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!

Great Moments in Comics!

A full week of comics from both the big super-hero companies, but sometimes it's fun just to concentrate on the little moments writers and artists work into the bigger stories! I've been reading comics for a long, long time, and I can honestly say most of my best memories of them are scattered shots of just such moments, rather than the bigger stories and crossovers and what-nots I'm supposed to be remembering.

I'll do a few longer postings collecting some of those classic moments from across the decades, but for now I thought I'd start with a Great Moment from this very week, featuring Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner.

The long background: Namor is one of Marvel Comics' oldest, most storied characters (the Human Torch and then later Captain America being the other two marquee-caliber names), the son of a human fisherman and a princess of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis. As this description might hint, Namor is also - quite accidentally - Marvel's very first mutant: he's a hybrid with the pale skin of his father (Atlanteans are deep blue in hue, don't you know) and the water-breathing ability of his mother, but he has traits neither one possesses - mainly, he's got little wing-thingees on his ankles that allow him to fly, and he's preternaturally strong. But Namor has a claim to the affection of Marvelites everywhere that goes beyond his superhero stats: he's a great character, and, miraculously, he always has been. Namor is headstrong, irritable, proud, stubborn, prone to snap-judgements but not always wrong, and he's never been changed from that winning template, the perfect middle-ground between your standard hero and villain. And since his Atlantean physiology gives him a much longer lifespan than that of a normal human, no gimmickry is needed to have him right here, slapping around whoever's pissed him off in 2009. He doesn't currently have his own ongoing monthly title at Marvel, but that's as often as not a good thing - it allows writers to handle him exquisitely and consistently give him great lines, and that's certainly been the case in 2009 during the whole "Dark Reign" story-arc.

(That arc, for those of you joining us en medias res: psychopathic killer Norman Osborn has cleaned himself up and managed to worm his way into control of Marvel's amped-up equivalent of the C.I.A.; he's drafted other psychopathic killers to masquerade as his "Avengers" while hunting the real heroes into hiding; he's conducted clandestine deals with other Marvel super-baddies like Loki and Doctor Doom - and Namor, who just recently turned on Osborn, thereby earning his ire, which is not a good ire to have)

The short background: twenty years ago, a writer took Marinna, one of the dumbass-useless characters John Byrne invented for his dumbass Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight, and made her attractive to Prince Namor (Marinna was a yellow-skinned, fish-eyed amphibious slip of a thing, a uselessly derivative character as was everyone else on Alpha Flight), who, in a decision well-known to other fictional characters (such as Larry King), decided to marry the much, much, much younger girl, even though she had a tendency to turn into a mindless, rampaging sea-monster when stressed.

Cut to the present: Namor has enraged Norman Osborn with his perceived betrayal, and Osborn, it turns out, was prepared for just such an eventuality. He has stressed poor little Marinna (and pumped her full of shark-hormones), and she's now a gigantic rampaging mindless sea-monster - which Osborn sets loose on Namor's undersea people with instructions straight out of the U.S. Army: take all you want, but eat all you take. When Marinna begins consuming Atlanteans, Namor goes to the X-Men for help (only he's too proud to admit that, and he's too proud to ask for it when he gets there, and he's too proud to accept it when it's offered - this one-shot of "X-Men/Dark Reign/The List" is a great little snapshot of what a royal pain in the ass Namor can be, even to his friends). The plan: lure monster-Marinna in and take her down.

Which brings us to our Great Moment! Namor and the X-Men are gathered on the shore of the X-Men island sanctuary, and they can all see the monster approaching. One of the crowd of young mutants there scans the beast and sadly reports, "There's nothing to her but hunger and rage and ... and hate. There's nothing there but hate."

To which Namor - with the deadpan perfection only an 80-year-old warrior king might muster - replies: "Ex-wives. What can you do?"

Hee.

So hat's off to writer Matt Fraction (and the always-gorgeous artwork of Alan Davis, of course) for providing us with our inaugural Great Moment!

Comics! 52, FF, and more!

Four comics this week, all quite good (proof positive that they must have come from Elmo, since there's not an issue of gay-murderer Nightwing or Super-Linebacker, not a piece of crap in the batch ... hence, Pepito's hand is not seen) - and each yields a fervent PLEA to the funny book powers that be.

The current issue of '52' maintains that title's increasingly incredible run of great issues (those of you who a while ago gave up on this book should pick it back up forthwith ... not as some sort of 'prequel' to the current continuity, but because you'll scarcely read better DC stories anywhere on the new release shelves)(that last urging was aimed pretty much squarely at you, Kevin, ya snobby slug-a-bed!). It can't last, this run - next issue promises more of the idiotic new untrained lesbian Batwoman, and that CAN'T be made good.

But we can savor it while it lasts! This issue's hugely winning highlight is the whining, hapless Ralph Dibny's discovery of the hidden mountaintop city of Nanda Parbat.

I expected to be bored. I expected, in fact, to be FRUSTRATED and bored, since the Nanda Parbat stories I WANT to be reading star one of the greatest DC superheroes of them all, sharing all the elegant simplicity of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, or the Barry Allen Flash - or indeed Superman and Batman: of course I refer to Deadman. And not whatever stupid-ass relaunch might be out there, but good old Boston Brand, wisecracking circus performer/ghost, who can slip his ghostly form into living bodies and take control of them. THAT character should be on issue #300 of his own title right now, but that's not the plea associated with this issue (well, it IS - I mean, it's always been a plea of Stevereads that Deadman be given the treatment he's due ... and yet, apart from that marvellous mini-series two years ago with its stellar artwork by Jose Garcia-Lopez, he hasn't received it).

No, our plea arises from this issue's amazing portrayal of one member of '52's Chinese super-team, the Great Ten of the Peoples Republic.

When we first encountered the team, we groaned at all the stereotypes herded together in one narrow space. Perhaps unlike the rest of you, we here at Stevereads number among our closest friends a native of China who would cringe equally at all the one-note caricatures it contained.

So imagine our pleasure when, in this issue, we learn that at least one member of the team, the lamentably-named Accomplished Pefect Physician, is revealed to have an actual personality, an individual back-story in which he's NOT just a mindless Communist party drone.

So our plea is this: more, please! Let's have a Great Ten mini-series, with equal complexity doled out to each member. With sufficient googling on the part of our writers, it could prove an educational experience for all the comic readers out there whose knowledge of China starts and stops with the Yellow Claw.

Up next is the third issue of Alan Davis' everything-but-the-kitchen-sink 'imaginary' Fantastic Four story, 'The End.' This is the third issue of six, so there's way too much going on to summarize here. Suffice it to say Davis is continuing to haul in as many characters from the FF (especially the Lee/Kirby era) continuity as he possibly can - Galactus, the Watcher, Ronan the Accuser, Black Panther, and the Sentry this time around. And as with the previous two issues, there's the distinct feeling that he's sending out invites before he counts his chairs, if you get my meaning.

Still, this issue has high points - Davis' artwork is stellar, and John Kalisz contintues to outdo himself with his coloring. And there's an intriguing attempt to explain something that's always confused me - why so many of the Inhumans wear masks (Davis comes up with the ingenious idea that it's done as a sign of public contrition, for still looking human even after exposure to the Terrigan Mists).

(There are low points as well, most notably the 'cliffhanger' ending ... our heroes are attacked by a Sentry! Now let's see ... the original Sentry was defeated by the Fantastic Four; THIS one is facing the Human Torch, the Thing, the entire Inhuman royal family, and oh yeah - the friggin Silver Surfer. Geez - I'm on the edge of my seat over here!)

And the issue features a great action sequence involving Sue Storm and the Sub-Mariner, which leads us to our PLEA for this issue: could we please have a Namor ongoing series again? It's been years since the last one flared out in a burst of incoherent Jae Lee nonsense - surely it's time for one of Marvel's flagship characters to have his own title again? (and while we're at it, could somebody really popular propose renovating the continuity of the original Human Torch? So that he's alive, fully powered, and starring in his own title too? Thanx)

The Justice League shows up twice in this batch - first in the fourth issue of Brad Meltzer's ongoing relaunch. As you-all have gathered, I'm growing a bit impatient with this title - Meltzer clearly mapped out in his head the big storyline he wanted to tell, but it turns out he payed virtually no attention to breaking that story down into individual issues that are compelling in themselves.

The result has been four issues that feel, each one of them, like prologues. This is very annoying - bad enough we all know this run is going to be graphic novelled before the ink is dry on the last issue, but it sucks to have that fact rubbed in our faces.

This issue is a typical mess. There's Starro. There's a new Amazo. There's the issue's big reveal, Solomon Grundy - only dressed in a suit, so you know he's REALLY dangerous this time (where do these size-145 large super-villains get their suits?). But none of it gels at all, and you're left at the end of the issue same as at the end of all the other issues: wondering when the story's going to start.

So our plea? Start the story, already! So far, it looks like the new League membership will consist of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Black Lightning, Vixen (just as soon as she gets her friggin jewelry back), Green Lantern, Black Canary, Red Tornado, Hawkgirl, and Roy Harper, rather disasterously renamed Red Arrow (it's the color-league!) - but it still feels like we're light-years away from actually seeing them all together.

(the issue also features a little mystery: on the bottom of page 11, the panel where Black Canary is hunched menacingly over Professor Ivor is clearly drawn by Adam Kubert, not Ed Benes ... but he's not credited. What the eff?)

Our last comic this time around is Justice League Unlimited, and there our plea is pretty simple: everybody should read this title! Month after month, it's the happy little antithesis of the 'adult' team books: a jam-packed story, great art, and the whole thing wraps up neatly at the end of every issue. Speaking for those of us who remember when ALL comics were like that, it can be pretty darn refreshing.

And what would a comic entry be without a Kevinator quiz? Let's try two this time around, and see who steps up:

1) The Sub-Mariner and Deadman share, by my counting, three major things in common as characters ... anybody care to guess what they are?

2) Davis' idea about why some Inhumans wear masks is good, but three things in Marvel continuity contradict it ... anybody?

comics! wolverine and JLA!

Only two comics this week, although my nemesis Pepito just recently returned from an exclusive tour of Europe and the subcontinent, so I'll doubtless be rooting through a pile of poop sometime soon.

In the meantime, I bought Justice League of America #1 and the latest issue of Wolverine. Both were meticulously well-done (fantastic artwork in both cases), and both irritated the piss out of me.

Wolverine #45, written by Marc Guggenheim and drawn by Humberto Ramos, is a Civil War tie-in, and I confess I bought it because the cover showed Wolverine duking it out with the Sub-Mariner, and Namor fascinates me these days. Not only does he LOOK like DC's Black Adam, but nowadays, with Namor having no ongoing title of his own, he's being WRITTEN like Black Adam - not a super-villain, but something much rarer in the comics world: a powerful badass who just doesn't happen to AGREE with the normal way super-heroes act.

Never bought an issue of Wolverine in my life. As many of you might already know, the character as he's always written torques me off no end. The pinnacle of that torsion had to be that John Romita Jr.-illustrated storyline a few years back where the writer (the perp's name escapes me at the moment) had a mind-controlled Wolverine take on - and BEAT - the frickin Fantastic Four.

This issue isn't as bad as that. But almost.

Guggenheim is a really good writer, and Ramos is a great artist, better all the time. And that keeps the issue interesting, well worth the offensive $3 price tag. I was brought up to speed quick: Nitro, the super-villain whose explosion killed Namorita and started the whole Civil War, has been hunted down by Namor's operatives. But Wolverine wants to know who was supplying Nitro with the drugs he was high on when he detonated, so he's in the odd position of needing to defend the guy against the Atlanteans. As this issue opens, that pits him against Namor himself, and that's where I started to get irritated.

I want you to picture something along with me. Picture yourself pitted in combat against a little toddler, a toddler who just a month ago learned to walk. This toddler, despite his outward appearance, has years of combat experience - and to top it all off, he's got super-tough bones and two hands full of razor sharp knives.

In this scenario, you're a fully-grown male Navy SEAL.

Yep, you anticipate me. There is one, and I goddam mean only ONE way such a fight progresses. You are ONE HUNDRED TIMES stronger and faster than the toddler in question. There is NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER that the toddler will WIN the fight. There won't BE a fight.

Now guess what happens in issue #45?

On page 2, Wolverine a) takes a direct punch to the head and b) IN THE NEXT PANEL kicks the Sub-Mariner's feet out from under him.

That's just on Page 2. Not only would Namor's punch have blown Wolverine's eyeballs out of his head (bet they're a bitch to grow back, huh?), but Wolverine shouldn't be able to kick Namor's legs out from underneath him under any circumstances, even with a backhoe to help him out.

I mean, what's the POINT of having these characters in the first place, of endowing them with a rich continuous history, if you'll disregard it to make the little toddler look cool?

But I'm not sure the issue's ending doesn't bother me even more. Wolverine borrows a suit of armor from Iron Man to track Nitro to Atlantis (no attempt is made to explain why Iron Man doesn't just go himself, except that if he did, it would fuck this issue's storyline up the wazoo), where he fights Namor again and - surrealistically absurdly - comes even closer to being his equal. And then Wolverine has a change of heart and LEAVES Nitro to the Atlanteans. Knowing full well that they're going to torture him for a very, very long time before they kill him. Having been told of these methods by Iron Man.

So they both know about it. Iron Man and Wolverine know they're handing Nitro over to a society that'll TORTURE HIM TO DEATH.

That's my growing problem with the whole Civil War storyline: it's making half of all Marvel's super-heroes into SUPER-VILLAINS. The appeal Wolverine used to have was that he might kill people, but he had a code of ethics - that deep down, he was a super-hero. And Iron Man? OUR Iron Man, leaving a super-villain in the hands of people who he knows will torture him to death?
I find I don't mind the idea that Civil War might radically change everything in the Marvel universe forever. I find I can live with the idea that half our erstwhile heroes are now ... well, if not super-villains maybe then certainly something more complex than they were before.

Oddly enough, the thing that bothers me is that the 'bad' guys include not only Spider-Man but ... worst of all ... the Fantastic Four.

So we move across the aisle to DC for a much bigger event: Justice League of America #1! Written by fourth-rate hack novelist Brad Meltzer and drawn by the great, the mighty Ed Benes.

There's a lot going on in this issue, and a lot of it is wonderful. Meltzer gives us a very mature multi-layer narrative, the hands-down best part of which is the strand where we see Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman standing around in the Batcave discussing who they should invite to join the new League. Oh, how I wish we'd been given EVER so much more of that! It's wonderfully done - Batman obsessing about security issues, Superman exuding hope and inspiration, and Wonder Woman balancing it all out with tactical considerations.

From their deliberations, I'm gathering the new League's lineup will include at least Hal Jordan (a boring but predictable choice), Power Girl (an INSPIRED choice, if only for the interplay possible between her and Wonder Woman), Arsenal (mystifying, plain and simple - over in Outsiders, hasn't Arsenal been beaten up, tied up, throat-slit, chest-shot and just generally bitched-up by every single enemy they've faced?), Black Lightning (a welcome choice, not only a character with a rich history but also the very rare black super-hero who's not a pale imitation of some earlier white character) (but let's have his electrical powers substantially AMPED, shall we?), Vixen (a character with great potential, but still a fewkin lightweight), and Red Tornado (but a very altered version of the same, potentially not the same old boring android-striving-to-be-human yutz of old).

Alas, the rest of the issue ain't s'good.

There's Black Lightning's plotline, in which we learn that the old Flash villain is now an addict, addicted to Psycho-Pirate making him feel ecstatic. This bothers me because it links uncomfortabtly with Nitro over in Wolverine - so what, super-villains are now going to be drug addicts? But no HERO drug addicts (except maybe poor old Rex Tyler)?

And then there's Vixen's plotline. Urrgh, where to start? Actually, I'll start where the plotline starts - with Vixen, responding to a hand-written note, showing up at a bar for a BOOTY CALL. For some quickie-sex with the Question. Yeesh. So her code-name is Vixen, and she's Latina, and on top of that ... she's a drooling nympho. What's next, in the parade of stereotypes? She's got a brother upstate?

Then there's Arsenal's plotline, which is good in its own right but raises one HUGE question that Meltzer of course doesn't even acknowledge, let alone answer: why would you WANT Arsenal if, as the issue makes abundantly clear, Green Frickin Arrow is available? I mean, I'm all for new blood (Power Girl would be an inspired choice, as would Black Lightning), but why aren't we talking about re-assembling such core members as Green Arrow, Zatanna, SOME Flash, Martian Manhunter, etc?

And then there's Red Tornado's plotline, wherein the character's soul - ushered by Deadman (ALWAYS a pleasure to see, and a much brighter writer would have explored means of having HIM on the new team ... wouldn't THAT have been fun? DC's best character in 30 years ... why not at least try?) - eventually enters a genuine flesh-and-blood human body, although he gets to keep his powers. This bugged me less than other storylines - Red Tornado has needed re-defining for some time now, and this seems as good a start as any.

So, a hit-or-miss issue for me, but it might have worked OK, since it IS intelligently done and DOES leave the reader wanting a whole Hell of a lot MORE ... but no, I finished it with the pulpy feel of vomit in my mouth, and can you guess WHY?

YEP! The pages and pages of The Book of Fate, Meltzer's forthcoming novel ... pages that are tacked on at the end of the issue like a Cleveland whore's early-morning slurred demand of payment for service rendered.

So what are we supposed to think? That Meltzer demanded the pages appear, or he wouldn't write for the title? Or that the DC powers that be voluntarily appeased him, to woo his compliance? Either way, it's disgusting, and not just for the rank feeling of being manipulated.

No, the main reason it's disgusting is one not many comic fans will stomach easily, and that's the acknowledgement that they are children of a lesser god.

Comic book writers sometimes forget this and make inevitably disastrous forays into actual book-writing. They forget that nine-tenths of their comic book work is shouldered by the artists with whom they work - sequential art aimed at the eye does SO much of the work of words aimed at the brain. And so E.S! Maggin or Chris Claremont write novels fogged over with hyperbolic prose and phantom-limb longings for pictures that aren't there.

This is kin to the same thing. The only reason Meltzer writes a (very) decent Justice League issue is because he can't HACK it in any bigger leagues. He stoops to conquer, but in so doing (i.e. following up the issue with a frickin novel-excerpt), he gives ample sighting of his wide fat bum.

Don't get me wrong - comics these days are producing some mighty fine writers. What bugs me here are the one or two who have stupid, condescending ulterior motives for writing comics ... so my question is: is Meltzer in or out? I wouldn't have asked before this issue's noxious excerpt-inclusion, but I'm asking now.

Still, no matter how any of that works out, I was pleased to see the new JLA launched with such multi-layered intelligence. Let's hope DC's other, even more venerable flagship team title, Justice Society, is launched with equal care.