were magicians and understood magic. They could convince us of reality of what the heroes did, when they used magic tricks to pull off their stunts. Again, here Liss seems to use the stage magic background as a shorthand to explain things without actually selling it to the reader. How does a man dress in white sneak up on people at night and attack from clouds? How does he present multiple images of himself in the Operative’s apartment? The idea of the character and his background is interesting. He falls down as being presented as being credible.

But these are minor quibbles against the backdrop of the story and comic itself.  The story is intriguing. Since Liss is a novelist and not someone whose credentials are primarily writing comics, he delivers an actual story. Despite being set in the past and in the Marvel Universe, it’s not actually about continuity and comicbook history. The heroes are active and pro-active though most are driven by circumstances to become heroes. The villain is frightening. The third issue cranks up the danger as the supernatural elements come into play and the heroes are suddenly out of their depth. Against normal crooks and men, they excel but actual horrors are another thing entirely. It is taking what was part pulp and weird menace and reminding the reader this is the Marvel Universe. Things like this can and do happen. But, it doesn’t break the mood and atmosphere of the story that is being crafted by Liss and ably executed by Patrick Zircher. The world has corruption and is dark and dangerous, but it’s not a cynical or dark comic. The heroes are less than perfect without actually having the concept of heroes being mocked or treated cynically. It understands that not all pulp or crime stories need to be urbane or noir just as all horror stories need not be gore fests (a distinction that many “pulp comic” fans don’t seem able to make).

Something that struck me interesting was that in many ways, this story could easily be set in the modern day. The issues and themes that root this story in its time, racial and class inequality, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, economic downturns and future instability at home and wars and unrest abroad, they are all elements that would make the same story and the pulp heroes relevant today. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we’re seeing a resurgence in popularity and interest in them.

One of the things that has bothered me about the recent depictions of Captain America was not the sudden shift in how Captain America's costume was drawn (with the mail armor being on the outside and covering just his chest and shoulders, and pouches on his belt), but the depictions became retroactive. And the costume underwent other changes. The boots, the pouches on the belt, the mask, and the "A" on the mask differed depending on which "realistic" artist was drawing. Since no one seems willing to call the artists to task on keeping the character actually on model, there's no consensus on just what constitutes Cap costume. For decades, artists had no problem with each drawing Captain America in keeping to his actual costume and still being true to their artistic vision. Now as shown in issue #616, the artist on the cover and the artists doing the interiors cannot even agree what Captain America's costume looks like.

Issue 616 is meant to be an artistic tour-de-force, yet the artists all are drawing different costumes. It's not merely artistic license, some of the artists are being more detailed than others, some depict his mask as a cowl another as a helmet, some are drawing plain leather belts vs the belt with pouches. One artist gets a pass in that at least the costume he's drawing is a variation of his first appearance with the triangular shield, but the others should all be the "same" costume and they clearly are not. I'm not saying we should go back to the days of having Neal Adams redrawing Kirby's faces of Superman, an artist should be able to express his style providing it's in keeping with the appropriate tone of the book, but the character should at least look "correct". Can you imagine a similar book starring Superman and each artist drew him with different belts and boots and chest emblems, but with all the stories taking place around the same time in his history (and none of them close to being accurate to how he was depicted during that time period).


Dwayne McDuffie Still a bit stunned by the death of Dwayne McDuffie. As a fan of golden-age comics, I'm not shocked when hearing of creators from the forties passing away. Heck, even many of the greats that came to prominence in the Silver-Age are at least in their late 50s now.

That his death came just as a big project of his was garnering press and about to come out makes it doubly tragic.

I won't say I was a huge fan. He was a name I recognized. And, I looked forward to his taking over the JLA book as his work on the JLU cartoon as writer and story editor showed a man that knew how to tell complete stories while layering in themes and subplots, so each story was enjoyable on its own but regular watchers/readers would be rewarded with more subtext and richness overall. But, otherwise, I cannot say I followed his writing with any great faithfulness.

Sadly, it didn't translate well to his work with the JLA book. A big part of that was that he was hampered first with subplots that the previous writer introduced but had no intention of staying on the book long enough to follow through on. And, when that was not dictating the shape of his stories, editorial fiat of who and who could not be on the team, of doing stories that would be continued in other books, and other crossover tie-ins (something he obviously disagreed with as he wrote a manifesto arguing against that very thing among others). He was sadly dumped from the book unceremoniously after he spoke out against editorial practices. This didn't seem to hurt his relationship with DC too much as he still worked on their animation projects such as the upcoming All-Star Superman animation video.

Reading his views on continuity and how it should probably be used is wonderfully insightful and funny. I have thought a similar thing myself in the last couple of years, but he was apparently arguing about it some time before even I came to that conclusion (though my buying was already reflecting it, as I was bailing on "family" books since it was impossible to get just one without a storyline suddenly arising that required buying the whole family of books).

One of the things I respect him for was his work on bringing more minority characters to comics, especially when he and a couple of other creators created the critically acclaimed Milestone Universe of characters published by DC Comics, being a showcase for various all-new non-cliche minority heroes as well as a place for minority creators to have a voice with characters that weren't mainly white heterosexual males. He and Milestone didn't merely champion minorities of their own cultural background, either, but worked for a better presence of minorities in general. He co-created Shadow Cabinet, a superhero group made up of multiple ethnicities and sexual persuasions. Milestone also published Xombi, created by John Rozum, featured an Asian American, one of the very few in comics, much less one in his own book. McDuffie would later use him in his Justice League book where in an alternate reality the character became Green Lantern, and a cool one at that. It's another one of the sad ironies, when he was doing the Justice League book, DC was talking about bringing the Milestone characters into the DCU continuity and back to prominence. But, other than a crossover with the League title and a mini, it's only now that several of the books are being solicited. Looking forward to Xombi myself. 

An outspoken passion for the medium, always striving to move it forward and expanding the readership. Helping to open the way for creators and minority characters (mostly by creating NEW characters and riding the coat-tails of talent NOT the corpses of previous characters). And reaching out to kids and potential new readers though helping create hours of entertainment with superhero cartoons with solid quality writing. He died young, but what a legacy and challenge he leaves for the rest of us.

Comic stores and Comic shops

I was in Chapel Hill on Saturday with my girlfriend, heading over to their Botanical Gardens. Along the way we saw the storefront for Ultimate Comics along with Season's Greetings. So, after lunch at a Persian restaurant, she went to Season's Greetings for a little shopping so I went to the comic store although I wasn't actually looking for any comics at that time.

I was confronted with a bare bones store as the store was in the process of moving and was in its last days. The clerk was helpful in telling me about the sale and the location of the new store that was already open. We talked a bit, he showed me the old sign to Second Foundation, THE comic store of Chapel Hill when I was in college. After several minutes hanging around, I decided to go to the new store just about four miles away near I-40 on 54.

The new store is very nice and spacious. Along the wall by the entrance are shelfs spotlighting various single titles while the middle of the store is devoted to bookshelves of trades, arranged solely in alphabetical order, no differentiation between companies. Near the front by the checkout desk is an area devoted to comics AND collections for kids and all-ages. Which is interesting because this means that the shelves with all of the current and new monthly comics is actually two-thirds to the back of the store with back-issues behind those shelves, almost blocked from view.

Like the clerk at the other store, the clerks here seem focused on customer service, engaging customers in conversation and freely talking about the history of the store and what they are doing in the community in regards to organizing comic shows and such. They also push a mailing list for people interested in order to communicate sales and such and talked of business, of being open to buying comics for trade, etc. They communicated their love of comics and such without actually denigrating any creators or particular style. Despite my rather odd choices for purchase, two different clerks spoke positively of them. All giving a positive shopping experience (compared to going to Acme Comics where I feel like a dinosaur as clerks freely talk about their favorites of current crops of writers, their disdain of others like Byrne).

Overall, the store communicates a very professional atmosphere. It is interesting to see the subconscious message that it communicates due to the prominent placement of trades over the monthly comics, where it sees the direction of comics going and where the money is to be made.

The store really only had two flaws against it in my eyes. One, it actually needs more trades. The place has the space to easily double or triple the shelves they have and what they carry. Especially as that seems to be their focus. Maybe that's the plan as they get more established. I didn't see any Manga collections nor recall many if any copies of the b/w Showcase and Essential volumes. While they give prominence to the trades and a professional and uncluttered look, they don't have a bigger selection of said books than Acme Comics out of Greensboro, really not much more so than your Barnes & Noble when you take into account the mega bookstores DO carry manga.

The other is that all of the current comics are already bagged and boarded. This cuts down on people handling and reading comics in the store without buying them, but it cuts down on browsing and casually checking various titles to see if you're interested in picking them up. Such as I saw they had Birds of Prey and had heard some good things concerning the title now that Gail was back on it and was a bit curious to try it out despite my ban on buying Black Canary these days. However, I wasn't going to pick it up without looking inside of it first. And, there was nothing on the racks that prompted me to go through the trouble of asking the clerks if I could open it. In fact, it did bite me in the posterior when I did pick up one book without checking the insides based solely on the fact it featured GA characters, Larsen and Image's issue of Silver Streak Comics.

I also picked up a collection of the color strips of The Norm, an overlooked gem of a comic strip from a couple of years ago. The fact that I didn't know this latter book existed and had not seen Silver Streak at any of the other stores I frequent though I had heard it had been published does speak at the very decent variety actually offered. I don't know if it will ever replace my shopping at Foundation's Edge in Raleigh, which is closer after all and I have two decades of knowing the owner nor the convenience of Acme Comics as I'm in Greensboro half the time. However, if I'm looking for something specific or they have a good sale going on, it's only an hour away from either place I call home.

Comic Reviews:
As I've already talked about them, we'll start off with the recent purchases before moving on to to other titles.

The Norm: A great collection of the Sunday strips and a few notes in the back talking about a few key strips and what the Michael Jantze was trying to do. Norm is a twenty something working in the world of publishing, navigating the worlds of best friends, girl friends, and later married life, in-laws and unemployment and having a baby conversations. Along the way, we get what it is to be a man in the modern age, of being a man on the inside but often feeling like a boy in a man's body given to flights of fancy. Unfortunately, the Sunday strips don't really show the strip always at its best and it seems to skip many of the ongoing events and narrative of the overall story such as him just waking up one day married and a whole year of his life gone by. Instead, we move from strips with him hanging out with whatever girlfriend he has and his best friends to just being married. Funny when it was part of the narrative, but this snapshot approach, it feels clunky and non-sensical. Also a downer is that the strips are at different sizes, a couple of them done at an extra large size that a single Sunday strip extends across the spread of two pages. This doesn't work as it doesn't take into account the center fold of the spread and so details and text are completely lost in the gutter. Still worth the money for the creativity that Jantze shows in his approach to the medium and storytelling. If you want to see a bunch of the strips and just how much his art and storytelling grew over the years go to gocomics.com.

Silver Streak Comics: I really have myself to blame. I wasn't too impressed with their Fantastic Comics in the Next Issue Project and given the fact that the comic was bagged and boarded so I couldn't check the insides first, I should have listened to that little voice in my head.

Larsen's Daredevil story is a thin-bare plot suitable for a Hellboy comic but without the charm or spookiness. Larsen's writing has always been episodic, much like a soap-opera. He writes action scenes and vignettes that build into a larger narrative. However, as standalone shorts like this, what we have is just a vignette or a scene not a story.

And, it's the best out of the bunch. The rest is full of self mockery and pastiche, not playing the characters as straightforward heroes but as commentary either on superheroes or the differences in the times. Silver Streak and Captain Battle almost succeed but have that same undercurrent of not taking the characters seriously. The one-page comedy strip has to do it with a post-modern bent and instead of coming up with something funny delivers something that makes you want to slash your wrists. Actually makes you want to read the Superpowers versions of the characters.

Speaking of Larsen's comics, I recently picked up an issue of Savage Dragon as it guest-stars Daredevil. Sadly, it looks as if he has embraced modern coloring. Everything was dark and intense, and the colorist putting highlights on individual muscles making them look plastic. I couldn't get past the coloring to even see if the story itself struck me as being any good.

DC Universe: Legacies: DC has launched a new mini-series, a sorta Marvels as a look at the history of DC comics starting with the golden-age and working more or less towards the present through the eyes of a common man.

As the first two issues deal with the JSA and the golden-age, and has artwork by Andy Kubert inked by papa Joe Kubert, they were pretty much must buys. It is interesting to note that the title is fairly literal. The heroes prominently featured are ones with modern day legacies: the Atom, Sandman, Crimson Avenger (though his legacy is very minor), Dr. Fate, Spectre, etc. The scenes of the various heroes also seem to be mostly from actual GA stories, the exception being the Atom and Sandman working together on a case but not as part of the JSA.

Now, with a universe that undergoes major continuity revisions every couple of years and minors ones constantly appearing in ongoing titles, a series like this can be helpful in smoothing out a few wrinkles and setting stuff up. Yet, with the second issue, the mini already goes astray in that it applies an all new retcon on top of other retcons ie it makes TNT and Dyna-mite the replacement heroes for Green Arrow and Speedy in the Seven Soldiers of Victory.

This is a bad retcon on several layers. One, the Seven Soldiers are a team of non-powered heroes. The Shining Knight is the powerhouse in the sense he has magic armor, sword and a flying horse. TNT and Dyna-mite upset that dynamic. Not only that, they are so powerful that although they are the retcon characters, they are now the power-houses of the team. It violates the spirit and balance of the team. Two, there are already retcons in place that explain who replaced Green Arrow and Speedy. Two retcons actually. The first was just the promotion of Billy Gunn and Wing to full status. Not a good explanation really since both are partners of other members it still leaves no one to plug into Green Arrow segments of the adventures. A second retcon was of the Spider whom James Robinson had made into a villain and traitor. Again, not a comfortable fit since it adds un-necessary baggage and not one I like as it takes a hero and recasts him as a villain, a specialty of Robinson's. But, it is an explanation. So, unless a later retcon is going to come along and clear things up and be a better fit... but, that brings us up to point number three. Some fans with whom the Spider as a traitorous member and/or TNT's death in Young All-Stars doesn't sit well, optimistically rejoice, seeing this as over-writing both events. Others, are just curious what this actually means for TNT and Dyna-mite as well as the Spider. The story involved does not implicitly contradict anything concerning previously published history of TNT and Spider as TNT may have just been a member before his death and it was that death that lead to the Spider joining. Which means, this would be a retcon without any purpose since it doesn't really correct anything. But, it's also one that instead of answering or addressing any questions, it raises questions and concerns, instead of simplifying things it complicates them.

The lead story of issue two covers the influence of the JSA, causing a heroic explosion of individual heroes along with other super groups such as the Seven Soldiers and the Freedom Fighters in a nice two page spread. The spread shows the core heroes of both groups along with others such as Mr. America, Air Wave, Sargon and Zatara. Of course, in the real publishing history Zatara preceded the JSA. And, there are no depictions or mention of the Fawcett characters such as Minute Man, Bulletman, Mr. Scarlet, etc and their GA superteam Crime Crusaders Club. In addition to an overview of the history and the dissolution of the JSA we get a wonderfully rendered look at the Guardian and the Newsboy Legion. Wonder if we'll see an account of what happens with them over time in the future issues?

The back-up story covers an adventure of the Seven Soldiers establishing TNT and Dyna-mite as members. It also may be a retcon of an actual story as in this story the team is challenged to stop a series of crimes by Black Star. Which they do in individual vignettes before teaming up to take down the master villain... the Dummy! Only, the Soldiers really did have an adventure fighting against a mystery villain called the Black Star. Just like the retcon of TNT, this story only raises questions.

Justice Society of America #39: Mr. T's plan on undoing the bleak Nazi controlled future is revealed and we see the powerless heroes fighting back to give him a chance. We also find out a little more just how the Fourth Reich took over the world with a little snide remark about America not liking having casualties while waging a war. The more time they spend on this, the more holes it has. We don't see who actually organized all of this, that came up with a way to neutralize ALL superpowers on the planet including power-rings and magic. And, how, realistically they managed to take over America so seamlessly with only a handful of super powered joes that they couldn't even use while keeping the powered heroes in check... so how did they have a huge enough army to fight America's armies AND non-powered heroes? The longer they spend on it, the more glaring these improbabilities become.

Overlooking that, it's a fun issue full of slambang action and a bit of fun in picking out the characters with them looking quite a bit older and out of costume.

The Phantom: Moonstone may have lost the rights to the Phantom so that Ross can do his revision update on the character, but at least they are going out with a bang by putting out several Phantom comics at a time. There's the monthly Phantom (with a purple cover and no logo this go around) that sports the wonderful art by Silvestre Szilagyi. Then Phantom Generations that has text stories and art by a different creative team each month focusing on Phantoms of different eras. And, the weakest of the bunch, The Phantom Double Shot with b/w artwork and two stories, one featuring the Phantom and the second another luminary of Moonstone, this time Captain Action.

Moonstone is also advertising "The Return of the Originals" ie various pulp heroes such as G-8, the Black Bat, Phantom Detective and Domino Lady whom they already publish. I'd be excited if not for the fact that so far, the Phantom has been the exception and not the rule in regards to Moonstone's handling of the various characters. They are just as guilty of modern revisionistic takes that bear little to the spirit of the original characters beyond superficials.

Alex Ross meanwhile sees the Phantom running through the jungle in a purple costume as being unrealistic, that painting himself in red berry juice is more realistic and edgier. And, he's right. It is unrealistic. So is Batman wearing a costume that limits eyesight, a cape that enemies can grab, and spending all that money on gadgets and such to fight crime when he could have just joined the police or FBI. Or teenage Peter Parker who could make a fortune with his temporary adhesive (but thought the best way to make money was entering a wrestling ring) and then uses a costume to fight crime that makes him a target of both crooks and the police. Or pretty much every other costumed crime fighter. What part of the Phantom is a superhero does he fail to understand? It not only works within the conventions of the genre, the Phantom is pretty much the first guy to do so and establish it! Tell you what, Alex, how about we see you actually create a character and story and stop trying to put your name on everyone else's.

The Spectacular Spider-Girl #2 of 4: Gang war has engulfed NY and half the crooks are running scared due to reports of the Punisher returning. The balance already upset, his quarry decides to bring his own powered operatives into play, one of whom seems to be May's clone who has the venom symbiote and is calling herself Mayhem. Great, old fashioned fun and artwork by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz. This time out, the back-up serves more of a purpose as it follows up on one of the scenes in the main story and follows how the gang war is affecting other heroes of the MC2-verse, in this case the Buzz and American Dream.

Star Trek: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor #2: The review of this issue is a bit late due more to the fact that it either 1) didn't show up at my usual store or 2) they sold out. So, I didn't get it until the same time as #3. Byrne tells the story of an alien race that is mysteriously dying of no apparent cause. Dr. McCoy's irascible nature gets the better of him as the race has very specific customs and laws that not only hinder his work but gets him into legal trouble as he tries to delve into the mystery of both the deaths and the secret that the race is guarding. We see Scotty appearing in a guest role. Romance between Duncan and Theela move along at a quick pace.

The coloring is not as much a distraction this time out, a few places where it creates patterns on the alien skin and adding definition in the faces where the artwork doesn't call for it. In places where less is more, the coloring seems to want more is more, over-doing it. At least the coloring is not too dark and dense.

Star Trek: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor #3: This issue brings in various characters from Byrne's little corner of the Star Trek original series universe all together, as McCoy and company end up on the planet where warlike clones were left in the Assignment Earth mini and so Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln aren't too far behind. However, everything needed to follow the story is pretty much explained in the issue, not requiring the reading of the other minis.

I don't know if it's deliberate, but Byrne's inking seems harsher, both grittier and splotchier in the blacks fitting a grim and gritty world. The flashback is marred by the benday dot screen, meant to get across that it was from an older comic. Of course when that is used, it usually refers to a comic printed in the 1980s or before or a comic within a comic, setting up a level of unreality between the comic and the story-within-a-story. The only other throw-out is the space battle where the explosions in space are obviously generated through the computer and thus not fitting the style of linear artwork. Like the previous issue, a little too much effort is given to painting in definition on the faces.

However, Byrne's handling of the Star Trek characters and his telling single issue stories makes me wish they'd just go ahead and greenlight an ongoing series set in the original series universe and time period (and maybe incorporate a few of the alien crew members from the cartoon, giving the crew a more interstellar mix beyond just Spock).

The Torch #8: The mini ends about where one would expect where Torch and Toro must fight a more powerful version of themselves but leaving both characters intact to continue along their way in the Marvel U. What it doesn't really do is set them up with any kind of lives or status quo beyond existing. It does establish the Mad Thinker though as a major bad guy and a veritable threat as he tends to stay one step ahead of everyone else. May not be the definitive Torch storyline, but it comes almost off as the definitive Mad Thinker story.

As I talked about the coloring of the Star Trek books, this one is full of all the bad coloring that is pretty indicative of the Dynamite books. It's often too saturated and dark. So flesh tones are high contrasts and orange where the Star Trek books excelled in subtlety. Several scenes of blurring backgrounds, using the coloring to providing textures, etc. It's hard to judge the pencils due to the overpowering colors.

Sadly the followup is a modern Invaders comic. As much as I like golden-age comics, my interest in Bucky-Cap is in the negative numbers. And, the work on this comic was passable but never outstanding and it's the exact same team. So, we'll wait and see.

** Interesting little note, while writing this, I was listening to an old radio show of the Green Lama. In the radio show, everyone knows Jethro Dumont is the Green Lama, his phrase accompanied with "the Green Lama strikes!" seems to give him some super-strength. It also gives an explanation of why the color green. In "The Last Dinosaur" the script is peppered with educational proverbs much like the pulps were. Strangely, his assistant is not called Tsarong but Tulku, a form of address of honor generally used by Magga and Tsarong in talking to the Green Lama. With the Green Lama calling his assistant Tulku, it would be establishing Tulku as his mentor and teacher.

2 steps forward, 3 steps back

Heroic Age... Yeah, right.

So, in the new Agents of Atlas series, they killed half the duo that made up the original 3-D Man and left the other comatose so that the minority legacy character can have a stronger hold on the title...

If there was any lingering doubt that the big 2's posturing of their transitions to "heroic age" and "brightest day" being anything other than just business as usual...

I think I was one of the few that didn't mind Triathlon as being a legacy hero and actually liked him and his costume in the pages of Avengers. Part of that was that he didn't actually usurp the original identity. Through his powers, costume and name, he referenced and updated the retro-hero without being an actual minority copycat replacement. Once they started with actually changing him to BE 3-D Man, I knew that something like this was coming. By turning him to the 3-D Man via name and costume, it robbed the character of what made him unique. Now, he's just like all other minority replacements of established heroes. See, the name "Triathlon" was uniquely his and tied to his powers and background just as the retro name "3-D Man" fit the original character as a retcon retro character of the 1950s. Re-naming Triathlon to 3-D Man lessens the identities of both men. And, where Marvel had two separate heroes that were unique but with bonds to each other, they now just have one. How is it a good thing to actually lessen the variety of a company's assets?

Astro City #4: Meanwhile, Astro City brings to a close its own "Dark Age" storyline. I've enjoyed the meandering stories of the past in Astro City such as the Confessor and Steeljack storylines. This one never quite gelled for me. I think there are some interesting themes in there of the evolution of the characters Charles and Royal Williams from being brothers who were a cop and a street hustler to the men driven to avenge the deaths of their parents years before to the point of them transforming into what they hate. Somewhere along the way, their personal journey became tiresome as the story delved into the death and resurrection of the Silver Agent, time travel, dimensional rifts to an evil dimension and the man they pursued becoming almost a cosmic level threat.

There was just too much stuff the story had to cover that was tangential to the core story, the conceit of trying to follow it through the eyes of the two men and their own journey wore thin. The story became bloated. Busiek may be one of the few writers that when one of his stories becomes padded, it gets denser with more story and characterization as opposed to just making a four issue story fit 6 issues by just adding action and frame-by-frame sequencing in the art so that something would normally fit in two panels takes a whole page or two (Batman taking two pages to change clothes and drive across town in a JLA Classified story a few years back comes to mind. Used to be such things would happen between panels). This time, it works against Busiek and the story he's telling though. The brothers' metamorphosis and its symbolism and themes become heavy-handed from having to constantly revisit it for several more issues beyond the story's natural end as the villain Aubrey gains powers and escapes, extending the storyline for several more issues.

Ironically, as the story became so bloated, there were elements that never got developed as much as they probably should have, feeling like they were tacked on to draw the story out. Such as the rift that was either darkening the public or feeding off of their darker natures, what and who the Pale Horseman was, the story of the Street Angel (I was left wanting more of this guy), as well as the Black Badge. Other than being a cosmic threat, I felt like I was missing something somewhere and just how it all actually connected to the why's of the Silver Agent and his time jumping. It all was just too big of an epic for the limited dual 1st person narrative of the Williams brothers.

The Spectacular Spider-Girl #1: Somehow, the news of this mini completely passed me by. Didn't see any reference to it at comicbookresources or any of the other usual blogs and forums. A pleasant surprise. It' had been awhile since I last saw Spider-Girl, I didn't follow her over to the Spider-man Family books as I don't see a reason to buy an anthology just for one feature, especially with today's prices. This doesn't seem to pick up too far after her series though. However, I still had to play a little catch-up as I didn't remember all the details of the status quo when the series ended such as the status of her clone and that she was living with May as a "cousin". Still, it has all of the elements that made her series a joy to read. Heroic characters, clear concise art, plenty of action and all done in an all-ages classic style. The main story concerns a gang-war enveloping the city, one that draws an older Frank Castle from his self-imposed exile in South America. While Spider-Girl is saving lives from a burning building, the Punisher shows he's still the toughest guy around as he fights his way onto a plane heading for the States. Fun stuff.

The book also contains a couple of short back-up stories, one featuring American Dream, re-introducing her to the readership. The second back-up is the one that falters as May has a dream that she has to play basketball against several of her foes. It's not that the story is just filler with no real insight or purpose but that the usually solid Paul Ryan fails to deliver on the artwork. Ryan's biggest flaw as an artist is that like Frenz, his style is about 20 years too late. He's wonderfully suited for books with a more traditional and classic style without an inker or colorist doing all sorts of filters, fills and special effects to jazz it up and fighting both the penciler and the writer for dominance. In short, in this day and age, a book with his artwork is normally a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it is lacking here. It feels like it is trying too hard to be Pat Oliffe (the artist that started Spider-Girl off) instead of his own style and lacks the energy that he normally is able to deliver. Nor does it impart any mood or atmosphere or surreal aspect to what is supposed to be a dream. A weak ending to an otherwise enjoyable first issue overall.

Hellboy in Mexico: Love this comic. Mignola and Corben make a great team, I've praised their Hellboy comics in the past. It helps this is a self-contained story as well. Add in the phenomenon of masked Mexican wrestlers and make it a set of three brothers who get the calling to stop wrestling and hunt monsters and team up with Hellboy for monster butt-kicking, drinking and carousing, and you have the makings of a great story. Pick it up and you'll be entertained. Wouldn't mind seeing a return of the brothers.

JSA #38: As the story unfolds how the Fourth Reich managed to take all the heroes out and take over America, it stumbles. I've talked about how one of the problems with the Fourth Reich as a villainous group in this storyline is that it doesn't really have a head, we don't see who's pulling the strings. A bait and switch is pulled here as we are shown who is the "current" leader in the future, an adult Kid Karnevil. The flaw is that in explaining how the future came to be, it also glosses over many of the important details. Somehow, the darkness engine robs all heroes of its powers including Atlanteans of their natural ability to breathe underwater and the technological GL power-rings, while at least trying to give some lip service at explaining it. But, we are then expected to believe that the Reich is able to take over and people quickly align to their way of thinking, seeing the new government as being the rightful one and former heroes the criminals. It never explains how that transition happened, how the Fourth Reich went from a small band of a few super-powered Nazis to a movement that was able to take over the government and world and defeat all the non-powered heroes as well as the common men and women that would stand against them. It goes straight from the men and women on the street fighting to save the life of a now powerless and severely wounded Superman to a mob seeking to burn Power Girl at the stake in support of the Nazi regime. Nor does it explain exactly who came up with the idea of the Darkness Engine, knew that it would depower the heroes and put the Fourth Reich together in the first place. Some crucial parts of the story are missing for the presented sequence of events being at all credible.

Black Terror #10: After a promising improvement last issue, this one slides back into almost everything that makes the Dynamite titles a chore to read. Literally a chore in this case as the artwork is so darkly and heavily colored, it's a wonder they even bothered to do this as a comic book. Half the time Miss Masque's costume is more purple than red. It makes it difficult to really critique the storytelling skills of the penciller since it takes so long to just get past all the dense coloring to even figure out what he's trying to draw. Likewise, the ghostly flying pirate ship has a kewl special effect, done as a negative against the backdrop of everything and everyone else done as positive. But it makes the ship even busier and harder to read as a figure in already too dense and crowded artwork.

The primary purpose of comic art is to TELL THE STORY. This means everything, from penciling to inking to the coloring should work to that end. If any part actually impedes the movement of the story or the central message of a panel or page, then it fails. When you get a hyper detailed page by George Perez, the storytelling is still paramount and clear. The detail enhances, not impedes the process.

Unless I have forgotten something, it was Mystico from last issue that gave the Black Terror the ship. However, they refer to him as the Scarab several times, a completely different hero. Oops. And, the plot goes back to being about the Urn instead of just giving us a new threat and a little more variety to their world.

I did like the opening scene with the Magi. Still a bit curious as to which golden-age villain he's supposed to be, if any. We could use a little more development of the villains and surely not all the supervillains are part of the Supremacy or Claw.

Brightest Day?

So, in spinning out of the Blackest Night mini's DC announced a brighter future and even have a series called "Brightest Day." But, to show that this is really just meaningless lip service and it's standard business as usual, Green Arrow has become even more violent, again eschewing trick arrows and using maiming and disfiguring shots. Remember the last time he did this, the book was actually labeled "For Mature Readers Only" and it started the downward spiral that lead to the character being killed off? The whole point of his resurrection and relaunch was to turn the clock back a bit to when the character was actually a viable superhero within the rest of the superhero community. What's next? Hal Jordan going nuts and massacring the whole GL Corps? Superman getting killed and replaced by four others? Hawk going nuts and getting enough power to kill off half the JSA?

Also, as part of this supposed focus on the heroes and brighter future, we have a new Titans book starring villains. First order of business, kill off the Ryan Choi Atom! Ok, I was a bit surprised that he hadn't died already since his book was canceled. And, once Ray Palmer started making appearances again... Still, of all the "new" One Year Later titles, his was the only one that had any legs to it, lasting for 25 issues. Part of what made it work was it didn't invalidate previous continuity nor build up the current character at the expense of the previous one. Of course, it is what ultimately doomed poor Ryan as the back door was always open for the return of Ray Palmer.

Meanwhile, the writer Eric Wallace defends the killing by talking about how much he likes the Ryan Choi Atom and what a great character he is. Just as Scott Beatty and Alex Ross talk about how much they love the Phantom character which obviously translates to not actually wanting to write the character as is but changing him. Geez, with friends like these...

Stories like this and James Robinson's JLA mini and ongoing book likewise built on a bunch of corpses are what are keeping me away from the majority of the titles by Marvel and DC. Even when they say they are going to focus more on the heroes and a "brighter day", their deeds show that it's all meaningless hype. It's an attempt to lure back lapsed readers, hoping that they won't notice that the majority of the line is still the exact same morose and dreary writing that drove them away the first time. If they really wanted to focus on producing brighter, more accessible and more heroic comics, they'd just do it.

Thought the recent promo of the new relaunched Avengers title was interesting in that the conversation between Wonder Man and Steve Rogers, if you substitute "Bendis" for the word "Avengers" and it pretty much sums up my feelings.

Iron Man 2: Saw the movie last night and I really enjoyed it. Sure, it's not a Tony Stark that I remember, but it doesn't seem out of kilter with the way the character has been portrayed in the comics in the recent past. I was happy to see Happy Hogan with significant screen time and actually doing stuff. His scenes are funny but they show that he has a heroism to him even if he's not of the same caliber as Iron Man or the Black Widow. The movie did a great job at really playing up Stark's intelligence and drive, even when he's not in the suit. At times it's unclear just how much of his personality as a egotistical shallow genius is really that or a show. There's one point after he really makes a complete jerk of himself that it's implied that he engineered the whole debacle so that Rhodey would steal the suit and become his replacement.

Only a few things bothered me in the movie. One, the armored threat. It seems to be the tact of the movies to make the hero and villains too much of the same cloth. He fought an armored villain the first movie, it would have been nice to see a different kind of threat. The Hulk movies went the same route, where the villains were just reflections of the hero.

I thought Hammer was too lightweight of a bad-guy as well. If not for Sam Rockwell's performance, he would have been a complete joke. I never felt that Stark or his business was ever in any actual danger from Hammer as he was completely shown up by Stark in every single situation. He was never a credible or serious threat, just an annoyance. In fact, Stark's enemy was really only himself and his own shortcomings and not Hammer. This backfires a bit as it distances Stark from us. It's a role reversal of the Doctor Doom and Reed Richards relationship in the first FF movie. Stark and Doom are the arrogant and more successful men and who come out on top continuously throughout the movie, their undoing more from the worse parts of their nature. The difference being that at the end of the day, we know Stark will redeem himself, while Doom will ultimately pay the price for his arrogance.

Census: I'm temporarily working for the census and it really amazes me the resistance and anger to it that I've been seeing in the field and online. How does the line go? I like individuals, it's people I can't stand. And, it's not in the places you'd expect. I am in a rural county, lots of nice subdivisions alongside mobile home parks and farms. The people in the nice homes, the ones that benefit the MOST from the information gathered are the ones that are the most resistant, rude or won't even answer their doors. The simple fact is that government is only a small part of who makes use of that data.

Unless you live in the woods in a house that you built yourself by chopping down the trees, dug your own well, have no power and grow all your own food, you benefit from the information gathered. A recent news story talked about how whites were moving from the suburbs into the city, guess where a lot of that type of statistical information comes from? When businesses look to locate, it's based on demographics gotten from the local governments. Your roads, emergency services as well as local services such as power, water, trash pickup, schools... all based on statistics gathered from the census and which drive the value of your property. The building you are living in exists because some builder made a decision based on local demographics, largely built from census info.

Ironically, by not filling out the census, it causes the government to spend MORE of taxpayers' money in trying to get that info, the going door-t0-door is the most expensive part. And, it only guarantees that someone is going to come to your front door, and keep coming to pester you. If you seriously have something to hide or don't want to be bothered, the smart thing to do was to actually mail it in and the government won't come snooping around your door trying to get or verify the information.

Robert Culp, Green Hornet & the Torch

Another childhood favorite of mine passed away. This time it was Robert Culp, 79, after a fall.

I first became aware of Culp in The Greatest American Hero and it was my parents that told me about his earlier and groundbreaking show, I-Spy with Bill Cosby. At the time, Cosby was more well known to me as the guy from Fat Albert.

Culp excelled playing the conservative gung-ho, and often exasperated, FBI Agent Bill Maxwell opposite the unassuming liberal Ralph Hinkley who had the super-suit. As a kid and super-hero geek, I loved the show and its theme song. And, who didn't have a crush on Hinkley's fiance played by Connie Sellecca?

I got to see episodes of I Spy in syndication years later, after the advent of cable. A solid and fairly serious spy tv show that Hollywood in typical wisdom turned into a comedy on the big screen ala Starsky & Hutch and Charlie's Angels. See, we accept it with Charlie's Angels because the premise already was a bit ludicrous and straddled being both sexist and empowering when it came out. With that kind of thinking, I'm surprised that the movie version of Dukes of Hazzard wasn't more like Deliverance. I loved how years after the television series, Cosby has Culp making a guest appearance on The Cosby Show, basically as his I Spy character and all the little references to them playing tennis together (their cover identities in the series). While looking for images to use in this blog, I came across a reference to a Diagnosis Murder episode that featured actors from various tv spy shows: Robert Culp (I Spy), Robert Vaughn (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), Patrick Macnee (The Avengers), and Barbara Bain (Mission: Impossible). Never saw it, but love the idea.

I saw an old made-for-tv movie several years ago starring Culp called Outrage where he plays a suburban father whose family is harassed by neighborhood kids to the point they kill the family dog but the police and the parents won't do anything to curb them. At which point, Culp takes matters in his own hand. Wonderful stuff.

Of more recent vintage, Culp played the slightly uptight and pretentious father of Patricia Heaton's character on Everybody Loves Raymond, with his charismatic affable charm softening the edges of a character that would probably be annoying to know in real life. Of course, that describes most of the characters on that show with all of their various neuroses.

In addition to starring in a series about a comicbook type hero and in another series that got made into comics as shown here, Robert Culp has another connection to comics. Culp starred in several episodes of The Outer Limits including one called "The Architects of Fear" where a group of scientists decide to trick the world into thinking an alien invasion is imminent with the hopes that the world leaders would set aside their differences and come together in light of the perceived bigger threat. This is, of course, Ozymandias' scheme in Alan Moore's Watchmen. The episode is referenced at the end as it is airing on the tv in the background when Dan and Laurie in their new guises visit her mother.

Green Hornet: Year One: It's interesting to note how terms become part of the lexicon and how each industry or a group will develop their own specialized language. Such as DC coming up with the hardcover reprint line called "Archives", the term now applying pretty much to any hardback collection of a title or character's original run. The look is even reproduced by Dark Horse in their volumes which would be a clear case of trademark infringement otherwise. Likewise Thomas coined the terms "retroactive-continuity" and "ret-con" though they have been in existence for almost as long as the form. It was just never given a name. What was originally a stunt to tie in with Zero Hour, we now have regular "zero issues" trotted out by almost every publisher. Likewise, the term "Year One" has grown apart from it's original meaning. Used by Frank Miller in his revamp origin of Batman in Batman: Year One, it now tends to mean any origin story set in the past of the current continuity.

Thus, this Green Hornet title is not about the first year of his activity but all the years leading up to it and his first outings that would set the tone of his career as masquerading as a masked crime boss preying on other gangs and organized crime.

In some ways, it covers the same ground as Kevin Smith's Green Hornet comic. It sets up the the concept of the Green Hornet as a fighter against organized crime, while being about fathers and sons and their responsibilities. However, Matt Wagner actually delivers the beginnings of a solid story as opposed to Smith's opening ten minutes of a movie.

Wagner layers his story by comparing the childhoods and father-son relationships of both Britt Reid and Kato. He lays out and starts weaving the threads of the two characters' stories into recurring thematic elements, so we see where the story is going. Wagner sets the stage of Britt's father crusading against organized crime through his newspaper, his focus on raising Britt to take up that mantle some day and emphasizing academics as well as athletics. This is contrasted against Kato who is not as adept at the academics and who focuses on training in the martial arts while his father also teaches him about loyalty and the way of the samurai in Japan. And the comic ends with each a young man on a collision course, taking the lessons of their fathers into directions their fathers had not intended. Against the scenes of their growing up, we also see them years later emerging as the Green Hornet and Kato starting their careers, the destination and point of the story being set before the reader.

This is the Green Hornet comic Dynamite should have started with. In one issue, we get the underpinnings of the motivations and forces that drive the characters as well as the facts of the world that they inhabit. Aaron Campbell's artwork is more expressionistic and stylish than his previous work on the publisher's Sherlock Holmes book and looking a lot less blotchy in the inks. The coloring by Francesco Francavilla goes a long way to reinforcing the style and mood through limited color use (the book is almost all orange and green).

The Torch #6: Alex Ross and Mike Carey use a similar plot structure that was in Ross' and Jim Krueger's Avengers/Invaders and that is found in many role playing video games. The story is broken down in distinct Acts with a clear resolution to each Act that sets up the action and story for the following Act. This helps in keeping a story from feeling a little too complex or meandering too terribly much, breaking it down into smaller stories with an over-arcing plot and theme. Issue six is the beginning of Act III. The Torch has been reactivated, he and Toro have their powers back and with the help of the Fantastic Four, stopped an experiment by the Mad Thinker from running completely amok and enslaving the human race. The downfall is that the solution is slowly killing the original Human Torch, with days to live. Meanwhile, the Mad Thinker is still at large and Toro is looking into his mother's role in the Torch's origins.

While not a bad story, it lacks certain logic in human nature. The last issue brought the Torch and the Sub-Mariner together in battle. But, there is no logical follow-up. Namor doesn't feature at all once that aspect of the plot is over with even though he is an old friend and ally of the two from their days in the Invaders and All-Winners Squad and he witnessed Toro's last days and death before this resurrection. Likewise, Toro shows no interest in contacting his wife who was last seen hanging around with the Torch. It's been years for us, but his marriage should be like yesterday to him. At first, I thought that maybe the woman he was with in the diner was her, but it's someone else. Who she is, and how she has contacts with an older spy is not clear. Maybe, if I go back and re-read some of the earlier issues, I'll see that she was introduced earlier.

It's part of a tendency of many modern comics that set up heroes as being just the heroes. The Torch and Toro are back in the land of the living but they seem to be living off of the FF's dime. Take the scene in the diner. Toro has no money, no job and apparently no clothes beyond the new generic outfit given by Reed Richards (I'll grant that his last costume was equally generic). How does he afford to eat out in New York City, even if it's a diner? He shows more interest in getting his powers back and solving the decades old mystery concerning his mother than actually building a life for himself. It's like all of the Avengers who seem to live solely by virtue of the Avengers offering room and board. Toro's whole personality is solely mission based and defined by the plot.

The comic may go down as one of the most defining ones for the Mad Thinker. Of most of the super villain master minds, he's one of the few that never really had an extended story arc or series of appearances that really set him up as a foe to be reckoned with. In this mini, he gets ample room showing off his criminal genius. After the way he manhandled AIM in allowing him to pursue his own pet projects, he gets a little comeuppance here. And, he is in such fine form with his arrogance and superiority complex that at first the massive coincidences and glossed over plot-holes involved swept right by me. How did a dictator of a secreted, remote and almost completely isolated village get in touch with the Thinker? How did they know about his recent work with the Torch (otherwise, why contact him now instead of anytime in the last 20 years)? And, what a huge coincidence that this hitherto unknown leader just so happens to be the man that holds the secrets to Toro's past thus setting him and the Torch on path to another clash with the Mad Thinker.

Another little flaw in the storytelling, one that occurred to me when seeing the online previews, if you have characters speaking in translated word balloons as in the opening scenes, then none of the words in said balloons should be in the foreign language, even if their meaning is clear. It's not the same as if trying to get across someone of foreign background speaking English as their second language and thus peppering their language with foreign words and phrases such as Nightcrawler's exclamations of "Mein Gott" or Colossus calling his comrades "tovarishc". The translated conversation should not be:

"We're not even supposed to be here. It's a Verbotene Zone."
"Sophie, everything is verboten, Let's break the rules for once."

and

"Fantastisch! It's like a fairy tale!"

but

"We're not even supposed to be here. It's a Forbidden Zone."
"Sophie, everything is Forbidden, Let's break the rules for once."

and

"Fantastic! It's like a fairy tale!"

If you are translating, you translate every word apart from proper names.

Lastly, if the Torch is dying due to the destruction and breakdown of the Horton cells, shouldn't this affect Toro's powers. Maybe by the end of the story, we'll see Toro sacrifice his life or his powers in order to save the Torch. After all, do we really need three almost identical flaming heroes in the M.U.?

Still, a solid enough read and it stands on its own, no need to be getting all those other tie-ins, other mini's and one-shots or titles you don't normally read in order to get the full story.