Back To The Golden Age

A few thoughts on recent comics.
Captain Midnight: By Dark Horse, Captain Midnight has been mostly a way to do a revival right. While clearly based on the history of the old radio and comic character (not "pulp"), the comic is also modern storytelling. The Captain is brought forward through time and finds that his villains have not been idle over the years. Also, his own tech seems to have been corrupted by others over the years. The writers manage to tell their Captain America/SHIELD over arcing long story without sacrificing telling smaller stories and keeping the hero heroic and active force. There were a couple of mis-steps in the Skyman issues as with the character of Skyman, they did everything they didn't do with the character of Captain Midnight. They went out of the way to make the character derivative of CM by completely ignoring Skyman's own rich history and motivations (the truth is that the Skyman owed more to Spy Smasher than Captain Midnight, especially as this version of Midnight is based on Fawcett's version, who they re-worked as being more like their character Spy Smasher). The character of Skyman is not the original but some patriotic zealot thug and made to look ridiculous by seeing his hair sticking out from under his cowl. Then to add insult to injury, in the upcoming Skyman comic, he's replaced by a minority character AND given a new, kewl costume while making making fun of the original costume!

Doc Savage: Two issues in, Dynamite's Doc Savage is a bit of a surprise. One, it is keeping so far halfway close to the actual pulp character. Two, the artwork in the second issue is the same as in the first issue, and mostly solid if not exceptional. Three, it is a tighter, stronger and in character driven story than the writer's attempt in "Masks". The second issue thankfully does not live up to the advertised hyperbole, that Doc would have to choose between his mission or his cousin's life. No such decision is made here. There's even hope that the writer is coming up a way to bring Doc and crew both to the present day without actually sidelining them by death or infirmity of age. The story of the second issue only has one real flaw. It states that when Doc is at his fortress, that his men call in help and that help is Pat Savage. This is necessary for the sake of the story, but it doesn't fit with what we know of Doc's men or of their relationship with Pat. Pat is a capable character, but she's not super-capable, no more capable than they are. Plus, the text states that she formed her own crew of adventurers, which would make some sense as Doc and crew tended to try to keep her out of trouble, but after stating that, instead of seeing some of them, we get Monk and Ham! Kinda disappointing.  If Doc's men were calling in help, might have been interesting to see another Lester Dent or Street & Smith character ala Click Rush, Blond Adder or Nick Carter, Cash Gorman, the Avenger...

I give Roberson credit by dealing with the Crime College and NOT writing it up as if Doc was lobotomizing the bad guys and removing all sense of free will.

The biggest drawback so far really is the art. It's clear and straightforward, detailed where it needs to be, not overly colored. What it cannot do is really distinguish Doc and his men. Long Tom, Renny, and Johnny all have the same build and face, nothing distinguishing about them. Doc is not drawn taller than those around him. Monk doesn't look shorter than the others and doesn't look homely as much as just perpetually angry. Characters are identified not by who they look like, but because they look less like anyone else.

The Invaders: A strong first issue by Marvel and James Robinson that comes as a bit of a surprise. There are two cannon fodder deaths, one belonging to a Shi'ar Imperial Guardsman and the other a golden-age hero. Although, given the nature of the particular hero's power and who killed him, it is not something that is necessarily permanent. Although, it does raise the question as to why he was on the mission and not Captain America and hopefully, there will be an in-story explanation.

The plot concerns the Kree after a device that the Invaders discovered in the 40s being used by Strucker. It could control gods and the original Human Torch, Namor, and Bucky divided it up and hid it. Namor's piece was found and they are after the Torch's piece. The Torch has been living the quiet life in a small town as a mechanic when they come calling. A pitched battle, things go badly for him, and then at the end Superpro and Nomad show up.

There's a few places that make little sense beyond the story needing it to be that way. Such as if the Human Torch is retired and keeping a low profile, why is he wearing his costume under his clothes? Even more to the point, why is he wearing a new, cool version of his costume? As he's a synthetic human, if he's trying to pass as normal, why wouldn't he eat a whole pie or drink a whole cup of coffee? Presumably, he could actually process the food as energy just as a normal person. It's there to drive home that he's not human, but it doesn't really make sense from a character point of view. Since, the Invaders divided the pieces to hide, why would Namor and NOT the Human Torch hide his piece in the middle of the desert? One might guess that Namor would hide a piece in the desert if he is the one that had to hide all three, who would look for a piece there. But, since they divided it up, the desert is no longer a reach for a hiding place as the other two could conceivably hide it there. So, it simply makes no sense other than being a cool moment.

The artwork is top notch. Clean and clear storytelling, actually looks better on print than online. The only drawback is in a few flame effects and the explosion behind Superpro-Cap and Nomad-Bucky are obviously digitally created.

The biggest problems for me in continuing with the book are things mostly coming from outside this specific issue. For example, I don't like the idea of Winter Soldier. We see Bucky in the past and he's mowing people down with his gun, his new default personality. I also lost faith with James Robinson as a writer some time ago. We get an indication of that with the cannon fodder deaths that he's using to kick off his series. He plans on making changes to Toro's powers (because somehow another fire-based character is redundant, even when he's one of the first ones). Then there's Cap's movie inspired costume that is one of the ugliest ideas to come down the pike. Where's the idea that he is an acrobatic and martial artist styled fighter under all of that padded gear? The idea that it's supposed to be a superhero costume? 

Scooby Doo Team-up: A comic that actually captures the fun. The first issue was the gang teaming up with Batman and Robin to take down Man-Bat. The second has Batman and Robin but also Slam Bradly, Mystico, Jason Bard, Roy Raymond, Dr. Thirteen, Angel O'Day and Ace, the Bat-hound. And, manages to keep in character with the various characters... well, as long as you consider in-character does not have to do with the nu52.

Comic Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Return of Captain Midnight

 Dark Horse has announced they are bringing back Captain Midnight, first in their anthology Dark Horse Presents and then as a mini-series. Unfortunately for me, their anthology book is usually too expensive when there's only one feature in it at a time I'm interested in.Link

This isn't the Captain's first return. He's been showing up some in the Airfighters comic by the company that's doing a manga influenced Airboy. AC has reprinted a few of his old tales, only promoting him to a major (presumably for trademark and copyright purposes).

But, the news story is interesting. Most companies, including Dark Horse, announce the "return" of a character only to mean a new character using the old one's name, powers and maybe the costume if you're lucky. However, in this instance, the story is all about using the Fawcett version of the character. I'm not thrilled with the angle being the US Government hunting him down and hope they move away from that. At this point, it's bit of a cliche and an easy target. I want to see the character as a cross between Captain America and Nick Fury. Hopefully, when they get the introductory story out of the way, we'll get more of that. However, the writer Josh Williamson says all the right things about trying to remain true to the character and his history and honoring that. A far cry from creators that bash the original material or praise it, while changing everything about the character.

In some ways, this almost seems like an anti-Dynamite book. At least from the one bit of artwork shown, the Captain is not getting a heavy re-design. He's not being re-imagined from the ground up. The cover art by Steve Rude is like Ross only it embraces the superhero aspect of the character. He's larger than life and very dynamic, not looking at all like someone striking a pose. It alone makes me want to read the story.

To quibble... the serial was a movie serial. And, there was a tv series (never seen it, but those usually weren't serials although the serials themselves would sometimes re-air on tv). Their particular take of "the man out of time" disillusioned with the present isn't really all that different either. That's pretty much the whole point of Marvel's The Twelve. Frankly, that seems almost the obvious take and pretty much patently false. It's looking at the past through rose-colored glasses which may work to an extent if you're a white heterosexual male. The strides we've made (though still a ways to go) in regards to race, gender, religion. There's no jet-packs, but an African American President! There's 100 plus channels on tv. In color. In high definition. We've been to the moon and have a robotic car on Mars. Our telephones can do what machines the size of a room could not do. We can cook a dinner in minutes. Sure, there's bad stuff too. But, this is a man that saw WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. Prohibition and gangsters, Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Atomic bomb, the Red Scare.

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This just in, DC discovers that selling 4 titles a month makes more money than selling 2 or 3 titles a month and making more money is good for business.

 One of the more annoying conversations I sometimes run into is explaining to people that late books is bad for business. It's less product for DC to sell, it's less product for stores to sell which is especially damaging as many stores are largely dependent on their weekly deliveries and new comic sales to make budget. The length of time it took JMS to finish The Twelve, Marvel could have completed the series, had the trades out, a follow-up series or spin-offs with the characters. Instead, it lost all momentum, and a year of lost opportunities. If Frank Quitely or Frank Miller can only put out as half as many books as other creators, do their books sell over twice as well if other artists had been associated with the book? You'd think this would be common sense but  judging by conversations I have had with some fans, common sense is not all that common.

Plus, the evidence suggests that coming out on time and regularly increases the sales each month. Thus a book that comes out on time 12 times a year sells more than just 25% more than one that only managed to eke out 9 issues that year.

Here's another angle. If you have a regular publishing schedule and keep to it, advertisers are more prone to advertise with you. After all, they want to know if they run a Christmas theme ad, the title actually comes out before January. You run a business professionally and it instills confidence in others to do business with you.

www.newsarama.com/comics/new-52-one-year-later-title-title-sales.html

Post-reboot — with the exception of very few titles — DC has been publishing its comics on a strict monthly timeline. While fans may be disappointed by the fill-ins that are required to keep the train running, the sales performance of the overall line is more steady and predictably higher when all the books are shipped each month.

Captain Midnight & the Secret Squadron

This little blog will be a bit link heavy. Much of it got it's start from a posting to one of my favorite online hangouts and I ended up with some neat stuff that I wanted to share.

Anywho, the following little song on Youtube was posted which I found enjoyable and funny. Hot Girl in the Comic Shop

I've been to a few comic stores that actually had the audacity to have women employees. In the context of the song, I wondered if that helped bring in customers or maybe it made some of the geekier fans a little uncomfortable. Then, I got to wondering, what if you combined the concept of Hooters/Flying Saucer with the comic shop, having the employees dressing up in a short shorts and too-small tees. It prompted me to use a little artistic license of what one of those potential employees would look like.

Now looking for Captain Midnight artwork to make use of, I came across another really cool site, devoted to Captain Midnight and his radio adventures! Meanwhile, Moonstone is in the process of releasing new adventures of Captain Midnight in both prose and comic stories, having him join the ranks of the Phantom, Kolchak, Captain Action and others. The artwork there looks like the stories will be in the present day with futuristic aircraft blasting across the pages. And, he'll be a bit more in line with his radio/movie serial persona and not the Fawcett version with the gliding superhero costume. Ought to be interesting.