Over the last few weeks, I’ve been corresponding with a gentleman who saw the Weird City Theatre production of my “Giants in Those Days” way back in July, 2010 (several times, apparently), which is kind of amazing because to the best of my understanding no one saw it (though I was told a fascinating rumor that Mary Jo Pehl came to a performance (I suspect she was probably alone in the auditorium)). One of his reasons for writing was to he ask me for a copy of the script, which I at first demurred to do because I more than anyone realize the raw nature of the script and the too-serious tact of the production, and while the horse has already jumped the fence (and more than likely dead from some Wildfire-like accident), but eventually sent him a DOC copy of. I also hinted that there was a hardback version of the script, but it was a one-shot deal I secured for myself so I could had a semi-permanent copy to eviscerate at my leisure. He asked if there were a way for him to get a copy as well, so I contacted Ka-Blam and it became available today.
As chance to experiment in live theatre, there has been no parallel. As a work of mine, there are some really excellent moments and characters that I love. As a classic for the ages, well… Going back to the above said evisceration, I’ve thoroughly gutted the play and have started re-writing Act One as more of a “Super Friends”-type show that will not only have educational PSAs and crafts, but high adventure, dangerous traps, clumsy kid sidekicks, Miss Dawna’s bukkake obsession and other more contemporary superheroic foibles. Act Three will probably stand as is. Maybe.
Justice League #4
Oh, sweet untouched Mary on assback, the testosterone! Still! Four issues in and just glancing at the cover gets me hard with visions of high school locker room posturing and towel snapping! I suppose there is something to be said about having reprehensible characters lead a story – it is what drove Married with Children to be so popular, to say nothing of 16 and Pregnant or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Seinfeld. Or Glee, for that matter. But the characters should at least be intriguing, draw us in, and maybe pause for a moment to let us in on the adventure. But so far, this maiden arc of Justice League is the comic book equivalent of Rush Hour: lots of noise but not one inward glace or moment of calm, rational discussion.
Superman has become anti-establishment, but is he still a hero of the people? Morrison has Army General Lane coming to the realization that not only has he been manipulated into hating Superman by Lex Luthor, but also that superman is the only one who can save his daughter from being collected by Brainiac. Jump ahead to JL times and Superman still distrusts the government. It will be interesting to see how these stories are bridged.
Wonder Woman doesn’t know ice cream, but can tell when someone’s flesh has been fused to cybernetic armor.
Flash is the adult child of an alcoholic, and so far can sing one note.
Batman wants to be in charge. And while he’s always kept the Batman Family in line under his benevolent hegemony, I can’t see him wanting to wrangle strangers into working for him, especially when, as a Loner of the Night, he could just as easily walk away. Unless he’s just pissing up a rope to not lose face in front of the other males of the JL which is also not his style. He knows he’s better.
Aquaman is King of Atlantis and wants to be King of Total Strangers Whom He Just Met and also wears flashy jewelry. And still is just some guy who talks to fish. The trident is nice, though. Phallic. Like his glans-shaped belt buckle.
Green Lantern is still playing “What are Your Powers?” though we find out in an unguarded moment -of truth, misogyny, and paranoia- that his bravado is as blustery as March in Chicago. And, for me, GL is the new JL writ small. Geoff Johns has given us Ryan Reynolds’ version of GL, but without the self-confidence and understanding of what a hero is that Reynolds managed to tweak out of his character by the end of the movie. I’ve never found (classic) Hal Jordan’s GL to be all that interesting (outside of Darwyn Cooke’s The New Frontier) because he’s always been so noble and good. And boring. My knowledge is sketchy after that. I know he was Parallax for a while and then dead and then back again for Blackest Night. And as much as I liked BN, Hal’s story didn’t intrigue me as much as, for example, Mogo’s did. Needless to say, the prospect of a GL movie didn’t tantalize me at all. When I finally did see it (it was the nephew’s idea), I was surprised that the most important element of Hal’s being chosen as a Green Lantern -his innate courage- was dismissed in favor of him being a man-child womanizer. But then he evolved. And while it wasn’t perfect, I went along with it and found some enjoyment in that iteration.
And perhaps this evolution will come to the JL membership in future issues. This is, after all, a glimpse into the past when there was no JL and anti-hero sentiment was at an all-time high (which really makes one wonder what motivates Batman and Superman to don costumes and fight crime). Perhaps there will be time for character development later. Perhaps I’ll revisit around issue 12 when, no doubt, someone else will be writing this series.
Good help is so hard to find.
Grade: D
Justice League Dark #4
I really can’t believe Madame Xanadu was cancelled and an alternate John Constantine was created to get this title out on the market. Matt Wagner’s MX was an excellent tour-of-the-ages that connected the dots between a hero from a lost kingdom to the early Golden Age of superheroes, charming, creative and had an all too brief life. And while I’m not a die-hard Hellblazer reader, I know who Constantine is and the dew stories I’ve read were all top-notch. I just don’t see him as being part of a team for a long period of time, but that’s just me. But Justice League Dark… What perplexes me is that the title has all the elements I love in fiction writing – good characters (though I know very little about Shade, the Changing Man), magic (magic is always wonderful), underdogs trying to beat impossible odds (like The Mighty Ducks), groovy, psychedelic art with a rotoscope realism, a dense story that requires some thought to put it all together, but it all totals out to bad hash. I wish I knew why.
Grade: C+
Wonder Woman #4
I disagree with Azzarello and Chiang’s announcement that their run on Wonder Woman will be a horror story. There are no elements of horror that I recognize in the story beyond (stretching here) encounters with the supernatural, but I would call this “mythology” and not “horror”. Maybe I’m wrong. Feel free to say so. Which is not to say that I’m not enjoying the series because I am. It’s just not horror.
What I do read in the title is a pagan Wonder Woman. And there could be a fearful element in that. There is something terrifying about ancient religions (to be fair, there’s something terrifying about modern religions) and how far removed they are from the clean (read “sanitized”) places of worship people flock to these days. The last time I attended Mass, there was no awe in the pews. No reverence for Transubstantiation. No resigned dismay to ingesting the Body and Blood. No fear that God was present and maybe a little miffed about the horrible things done in Its name. Really, Church is for pussies, or at least people who would prefer to not think of the Infinite as something that would make them void their bowels when confronted by it. Pagans knew how to worship, and that was through fear-inspired servitude. Like the Amazons do. Azzarello and Chiang have stripped the marble and ruffle-y robes and Escher-esque architecture away from the Greek Gods and made them dirty, blood-covered brutes, which is horror of a sort, I suppose. It works. The Gods are to be feared. Ask Hippolyta. Oh, wait. You can’t.
While Diana is now a demi-goddess by heritage (and I have my own misgivings about what this does for Diana’s uniqueness since Zeus was the Johnny Appleseed of his day -except that instead of appleseeds he spread it was his godly sperm and instead of fertile land it was any woman within squirting distance), she doesn’t have a familial connection to the Gods, though she is obviously friends with Hermes. She could have been friends with Strife as well -Lord knows Strife was trying to get in Diana’s Good Books even after causing the deaths of who knows how many Amazons- but only ended up making another enemy. However, spending time with her new family brings Diana to the conclusion some people never learn: family is the people you go home to. Which brings us to the most frightful page of the issue.
Finally, while Chiang’s art is growing on me, his rendition of women in armor is still a visual stile. Diana in street clothes is lithe and powerful-looking almost like a dancer; Diana in costume is blocky and has Dot Marie Jones shoulders. She almost looks like Futura from “Metropolis”.
Even has the same fussy lines. Ah, well. A minor concern.
Grade: B+
Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #8
Yeah, yeah. Late again.
Yeah, yeah. Great writing.
Yeah, yeah. Fantastic art.
Now that all that is out of the way, let’s talk about absolution. A terribly Catholic notion, absolution is granted when a person is truly sorry for his or her sins and asks the Divine to wipe the slate clean and return one to a state of grace. It’s a step above the passive-aggressive bumper sticker theology of “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven,” because one has to be sorry for being an asshole and not just assume that belief in Jesus’ warm, loving forgiveness is enough.
Part of The Children’s Crusade is about the Scarlet Witch’s search for absolution, as an Avenger, as a mother, as a person. But not everyone is willing to give her that so easily; the X-Men and the Avengers are on the scene to … do … something (even Scott Summers isn’t sure (or is unwilling to explain himself) how Wanda should be punished for purging mutantkind from the human race), but they are all in agreement that punishment is required.
And then Wiccan -who has the greatest sense of family and love than any other character in the Marvel Universe outside of Jean Grey- rises to his mother’s defense (as she will not defend herself) and points out that The X-Men now keep company with Magneto and Emma Frost -murderers themselves- and that The Avengers themselves have ex-criminals in their ranks. It’s a beautiful scene because all the elements are there – the guilty whose conscience demands she atone for her sins, her accusers who are blind to their hypocrisy, and her defender who sees the world as a place where fairness and justice are attainable.
And then God -a Life Force imbued Victor von Doom- arrives to make everything OK.
Not really.
What he does, in fact, is destroy the Scarlet Witch’s need for absolution by saying that it was he who excised the X-factor from the human genome, not Wanda. And right out the window with the baby went the entire passion play that has been building from issue one. The Scarlet Witch is no longer a tragic figure who knows that her hamartia is due her, but merely a weak woman, used (in ways yet to be explained) by Doom (for reason yet to be explained). And the choice grates. Wanda was poised to be a great hero, and is now instead just as damaged and thoughtlessly reactionary as she was back in House of M.
And to distract readers from this terrible revelation, there are two almost-deaths.
Not my favorite chapter in this otherwise great (though needlessly protracted) mini-series.
Grade: C
Invincible #86
“[Humans]‘re assholes.” AAAH, Mr. Kirkman! What a talent for understatement you have! Let me correct that for you: “Everyone is an asshole.” Some people are just better at rationalizing it. (I’m looking at you, Allen and Roger.)
Grade: B
Whenever you find Batman, you also find… punchline HERE
While I may be a comic book nerd, my brother Scott is in no way one. Sure, he listens to my rants about terrible storylines and my praises for excellent, novel writing and art, but shown a picture of Catman he would probably laugh wonder why someone hasn’t been sued for the obvious Batman knock-off. OK, OK, that’s not a great metric because I laughed the first time I saw Catman, thinking he was some kind of out-of-US-copyright-jurisdiction Mexican (maybe Taiwanese) money maker for a drug cartel to finance new stealth motorboats. But you know what I mean: he’s DCnU’s target audience for their relaunch. What then did he think of their flagship title, Justice League #1?
The theme of this article is “point of reference.” From what I am told, I’m not necessarily meant to have one and do not necessarily need one in order to appreciate DC’s new re-lauch–or reboot or whatever you want to call it–of their DC universe. This is a lie. Or a misconception. Or both.
It would not be fair to say that I grew up with comic books, but I do know my share of the comics universe. Like many of my childhood peers, I watched the “Batman” television show and saw Christopher Reeve fly in the first Superman movie. Like a good number of my male childhood peers, I experienced my first surge of hormone carbonation somewhere between the costumes Batgirl and Wonder Woman were curvily poured into every week. (Seeing Batgirl’s motorcycle cross the Batman title sequence was enough to instantly snap my attention to right quick.) However, I do not know or even care about the intricacies of the multiple universes occupied by the post-modern clusters of anti-heroes, doubles, duplicates and dopplegangers that have driven the comics world for the past several years. So, I am a cultural comic geek. I am told that people like me are the target demographic for the new DC. That’s what I’m told. What I got from reading Justice League #1 was not quite what I was expecting and, perhaps, not quite what DC intended.
It has always seemed to me that among the best comic books are those which tell a dynamic story that doesn’t get lost between panels. That is, comics are not films where many squares of information happen by really quickly and make scenes and people seamlessly move to create a story. Comic panels are static; what happens between panels–call them ghost panels, if you will–ought to be readily intuited by the reader bsed on the preceeding and following panels. JL #1 falls quite short of the mark, here. In the first panel, the reader in thrown into a storyline in media res where a rifle-weilding SWAT member tells his superiors that he has Batman in his sights. Behind the sniper are other SWAT members holds a bathed in red light. There is tension. A disembodied typist–the font and balloon style look like an all-caps text message circa 2004–tells us in the caption “There was a time when the world didn’t call them it’s greatest superheroes.” The next panel–the very second panel in the comic book–tells us that we are five years in the past. Already, the comic has timed itself and told the reader that everything he or she is reading will work out and that heroes will be heroes, even superheroes. The intelligent reader might be asking “Well, why were–or is it ‘are’?–the heroes hunted? And how did they get to be heroes to begin with? And if the world didn’t want them, how and why did they stay heroes?”
All of these go unanswered. The reader is thrust into the middle of a simultaneous firefight and chase scene worthy of the best of Michael Bey’s filmmaking. (“Wait, how did we get here? And where did that important bit from a couple of minutes ago wander off to?”)
The rooftop chase scene proceeds apace. Batman is chasing some kind of robotic, dog-like creature. Do we know why? No. Are we meant to know? To tell you the thruth, I’m not sure. This creature will later plant a bomb and detonate it in the name of “Darkseid,” whom neither of this book’s heroes will be able to identify, either.
[Sean's aside - When I read Green Lantern's suggestion that he and Batman go to Metropolois to ask Superman if he's connected to this "Darkseid" person because he's an alien, the implication being all aliens obviously know each other and are in cahoots to bring down this great nation of ours. Like Asians. Or Bank of America. Green Lantern's xenophobia is showing, which makes me wonder why he was chosen to be a Universal cop if he is so distrustful of alien races. I also found it hard to believe that the Guardian database -compiled by near-immortal beings who live on a planet located in the center of the Universe, and who have divided said Universe up into patrolable sectors routinely guarded by corps of ever-on-the-go Green Lanterns- somehow lacks information on Darkseid.]
So, it is held that a point of reference is not necessary for a reader to enjoy these comic books. However, this comic is nevertheless clearly desinged with the diehard fan in mind. It’s as if DC wants its new readers to shake loose of something they themselves are unable–or unwilling–to do. The most telling examples of this 50/50 thinking on DC’s part are the adverts in the comic and the jokes in the story. Not three pages into the comic, the reader is shown an ad for Converse hightops emblazoned with a classically-posed Batman. (He’s swooping down, a shadow from above ready to kick wholesale ass. Beware evildoers!) Above the sneaker are clips of Batman in the same dynamic pose taken from comics throughout the years with the attendant, different iterations of the famous costume. The tagline? “Classic heroes. Classic shoes.” Appealing to the longevity of the character and the geeky fascination with the changes that the costume has undergone through time harldy seems like the tack to take with teh n00bs, does it? Rather, it is a clear pandering to those who know: DC’s old, established audience.
After Green Lantern and Batman meet for the first time–and I can’t imagine a less dramatic scene than these two sizing each other up and forcing exposition out like the last bit of toothpaste in the tube–Green Lantern angrily realizes that Batman is “just some guy in a bat costume” and asks him “Are you freaking kidding me?!” The scene was stolen almost line for line from two animated College Humor videos that made their way around the interwebz in 2008, the tagline for one of which was “Batman faces his toughest adversary yet: Real super powers.”
And lest DC forget the moviegoers, Green Lantern asks Batman whether he intends to simply talk to bad guys in a deep voice upon encountering them, a clear nod to one of the most prevalent criticisms of Christian Bale’s gravel-voiced portrayal of Batman in The Dark Knight in 2009.
The rest of the ads showcase the new DC universe but are bookended by the Got Milk? ad on the back of the comic book featuring Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern from this past summer’s theatrical release. Again, if DC intended its audience to be comic neophytes, they are being rather odd about making them feel welcome.
Scott can be reached via his website, Daedalusrose.
It’s always very sad to see someone go, especially an artist as talented as Juan Romera, but he’s been getting more and more high-exposure jobs and just can’t stay on Frater Mine anymore. Of course, I’d love him to stay to the end of the “Here, There and Nowhere” arc, but he definitely deserves to be unleashed on the world so everyone can see how talented he is.
Enric Simon will be replacing Juan on issue 9. Their styles match very well, and after seeing a test page of the FM characters, I can say that Enric (like Kav) is an excellent successor to Juan.
Enric says of himself,
My name’s Enric Simon, I’m 31 years old and I live in Barcelona(Spain). I started working as an illustrator and comic book artist 10 years ago. The first work as a comic book artist that I did was political cartons in one Spanish newspaper, then I published one-shots and some covers and illustrations in magazines and indie publishers specialized in horror.
In the U.S., I have published with Incubator Press, Babylon Comix, Divine Authority Comics, Rna Brand. And now I’m working on 3 different projects with others publishers.
More of his art can be seen on his DeviantArt page. Welcome aboard, Enric!
This was unexpected buy hilarious this morning. Before I figured out I wasn’t looking at Mr. Rob, Cable’s incredibly huge forearms suddenly made sense. Then clarity evaporated and I’m just as confused as ever.
THREE #2
Edited by Robert Kirby
Contributions by Jennifer Camper, Michael Fahy, Sina Evil, Jon Macy, Craig Bostick, and David Kelly
Two is the number of Others in the world. With One, there is just the Self and the Self doesn’t have to care about Others because there are no Others. But when comes the awareness that Self is not alone in the world, there has to be a balance between what Self needs and wants, and what Others need and want. While One may want to decide who lives and who dies, that is not given to the world of Two. Two tells us there must be balance between Self and Others. Of course, that’s complicated. So are the stories in Robert Kirby’s THREE #2.
In Dragon, Sina Evil presents an almost confessional story about a one-night stand between a comic creator and a fan. The narrator’s words are so serious and so true they are almost embarrassing to be read, like coming across two guys blowing each other at the P Street Zoo some Saturday night. But the tension is exquisite. How many enter into a new dating relationship putting one’s best foot forward (that is what our parents told us to do, right?) and in doing so maybe leave out a few unsavory or controversial opinions or experiences just to get along for the moment with the chance of it going farther? Totally co-dependent, I know, but, let’s be honest here. Sina show us a few hours where the narrator’s self is subverted by his want: the comic artist. He lies and glosses over troubling (if not outright dangerous) moments in order to get what he wants (naked, if you were wondering). There is a sadness in this story –emphasized by Macy’s shadowy art– that comes from the longing for something that one cannot have forever, but only for a moment before life or other obligations move one along.
Jennifer Camper and Michael Fahy take to the high-wire for their comic jam balancing act, Help Wanted. It seems a simple enough falling-in-love story –Leo is attracted to his subordinate Raoul, and when they have the chance to go home together, they do– but Camper and Fahy nimbly show that being aware of another is not the same as knowing them; however, in knowing another person there is the potential for unexpected joy.
Finally, in contrast to Camper and Fahy’s upbeat tale of coalescing lives, David Kelly and Craig Bostwick explore the loneliness of Two in Nothin’ but Trouble. They say that bartenders and strippers are the last people anyone should fall in love with, but Jimmy, an on-the-road country and western singer, ignores this truism and picks up hustler Butch for an evening of companionship which ends in Jimmy being smitten and Butch wanting to get paid. Jimmy’s infatuation leads to a lesson that many queers have unfortunately learned: “Maybe love isn’t in the cards for a guy like me anyway.” Still, it is not entirely without hope and, oddly, given the subject matter, cuteness.
THREE #2 chases down facets of the infinite possible relationships between the Self and Others and, capturing them, puts them on display like rough-and-tumble butterflies, the kind you might find in the Museum of Cutthroat Lepidoptera. Well done! Buy yours here.
(Click for embiggenation.)
Is it possible that Jim Lee lobbied to get Ms. Lee folded into the relaunched DCU? Or is she just the first character to appear in what will be the real new Universe wherein Marvel and DC become one? Time will tell!
Let’s the basics out of the way first: Jon Macy’s art in “Fearful Hunter” is superlative. His “Teleny & Camille” was great, but he has (as he should) gotten stronger, more Macyesque imagery on the page. Boffo. And basic number two: the erotic charge of the story is part of the story and not the only story or, worse, filler to bring the book to an even number of pages. I read comics for the stories; I read nifty.org to get off. Macy has kindly brought two of my hobbies together. Again, well done.
But here’s what I really love: Macy has created intriguing characters in the couple of Oisin and Byron, two men who in the real world I would probably start a betting pool over how long and in what way their relationship would implode. Yes, I know this makes me a horrible person. Still, I found myself pulling for these two to come and stay together.
Oisin is a druid apprentice, taught by the older Tavius, who is full of plots and snares like Old Nick himself. Oisin wants to be a druid, but is distracted by what he is told he cannot have: a life involving other people. Magic requires that he be dedicated only to his work of safeguarding the Natural World. Still, he is fascinated by the wolfboy Byron, and is in earnest to heal Byron’s “sad heart”. Because that always ends well.
Byron, the wolf-boy, is magickal, hot, and as sensitive as a ficus. If I knew someone like this, I would definitely call him on a lonely Friday night after a contempt-filled watching of “Smallville”, but then shuffle him out the door after the deed was done and before I could hear how painful and difficult his week had been (which, yes, I know makes me a horrible person). Byron’s sensitivity, however, isn’t from the oh-so-common “my man done me wrong” syndrome that I’m certain anyone reading this article can relate to. Since he mates for life, there’s never been an emotionally stunted, abusive ex that swims in his subconscious, telling him that he’s worthless. He is simply fearful. And emo. So. So. SO emo. Which makes me wonder what it is that Oisin sees in him, or, more importantly, what Macy sees in him (he is, after all, the eponymous character). Of course, not every love story (and this is a love story) has to be peopled with noble characters of deep-set virtue who are not only self-aware and pithy at an early age, but who have a love like no man or woman has ever know handed to them for no better reason than Destiny has declared they be the Luke and Laura of their age. Flaws like Byron’s (and Oisin’s for that matter) make their story far more worthy a read, mostly because there is no guarantee here that love will conquer all, despite what Shea, the werefox, promises.
What I enjoyed most about “Fearful Hunter” is the world Macy created to house his people and their stories. Like Charles de Lint’s urban fantasies, our and the sidhe world aren’t countless dimensions apart, but literally right next door to each other. Neighbors, classmates, acquaintances could be fey and one would never know. Tavius and Oisin’s keep is a cavish affair, deep in the forest and underground, where they practice magic that should light them up like a Fukushima crab to even non-magical folk. Yet they are practically unknown to the nearby townies. There is a sidhe bar that is in plain sight of every slack-jeaned punk within a hundred miles (have I mentioned the care with which Macy draws men’s asses?) hangs out in with the Cousins that is just part of the fabric of this world. No walls or wardrobes separate Humans from the Others. In fact, it seems that only one’s unwillingness to see what is right there in plain sight is what keeps these peoples apart.
Jon Macy’s “Fearful Hunter” series comes highly recommended.
Juan Romera sent me pages this week from Frater Mine #9, and I couldn’t be happier with the way they look! Juan’s style continues to evolve, and even without words, the tension and humor and anxiety in the scene is there.
Juan captured my favorite line in the issue perfectly: “Do you allow.. guide llamas? They are uncanny navigators.”
Warner Bros. Television has provided [Superherohype] with the first image of Adrianne Palicki starring as the title character in the new NBC pilot “Wonder Woman,” from executive producer David E. Kelley (“Boston Legal,” “Ally McBeal,” NBC’s “Harry’s Law”). The pilot was written by Kelley, who also serves as executive producer with Bill D’Elia (“Boston Legal,” “The Practice,” NBC’s “Harry’s Law”). Jeffrey Reiner (“The Event”) is directing. Based upon DC Comics characters, “Wonder Woman” is from David E. Kelley Productions and Warner Bros. Television.
Normally, I wouldn’t post about something like this, but it just throws two things into sharp relief: 1.) Jim Lee’s current costume in WW does not say “I’m in hiding,” and 2.) I have no idea why I’m not in television.
Brian Cronin, who is the voice of Comics Should Be Good over at Comic Book Resources is reviewing one LGBTQ comic book a day for the entire month of March. On March 13, Brian reviewed Frater Mine and he completely made my week with his praise for the book, especially recognizing the (in my opinion) superlativeness of Scott, Dan, Juan, Andres, and Ed. So, please take a look at what Brian had to say about the comic and the team.
Because I’ve been involved in the LGBTQ comics community for a while now, I sometimes think that I know all the players, but thanks to Brian’s reviews, I am now aware of comics and artists I had no idea existed. I definitely am going to check out Dar: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary, Wandering Son, and Tough (so far as his list has gone). See Brian’s full archive for anything that might interest you.
Who knows why I think this is funny, or at least why this is an excellent example of synchonicity?
Via Playbill
I was writing my review for Justin Hall’s Gamazonia trade, recently published by Northwest Press, when I was… interrupted.
It looks like a mess, but Julie Taymor is so adorable in her genius, I’ll probably do my darnedest to see it. But, still, “Swiss Miss” and a song about shoes? Not very super-heroic.
Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #3
I want to be mad at Allan Heinberg for the bi-monthly publication schedule of The Children’s Crusade, but I’m afraid that his control of dialogue and character development have pushed me to his total… well, near-total forgiveness; eighteen months is still a long time to be strung along by a single story. And that is the last time I will complain about this particular topic, though I reserve the right to revisit it if the final payoff isn’t commensurate with the investment of my patience.
Let’s start with the reason why I really love The Young Avengers: Billy and Teddy. Of all the gay superheroes out there, these two have got to be my favorites. Part of it is because they’re young and still pretty innocent about their love for each other, and I need that level of cute in my life, being the jaded old man that I am. It’s kind of like how when I listen to Bare and I think it’s alright that Jason killed himself at the end rather than go to college and end up betraying Peter even worse than he already had by breaking up with him then impregnating the school slut. For some reason, I see Peter walking into their dorm room at Notre Dame one afternoon unexpectedly only to find Jason with a pillow under his butt taking it hard from the linebacker, high as a kite, and when he sees the hurt on Peter’s face, Jason looks at him with half-closed eyes and says, “Heeeeeeeey, Peter. Wanna join ussss?” And then there are the months of Peter having to see Jason in the cafeteria every day, pretending that what happened (again) doesn’t hurt, but inside he’s nursing an ulcer the size of Rhode Island.
So…. yeah, take note Marvel: keep these two together; I’d like to not see Billy get hurt. That’s right, Hulkling. I got yer number.
Still not liking Wolverine. I’m not sure I’ve liked him since he got his own spin-off title back in, what, 1987? But in the last year or so, I’ve grown completely unable to stand him. I know he’s “doing what needs to be done” to protect the mutant race, but I’ve always thought of Wolverine as a character with a firm grasp on what it meant to be a man of Honor, and not just a wetworks soldier. His picking a fight with the Primary Avengers is just one more moment added to the pile of objections I have to him of late. Well, at least Heinberg is standing firmly behind the party line.
In the end, this story is about families: the ones people are born into, the ones people create, and the ones people find. Billy and Teddy have found each other in the larger Young Avengers family (they’re even sharing a bed now!), and they have found a highly suspect connection to Magneto and Quicksilver through their absent mother, The Scarlet Witch. Wolverine is quickly running out of friends (Storm even broke off her familial bond with him a few months ago over a “last drink”), mostly because he doesn’t trust anyone around him. Teddy rightly calls the Maximoff family “toxic”, and Billy tries to be a hero for his mom (despite the song telling him to not do that). Heinberg is a master of creating scenes that define characters by making them react to each other in ways I would expect my friends and family to react to similar situations. I mean, as similar as they can get to this reality. This is a very human story, and while the action may seem MIA, I’m enjoying the moments that are defining these characters and their relationships.
Grade: A-
I’ve decided to post two issues of my take on a certain 1970′s Saturday morning TV goddess here on the site for FREE. Being only 8 pages long, I couldn’t justify keeping them up for sale any longer. The print versions will no longer be available on IndyPlanet.com after tomorrow. The files are in CBZ format.
Hope you enjoy!
My nephew’s birthday is in a few days, so I’m giving him the gift of his own comic book characters. Yeah, yeah, that sounds cheap, but he tells me his ideas and I surreptitiously (however difficult one may believe it is to sneak around a six-year old) pass them along to Benjamin Ruth. Like Static Electra, Ben has made these vague ideas (sometimes we only had names) into comic reality. Take Toxic Waste Band, for example: Agent Orange (lead vocals/guitar), Ben Zyne (bass), Auntie Arsenic (drums), Madame Mercury (tamborine), and Acetone (keyboard and backup vocals) rob people blind by day and rock them deaf by night.
Toxic Waste Band (c) 2010 Dominic Kierzek. Costume design (c) 2010 Benjamin Ruth.
The third and final gift to my nephew is going to be the brother and sister magnetic cryptologist team, North and South Decoders! They are actually my creations (if you saw Giants in Those Days, my first real superhero story, you understand how much I love punny names), but think Dominic will have fun with them all the same.
North and South Decoders (c) 2010 Dominic Kierzek. Costume design (c) 2010 Benjamin Ruth.
I can’t wait to see what my nephew thinks of his gifts!
Let’s say you like comics. Let’s also say you’re gay. Let’s go even further and say that you’ve spent some time in front of Xtube participating in your own personal Tubesock Holocaust the likes of which would make Onan himself stop and go, “Wow.” Pushing the “what if’s” past the bounds of good taste, let’s finally say you enjoy the Underworld series. Sean-Z’s MYTH #2, then, is probably for you. However, if you are a savvy politico who keeps abreast of current gay events, MYTH #2 is definitely for you.
Ostensibly a story about the often-naked Zithyran V’riel and his quest to locate and reawaken his world’s gods, MYTH also reflects an important part of the gay cultural dialogue that has long gone unaddressed: namely, the equal and opposite reaction of gay opponents to Marriage Equality. As important as Marriage Equality is as a civil rights issue, there is a faction within the gay community that does not embrace it as step forward, but rather as a white flag to the heterosexual hegemony (say that three times fast!). In essence, gay culture will die under the trappings of “normalcy” – spouses, children, split-level houses, and dogs that do no fit into a shoulder bag – finally losing our sense of “special otherness”. I’m not saying I agree with this, nor do I presume to know Sean-Z’s political leanings; nevertheless, he gives us an alluring, profound, and often exciting look at the Marriage Equality counter-argument.
Sex will always be a part of the gay identity, mostly because we are both self- and other-identified through our sexual behavior. In terms of the heterosexual (i.e., “other”) identification, I would even argue towards “over-identified and bordering on unhealthy obsession” (I’m looking at you, Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera). One only need glance at any number of postings by anti-gay groups to see that their fevered imaginings are far more pornographic and detailed than anything the average gay male has experienced. Why then is it important to have the discussion of “marriage” at this time? Wouldn’t Marriage Equality kill the gay sexual drive, as any number of late night TV wags have said it does to straight marriage? What would become of gay culture as we know it? Obviously with so profound a question mark directly in our path, it makes sense that some people would try to apply the brakes or jump out of the vehicle altogether.
In MYTH, inhabitants of the world Zithyra and their gods are comfortable with their bodies enough to go au naturel (and with their bodies, who wouldn’t be?) and are obviously queer. In choosing to arrange his universe this way, Sean-Z opens up two interesting points: one, that somehow the race propagates, and two, that there is no stigma attached to being queer, so we are left to judge “good” and “evil” by their respective behaviors. The “evil” side, the one that represents Marriage Equality proponents, is populated by vampires, draining the life of others to make it their own. I’ll admit the characterization is on the harsh side, but one can feel the sense of betrayal that V’riel has towards the head vampire, Donjovan Faust. I hope in future issues to see the past of their relationship. The “good” side is seen in V’riel and his mecha servant Koz (which brings to mind the colloquial “cuz”, so I’m left wondering about the implications of man-on-machine sex), who rescue a god (called a “Maker”), Julian, and his friends from a fire at a bar called “The Raunch”. The good guys are sexually liberated and for most of the book are naked and/or on teh cock like a GOP Congressman at an out-of-town convention without his wife. It’s a canny metaphor, and one without clear answers. While we root for the good guys, we can’t help but notice that the bad guys are just as hot and just as motivated to prevail.
Whether you are pro-Marriage Equality or feel that it will be the ruination of “gay”, Sean-Z’s compelling MYTH #2 will force you to take a long hard look at the future as it lays bare before you.
While looking at the cover of my copy of Giants in Those Days, specifically Miss Dawna, my nephew came up with the idea that her light power should evolve into an electricity-based power and her new name would be Static Elektra (which I thought was pretty clever)! And she would be evil because the good guys abandoned her (seems reasonable). Of course, I had to ask the ultra-talented Benjamin Ruth to come up with an appropriately good-stomping costume. And this is she:
Static Elektra (c) 2010 Dominic Kierzek. Costume design (c) 2010 Benjamin Ruth.
Dominic now owns a character, and I hope it gets him to draw more and make up stories. When he becomes famous, he’ll owe Ben a HUGE royalty check.
I can tell already that Robert Kirby’s new series, THREE, is going to get a lot of mileage out of its title. So many good things come in threes – like wishes and bears and the hot soccer triplets down the street whom I fervently know are 18 years old – or multiples of three – like a six pack (a three pack would look weird with a partnerless odd-ab-out) and… no, a six pack is the pinnacle of all things “six”, I’d say. And to begin his latest anthology venture (the sublime Boy Trouble book preceding), Robert and two other cartoonists – Eric Orner and Joey Alison Sayers – each offer up a story of a moment. Filed under “s[tuff] you can’t make up”, I’m tempted to say there is a semi-autobiographical revelation that comes from these moments. Whether by accident or design, there is a theme of “one” in each cartoonist’s work (yeah yeah yeah, it’s also issue number one) that has the ring of verisimilitude which I say can only come from personal experience. Like so:
Weekends Abroad by Eric Orner sets the bar high for every story in every issue including and following this one. Ostensibly a tale of what an American Jew working in Israel does on the weekends (cruise guys on the Internet, go to clubs, get laid), Weekends is a sad story. Not suicide levels of sadness by any means, but I feel for the nameless protagonist. And that is my point in a nutshell: can it get any lonelier for this cartoon stranger in a strange land who doesn’t speak Hebrew and who can’t find a decent guy to schtup than we readers not even knowing his name? I doubt it. There are moments of comfort, but the anonymous hero isn’t part of them – Markot games, Vox, finding the mysterious graffiti poet; he’s an observer. But, as with most things, there is grace in the end.
Joey Alison Sayers’ Number One is an odd piece, but it made me laugh. My six-year old nephew is going through his “bodily noises and functions are funny” stage, and, yes, my brother and I are encouraging it, not only because burps that scare birds out of trees are funny, but also because they’re natural and everyone does them (we’re trying to avoid any kind of shaming issues). Recently, the three of us were at Sara’s, a local beach-front hamburger “stand” which has my favorite ice cream in the world: soft-serve orange sherbet, when my brother belched unexpectedly, like, “Kronos eating his children too fast” belched. We all started laughing then realized a woman and her daughter sitting next to us were chuckling along. Scott was immediately embarrassed and apologized for interrupting their meal, though I have to give him credit for not stopping laughing. The mother said she looked over because she thought her son was nearby as he also doesn’t cover his burps in public. My nephew and I were amused by this, like, groundling amused. This is the charm of Number One: we’ve all been there.
Robert Kirby’s Freedom Flight rounds out the issue with another story about loneliness in the middle of a crowd. Drew has always wondered what it would be like to disappear, so when his boyfriend blows him off to work one afternoon, Drew leaves their apartment to meander around NYC. Kirby’s “one” could be seen as a companion piece to Orner’s, but much darker. In both stories, the protagonists are lost in the Big City, mostly because they’ve never been connected to it. But unlike Orner’s leading man, whose interior monologue connects his past to his present and to his future, Kirby’s Drew cycles around and around in a never-ending present, an existential “Groundhog’s Day”. And finally, there is no grace to save his Drew in the end: “one” simply becomes “none” (worse, “no one”). It’s a sucker punch in the gut, to be sure. It’s also honest and real.
Robert Kirby promises this is the first issue of an on-going series (a promise backed by the art samples for #2 on the final page) with contributions from old and new names in queer comics. It’d be a shame to not get on-board for this sure-to-be spectacular ride now. Order a copy of THREE here as soon as you reach the period at the end of this sentence.
Jon Macy’s adaptation of the early gay pornographic work Teleny into the graphic tome (seriously, I could kill a cat with its heft) Teleny and Camille seethes. It churns. It tugs. It traps all things beautifully gay and all things terribly gay then challenges the reader to not look away. I’m sure many will see this novel only for the love story, but what Jon has given us is a vision of how much and how little we gay folk have changed in the 100-plus years since Oscar Wilde (allegedly) and his band of lavender men wrote the original novel in round-robin. It’s a FAR superior execution of the idea behind Francis Ford Copolla’s Dracula: Victorian context, modern subtext. (I have to thank my brother for this succinct metaphor.)
The story is a simple one: boy (Camille) meets boy (Teleny), and they begin a secret yet intense love affair that knocks Camille out of his perennially heterosexual life and into the clandestine London homosexual world. But there’s so much more than that. Even in 2010, the gay world is somewhat invisible, almost like a Wonderland that isn’t seen until someone falls down the rabbit hole. Yeah, people are aware of Teh Gays, but they have no idea how subversively ubiquitous we are until it’s pointed out to them. A dear, dear friend of mine knew me for years before I mentioned the local bathhouse in Austin, TX to her, and when I did, I thought she was going to have a stroke. What she couldn’t get over was that it’s located right next to a major shopping mall on a major street. She’d seen it a million times, but never knew what it was for. So it goes with Camille. After becoming involved with Teleny, the scales fall from his eyes and he stumbles upon homosexuality everywhere. But when you look into the gay, the gay looks into you. Camille is no longer able to hide his nature (though he does try at times).
I won’t be the only person to say this (though I hope I’m the first): Jon’s art is the sensual motifs of Aubrey Beardsley with the grotesqueness of P. Craig Russell (though it lacks PCR’s cool detachment from said grotesqueness). I’m sure by now that everyone knows NOM’s Tour of Hate is crossing the nation, preaching the sanctity and sturdiness of a “one man, one woman” marriage and the horror that is Marriage Equality. But if one looks back over just this past year, there have been shocking abuses in these “sanctified” marriages ranging from mundane adultery to selling children in Wal-Mart parking lots. The hypocrisy rankles me, but it seems to be “OK” with Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown because straight people are perpetuating the abuse.
Stay with me. I have a point.
Teleny and Camille calls this hypocrisy out, or at least recognizes that straight people don’t get a free pass by virtue of where they insert their genitals. In his youth, Camille visited a brothel with friends before they all left for college. The night ended… let’s say, “poorly” for one sad prostitute. Yet there is no condemnation between Camille and his friends for being in the brothel in the first place (to say nothing of the dead whore). As an adult, Camille accidentally wanders into a cruisy section of a park, calling it a “modern Sodom and Gomorrah”. Yet, what is the difference in these locales and the behaviors except the attitudes which accept or reject them? Wilde and company were making a point then that we’re still trying to make today. Consciously or unconsciously, Jon does some editorializing in these scenes. Most of his pages are not made of composed art inside panels in a certain disposition, but rather the pages themselves are full compositions, whole art. However, in these scenes (and one or two others), the pages break apart in a sense. Panel dominate the landscape, and Jon’s lines change from fluid and expressive to harsh and… like barbed wire in 3-D. Grotesque. They fit the scenes perfectly, but they jar the eye.
And don’t even get me started on how much I think Jon hates poodles.
Where the story and the art meet is in the sex. The sex in Teleny and Camille is more than just hardcore porn. Yeah yeah yeah there are engorged penes and money shots that could blind a treeful of squirrels, but it’s not gratuitous and definitely not there for a cheap thrill or (even worse) page filler. The sex has meaning and purpose and emotion behind it. Some of the emotions are lovely and expansive; others are more bothersome, but still need to be there.
One thing I must thank Jon personally for is his ending. THANK YOU, JON!! Your indictment against the trend in gay literature that “even the one’s written by the gays” require a tragic ending because “it’s like we’re too damaged to even dare imagine being happy” is difficult to refute. So many stories dwell on death for obvious reasons, but even pre-AIDS gay media fall to either Boys Beware or Cruising-type idioms. It’s refreshing to have a gay love story with a happy… well, at least an ending without murder, death, or disfigurement (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if your ending is a happy one). E. M. Forster is no doubt completely behind your modern addition to the text.
So. Yeah. Buy it!
New X-Men #114
New Mutants #14
The Once and Future Master Mold. No wonder New X-Men #114 was re-issued this week.
“Second Coming” continues with Part 11 this week. It’s still mass destruction on all sides (though I seem to care less about which characters are dying than I did way back in “Mutant Massacre”), and all the B-list mutants (like Colossus) are taking the heavy knocks. Of all my impressions of this book, the strongest one I come away with is that I don’t like Doug very much. Actually, I don’t like any of the Muties very much. They’re all grouchy and smarmy and way too cocky for their own good. At least when they were teens, there was a reason for their cockiness (i.e., they were teenagers who thought they knew better than everyone around them); now it just reads as snark. And transparent snark at that. And what happens after “Second Coming” ends? What is the next genocidal plan Marvel will put into motion? I know that The X-Men will join “The Heroic Age” next month, but I probably won’t be along for the ride. “Mutant Massacre” was back in 1986, and it’s been one long assassination attempt since then. And “The Heroic Age” pits the X-Men against Dracula. Wow. Didn’t that happen back in 1983? Well, it will free up a few bucks every month to start my Bird of Prey, volume one collection. Speaking of which…
DC Legacies #2
Birds of Prey #2
Brightest Day #4
Apparently, “Brightest Day” is not going to be the solution to the endless deaths and editorial-driven disasters that I have assumed it to be. In an interview for the DCU Blog, Alex Segura has Geoff Johns as saying
“Brightest Day” is about second chances. I think it’s been obvious from day one that there are major plans for the heroes and villains from Aquaman to take center stage in the DC Universe, among many others, post-”Blackest Night”. “Brightest Day” is not a banner or a vague catch-all direction for the DC Universe, it is a story. Nor is “Brightest Day”a sign that the DC Universe is going to be all about ‘light and brighty’ superheroes. Some second chances work out…some don’t.
Yet, for being “just a story”, it’s leaking all across the DCU, even into the restart of Birds of Prey (granted Hawk and Dove are now part of the team), so it seems to be more of a paradigm than a story. After reading my DC titles this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that this could be a great opportunity to shake things up in DCU. Yeah, yeah, “again”, but everyone loves a crisis,right? Looking at DC Legacies, the heroes of the Silver Age disappeared rather than reveal who they were to the government and thereby lose their effectiveness to fight crime. But look at this week’s Birds of Prey: Oracle’s Braves know who the Penguin is, know his real name and know that he’s a bad guy. I’ve never really thought about it before, but, really, everyone in the DCU knows who the villains are. They don’t have secret identities per se, though they do have criminal personae and $$$ and guns and guards and compounds and Machines of Doom. Yet for some reason, they persist like untreated athlete’s foot even after year of head-butting with any number of heroes. But how much more fragile is a hero’s secret identity. The whole plot of BoP is the ruination that would follow revealing a hero’s alter ego. Witness what happened to Black Canary, and she’s apparently just the first. Does this make her more vulnerable (as we’ve always thought), or does this free her to be more of a hero? If “Brightest Day” is about second chances and not about being “light and brighty”, then maybe the way the heroes can get the upper-hand and not make porridge out of this second chance would be to adopt the villains’ “lifestyle” – live openly and without apology.
At least, that’s how I’m making sense of “Brightest Day”: that there really is a plan to drastically cut back on the snuff porn and get back to good stories. Of course, I thought that keeping New Krypton around for more than a minute was a good idea, too. Oh oh oh! and leaving Paradise Island intact.
For Immediate Release: June 10, 2010
Media Contact: Patti Neff-Tiven, Managing Director, Weird City Theatre Company
512-786-5033
Patti@WeirdCityTheatre.com
Weird City Theatre Company
Announces World Premiere
Giants in Those Days
AUSTIN—Weird City Theatre Company announces the world premiere of Giants in Those Days, an original graphic novel to stage adaptation by local writer, Sean McGrath. Heroes and villains of the muscle-y spandex-clad kind have been all but expunged from the world by the godly decree of Jason December, but one man remembers the Heroes of the Superior Union – shining beacons of everything mankind could become – and their stand against the evil of The Karnivale. Alone, he attempts to resurrect hope and decency and light in a new generation of heroes. But victory isn’t guaranteed for the good guys… Directed by Patti Neff-Tiven, the cast includes WCT Artistic Director John F. Carroll, Company members Kevin Gouldthorpe, Bethany Harbaugh, Nick Orzech, Jenni Bauer and Russell Minton and features Jennifer Baldillez, Chris Romani, Braden Hunt, Daniel Moore, Paul Camp, Austin Davison, Terri Lynne Hudson, LeRoy Beck, Ronis Alvarenga & Xaq Webb. This multi-media piece includes film, puppetry and panels from the original comic book. Featuring original art by Benjamin Ruth, Nockiman, William O. Tyler, Michael Troy, Joe Palmer, Ren Burke, Christopher Moshier, and Sean S. Martin.
Performances run July 8 – July 25, 2010 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road, Austin, TX. Performances are Thursday through Saturday nights at 8:00PM and Sundays at 5:00PM. Tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased at our website, www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512-745-2636.
Weird City Theatre’s mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!
Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.
Acts of Violence
I often say that Noir is dead though my saying so doesn’t stop people from trying to put the corpse on stage and make it dance. Noir was a time and a place that doesn’t exist anymore, and woe betide anyone who thinks its resurrection is imminent. This being said, it’s so much better just to write a 1920′s gangster story or a rural justice anecdote in one’s own voice the way that Martin Scorsese did in Gangs of New York or The Departed… well, maybe The Departed is a bad example of “better”. The team behind Acts of Violence took the better path, and in doing so put out a collection of four outstanding stories. I’m not one for gratuitous, over-the-top violence, but I am one for good stories, and the four tales here – “The Three Princes”, “Six O’clock Noose”, “Reggie-Town” and “The Orchard” – are excellent reads. I was especially intrigued by “Reggie-Town” with its deluded protagonist and the unexplained fate of the baby he kidnapped. Without histrionics nor finger-wagging, these stories stare at a black spot in the human psyche then take a picture.
Grade: A+
Batman/Superman Annual #4
Lex Luthor is one of those characters who can be admired for his ability for do impossibly heinous acts in the name of some twisted moral code and yet slip away form punishment like Louisiana shrimp from the hands of a shrimper… too soon? For this same reason he is also a source of frustration for me. Yeah, he’s Superman’s greatest enemy, but I’m rather tired of him (especially in the movies), so it’s nice to see that he will eventually (at some far-flung future time which should reach the newsstands in about 3130) get what’s coming to him. And while I at first thought he was a commercial ploy, I’ve grown to like Batman Beyond, and wouldn’t mind seeing him in an on-going series of his own, especially if Renato Guedes continues to draw him (his transitions are somewhat awkward, but his coloring and linework are peerless).
Grade: A-
Brightest Day #3
Wow. This is a total downer. And not all that bright at all. Seriously, Blackest Night had more hope than this. The story is intriguing and well-paced, but it’s not living up to its title. Yet. I’m standing by my man and saying that things will get better as the series goes on.
Grade: B
Wonder Woman #44
As cool as it might be to dream of being an Amazon, after this issue I am convinced it’s just a protracted death sentence being related to Diana. Last issue, Astarte revealed that she was Diana’s long-gone aunt, taken by The Citizenry and become mother of their greatest monster, Theana, Diana’s never-known cousin. By the end, Theana, by all rights an interesting and powerful character, is dead, and Astarte is Paradise Island-bound to be re-educated (which is the same fate Diana has planner for her, but with an upstanding moral twist to it, I’m sure). Another branch of the Amazon family tree is pruned for no really good reason other than to make Diana fightin’ mad and win the day. Yeah, it’s a long drink of hemlock being Diana’s kin.
But why? Why did Gail Simone end her excellent run on Wonder Woman with a rather macabre tale of mayhem and familicide, and then blunt the point of the tale with a happy ending that makes that of the first “Harry Potter” film seem maudlin? I’ll give her props for handing off the book to JMS in a package cleaner than that handed to her by Picoult, but there’s a difference between having a mess to clean up, and being handed a story that’s been cauterized. Which is not to say that this was a bad story; I’m just uncertain what its meaning is for future Diana stories. Usually, an author will take a moment to show what lurks around the corner or for terrible realization to dawn on a hero’s face, but here, Diana’s ignorance of what she’s just done is more worrisome than anything. I’m not saying there’s any deliberate malice on Diana’s part, but there were some troubling juxtapositions between her and Astarte’s behavior. And maybe Diana was supposed to come off looking better, more moral, than Astatre, but I’m not convinced she did. Here’s what I saw:
* Diana used the lasso to compel Zusen to betray her people. It was said in the previous issue that the members of The Citizenry were taken from various cultures and trained to forget their past lives. Having Diana subvert someone’s free will to do her bidding looked bad.
* The Reformation Island reference was a bit too close to the re-education proposed by Astatre.
* Diana took over a violent culture that has centuries of severe administration issues then let it go without supervision.
* She omitted telling her mother about her stolen sister. Yeah, Diana said she would te
ll her later, but it’s such a Catholic thing to do, putting off bad news until someone is happy enough to receive it without falling apart. It’s pretty co-dependent.
* She let Gail Simone kill her cousin (ok, that’s probably just Gail’s evil showing through 
).
i dunno. could there be an evil Diana in the future, regardless of the “Brightest Day” mandate?
Grade: B
Madame Xanadu #23
“Broken House of Cards” finally ends, and while the end is just as subversive as most of Matt Wagner’s other endings (where instead of a full-pitched battle for world supremacy, protagonist and antagonist sort of slip away from each other to wage war another day; really, Wagner is the Anti-Millar), I found it to be a satisfying one. Of course, anyone who’s read Jack Kirby’s The Demon knows that Morgana comes back around 1973, but however frustrating that might be for Madame X, it’s also another story for another time.
Two things I would like to see happen with this book: one, that we linger in the early days of the DC Legends for another story or two. With DC entering the “Brightest Day” (which is still pretty dark, all things considered) and looking back on the early days of the DCU and its heroes, seeing Madame X move alongside more of them would be years worth of fascinating reading, especially under Wagner. Two, Madame X needs to grow in power. What kept her from being more powerful than Morgana who has basically been catatonic for centuries? Is it her moral restraint, as though the power to appropriately defend her ideals would end up eroding them, or is it some kind of… let’s call it “naivete” instead of “character flaw”. It’s fitting to be reviewing Wonder Woman this week while bringing up this issue. Diana has grown up in her comic from a wide-eyed princess to a warrior-philosopher. However, she’s done this in (relatively) little time. Madame X needs more depth without her having to go to the Dark Side and back again (“depth” does not have to mean “be laid waste to”), and I think then that we’ll see her grow in power and in character.
Grade: B+
Birds of Prey #1
Collectors are by nature an obsessive people. Nothing is so upsetting to us as missing pieces of a set. While I had been aware of Birds of Prey, I was so turned off by the TV show of the same name that the comic book didn’t seem like a “must get”. Then Gail Simone took over the writing duties for Wonder Woman, and I immediately loved her take on the Amazon Princess. I still had zero interest in BoP, but when I heard that it was starting over with Gail at the helm (sadly no longer on WW), I had to pick it up. I mean, I needed my monthly Gail fix. All I can say is, “Well. Crap. It looks like I need to get the full run of the original BoP series.” Damn you, Gail Simone, for loving your characters and making them so fun and appealing to read!
Grade: A
New Mutants #13
There not being even one mutie on the cover gave me pause. I know that with the “Second Coming” storyline taking over all things X, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Sam’s team took a backseat to Hope and Cable’s return (though Moonstar beating up the Messiah was an awesome tribute to the on-going struggle between polytheism and monotheism). I like and dislike that Marvel would declare martial law on the X books and commandeer their regular storylines. I like it because it means there are no core event books to buy with my regular reads being tie-ins. Instead, there’s a chapter book-like continuity to “Second Coming”. I dislike it because everyone is all jumbled up and I’m missing important information that core event books would probably provide.
Zeb Wells continues to grow as a writer and continues to grow on me. He hasn’t hit any remarkable strides yet, but I’m aboard. For now.
Grade: C+
Seige #4
Marvel is the Naproxen of event comics. Yeah yeah, they get the job done, and the result is almost indistinguishable from the real stuff, but ultimately there is something off-brand about their stories – a whiff of clone, a hint of prête à porter – that makes them seem tawdry in comparison to the Aleve of DC. Stan Lee rather cynically and shamelessly exposed the Silver Age trend of Marvel’s copying DC’s lead during a feature on the Justice League: New Frontier DVD (why he was doing an interview for a DC project is anyone’s guess), but why they still do this is beyond my imagination. Seige (along with “Necrosha” and Civil War and… some other event I have blocked out) is Marvel’s Darkest Night, though less aptly handled. Is it any surprise then that later this month they’ll be releasing their Brightest Day, The Heroic Age? (Though to be fair, I’m skipping The Return of Bruce Wayne because GMo’s Bruce-Wayne-as-Dawn-of-Time-eugenicist is already tripping me out.)
Beyond the ethics of the story, Seige ends, and ends well. Good. I’m uncertain how the combined forces of Marvel’s heroes can’t hurt The Void, but the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier can. And if the combined forces of Marvel’s heroes can’t hurt The Void, how is it Thor manages to drive The Void back and disintegrate Bob? I think it’s time to revisit the Marvel power scales flowchart. Oh! Ares gets a splatter porn death, but Loki just disappears? Not a power comment, just wondering why the bad taste couldn’t have continued all they way through to the end. In the end, there is a promise of renewal and hope which I do indeed hope Marvel follows through on. I’m kinda worn out with the body count and all.
Grade: C
Brightest Day #0
Geoff Johns needs to be cloned so he can write every current mainstream DC book, with maybe the exceptions of Wonder Woman and Batman and Robin and the upcoming return of Birds of Prey. His Blackest Night was the one event in years that was 1.) readable, and 2.) important. As one of DC’s new creative admins, he’s in the perfect position to make sure that his work isn’t changed at the whim of some editor **cough*dandidio*cough** because there’s more money to be had by putting out a new, contradictory event. With Brightest Day, Johns (with Peter Tomasi) brings continuity to his vision for the DCU by exploring the aftermath of the defeat of Nekron and the resurrection of several characters. There’s no story to report on so far, just tantalizing hints of what’s to come as seen by White Lantern Boston Brand, the hero formerly known as Deadman. Great stuff for the man I intend to father my children. Seriously, I’d grow a uterus for him. A+
Kill Shakespeare #1
I’m not a fanatical Shakespeare purist. You know, the kind who doesn’t have a sense of humor about adaptations or who can’t seen the plays done in alternative form (like “Ten Things I Hate about You” or “O” or “Forbidden Planet”). I am, however, one of those people who is going to give a salty opinion when some theatre group manages to mangle the text into something unrecognizable on stage. Which brings me to Kill Shakespeare. The stumbling blocks I had with this comic were exactly the elements that are crucial to a good comic book: the art, the language, and value of the story. Of course, the art sets the tone for the story because it’s the first apparent element when browsing a comic book title. Had Kagen McLeod, the cover artist for the edition I bought, done the entire story rather than Andy Belanger, I would have been more interested in the story. Belanger’s Mignola-like style pulls away from the story instead of supporting it. As far as the language goes, I wasn’t expecting iambic-pentameter (the only people who actually spoke in iambic-pentameter were pirates because in attempting to look educated, they were too dumb not to know that regular people didn’t speak that way), but I also wasn’t expecting contemporary language patterns. Lord knows there are enough 16th century resources and texts (or even amateur scholars) out there for people to emulate. And finally, Richard III is manipulating Hamlet into killing Shakespeare, and given the title, it seems a done deal that he’ll try to do so. Why show us your hand like that? It certainly doesn’t leave much in terms of plot twists or surprising moments. Then again, Rosencrantz here is shown to be a faithful friend to Hamlet and not Claudius’ crony, so who knows how Shakespeare himself will be characterized. Ultimately, there’s not enough here for me to consider buying issue #2. D
Uncanny X-Men #522 - No one could have been more supportive of the return of Miss Pryde than me, but the overall story to get her back home ASAP seems rushed. I don’t doubt that in the Marvel U, Magneto can reach across the vastness of space, turn a moon-sized bullet around and draw it to Earth at near the speed of light. But I’m calling shenanigans on the “he disintegrated the bullet as it entered the atmosphere thereby not destroying the world.” That’s just too much to take in in a single issue. And why the hurry to get her back, anyway? The story could have been drawn out for a few months and had a way better plot, but it seems she had to be back now. What is Marvel planning for Shadowcat?
Of course, there is a twist to Kitty’s return: she’s stuck in her phasing state. I suppose that the X-Men could ask Reed Richards to unstuck her like he did in The X-Men vs. The Fanstastic Four back in.. what, 1987? C
Nemesis #1 - I am going to hold off on doing a review of Nemesis, except to say that I got it, and it does indeed, make Kick-Ass pale in comparison. Good or bad? You decide.
