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If it's not being presumptuous, I'm really enjoying these would like you to Hit Me Again with a non-duplicate number - I'm kinda hoping to get something terrible (oh God but what if it was Spider-Man Chapter One....  )
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Jan 19, 2018 13:33
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I'll start by talking about a comic I actually like so I don't sound like a downer. In the last arc of Al Ewing's excellent U.S.Avengers, Cannonball finds himself held captive on what you might call the Planet of the Archies. A renegade skrull prince has set himself up on his own little world, Kral X, based on an Archie-like named Ritchie Redwood. Ritchie is an all-American teen with Archie-like friends such as Bugface Brown, and feuding love interests Becky and Vanessa. This skrull has latched onto the iconography of Ritchie Redwood because it's charming and comforting, but he remains invested in it-- to the point of brutally enforcing his little warlord fiefdom along its generic lines-- because it always stays the same, it's always safe, and it never gets complicated. Cannonball, of course, is rescued by his friends, and Kral X is handed over to the weirdos and underdogs-- your Bugfaces Brown, your teenaged witches, characters of color, etc.. Time is allowed to go on and the reader is gently reminded that time going on is good, that change is interesting and exciting, and that we should be deeply skeptical of the people demanding and benefiting from stasis predicated on nostalgia and the romance of the past. Seven years prior, Geoff Johns and Gary Franks gave us Superman: Secret Origins, a comic which I would have liked much better if a Bugface Brown had burst out of a hidden prison halfway through to raise a little ruckus. In the bare strokes-- citizens of the dying planet Krypton send baby Kal El off into space. He lands in Smallville and is raised by kindly farmers, enjoys a rural childhood with Lana Lang, meets Lex Luthor, goes to Metropolis to work at the Daily Planet, meets ace reporter Lois Lane and not-ace photographer Jimmy Olson, meets Lex Luthor again, god, do I have to go on, he just does the loving Superman bit. Published from 2009-2010, it promises to provide the new, improved, officially c a n o n origin for Superman, ironically just a year before the New 52 shoved everything off the table. This, in other words, is meant to be the final word on the backstory of a certain version of Superman, more precisely, the Superman who is ostensibly somewhere in his twenties or thirties in 2010. So why does it read like a pastiche of Frank Capra movies by someone who hasn't seen a lot of Frank Capra movies, or, sorry, a riff on Jimmy Stewart by Jimmy Stewart's worst enemy? This isn't a Superman who has anything to do with the world, but it frames itself as a story about Clark Kent realizing that he is, of the world, that despite his alien origins he is in fact of this world. Yet "this world" doesn't resemble the world I lived in in 2010-- it doesn't resemble the DC universe of 2010 either. It doesn't resemble anything but a middle-aged guy's vague impression of the "good old days," an assertion which gets even more complicated when Clark Kent shifts from Smallville to Metropolis. You see, in Smallville everyone is good. Everybody smiles big peachy Gary Frank smiles, with dimples, and friendly crinkles around the corners of their eyes to show that they mean it. The meanest person in town stoops to vaguely alluding to Clark Kent being a wimp. Well, no, scratch that, the meanest person in the world is Lex Luthor's dad, an abusive drunk who plunges off a cliff when his son cuts the brakes in his car. But the mean jock is also pretty mean, I guess. Lex Luthor, though-- he can't take this podunk town one second longer, and whenever he shows up with his curly mop of red hair, he's sneering and lurking and talking about how much he wants to get out of this pit and go to Metropolis. But who, wonders young Clark, who would want to leave this Eden of lemonade and rumble fumble and corn fields and pretty girls with freckles? Who? Who? And well should he wonder because Geoff Johns is eager to demonstrate that Metropolis is the loving pits. The minute our friendly lumbering oaf Clark Kent hits the pavement, he's beset by assholes. An older woman drops her purse and when he stoops to pick it up he gets chewed out for looking up at the sky. Everybody immediately twigs that he's out of town, presumably because he's beaming gentle, saintly Gary Frank kindness beams out of his instead of looking like Gary Frank drew the Gary Frankiest batch of lemons of all time and force fed one to everybody in the city. He meets a particularly odious character, Rudy Jones, the janitor at the Daily Planet building. We know Rudy is no good because he's fat and this is a Geoff Johns comic. Duplicitous Rudy has forgotten his lunch-- Clark gives him his own. We love Clark. We hate Rudy. Awful Rudy has forgotten his bus pass. Clark gives him a twenty. Rudy, why. Everyone is predatory in a PG sort of way, which isn't really an amelioration. Frank draws sunny streets, broad, handsome sidewalks, impressive buildings-- but everyone in Metropolis seems absolutely miserable. Crowds throng ouside of Lex Luthor's looming skyscraper, where each day he descends to grant one luck citizen's wishes, a weird plot hook which never goes anywhere (spoiler-- he picks Rudy, loving Rudy, and he spoils it by, I'm trying not to make this sound as dumb as it is, shoving a kryptonite-tainted donut into his mouth and turning into the Parasite. Rudy!!). Nobody loves each other-- gosh, goons, they don't even love Superman, at least, nobody except our plucky friends Lois and Jimmy love him. A bunch of other boring nonsense happens. Metallo shows up in a truly awful costume-- he's some abusive creep stalking Lois on behalf of her awful dad. They both hate Superman, by the way. The Daily Planet is saved, then imperiled again, then saved again. Superman flies down and gives a pretty ok speech about how he's not better than anyone and the citizens all need to learn to love each other. Clark loves Lois. Lois loves Superman. You get the drill. I suppose I get the utility of a series like this-- after Infinite Crisis, after all, Superman did not quite have an origin that laid out all the salient points from A to Z, and if you absolutely must insist on lining up everybody's first meetings all in a row, I guess Geoff Johns would be the guy to do it in 2010. And there's nothing as absolutely wildly baffling as in John Byrne's Spider-Man revamp from the later 90s. It sets a low bar and in technical terms it clears it. Johns certainly doesn't forget to mention Krypto or anything like that. Gary Frank certainly draws a lot of very nice panels. But two things bug me, and maybe you've picked up on this, they bugged me a lot. The first is simply the series' lack of ambition. It has nothing new to say about Superman, rather it simply wants to add a layer of polish and finesse to what's already been said. It wants to hit the buttons that you've enjoyed having hit before. Everyone good is very, very good and everyone bad is very, very bad. Superman, or Pa Kent, makes sure to provide little moral speeches at the end just so nobody is unclear. Is this really worth reading six issues of? Is this conveying to us any kind of beauty or truth that Grant Morrison didn't level in three panels in All-Star Superman a few years prior? This leads me to my second point, the thing that really made me dislike this comic. It's mission statement is conservative in the formal sense, in that it merely wanted to reiterate what we could have presumably pieced together about Superman, in such a way as to make existing stories fit together smoothly, rather than to challenge or delight us with new, unexpected Superman takes. But by leaning on nostalgia, and by leaning on a nostalgic vision of the difference between the town and the country, Johns inadvertently makes a pitch for a deeply reactionary ideological reading of what makes Superman work, and readers, I hate it. As mentioned above, almost everyone in Smallville is a good, simple, person-- sorry, "folk"-- and almost everyone in Metropolis is a misanthrope or a... well, a parasite. The exceptions are as follows: if you're in Metropolis and you love Superman, you're good; if you're in Smallville and you love Metropolis, you're evil. Fortunately things are sorted out in the end, as Superman wrecks up the meddling forces of bureaucracy, humiliates Lex Luthor, and teaches everybody to just, gosh, slow down and smell and the roses once in awhile. Overawed by his folksy ways, the people of Metropolis accept this strange visitor as their new savior. Again and again the narrative structure runs like this-- the nasty cynicism of the city folk, which sets itself up as superior to the perceived naivete of the country folk, is shown to be itself naive, and Clark's optimism and purity wins the day. His values win-- those of the cosmopolitan lose. He doesn't learn, he doesn't change, he blunders in and just shows the horrid city folk how horrid they are and in the end they like it. We talk about the excesses of that period of DC comics in terms of the casual megaviolence-- a lot of which came from Geoff Johns' pen. I don't think that stuff is bad because violence has no place in superhero comics. I think it's bad because it often feels cheap. Superboy Prime ripping some minor Teen Titan's arm off doesn't shock me because I don't care after awhile, Titan arms becomes a coin of cheap purchase. It demonstrates in the most facile way possible that one character is strong and scary at the expense of another character. It communicates a lot (I mean, after all, you must be pretty strong and scary to go around dismembering people), and it communicates it quickly, but it doesn't communicate it in a way that moves me or frightens me or excites me or gets anything out of me other than "oh, I suppose this guy is strong." But this isn't a trick limited to violence-- we've all seen by-the-numbers romcoms where the second snow begins to fall you know the two leads will look up, then look at each other, then slowly go in for the kiss. And if that's all there is to it, it means nothing. It's a grammar exercise. Secret Origins is the pathos equivalent to Risk getting his arm ripped off for six entire issues-- a skillfully assembled montage of story beats and character moments ruthlessly engineered to remind us of what we already know about Superman, and to make us think back fondly on how nice and simple things used to be way back in, uh, you know, whenever. It's a somewhat cynical response to the ultraviolent epoch Johns himself was partially responsible for, I think-- another spoiler, nobody's arm comes off in this, although there is some grisly stuff with Parasite and Metallo-- and as such it feels like blame shifting. But more than that, these appeals to simplicity and to familiarity rely on pretty dangerous narratives of the insider and the outsider, the friend and the enemy, the tribe and the stranger. At it's best, Superman's origin is an immigrant story. It's about a kid who comes from somewhere else with unfamiliar customs, who knows he can never go back to where he was born, and how he learns to share himself as best he can, as kindly and as courageously as he can, with a world that is sometimes unfamiliar and sometimes hostile. That's lost here. Clark Kent, Johns seems to argue, is the normal American-- it's everybody else that's the weirdo. There's nothing alien to him-- he's Gary Frank handsome and Geoff Johns boring, a big white slab with perfect hair telling a city of depressed people to cheer up. If there's a problem he can't solve by throwing it around, he can solve it by telling somebody to cheer up. Well, there's Lex Luthor, but then again, there's always Lex Luthor. The point is, nobody does anything. They're not characters. It doesn't matter why they're so despondent. It doesn't matter why they distrust Superman. The only thing that matters to this story is that they're wrong, and Superman will teach them to be right, and he'll do that by fixing everything for them. In a particularly egregious plot point he even handles Metallo, a real creep of a guy who keeps harassing Lois Lane for a date, leaving Lois the role of just standing there being grateful. A better story would have allowed her a moment of agency or power-- if Metallo weren't stuck in the body of a gross robot man, he wouldn't have learned not to treat women better, he just would have learned not to pick a fist fight with Superman. It's bad, and again, the game is rigged to show Clark Kent being saintly at the expense of everyone else. His words-- and look, his final speech isn't bad-- say that he's not above anyone else, that he's there to help but that, just as importantly he's there to be helped, to be an equal participant in a community of mutual care. But Geoff Johns argues otherwise-- that everyone is a prop in the moral pageant of Superman. Look, I get why people would like this-- it's competently told, it's very well drawn, and it shows all the main Superman characters, for what it's worth. But it's empty. And it pads its emptiness with a fantasy of simpler times and simpler values that winds up being quite ugly. I'm not the world's biggest Garth Ennis fan, but my all-time favorite Superman panel is from JLA/Hitman. We find Clark hovering in orbit, looking at the earth. He looks grim and a little hurt, and he's thinking "The seas are sapphires, the fields and forests emeralds. The Himalayas gleam like diamonds. The strange blue world to which my father sent me. If you knew how you are loved, not one of you would ever raise a hand in rage again." If I have that a bit off its because I recalled it from memory, that's how much that little duo of panels means to me. I think it says almost everything important about Superman. He's not one of us, and not because he's stronger, or because his planet is far away, but because none of us are an us. We're all aliens, and we all feel idiot rage and frustration sometimes, but we're also all deserving of immense love, and if we're lucky we get to receive that love. Superman is one of my favorite superheroes because deep down he's one of the sappiest. His greatest power is that he sees us, he sees everybody, and that he likes us anyway, and that as different as he is on a biological level, he understands that difference grants us some kind of weird grace, and that it's that grace which allows him to call himself Superman instead of Superalien (a distinction which I think makes Martian Manhunter a much more melancholy character in comparison). You might think of it as a kind of x-ray vision-- he sees in you what you wish people would see, and respects it. Compared to that-- a super-empathy, maybe-- bending tanks in half is kind of trivial. It's not that Geoff Johns makes Superman a dick-- no, he's perfectly pleasant. But he's being written by a dick, who can't think of any way to make Superman look kind and strong other than making everybody else look stupid and weak. It is, weirdly, how I suppose Lex Luthor would write a comic about himself. As a case in point, by the way, about the reactionary nostalgia of this series, I went through issue by issue and made note of all the people of color and their contributions to the proceedings. Issue one: -an anonymous, silent kid who is sporadically colored to be black. Issue two: -Brainiac 5 is... green? Issue three: -beloved character Ron Troupe, sitting in the background -a Lexcorp security guard -an Asian punk-type guy gets to say "Look! Up in the sky!" so that's something I guess. -a black woman appears in one panel urging her child to be scared of Superman Issue four: -none, but Rudy is fat, which I don't know if I or Geoff Johns or Gary Frank remembered to mention, which is treated like being from The Planet Hell For Egregious Fuckers, so maybe it counts if Brainiac 5 counted? Oh and he's purple, so two-in-one, congratulations Geoff. Issue five: -oh, there's a black man on the cover. Superman is picking him up by the color and menacing him. Issue six: -none, although Ron Troupe returns, admiring a door. On a related note, here are the women in the series who are neither Clark's mom nor his girlfriend. Issue one: -a bunch of teenagers clamoring to sign Pete's cast. -Lex Luthor's sister, appearing in one panel to beg her dad to stop beating everyone Issue two:-well, there are three members of the Legion of Super Heroes but I don't care what they're called, and in any case they're mostly there to say how great Clark is and to literally hover in the air saying "ohmygoshohmyGOSH" Issue three: -an old woman who calls Clark a clumsy oaf for helping her pick up her dropped purse. -Cat Grant, striking Gary Frank poses and helping to demonstrate that yes, Steve Lombard is also there Issue four: -Lex Luthor has his normal chauffeur/bodyguards from the cartoon -a woman shouts "It's him!" in one panel -Parasite kills one, maybe two women in Luthor's lab Issue five: -none, they all had to keep a low profile so that Superman could teach another guy a non-lesson about harrassment without being interrupted Issue six: -a woman in a crowd scene says "Why?" How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jan 19, 2018 |
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Jan 19, 2018 15:23
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Jerusalem posted:If it's not being presumptuous, I'm really enjoying these would like you to Hit Me Again with a non-duplicate number - I'm kinda hoping to get something terrible (oh God but what if it was Spider-Man Chapter One.... Nope! Instead, you got 112. Starman (Robinson/Harris). That's, uh, volume 2, and its also 80 loving issues long, so it's probably on the whole the single longest run of comics to read on the list. I've sincerely never read Robinson's Starman, so hopefully someone who is an expert can chime in, but the cheapest way to read this that doesn't involve the library would probably be via omnibus (of which there are five), which works out to about fifteen bucks a month (checking amazon pricing) for (what I assume are) very very good comics, so that seems like the most reasonable financial solution to have monthy check-ins via omnibus? I'm sort of out of my depth here, but if this is too financially burdensome I get it and will gladly do a reroll.
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Jan 19, 2018 21:28
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gently caress it, put me in, Coach!
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Jan 19, 2018 21:53
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:I'm sort of out of my depth here, but if this is too financially burdensome I get it and will gladly do a reroll. I've never read Starman and have always meant to, so I would like to do this. I'll investigate and see if I can make it work over the next couple of days. Archyduke posted:It is, weirdly, how I suppose Lex Luthor would write a comic about himself. This sounds like a frustrating as hell comic to read, and Superman (and Gary Frank!) deserve better.
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Jan 19, 2018 23:03
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There are actually six Starman omnibuses, and good luck getting them as the hardcovers are long out of print (though it does look like Amazon has vols. 4 and 6 in stock), and they've only reprinted the first two in paperback. Vol. 3, in particular, commands some very high prices as it was underprinted compared to the first two, I believe (I had to drive to a comic store an hour away to get mine). There's also a series of TPBs, but I believe those are out of print, as well as missing issues.
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Jan 19, 2018 23:15
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Gaz-L posted:gently caress it, put me in, Coach!  You got 327. FANTASTIC FOUR #8. The first Alicia Masters appearance! It's on MU.
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Jan 19, 2018 23:19
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Batman/Dardevil: King of New York I lucked out by getting assigned a 40-page one shot starring my two favorites, but unfortunately the quality didn’t live up to the premise. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much from an 18 year old company crossover, but the quality of recent DC crossovers, like King’s Batman/Elmer Fudd, had me interested. King of New York is a pretty uninspired fare, with a boilerplate story and artwork. Daredevil and Batman team-up to track Scarecrow across Gotham and eventually New York because he’s going to do his fear gas thing again. Yawn. There’s no real exploration of the relationship or differences between the two characters (again, what was I expecting?), they just coexist and do their things together this time. It’s simply about smashing toys together with purple-ish prose narration. Catwoman’s presence in the comic seems to only be driven by the artist’s love for her rear end. Just about every panel she’s in has her breaking her back to shove her rear end at another character or the camera. Otherwise, she doesn’t have any reason to be in the story, she just hands off some of Kingpin’s files to Scarecrow’s guys at the beginning.  Though to be fair, Daredevil is on some weird poo poo as well.  Scarecrow seems like a natural fit for Daredevil though, and it would be cool to see that crossover done again today by someone like Tom King or Mark Waid. Although Waid already traumatized Daredevil in his run with the Purple children arc, so I’m not sure what else could be explored there. All in all I can’t say I’d recommend bothering with this unless you have a huge desire to read the company crossover that will never happen again (until Disney buys WB).
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Jan 19, 2018 23:45
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:
Heh, I actually own the first two Lee/Kirby FF Omnibuses, haven't opened them in years.
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Jan 20, 2018 00:58
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:the cheapest way to read this that doesn't involve the library would probably be via omnibus (of which there are five), It's six volumes unless there's been a re-release that I'm overlooking (source: the books are less than two feet from my head). SMP posted:Scarecrow seems like a natural fit for Daredevil though, and it would be cool to see that crossover done again today by someone like Tom King or Mark Waid. Although Waid already traumatized Daredevil in his run with the Purple children arc, so I’m not sure what else could be explored there. Daredevil has a villain called Mr. Fear who also has a fear gas which makes having him chase down the Scarecrow seem a bit odd; he already fights his own version of that character. Daredevil versus pretty much any other Batman villain seems more interesting.
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Jan 20, 2018 01:08
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Random Stranger posted:It's six volumes unless there's been a re-release that I'm overlooking (source: the books are less than two feet from my head). Ah that's true, I forgot about him. He's the one who fridged Matt's girlfriend, right?
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Jan 20, 2018 02:39
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SMP posted:Ah that's true, I forgot about him. He's the one who fridged Matt's girlfriend, right? Which one? I thought Bullseye was the leading cause of death among Daredevil's paramours.
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Jan 20, 2018 04:31
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Skwirl posted:Which one? I thought Bullseye was the leading cause of death among Daredevil's paramours. Milla, the blind one. I think Brubaker's run had Mr. Fear put her in a coma.
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Jan 20, 2018 04:46
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Archyduke posted:Look, I get why people would like this-- it's competently told, it's very well drawn, and it shows all the main Superman characters, for what it's worth. But it's empty. And it pads its emptiness with a fantasy of simpler times and simpler values that winds up being quite ugly. I'm not the world's biggest Garth Ennis fan, but my all-time favorite Superman panel is from JLA/Hitman. We find Clark hovering in orbit, looking at the earth. He looks grim and a little hurt, and he's thinking "The seas are sapphires, the fields and forests emeralds. The Himalayas gleam like diamonds. The strange blue world to which my father sent me. If you knew how you are loved, not one of you would ever raise a hand in rage again." If I have that a bit off its because I recalled it from memory, that's how much that little duo of panels means to me. I think it says almost everything important about Superman. He's not one of us, and not because he's stronger, or because his planet is far away, but because none of us are an us. We're all aliens, and we all feel idiot rage and frustration sometimes, but we're also all deserving of immense love, and if we're lucky we get to receive that love. Superman is one of my favorite superheroes because deep down he's one of the sappiest. His greatest power is that he sees us, he sees everybody, and that he likes us anyway, and that as different as he is on a biological level, he understands that difference grants us some kind of weird grace, and that it's that grace which allows him to call himself Superman instead of Superalien (a distinction which I think makes Martian Manhunter a much more melancholy character in comparison). You might think of it as a kind of x-ray vision-- he sees in you what you wish people would see, and respects it. Compared to that-- a super-empathy, maybe-- bending tanks in half is kind of trivial. I really liked this review a lot but this part, especially, really emotionally affected me when I read it. I went through the anti-Superman phase a lot of people go through, when they become skeptical and cynical about Superman's sort of boundless optimism, or Boy Scout Morality, or exceeding perfection. This sort of coincided with my growing criticism of media and its construction, and when you're sort of that lovely person who has to nitpick everything - the guy who took Creative Writing 101 once and thinks he's the next Roger Ebert - Superman is the easiest target ever, especially if you don't read Superman comics. Superman is a bad character, because he's invincible, because he has no flaws. His secret identity doesn't make sense, because he's immune to everything. His powers are ill-defined and too broad. He can basically do literally anything he wants to do, and therefore his stories have no stakes. He literally had to have a weakness invented for him in order to have any dramatic tension in his stories. Superman is pointlessly cheerful and graceful in a lovely, ugly, broken world, he's not human - and not just in the literal sense, but in the sense that he has no flaws or personality defects that define him. Especially in direct comparison to, say, Spider-Man, who is all about his very human failures and being informed and learning from them, Superman is just a smile and a symbol. He's nothing, he means nothing. He doesn't reflect me, I don't see myself in him, and therefore he's just a way for people to pine for some Aryan ubermensch to save us from ourselves. Of course, over time I grew out of that really dumb, stupid poo poo, partially from reading better critics than me explain why they love Superman, partially from reading Superman comics myself, partially by realizing that a lot of my thinking was toxic and reductive at best and outright loving wrong at worst. If you were to ask me why I love Superman now, or why I think he's a great character I could give you a good answer; I would talk about how Superman is the ultimate expression of the immigrant story, which everyone knows. I would mention how Superman, as a character, is so fascinating because this dude who could rule us all so effortlessly, could become the greatest tyrant the world has ever seen, elects not to. That his insane overpowered abilities make him so compelling because he uses them to do good when he has no obligation or desire to; at the very least, he should be free to not concern himself with the issues of a race of people that aren't even his own. But he does anyway, and that's what makes him compelling. Or, as a much better writer proves in eight bare panels:   I'd point out that Clark Kent is what makes Superman a good character; that Clark is the actual hero, because he's a dude who decided to assume the Superman mantle (and that Superman is the secret identity, Superman is the facade, that Superman is intentionally an avatar of all of humanity's best qualities because Clark presents Superman as so) for no reason than because he feels that the world needed a Superman to exist, someone to look up to and take inspiration from. Essentially, Superman comics are about a sort of regular, everyday dude reaching apotheosis and becoming a god for no reason other than sheer benevolence, and that idea is centrally fascinating. But I never really thought of Superman as a character who is able to perceive humanity as how they want to be perceived, their very best selves, and understands and loves them regardless. I think...I think, especially now, there's something so deeply, emotionally meaningful to the idea that there's someone out there, someone who embodies all the greatness of humanity and what it can be and what it is, someone who understands everyone and loves them for who they are, with no bias or preconception. Even if that person isn't, strictly speaking, real, there's an overwhelming beauty and deep resonance to that concept. That the greatest superhero ever loves everyone, no matter what. That he loves me. I, sincerely, thank you for expressing that to me. In any case, I think it's really interesting that the two stories you've reviewed are essentially both conservative arguments in favor of the Silver Age characterization of classic heroism coincided with "origin stories", with completely opposite reactions you've seemed to have to both. I mean, I know part of the reason is because Waid is a flat-out better writer than Johns, like period, but is there any specific reason you've reacted so differently to what appears to be, on the surface, incredibly similar stories?
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Jan 20, 2018 19:24
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I've always been very skeptical of the Superman-as-an-immigrant take. I admittedly haven't read much Superman outside of the hits, but I find it really hard to compare Clark and his upbringing to that of an immigrant. Like yeah sure, he's an alien with superpowers that he has to suppress, but he's also a traditionally handsome straight white guy raised in Kansas by two white parents. There's no way he faced any of the same challenges actual immigrants face.
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Jan 20, 2018 19:45
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I mean, yes, that's sort of the intentional dramatic irony of Superman and also part of why the immigrant argument can be easily criticized, but on the other hand Superman was the creation of two Jewish sons of immigrants escaping persecution at the hands of the Russian Empire, during a time when Nazism was on the rise in Central Europe. Like, his race is part of the coding of his character - he's meant to be the perfect embodiment of German eugenic supremacy, and he spent that time punching Hitler in the face. And, I mean, there's the time when Superman basically literally helped destroy the Ku Klux Klan, so much of his character even early on has been a reflection and the destruction of nativist supremacy arguments. You can even argue that Superman is essentially the concept of the Jewish golem given comic form.
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Jan 20, 2018 19:52
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:I mean, yes, that's sort of the intentional dramatic irony of Superman and also part of why the immigrant argument can be easily criticized, but on the other hand Superman was the creation of two Jewish sons of immigrants escaping persecution at the hands of the Russian Empire, during a time when Nazism was on the rise in Central Europe. Like, his race is part of the coding of his character - he's meant to be the perfect embodiment of German eugenic supremacy, and he spent that time punching Hitler in the face. And, I mean, there's the time when Superman basically literally helped destroy the Ku Klux Klan, so much of his character even early on has been a reflection and the destruction of nativist supremacy arguments. To me this sounds more like Superman's real-world origin and history is the ultimate immigrant story, rather than Superman himself being the story of an immigrant.
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Jan 20, 2018 20:00
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Except that the things you pointed out: That Clark is white, that he's a straight, cis dude, that he speaks perfect English and probably has a Kansas/Midwestern accent... All of that does not matter to a substantial, and still powerful portion of the population, even in the US. Look at what's happening with DACA right now. A LOT of those kids would fit into the exact same box as Clark Kent. Except for not having a birth certificate in the United States, they'd be indistinguishable from any other kid, but that's enough for a lot of very cruel people to label them as different, as wrong, as leeches or parasites, just because they were born Somewhere Else. And this goes all the way back to Superman's origins when the Italian and Irish immigrants were treated pretty much the same way, despite us for the most part not seeing them as ethnically/racially distinct in that way nowadays.
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Jan 20, 2018 20:19
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I think it all boils down to the fact that SMP's right, that Superman being white and straight and cisgendered and, for lack of a better word, "normal" looking sort of defeats the argument that he encompasses the immigrant story. However, I would argue that the immigrant story they're presenting is a different but related one - where he looks and passes for the "perfect" All-American straight white cornfed boy from the country, but he's not that. Or, rather, not just that. That he's an Other, from Somewhere Else, and he could - if he so desired - just conform and use his privilege from being able to "pass" to all the success available to straight white cisgendered men in America. But he doesn't do that, he delights in and finds solace in his status as alien, in a culture he has lost, in a people he came from that he tries desperately to reconnect to, down to wearing a gigantic loving symbol of their language on his chest. The immigrant story they're going with is how he could just disappear into his whiteness and straightness and reject his Kryptonian heritage, just like many immigrants and their families are pressured to do when they immigrate, and instead he goes around in-costume proudly reclaiming his roots.
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Jan 20, 2018 20:40
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:I, sincerely, thank you for expressing that to me. First of all-- and I never thought I'd say this-- don't thank me, thank Garth Ennis! It's always struck me that for all the skepticism of the superhero in his work, he's always adhered to this very interesting vision of Superman, where he kind of blends proletarian solidarity and messianic capacity to protect everybody. I hope JLA/Hitman is on this list and that someone gets it because it represents Ennis at both his best and his worst-- cheap jokes about Kyle Rayner getting molested by tentacles, and some very lovely stuff about what heroism means to a person like Tommy in a world like DC's. Second of all, good question. I think that, as you pointed out, Mark Waid is just a better writer than Geoff Johns, and one whose sensibilities are much closer to my own. I want to credit the art as well, which I think is a hint to what elements of the Silver Age each story is trying to emulate. Gary Frank, who I like a lot, is a realistic guy in the tradition of Hal Foster, and the appeal of reading Secret Origin is, in part, to see what Silver Age Supes would "really look like." In places this works-- we see teenage Superboy awkwardly trying on a jumpsuit that's too tight across the chest, too baggy in the thights-- it sells that a kid who saw himself as essentially "normal" is transitoning into an unfamiliar new role that he still has to grow into. Similarly, to give credit where credit's due, Parasite looks scary after his transformation, with a rubbery, limpet-like mouth and flesh that straddles the line between blubber and armor. Kitson, on the other hand, leans closer to the approach Darwyn Cooke would take in New Frontier. It's cartoonier and more streamlined, with bolder, thicker inks-- everyone's body language is more exaggerated, everybody's facial acting is a little more abstract. One is an attempt to revisit a Silver Age kind of story-- or, really, a nostalgic recollection of what the Silver Age was like-- with a 21st century sensibility, imposing a kind of psychological "rigor" to the proceedings so that they "make sense" (see also Johns' first Green Lantern arc). The other is, partially, an attempt to just inhabit the imaginative space that the Silver Age offered, in which weird aliens show up out of nowhere, all the superheroes hang out together in a secret base, etc., and trying to acclimate the relative sophistication of late 90s technique into that space. I think it's telling that JLA: Year One does tend to falter when it strays from that project. The metaplot is very 90s, with its shaowy and generic conspiracy of guys in military dress. It's better when it hews to the premise of the Silver Age JLA-- that these guys hang out, that they're friends who occasionally clash in outsize ways, and that they fight a lot of aliens in big, bold, sometimes contrived ways-- and lets Mark Waid consider how he'd put his idiosyncratic Mark Waid spin on it. In some ways I can't in good faith deny that JLA is a sloppier, less "successful" comic than Secret Origin-- it's too long, it's not at all new-reader friendly, and its overarching plot is way too convoluted for the kind of thing it's trying to be-- but it has charm. It wants to celebrate that the Silver Age was weird and silly rather than retroactively imposing a fantasy of simplicity and purity onto it. There's that famous anecdote about Mort Weisinger getting ideas for Superman plots from his psychoanalysis-- Superman waking up with a lion head, the Flash finding himself obese, Batman laughed out of town for obscure reasons beyond his control-- these are absurd and campy and easy to laugh at, but they also gesture at the dream language of childhood anxiety and fear in a way that the very hyper-literal approach of Johns misses out on in favor of telling a story that's more efficient and concise and structurally sound. Mark Waid, on the other hand, devotes an entire issue to visiting Doom Patrol bad guys shunting pieces of the JLA's bodies onto themselves, leaving Black Canary mute, the Flash legless, etc.-- a technicolor and lurid extrapolation of castration anxiety that is goofy, unsettling, and also a pretext to do a weird Johnny Thunder riff and to get 18 people whaling on a Frankenstein's Monster-cum-Amazo version of Monsieur Mallah and the Brain holding forth in a giant GL construct castle. So I think he just "gets it" in a way that Johns doesn't. To be honest reading Secret Origin endeared me to JLA: Year One more than when I was comparing it to peope doing similar projects-- Grant Morrison in All-Star Superman or the aforementioned but actually quite different New Frontier-- just because it's taking the same rough period of comics, or the archetype of that period, and going in the opposite direction.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:23
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The Punisher #52 (September 91) - "Maternity War" Written by Mike Baron; Pencilled by Paul Guinan; Inked by Jimmy Palmiotti So here comes a "Well, duh!" statement: the Punisher is a character with a lot of problems and many of them are external to him. The Punisher as a serial killer of criminals who is a symptom of the breakdown of society is interesting. The Punisher as the manliest of heroes who blows away scumbags because those other superheroes are too wimpy to do it is awful, but that's the version of the character that exists in the minds of many of his fans. Even well crafted Punisher stories encourage the ugly reading of the character because he's still the big goddamned hero with the big guns and look at how awful those villains are. So needless to say, I am not a Punisher fan. There are good Punisher stories and I have tried to give him a chance, but I my distaste for themes that accompany him have only grown over time. If I want to read storied about criminals being killed I'll read some Spectre, thank you very much. If you're curious how I happened to have a copy of this random issue when I don't like the Punisher, my younger brother found it on the side of the road and gave it to me. Really. Mike Baron had been the writer for the ongoing Punisher series from the beginning and it's because of him that I have been willing to give this run of Punisher a chance. Baron, you see, had made his name on Nexus, a scifi comic about a man who has dreams of mass murderers and he has to use his effectively unstoppable superpowers to kill them before the dreams drive him mad. Nexus isn't about the killings, it's about the morality and consequences of the killings. Nexus is also one of the greatest comic books of the 1980's with the only downsides being that it's pretty heavily tied to cold war politics and Steve Rude doesn't stay with the book nearly long enough. As for Baron's Punisher, well I could see signs of him trying to do something interesting within the confines of a Marvel comic, but it wasn't long before the stories were about how much of a bad rear end Frank Castle is. And by issue #52 of his run, I think Baron was running out of ideas. Let's take a look at the cover first:  That's a great cover that has pretty much nothing to do with the rest of the issue. There is no maternity ward, the Punisher never gets into a gun fight while carrying a bunch of infants, and he doesn't even give his shirt and a gun to a small child. There's a woman who knows some rich people who want babies so she goes around killing mothers of infants. The Punisher stumbles across one of her victims and after some slight detective work he literally stumbles over one of her crimes. There's a fight, she gets killed. Then the Punisher recovers one of the stolen babies somehow in order to give it back to the surviving father, a junkie who Frank threatens before leaving. So as you might guess, this is not a good Punisher story from any viewpoint. If it wasn't for the fact that Mike Baron had the writing credit, I would have put money on this being an inventory story that was slotted in because they were running late. It fulfills the bare minimum of expectations, but nothing more than that. A really odd aspect to this story is the racial subtext as the villain is an illiterate Hispanic woman who steals babies from minorities so that rich white people can adopt them. Even the art isn't worth remarking on; Guinan's figures are oddly proportioned and his staging of the action is confusing. This is a nothing book that came out at the height of Punisher-mania and I wonder if some of those Punisher fans back in 1991 were annoyed at this. I'm really stretching to find things to say about this comic but it's a whole lot of nothing. I can't even call it an especially bad Punisher comic. It feels like someone saw a segment on 20/20 and said, "Oh hey, the Punisher should take on a baby broker!" and that was the sum total of thought put into the issue. It's pretty comparable to the evil Santa Claus issue of Batman that I read earlier in this thread except in this case the fact that I have tried to give Punisher more of a shot than Batman means that I have read worse Punisher stories.
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Jan 20, 2018 23:56
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Uncanny X-Men 101-103 - Leprechauns co-starring Phoenix Overview Returning from space after doing something I don't recall but I think involves a crystal, the X-men are in a space shuttle plummeting towards Earth, no doubt soon to die! But Jean Grey, aka Wonder Girl, keeps the shuttle intact as it crashes into the tarmac! But then it bounces into the ocean, where our all-new, all-exciting X-Men swim out, panicked because Jean hasn't surfaced! But then Jean explodes out of the water, in a fancy new outfit - she lives! But now she's in a coma! Professor X tells the X-men to scatter while he mind controls everyone else to totally forget that a space shuttle has crashed. Jean is taken to the hospital, while Wolverine buys flowers for her as he ponders his feelings for her. But Logan's hopes for a romantic coma-fession are ruined because everyone is already in her room. Professor X says everyone needs a vacation after their space adventure, so Banshee says he is now the heir of an Irish castle and they should go there for a fun time. So Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Banshee go off while Cyclops and the Prof stay behind, because what if Jean wakes up. The travelling X-men arrive at Castle Banshee, get dressed in fancy clothes, and then fall through a trap door because it turns out Black Tom as teamed up with Juggernaut to kill the X-men! Also Storm is claustrophobic. So ends the first issue! Issue 102 is basically an extended fight sequence coupled with Storm's origin story and a brief interlude with Prof and Cyclops. Banshee fights Black Tom while the rest get stomped by Juggernaut, in large part because Storm is paralyzed by her fears. The art is clean and easy to follow, which is nice. Prof X knows through his mind powers that a stomping is in session so he orders Cyclops to Go To Them, My X-man (yes, from NY to Ireland, but Cyke refuses because he wants to stay near Jean - this gets Cyke called a "ungrateful, unspeakable -- cur!" by Prof. Then Prof sees an alien or something in the mirror but this is not addressed in my assigned reading. The main focus of this issue is Storm's origin - long story short, her father is a photojournalist from NYC, her mom is an Kenyan princess, they go back to her "home" in Cairo (they do reference the distance, it's kinda odd). Then her parents are killed in the 1956 Suez War, which I would assume in sliding time is now... Desert Storm (and Kuwait)? Anyway, she gets trapped under rubble while her parents are crushed, creating her fear of confined spaces. Then she becomes a thief (I think this origin was covered in an earlier issue), then wanders off and becomes a savannah goddess, then Prof X rolls up and convinces her to leave, somehow. Also, leprechauns are real and rescue Nightcrawler after being knocked out during the fight - he isn't captured because it turns out he becomes invisible in the shadows. Issue 103 is a rematch that the X-men win after Nightcrawler teams up with the leprechauns (who were terrorized by Black Tom, and is answering to some horned dude), frees everyone, knocks a hole in the wall of the castle allowing Storm to see the sky and go batshit, Colossus gives Wolverine a fastball special, the castle sprouts lasers, Banshee knocks Black Tom into the sea, and Juggernaut jumps over because of the power of friendship. Review I went into this expecting a lot worse than it was. I'm not a fan of Claremont's wordiness, and my memory of a lot of other issues from that era were basically "constantly inventive, constant slog". And at the beginning, particularly mopey Wolverine, I got what I expected. But when the fighting started he did a pretty good job of reducing the word count and letting Cockrum's thoroughly solid+ art take over. I've read these issues before, and well past them, and my takeaway is that short bursts of this kind of storytelling (aka monthly) probably work a lot better - I read each issue a few days apart and that eased the impact. I'm primarily a trade reader, and a big fan of omnibuses, so I'm used to long, non-stop sessions of single comics. Most comics in the last 20 years are, I feel, written at least partly for trade readers; these comics were not, at least not Claremont's during this period. It's not wrong or bad, but it is different from what we tend to get now (and does not "tell a complete story in 22 pages" or whatever some people seem to pine for when complaining about decompression) I was kinda hoping to be able to say more about this story but it's mostly a fight story stuffed with lead-ins to future stories. Xavier in space, Phoenix, love triangles, horned dude - a lot is put in place but aside from the origin story it's mostly a fight sequence. Even Storm's origin comes across as fairly empty - more story can be inferred from what's shown but it's glossed over so quickly there isn't much to make of it, and the claustrophobia reaction comes across as fairly ridiculous given what's going on around her. Logan is sad and lonely, but that's in service of a future story. Same for Cyke and Prof. Nothing about Phoenix is investigated - Jean's just in a coma. Black Tom and Juggernaut are just following orders which overlap with their desire for revenge. What about the leprechauns? Well... they're there. I mean, the X-men just got back from space dealing with space alien stuff, and by this point I think the X-men had fought Lucifer, so frankly leprechauns are pretty bland. They don't have a pot of gold, or rainbow powers, or I think anything - they just know where the secret passages are. How were they eating? Did they steal food? Do they use the castle toilets or just use a bucket? They've been there a while - is there a tiny graveyard where they bury the dead? Overall, it's a fully decent set of comics, but I'm not sure why this would be necessary reading in any shape, other than the start of Phoenix Saga.
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Jan 21, 2018 06:50
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Context quote:Maximum Clonage is a six-issue tie-in event during the retroactively named "Clone Saga", meant to serve as the conclusion and finale to that storyline. quote:So, it's early 94, and over at DC they just finished two of the most famous and most important storylines of their publishing career: the Knightfall trilogy (Knightfall, Knight's Quest, and Knight's End), wherein Batman has his back broken by Bane and is thus temporarily replaced by Azrael, an extremely, extremely 90s version of Batman. quote:The second is The Death and Return of Superman, wherein Superman is killed fighting Doomsday to the death and is also temporarily replaced by not one, but four different Supermen simultaneously. Both stories were critically acclaimed, and that combined with the nineties boom on superhero comics meant they all sold extraordinarily well. quote:But they do what they promised from the outset. DC took a really crazy, really bold step in the mid-nineties - they took their two biggest characters, their two biggest earners, and swept both off of the table at essentially the same time and replaced them with substitutes. Even if the change was self-evidently temporary, that's some really brave storytelling regardless. #3: Robin II #2 (with a hologram) #5: Robin II #3 (with a hologram) #10: Batman vs. Predator (glossy paper) #16: Batman vs. Predator (regular paper) #18: Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special #26: Legends of the Dark Knight #27: War of the Gods #4 #28: Batman #473 #31: Robin II #2 (no hologram) #33: Robin II #3 (no hologram) #39: Armageddon 2001: The Alien Agenda #3 #41: Detective Comics #640 #44: Deathstroke the Terminator #6 #47: Aquaman #2 Batman books weren't selling terribly, but they were a long ways from what a reader in 2018 would think. It took then-novelties like hologram covers or media crossovers to goose them into the top 20. The Superman books were being outsold by things like What If?, a Marvel Christmas Special and Avengers West Coast. It only got worse in early 1992 when the Image guys broke off, because it meant DC was losing out to Marvel and Image. Starting in February 1992 (when Youngblood #1, the first Image book, came out) here's a comprehensive list of every DC book that cracked the Top 20 in sales prior to Superman #75: February: Batman: Gotham Knights #2 (#17) March: Lobo's Back #1 (#9) April: Lobo's Back #2 (#13) Green Lantern Mosaic #1 (#20) May: Shadow of the Bat #1 Bagged Collector's Edition (#3), Eclipso The Darkness Within (Plastic Gem Collector's Edition) (#9), Shadow of the Bat #1 (no baggie) (#13), Shadow of the Bat #2 (#15), Lobo's Back #3 (#19) June: Lobo's Back #4 (15), Shadow of the Bat #3 (#19) July: Lobo: Blazing Chain of Love (#17), Lobo's Back #3-4 resolicited because of art delays and editorial nixing the idea of Sergeant Jesus and His Howling Apostles (#19-20) August: DC's highest selling book was Lobo: Infanticide #1 (21st best selling book) September: DC's highest selling book was Lobo: Infanticide #2 (23rd best selling book) October: Robin III (Shuttershade Bagged Version) #1 (#16) Again, gimmicked Batman books could crack the Top 20, and people were really into Lobo. That was about all DC had going for it heading into Doomsday. Even in October 1992, the month before Superman #75, the Superbooks that were being solicited and hyped as part of the Doomsday storyline were languishing down between #77 and #91 on the charts, prior to the absolute media circus that arose around THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN, which is why there were 4-6 printings of all of those issues, no one expected the mainstream hype/speculation that came to drive massive sales. All of that obviously changed in November 1992 when Superman #75 was the top selling book of the month and one of the best selling single issues of all time. But the very next month sales dropped down to a way less insane level. Funeral for a Friend had all of its issue sneak into the Top 20 in December and January, but it didn't do a whole lot for the rest of DC's line. In February, when they took a couple of months off of printing Superman books to "sell" the idea that he was really gone, DC's top two books (at 24 and 25) were the collector's item polybagged first issues of Hardware and Blood Syndicate. Batman #491, the lead-in to Knightfall, was down at #64, just below Ren & Stimpy and the adaptation of the X-Men cartoon. The following month their top book was a fake newspaper memorial for Superman at #22; by this time DC was getting crowded out of the top of the charts by Marvel, Image, *and* Valiant. The official start of Knightfall bumped Batman #492 up to 58th place, still lagging behind Ren & Stimpy and a second printing of the issue where Tom DeFalco "killed" Mister Fantastic. April 1993 saw DC re-enter the top ten with Reign of the Supermen taking the top five spots on the charts, even sticking around in the Top 20 in May when the highly collectible first appearances/polybags/diecut covers went away. By this point the hype around Knightfall had built up post-Doomsday, and Batman #497, where Bane breaks Batman's back, finds its way into the Top 20 as well. For the rest of 1993 and into 1994 (encompassing Reign of the Supermen, the conclusion of Knightfall, Knightquest, Knightsend, and the first couple story arcs of Superman Being Back) some (though far from all) of the Superman and Batman titles stick around in the Top 20, and Batman #500 actually hits #1. But already there's diminishing returns; when they try to do the same thing with Green Lantern in Emerald Twilight and bringing in Kyle Rayner, the story barely cracks the Top 20. A year later when they replace Wonder Woman and Green Arrow the issues don't even make it into the Top 50. Admittedly, none of this changes the fact that the creators of the Clone Saga say that "marching orders" were given to do something like the Death of Superman, because the Spider-Man books had suffered a tough couple of years after losing Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen and leaning into a series of baffling decisions like quintupling down on the big success of Venom and the moderate success of Carnage with more and more symbiote-related villains like Shriek and crossovers like Maximum Carnage. The summer before Doomsday, Marvel made a big deal about celebrating Spider-Man's 30th Anniversary with the following "epic" stories: Spectacular Spider-Man: Harry Osborn is back, and he's crazy! He's going to be the Green Goblin again! Web of Spider-Man: Mysterio attacks and allows for Spider-Man to conveniently fight and team up with all of your favorite friends and foes from the past thirty years. Spider-Man: Spider-Man encounters the Burglar That Killed Uncle Ben's nephew and convinces him to go back to school and not be a burglar like his uncle. Amazing Spider-Man: Surprise! Peter Parker's mom and dad are alive!* * They were actually robots or Life Model Decoys or something and the Red Skull and Chameleon did it to mess with Spider-Man for... uh... reasons? This storyline (and symbiotes) dominated 1992 and 1993 for Spider-Man's flagship title as it slid from being a Top 10 to Top 20 to Top 30 to slouching in at #31 a year before the Clone Saga officially kicked off. The other Spiderbooks were at 38, 41, 59, and 68 that month. Then they went all in on The Spider and Peter forsaking his civilian identity and really really wanting to kill all his enemies but pulling back at the last second and hanging out in Again, critical acclaim was pretty much non-existent for Doomsday or Knightfall, but they definitely boosted sales (all of the Superman books a couple of months past the official Return were in the Top 30, part of what probably pushed ASM down), so it's understandable that Marvel decided to go ahead and try something similar. Going back to the original context statement: quote:But they do what they promised from the outset. DC took a really crazy, really bold step in the mid-nineties - they took their two biggest characters, their two biggest earners, and swept both off of the table at essentially the same time and replaced them with substitutes. Even if the change was self-evidently temporary, that's some really brave storytelling regardless. When Tony Stark turned into a raging alcoholic, he was replaced by Jim Rhodes for about two years (1983-1984). Steve Rogers had given up being Captain America for awhile in the mid-1970s and was straight up replaced by 1980s Reaganite John Walker from the summer of 1987 through the end of 1988. Thor Odinson was replaced by Eric Masterson from 1990-1992, to say nothing of shorter-term storylines with Rick Jones becoming the Hulk, Beta Ray Thor, Unfrozen Fascist Captain America, the Fantastic Four and Avengers breaking up, etc. etc. etc. Besides the outsized media attention at "killing Superman", these really weren't particularly groundbreaking or daring stories. quote:It's important to note how Marvel is structured. They're essentially a three-pillared company; they have the Spider-Books (which are basically their own imprint, with their own more-or-less self-contained storylines and crossovers), they have the X-Books (again, essentially their own imprint with their own storylines), and then there's everything else, which determines the overall creative direction of the company. The first two pillars are by necessity subservient to the third, but are still basically free to do what they want; a good example is how, during Civil War II, there was The Clone Conspiracy (a Spider-Book-specific crossover event) and Death of X/IvX (an X-Book-specific crossover event). The X-Men and mutants in general showed up in CWII, and Miles Morales' Spider-Man was, in fact, a major plot point of CWII, but as creative direction goes they're sort of free to do what they want. Bob Harras edited all of the X-Men books Bob Budiansky edited all of the Spider-Man books (which had New Warriors lumped in for no solid reason) Mark Gruenwald edited all of the "Marvel Universe" books Bobbie Chase edited "Marvel Edge" which was a kind of nonsense imprint that including Hulk, Punisher, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and a few other 'dark' books Carl Potts edited everything that wasn't in continuity (mostly media tie-in books) This was around when the Clone Saga was kicking off, and within a year or so they undid this and just made Harras EiC, though he continued to make the X-Books more or less their own subline. In 1996 Gruenwald died suddenly, Marvel declared Chapter 11 Bankruptcy (which had zero to do with the comics line but still disrupted the hell out of it) and the whole concept of separate lines died off. There are still smaller contained crossovers, but it's a lot less cut and dry than what you describe. quote:It's definitely more clear now, but even back in the 90s Spider-Man was basically his own section of Marvel, considering his insane popularity. When The Clone Saga started, there were four Spider-Man ongoings being published monthly: Amazing Spider-Man (the flagship, published since the early sixties), Spectacular Spider-Man (which had been running for about 20 years at that point), Web of Spider-Man (about six or so), and Adjectiveless/simply Spider-Man (only a couple). To be clear, none of these were team-up books, they all had different ongoing creative teams, and they were all coming out simultaneously. Essentially, Peter Parker, the character, was so loving popular that he sustained four different comic books about what he and basically only he was doing, every month. quote:As you can see, Spider-Man is the foundation of Marvel; it's the house that Spider-Man built. There wouldn't be a 616, there wouldn't be an MCU, there wouldn't be a House of Ideas without Amazing Fantasy #15. Like, period. So replacing him, even temporarily? Again, four comics a month are based around one dude. That's a tough ask, but a bold choice for Marvel. Marvel themselves didn't really push Spider-Man as "the foundation of Marvel, through him all things are possible" or whatever either in the 1960s.  Admittedly, he was the first Marvel character to get a second title (Marvel Team-Up, which had Spider-Man teaming up with someone every month, this was the book Web of Spider-Man replaced in 1986 after MTU ran from 1971-1986) but it still feels like you're overstating how there wouldn't be a Marvel (or a MCU?) without him. Plus again, Superman and Batman had two books earlier, and had four books when the characters were 'replaced'. The common feature of all three characters at the time of their 1990s upheavals were that they weren't living up to sales expectations. quote:Clone Gwen goes away, never to be mentioned again. quote:And, as mentioned before, Spider-Man has grown in popularity from being just one of like five comics Marvel publishes to being his own, gigantic segment of the company. He's their biggest deal, and The Clone Saga is his biggest story. All four of his ongoings would be, exclusively, devoted to this storyline. I don't actually have the issue of Wizard that has the sales chart for August 1994, but the month prior to that (before the goosing of Spidey-Sales with the holo-foil Power & Responsibility covers) the chart placement of these Spider-Books are: #25: Spider-Man (Oversize Holo-Cover 50th Issue) #26: Amazing Spider-Man #46: Venom: Nights of Vengeange #48: Spider-Man 2099 #54: Spectacular Spider-Man #61: Web of Spider-Man #75: Spider-Man 2099 Annual #82: Spider-Man: Web of Doom #89: Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #91: Spider-Man: The Arachnis Project Meanwhile the same month, three of the top five books in the entire industry and seven of the top twenty books (comprising Marvel's ten of Marvel's top twelve books) were all X-Men books. None of this stopped marketing from pushing them to do a Big Mainstream Media Grabbing gimmick with Age of Apocalypse the next year, but the X-Books were in no uncertain terms the real gravy train for Marvel in the 1990s, not Spider-Man. quote:I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but apparently there was a directive at Marvel (or at least the Shooter era) that every issue of every published comic be written as if it were a brand-new reader's very first one, meaning all context was explained to everyone in every issue. The recap page had not been invented yet by the time The Clone Saga was being published; it was still like six or seven years out for Marvel. quote:The Clone Saga, hilariously enough, does feel sort of ahead of its time. Because it was meant to be this one gigantic mega-story where every single issue of every ongoing comic was meant to form a complete narrative when assembled together, it feels at points like post-decompression storytelling ten years early. Like, there's elements of Bendis where the focus is more on characterization and personal narrative than there is on overarching storyline, and in the abstract, as a foreshadowing of things to come in how comics are written a decade later, this is sort of a cool idea. The real influence here is that when Marvel looked at the huge disparity between sales of ASM in the mid 2000s and every other book they tried to sell starring Spider-Man, they just folded everything into a 2-4 times monthly book called "Amazing Spider-Man" and went from there rather than dragging Amazing down with some book everyone will look at as tertiary. quote:An issue was meant to be a complete story, and the idea was for comics to provide as much bang for your buck as possible by cramming as much story as they could into them. quote:The irony of The Clone Saga is that it sucks on virtually every level, but in retrospect it's hugely important. As I mentioned before offhandedly, Chris Yost's Kaine Scarlet Spider run is either my favorite or second-favorite non-Spider-Man Spider-Book run I've read (depending on how I feel about Agent Venom), and that story does not and cannot exist if Kaine never existed, and Kaine owes his existence entirely to The Clone Saga. [...] Jessica Drew Spider-Woman Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman Mattie Franklin Spider-Woman La Arana Prowler Black Cat Silver Sable Annex Nightwatch Jackpot American Son Green Goblin Phil Urich Silk Alpha Carnage This isn't even counting characters who first appeared in Spider-Man and then spun out into solo books years later like a Punisher or Morbius, these are all books that essentially had backdoor pilots in a Spider-Man core comic and then immediately leapt out into their own book. None of them lasted more than a year or two at best, most of them either being a mini-series the fans Did Not Demand More Of, or an ongoing hastily knocked down to a mini. After steadfastly, adamantly ignoring all characters related to the Clone Saga for well over a decade, they brought them back awhile ago, and seem to have put them back into the discard pile again. I guess this is important to people who really loved the Scarlet Spider comic, but I'm not sure what it matters in the big picture. I realize this is ridiculously long and probably nitpicky in a few places, but I lived/read through all of this back in the 1990s, and as a hobby/project the past couple of years I've been trying to track down/archive/data-mine old issues of Wizard/Comic Buyers Guide/etc. etc. from this era and once I found a (marginally) productive use for all of these old magazines lying around I went overboard. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 07:53
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Edge & Christian posted:Jessica Drew Spider-Woman You got Annex but forgot Solo! I guess terror isn't going to die now, thanks a lot. Also let's not neglect that other symbiote Pete Milligan liked. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 09:10
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Edge & Christian posted:the Burglar That Killed Uncle Ben's nephew I read this completely the wrong way and got VERY confused.  It would have been brave of Marvel to turn the entire 30 years of Spider-Man publishing history into the end of Jacob's Ladder though!
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Jan 21, 2018 09:22
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It should be noted that Superman only died as a stalling tactic so they could get married on "The Adventures of Louis and Clark" tv show first.
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Jan 21, 2018 09:43
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Archyduke posted:You got Annex but forgot Solo! And Slingers!  Nobody wants to remember Slingers.
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Jan 21, 2018 13:55
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Edge & Christian posted:Some additional context. Thanks for this, this is all really fascinating.
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Jan 21, 2018 18:31
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25. Daredevil: Born Again (Daredevil #226-233) I don't think there's been a single comics writer who's suffered a more significant critical reassessment of his work than Frank Miller. Well, maybe Alan Moore, but that's almost entirely as a result of one of the Big Two literally having a vendetta against him for nigh-on thirty years now, combined with rear end in a top hat contrarianism from people who blame Alan Moore for DC trying to endlessly copy, and then blame him for endlessly copying, his work. (Like sorry, if you honestly try and say that Watchmen ruined comics, much less that it's not genuinely and pretty much inarguably one of the greatest creative works this medium has produced, I'm going to call you a contrarian rear end in a top hat.) Like, I will admit that TKJ ain't my favorite story ever, and I'll be the first to argue that Moore uses rape as a plot device way too much and sort of has an issue with women in general, both of which are fine reasons to criticize his work. But Frank...Frank's on a whole 'nother level. I think the difference between why I think Moore is still incredible even accepting his more problematic elements, and why I think Miller is a garbage person who writes, generally speaking, garbage comics, is that Miller is inextricably tied with his work in a way Moore just flatly isn't, and most comic creators aren't. Obviously, every comic - every piece of fiction in general - is at least partially informed by and reflective of the mentality and perspective of the person who wrote it, but with Miller it feels so much more deeply personal than most other forms of media. And as a person? Miller loving sucks. There's the famous, possibly apocryphal story that Miller moved to NYC and, in his first month there, was mugged twice, once at gunpoint. Later on, in the mid-eighties, he would go on to write three stories all about, surprise surprise, New York or its direct analog being a crime-ridden hellscape that crushes and destroys otherwise honest people. And, to me, unlike Moore, who has TKJ and Watchmen and For the Man Who Has Everything and Swamp Thing and Top Ten and From Hell and V for Vendetta and Supreme and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? and Miracleman and Promethea and on and on and on, Miller to me is, critically speaking, three stories: Year One, TDKR, and Born Again. Now obviously, there's other, hugely successful stories Miller has done - Sin City and 300, just to name two - but, as a creator, Miller is most identified with the three stories that apparently sprang from his getting mugged in the early eighties. And, really, I'd argue it's primarily Year One and TDKR, with Born Again way, way down there in overall relevance. It's huge, don't get me wrong, and hugely important, but Year One and TDKR are two of the...probably top three most important stories DC has published? Probably? Like, it's basically those two stories and Watchmen, in some order, to fill out the top three. Which, well, sucks, because I don't much like Year One or TDKR. Well, okay, that's not true: I like Year One a lot, and it's still the first story I'd recommend to anyone who's never read a Batman comic before and wants to read one. But I think it's sort of overrated, as a Batman comic goes. I genuinely, unironically think Zero Year is a better and more cohesive story than Year One. A large part of that boils down to my belief that Year One isn't really a story so much as a collection of moments. I think Miller is a genuinely brilliant and incredible writer (when he's good), but Year One, to me, is a story about how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman that has him become Batman on its first page.  And, I mean - that first page, it's loving incredible. One of the best first pages of a comic in history. But like...as soon as Bruce Wayne says (or rather, thinks) "I should see the enemy," he's Batman. Boom. Done. Story over. The first fight, the almost dying, the crawling to his room, the waffling over ringing the bell, the bat crashing through the window, and finally, probably the single best panel ever created in a comic book -  - that's all him deciding to wear the costume. That's all process. Bruce Wayne is Batman the instant he arrives in Gotham, the moment he sees the city laid out before him in the airplane. And so you get the rest of Year One, which to me reads as a collection of moments and sequences as opposed to an establishment of the character of Batman. And those moments, those sequences, they are loving incredible - the dinner, the fight in the condemned house, and so on - but they don't cohere into a narrative I can follow, because the job's already been done from page one. It's part of what sort of frustrates me about Year One - a true, definitive origin story of Batman reads as Batman just doing regular old Batman poo poo without the connective tissue of his character growth, because he arrives fully-formed. So, therefore, the ultimate Batman story, the one that has now become the first one due to its insane popularity, is a better Gordon origin, at least to me. Gordon is the one who receives the arc, who goes from lieutenant to straight-laced, incorruptible commissioner of police (or at least on the road to it), tied together by his doomed affair, the birth of his son, and the framing narrative of his diary entries during the four issues Year One runs. A Batman story that ends up being a better Jim Gordon story - even caveating that it’s probably the single best Jim Gordon story ever written - reads as fundamentally faulty. And then we get to the Selina Kyle portions of Year One. Easily the portion of the arc that has aged the worst, Miller re-imagining Catwoman as a hooker/dominatrix who gets inspired into becoming a cat burglar because of Batman reads, now, as embarrassingly dated and regressive, taking away most-to-all of Selina's texture as a character and not handling her portrayal as a sex worker (which isn't even an inherently bad idea) pretty poorly. This is the central issue with Year One, with Miller's work in general, with Miller as a person. He's a capital-P Problematic writer, who loves to write women as, at best, terrorized victims needing to be saved from themselves and their own moral failings; at worst, they're scheming, heartless shrews who not coincidentally are horrid sluts, usually sex workers. And this would be safely ignorable in his best work if it weren't so deeply personal. This is where the critical re-examination of Miller comes from, I think; he has made it abundantly clear in interviews, in quotes, and most of all in the text of the fiction he writes that he draws from his own experiences and most importantly from his own viewpoints when writing comics. Approving of Miller's work, therefore, is basically approving of Miller as a person, because his work is very nearly a direct reflection of himself. And boy, does Miller as a person loving suck. Even before Miller went loving insane after 9/11 and wrote Holy Terror, aka "let's kill all Muslims because not-Batman said so", Miller's politics and most of his viewpoints were pretty horrid. I've mentioned the weird sexism, and his racism would become more and more pronounced over the years he wrote comics leading to, again, Holy Terror, but even at the height of his popularity and writing prowess he had issues, especially in TDKR. I really, really don't like The Dark Knight Returns. Firstly, I just don't like Frank Miller's art. I think it's ugly and too sketchy, the proportions on all his characters look bizarre. I don't like his faces, especially his lips. But, even more than that, I don't like TDKR because it's Miller's politics and viewpoints given form. It consists of an authoritarian Batman violently and senselessly dispatching thugs. Batman only really works as a superhero because he wants to kill Crime, with a capital C, and Miller, because he was mugged twice when he moved to NYC, shares that antipathy. What should be a synergy of writer perspective and character perspective ends up discordant, and Miller paints Batman as the only principled actor in a sea of people willing to pervert and molest the innocent. Miller never really gives crime in TDKR (and Year One) a face, a name to associate with the crime being committed. Therefore, crime is just a state of being in Miller's universe; it has no beginning and no real end. It's a disease with no cure, which might be literally true but is extremely cynical and cancerous. The only solution to crime, in Miller's mind, is fear, fear and rage and violence, and even that doesn't really work - TDKR posits that Batman is ultimately a failure, considering how the story begins. TDKR is ultimately the genesis of Miller's overriding belief that the only way to combat actual societal problems is not through rehabilitation or anything resembling compassion, but only through totalitarian and unilateral decision-making from a higher power, enforced with fear and overwhelming force. In other words, fascism. TDKR is Miller's approval of fascism as a way to prevent societal decay. This is most obvious in the much-ballyhooed Batman versus Superman fight. Miller clearly dislikes Superman, considering he contorts the character into being a MAD Magazine parody of himself to make Batman look better; the easily fooled, toady Superman who is waiting at the beck and call of whatever politician that deigns to use him, in TDKR's case Ronald Reagan. I think Miller goes out of his way to perform deep-seated character assassination on Superman just because he doesn't like Superman, true, but also because the world of TDKR can't allow for a character who believes in changing people by inspiring them to be better. Hope has no function in the world of TDKR, except as a weakness. I mention all of this because it's partly why I'm so hesitant to compliment any of Miller's works. You can separate art from artist, but Miller is tied so intrinsically with his art, they're so deeply meant to embody his viewpoints and beliefs, that on some base level validating his comics is validating the man himself. And I just can't do that; I genuinely believe, as a far-left socialist, that his deeply conservative, deeply fascistic far-right viewpoints are straight-up horrific, even disregarding his casual sexism and now-overt racism. And that's why, up until now, I've never read Born Again. I've never had cause to, and I've never had the inclination. Miller is three stories to me: Year One, TDKR, and Born Again. I read the first two and I came away liking but sort of unimpressed with one and kind of hating the other. Why would I read his third-most popular story of three, especially now, when everything Miller stands for is antithetical to me as a person? Why would I go out and support his works, especially considering how in Miller's specific case that's essentially supporting him as a person? There's thousands of fantastic comics I haven't read. Why his? So it's with all that being said, with all my hesistation and trepidation and just general level of apathy I have toward Miller's creative output, not to mention my overt antipathy I have towards Frank Miller as a person, that I sat down and read Daredevil: Born Again a couple of nights ago. And, friends?  Born Again is one of the greatest loving comics I've ever loving read. Summary The overall summary of Born Again is actually pretty short; Karen Page, Daredevil's secretary-turned-lover who was last seen prior to BA leaving for California to become an actress, was forced to become a porn star after a short and unsuccessful film career, leading into an extended fall where she begins the story as a broke junkie. She sells the secret of Daredevil's real name (in an envelope) to a low-level drug dealer for a fix; eventually, this gets passed up the chain until it reaches Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin's, eyes. He investigates the information, then plots an elaborate plan to ruin Matt Murdock's life, ending in Matt's disbarment due to a crime he was framed for and all of his finances frozen. This coincides with a nervous breakdown Matt was suffering due to unrelated events; that, combined with Foggy beginning to become romantically involved with his ex-girlfriend, alienates Matt from his friend group, believing that everyone in his life is out to destroy him. After his childhood home explodes in front of his eyes, however, Matt realizes that the Kingpin was, in fact, behind the destruction of his life. Matt attacks Fisk; he's beaten unconscious and stuck in a taxi with the doors rusted shut, that is then plunged into the river, in an attempt to murder Matt but make it look like a drunk driving accident. Matt escapes and, badly injured, ends up recuperating in a church run by his mother, Sister Maggie. Fisk orders the execution of everyone who might have handled the envelope; Karen, fleeing for her life, ends up in New York. Foggy takes her in, only for a criminal hired by Fisk, wearing a Daredevil costume, to attempt to kill both of them, in a way to force Matt Murdock out of hiding (whom Fisk had learned was still alive). Matt stops the criminal and saves Karen, only to go back into hiding with her. Concurrently to all this, Ben Urich has been investigating Fisk; the sudden and total disgrace of Matt Murdock, whom Ben knows to be Daredevil, incites Ben to conclude that Fisk somehow set Matt up. Both stories intertwine when a desperate Fisk convinces a general to send him Nuke, a super-soldier working for the U.S. government at the time. He causes a bloodbath in Hell's Kitchen, forcing Matt out of hiding and in costume as Daredevil for the first time since the beginning of Born Again; he defeats Nuke. The Avengers take possession of Nuke's body (as they are informed he's a terrorist) only for him to escape from military custody again. Captain America and Nuke both fight, before the U.S. military attempts to kill both of them (Cap learned that Nuke was secretly a government agent). Daredevil saves both of them and attempts to transport Nuke to the hospital before Nuke dies, but is ultimately unsuccessful. Still, Daredevil delivers his body to the Daily Bugle offices, in order to prevent the military from keeping the entire affair quiet; simultaneously, Captain America learns that Fisk was responsible for the order to have Nuke assault Hell's Kitchen, and reports the information he learned to the press. With his carefully constructed persona ruined, Fisk ends Born Again a more or less broken man, as Matt Murdock lives happily in Hell's Kitchen with Karen. The Context Born Again covers issues 226 to 233 of Daredevil, and is one of the last Daredevil stories written by Miller. Miller, having basically built his career off the back of revitalizing Daredevil through his run from #158-191, essentially returned to DD as a personal favor to the Daredevil editor at the time, since the previous writer was leaving the book. It sort of makes it all the more amazing how incredible Born Again ends up being, because it's essentially a glorified fill-in arc. The Story Normally I focus on writers over artists, partially since mainstream American superhero comics are, normally speaking, writer-driven and partially because I know what good or bad writing is and how to describe it, but am less sure on what good or bad art is as a constructed work. That being said, David Mazzucchelli is just as important as Frank Miller is in this story, and definitely a co-creator on Born Again. There's so many fabulous examples of beautiful art in Born Again, to the point where nearly every issue has some sort of standout, but one of the highlights is how Mazzucchelli drew the slow three panel zoom-in as Matt approaches his bombed house.  I mean, the writing's absolutely incredible too - gotta give Frank credit, even when he's awful he can write the hell out of an issue of comics - but the way Mazzucchelli is able to portray Matt's fear and sorrow and rage as he clutches his destroyed suit in the rubble of his house? Unbelievable. The covers for this arc are transcendent as well.  As a direct followup to the previous three panels - basically, literally the next image you see of Matt - it expresses Matt's immediate and total destruction as a person far better than any recap, any words of backstory or explanation ever could. Every action sequence in Born Again is paced so fluidly, progresses so naturally, they're all exciting to read. There's just such a wonderful visual coherency and immediate appeal to the action in Born Again, able to establish and release tension so well, that it's really difficult to overstate how great these comics are to just look at.   The first five pages of issues #229, "Pariah", deserve special mention. Matt's just escaped the taxi, and is trying to sleep on the street, next to a couple of other homeless men. Mazzucchelli constantly returns to overhead shots of Matt sleeping during Born Again; it's really great visual shorthand to establish how far Matt falls, then rises again. In any case, the first five pages are a slow zoom-out on Matt's sleeping form. As Matt is sleeping, he's essentially reliving a flashback to how he first got his powers - saved a man from getting run over, hit in the face with a radioactive isotope, blinded but the radiation enhanced his other senses. Mazzucchelli, brilliantly, splits the page up into thirds, with the left third detailing the zoomout and the middle and right third entailing his memories. It's some really brilliant page construction, and it coalesces into this page, when a young Matt awakens to his powers for the first time:  The flashbacks being in all black to illustrate his blindness, with the words themselves dominating the panels to illustrate his enhanced hearing - this is some brilliant artwork. It must be so difficult to portray blindness in a visually interesting way in a purely visual medium, and the fact that David did it here so well is, quite frankly, astonishing to me. Mazzucchelli's splash pages were something to behold as well.  I don't normally go for comics art like this - I've made it clear my general dislike for house style comics, especially Bronze Age ones. I like art that reflects the artists' personal sensibilities, art that is somehow an expression of the artist. I like art that is, essentially, stylized and individualistic, but Mazzucchelli just does such an incredible job with it here that I'm in love with basically every image he draws. I could keep going, on and on and on. I'm in love with the art in Born Again. The way Mazzucchelli draws this little four panel sequence, the look of homicidal glee in the Daredevil imposter's eyes, the construction of the scene itself, it's just so fantastic:  But I won't. No matter how incredible of a job David Mazzucchelli did or does, this is ultimately Frank Miller's baby. And, loathe as I am to admit it: He does an incredible job. I find it sort of hilarious that people refer to Born Again as the "Year One" of Daredevil stories. I mean, I sort of get it: It's the exact same creative team, and as a written work, it's a great onboarding point for new readers that recontextualizes the starring character of the comic, interspersed with a throughline starring a weathered old dude from some sort of protective institution (the cops in Year One, the press in Born Again). So I can kind of see it. But unlike Year One, it's not an origin story. I mean it's called Born Again, it's right there in the name. Matt Murdock was Daredevil before the first page of issue 226, and he's still Daredevil after the last page of issue 233. To me, it's a reinvention and re-presentation of a popular character, and therefore, it's much more akin to TDKR than Year One. Which is far more interesting of an idea to me, because despite my sort-of indifference to it I'll be the first to admit that Year One is a great story, that every Batman fan should read. I'm not interested in a Daredevil origin story, however, because I'm just not that interested in Daredevil; he's fine, I guess, but before Born Again, even counting that Ann Nocenti story I read previously, he's the second-most important street-level Marvel superhero who wears red tights and works in downtown New York that I've read, and number one is Spider loving Man. So I don't need a recap of his beginnings, I don't need to see Matt Murdock fumbling around and trying to combat street thugs for the first time, I don't need to see an errant New Jersey Devils jersey fly through his open window or something. It also avoids the biggest issue I have with Year One: for a story that purports to be Batman's beginnings, he more or less arrives fully formed. In contrast, since Born Again is quite literally a rebirth of Daredevil, we get to see him at the height of his powers, and then we get to see Daredevil as a concept completely dismantled and then rebuilt. So, as a matter of course, DD's personal story arcs in a way that I'd argue Year One Batman's simply doesn't. It's why I find Born Again much more texturally similar to The Dark Knight Returns than Year One. They both actually started and were being published simultaneously (both had their first issues in February 1986; Year One would begin in February 1987), furthering my point. Thematically speaking, though, both BA and TDKR are about a hero, having suffered tremendous losses, coming out of hiding and reclaiming their superheroic persona in the face of the triumph of evil. Both feature the sort of paranoid, anti-governmental beliefs that marked all of Miller's output but definitely his late eighties work specifically. And, finally, even as constructed plots they're fairly similar; the end of both comics feature the main hero coming into direct conflict with a direct analog for America (Superman in TDKR's case, Nuke in Born Again's) and fighting and triumphing over them. Comparing Born Again to TDKR feels much more honest and critically fulfilling as a result. Year One and TDKR, to me, read as bookends of the Batman mythos; one is his definitive beginning, and one is a possible end that became more or less his definitive end after it was so immensely popular. And that's sort of my biggest problem with it; TDKR is a story about how being Batman doesn't work. That Batman ends up having a Gotham that is infinitely worse and more grotesque then when he started, that all of his efforts to fix the city have failed. Even if he reclaims the suit, and even if he gets a new Robin (and, admittedly, Carrie Kelly is basically the only portion of TDKR that represents any hope of potential or success), and even if the story ends with him sitting in caves planning the next assault to pull Gotham back from the brink, it's based on a fundamentally cynical premise. In contrast, Born Again is set in the now, as almost every Marvel story is, and because the 616 is always about being current and not based on either nostalgia or the future, Daredevil's story is just part of a continuum. Sure, Daredevil's secret identity is discovered; sure, everything his life is destroyed; but it's a clearly-impermanent state for Matt Murdock to inhabit. Born Again, due to when it's set, is a fundamentally hopeful story in the exact opposite way that TDKR is a fundamentally hopeless one. Hope is really what sets BA and TDKR apart, and it's why I adore one and kind of hate the other. TDKR is dour and miserable and angry and sad at virtually all times; Born Again might be dour and miserable and angry and sad too, but it ends with Matt Murdock, having endured a road of trials, genuinely content. Sure, Kingpin might be plotting his revenge, but he's always plotting his revenge. Matt won. Like, sincerely, just compare the final page of Born Again:  To TDKR:  Matt Murdock ends BA walking on the street, with a newly-sober Karen Page by his side, in the sunshine. There's a construction sign on the building opposite; the way Matt has rebuilt his life is being textually reflected in the promise of renovation to a section of Hell's Kitchen. He doesn't mention fighting - the closest he gets is mentioning that he "keeps [Hell's Kitchen] clean". In contrast, TDKR ends with Batman in the literal shadows, having just faked his death after fighting and nearly killing Superman. After nearly killing hope, he doesn't sit back and relax like Matt does after finally triumphing over Kingpin; he prepares again, he's building up his army. The end of TDKR and one of its most hopeful pages is Batman plotting more violence, and even his final thought, when he's living in gloom and literally planning to go to war - is that this, all this, is "Good enough." Batman ends TDKR having visibly elected to settle, and it's not even a moment of quiet or reflection; it's just preparing for the next fight. TDKR only works, if it works (I don't think it works, but I'm clearly in the minority there), if it's the last Batman story. As I said, it forms a neat little bookend with Year One. I mean, it's fundamentally an Elseworlds story that was made more or less officially canon due to its popularity. Honestly, it works best as an Elseworlds in the same way that, say, Kingdom Come does, where it's a specific interpretation of Batman that's not supposed to be his dark future, considering how much it negatively says about Batman's impact to the world in which he inhabits. But, grudgingly accepting it as canon, as the future Batman is building to, it only works as a constructed narrative if there are no more Batman stories after TDKR. It's the only way the ending of TDKR works at all; if you can believe that the Batman army he builds is successful, and that Carrie Kelly somehow takes over as the new Batman or something, that his legacy is passed on and they are able to reclaim Gotham and, later on, the world, then, okay. TDKR's ending is triumphant. But the moment that TDKSA was published, that all got thrown out the window; it makes TDKR a story where Batman was unsuccessful at the beginning and the end, where his plans just didn't work. TDKR is a story that makes me not want to read more Batman stories; it makes current Batman stories irrelevant because no matter how good of a job he does, he ends up a broken man in his fifties as mutant gangs overrun Gotham. In contrast, Born Again works so well because it's set in the now. It allows for the possibility that Matt will finally, permanently be successful and happy. I mean, he won't be, because that's not how comic books work. Even accepting that Karen eventually gets killed by Bullseye, that Matt Murdock's life will be ruined many, many times in the future; even accepting all that, Born Again capturing the ever-shifting time period of "now" that all Marvel stories are set in means that it's able to keep the reader's faith that this time, this time it'll stick. And that's what you need for serialized narratives to function; you need that belief system that maybe this time, the heroes that you love will be okay. For good. TDKR (and Year One, admittedly) don't really have villains. In Year One's case, that's okay; I think it's a failure of the book, sure, and I think not having a villain is partially why Batman comes off as so ill-defined in the story, but Year One is so good besides that it still works. Unfortunately, in TDKR's case, that's less so. The lack of a centralized villain means that the true enemy of TDKR is Crime. Even that isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the problem is that Miller has such a specific interpretation of Crime as this constant state of the world, a constant societal ill that can only be combated forcefully, that it contributes to the overall miasma of cynicism that permeates TDKR as a whole. I think that's why supervillains exist. Everybody knows that crime is a problem inherent to societies, so unless everyone in a superhero comic becomes a sociologist then nothing ever change. However, with a supervillain, crime has a source. It can be stopped, because it flows from somewhere, and there has to be a fundamental belief that one person with extraordinary powers can make a difference if he or she decided to in order for superhero comics to work. In other words, superheroes need people to punch not just because superheroes punching people is cool, but because superhero comics sell the fantasy that crime has origins and specific personifications that, therefore, can be apprehended. That crime has origins, as opposed to being a general state of the world. How Miller presents crime in TDKR might be literally true, as this all-consuming force that destroys everyone in its path and has no beginning or end; it might be a realist interpretation of crime, but it's one that exposes superheroes for the falsehood that they are. It breaks the immersion and argues, subtextually, that nothing Batman has done matters, and in fact has only made things work, because crime was there before Batman started and will be there long after he leaves. He doesn't make things better, Miller argues, because nothing can. It's just the state of the world in which he lives. In the absence of any real villain in TDKR, the subtextual interpretation of it ends up being really uncomfortably awkward as well, Miller argues, pretty effectively, that the real villain of TDKR is The Future, and more specifically, The Next Generation. The mutant gang leader, the closest thing TDKR gets to a recurring "bad guy", is basically a corrupted and evil Youth out to destroy The Way Things Were. Miller's extreme conservatism and outright fear of the future comes most into play here, and the entirety of TDKR comes across as a polemic against The Kids in a way that reads as very uncomfortable and fatalist. Carrie Kelly is specifically excepted as One of The Good Ones, and even she needs to be brought into line and taught how to succeed by the craggy-faced white dude who represents The (Better) Past. This is where Born Again well and truly succeeds over TDKR, and by extension Year One. By making Kingpin just as important to the story of Born Again as Matt Murdock, he's able to give crime a source. Even if Wilson Fisk is the Kingpin of Crime, Miller's able to externalize the story's villain in a way that isn't a social force. It gives Matt an opponent, and unlike in Year One giving Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock parallel storylines makes Matt a better character overall. Miller contrasts the intersecting throughlines of Daredevil and Kingpin by making them, essentially, inversions of each other. Matt has a fall from grace at the same time as Kingpin pleasures in his greatest triumph, and the rest of the story details Kingpin's slow descent into destruction while Matt slowly rebuilds his life again. It also gives Miller a chance to write Kingpin and, despite my dislike of the man, I'll be the first to loving admit that Frank can write the hell out of a page of comics.  I've heard that before Born Again, the Kingpin was basically solely a Spider-Man villain. Off the back of this one story, Fisk becomes Daredevil's pretty much exclusive archnemesis, and it's easy to see why. Miller's Kingpin is as cunning, as clever, as brilliant, and as physically powerful as Matt Murdock, but with the extra bonus of having infinite funds and no scruples. If heroes are fundamentally defined by their limitations - their morality, their unwillingness to kill, their desire to help others and to not take advantage of them - and villains are defined by their lack of those same limitations, then Wilson Fisk is a brilliant villain for Matt Murdock to have. He is solely defined by his limitless capacity for evil, and that makes him infinitely flexible. Even the central premise of Born Again, the the entire story hinges on to function - that Kingpin has conclusive proof that Matt Murdock is Daredevil, but refuses to let anyone else know out of pure selfishness and ego - works completely because of how Miller writes Kingpin. It's not only a justifiable motivation, it's the only motivation for Wilson Fisk that makes sense for the character. Frank does a loving incredible job with Fisk to the point that he's probably one of my most favorite villains of all time, off of this story alone.  I would put "And I--I have shown him...that a man without hope...is a man without fear." up there with "Yes father. I shall become a bat." as one of the greatest single lines and character mission statements in comics history. This is Daredevil, this is who Daredevil is. When I read that line for the first time, I was blown away by the sheer complexity and brilliance of it. Making Kingpin essentially the genesis of Daredevil, and having him realize it, and then having the rest of the story detail Fisk's increasingly desperate attempts to kill him, as he realizes how big of a mistake he made? It's loving genius. This is incredible loving storytelling. Showing Kingpin's decline while simultaneously illustrating Daredevil's rebirth, and stressing how similar of characters both Fisk and Murdock are, is an ultimately hopeful statement from Miller; he argues, conclusively, that evil always loses out to good. In direct contrast to TDKR, which takes as a given that left unchecked Crime Always Wins, Miller personifies Crime and sets him against his personified Hero and shows how the former always loses to the latter. It is a hopeful comic, in a way none of any of other Miller's comics ever are. It states that Miller fundamentally does believe in the triumph of the human spirit, no matter how cynical and fatalist he ultimately proves himself to be in later works. And it cannot be stressed how well Miller writes Ben Urich's story that runs throughout the length of Born Again. In contrast to Gordon's being the only real completed arc of Year One, making Ben's storyline parallel to Daredevil's - the same downfall and destruction of the man, but this time from within and not without, so his arc ends up redemptive over Daredevil's reclamation - makes it so it's just as compelling as what Matt is doing, but not overwhelmingly so like Jim Gordon's is in Year One. You buy Daredevil to read Daredevil, and Born Again is a Daredevil story, it just happens to have this incredible additional story about Ben Urich's fall, then eventual re-rise. Just...that three page sequence where Ben witnesses a cop's murder over the phone...I can't overstate how incredible of a sequence it is.    Everything about this scene, from the way the camera zooms in to Ben's increasingly horrified face, the dramatic irony of the banal newsroom conversations happening around him, Robbie's increasingly harsh insistence to get on the phone. Mazzucchelli's art deserves endless praise, sure, but just the construction of the sequence - with every other panel detailing the murder itself, cutting back to Ben's reactions on the phone. The final line of the scene itself - "I thank you for listening, Mr. Urich." It's unbelievable. It's impossible to overstate how good it is. Of course, the eventual payoff to this scene - in the second-to-last issue of the arc, where Ben Urich finally both metaphorically and physically fights back against Kingpin, when he finally decides to stop living in fear of what Fisk will do to him, and beats his would-be assassin to death. Urich might be using the butt of a gun, but the true weapon Ben wields, the one that will eventually destroy the Kingpin, is the press, as Glori takes pictures of the beating. It's Miller on top of his metaphorical game and after reading a half-dozen issues of Ben Urich being terrorized and cowed into silence is such a tremendous moment of relief of all the tension built up to that point. It's incredible.    The final confrontation of Born Again - the Nuke fight - is, in many ways, a symbolic parallel to the Batman v. Superman fight of TDKR. It works here in direct contrast to TDKR, where I would argue it doesn't, because it isn't Miller childishly performing character assassination on someone he doesn't like to build up someone he does. Nobody who reads comics gives a poo poo about Nuke, but even if they did Nuke is both genuinely a pretty bad person (over TDKR's portrayal of Superman as an easily-fooled sycophant, which is arguably less charitable) and very clearly a drug-addled lunatic. He's also just an arm of Kingpin - again, the comic routes the story back to its most important central premise, of Daredevil and Kingpin at war with each other, instead of how in TDKR Batman fights Superman because Politicans Want Them To. The fight, in general, just seems strangely more benevolent and justified, and Daredevil's motivations read as more ideologically pure than TDKR's Batman. It's why Daredevil kills a dude and it reads as understandable -  - he's trying to defend Hell's Kitchen from a bloodthirsty maniac killing dozens of innocent people, and he even loving apologizes in the act of killing him. It's so much more understandable than Batman fighting and nearly killing Superman because, well, he really really hates Superman I guess. There's just a level of grace that Miller writes Daredevil and this story in general that's just not present in the other stories of his that I read. He wants to portray Matt as a good guy, doing the best he can through a mental breakdown and having his world destroyed. There's a level of sincerity here that makes the whole thing so much more palatable and therefore appealing. There's even a little moment after Nuke escapes for the second time, he's been shot through the chest and is dying, and Daredevil's rushing to save his life -  This is a jingoistic maniac, who literally just tried to kill him. And Daredevil's risking it all to save him, not just because he can out Kingpin, but because Daredevil is a hero, and that's just what heroes do. There's even a sort of echo to the Batman v. Superman confrontation in that our hero encounters and confronts the avatar of Americana (in Born Again's case, Captain America), and, again, it's that level of grace with which Miller writes both characters that makes it such a compelling sequence. Miller seems to give a poo poo about Cap in a way he never did with Superman; Captain America is manipulated, but he doesn't come across as a foolish, stupid oaf in the way Miller's Superman did.  I love these two simple panels; despite (or, probably, because of) the fact that I'm a veteran, I really dislike overt jingoism in the media I consume. Especially since Miller has a villain in Nuke who is blind, idiotic belief in country over all, Captain America in this comic comes across as a man who has a deep-seated and sincere respect of the flag as a standard that he holds himself to, that America - as a concept - is one worth defending and believing in. And it makes all of his subsequent actions - his hacking into the military base and eventual release of all the records on Nuke - come across as a noble act of pure patriotism, one to be respected and even admired. And, speaking as a guy who loved and still loves Cap, I'm really grateful to Miller for writing him into the story without cheapening who he is, what he stands for, or what he symbolically means to make "his guy" look better. Finally, and most significantly, Miller avoids his most glaring issue in his comics: his weird and really uncomfortable sexism. That aformentioned grace, that level of odd sensitivity Frank has for his characters somehow also filters down to Karen Page. As the person who incites the entire mess, it would be so easy to write Karen as an evil, amoral slut like he does with virtually every other female character he ever writes from this point on. But he doesn't. He doesn't even really infantilize her, make her someone who has to be saved from herself by the Big Strong Men in her life, like he does with...every other female character he writes. Even if she's literally a victim to be saved in Born Again, Miller argues that everyone in the comic is a victim: Matt, Foggy, Ben Urich, Captain America, Glori, hell, even Nuke a little bit. The only person who isn't a victim is the victimizer: Kingpin himself. Karen could've so easily been a terrible parody of all of Miller's worst habits re: women. But she's not, and I became invested in and cared about her story, her eventual reunion with Matt, her eventual sobriety in a way that was genuinely pretty touching. Miller cares about Karen, and in a way he almost never cares about the women in his comics that he writes, and I think it's because he's willing to accept that people can be drug addicts and sex workers and not terrible people, that they're people with humanity that should be respected, that they're people deserving of love and acceptance and yes, even a little happiness.   Or maybe the way Karen is written in Born Again is just as problematic as all of Miller's other women in all the other stories he writes, it's just that I'm a hypocrite unwilling to see it in a story I like. That I'm trying to justify to my own morals why I love Born Again as much as I do despite being a bleeding-heart socialist who ostensibly cares about the equal treatment of women. I can believe that too. Regardless, the story touched me in a way I never thought it could. In Conclusion Nothing feels stupider to a critic than saying some popular, well-reviewed, critically acclaimed, old piece of media is good. Everyone knows The Godfather is a high-water mark of American cinema. It isn't a challenging or interesting or daring thing to say in 2018. Everybody knows Pink Floyd's The Wall is a great album. It's especially bothersome when it's a critically acclaimed work from a problematic creator. I'm as ideologically opposite from Frank Miller as they come; I have a genuine distaste for him, as a person, considering the things he clearly believes and the consistent, ugly intentions that run through his work. Look, I knew. I knew going in that Born Again was a "great" comic. I knew because it's one of the few DD storylines people can name. I knew because it's Frank Miller and one of the three main reasons he's critically beloved. I knew because, more than anything, I am a comics fan, and being a comics fan means there are certain stories that all comics fans contextually know are good stories. Watchmen. Year One. All-Star Superman. Preacher. Transmetropolitan. Y: The Last Man. And, yeah, Born Again. Listing them off is a reflex; reading them is considered compulsory. Homework. A commonly understood touchstone, a foundational work. So it is with all that said, caveating how much-ballyhooed and memetic and overstated it is, how cliche, I need to stress, on a deep, personal level: If you have not read read Born Again, read Born Again. If you don't like Daredevil, or you're indifferent to him, read Born Again. If you don't like Frank Miller, if you think he's hack or overrated or a genuinely problematic dude. Read Born Again. If you think I somehow summed up why Born Again is great, or you got enough context to its greatness just from reading the panels I posted: Trust me. You didn't. Read. Born. Again. I can't express how deeply and how personally it affected me. I just can't. I can't express how high my expectations were - I expected greatness going in, but greatness in the perfunctory, technically well-crafted but emotionally meaningless sense. The Year One sense. I expected to come out going "Yeah this is a 'great story' that everyone should read because Miller is, yeah, a good writer and Mazzucchelli does great comics work. If you liked Year One, you'll like Born Again." I was completely and utterly overwhelmed by how incredible of a story this was. This was a, genuinely speaking, once in a loving lifetime comics story that I read. It was emotional, it was cathartic, it was meaningful, it was brilliant. It, single-handedly, turned a character I was pleasant but more or less indifferent to to one of my favorite superheroes possibly ever, and that's not counting the work it did with Kingpin and Ben Urich, which was almost as transcendent. On every level I was just blown the gently caress away reading this story. I'm sort of indifferent to Year One, and gently caress TDKR. But loving Born Again...Born Again is a story everyone should read. I've read a lot of comics in my life; this is the first time I was well and truly flabbergasted reading a comic. That I was fuckin' thunderstruck. That's not how I react to comics any more; that's not how I expected to react to anything, much less some uber-popular and critically adored work that everyone already knows is good. If I was gonna be blown away by a comic's quality, it would be some relatively unknown indie comic from an unheard creator, not a story from a creative titan in the industry that directly established why he is considered a creative titan. But I was. But I am. It's unbelievable how fantastic, on every level, this story is. If you're reading this right now and still haven't read Born Again, stop reading this and figure out a way to do so. Go and get Marvel Unlimited and read it there. Go buy a loving trade, or go to your local library. I promise you, I promise you, even knowing how much I oversold this story, it somehow manages to be better than advertised. It's just that loving good. Good comics stories make you interested in the character, eager to read more of their stories. I came out of "The Man Without Mercy" wanting to read more DD. Great comics stories make you interested in the author. Tom King's Vision makes me willing to read basically anything the man ever publishes from now until the end of time, and if Hickman ever goes back to either of the Big Two I'll read whatever he writes, solely off his Fantastic Four/FF run. But transcendent comics stories. Transcendent comics... When I finished reading Born Again, I didn't re-read it, although I would've been perfectly content to do so. No. Instead I pulled down my Bendis Daredevil omnibuses I've had laying around for months and I started reading them immediately. Not because I wanted to, but because I had a need for more Matt Murdock in my life. After I'm done with Bendis DD, I'm gonna read "The Devil in Cell Block D". I'll go and watch the second season of the tv show that I've just neglected for over a year now. gently caress, I'll probably go and track down that Ben Affleck movie. Born Again wasn't just a great comic - it was a comic that was so loving good it, single-handedly, made me need to read more Matt Murdock stories. It's...it's loving incredible. On every level. Read. Born. Again. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 22:25
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Read. Yeah, I've grown to detest Frank Miller over the years but I can't stress this enough - it really is an exceptional story with some absolutely amazing character work, wonderful art and a shocking (for Miller) sense of hope and the belief that things not only can be better, but that they will be. As soon as I read the words "Born Again" I thought of this beautiful, beautiful page.
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Jan 21, 2018 23:55
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Born Again wasn't just a great comic - it was a comic that was so loving good it, single-handedly, made me need to read more Matt Murdock stories. It's...it's loving incredible. On every level. You need to read Miller's first run on Daredevil. It's not quite the high water mark that Born Again is, especially in the first year where Miller is learning to write comics, but by the time you hit Elektra and the Hand it comes drat close. I even pulled down my omnibus and confirmed the issues issues I was thinking of: pick it up at #168 and you haven't really missed anything and stop at #191. Unfortunately, Miller's third pass at Daredevil, The Man Without Fear, is a let down because it's "merely" pretty good instead of absolutely incredible. Worth checking out if you really want to read some Daredevil, but not something I'd tell people they need to read.
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Jan 22, 2018 00:39
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I think you did let your affection for the story blind you to Miller being Miller when it comes to women, though.Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Karen Page, Daredevil's secretary-turned-lover who was last seen prior to BA leaving for California to become an actress, was forced to become a porn star after a short and unsuccessful film career, leading into an extended fall where she begins the story as a broke junkie.
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Jan 22, 2018 01:36
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The Coyote Gospel Animal Man #5 Written by Grant Morrison, Pencils by Chaz Truog, Inks by Doug Hazlewood "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." - John 3:16 "In heaven's name - what am I doing?" - Wile E. Coyote  Animal Man is a nobody. Debuting in 1965 in Strange Adventures #180 in a backup story entitled, very creatively, "I Am the Man with Animal Powers!", Animal Man, also known as your average work-a-day stuntman Bernhard "Buddy" Baker, is the result of an alien spacecraft exploding, imbuing him with the power to gain the attributes of nearby animals. He'd appear infrequently in Strange Adventures for the next two years, then dropped off the face of the planet throughout the 70s, before being brought back in the run-up to Crisis On Infinite Earths alongside other forgotten heroes of the 40s, 50s, and 60s (Cave Carson! Immortal Man! Dane Dorrance! Rip Hunter!) in a group called...the Forgotten Heroes. A few appearances came out of this, but then he slipped back into obscurity in the post-Crisis DC landscape. But the nice thing about nobodies is that nobody cares if you mess around with 'em. People will riot in the streets if you change the color of Superman's underwear, but Animal Man? Who cares about Animal Man?? Enter Grant Morrison. Well, actually, enter Alan Moore, who had transformed the similarly irrelevant Swamp Thing into a critical and commercial darling, paving the way for other more "out there" takes on flagging and forgotten books, leading to Gaiman on "Sandman" and, yes, Morrison tasked with breathing new life into Animal Man. After a four issue run revamping Buddy Baker's origin story, Morrison was given two years to play around in the comic. His first issue post-origin story would be "The Coyote Gospel" Lemme run down this issue of "Animal Man" which features very little of the titular hero. A trucker and his young hitchhiker passenger runs over a coyote while singing "Roadrunner" by The Modern Lovers.   A year later, Buddy Baker is going vegetarian:  And his wife reacts badly to this unilateral decision. Going out to get some air, we cut back to Death Valley, where the trucker's life has taken a turn for the worse. His good friend died, his mother died, he lost his job, and just four days ago the young hitchhiker he'd picked up, whom he'd cautioned about this chance she was taking, had been slain in a drug raid. All this misfortune he knows, he's certain, is the work of Satan, incarnated in the coyote he'd struck a year ago. Now he's out to destroy Satan and save the world. He rigs up explosives. He shoots the coyote. He drops a rock on it:  But in the grandest of cartoon traditions, in his haste to deliver the killing blow he wanders too close to the bomb and is caught in the explosion:  Animal Man arrives on the scene and is presented with the scroll around the coyote's neck, and while Animal Man can't read it, we privileged readers aren't so limited. The coyote is in fact named "Crafty", and he comes from a cartoon world where all wounds are healed, all violence is without consequence, and thus the whole cycle is rendered pointless. Crafty, fed up with it, ascends up to Heaven to see the Creator and to make a deal:   And then Crafty's shot dead by the trucker, pierced in the chest by a silver bullet made from a melted down silver crucifix.  So it's a Jesus allegory. And it's up to me, a Jewish guy, to put it together. But luckily that's the point of this story: nobody knows what's going on. Buddy Baker, arriving towards the end, ignorant of context and unable to decipher Crafty's scroll, has no idea what's going on before it's all over. The trucker, so certain that he's slaying Evil incarnate and saving the world, doesn't know Crafty's purpose for being there; so unable to handle the idea of chance just dealing him a bad hand, he needed a scapegoat and found instead a scapecoyote. Even Crafty thinks his world is dictated by the Creator, but the Creator in turn is only dictated by Morrison, Truog and Hazlewood. Crafty's suffering for the sake of peace in his world was always a hoax deal, a sham, because the Creator had no say in it. Even we are fed incomplete information: How did the trucker know the coyote would be alive, and how did his silver bullet actually have any effect (except for the obvious reasons in both cases: because the storyline demanded it)? These are all questions that remain unanswered, and will remain unanswered, for such is the nature of creating fictional worlds. Ultimately, Morrison would explore this question of knowledge and awareness further in his two year run of Animal Man, from the more mundane revelations of the extent of Buddy's powers, to deeper insights into Buddy's life, and indeed his existence as a comic book character. This all culminates in meeting his own Creator (Morrison) in a book-long exploration of instilling humanity into comic book pages, and what the delight we take in these characters' rises and falls means for the characters, the creator, and the readers. Whatever the reasons, we sure can't stop making them. Just as Crafty will forever chase that roadrunner, Peter Parker will always be figuratively chasing Uncle Ben's killer, Batman will always be chasing Joe Chill, Superman will always be looking for a sense of belonging. Struggles, even the never-ending ones, will always appeal to us. How does that knowledge feel?
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Jan 22, 2018 02:38
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I've been busy lately, but I finally return with Chuck Austen's Holy
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Jan 22, 2018 08:24
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YARVA ETRIGAN DAEMONICUS, pt I Mark Evanier's intro to Jack Kirby's The Demon omnibus details Kirby quietly creating a book that was half the death knell for his beloved Fourth World (the other half being Kamandi) and played in a genre he felt no real affinity for (horror and the occult) between ordering and receiving a hamburger on a family outing to Howard Johnson's. And... it shows? I've always liked DC's weirder characters, Etrigan being rather high on the list, but this is the first book I've read with him explicitly as the star. Overall, the art is gorgeous, as you'd expect from Kirby at the top of his game, and the world-building seems fairly effortless, concentrating on a fringe hero dedicated to fighting fringe threats. The book is, in general, a solid introduction to one of DC's more esoteric heroes. But there are some definite growing pains.  Ultimately, Camelot falls, and the demon Merlin summoned as a last ditch effort to aid in the fight against the forces of Morgaine le Fay is bound to the human form Jason Blood, waiting for the day he is called again to service. Centuries later, Blood's dinner party is interrupted with talk of nightmares and a member of the Unliving, ie: a golem, carrying a message for him. Blood travels to Castle Branek in the wilds of Moldavia, is chased by le Fay's minions into Merlin's tomb, and, in desperation, reads an inscription off of the ornate stone slab.  Although he tears through his enemies with ease, Etrigan is almost instantly returned to his human form by le Fay, and she makes her first escape. Back in Gotham, Blood's friends are snooping through his apartment, wondering why all of his family portraits look just like him. An apparition of Merlin awakens Blood and sends him to Walpurgis Wood to prevent le Fay from completing a ritual to restore her beauty and further extend her unnaturally long life. Sensing their arrival, she pits an orange monster called the Gorla against Blood and the local inspector who has joined him. Meanwhile, reading the words off of a shield in a painting in Blood's gallery, Blood's friend Randu manages to summon Etrigan once more using his mysterious ESP. Etrigan defeats the Gorla, but le Fay completes her ritual and disappears. The inspector politely suggests Blood cut short his stay, to which Blood happily agrees. So, on his first outing, Etrigan is 0 for 1. Thugs and minions he can take care of, but the sorceress who brought down Camelot has returned to the modern era with renewed power. Whoops. Nevertheless, Blood's supporting cast has quickly taken shape. First and foremost is Randu Singh, a UN ambassador who uses his "Eye of Karma" to communicate with Jason and Etrigan telepathically. It's kind of a problem. Harry Matthews is the resident Franklin "Foggy" Nelson. He likes cigars and parties. That's about it. Then there's Glenda Mark, Jason's romantic interest with a receding hairline so pronounced it instantly made me suspicious.  Over the next few issues, Etrigan fights a number of evils. The cult of The Master Eye temporarily reverts victims to previous lives, like cavemen and pirates, and sends them to kill UN delegates. The Iron Duke wants to steal Merlin's knowledge, but is double crossed by a witch named Ugly Meg who's been using a Dream Beast to boost her own powers. An anthropologist possessed by a primal spirit tracks Blood down to ask for help ridding himself of its curse. And during these misadventures, all three of Blood's friends discover that he regularly turns into a yellow, fin-eared demon built like a linebacker wearing a red onesie. Then Klarion shows up.  Up until now, The Demon has been bounding along dispatching Merlin's justice without much focus. Morgaine le Fay is still out there somewhere, but so are plenty of other things. After an encounter with The Judge and his venomous Draaga, Etrigan is left poisoned on a rooftop. Luckily, a strange boy named Klarion and his companion Teekl, an orange cat, are there to change Etrigan back to Blood and get him home safely. Teekl heals Blood's wounds and Klarion magically stocks his fridge, to both "Uncle Jason" and "Cousin Harry's" surprise. Before any questions can be answered, the two men have a social gathering to attend. Klarion insists he won't be any trouble and stays behind. At the party, things turn somewhat vicious when Sid Courtney, the Stock Market Whiz Kid, questions the validity of Blood and friends' claims of the supernatural. "If you're so clever," he says, "let's see you produce a demon!" Which is somehow enough to prompt the transformation into Etrigan. Jason's friends get him out of the room, and within moments, Etrigan is leaping out the window, drawn by a desperate psychic plea for help. On the way, he fights a harpy and a hooded figure holding a "hex-sign of the witch-cult", but they do little more than slow him down long enough for Randu and Harry to get to Blood's apartment first, where a shirtless Klarion is being held upside down and accountable for dabbling with spells that would give him power over his elders. His main accuser, who sentences him to The Ritual of The Beast, is none other than The Judge, the Draaga still curled around his neck. Etrigan quickly dispatches The Judge and his co-conspirators using the hex-sign he swiped from his last opponent. Etrigan praises Klarion's mastery of such powerful spells for being so young before the witchboy shows his true colors. He really was going to use Etrigan to help conquer his elders after all, but not before Etrigan wraps Klarion and Teekl in his cape and teleports them away. ...Case closed? As a quick synopsis, The Demon #7 sounds roughly like every other issue of the series so far, but it has two big distinctions. First, Klarion, making his debut, The Judge, and the other witches are a definite step up from the random magic users and mostly faceless cultists Etrigan has been fighting thus far. Even for how easily rid of them he is, they're design is visually striking and they leave with enough dangling plot threads to hint at a strong return. Second, and more importantly, Blood's friends are beginning to take a more active role in the stories, standing by his side, even if he's Etrigan, even if they're not entirely sure what to do. It's implied that Jason has led a fairly isolated life for a very long time, and even the people who know him well don't really know him all that well. This feels like a real turning point where, with their limited knowledge and experience, Jason's friends still try to do their best by him. Having Blood and his supporting cast take a full step in characterization like that makes a huge difference.  When the next issue starts, it feels like no time has passed. Randu and Harry are showing Etrigan around Blood's apartment when they notice his most valuable pistol and sword have both been stolen. Etrigan finds and confronts the thief, retrieves his sword, and promptly gets lost in the sewers, allowing The Phantom to return to his pipe organ and a statue that looks exactly like Glenda Mark. After the police and Blood's friends find him, they decide to throw a party despite what just happened at the last one they attended. Jason takes this problem a little more to heart than he should, waiting for his friends to leave before using the Philosopher's Stone to call the ultimate cold, the frost that lies across the far reaches of the nether-world, to rid himself of Etrigan. The next night, The Phantom crashes the party, kidnaps Glenda Mark, and Jason get's knocked unconscious. When he awakes to a bandaged head, he realizes what he's done. In the lair of The Phantom, Glenda Mark is being introduced to "Galatea" and romanced with organ music in the hopes that she'll remember who The Phantom thinks she really is. When she objects, there's a struggle, she rips off The Phantom's mask and, lo and behold, it's...  And that's where the reading ends. Except it's in the middle of a story. And I have the omnibus of all sixteen issues now anyway. So I'll probably keep going before I spin the wheel again. For right now, I... guess I would recommend it? It's a bit like asking someone at the top of that first drop on a roller coaster if they've enjoyed the ride. They decided to ride (#1 & 2), they waited in line (#3-5), got close enough to see the joy on the faces of the people getting off the ride (#6), boarded a car themselves (#7), got to the top of that first drop (#8), and then... Etrigan is a an amazing creation that fills a unique niche in the DC universe. Or he will. Eventually. But these first eight issues, as perfectly fine examples of Kirby's work as they are, are a bit shallow. He burns through an unmemorable rogues gallery, issue by issue, until all of Blood's friends are on board with his secret. Then Klarion. Then we're a third of the way into The Phantom of the If the next eight issues truly manage to put this run alongside Y: The Last Man and Mage: The Hero Discovered as all-time greats like the list promises, I'll be ecstatic. It's just not there yet.
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Jan 22, 2018 15:41
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I decided to roll for myself again. I got 526. Spider-Man: Identity Crisis. I genuinely do not know why I keep getting either Spider-Man or Daredevil stories.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:26
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I think you've hit the gist of it. The Demon is kind of interesting and I think it's got some really striking Kirby art, still, it's not very strong until Klarion shows up and then he steals the show. I'd much rather being reading Klarion's adventures than Jason Blood's (and I guess Grant Morrison agrees with me there). Alan Moore was the person who actually takes Etrigan and makes him the cool, memorable character that we know and love in the pages of Swamp Thing, and when you're comparing Kirby's writing and Moore's, it's not hard to see who comes out on top there. One thing I can give Kirby's Demon series is that it's better than it's other contemporary superhero/horror series at DC, The Phantom Stranger. The Stranger might have had a great logo but his series is a real bore in the way that Kirby couldn't be if he tried. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 00:59
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Inkspot posted:YARVA ETRIGAN DAEMONICUS, pt I I liked your review and I didn't actually know Etrigan's origins. All that said, I'm mostly distracted because: God drat do I love me some Kirby splash pages 
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Jan 23, 2018 06:38
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That's a very silly thing to yell in the middle of a battle. "Take this beach! It is the will of our lord, the general Dwight D. Eisenhower!"
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Jan 23, 2018 08:03
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 17:15 |
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If I lived in a comic book universe, I'd take every opportunity to be overly dramatic and wordy because it's a pretty sane response to the madness you'd constantly be living in.
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Jan 23, 2018 08:40
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