It was a big week at the comic store this week, but I am still trying to work through my self-imposed restrictions of not commenting on a single title more than once every other month and only write about things for which I care one way or another. So...
Spoilers ho!
Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil 1 -- It just has to be said up front that his book starts from a deficit because it was announced from DC at San Diego Comic-con in 2004. I remember the expectation of the audience at the panel...Jeff Smith taking on Captain Marvel! The audience was excited; hell, Bob Wayne was excited. And then nothing for more than two years. So, for me, the expectations have risen, since something awesome must be under work for it to take that long to produce a four issue mini-series.
And I'm not entirely sure it was worth the wait. Jeff Smith is a fine cartoonist, and I have enjoyed the bits of Bone that I have read. But Bone is an all-ages fantasy comic. Captain Marvel is superhero stuff, which has an entirely different feel to it, even if Captain Marvel is the one hero best-suited to an all-ages treatment. But Monster Society of Evil doesn't just pull me in the way I would've expected for something so heralded.
First of all, Billy Batson is drawn like he is no older than five. He says and does things that are more like the actions of an eight year-old, and eventually I just accept that he is older than he appears. But Billy really is drawn as a very small child, perhaps to emphasize his innocence and vulnerability. It is jarring and unfortunate. Second, this story is clearly not going to be within the continuity of Captain Marvel, as we get another spin on the classic origin story as well as an interesting take on his powers. In Jeff Smith's retelling, when Billy Batson speaks the magic word, he doesn't become Captain Marvel, he is replaced by him and Billy goes somewhere else. In a conversation with Merlin, Captain Marvel reveals that he has been around for a while and that Billy is just his latest vessel. There is some comedic potential with this set-up--and Smith touches on one of them when Billy visits a hot dog vendor--and this arrangement allows for some panels where both Billy and Captain Marvel appear, but these seem rather small benefits when compared to the cost of such a huge shift in the history of the character. The very thing that makes Captain Marvel so all-age appropriate is the innocence attached to the hero because he is truly a child wearing a disguise. Having an experienced Captain Marvel is strange terrain to find one's self in. Perhaps Smith has a big pay-off in mind, so I am waiting..but I am dubious.
Another strange thing Smith does is that each chapter title is in code, a simple replacement of letter for letter. It took only a few moments to break it, but I'm not sure what the point of the code is. Again, maybe it will pay off, but I don't expect it to be a big pay-off.
The art is classic Smith, very cartoony and thus very approachable. If you didn't like his work in Bone, there is nothing really new here. I'm holding out hope for the series, but if things continue like this, I think the series will be more appropriate for kids or for people pretty unfamiliar with Captain Marvel; fans of Captain Marvel should see this as a sort of Elseworlds version.
Action Comics Annual 10 -- Kudos to the creative team for the cover of this book, which harkens back to the classic covers of the Annuals from 70s. The cover is made up of scenes from the seven stories within the comic with the classic checkerboard border on the top. It is so exact a duplicate, my fingers rebelled when it wasn't newsprint they were touching. The structure of the comic maintains its dependence on those earlier issues, with five stories and two "articles": a layout of the Fortress of Solitude and a top 10 list of Superman's foes.
Each part is illustrated by a different artist. Of particular note is the very short Joe Kubert story, filled with many Thanagarians in hawk-costume. My thrill at turning the page and finding Kubert's space scenes and aliens nearly made the comic worth its cost. Art Adams, Gary Frank, Tony Daniel and Phil Jimenez do some very good work also.
My problem is with the stories, which are not as good as the art used to illustrate them. All of them are written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, and all of them appear to be setting up future storylines in Action. In them, we get the backstory of the three Kryptonians from the Superman II movie, which is just wasted if the three of them don't make an appearance in the regular title. But the movie Zod is not the comic Zod, especially not the one we have been seeing for the past few years. I'm not convinced of the value of going back to that continuity, except that it may be the only one that Donner knows. This issue also has the reintroduction of the various flavors of Kryptonite, which DC has studiously avoided since Superman was rebooted in the 80s. Stories using all those flavors can end up being extremely hokey and I'm more worried about what other writers will do with them than what Johns and Donner will. And I'm just not sure the ultimate benefit of having them outweighs the cost.
By far the best story in the book has a young Clark Kent learning about his powers and growing up separate from his peers in fear of accidentally injuring them. Into this lonely life is introduced another alien with super powers, whose spaceship happens to also crash in the Kents' cornfield. (I'll only grimace here and mention the hugely unlikely coincidence of his ship crashing into exactly the same farm...). They adventure together, with the alien hinting he may be another survivor from Krypton, until they decide to test his heritage. When the lead in the case around the shard of kryptonite proves more deadly to the visitor than the kryptonite itself, the visitor is revealed to be an amnesiac Mon-el, who has traveled from his own planet to find the last survivor of Krypton. But after all is revealed, Mon-el is still dying from lead poisoning, so that Clark puts him into the Phantom Zone where time stands still. This is clearly a tie-in to the continuity of the new Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes. And yet, with such an interesting story about Clark's loneliness and newfound "brother", the art is the weakest here. I'm not sure how closely the artist and colorist worked together on this, but all the panels have a very washed out feel to them, with a palette in the browns, almost sepia. Perhaps this was done to give an impression of nostalgia, but it gets boring to look at, especially all the flat colors. Compared to the vibrant coloring and art throughout the rest of the book, this story is a dramatic departure.
Jonah Hex 16 -- My primary reason for pointing this book out is the art by Phil Noto. As a friend said to me, "His art is too pretty for Jonah Hex" and normally I would agree. But it works, as we follow the story of a woman who comes to Hex to be trained in revenge so that she can avenge the men that have made a wasteland of her life. Even scarred as she is, Noto 's art evokes the beauty she would have been had bad men not entered her life. And this evocation is important--she is just as scarred as Hex and so feels they should share a kind of kindred feeling. But her wasted beauty points out what the reader already knows, wanting to kill and doing it are two completely different things, and performing the actual act changes a person forever. Hex agrees to train her, and the next issue will continue the story in an unusual muli-part story for this title. But Gray and Palmiotti continue to hit all the right notes in their work here, and Noto turns out to have been an inspired choice for this story.
Detective 828 -- Given last week's review of Legends of the Dark Knight, I thought it important to call out this title for two reasons. First of all, I found out this week that issue of Legends was the last, and I assume that Batman Confidential is taking over the duties of stories from Batman's past. I'm going to miss Legends; I was working in a comic store when it was first released. I remember the hype about the title, I remember the interest in it, and I remember how good the first stories were. I still believe that it lost its path for a while, and I regret that there weren't more stories like the early ones or last week's. Secondly, Detective is plainly the best Batman title going at the moment. I said it before, I'll say it again here--Paul Dini is opening the door on a new golden age of Batman stories and Kramer and Faucher's art is magnificent. But the comic excels especially for Dini's writing as he brings us back to the the root of who Batman is in this most appropriately titled book. Batman is a detective, and a good one. We've lost sightof that over the years, but Dini is bringing it back in crystal clarity. I sincerely hope that the upcoming Countdown mini-series does not distract him from the work on this title, and that he stays here for a good long time.
And a couple of extras--
Having spoken the name, I just want to add a comment on the idea of this Countdown series. The success of 52 has proven the viability of a weekly series in the comics market, so long as it is handled well. DC's "sequel" to 52, Countdown, will apparently build on this success. But did we learn nothing from the special event series Zero Hour? Having a five-issue miniseries be numbered backwards, from 4 to 0, was cute. Doing the same for a weekly comic for a year, from 51 to 0, is a major pain in my butt. It's starts out being cute, and then when you think about it, it's just stupid. I use Excel to catalog all my comics, and I'm sure the other comic databases in the market work much the same way. I have a choice in how Excel sorts my comics, ascending or descending in a field. There is no way to make it ascend for most titles and descend for two titles. It's a nuisance and, I'm going to say that word again, cute. Ultimately, it's just wrong.
DC announced the winners of the "Best DC Cover of All Time" contest. The results are not terribly shocking, for all the reasons I had described when I first talked about it. People remember the covers of seminal events, and equate the most important events with the best covers. I'm pretty certain that there have been better covers through the years, but the stories were so unmemorable that we can't remember the covers either. I truly wish that they had taken the five or ten most nominated and given the readers a chance to vote, but the email campaign was the only voting there was.
And the winners are:
Crisis on Infinite Earths 7 (Death of Supergirl)
Flash 123 ("Flash of Multiple Earths")
The Dark Knight Returns 1
Action Comics 1
The Killing Joke
You can see them at http://www.dccomics.com/news/?nw=7329. Although I personally voted for Crisis and am not surprised to see it win, it's clear when you look at the covers side-by-side, the best of the lot is Dark Knight Returns. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised none of the Watchman covers made it, both because of the seminal nature of the story and because of Gibbons's brilliant work.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Variable Star
In the afterward of Variable Star, Spider Robinson talks about the dangers inherent in attempting to write a novel based on the notes of someone else, especially when that someone else is Grand Master Robert Heinlein (not to be confused with Grand Master Flash). Robinson's friendship with Heinlein served as both a blessing and a curse, according to the afterward; he thought writing the novel a fitting tribute to Heinlein and would never have gotten the opportunity had he not been a friend of the family. However, he also recognized the expectation that, as someone recognized for knowing and admiring Heinlein and writing in his style, he would channel Heinlein-that he somehow would write the book Heinlein never got to. Towards the close of the afterward, Robinson talks about a conversation with the literary executor, in which Robinson is told to make it the "best Spider Robinson book" he can, and he admits he feels he has done so. Unfortunately, the marketing of the novel seems to do the opposite, describing the book as something like a séance for Heinlein, with the spirit gently possessing Robinson so that Heinlein speaks again.
So, depending on what you know as you approach the book, it is either a flawed attempt at being Heinlein or a flawed novel by Robinson. And even if you accept that Robinson is being Robinson, the novel spends a lot of time kissing Heinlein's literary butt. Perhaps Robinson does this in all of his novels, but the references to the Heinlein mythos are staggering in their number and … well, smarminess.
For example, the main character is a farmer from Ganymede, in a winking reference to Farmer in the Sky. At an emotional low-point in the book following a massive disaster, a character reminds the rest of the passengers on the ship about Nehemiah Scudder (from Heinlein's "If This Goes On--") and his rise to power. In the same passage, a reference is made to Leslie LeCroix, the first man on the moon in some of Heinlein's stories. There are even puns on titles of books, including a particularly clunky one on The Rolling Stones. So, even if this is Robinson at his best, it is inextricably interwoven with Heinlein, and not necessarily to the betterment of the part of the book that is Robinson.
Of that part of Variable Star that is Robinson, not very many good things can be said. Adopting the narrative style of juvenile novels (of which Heinlein was a master), we observe Joel Johnston as he approaches maturity, studying him in his non-maturity and following the events that cause him to become an adult. But the weakness here is that the Joel's circumstances are so contrived that they are nearly unacceptable, even for a science-fiction novel. Joel's mother died soon after his birth, and his father (a Nobel Prize winner in physics) was the perfect parent. When his father dies, Joel finds himself on Earth working on an education as a composer and musician. The novel opens when Joel and his betrothed have a horrendous argument about the potential of their wedding happening soon and goes downhill from there. Joel finds out that Jinny Conrad is actually the grand-daughter and heir to the Solar System's wealthiest man, and he is being groomed to help run the financial empire, no matter what he wants for himself. Joel goes on a bender and awakens to find himself aboard a colony ship headed to a star 20 light-years from Earth.
The rest of the novel is spent on board the ship as Joel is forced to undergo the lessons that his peculiar status until then had allowed him to miss. We get to meet Joel's friends and companions, all the while Robinson fills in the information about the setting. Swerving around the Heinlein references, we find out that that the ship is basically powered by Zen individualists who have a fondness for Joel's saxophone playing. But if the novel is meant to exhibit a man pulling himself up, it misses its intention since Joel seems to be the luckiest man on the ship. When he realizes he has gone aboard the ship with no liquidity, he discovers that an option his father had left for him has come through and he is extremely wealthy. And, oh by the way, the ship's banker becomes a great friend in the process of giving Joel the happy news. In fact, Joel rarely meets any one on the ship who doesn't like him-the one character there who is uncertain of him is more terrified of Joel's father's reputation than anything he knows about Joel. Even after he gets into a fight with two of the ship's toughs, they eventually become valued comrades.
And, as is the way with such novels, when Joel reaches some sort of maturity, it is put to the test by calamity. However, in this case, the calamity is so huge that it literally beggars the credulity of the reader; Sol is destroyed, wiping out the entirety of the Solar System and leaving the fate of humanity on Joel's ship and the other colonies being established. And then, as the effects of that sink in, Zen fails the ship and its propulsion unit is lost, stranding the ship as it is moving at near-light speed, destined to flash by its target planet without the ability to stop or even slow down. But taking a step back as a reader, this calamity strikes with about 60 pages left in the 300+ page novel. In about a fifth of the novel, somehow this is going to be worked out, and unless Robinson pulls a god out of the machine, it's going to have to be resolved from the cast of characters we already have at that point. From there it is only an exercise in logic to figure out the ending, making it feel extraordinarily contrived.
And, speaking of contrived, I need to go back to the speech about Nehemiah Scudder. Robinson grafts current world history onto the Heinlein history by explaining the root causes of Scudder's rise to power. Unfortunately, he uses the events of 9/11 and the resulting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to deliver a heavy-handed sermon about the failure of the American people in their current crisis. I found this particular passage insulting and well out-of-place. It only served as a distraction from the flow of the novel as the character paraphrases FDR: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." While I happen to agree with political stance of the speaker, it just didn't work in this novel.
So, which is it? Tribute to Robert Heinlein or an attempt to evoke his spirit? Whichever is the case, the novel follows the familiar pattern of he coming-of-age novel, but it misses on the details. Joel doesn't have much adversity to rise out of, and what he does escape, he usually escapes with a lot of help from a large cast of characters. While it may evoke Heinlein in its broad strokes and allusion, I much rather point to Robinson's essay "Rah! Rah! R.A.H." in the posthumous Heinlein collection, Requiem. This book is okay for Heinlein completists; in fact, it might actually be a fun wink to the Golden Age of science fiction if it had all of its Heinlein trappings removed. But unless you are looking for one of those niches to fill, there are better ways to spend your reading time.
So, depending on what you know as you approach the book, it is either a flawed attempt at being Heinlein or a flawed novel by Robinson. And even if you accept that Robinson is being Robinson, the novel spends a lot of time kissing Heinlein's literary butt. Perhaps Robinson does this in all of his novels, but the references to the Heinlein mythos are staggering in their number and … well, smarminess.
For example, the main character is a farmer from Ganymede, in a winking reference to Farmer in the Sky. At an emotional low-point in the book following a massive disaster, a character reminds the rest of the passengers on the ship about Nehemiah Scudder (from Heinlein's "If This Goes On--") and his rise to power. In the same passage, a reference is made to Leslie LeCroix, the first man on the moon in some of Heinlein's stories. There are even puns on titles of books, including a particularly clunky one on The Rolling Stones. So, even if this is Robinson at his best, it is inextricably interwoven with Heinlein, and not necessarily to the betterment of the part of the book that is Robinson.
Of that part of Variable Star that is Robinson, not very many good things can be said. Adopting the narrative style of juvenile novels (of which Heinlein was a master), we observe Joel Johnston as he approaches maturity, studying him in his non-maturity and following the events that cause him to become an adult. But the weakness here is that the Joel's circumstances are so contrived that they are nearly unacceptable, even for a science-fiction novel. Joel's mother died soon after his birth, and his father (a Nobel Prize winner in physics) was the perfect parent. When his father dies, Joel finds himself on Earth working on an education as a composer and musician. The novel opens when Joel and his betrothed have a horrendous argument about the potential of their wedding happening soon and goes downhill from there. Joel finds out that Jinny Conrad is actually the grand-daughter and heir to the Solar System's wealthiest man, and he is being groomed to help run the financial empire, no matter what he wants for himself. Joel goes on a bender and awakens to find himself aboard a colony ship headed to a star 20 light-years from Earth.
The rest of the novel is spent on board the ship as Joel is forced to undergo the lessons that his peculiar status until then had allowed him to miss. We get to meet Joel's friends and companions, all the while Robinson fills in the information about the setting. Swerving around the Heinlein references, we find out that that the ship is basically powered by Zen individualists who have a fondness for Joel's saxophone playing. But if the novel is meant to exhibit a man pulling himself up, it misses its intention since Joel seems to be the luckiest man on the ship. When he realizes he has gone aboard the ship with no liquidity, he discovers that an option his father had left for him has come through and he is extremely wealthy. And, oh by the way, the ship's banker becomes a great friend in the process of giving Joel the happy news. In fact, Joel rarely meets any one on the ship who doesn't like him-the one character there who is uncertain of him is more terrified of Joel's father's reputation than anything he knows about Joel. Even after he gets into a fight with two of the ship's toughs, they eventually become valued comrades.
And, as is the way with such novels, when Joel reaches some sort of maturity, it is put to the test by calamity. However, in this case, the calamity is so huge that it literally beggars the credulity of the reader; Sol is destroyed, wiping out the entirety of the Solar System and leaving the fate of humanity on Joel's ship and the other colonies being established. And then, as the effects of that sink in, Zen fails the ship and its propulsion unit is lost, stranding the ship as it is moving at near-light speed, destined to flash by its target planet without the ability to stop or even slow down. But taking a step back as a reader, this calamity strikes with about 60 pages left in the 300+ page novel. In about a fifth of the novel, somehow this is going to be worked out, and unless Robinson pulls a god out of the machine, it's going to have to be resolved from the cast of characters we already have at that point. From there it is only an exercise in logic to figure out the ending, making it feel extraordinarily contrived.
And, speaking of contrived, I need to go back to the speech about Nehemiah Scudder. Robinson grafts current world history onto the Heinlein history by explaining the root causes of Scudder's rise to power. Unfortunately, he uses the events of 9/11 and the resulting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to deliver a heavy-handed sermon about the failure of the American people in their current crisis. I found this particular passage insulting and well out-of-place. It only served as a distraction from the flow of the novel as the character paraphrases FDR: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." While I happen to agree with political stance of the speaker, it just didn't work in this novel.
So, which is it? Tribute to Robert Heinlein or an attempt to evoke his spirit? Whichever is the case, the novel follows the familiar pattern of he coming-of-age novel, but it misses on the details. Joel doesn't have much adversity to rise out of, and what he does escape, he usually escapes with a lot of help from a large cast of characters. While it may evoke Heinlein in its broad strokes and allusion, I much rather point to Robinson's essay "Rah! Rah! R.A.H." in the posthumous Heinlein collection, Requiem. This book is okay for Heinlein completists; in fact, it might actually be a fun wink to the Golden Age of science fiction if it had all of its Heinlein trappings removed. But unless you are looking for one of those niches to fill, there are better ways to spend your reading time.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Comic musings for 1/31
The Research Triangle finds itself confronted with winter weather. Not so much snow and ice as in past storms, but enough that my afternoon plans all got cancelled, so I finished this week's books a little earlier. Just one comic this week, but it's a doozy.
Spoilers ho!
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight 214 -- The story begins with Batman convincing a hood to testify against yet another crime boss in Gotham. Batman's method of interrogation, dangling someone at the end of a batrope and seeing how close the victim can get to the ground without touching it, appears to work just fine to summon a sense of civic responsibility. And all goes well until another costumed character threatens the mook, and Batman realizes that the underworld may be more afraid of Deadshot than of him.
Writer Christos Gage performs a fascinating study of Deadshot in this single-issue story, setting up a thorough comparison between the antagonist and protagonist. It turns out that people fear Deadshot because of his professionalism--once he takes a job, he does not quit it until it is performed, no matter the personal cost. As a result, anyone he is paid to kill dies. Always. Batman's reputation is that of a freak or maybe vampire, an avenger who doesn't take life but just scares his victims. Floyd Lawton does far more than that and so may be far more effective at his job than Batman.
What follows is a series of attempts by Batman to dissuade Deadshot from completing this task. He tries or considers threatening Deadshot, bribing him and even blackmailing him. Throughout their interaction, the high points of their relationship are played back, including Lawton's inability to just kill Batman; Batman even offers to tell Lawton what that reason is, but Lawton will not be thwarted. Nothing works until Batman finds a way to turn Deadshot's own professionalism against him.
The writing is crisp and thoughtful, not relying on outrageous plot twists or dramatic reveals to propel the story. It is simply two men at the top of their game pursuing goals at odds with one another.
The fine writing is capped by more terrific art by Phil Winslade. I imagine the writer realized his content wouldn't quite fill two issues without padding, so Winslade must take a dense story and fit it into a single issue. On the one hand, his layouts are phenomenal--each page is dense with art, feeling sometimes like Perez when he is at the top of his game and at others like Adams. On the other hand, the art itself is wonderful and evocative, no extraneous lines and realistic and lush portraits of human figures in a gothic cityscape. It must have been a challenge for colorist Mike Atiyeh, but he comes through beautifully.
When Legends of the Dark Knight started, it was meant to be a showcase of strong writing and solid art in the service of DC's favorite hero. All too often in the many years of the series, the art and/or story just falls flat. This issue represents what was originally advertised, writer and artist hitting their stride together. This story would easily be included in the old "Year's Best" digests from DC if they still existed, and is worthy of consideration for other comic awards. This is what a Batman story should be like.
Spoilers ho!
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight 214 -- The story begins with Batman convincing a hood to testify against yet another crime boss in Gotham. Batman's method of interrogation, dangling someone at the end of a batrope and seeing how close the victim can get to the ground without touching it, appears to work just fine to summon a sense of civic responsibility. And all goes well until another costumed character threatens the mook, and Batman realizes that the underworld may be more afraid of Deadshot than of him.
Writer Christos Gage performs a fascinating study of Deadshot in this single-issue story, setting up a thorough comparison between the antagonist and protagonist. It turns out that people fear Deadshot because of his professionalism--once he takes a job, he does not quit it until it is performed, no matter the personal cost. As a result, anyone he is paid to kill dies. Always. Batman's reputation is that of a freak or maybe vampire, an avenger who doesn't take life but just scares his victims. Floyd Lawton does far more than that and so may be far more effective at his job than Batman.
What follows is a series of attempts by Batman to dissuade Deadshot from completing this task. He tries or considers threatening Deadshot, bribing him and even blackmailing him. Throughout their interaction, the high points of their relationship are played back, including Lawton's inability to just kill Batman; Batman even offers to tell Lawton what that reason is, but Lawton will not be thwarted. Nothing works until Batman finds a way to turn Deadshot's own professionalism against him.
The writing is crisp and thoughtful, not relying on outrageous plot twists or dramatic reveals to propel the story. It is simply two men at the top of their game pursuing goals at odds with one another.
The fine writing is capped by more terrific art by Phil Winslade. I imagine the writer realized his content wouldn't quite fill two issues without padding, so Winslade must take a dense story and fit it into a single issue. On the one hand, his layouts are phenomenal--each page is dense with art, feeling sometimes like Perez when he is at the top of his game and at others like Adams. On the other hand, the art itself is wonderful and evocative, no extraneous lines and realistic and lush portraits of human figures in a gothic cityscape. It must have been a challenge for colorist Mike Atiyeh, but he comes through beautifully.
When Legends of the Dark Knight started, it was meant to be a showcase of strong writing and solid art in the service of DC's favorite hero. All too often in the many years of the series, the art and/or story just falls flat. This issue represents what was originally advertised, writer and artist hitting their stride together. This story would easily be included in the old "Year's Best" digests from DC if they still existed, and is worthy of consideration for other comic awards. This is what a Batman story should be like.
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