Byrne goes Jurassic!

John Byrne currently has two mini-series out. One, the continuation of his independent series a while back Next Men. The other is a mini set in the Jurassic Park universe titled Jurassic Park: Devils in the Desert. While the latter naturally has dinosaurs, the former also featured a down covered Tyrannosaurus Rex who has eaten one of the central characters of the series! With the second issue of both out, Byrne reveals a talent that doesn't manifest itself very often: dialect.

I talked last time how in Spider-Girl we had a writer not only having Johnny Storm and Reed Richards talking in the same voice but used the exact same words! Byrne isn't one I normally associate with strong dialogue. Generally the opposite actually. His heroes often have a tendency to talk in a universal formally educated dialect of stilted dialogue. But, in the second issue of JBNM, we have the African American woman Tony thrust into the Civil War South, Nathan finds himself among soldiers of WWII, Jasmine is in Elizabethan England, while Jack is a priest some decades in the future. Not only does Byrne nail the atmosphere in the artwork, but he establishes each group with believable speech idioms and dialects. In "Devils in the Desert", the differences are a bit more subtle as almost all of the characters are from the same area of the American West. Indeed, there's even a clunky expositional "As you know, Bob..." type speech as the Sheriff explains his relationship and personal past to a deputy who should already be privy to the information unless one or the other is new to the area. Overall, though various characters show individual characteristics through the way they talk. It's no Coen Brothers film, but it's refreshing nonetheless.

Interesting to note, with the second issues of both comics, I had to wait a week to get a copy. As I moved, I go to a new store to pick up any comics I decide to get. With JBNM, they sold out, with "Devils in the Desert" they claim to have been shorted in their series. Might hold more weight with me if I hadn't on another occasion overhearing the owner talking with a customer, disparaging Byrne, his fans and his forum with half-truths and exaggerations.

In "Devils in the Desert", he includes a Native American deputy. Made me think that a comic featuring the modern American West with a Native American hero would be interesting. America is a big country and its different regions are micro-cultures amongst the larger landscape. Factor in Indian tribes and traditions, there could be fertile ground with the right writer and artist. Imagine Pow Wow Smith mystery series for DC or Red Wolf for Marvel. It was one of the neat things about Gerard Jones and Mike Parobeck's short-lived series El Diablo featuring an Hispanic-American hero in Texas that seemed to faithfully get across the sense of place and culture, something as important in that type of series as it is in a D&D fantasy story. Maybe moreso since you cannot simply make it up.

Black Terror by Dynamite is one of the last hanger-ons of my collecting. Partly because rumors of it being canceled. Plus, it has either been improving or the rest of the comics have denigrated so much, it's a mostly enjoyable series. The art has definitely improved somewhat. There's still stupid or bad writing. With issue 12, he gets a new sidekick called Parrot. Who or what she is, is unclear as she seems to be some sort of by-product of the flying pirate ship. Seriously, the pirate motif is way over-done, especially considering how wrong-headed it is to begin with. It obviously springs from what the creators want his costume to symbolize over the character's actual background and history. He wears the skull and crossbones because he was a pharmacist and it's the symbol for poison. Expanding on the character should build on that, not from what we associate Skull and Crossbones with and is all the rage right now.


The writer does seem to have plans on moving the character to center. Since the beginning, he's been angry and belligerent but in the last two issues we see there's a Dr. Bob Benton also walking around, maybe he's a fractured soul (though issue 13 calls him Benson several times even as the character is sporting a name-tag to the contrary). We also get several Nedor Villains appearing although substantially changed from their GA appearances: Red Ann, Lady Serpent, a Nazi Torchman, and Electru. The writer doesn't do much to flesh them out though, they are just hirelings. All new guys? Old ones somehow still around? It's a shame because the original Red Ann wasn't really a villain and is one of the better written and drawn GA Black Terror stories. Should be noted that only Red Ann and Lady Serpent were Black Terror villains. Electru faced Doc Strange and the Nazi Torch I think was an American Eagle villain. Also, the Nazi Torch has a flame thrower attached to his forehead. Terror cuts it off and chides him for having it as his nose? I know he hangs around with superheroes and not normal people all the time, but seriously, how many people does he know with noses above their eyes? Another bit of writing that makes no sense, the Black Terror meets up with a character calling himself Black Satan. Terror recognizes him as being someone he met during the War, only that guy was a hero. Thing is, the original Black Satan looked nothing like this guy, this guy looking like an all black devil complete with pitchfork while the original wore a loose fitting white shirt, tight red pants and sported a domino mask. Nothing particularly black or Satan abut him. Terror might recognize the name, but he wouldn't find the guy looking familiar at all. I think they have gotten so caught up in re-designing and re-imagining characters willy nilly, they forget that at one time, these guys are supposed to have looked and acted like they did in the comics originally.

There are also cameos of sorts of a lot of characters we haven't seen since the early issues of the first "Superpowers" mini: Airman, Man O'Metal, Flintman, Martan (I think), Amazing Man, etc.

Hester seems to be the go-to guy to take over series that star-creators start but don't stick with. He's taking over for Kevin Smith's Green Hornet series, JMS' Wonder Woman, of course picking up the Black Terror from Alex Ross and Jim Krueger.

Time Masters: Sadly, my last DCU comic for the foreseeable future had to be the final issue of this mess of a mini-series. It started off with a mediocre premise but with some classic Silver Age and Bronze Age characters looking pretty nifty that it over-rode my internal warning bells, thinking there could be something fun in this. Should have listened. The art was inconsistent, looking like a bad Jurgens impersonation over the course of the series, there was no real central plot or story despite the premise (which wasn't really the plot or story, just the device to get the heroes together).We get an explanation of sorts that makes no sense in the final issue as to motivations of the the Black Beetle but there is still no story to it. And, all the talk about the destruction of Vanishing Point over the first half of the mini is solved by sci-fi magic as if no big deal all along. Even Rip Hunter's exposition seems to acknowledge that this was just a big waste of time. Oh, and there's a big reveal at the end that you can tell was supposed to be a surprise, but no effort was really made to set it up beyond the final issue.Oh, and the whole purpose of the Reverse Flash the last issue and this was so this could lead into/tease the next big event. If it didn't cost me money, I'd just mail the issues to DC with a note saying I didn't want them stinking up my collection and I don't want simply my money back, but the money spent on gas driving to the store and the time wasted reading it.  If you are going to produce such a waste of non-story, at least follow the example of DCU Legacies and put some top creative artists on some of the issues to make the pictures nice to look at.

News & Reviews

Comic News: It has probably been a while since there has been quite a bit of good news concerning upcoming comics, especially linking the names "Dynamite" and "Alex Ross".

Dynamite has gotten the rights to various Kirby characters, specifically Captain Victory, Silver Star, Phantom Force and his various Topps-verse characters and Alex Ross is associated with the project. That's not the good news, though. The good news is that Kurt Busiek has been roped in as writer! Kurt Busiek frequently proves himself as a writer that understands the power of continuity and history, that they are tools to be used not hindrances. His writings show that he understands the genres of superheroes, where they overlap other genres and what defines them. He has proven time and again, that he understands characterization and how continuity and history plays into that. His characters are defined by their history, the choices and lives they have lived. Even if you don't really agree with a particular characterization or direction he may take, you cannot argue that it's not at least grounded and reasoned out. So, instead of seeing the typical project by Dynamite and Ross of re-writing the characters to fit an arbitrary artistic vision, we can look forward to a book that truly starts with the basic concepts and characters Kirby came up with and grow out of that. Already, the promo art looks more faithful to the source material than the Phantom artwork did.

And, Busiek already has a history with some of these characters as he had been working on many of these characters for Topps with first issues being published of his Silver Star and Victory mini-series. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more faithful renderings by the artists this time around than Giffen's wholesale redesigns for the Victory comic.

Jurassic Park, Angel & Frankenstein, and Next Men! In the space of a week, three different titles have been revealed coming from John Byrne. Admittedly, the first two are just mini's or one-shots, but all should be a lot of fun with plenty of mayhem. Personally, I liked Danger Unlimited and the Torch of Liberty more than Next Men. But, I'm a superhero type of guy. Still, Next Men was some of the best out and out genre breaking writing to come out of John Byrne with complicated characters and motivations and intricate plotting, the top of his game. It will be interesting to see if he can recapture that lightning for I've felt that sense of depth hasn't been in the majority of his work of late. I'd like to see Byrne create and do his own full-blown superhero universe, full of costumed heroes, super-villains, magic monsters, lost civilizations, prehistoric jungles, alien invasions, etc. The stuff that actually makes superhero comics fun to read. The type of stuff we found in his Fantastic Four, Namor, Alpha Flight, Superman, etc.

Reviews:
Astro City: Silver Agent #1: After all this time, and a very long arc looking at him from the outside, we get an inside look at the Silver Agent, his origins and motivations. First up, Ross pulls off a nice Steranko pop-art feel to the cover. I love the start of the book, looking at some of the heroes of Astro City's past in action filled cameos then moving on to the far future with the Silver Agent fighting alongside a Legion of Superheroes/Alien Legion mish-mash against a cosmic menace that comes across as something that Jack Kirby would have come up with. Unfortunately I just don't buy that anyone would willingly choose to be innocently executed when there were other viable options available that wouldn't damage the outcome of history. He could still travel through time making those sporadic appearances and sending a "geneti-copy" to be executed. The problem is that with the sci-fi elements and raising the issue that they do have the technology to send a copy back through time, it's next to impossible to come up with a truly plausible reason not to take advantage of any logical outs.

There's some art issues. To be a broken record, we have instances of coloring that's too heavy and intense, muddying the clarity of the artwork. In fact, there's one scene that's almost laughable as the coloring of the Silver Agent out of costume with him looking at his palms, it looks like he's fondling his own chest. Then the flashbacks, look like they are going for that large dot pattern of comics past effect, but in this case we are getting a moire pattern that just mars the whole thing. Instead of going for a printing trick or special effects, such scenes would really work best by simply using a limited or muted color scene. It's not as if Anderson is trying to make his work look dated or old, so why should the printing?

Still, page for page, there's more story, more depth and pathos and action than found in many of today's comics.

DC Universe Legacies #3: Wow, three issues in and it already jumps the shark. Tthis issue even has more problems than the others. It seems like it cannot really decide what it's supposed to be. On one hand it seems to be a version of the modern history of the current DCU, which would be fine. On the other, it's a meta-fictional history, explaining superhero continuity and publishing trends through a story such as the fall of the GA heroes, the rise of the detective heroes and western stars (using television to stand in for comics, and the coonskin hat craze explained as a Tomahawk fad...). Except for the fact that the timeline in this issue is all sorts of screwed up. If the kid was around 8-12 in 1939, this story (and many of the characters used and referenced events) suggest that it's taking place in the 1950s. Which is fine when talking about the rise of the cowboy heroes after the GA masked men mostly leave the stage. But, the story then has that the Silver-Age heroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern and the Flash all debuted in the mid to late 1950s while our older narrator was still a young man! Which is true publishing wise (for Green Lantern and the Flash anyways, the other four never really left), but no way that jibes with modern continuity! And, considering the age of the narrator, that means that he would have to be narrating from some point in the future, or we're going to acknowledge on some level that the modern heroes have been active for 50-60 years! Where's the editor on this thing? He's definitely not trying to have the story make sense. Or even correct spelling errors unless there's an alternate spelling for "brunette" out there. The only thing going for it is the wonderful art as in this one issue, the comic has no reason for being. It's telling a retcon history so it's all about continuity but it is a history that is completely inapplicable to any known incarnation of the DCU. Worthless.

Green Hornet: Year One #4: This is the first issue that falters a bit. Aaron Campbell's artwork is a bit inconsistent with the faces of Britt Reid and Kato, the two sometimes seem to be drawn from the same model, one with a rather sizable nose and weak chin! Nor do Francavilla's color combinations work as well this time out. The opening page with magenta and purple skies while the city is bathed in reds and yellows and carrying through to the interior scenes makes the color choices seem almost random and work against establishing mood or even place as it lends an otherworldly alien atmosphere to everything.

We get yet another story that depicts Reid being trained by Kato, but that is at least defensible in that a) it's four issues into the story, b) so we've seen how Reid is a hero and the driving and passionate force behind the team without sacrificing Kato as a developed character and c) we promptly see him in physical action showing himself to be a quick study and very capable fighter in his own right. So, while it's Kato training Britt how to fight, it's not Kato being the mentor and dominant factor of the team with Britt just stumbling along the best that he can that most modern Green Hornet takes fall into.

Justice Society of America #41: Not really impressed with Robinson's JSA story. We have have an inappropriate comment between Mr. America and Lightning, Wildcat doing the cliched "poor me with no superpowers but a good left-hook and on an adventure involving magic/superpowers/etc" monologue, Obsidian taken over right after a whole arc whose ultimate issue was about how he'd never be taken over again, Dr. Mid-nite getting sidelined out of an adventure in order to do real doctoring yet again, and by the end, the story's main heroes being just legacy heroes as all the originals or primary ones taken out. And, conflicting accounts as to how the starheart's possessions work. Is it random, possibly targeting anyone with a modicum of superpowers, or just the ones powered by starheart/chaotic energy? We are pretty much told both by Dick Grayson. As the majority of the team that Batman nee Nightwing nee Robin are superpowered, exactly what is his logic that these heroes are the least susceptible, when the whole start of the comic points out to both the reader and Dick Grayson that it is targeting even those with very little super power, that his original assessment was wrong? It's not that the story is following an internal logic we and the characters cannot see yet, it's there is no internal logic between what the characters know and their decisions and how they react.

Otherwise, Robinson does a decent job at telling the story without actually requiring a reading of the previous JLA. Of course part of that is that it's a relatively simple plot despite it's internal inconsistencies. And, Bagley does a good job on the artwork.

I am a bit surprised by how many people don't see anything wrong with a mid twenties at his youngest federal agent Mr. America making innuendo flirtations and holding hands with a girl of about sixteen years old and actually defend it.

Spectacular Spider-Girl #3: Not more that I can say that I've not already. Each issue is better and stronger than the one before. There's plenty of superhero action and characterization. As I've been a long time reader of the character, I'm not the best to judge on the reader friendly quality. New readers might wonder exactly what the Black Tarantula's relationship with Arana and Spider-Girl is, what the whole deal is about April and May and who's the clone questions. Heck, I'd be hard pressed to sum it all up and I'm not really sure exactly what the deal with Arana is, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the ride on this title. I give DeFalco props for not trying to draw out the mystery of who Wild Card was as it was very obvious. Of course, it was obvious because DeFalco wrote him as being in character even with his identity hidden. Straight-forward superhero fun by all involved.

Time Masters: Vanishing Point: This title has a few strikes against it. One, the comic has a built in flaw in its very premise of a plotline. It's all about Rip Hunter, Booster and several of the heroes looking for the Bruce Wayne Batman who's lost in time and whose very present is damaging the time stream. That's the mega plot to the story. The problem with that is it's a plot whose resolution will not be in this title as Batman's journey to the present is a whole other mini-series. Either this and that series will cross over before they are through or one of the two cannot really deliver on the story it's promising. Remember the "Death of Batman" mini from not too long back when the actual "death" of the character was in completely different title? It's the same thing here. Imagine a Star Wars story where a young man blames the jedis in general and Darth Vader specifically for the death of his father and sets out to kill him. Only that young man is not Luke Skywalker. You've set up for yourself a story whose logical climactic conclusion cannot be contained in your story because it's covered pretty well in another story. What Dan Jurgens has to deliver is that while the search for Batman is the goal of the heroes, it's only the starting point of the story, what gets the ball rolling and what the story is really about is something completely different. Jurgens does a little bit of that as he throws in a lot of other stuff such as the destruction of the Vanishing Point, where/when Booster and company normally make their home. Of course, that leads to the next problem... if like me you haven't been reading Booster Gold or really following all that's going on, it's hard to keep up with the storyline and characters. I don't know if this Rip Hunter is the same as the old Rip Hunter or the retcon post-Crisis Rip Hunter. He's not blond, no hint of a team nor a Time Sphere and he's a bit too world weary for my tastes, I like the idea of a time-traveling swashbuckler adventuring scientist. I don't know who Supernova is or his powers and we have three pages of him without identifying him. This is endemic of modern comics across the board. In trying to avoid clunky exposition whether in dialogue or captions that slows down stories for long time readers, we have more and more comics written as if everyone reading it has the complete scorecard, knows every character and their stats by heart. It's watching a sporting event that never bothered to tell you what player is wearing what number, what the team or player's stats were nor even bothered to tell you the score because you should be tracking all of that by yourself. That's modern comic book writing.

So, why did I get this? Because I like Jurgens' artwork. Even with the over-coloring and computerized effects (which there is plenty in this alas), his work stands out. I like odd pairings of heroes and characters (personally, I'd love to see obscure out of the past characters such as a pre-Alan Moore Swamp Thing, Ultra the Multi-Alien, DC's original Black Orchard and Shade, the Changing Man, or Prince Ra-Man and Mark Merlin). I generally enjoy time-travel stories though they can be overdone. And, I thought it was cool seeing Per Degaton and Despero in a story that doesn't involve a team-up of the JSA and JLA. It's an odd super-villain team-up and I'd like to see how that comes out. And, despite the link to the Batman mini, I hope for an enjoyable adventurous romp that doesn't require me to read too much of other DC comics as it jumps around in time. Heck, in a mini like this is about the only place where I stand a chance of seeing the above characters without a veneer of cynicism and darkening applied to them. So, I'm willing to give it an issue or two to establish its story and themes before deciding whether to continue or not.