Comics: yet another X-Men #1!

Deafened still by the ongoing kettle-drum of DC Comics' "New 52" media phenomenon, I almost missed Marvel Comics' recent re-launch of "Uncanny X-Men" with a new first issue. And I might have given the whole thing a miss in any case, except the artwork is by one of my favorite working comics artists, Carlos Pacheco.

This issue is written by Kieron Gillen and takes off right where a recent mini-series left off: Cyclops and most of the few remaining mutants left on Earth (in the wake of the still-seminal events in "House of M") are gathered together in Utopia, their city/stronghold in the bay off the coast of San Francisco. Cyclops is determined that mutants will no longer be the meek targets of non-mutant aggression, but he's equally sure that the way to turn that aggression around is for his core team (for some mysterious reason perhaps known only to Gillen, he dubs this his "extinction team") to function more as a standard save-the-world superhero team, ala the Fantastic Four or the Avengers. It's an interesting idea - mutants using PR to sway public opinion (to my recollection, it hasn't been used since the launch of the original "X-Factor," many moons ago) - and Gillon bungles it right from the start.

If it's any consolation, he bungles it in the exact same way DC has bungled all but a couple of its own much more headline-grabbing first issues this summer (winter on the calendar, but I'm in shorts with the ceiling fan going in Boston, so as far as I'm concerned, it's summer until it's actually cold): he picks up a game in mid-play, tweaks it here and there in ways that may or may not be good ideas ("extinction team"?), but never pauses for even a moment to give new readers any reason to care about any of it. First issues are - at least theoretically - about providing a 'jumping on' point for those new readers, and yet in the many wide open spaces so helpfully provided by Pacheco's artwork, Gillon never bothers to explain anything, never bothers to catch us up on anything. In short, he makes the same mistake that's been plaguing the various X-books for decades now: he assumes every single reader is chapter-and-verse familiar with every jot and tittle of the X-catechism. The X-Man Colossus is intermittently possessed by the spirit of the old X-Men villain Juggernaut? Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner wears a modified X-Man costume and for some unaccountable reason takes orders from the team leader's girlfriend? Magneto too? It would have taken five minutes to write dialogue and monologue-boxes that grounded new readers on all of this, but Gillon doesn't do that. Instead, he assumes the worst thing you can assume about the opening of any drama: that his audience is already interested.

The result is as insular as most of what's been going on at DC lately, a first issue devoid of drama, meaningful only to the insider crowd, full of 'payoff' moments comprehensible only to a thousand people on the planet. I bought it for Carlos Pacheco's artwork (which didn't disappoint), but if his past is any indicator, he won't be around more than a few issues. Let's hope Kieron bothers to ground his story in that time.

Comics! Great Expectorations!

It's Marvel Comics' show this week at the comic shop, and the obvious reason is the launch of yet another sooper-dooper multi-crossover event, "Fear Itself." If you're thinking it's been only a very short time since the end of the previous sooper-dooper multi-crossover, you're entirely right, and what's even odder is how similar "Fear Itself" is to its predecessor, "Siege," in so many ways. In both cases, continuity-wide changes are promised that almost certainly won't happen; in both cases, the central story revolves around Thor and his fellow Asgardians - and in both cases, the actual issue-by-issue execution of writing and art will in all likelihood be irresistible. The writer-artist team here is Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen, and the first issue is so good that even a reader as sceptical as I am will be entertained even while they're muttering "but, but."

Our story so far: the Asgardian god of fear, Skadi, has delusions of all-fatherhood and has seeded the human world with hammers that look bigger and sleeker than Thor's famous Mjolnir, and Skadi is found by the daughter of Captain America's old foe the Red Skull. As those two start to cook up eee-vil, a more domestic strife is brewing in the city of Asgard itself, which crashed into the Oklahoma plain at the end of "Siege." Thor's irascible father Odin, the original all-father of the gods, is irritated that Thor is joining with his mortal allies the Avengers to rebuild Asgard. Odin interrupts a feast his people are sharing with the Avengers in order to tell everybody that Asgard is returning to the stars, that he's rebuilding Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge and taking all the Norse gods and godlings back home (the ominous Watcher shows up briefly to, um, watch - which enrages Odin still further, prompting him to shout "I am the father of all things! I am the fury and the extinction! The leader of souls! The commander of warrior gods!" It brought back many memories, for this long-time Thor fan).

He demands that Thor choose between his mortal and immortal loyalties, and when Thor chooses mankind, Odin slaps him around just for kicks and tells him he's coming back to Asgard anyway. The all-father senses that Skadi has returned, and he's obviously preparing for the battle that's coming, in which the heroes of Asgard and Earth will face off against the god of fear and his hammer-wielding warriors. Fraction has very little in the way of character-based writing to do here (and far too many opportunities for social commentary, but what can you do?), it being basically a premise-setting issue, but Immonen's artwork is yet another step forward in a progression that hasn't slowed down since "Superman: Secret Identity." Although even upward progressions can have nervous tics, I guess, and this issue certainly does: everybody spits. The good guys, the bad guys - there's spittle everywhere. We can hope for dry mouths in future issues.

Marvel's other ongoing 'big event' mini-series, "Avengers: The Children's Crusade," continues this week as well, with really good writing by Allan Heinberg and rip-snortingly fantastic artwork by Jim Cheung. In the last issue, the fat hit the fire when the impetuous Young Avengers went to Latveria in order to find the long-lost Scarlet Witch, who fled there and gave herself amnesia in the wake of the "House of M" storyline. We learned that she had fallen in love with Latveria's king, Doctor Doom - and that he had fallen in love with her and very much didn't want her to remember her own past, for her sake and humanity's safety. The grown-up Avengers followed the Young Avengers, and Magneto (the Scarlet Witch's father) followed as well, and a gigantic, predictable battle ensued that was momentarily interrupted by the return of Iron Lad, the teenager who would grow up to be Kang the Conqueror, and who in this issue helps the Young Avengers to spirit the Scarlet Witch back in time to an alternate time-line - only time-travel is very complex, and they don't really know what they're doing, and by issue's end all they've succeeded in doing is restoring her memories and thereby putting the whole Marvel Universe at risk.

If that all sounds confusing, that's because it is - but then, this issue is just the mid-point in the mini-series, so some amount of textual muddle is to be expected, Cheung's artwork certainly makes the confusion easy to bear, including yet another eye-popping two-page splash panel like the one we commented on last time:



And Heinberg's writing is very enjoyable too, including his ongoing and very refreshing characterization of Doctor Doom as a bit more complex than he's usually portrayed. "She was happy here," he tells the Avengers. "We were to be married." And when Magneto says, "My daughter would never have married you. Not willingly. What have you done to her?" Doom's response is chillingly correct:

I have been trying to save her. From You. From all of you ... who sought to destroy her. And now, because of you, the most powerful force in the universe has been unleashed into the timestream, where she can rewrite the past or the future just as easily as she said the words "No more mutants."

Two big event-titles, both firing on all cylinders, and yet the Marvel comic that pleased me most this week was a regular old ongoing title that hardly ever pleases me at all: "The Uncanny X-Men." Marvel has been coming out with "Point 1" issues of its books, billed as good jumping-on points for potential new readers who might be leery of picking up titles in the middle of long-running stories. This latest issue of "Uncanny X-Men" is one of those: 534.1 (that "534" seems utterly unbelievable to yours truly, but we'll let that go), written by Kieron Gillen and pencilled by Carlos Pacheco. It has a straightforward, two-pronged plot: the X-Men (now basically comprising almost all the handful of mutants who were left on Earth after those three little words "No more mutants" - including both former villain Magneto and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner, who, as the super-powered son of a human man and a woman from Atlantis, was Marvel's first mutant long before anybody but Mendel had ever heard the word) race to stop an evil group of scientists from causing a major earthquake, and a media consultant tries to work with Magneto to improve his image with the public. I certainly wasn't expecting the issue to please me more than those big-e events for which I admit I have a sweet-tooth, but it did: Gillen's writing sparkles, and of course Pacheco's artwork is always great. The highlight of the issue for me was Gillen's characterization of Namor as a bit of a lout, not a sterling super-hero at all. When he's confronting one of the evil scientists, for instance, he snarls, "Only Namor has the ability to make the earth move. And he reserves the privilege for one woman at a time. Unless they have experimental friends." That's a far cry from the 'tortured hero' conception of the character that held sway back in the '70s, but I like it just the same.

Of course, there's a couple of sooper-dooper crossover events brewing at DC Comics as well, but this week clearly belonged to Marvel. Maybe we'll get to Superman and Doomsday next time!

Comics: The Thunder Reigns!

The Thorapalooza Marvel Comics is unrolling in preparation for their $200 million dollar movie continues apace. Thor has no fewer than four series unfolding right now, and this week Marvel added a fifth with the first issue of the “Ultimate” version of the character.

We've seen this character before, of course; he appeared in the first story-arc of “The Ultimates,” Marvel's problematic attempt to modernize “The Avengers” ala Wildstorm's “The Authority. In that story, we're introduced to a big blond guy with a super-powered hammer and told he was a nurse in civilian life and only thinks he's the ancient Norse god of thunder. One of the pleasures of that original Mark Millar/Brian Hitch arc on “Ultimates” was following that thread, as this version of Thor fights the Hulk, bridles at government control of the team, is fought by and defeated by his erstwhile teammates, and gets imprisoned in a mental institution, apparently powerless. The final couple of issues, before Millar and Ellis decamped for other big, overstuffed bags of money, provided a vindication for the character that couldn't possibly have displeased any long-time Thor fan.

It's that “Ultimate” version of the character who gets his own series this time around, and the writer, Jonathan Hickman, has wisely decided to tell us a story that ranges in time, rather than one that simply jumps off the latest “Ultimates” continuity. This is especially good news because in the latest “Ultimates” continuity, Thor is dead, in Hell, negotiating to get back to Earth by sleeping with Hela, the goddess of death … and who wants to kick off a series on such a tacky note?

Instead, what Hickman gives us is a good old-fashioned cornball three-ring circus. We see Thor in the present day, incarcerated for insanity, forlornly tracing out the Poetic Edda on the floor of his cell. But we also see him “eons ago” fighting frost giants on the border of Asgard with his brothers, Balder and Loki. The characterization here is lightly but expertly done – seeing these three as brothers with radically different personalities, it's hard to imagine them as anything else (the whole scenario is a nod to Thor's non-”Ultimates” ongoing comic, in which a scheming Loki recently revealed to Balder that he is in fact a son of Odin). And balancing out these two story lines is one set in 1939 Nazi Germany, where Baron Zemo has discovered mystic Norse rune stones – and hatched a plan to use them in order to invade Asgard itself. Crackerjack stuff.

All of which is intensely enhanced by the artwork of Carlos Pacheco, here given a heft it's never had before by inker Dexter Vines. Vines takes Pacheco's standard somewhat sylphlike line and fleshes it out everywhere with dark spaces and hatchings that at times call to mind Walt Simonson's epic run on “Thor” from thirty years ago (rumor on the Internet has it that said run is being collected by Marvel into one oversized hardcover edition with remastered coloring ...if this rumor is true, I'm sincerely hoping the Silent Majority will take up a collection and send a copy winging its way to Stevereads the instant it appears).

When you bring the first-rate writing and artwork together, you get yet another Thor title to look forward to every month. It's an embarrassment of riches for us long-time Thor fans, who well remember the dark days not long gone when Thor had no title of his own at all – or the far more frequent days when whatever title he did have stunk up the comics store like goat cheese. It'll be ironic indeed if the movie that's presumably prompting all this good stuff turns out to be a disaster. When you've got Anthony Hopkins playing Odin, things could go either way.

comics! World's Finest What The Eff?

Two comics for myself this week, and they don't come any more basic: Superman and Batman. Despite what some of you out there might think, this is not rote loyalty on my part. I've almost never followed any of the various Bat-titles. I've only decided to follow this one for the same reason I ever do: the fantastic artwork. Andy Kubert's work here is so damn good, so wonderful in layout and execution, that every time I see him up his game (which he, unlike so many brand-name artists out there, consistently does) I'm tempted to bring up the Forbidden Subject: is he - or his almost-equally good brother - actually BETTER than their revered father Joe Kubert?

The answer's still no - Joe's work portraying Tarzan (perhaps the only other 'superhero' as iconic as Superman and Batman) has a worldly wisdom underlying it that neither of the sons has - yet.

True, I am the world's biggest Superman fan - but buying that title wasn't rote either! There've been plenty of times I stopped buying the title (um, shoulder length hippie hair? Um, big blue energy-being? True, I stuck around for John Byrne - but that was the equivalent of being mesmerized by a horrible highway accident). But Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco are doing such a fantastic job with this title that - despite our rather bumpy courtship - I'm completely hooked.

Both issues were wonderful, and, oddly enough, both issues had a great big What The Eff moment that left me jaw-dropped and hovering between pity and outrage.

The Moment happens at the end of this current Batman issue - the storyline is hugely promising: a boy claiming to be Batman's son by Talia demands to be let into Batman's life. He's brought to the Batcave, where - since he was brought up by the League of Assassins - he proceeds to attack everybody with a pulse, overcoming Alfred and Robin and provoking a lot of Bat-yelling from the big guy. Using the element of surprise, the boy badly wounds Robin (this week's Stevereads award for the most inadvertently creepy detail: the Cave has its own private blood supply), so Batman has no choice but to take him along to Gibraltar, which, um, Talia wants to take from the UK.

Batman and the boy show up to foil the plan, and there's lots of great action, and Talia offers Batman a chance to 'convert' her to the cause of good - a fascinating twist I'm amazed nobody's thought of before. Everything is tense and balanced to go either way. And then ...

BOOM! Our writer, Grant Morrison, slams a British torpedo into Talia's ship, and the issue ends with Batman watching the burning wreckage from shore, and with Stevereads saying, you guessed it, What The Eff?

We can assume that both Talia and the boy survived and will be back (after all, in comics nobody dies but Bucky ... grrrrrr), but even so, what is such an ending but Morrison basically saying 'Mmmmmmm, I'm bored .... I'll come back to this later.'?

Over in Superman, a delightfully snotty Arion is detailing a post-apocalyptic future to our cast, a future in which a small handful of unlikely heroes led by Lex Luthor are making their way through a nearly destroyed world.

And what's responsible for this apocalypse? Why, our second What The Eff moment, that's what!

Or rather, that's who - a new super-villain named Khyber, who's clearly intended to be comics first Islamic villain - certainly the first major villain who's Islamic identity is the biggest part of his villainy.

I know, I know - in the issue, Khyber is never explicitly described as Islamic himself, only as using strife between Islamic extremists and the West to further his own plans. But the wording is so delicately ambiguous that we're clearly meant to make some heavy-duty associations, and I think those associations are dead wrong.

I know, I know - it's been done before. During WWII, wildly prejudicial anti-German and anti-Japanese were all over comics, and there's nothing very subtle about villains like the Yellow Claw.

But this is different. No goose-stepping Nazis ever waved their lugers around Times Square, and no bayonet-wielding Viet Congs ever boarded planes at Logan. Creating a sooper-evil Islamic villain who beats on Superman and causes the end of the world ... well, in its own small way, it's intensely irresponsible. Islamic extremism is the fastest-growing social movement in the world, and it has two salient characteristics: it's unchecked by geographical borders, and it's very, very touchy. Creating a character like Khyber encourages ignorance just to tap into a little topicality, and I wish Busiek had gone a different way in adding to Superman's rogues gallery.

Anyway, I passed on Teen Titans, Green Arrow, 52, and a bunch of other things this week, but I'm sure Elmo and my nemesis Pepito will furnish the gaps in due time. You must be patient, my little marmosets ...

(by the by, for you techno-heads out there, I tried for 30 utterly wasted minutes to find a copy of the cover of the current Superman to post here, totally without success .. if any of you can find such a holy image, feel free to tell me where, so I can avoid giving preferential treatment to a non-superpowered character.... yech ...)

Comics! Superman and Spider-Man!

15 July 2006

COMICS

Only two comics this week, amazingly enough: Superman and 'The Sensational' Spider-Man. Each company's long-standing icon, and each icon at a turning point.

Sensational Spider-Man #28 - "My Science Teacher is Spider-Man!!" - follows a little of the fallout in Peter Parker's life in the wake of his nationally televised coming-out as Spider-Man (it features a GREAT cover by the wonderul new-to-me artist Clayton Crain, whose names sounds like a Stan Lee secret identity name). In this case, what would happen to a really bright kid in one of Peter's classes, once it was revealed that his science teacher is a super-hero. The issue was really good though predictable, and my favorite moment wasn't the one very good writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa planned it to be, the rousing final page where we learn that the kid is going to be fine ... no, my favorite moment was when the writer remembered that this isn't the first time Doctor Octopus has seen Peter Parker dressed as Spider-Man (although the previous time he wasn't dressed in the new stupid gay-ass bright red hotsuit like he should be called Afterburn and be working four nights a week at the Bun Factory... geez) - when I saw that Aguirre-Sacasa had even gone to the trouble of mimicking Stan Lee's original hyperventilating multiple-exclamation points .... well, I smiled.

Not much to smile about with Superman #654, "On Our Special Day," and that shouldn't have been true - the thing is written by Kurt Busiek, one of the best Superman-writers of all time, and it's drawn by Carlos Pacheco, one of the most gifted comic book artists in comics history. I was extremely gratified to learn that DC was bringing its A-team to its flagship character, but hoo-boy, this first issue left me waiting for that to happen.

Let's start with the cover - great iconic Superman pose, but what about the REST of it? The bad guys seem not only beaten but ... well, BEATEN, like they're begging us to pull the big guy OFFA them before he KILLS them - hardly the tone you want in a Superman comic (and what's with that bizarre WWII-era insulting Oriental crouching beneath the Western Imperialist dog? Me so solly, but that sort of stuff just doesn't fly anymore).

Then there's everything on the inside.

Page 1: Who the Hell gets up at 7 if they've got a staff meeting at 8:10? What were Lois and Clark going to DO with that honey-nut toast and fresh-squeezed juice and eggs florentine? Power-eat them? And where do they live? Actually IN the Daily Planet building?

Page 2 -3: OK, I like the fist-marks all over Neutron's containment armor ... but mommy, why does Superman have a mouth full of ragged fangs? Is he the devil?

Page 4: First reminder of the issue: Superman is not Cyclops. You can tell by the flying, and the big red cape. His heat vision makes things HOTTER - it doesnt shatter them.

Page 5: OK, I LOVE the 'science police' bit, but, looking at panel 1, I'm moved to ask: who the Hell is that in the Superman costume? Why doesn't he look anything like the ten or twelve other faces Pacheco tries in the rest of the issue?

Page 6: Um, people who 'establish' themselves as "erratic, prone to irregular absences" get their asses fired.

Page 7: Yeesh. That line "Lana? I'd been wondering what she'd do with her life, but this is a surprise" couldn't be a bigger writer-copout if it read "Lana? I'd been wondering what the writers would do with her life, but this is sure a totally out-of-character mindfuck." Lana Lang as CEO of Lexcorp! Or, as it's known in the DC bullpen: Busiek drunk off his ass!

Page 8: Hard-nosed is one thing, but Perry White is coming off here as a J. Jonah Jameson-style a-hole with no redeeming qualities at all.

Page 9: I miss Clark Kent's blue suits. And I could do without Lois Lane's frickin belly button flashing in the newsroom.

Page 10: Um, just wondering here, but why would you NEED your crack camouflage squad with their specially-designed light-refracting invisibility suits if you're planting frigging glowing spheres in frigging broad daylight?

Page 11: OK, panel one is a great, compacted action-scene, but ... reminder number two: Superman is not Cyclops. You can tell by the flying, and the big red cape. His heat vision MELTS things, it doesn't knock people unconscious (or anything else that isn't melting). And also: so you've got this glowing energy-sphere and you have NO IDEA what it does, but what do you do? You hand it over to a Metropolis cop - but hey, you make sure to give him a helpful warning: "be careful ... it's almost pure, compacted energy"... love that 'almost' ... (also love the fact that Superman is clearly still holding the energy sphere in his hand as he flies off ... what, don't Busiek and Pacheco even get drunk TOGETHER?)

Page 12: So let me get this straight: the villain on the water-sled is yelling to his unarmed scuba-buddies "Kill him! Kill him!"? And that's what kind of writing, again? Where is there ANYBODY, and I mean frigging ANYBODY, who yells "Kill him! Kill him!" to his buddies when they're fighting Superman? It's so nonsensical it's annoying.

Page 13: So Jimmy's spent the whole friggin morning obsessing on what anniversary Lois and Clark are celebrating? But Clark's the one fighting for his job? And shouldn't somebody tell Lois she's got an oilslick on her head?

Page 14: OK, aside from that 'focus my hearing forward' bit of nonsense, this page kicks ass, especially the last two panels. But even in the midst of enjoying them, I'm bombarded with the concentrated bullshit of "The building's shielded with an energy field that gives off the spectrographic signature of lead paint." Just think about that for a minute. Just wait ... it'll come to you. Trust me, you haven't read a sentence that dumb all day.

Page 15: Awesome page - a real good twist.

Page 16: Um, I counted 12 scientists monitoring Mannheim on page 15 - wouldn't Superman be, um, interested in, you know, saving them or something? I mean when the friggin building collapses on top of them? Just a thought.

Page 17: Oh great .... so in addition to not saving the aforementioned scientists trapped under the building's rubble, Superman is now ENTOMBING them by slagging the rubble to hamper Mannheim's feet. What's next? Repeatedly X-raying little orphans' scrotums until they get testicular cancer? Welcome back, big guy!

Page 18: Curses! Superman could have used his telescopic vision to SEE who was behind Mannheim's transformation if he'd only ... LOOKED UP! Oh well, Mannheim foiled him this time, but next time, he might just MOVE HIS FRIGGIN HEAD.

Page 19: So let me get this straight - when it comes to energy-spheres made of almost pure compacted energy of unknown design or function, Superman can't stick around, but when it comes to booby-traps (which he could, um, LOOK for) or 'damaged weaponry' (whatever the hell THAT means), he's got to hang around and miss his deadlines and his anniversary?

Page 20: Just a little note on journalistic ethics for all you little turnips out there who might be thinking of becoming news-people: Superman saving millions of lives is not the same thing as Lois using a forged edit-code to lie to her publisher. They're not even in the same ballpark.

Page 21: So let me get this straight: Lois is a little worried that if Clark holds the apartment door open too long, 'old Mrs. Schwartz' will peep in, but she's not concerned about FLYING over friggin Metropolis in the arms of Clark Kent, the famous newspaper reporter? And Clark's not worried either? Isn't there a chance that, oh, I don't know - somebody might be LOOKING OUT THEIR FRIGGIN WINDOW right at that moment? Or that the weirdly-obsessive Jimmy Olson might have their place staked out?

See, the fact that I only unabashedly LIKED one single page from this issue points out the problem with this bi-annual Superman relaunches: they always stink. And they always stink because they're so obviously not thought-through for any length of time ahead of time, by any of the people involved. If I had to guess, I'd say the inspiration for this issue - filtered through lots and lost of beer - was the first issue of Busiek's Astro City, in which a decent but harried Samaritan is seen as the busiest guy in the world, only instead of his peaceful dream of flying, our Superman gets the real, secret-identity-endangering thing.

But that's half the problem right there: this is Superman, the guy of whom Samaritan is a pale copy, not vice versa. AND this is Superman just coming back from a massive, life-altering event: a PERFECT time to re-invigorate the character. This issue shouldn't feel like a tired re-tread of Busiek's earlier work ... and if it did when it was presented to the DC powers that be, it should bloody well have been rejected, regardless of whose names are attached. My super-genius young friend Elmo could have come up with four different, totally involving ways to relaunch this title, AND still had time for some bird-watching in the afternoon.

So here's hoping the next issue will be better. Sap that I am, you know I'll be there.