Guest Reviewers Month: Grant Goggans on Charley's War

The saddest scene I've ever seen in a comic comes when a young soldier
loses his best friend to the Germans, and, shellshocked, spends a few
heartbreaking panels finding the words to tell an insensitive miltary
policeman what it is that he's carrying. It's a pivotal scene from
Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun's Charley's War, and if you can
read it without a lump rising to your throat, then that's all the
evidence needed that you're a soulless vampire, in need of a stake
through the heart.

Charley's War debuted in December, 1978, in the 200th issue
of Battle Picture Weekly, and immediately made a statement
that it was going to be a bold and challenging read. As we'll see,
Battle never shied away from controversial characters or
issues, but World War One had proven itself a very unpopular subject
for adventure-oriented comic strips, and the story's launch saw the
artist Joe Colquhoun removed from Johnny Red, the book's most
popular feature for the previous two years. The easiest decision for
Battle's editors would have been keeping Colquhoun on the
existing, proven success, rather than putting him on something so
radically different.

Battle was launched by the publisher IPC in 1975 and was,
from its outset, unlike any comic that Britain's newsstands had ever
seen, mixing hard-hitting war stories with achingly believable
characters. True, features with haughty antiheroes were nothing new;
in the mid-sixties, characters like the Spider, the Steel Claw and
Janus Stark were thrilling young readers by either working outside the
law or in opposition to it. There were exceptions, like the
square-jawed, heroic, indestructible Tim Kelly, but he seemed to be
outnumbered by all the dark and macabre protagonists of these stories.
Dollman, a super-genius who controlled dozens of robots, might have
been a good guy, but he was also badly needing a padded cell.

None of these offbeat characters, however, operated during wartime.
British adventure strips, regardless of who published them, could have
been set anywhere and in any time and featured any kind of oddball
antihero, but prior to Battle, you could be guaranteed that a
wartime protagonist would be a flawless patriot, valiantly defending
Britain from the Hun. It took publishers until 1975 to try out
characters who weren't acting as role models during the war. The Rat
Pack was made up of four convicts, any of whom might have gone AWOL
with stolen Nazi gold at any opportunity. Major Eazy was so laid back
and disrespectful to his commanding officers that he routinely drew
letters of complaint from outraged kids. Joe Darkie, operating an
illegal guerrilla war in Burma, would routinely murder any pressganged
Tommy who disagreed with him. Johnny Red was drummed out of flight
school after accidentally killing a commanding officer and began his
strip swabbing decks on a merchant marine ship, Even the comparatively
upright, role-model-type Bootneck Boy spent all of his stories
ferretting out black marketers and bloodthirsty American soldiers.

Battle, therefore, knocked convention and expectations for a
complete loop. It was a huge success and made D.C. Thomson's rival
paper, Warlord, look stilted and dull by comparison. Yet
even with its willingness to challenge young readers by presenting
morally shady protagonists, there's still an underlying respect for
the people who act heroically, and a clear antagonist for them in the
Nazis. War isn't glamorized, but it's shown, believably, as a
necessary evil.

Charley's War was the first strip to stand up and say that
actually, it isn't even necessary, either. It was an emphatic,
pointed attack on the establishment that permitted and enabled the
chaos. Certainly, including anti-war themes in comics wasn't a
radically new approach - Harvey Kurtzman's Frontline Combat
had taken a similar viewpoint almost 25 years earlier - but
Charley's War took it to new levels for an ongoing strip with
regular characters, especially one with characters as sympathetic and
wonderful as these.

In the strip's first episode, we're introduced to Charley Bourne, a
poorly-educated Londoner, sixteen years old, who decides to lie about
his age and enlist. This puts him in the front lines just a few weeks
before the Battle of the Somme. From there, it's an exciting,
heartbreaking look at life in the trenches, with missions into No
Man's Land punctuated by gas attacks, new technology, cowardly
officers, ratcatching, squalor, despair, mud and, somehow, a little
optimism and hope.

Bourne's world is realized by some of the very best art that any war
comic has ever been fortunate enough to see. Joe Colquhoun captures
everything in his pages, filling his backgrounds with the
intricate details of the trenches. There are absolutely no shortcuts
in Colquhoun's compositions; every panel is just packed densely with
linework. Nor did Colquhoun ever get around depicting the grim
violence of war via panels with a pair of helmets in the air instead
of soldiers getting shot, as you often saw in 1970s American war
comics.

Pat Mills was very lucky to have Colquhoun to illustrate his scripts.
As noted above, the artist had spent two years drawing the adventures
of Johnny Red, which was left in the capable hands of John Cooper.
Mills himself had actually been away from Battle for some
time, after launching the comic and devising its initial seven series,
and was writing Ro-Busters for Starlord, later to be
folded into 2000 AD, while researching this story. He wrote
the series until January 1985, penning 294 episodes before a dispute
over researching fees ended his involvement with Battle,
leaving writer Scott Goodall to continue the story for a further 86
installments of an older Charley fighting in World War Two.

Mills' run on Charley's War is arguably the highest point in
a career just full of peaks and pinnacles. There's a humanity to this
series that's very unique in comics, with both the British and German
lines filled with believable, sympathetic, terrified characters. The
terror is perhaps the most important part. Fear of death makes people
act without logic or sense, and when coupled with power, it turns
people into monsters, willing to act with inhuman cruelty towards
others. The British officers who happen to be stationed far behind
the lines are inured against the carnage in the trenches, but the men
they have in harm's way abuse their power constantly. Charley
narrowly avoids being shot in the head for falling asleep on sentry
duty at one point, and is sent on punishment detail to be strapped
onto the wheels of a huge cannon at another. When the trenches are
overrun, Charley's company, in an underground bunker, is ordered out
one at a time for individual executions, a scene of needless brutality
that illustrates how desperate men can resort to inhuman cruelty to
relieve stress.

Charley's War is a mostly linear story, beginning in 1916,
but it takes a fascinating detour about 18 months into its run to tell
the story of "Blue," a deserter from the French Foreign Legion, and
his experience at Ft. Vaux at Verdun, a few months before Charley
enlisted. In this storyline, Charley, while on leave, meets Blue in
London while he's on the run from military police, and agrees to hear
his story. It's an amazing tale of desperation, with the men trapped
under siege for weeks without reinforcements and supplies running low.
It's so bleak that, when Charley returns to the front, it's almost as
though Mills was showing mercy to the readers.

Titan Books has been collecting Charley's War in a series of
annual hardcover albums, each of which reprint 25-30 episodes.
They're gorgeous editions, and full of supplementary information
including new forewords and episode-by-episode commentary by Mills,
and historical background to the war. The reproduction is mostly very
good, although some of the episodes from 1980-81 which originally had
color pages suffer a little bit from the grayscale treatment. The
sixth of these books was released in October of last year, and they
have been so successful for Titan that they have slowly expanded their
line of reprints from the comic's archives, issuing a Best of
Battle omnibus last year, and planning to release the first in a
proposed series of Johnny Red hardcovers in the spring. The
Charley's War series is one that every good library should
own, and should not be too difficult for curious readers to track
down.

New URL for Trouble with Comics

Starting immediately, Trouble with Comics is moving to Tumblr, with a new URL of http://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/. You can also subscribe to our new RSS feed: http://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/rss. This is in response to Blogger ending its support of FTP publishing. Please update your bookmarks and thanks for your interest in Trouble with Comics.

TWC News with ADD

* Looks like Jog is taking his weekly rundown of the week's interesting new comics to Comics Comics. Good match, as Jog has pretty much the best taste in the blogosphere and Comics Comics is a place where the best comics are frequently under discussion.

* Also at Comics Comics, and I know I am late to the party on this, Tim Hodler weighs in with some observations on the new Art of Jaime Hernandez book published by Abrams (our own Marc Sobel already posted a response). Not much to add, other than that the cropping issue is much ado about nothing -- as mentioned in the comments, it's limited mostly to non-Hernandez art and done for a good reason, and having now read the book I can tell you it is on of the best-designed (by Jordan Crane) comics-related art books you will ever hold in your hands. Big kudos to Abrams, Crane and author Todd Hignite on creating a real treasure for the ages for Jaime fans. And yes, we need a Gilbert followup ASAP, thanks!

* Johanna Draper Carlson checks in on the latest in the Nick Simmons plagiarism controversy. Comments on the post now approaching 100. Egad. The guy is obviously a thief, he should man up and admit it.

* Chris Butcher is once again liveblogging Previews. Always entertaining to see how the smartest shop manager in the Direct Market approaches the ongoing disaster that is the Previews catalog.

* Commercial interruption: I am auctioning off a nice lot of new, unread books by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (both together and separately), so if you would like to grab a large amount of their work way below cover price, click over to the eBay and have a look.

The Art of Jaime Hernandez

Tim Hodler's got a great post about the upcoming Art of Jaime Hernandez book by Todd Hignite coming later this year from Abrams ComicArts. I can honestly say there is no book, not even Dan Clowes' Wilson, that I'm more looking forward to this year, so I was happy to see Tim gave it a mostly positive review.

But I wanted to respond to some of the points Hodler made in his post, and since I wanted to use images, I decided to post it here, rather than in the comments.

First, Hodler writes:

"I imagine most people first experience (Love & Rockets) in the collected volumes, in which the stories are mostly separated by artist. How many of their fans have never actually read an individual issue of Love and Rockets? The currently produced book-like issues still collect Gilbert and Jaime (and Mario) together, of course, and they still preserve the old brothers-putting-on-a-show feel to a remarkable degree. But for future readers, the original comic-book context—not just the intermingled stories, which often seemed to be commenting upon each other sub-textually (whether or not that was literally the case), but the letters pages, ads, short gags, lists, et cetera—may be as unimaginable, and unimportant seeming, as the context that surrounded serialized Victorian fiction (not to speak of that surrounding ancient Greek poetry!) is to readers of Dickens or Thackeray (or Homer) today."

Having spent years analyzing Love & Rockets, I completely agree with Hodler on this point. The first volume of Love & Rockets was originally conceived as a serialized comic book, and it loses some of its character in the current collections. Here are five things I came up with off the top of my head:

1. Oversized artwork - The original issues were larger than the new collections, and given how dense some of the middle issues get, the larger size opens the stories up and lets them breathe a little bit.

2. Front and back covers - The original issues featured stunning full color front and back cover illustrations, which are absent from the collections. The wraparound decade covers were particularly awesome, featuring scenes with all the major characters drawn by both brothers.

3. Letters pages - Hodler mentions this in passing, and he's absolutely right. The series included some pretty spirited and intelligent letters pages over the years. They also served as a who's who among later alternative cartoonists, showing the tremendous influence Los Bros had on the current generation of artists. Off the top of my head, Ho Che Anderson, Andi Watson, Evan Dorkin and Steve Rude wrote fan letters, and I'm sure I've forgotten some others. The first few issues also included some impassioned essays by Gary Groth that are worth reading for the die hard fans. None of this material has been reprinted.

4. Graphic design - It's an overlooked aspect of most comics, but Love & Rockets, particularly the latter half of the first series, included some amazing design work. The movie poster-style interior cover from issue #43 above, designed by Dale Yarger and Monster X, is something I would gladly frame and hang on my wall.

5. The interplay between stories - From the crossover cameos, like Maria in "Flies on the Ceiling" and Izzy in "Poison River," to the stray panels drawn by the other brother, these little hooks and inside jokes are completely lost when read out of context of the single issues.

Also lost is the subtle influence the Brothers had on each other. For example, Gilbert's storytelling style in "Bullnecks and Bracelets" (in issue #19), which jumps from one character to another in small chapters, was very likely influenced by Jaime's similarly organized "8:01 am to 11:15 pm" from issue #18. Similarly, the narrative style of Jaime's "Angelitas" in issue #45 is clearly inspired by Gilbert's "Pipo" in #43.

A case could certainly be made that the longer, multi-part stories hold up better in collected form than they did in individual issues. Certainly "Poison River," with its additional 50 pages and chapter structure reads better as a single book, yet still, little things are lost. For example, in issue #35, which featured the seventh chapter of "Poison River" and the fifth chapter of "Love & Rockets X." In "Poison River," Luba celebrated her 17th birthday, while in "Love & Rockets X," her daughter Maricela also celebrated her 17th birthday. By presenting the two stories in the same issue, Gilbert offered readers a fascinating contrast of mother and daughter at the same points in their lives. Admittedly, this is not critical to enjoying Gilbert's stories, but it's just one of those things that's lost in translation.

I don't mean to trash the new collections at all. I own them and they're certainly nice, and an incredible price point for new readers. And the sheer quality of Los Bros work is transcendent in any format. In the comments section of Hodler's post, Jeet Heer argues that "it's better to just focus on the stories and forgot about any attempt to re-create the original reading experience." That's probably true for the vast majority of readers, but I share Hodler's sentiment that this is a book that rewards those willing to track down the single issues.

Finally, one last point I wanted to comment on. Hodler writes:

"I keep wanting to see Gilbert’s art. I mean, Gilbert is certainly a near-constant presence in the book; Jaime and Gilbert’s careers are too intertwined to separate entirely in the text and photos. But I couldn’t help wishing to see some of his drawings included as well."

I whole-heartedly agree! I've never understood the people who don't like Gilbert's art. The man is one of the great character designers in comics history, and has proven he's among the greatest writers ever to work in the medium. I know it probably won't happen, but I would personally pay good money for a follow-up Art of Gilbert Hernandez book, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Seth: Dominion Art Show

On Sunday, January 31st, Seth came to London, Ontario for a conversation with curator Andrew Hunter on his Dominion art show - currently on display at Museum London (until March 14th). Seth has built approximately 60 cardboard buildings of his fictional Dominion town, and they have been on display in 5 different art installantions now, each installation being a bit different from the other. 

Originally, Dominion was to be a graphic novel of 5 interconnected stories -- with the connection between the stories being the town itself. Over time, Seth began to construct building of the town so he could better understand it for himself. Along the way he lost interest in the graphic novel, but continues to explore the city.

Here's a blurb from the Museum about the London show:

"Dominion is the elaborate, ever-expanding, work-in-progress of the renowned Canadian cartoonist Seth. An imagined place combining elements of numerous early modern Canadian cities, Dominion captures the spirit of the booming small metropolis at a time of community boosterism and growth."

I've seen Seth speak a number of times now, and he's always articulate and interesting. I went with fellow cartoonist extraordinaire Jesse Jacobs and a couple of others friends to the event.

Here's some highlights from the afternoon: 

About Dominion and Canada

•  Dominion is a fictional Northern Ontario town, but is really more influenced by Southwestern Ontario - especially Hamilton. There is also a lot of London, Ontario in Dominion. Seth likes how the quality of the past lingers into the present in these towns.
• He admits that this is less so today than it was 20 years ago, as "The only place the past really exists is in your memory, which is nebulous and always just out of your reach." 
• Not surprisingly, Seth finds the world today "ugly, cheap and vulgar".

About Art and Cartooning

• When curator Andrew Hunter talks about Canadian art and art schools, he mentions a current distaste or ignorance in young artists about the famous Group of Seven (a group of famous Canadian landscape artists from the 1920s for the uninitiated. Their work is ubiquitous in Canada from postcards & posters to placemats and coasters), Seth's reaction was hilarious:
  
  "Really? I can't see the point in rebelling against landscape art."
Tom Thomson, Snow Shadows, 1917
• Until recently, cartoonists have been forced to find their own ancestors. This has forced them to become collectors in order to learn from the masters who have come before you.
• Seth grew up reading Peanuts, but as a teenager turned to Marvel Comics, he said was: "like going from cocaine to crack."
• There is something about those Marvel Comics that play on adolescent minds - they're like an image of a raging erection going around in the world.
• In contrast, Schulz's work is deeply personal which transmits through his work.    

On his own Cartooning Style

• "I like digression -- where characters ramble on and give more of a flavour to the work. Where what happens is not essential to the plot."
• Cartooning is not drawing, it's graphic design and symbols. It's all about moving shapes around on the page. It's main purpose is as a storytelling medium.
• "Real drawing" is about looking and seeing the world.

My sketch of Seth at the event

Daily Breakdowns 066 - Mothersquiggle

ZVR Adventure #1
Writer - Chris Ryall
Artists - Menton Matthews III, Paul McCaffrey, Gabriel Hernandez
Publisher - IDW Publishing. $3.99 USD

Aside from the cover, Ashley Wood doesn't provide any art in this spinoff from the Zombies vs. Robots miniseries. If you recall IDW's Bloodsucker Tales, an anthology spinoff from the Steve Niles/Ben Templesmith 30 Days of Night books, this is kind of the same idea, but with original writer Ryall continuing with three serials here.

The first, "Kampf," deals with a particularly steadfast soldier in the war on zombies. He has to abandon his wife and child, in order to hopefully keep them safe by killing a lot of what might eat them. To aid in the war effort are a fresh batch of indefatigable robot soldiers. Matthews gives them a simple, perversely appealing design, and the rest of the art is pretty dramatic, and quite similar to lots of videogame cutscenes in the Photoshop faces, but with more of a painterly approach to the scenery and skyline. I'm not convinced he's synthesized the two effectively yet, but it's striking.

"Masques," with art by McCaffrey, is the cute story of the book, about a regular guy finding a bunch of adaptable work robots who will obey his commands, as well as blueprints for an Iron Man style armored suit, which he has now instructed the 'bots to build at the end of this chapter. McCaffrey's style is the most traditional, but with very good computer coloring. I got a little bit of a Moebius feel from it.

Gabriel Hernandez brings an interesting blend of Ash Wood, Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz to "Zuvembies vs. Robots," a perhaps unfortunately timed story set in Haiti, featuring a witch doctor who's going to raise his own army of zuvembies to go up against these viral zombies. There's a big, simply designed robot who's right in line with a Wood design, and some decent humor in his gentle embarrassing of a skeptical Haitian.

I like the premise of the book fine, to show the kind of silly ZVR world as richer and possessed of other tones and types of stories. However, I do think there could have been a little more meat to the book. "Kampf" especially suffered--three double pages spreads on a nine page story seems awfully luxurious, especially when there was more room for story if the inconsequential sketchbook section had been dropped. Not bad, just hope it moves along at a brisker pace next issue.


Milestone Forever #1 (of 2)
Writer - Dwayne McDuffie
Pencilers - John Paul Leon, Mark D. Bright
Inkers - John Paul Leon, Romeo Tanghal
Publisher - DC Comics. $4.99 USD

Look, we all have some hard-to-justify attachments to bad comics from our youth, certain creators, whatever. If Milestone was your thing back in the late '80s, I don't mean to take a dump on it. But I never read any of it, and while I like McDuffie's writing on cartoons like Justice League Unlimited and Static Shock, I just can't overlook how bad this reunion effort is.

I'm not sure what this was originally planned as, but what we have here is a curious first issue that's more of a one-shot and doesn't seem to lead into a second and concluding issue very well. Some hooded, mystical character sees portents of doom and destiny and whatnot in a framing sequence, really nicely drawn by Leon, and then we're treated to a bad after school special about staying out of gangs. Well, more accurately, various Milestone characters are reintroduced and they team up to stop a Jheri-curled villain who leads a superpowered gang with laughable (and very '80s to early '90s) names like Tech-9, Brickhouse (essentially Ben Grimm in a wig), Dogg (a talking bulldog) and Bubbasaur (don't ask). To toughen things up, there's a nice cover with cool stencils and creator credits done like graffiti tags, plus a ilberal use of "bitch" and a squiggle sign where variations of "fuck" would go. As in, "I'm strong as a mothersquiggle," and "I'm standing up to your bullsquiggle." The bad guy blows up real good, and most of the good guys stay together to help keep Dakota City blah blah blah. It's kind of sad because aside from Leon, who has grown as an artist, McDuffie and Bright are very static, no pun intended. Bright's style is stuck in the past, and McDuffie's dialogue wavers between dull and self-parody. Avoid.


Sparta, U.S.A. #1
Writer - David Lapham
Artist - Johnny Timmins
Publisher - Wildstorm. $2.99 USD

The thing I like about Lapham is he goes all out on pretty much every project. Maybe you didn't like Young Liars, but you remembered it, and you could tell he was putting his heart into it. Sparta throws a lot of crazy stuff at the reader right away and part of the fun is the way it challenges you to either jump on or stay behind. We learn a little about this mysterious town that's surrounded by mountains and where everyone plays football--there are over a dozen professional teams! They seem cut off from the rest of the world and seem to have been taught there are no more United States anymore. Their greatest quarterback, Godfrey McLaine, went up to the mountains years ago and disappeared, perhaps killed by a yeti. But no, he's back, in warrior garb and sporting red skin, ready to throw down with the town's blue-skinned leader, the Maestro, the one who makes the choices of which couples get the babies handed out every season.

When you have something fresh and nutty like this, you want a fresh artist, too, and Timmins throws himself into the project. It's heavily photorealistic (I think Godfrey's modeled on Colin Ferrell) but at least he picks his shots well. What Lapham is trying to do here, how deeply he wants to go into political allegory, fantasy, who knows? I'm signing on.

Daily Breakdowns 065 - Wolk Sulk, Suat Hulk

I'm not sure if it's restraint or just an ingrained verbosity that keeps Gary Groth from turning his apology for TCJ.com's painful rebirth into the same aggressive, arrogant and still out-of-it tone about 60 words in with which he began the whole online exercise a couple months back. Just to be clear, I want it to succeed, and I'm not one of those who think it's a total failure. At the same time, I read it much less frequently than I did Dirk Deppey's old Journalista. As many have noted, part of it is that it's not that easy to navigate or find things once they've slipped off the main page. That seems to have been improved a bit, and there's better labeling. So it's not so bad. Still, as good as Douglas Wolk's interview with Kevin O'Neill was, why would you run it in five parts?

TCJ's Kristy Valenti explains to commenter "Wesley," that, "This is a 30,000 word interview, so we are running it in five parts. Each part will have the previous posts linked to at the top, and now on the homepage as well." That's not an explanation, that's just gilding the silly. If I threw a rock through your window and you asked me why I did it, explaining that I had the rock in my hand wouldn't really cut it, right? This is the internet. If someone clicks on the link to the interview, presumably they want to read the whole thing, and as easily as possible.

I don't have any big stake in TCJ making it or not. I hope they do, mainly because even in this form it's still a good way to read some good reviews and interviews and pick up some comics news. I just find some of the thinking here sort of backward. Groth says the crew have been working nearly 24 hours a day to fix things, which I don't really believe, because it doesn't seem like the technical issues are all that complicated. Maybe I'm wrong, which is something it would be nice to hear from Groth, actually. For someone who admittedly doesn't follow the blogosphere, he seems pretty confident about what he can bring to it, and yet so far it's some fairly vague talk about what others aren't doing and what TCJ can do best, like hard-hitting journalism. Well, where is it? Your #1 journalist, Michael Dean, is editing TCJ. Can't someone else take up some of the duties of wrangling more reviews and cracking the whip on blogging activity while Dean files a story? What big comics stories are really being missed, anyway, or not in the depth Groth wants? Danish conspiracy? Con War? State of the DM? Angouleme? Seems like I read these every other day.

It seems to me that "in-depth" is just something that gets thrown around a lot, but what seems like a worthy goal often becomes restrictive. Ng Suat Tong is correct about TCJ.com needing to show a strong editorial hand and clear vision, but I think he's off the mark here when he says, "A website which treats single line blog entries and articles running into a few thousand words with equal weight and respect is clearly one which doesn’t warrant any serious writer’s attention or approbation." Perhaps he is drawing his own line between his own group blog, where roundtables share space with reviews and the results of Wikipedia searches for obscure Star Trek character actors, and website TCJ.com, I don't know. For the record, I liked the Star Trek stuff. What I'm saying is that while you could perhaps more clearly separate the spontaneous, bloggy stuff from the lengthier stuff, the main goal is that it all be entertaining. There's nothing wrong with a fifteen minute review of a comic if it gets the job done. I'm going to go do one right now on some dumb Hulk comics, and that's all they really deserve. What TCJ needs is not necessarily more long pieces, but a higher standard of what runs, a cleaner way to find and view it, and a little more energy. Some, like R. Fiore, have gotten into the spirit, and I'm sure more will follow. But I think it will take more than more design tweaks and unearthing old audio to get the b.o. out of this thing. It's probably going to take some young blood to basically take the thing right the fuck away from Dean and Groth and remake it, louder, funnier, once again taking no prisoners. Right now it's sort of like Mayberry R.F.D.. Lot of the same people, one step further technically, but missing energy and purpose, as well as a deputy and lovable drunk.


Hulk #19 & 20
Writer - Jeph Loeb
Penciler - Ed McGuinness
Inker - Mark Farmer

Incredible Hulk #607
Writer - Greg Pak
Artist - Paul Pelletier
Publisher - Marvel Comics. $3.99 ea. USD

When I started with reviewing those beginning Fall of the Hulks issues, I was in fairly high spirits, not having read any Hulk stuff in years. Now I realize I skipped a couple chapters in this "saga," and I'm wondering if I should even go on. Ah, well, it happens. Hulk #19 finds Loeb writing a reasonably decent Fantastic Four before a generic Frightful Four shows up and nabs Mr. Fantastic way too easily. Most of this is pretty autopilot, right down to a needless Thing/Red Hulk fight before they team up to do...something. Red Hulk has to absorb energy from the Negative Zone for reasons that may make sense later. That's mainly what the issue is about, a lot of bogus action to advance the plot slightly. About the most I can say is McGuinness' Red Hulk is fun to look at, especially the black fingernails.

I missed Incredible Hulk #606, but it's easy to gather that Cosmic Hulk and Dr. Doom slugged it out for a while before Doom was defeated and captured by the Intelligencia (Leader, M.O.D.O.K., Mad Thinger, Wizard, Red Ghost), so that's two of eight right there. Hulk #20 makes much of the strategic battle being waged between the Leader and Red Hulk, and once again it ends up with Red Hulk and Bruce Banner arguing and Red Hulk saying a cryptic line that lets you know he hasn't shown his true agenda yet. Before that happens, Red Ghost and his Super Apes (now Gamma-enhanced) show up to Ororo's birthday in Wakanda and abduct a completely ineffectual Black Panther from likewise ineffectual X-Men Cyclops, Beast and Iceman. Red Hulk is there, too, and at Cyclops' order, they waste their energies trying to fight him while Red Ghost gets away with #3 of 8. One of the more embarrassing outings for the X-Men I've ever seen. I also got a kick out of Red Ghost telling one of his apes to kill Red Hulk. Who is he kidding? Even better, Red Hulk ripped the ape's jaw apart (off-panel), killing him, which somehow led to an enraged Red Ghost punching him unconscious. Hard to get a handle on the power levels here. More stupid than fun, and damn, we have five more superheroes to capture before we even know what the big plan is? Yikes. I liked the typo of "causalities of war," too--it's rare when a mistake sounds smarter than what was intended.


Finally (for now), Incredible Hulk #607 takes this storyline to the Avengers, as Red She-Hulk's part of the plan is to capture Henry Pym. But being the "scientist supreme," as he calls himself twice here (I guess he's in his cocky, Yellowjackety phase), he figured out the plan and takes the fight right to the Intelligencia, but has to come back to try to stop Red She Hulk from killing the Avengers singlehandedly. With all the characters, this issue is a bit busier and more compressed than the others, and maybe that's also just the difference between Pak's style and Loeb's. Skaar is there but isn't very interesting, and as with the X-Men, the Avengers make a pretty weak showing for themselves. The good part of the issue is Banner finally revealing his own motivation here, which is to rescue his wife Betty from the Intelligencia, though from what little we've seen, she may not want rescuing and may not actually be with them. At least this heartfelt (we think) goal gets the Avengers on Banner's side, but still, so far it's all going the bad guys' way, as Pym is captured.

I find myself talking almost entirely about plot points here. Unfortunately, while this last issue finally provided a glimpse of humanity amidst all the green, red and blue muscular characters, there hasn't been much else to talk about. Undoubtedly Pak, Loeb, Jeff Parker and their editor(s) have hashed out the story so that this will all make sense down the road, there isn't really a consistent rhythm or tone to the issues, which is understandable with three different writers, of course. Loeb is blustery and that suits Red Hulk and Samson scenes fine, while Parker and Pak are maybe a little more character-focused. Pelletier is suited to drawing the Avengers, and the glossier coloring fits well with the established style of Bendis' run with David Finch and Mike Deodato, while the more "matte-finish" look works better on McGuinness' art. I haven't read much of how Henry Pym is being written these days to know if he's off, but from what I can tell here, both the X-Men and Avengers are out-of-character enough, or just too darned weak, that I think this storyline is going to have its share of detractors from fans of those characters dropping in to see what they're missing. The story could use someone to like, too, as right now I'm sort of rooting for the Leader.

Daily Breakdowns 064 - Chick Fight

Supergirl #50
Writer - Sterling Gates, Helen Slater & Jake Black
Penciler - Jamal Igle, Cliff Chiang
Inkers - Jon Sibal & Mark McKenna, Cliff Chiang
Publisher - DC Comics. $4.99 USD

There are a number of things I find disturbing about this comic. Let's start with the cover. It's easy to pick on Michael Turner, but I think he can occasionally be effective. Here, though, while it's not the worst sort of static, representative anniversary cover shot, it looks like Supergirl's right breast doesn't really line up correctly, and he seems to have forgotten a ribcage. It's not his fault for the long-sleeve/bare-midriff costume, but why emphasize the saggy cuffs?

Getting to the contents themselves, Jamal Igle makes a pretty competent George Perez imitator. The faces are more on the grotesque side, but then, everyone seems pissed off in this issue. Which brings us to the story. Aside from a couple issues at the end of the Peter David run a few years back, I've never read any Supergirl. I don't know if I'm being unfair, but with seeing any indication on the cover that this issue was the finale of some story arc, I kind of figured the 50th issue would be a bit more accessible, would take a moment or two to introduce new readers to the characters and status quo.

That doesn't really happen here, but comprehension is the least of Gates' problems here. As his name is new to me, I can only assume he hasn't been on the book since #1, so he may be inheriting some of the problems. I guess Lucy Lane, Lois' sister, somehow has Supergirl-type powers, and she's an Army major, and her dad is a very hawkish, anti-superhero general. There's a scene where he finds her in the woods, injured, and is suitably fatherly, but then grows instantly cold when she accidentally kills a soldier with her heat vision. That works well enough, but it's a small scene in the book, which is padded with the doings of minor Superman supporting characters like Gangbuster. It's a tradition with spinoff books that they use characters from the main character's world, to make them seem like their book is essential, part of a rich legacy, whatever. But Gangbuster is really a reach.

The rest of the story involves the real Supergirl, Kara, and Gangbuster infiltrating a hive formed by giant bugs and facing the Insect Queen, who's a hybrid of insect and Superman's high school sweetheart, Lana Lang, who has apparently been like a sister to Kara the past year. After the Queen is defeated and Lana is recovering, Kara tells her she can't be in her life anymore for lying about her illness. Lana sensibly defends herself, saying she didn't know what her illness was and that sometimes you lie to protect people you care about, but alien Kara doesn't understand and flies off. Maybe having seen their relationship develop in previous issues would have made this scene more dramatic for me. As it is, I had some difficult reconciling the innocent, obtuse alien girl with the one who swears a lot in Kryptonian in other scenes. Also, giant bugs are a pretty lame menace for an anniversary issue. Worse than this, though, is the all-too-common way longtime supporting characters are treated, particularly females. Supergirl aside, it seems like any woman who has a connection to Superman has to get some superpowers just so writers have something to do with them. Lana Lang can't just have a full, rich life doing charity work or politics. She has to turn into a cockroach, and even once cured, she's haggard and lined, no longer any kind of rival for Superman's affection. Lucy Lang can't just be Jimmy Olsen's ex or be a source of support or frustration for sister Lois--she has to become an evil Supergirl.

The cover promises "A Tale by Helen Slater," whom a handful of readers will recall was the star of the unsuccessful Supergirl movie. She's actually the cowriter, with someone named Jake Black, of a short backup story where reporter Cat Grant (also now aged and cougary) debates the merits of Supergirl on a contrived, "Meet the Press" type show. Cat rips Supergirl, then the host presents a long speech in her honor, with man-on-the-street clips of Supergirl supporters. It would be pretty wretched but for the Cliff Chiang art.


Power Girl #1-9
Writers - Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti
Artist - Amanda Conner
Publisher - DC Comics. $2.99 ea. USD

Gray and Palmiotti have an easier time with Power Girl, as she's less obviously associated with the world of Superman. Her costume's unique, simple and unashamedly revealing, which is fine as, unlike Supergirl, she's an adult. They also inherit her after what I vaguely recall was some effort on Geoff Johns' part to settle her angst over being stuck in the regular DCU Earth instead of the alternate one in which she grew up, fought alongside the Justice Society, etc. So they have a fairly clean slate.

They get to work right away, having her start a tech firm in her civilian guise of Karen Starr and start interviewing hiring a supporting cast. One arrogant scientist who didn't make the cut will obviously bedevil her in later issues. The supporting cast, which also includes a new girl to go by the name of Terra, doesn't make much of an impression yet, but they're all so nice.

In fact, this book is nice almost to a fault. If so much of the rest of DC's output wasn't so grim and endlessly convoluted and interwoven, this series would be cloying, but it's kind of refreshing at the moment. Power Girl is smart, kind, resourceful and has a decent sense of humor. She's kind of like Spider-Man if he made self-deprecating jokes about his junk bulging in his blue tights.

The stories are cute but maybe a little too light to justify the length they get. Ultra-Humanite wanting to put his "perfect" brain in Power Girl's perfect bod is a fun idea but three issues' worth? And three issues for a story with three reckless but mostly harmless humanoid alien girls who just want to party? Both of these should have wrapped up in two issues each, tops, which was the perfect length for the return of the kitschy, very '60s/'70s alien lothario, Vartox of Valeron, who wants to mate with Power Girl because his race has been sterilized by enemies. That was pretty funny stuff, and with a healthy sexuality to it, playful rather than lurid.

The real star of the book is Amanda Conner, taking her place alongside Adam Huges and the Dodsons as one of the best current "good girl" artists around. She draws Power Girl's ample bosom and barely-concealed butt every chance she gets, but there's something almost wholesome about it. This is a character who must be proud of her body or else why wear such a costume, so Conner approaches the art with the same lack of shame. It's not gratuitous--there's no jiggling or nipple outlines--it just sort of winks at the reader, and indeed, the way she draws the fabric makes it seem thicker and more realistic than the way most male superheroes are drawn. Conner also gets the most out of PG's hair, which is in that great kind of bob that's sexy but no-nonsense, and always falling adorably between her eyes. The hair helps, because it does have to be said that Conner seems to draw pretty much the same face for many of her women--check the full page in #9 with PG, Terra and Satanna.

Aside from some minor, and welcome, JSA cameos, the book is in its own world and unaffected by Blackest Night or anything else going on in the DCU, and it's all the better for it. Aside from the slightly-too-decompressed pace, my only other minor complaint is that it doesn't make a lot of sense for this alternate Earth woman to use so many of our pop culture references. Wouldn't it be more interesting to sprinkle in ones that reference some of our own celebrities in weird ways, as if things developed differently on that Earth? Enjoyable book, though. If it wasn't for the occasional use of "bitch," I'd let my daughter read it.

Daily Breakdowns 063 - Constantine Beat

Hellblazer: Pandemonium
Writer - Jamie Delano
Artist - Jock
Price - $24.99 USD

Hellblazer #260-264 "India"
Writer - Peter Milligan
Artist (#260) - Simon Bisley
Penciler (#261-264) - Giuseppe Camuncoli
Inker (#261-264) - Stefano Landini
$2.99 ea.
Publisher - Vertigo

John Constantine celebrates his 25th year of existence as a character with both a graphic novel and what appears to be a well-regarded run of the regular series. Although created by Alan Moore in Saga of the Swamp Thing (another example of a Moore creation providing steady income to DC for years), Delano did a lot of the work really establishing what Constantine was about, filling in his family history and establishing the chilly, nasty and often British personality of the Vertigo imprint. And he doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of credit for it. Maybe it's that there have been lots of acclaimed writers after him, like Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Brian Azzarello, Andy Diggle. It could also be that unlike those guys, he didn't follow this with something more popular. I confess when I checked his Wiki entry I was surprised to find I had read more of his work than I thought, but a good deal of it was stuff I dropped after an issue or two. Of late, he's done some stuff for Avatar, following the leads of Ellis and Ennis, and a lot of what they publish kind of reminds me of famous filmmakers doing episodes of TV anthologies like Amazing Stories or Masters of Horror: you can find some of your favorites doing some out-there stuff, but never their best stuff, and always on a budget.

I was interested to see what he came up with in his return to the character, though. In Pandemonium we find Constantine forced by the British government to go to Iraq to stop some supernatural serial killer. He accompanies Iraqi Aseera al-Aswari, the alluring woman who helped trap him, not that he holds a grudge. Delano has 120 pages or so to stretch out here, so Constantine isn't just whisky, smokes and double-entendres. There's some charm and respect in his casual, inevitable wooing of Aseera, but Delano also recognizes (and for all I know he established this trait in the first place) Constantine's obstinate, self-destructive side, causing him to get in soldiers' heads to mess with them even when he knows he's being unfair, or his compulsion to escape their supervision and set his own agenda.

I wouldn't call Jock an inspired choice as artist, but when I say that I just mean that after his work on The Losers he would be a natural choice for another gritty, militaristic comic, especially one starring another grizzled, spiky-haired jackass. That said, he has really stepped his game up since then, not so much compositionally but in his use of digital color and texture effects. You really feel the gritty swirl of the sand, the baked-on sweat, the chill when the sun goes down. It's a pretty vague Iraq setting, true, and Delano probably doesn't get quite as much out of it as he can by setting so much of it inside. Unfortunately there just aren't that many genre comics set in far off, real world places, so we take what we can get. The way the story plays out, Delano may have chosen Iraq as one more example of humans used as pawns in games and struggles over their heads, as Constantine is used, and as Aseera is used.

Where the book comes up short is the third act, where Constantine goes up against the demon/evil god behind the stinky-poison-vapor killer as the proxy poker player of a more humane deity. Maybe it's just that I'm not much interested in card games, even ones played with soul coins against mythical opponents, but I think it's more that card games are pretty hard to make exciting in comics. Moreso when the rules aren't explained and Constantine wins with cockiness more than skill. Not a bad effort overall, but there are sure a lot better ways to spend $25.


Milligan is a writer I have tended to like more than Delano, particular X-Force/X-Statix and Human Target. Right there you have some characters who make bad choices and revel in them, who have trouble making lasting relationships. Seems like a natural to write Constantine. And Milligan is pretty good. I'm coming onto his run after he apparently lost that one woman who really got to him (if you're going to write a character who's been around 25 years, why not make your mark and make it early). After a nice transitional issue with Constantine trying to escape gangsters and cops and get out of England on a phony passport (and wow, Simon Bisley's art looks committed for once!), he's off to Mumbai to maybe bring her back to life or save his soul. Of course, that story alone could be kind of dull, so Milligan and Camuncoli give us a colorful blue Indian demon occupied by a Raj-era British colonel's soul. This creature is being fed hot young Indian actresses by a filmmaker and a false British guru (old friend of Constantine's) in exchange for...well, I forget just what they get out of it besides getting to stay alive. It's not really that important. As with Pandemonium, part of the interest for a sheltered American is seeing a bit of the culture and crazy-ass deities of another land, with the added zing of thoroughly disreputable British character trying to not only improve his own karma but also to do a little to redress some of the wrongs his country did to India. And like Pandemonium, the climax is kind of weak. It probably would be a bad idea to try to come up with some rules and limitations on Constantine's magic, but it seems more often his ability to bluff or taunt his way through his magical battles makes for unsatisfying conclusions rather than being some intrinsic part of his charm.

What Milligan does do well here is give us a Constantine who's still a scoundrel but also knows grief and may have a little bit of desire to do a good deed if it's not too much trouble. The key is always to surround him with people who make even worse choices than him but also don't have his spunk or good lines. Plus, unlike Delano, who makes Constantine look like kind of an idiot for insisting on wearing his trenchcoat in the Iraqi desert, under body armor, Milligan isn't afraid to mess with the formula, here getting Constantine shirtless and covered in blood as a kind of lure for the demon. Milligan also creates a female character in gangster's daughter Epiphany who's not just a "strong female character" because she's tough, but because she seems to have her own life and goals beyond just propping up Constantine. He might be too stuck on his dead Phoebe to see her potential, but the reader isn't. She seems like a character who will soon be telling Milligan what she wants to do. Aside from the too-easy conclusion, this is good stuff.

Ebert

Hey, just a brief note on something that touched me, which is this Esquire interview with film critic Roger Ebert, kind of a profile on how he's spending his days lately with no lower jaw, an inability to speak or eat solid food. I guess that could be heartbreaking, and sure, the photos are a little uncomfortable, especially for those of us who grew up with the pleasant, salt-and-pepper-haired critic with the friendly, round face and wry good humor on Sneak Previews and At the Movies.

I grew up in a Chicago suburb, so I've known Ebert's criticism most of my life, although we always subscribed to the Chicago Tribune rather than the Sun-Times. Watching the shows was a treasured ritual with my mom up in our "TV room," a little den next to my bedroom, where we might enjoy some Stouffers Creamed Chicken or Creamed Chipped Beef inside puffed pastry shells while watching the show.

I don't want to delve further into those memories, because a) they would make me hungry for that creamy, fattening food, and I'm on a diet, and b) there's no reason to eulogize Roger Ebert, because he's very much alive. In fact, he seems as much or more alive than ever, his challenges our benefit, as he has focused even more on the movies he loves, while also infusing his writing with more personal insight and wisdom than ever. My mom always used to give me one of his fat review yearbooks as a Christmas gift, and I admit there were stretches over the years where I felt like Ebert was getting too soft or finding value in films I thought were mediocre at best. But one thing he taught me, which I've applied to my comics reviewing, is to try to judge the work on its merits rather than what we hope it to be. That is, an autobio artcomic isn't inherently better than Superhero Comic #467, but does Superhero Comic #467 accomplish its goals? Escapism isn't something to look down on. We all seek it, whether in our art or sex or food or other substances. It's tough to be alone with our thoughts and the crushing realities of the world. Entertainment is a noble endeavor, and there are no guilty pleasures.

These are things I've gleaned from Ebert's writing. But from the example Ebert's set with his own life, it's harder to say. I like to think I could face the day not just with stoicism but childlike enthusiasm, but who knows? I haven't experienced his hardships. What I do know is that it has made his writing even richer and I couldn't respect him more. His wife Chaz seems like a rare gem as well.

Daily Breakdowns 062 - Imprimaturity

Tim O'Neil is a writer I've read on and off for years, but without finding that crucial window into what he's really all about. Let's face it, it's not easy to reconcile an academic tone with a love for the work of Mark Gruenwald, particularly the execrable Squadron Supreme. Sometimes O'Neil will write something I enjoy and agree with (his music reviews are always good), and then he'll write something irritating, occasionally seeming contentious for its own sake.

I thought that was what he was doing here, in which he reduced the past decade's worth of comics as a glut of mediocrity. It struck me wrong based merely on my own general belief that of any art, around 80% of it is mediocre/crap, and only 20% or so is good to great. Even taking aside the time I spent trying to keep up with "The Golden Age of Reprints," there just never seemed to be enough time to read all the stuff everyone else thought was goodPlanetes? Maybe this decade. Probably not. And the truth is, like almost anyone else, I get caught up with the mediocrity, and only occasionally is it because it's a work assignment. I mean, I'm reading Fall of the Hulks and Blackest Night right now, and just as a preview of my eventual BN #1-8 review? It's awful.

I read O'Neil's essay as a way to blame largely innocent, generally competent, meeting expectations comics for his own feelings of being displaced as an enthusiast, one whose enthusiasm dated back before comics became respected, cross-platform entertainments. As interesting as the essay was (although it could have used some dates and the timeline was a little confused), by the end of it I felt like O'Neil was kind of doing to comics what hipsters do to bands whose talent has led them to a major label contract. It's not the music that changes but how we change, what life does to us that causes us to hear it differently.

Luckily, I didn't go off half-cocked like I usually do and write something fiery or withering, because O'Neil had a neat trick up his sleeve. In modular fashion, the essay can work on its own, but O'Neil surprised me (and no doubt, many others), with Part Two, in which he puts the blame for his ennui back where it belongs, on himself. I am absolutely praising him here for his self-reflection, even if it's unfortunately probably fair to use his "dancing bear" metaphor to find a comics reviewer's self-reflection at all noteworthy. In other words, it's a shame it doesn't happen more often, but I guess it's not surprising, because to some extent immersing oneself in comics or any medium is to buy into that illusion that time spent in one's room reading about superheroes in one's 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond is a more worthwhile pursuit than going for a walk, interacting with people, taking a class, making your own art or craft.

It's a very difficult thing to do, challenge one's own beliefs, because after all, it's not like we have a separate brain with which to do it. Any parent has had to, in a pinch, clean smutz off their kid's face with their own spit on a tissue, or their thumb, but is that really cleaning? It's hard, so it's understandable that O'Neil vacillates between questioning whether he's the turd in the punchbowl even as he defends his disdain for the so-called great comics he doesn't like. He says Marjane Satrapi paid her dues even while he introduces the idea that she didn't; he accepts that comics are bigger than his need to be in a club of outsiders even as he laments this acceptance. It's fairly extraordinary, and while it's maybe a little short of a breakthrough, in therapeutic terms it's significant progress for the first couple sessions. And somehow, he digs a little deeper and looks at himself a little more squarely in Part 3.

So obviously, the question then is, where does he go from here? Is there going to be a different approach to what he does? Do you take your comics at a degree of remove, so that they'll never get that close again, or do you throw yourself into it wholeheartedly, trying to find that lost innocence, that anything's possible/best is yet to come feeling? Are we encouraged by his following this introspective trifecta with terrific pieces on great Aughts books like Brunetti's Schizo #4 and the Milligan/Allred X-Force? Is the piece on whether Joker or Mr. Zzazs make sense in the real world (as if Batman does) a regression? Hard to say, but a good effort nonetheless. Would that more of us tried it.


Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Special #1
Writers - Mark Waid, Paul Dini, Greg Rucka
Artists - Brian Bolland, Mark Chiarello, Rick Burchett, Don Kramer
Publisher - DC Comics. $5.99 USD

I thought BLODK was canceled a long time ago? I think this was originally done as some sort of bonus in a box set or something, and now available to trick people thinking their six bucks is going towards new, exclusive material. Yep, this is all reprints, some just a couple years old and some going back to the '90s. And like the roughly 350 lb. Batman in Alex Maleev's cover, it has a bloated and unjustifiably self-satisfied feeling to it. Editor Bob Joy put this together with a really kind of pointless idea: let's present one story each featuring James Gordon, Two-Face and the Joker, and we'll preface each one with a brief origin piece for anyone who never saw Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Did anyone need to read a one page Batman Secret Files piece on Jim Gordon again? And while Waid is certainly concise in his origins for Batman, Two-Face and the Joker, and the art by Kubert, Chiarello and Brian Bolland is good given the tight space (and for the last two, it's rare to see sequential work from them anymore), these were just filler pieces from 52 and Countdown, respectively.

So with those, and a fine old 1990 cover from Neal Adams reprinted, we have three actual stories here. The Rucka/Burchett "Falling Back" is a 2000 story I remember fondly, with Batman and Gordon trying to restore their friendship after Batman's abandonment of Gotham during No Man's Land. It maybe rings a little over-earnest now, but fine.

"Double Jeopardy" has some annoying pencils by Wheatley and a sputtering script by Fisch about Gordon cajoling Two-Face to help solve the murder of gangster Boss Maroni, the man who had the acid thrown in Harvey Dent's face that caused his mental breakdown/transformation into Two-Face. Fisch is maybe not letting us into Harvey's head so as to make his motivations for helping more enigmatic and compelling, but to me it just came off uninteresting. Somewhat better is the Dini/Kramer "Slayride," which shows the resourcefulness of the Tim Drake Robin as he tries to keep a cool head when kidnaped by the Joker, on a maniacal spree of hit-and-runs. Kramer doesn't bring much to the table, but I kind of liked Joker's bluntly cruel plan of just running over a lot of civilians to try to make Tim crack.

In this download age, reprint compilations like this one may be going the way of the original motion picture soundtrack. Aside from Chiarello or Bolland completists, I can't see a lot of reason to pick this one up, and there are dozens of other stories that better capture the characters.


Zorro: Matanzas #1 (of 4)
Writer - Don McGregor
Artist - Mike Mayhew
Publisher - Dynamite Entertainment. $3.99 USD

Speaking of old material, Dynamite sees fit to follow their Eisner-nominated Zorro from a different creative team with this oddity, a miniseries that was already several years in the making when Topps yanked the rug out from under the creators a decade ago, not publishing any of it. Not that McGregor was cutting edge in 1999, but at least there's a helluva lot of enthusiasm for the character here. McGregor is, not surprisingly, verbose as all get out, and that leads Mayhew, who I recall had yet to make a bigger name for himself on Vampirella and eventually some Marvel stuff, to...see what I did there? I wrote like McGregor. Anyway, the wealth of expository captions from our young hero, Don Diego, sometimes causes Mayhew to have to be creative an compact in how he gets his visual information across in the reduced space left to him. He draws an attractive Diego, and it touched the childlike part of me to see the diagrams of his underground lair with the secret passages, (primitive) laboratory and so on.

Storywise, it's a lot of setup, which Diego's father wanting him to be more responsible, settled down, and attending to family business. Diego has come up with an excuse for his frequent absence to go administering masked justice, and it's a lot like Bruce Wayne's excuse--he's a playboy, although McGregor needlessly confuses things by making Diego feign being effeminate. There's a cruel, scarred, one-handed villain who inexplicably is a kind of friend to Diego's father, and this man is planning some sort of revenge, but it's not clear what that is. More importantly, it's not really clear what Diego is fighting for. Even in that '90s Antonio Banderas movie, you knew he was fighting corrupt Mexican officials, but here who knows? As such, it's hard to get very interested.

Daily Breakdowns 061 - Ural Nautilus

Weapon X: Wolverine #10
Writer - Jason Aaron
Artist - C.P. Smith
Publisher - Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I'm pretty sure this is my first exposure to Aaron's writing. Marvel seems to have locked up more of the younger, fresher writers the past couple years than DC. Anyway, I was intrigued by the cover, which is badly drawn by Adam Kubert but has the germ of a funny idea to it: Wolverine as ladies' man. Kubert draws such a tiny cocktail glass for Mystique that I have to think he never goes out--maybe he just drinks from a hose in the backyard? He also has to use a sound effect--unusual for a cover--to convey Wolvie's boredom. At least the idea reflects the contents within, as Logan only has thoughts of his new gal, Melita, a San Francisco reporter. Smith draws a leaner, more Jackman-like Logan, and has the honor of drawing the flashback to his loss of virginity (Logan's, not Smith's). Aaron gets to the finish line where there's an unsurprising wrap-up: Melita is the one for Logan, because she accepts him, won't put up with his crap, has her own gig away from the X-Men, and is able to rationalize the severe increase in her chance of being killed due to dating a superhero as no different than the dangers of riding a bus. We'll see how long that lasts and if Aaron has the chops to find real dimension in her character and their relationship. What's funny is how he gets through the issue, with centuries-old Logan acting like John Cusack in Say Anything, leaning on his female friends like Ororo, Rogue and Black Widow for advice. Of course, Lloyd Dobler never had to turn down guilt-free, cyborg ninja sex.


Red Hulk #1
Writer - Jeff Parker
Penciler - Carlos Rodriguez
Inker - Vicente Cifuentes
Publisher - Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

Parker has a pretty good batting average with me, but when you write for Marvel or DC, you do tend to get sucked into crapping out a superfluous story or ten when you're involved in a multi-title event. This could have just been a regular issue of any of the regular Hulk books instead of a new #1, and not a whole lot happens. Red Hulk and Rick "A-Bomb" Jones team up to break into an AIM base for information on M.O.D.O.K.'s new doomsday device. It's a trap, though, designed to get Red Hulk near the old "Cosmic Hulk" clone/robot/something, which gives it the spark of energy it needs to take off. So, basically, our heroes blew it, plus Red Hulk revealed himself as a traitor to old bosses M.O.D.O.K. and the Leader.

Sturdy enough work from Rodriguez but without the power Romita, Jr. and McGuinness have been bringing the Hulkverse of late. I'm still getting used to Rick Jones as a big, spiky blue behemoth, and despite his many years around superheroes, Red Hulk comes off the more sensible, pragmatic one. All in all, you'd be fine to skip this and just catch the next recap page of the next related Hulk issue.


The Indomitable Iron Man
Writers - Paul Cornell, Howard Chaykin, Duane Swierczynski, Alex Irvine
Artists - Will Rosado, Howard Chaykin, Manuel Garcia & Stefano Gaudiano, Nelson DeCastro
Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I'll give it an extra point for a new adjective for Iron Man, although if you're going to use "indomitable," maybe the longest story here, the Cornell/Rosado "Berserker," shouldn't be about failure? It reads a lot to me like an '80s inventory story, maybe something David Michelinie would cook up for the month when Bob Layton got behind or something. A kooky terraforming robot probe designed by Tony Stark for NASA gets its lifelike programming screwed up and tries to turn Earth into an alien world. It's angry at its daddy, Tony, for abandoning it, and in reprogramming it he somehow has some feelings of paternal regret. Not a bad premise, just not done that well here, although I liked Rosado getting into that old school spirit with an abundance of Ben-Day dots.

While that one certainly isn't a real inventory story, Chaykin's "Multitasking" looks more like one, as he draws more of an '80s style of armor. Actually, "multitasking" has lost a lot of its significance, hasn't it? It's like "recycling" or "rebooting,"--something that's so commonplace now it has lost all its initial zing. Anyway, it's an insignificant tale of Tony Stark fielding a number of calls from big clients and friends like Nick Fury (still directing S.H.I.E.L.D.), Captain America and Mr. Fantastic, while fighting a number of minor menaces as Iron Man. It's notable only for Chaykin's art, rarely seen in just black and white (the whole special is colorless, modeled on Marvel's '70s magazines), and his use of the exact same panel composition for each page, which works splendidly. Also, no one draws Stark more like an early '80s porn star than Chaykin. You can almost smell his mustache.

Swierczynski offers probably the most interesting story here, "Brainchild," which finds the granddaughter of Pepper Potts entering the protective monolith where an aged, Howard Hughesian Stark has been cooped up for decades, working on solutions to the real problems of the world without the distraction of fighting supervillains. There's a nicely bittersweet quality to the ending, where she gets him out into the fresh air to see how his ideas have been the building blocks for other scientists to finish and improve upon, but this only makes him feel obsolete. However, my favorite part was when he tells her he recycles his waste into nutrients and then asks her if she'd like something to drink. "Ah, right. You're probably going to pass on that. I would."

In keeping with the Marvel magazine model, there's a text story by Irvine and DeCastro, but as I've written about many times, I just have a big hangup about text stories when I'm trying to read comics. Aside from that, though, it's a pretty entertaining, if mostly forgettable, special, and probably a little more forgettable due to being in black-and-white from artists who are not generally good enough to carry the art on their own, or in the case of Chaykin, who is almost invariably served by thoughtful coloring.


Demo (Vol. 2) #1 (of 6)
Writer - Brian Wood
Artist - Becky Cloonan
Publisher - Vertigo. $2.99 USD

Demo was the first thing Brian Wood wrote that I actually liked. I found the works that got him his first industry attention, Channel Zero and The Couriers, to be pretty childish, petulant, though well-designed and drawn. But from the first issue of Demo on, I felt like he was reaching a new level, focusing on real emotions and with a genuine attempt to understand other people. Part of that may have been in writing for an artist like Cloonan, someone who hadn't yet settled on a style but had at least half a dozen capable-to-very-good ones to choose from, and also because he was writing stories that didn't use car chases or explosions to make their points.

Demo brought both Wood and Cloonan to Vertigo for other series, but they've overcome any trepidations they may have had about trying to catch lightning in a bottle to offer up another six issues together. This first, "The Waking Life of Angels," is a bit further removed from the "young people with superpowers" umbrella under which much of the first series operated, but there is some mysticism here, at least. Our heroine, Joan, has been experiencing dreams/visions of an angel in danger, falling from the upper floor of a cathedral. No one ever said Wood was the subtlest writer, so yes, our Joan is kind of like Joan of Arc, and readers can find out for themselves if she suffers a similar martyrdom for reasons that may be divine or could just be mental imbalance.

I haven't read much of Cloonan's work since the first series. It's lost some of that lovely, chunky inkiness, but while it's more assured, she hasn't lost that essential innocent quality. Even though rough pencils included at the back of the issue show just how hard she works, the end result feels unforced, and both she and Wood have a special working chemistry that doesn't appear to have dissipated. I wasn't absolutely thrilled by the ending, but ambiguity will do that, and all in all it's a quite welcome return.


Ultimate X #1
Writer - Jeph Loeb
Artist - Arthur Adams
Publisher - Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I sure didn't expect to start off 2010 reading a bunch of Jeph Loeb comics, but that's how things work out, I guess. I also thought the reformed(?) Ultimate Universe would be restarting small, but I suppose it's pretty typical of Marvel to start cluttering it up again right away. I actually picked this up not really knowing it was part of the Ultimate Universe at all. I mean, sure, it's got "Ultimate" in the name, but the trade dress is different from Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man and Ultimate Comics: Avengers. I just wanted to see Adams' art.

Adams has never been one to be able to handle monthly deadlines, so we'll see how long he lasts on the book. But what you do get from him is, still, excellent work, for however long he can manage. And clearly, he doesn't adjust his effort based on how important he may think the title in question is, because let's face it, no one was exactly clamoring for another title with "X" in it.

And yet, this is pretty good, even while it has so many familiar elements, not just from various mutant books but also the recent Star Trek movie. Based on one of the variant covers which features a team of heroes including the Ultimate Hulk, Loeb is going to give us a "gathering the forces" arc, each issue focusing on one future team member. This time out, it's Jimmy Hudson, a rebellious, reckless teenager who's a real handful for his parents, James and Heather Hudson. In this universe, neither are Canadian superheroes; James is the sheriff of their small town, Heather his wife.

Like his dad, Jimmy has a thing for redheads, except Hudson isn't his real dad. As he learns from a visiting Kitty Pryde, his father is Wolverine, who died during Loeb's much-derided Ultimatum storyline, but not before recording a Princess Leia-style hologram for Jimmy. Jimmy knew he healed quickly from any injury, and now, with Kitty's prodding, he finds he can extend bone claws from his hands just like his dad, PLUS form metal over them, kind of like Colossus. And that's pretty convenient and easy, ain't it?

It would probably be rather been there, done that, if not for a couple things. Adams, as mentioned above, brings his "A" game, helped enormously by Peter Steigerwald's beautiful coloring (I suppose it's a sign of the times that Steigerwald gets cover billing while the digital inker, Mark Roslan, doesn't). Also, Loeb's use of the elder Hudson narrating, while a little confusing at first, ends up adding a warmth to the proceedings. You know how much the man cares for and worries about his headstrong son, and any kind of focus on the parents of mutant children is a welcome change. Of course, there's a lot more work to do from here, getting readers to care about the other characters, offering Ultimate versions of villains that aren't simply retreads, etc. But it's a better start than I expected.

Daily Breakdowns 060 - Galacta

Galacta: Daughter of Galactus
Writer - Adam Warren
Artist - Hector Sevilla Lujan
Publisher - Marvel Comics.

I haven't checked out any of Marvel's free online content until now, and I have to say that while it could be a bit easier to navigate, good job so far. Lots of fairly current stuff is available as well as some random old issues from the '90s, from what I can tell. And while that wasn't the greatest decade for Marvel, it's cool that they're reaching back a bit and offering these surprises.

And they're also offering web-only comics like this one, which gives us a previously unknown, can't-honestly-be-in-continuity-right? daughter of the Devourer of Worlds, who has pretty much the same costume and same diet, but is otherwise a pretty normal teen girl who tweets. Preposterous idea from Warren, but I'll give him credit for getting Marvel to bite. Navigating the story was a little odd: clicking on the next page arrow just brought you through the same page first, sort of panel by panel but not quite, with some panels suddenly larger or smaller without a lot of rhyme or reason. You get the hang of it.

For a sort of cute, girl-friendly story, Lujan's soft, subtly manga-influenced style works well, and Warren can write a quirky teen girl's thoughts without embarrassing himself. That being said, I don't expect I'll come back for more.

In fact, after reading this, I really didn't feel all that much like doing a review. I just wanted to come up with more daughter of/switched gender spinoffs of existing heroes and villains. Alan David Doane came up with Batroca, which actually gave me some actual story ideas. Hopefully Tom Spurgeon won't mind me mentioning a couple of his winners, Heather the Duck and Klawmentine.

Here are some of mine. Hopefully at worst they are stupid but inoffensive.

Kangela
Nomaid
Speedovary
Valkyroy
Shebomination
Lady Ego the Loving Planet
Shang-Chick, Mistress of Kung-Fu
Black Widower
Arkonnie
Ragwoman
Woman Torch
Male Furies
Nicole Fury & Her Nagging Commandos
Wolveronica
Eve Strange
Justice Ladies Auxiliary
Spawnette
Milord Xanadu
Jill of Hearts
Sons of the Daughters of the Dragon
Grendella
Kravena the Homemaker
Va Vang Voom
Gentlewoman Ghost
Violatrix
Mr. Tree
Sister E
Damedevil
The Confusing Spider-Tran
Cowseye
Queenpin

And since I started this, I can't get the image out of my head of Red Skull with long blonde hair. Wouldn't he be scarier that way?