Dec
19
2008
That was the only thought I had while reading the final, anti-climactic issue of Marvel’s Secret Invasion limited series, the backbone to the sprawling cross-over event that’s taken up most of 2008. This issue should have been a fast-paced, dramatic climax to the story. Instead, it was flat and rather dry, and the blame must land squarely on the shoulders of the writer, Brian Michael Bendis, and the editor, Tom Brevoort. Both have delivered great work at other times and even on other issues of this title, but they faltered on this the crucial issue of the company’s event of the year.
Did neither of them think that having the action narrated as past events would weaken the impact of what we were reading? Every page of the climactic scenes of the story has caption boxes with dialog between two characters who are discussing the events as having happened some time ago. The first dialog caption, which is on a double-page spread of heroes, villains and Skrulls trapped in a vortex, reads “The battle in New York was fierce”, and right there, it distances us from what’s going on. It also breaks a cardinal rule of comic story-telling: don’t tell the readers in words what you are already showing them in images.
Beyond distancing the reader from what is happening and being somewhat unnecessary, the captions with this dialog get in the way of the art in places, making it difficult to enjoy the action.
The climax of the story itself is sadly predictable: who wins, who loses, who dies, and how some of those characters will probably be resurrected later is no surprise to any long-time comic reader. There are a couple of surprises in store, but since these are mainly to set up the next big cross-over event, they are not necessarily welcome. Too much time is spent setting Dark Reign up, and not enough time on giving Secret Invasion the action-packed and emotional ending it should have had. Overall, a very disappointing finish to a series that started out promisingly, and another lesson to me that I should just not bother with the big crossovers any more.
Nov
28
2008
…or what to give a really young comic reader for the Holidays.
Andy Runton’s Owly is the only truly all-ages comic book I have ever found. Wonderfully simple and charming, Owly is a series of tales about a lonely young owl who has a lot of love and kindness to give, and how his interactions with other animals teach him and them life lessons. The stories are heart-warming, the art is appealing, and the comic is unique.
Owly has no dialog. The stories are entirely told in images, and when the characters speak, it is in further images, making this a universal comic: anyone can get something out of the stories regardless of their age or native language. However, this is not to say the stories are straightforward or dumbed down: the emotion and detail that Mr. Runton manages to convery in each story may surprise you.
If there’s a young child in your life and you’d like to introduce them to comics, this would be a great place to start. I can imagine reading this with my nephew, and having him supply the words, interpret the art, and give the details. And if you’re young at heart yourself, and enjoy a well-told children’s tale of friendship, pick up the first volume (The Way Home) and enjoy.
Owly by Andy Runton, published by Top Shelf. A great book for younger kids and the young at heart. A
Nov
17
2008
A retcon is a change to the continuity of a story that goes into effect retroactively - not only does the change in the status quo affect the story from then on, but it also establishes that things have always been this way, and any older stories that contradict this reality should be ignored or adapted to fit. It is a practice that DC and Marvel engage in regularly, much to the irritation of plot- and continuity-obsessed readers. However, it is not only the Big Two who change established continuity: it can happen in long-running independent entirely creator-owned series like Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise.
If you are unfamiliar with the series, which ended in 2007, at its heart, it is the story of a group of people and how true love, truth and lies, and lust and obsession affect their lives. Initially, the focus is on the love between three characters: Francine, Katchoo, and David. However, as the series progressed and more characters gained voices and importance, the story developed to accommodate them. It is a good comic with many powerful and emotional moments, and with some excellent fully realized characters, and there are parts where the story, art and dialog shine. It has its weaknesses: the mafia-style Big Six organization’s story requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and distracts from the starker and more interesting reality of the main story; and the series arguably goes on for too long, leaving it sagging in the middle. That said, I still highly recommend it, especially the first few volumes, and especially to first-time comic readers.
However, despite being the vision of one writer, there is one glaring inconsistency that makes it difficult to read through the whole series and completely get lost in the world he created.
(The rest of this post contains plot spoilers for Strangers in Paradise.) Continue Reading »
Nov
10
2008
This week, I’d like to look at some of the retcons that have happened in comic books over the years. In case you don’t know the term, a retcon is a retroactive change in the continuity of a comic book series, or indeed a TV series or series of books. Retcons can be as simple as revealing that a character that was shown to have died actually survived, or as major as revealing that a character that was established as a hero was a villain all along. Some are done to keep characters seeming young or relevant, like the current retooling of Carol Danvers’ backstory to have her serve with the USAF in Afghanistan, rather than in the 70s space mission with NASA. Others are done to open up new story possibilities or for dramatic effect. Many are controversial, as continuity can be sacred to fans. Whatever the reasons, no retcon will pass without criticism.
There are also the revamp-type retcons, which DC Comics seem to be very fond of, where the entire history of a series is discarded in favor of a new version: the Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first time DC engaged in this kind of retcon, with changes like “Clark Kent was never Superboy, he only became active when he moved to Metropolis” and “Wonder Woman wasn’t in the Justice League of America from its founding”. This kind of retcon, because it disposes of so much history, can really disappoint fans: how do you handle your favorite series being basically cancelled and never referred to again?
So, join me this week for a walk through some of the best and worst retcons I’ve found while reviewing old comics.
Nov
05
2008
Because the reprint trade paperbacks bear the Vertigo label, people forget that Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man started before the Vertigo imprint was created. It was considered a mainstream DC comic book, with not even a hint of a “For Mature Readers” label on the cover. It was released without a Comics Code seal of approval because of its content, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t on the shelves with all the other hero books. I wonder what other kids in 1988 thought of the comic: I know I didn’t enjoy it at the time.
The Animal Man stories disturbed me. The portrayals of human cruelty to animals were unflinching, without even the safety net of the perpetrators being super-villains: whether scientists engaged in animal experimentation or drunken hunters, it was regular people doing the deed. Even when there were super-hero battles, they were complicated - a dying villain wanting to go out with a bang, for example. The rest of the work - the metafictional examination of the writer as God, and the exploration of the fragility of the human psyche - was beyond me at the time: Uncanny X-Men and The Avengers were more my speed.
Now, as an adult, I appreciate Grant Morrison’s Animal Man as a brilliant, innovative creation. It is one of the best things he has ever written, and the 5th issue, The Coyote Gospel, is the issue that really launched it into new territory. 20 years ago, I read it once and got rid of it; now I re-read it regularly in the trade paperback reprint, kicking myself that I don’t have the original issue anymore.
Continue Reading »
Oct
22
2008
This week has turned into Top Ten week, although I hadn’t planned on it. After re-reading Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct, the mediocre sequel to the brilliant first series, for Monday’s review, I wanted to remind myself of why I loved Top 10. I intended to just re-read a couple of issues of that original series, and as happens with these things, I soon found I’d read all 12 and was pulling Top 10: The Forty-Niners off the shelf. And here we are with another Top 10 review.
Top 10: The Forty-Niners is a prequel to Top 10 Season 1. Set in Neopolis in 1949, when the city that would become filled with super-humans was just starting out, it tells the story of the rocky beginnings of the Neopolis police force. Continue Reading »
Oct
20
2008
The new comic Top 10 Season 2 isn’t the first sequel to Alan Moore and Gene Ha’s 12-issue super-human cop series, but it certainly seems like a far more worthy successor than 2005’s pedestrian Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct. It wasn’t a bad comic book, and I was more than glad of it when it looked like there would be no more Top 10, but looking back at it now, it was a poor substitute.
Paul Di Filippo and Jerry Ordway did a fair job on continuing the story of the Top 10 precinct and its officers, but missed the mark in a few places. Continue Reading »
Oct
16
2008
There was a three-week break between shipments to my local comic book store this time around, so there was a lot to look through. By the way, have you any idea how difficult it is to avoid spoilers when you get your comics later than people in the US? If there’s a comic or storyline coming up that I don’t want to know anything about, I have to stay away from so many web sites, particularly if it’s a big book. We have the same problem over here with movies. I saw The Dark Knight at its German premiere… a good five weeks after most of my friends in the US had seen it.
Anyway, as always, I spotted quite a few interesting books in the large shipment that had come in, Continue Reading »
Oct
14
2008
As I mentioned on Sunday, I finally found Birds of Prey issue 42, one of he few issues of the series I was missing and actively hunting for. A prequel to the series, it is set after Barbara Gordon’s time with the Suicide Squad, but before the first time she contacted Black Canary, and it deals with events that have been referenced but never explained in other issues of the series. The readers know that Power Girl had gone on a mission, and things had ended so badly that she had sworn never to do any more work for Oracle. Even much later, in issue 100, when Power Girl receives an invitation to join the expanded roster of Oracle’s team, she simply says “When Hell freezes over,” and dumps the invitation. I was always curious as to the details of this mission gone wrong, imagining all sorts of scenarios, and now I´ve finally had a chance to read the story.
Continue Reading »
Oct
08
2008
I really wanted to like Paul Jenkins’ Sidekick. I was even excited about it when I saw it in the previews: it was a comedy book at a time when I sorely needed one, DC Comics having torn the Super-buddies to shreds between Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, and it was by an excellent writer. He’d done a great four-year run on Hellblazer, written the memorable Inhumans limited series that made people sit up and take note of the potential in the characters, and co-created the Sentry, an intriguingly complex character. I thought perhaps all that expectation is what killed Paul Jenkins’ Sidekick for me when it first came out, but even re-reading it now, it doesn’t measure up to any of his other work. It’s unremarkable, a little derivative, and worst of all, not particularly funny.
Continue Reading »
