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?

Daily Breakdowns 059 - The Losers

Jack Kirby's The Losers
Writer/Penciler/Editor - Jack Kirby
Inkers - Mike Royer and D. Bruce Berry
Publisher - DC Comics. $39.99 USD

When Jack Kirby defected from Marvel Comics to DC, he entered into a contract that would have been backbreaking for a lot of artists even back in the early '70s, when he and his peers, those "Greatest Generation" guys, were pounding out pages to put food on the table for their families. Many of these men had work ethics strengthened by military experience as well. They took pride in their work, but the first goal was getting the work done quickly and getting paid for it. Adding to Kirby's time crunch was the fact he wasn't just the penciler, he was also writing the stories and plotting the course of his various series, to the extent he plotted anything out long-term. Flying by the seat of his pants, making it up as he went along--these qualities served Kirby well his entire career.

In this spirit of put-your-head-down-and-come-up-with-something-good, Kirby took on the assignment of Our Fighting Forces, one of several DC war books. Well, maybe he didn't just put his head down. He apparently grumbled about the assignment, as he felt the name of the team he inherited, The Losers, didn't fit his sensibilities. His characters were winners. I really don't know what The Losers were like before Kirby took them on, or how they were depicted after his twelve issue run collected here. But indeed, Kirby's Losers are winners.

Those who knew Kirby have often written of his propensity for telling tales of his WWII experiences over and over again. Whatever pain or horror he may have known in those days was largely private and bleeds through only occasionally in the stories here. But in a way, that's part of why they work. I'm not a great admirer of most war comics fan, but ones I've liked have been intense, realistic and based on actual battles, with clear goals and great attention to detail, like Garth Ennis' War Stories and Battlefields, or they've been humanistic stories dealing with the futility of war, the way it represents our failure as a species, such as Archie Goodwin's Blazing Combat or some of Harvey Kurtzman's Two-Fisted Tales. None of those works bear any relation to The Losers.

So why did I like this? Well, we all contain contradictions. Let's face it, more often than not, comics present an escape from an often grim reality. Reading war comics of any kind, safe at home, is something of an escape, sure, but Kirby's work is in a whole other dimension, and that's why I like it. Joe Kubert may give you the rumpled uniforms and unshaven faces, the grit and steely resolve, but The Losers are indefatigable, colorful, often grinning. They're a team incongruously composed of different branches of the armed forces, working together, appearing in various hot spots where they complete a tough mission together, make no lasting human connections with anyone, and next issue they're somewhere else, another theater of war. There's no debate--they're right to be at war, and whatever mission they're assigned is the right thing to do to help stop the Nazis or Japanese. Kirby never glories in death but doesn't shy away from it, either. Soldiers shoot or they get shot. That's what they do. He respects them enough that each issue even includes pages at the end with his depictions of various Allied and Axis weapons and armaments, insignia, and helmets throughout history.

It goes without saying that Kirby was unique among comics creators, but still, it's hard to imagine anyone else with military experience being able to throw away much of what he knew to be true in order to tell such entertaining but often outlandish stories, like "Devastator vs. Big Max," an over-the-top Freudian, wry, yet gripping tale of brinkmanship between the U.S. troops and the Nazis over whose weapon is biggest. It never happened, and the German Devastator is a pure Kirby creation that would never work (I'm guessing the heat, noise and noxious gases from its use would take out as many nearby Nazis as the Allies and citizens at the receiving end of its bombs).

Kirby comes up with a neat formula for the series that carries throughout the run. A sort of "cold opening" to set up the situation, then we get the title and the details of the mission The Losers need to accomplish. Within this framework, Kirby's able to tell a story of the danger of hubris in "Bushido," a ghost story in "The Partisans," and a good heart curdled by abuse in "Panama Fattie/Bombing out on the Panama Canal," as well as war and idealogy getting in the way of the purity of sport in "Mile a Minute Jones." In his Introduction, Neil Gaiman notes that none of the characters in these stories get what they want, and that's an astute observation, at least on the part of Panama Fattie and Jones and the others who grab the spotlight for an issue or two and then are killed or just left behind when the mission is over. What's interesting is that Kirby, perhaps carrying an aversion to the whole "loser" label, spends as little time as possible on the team of Captain Storm, Johnny Cloud, Gunner and Sarge. In some issues, Cloud would appear to be the leader instead of Storm, but aside from the two-part Panama Fattie story, where Storm showed real affection for Fattie and regret over the route her life takes, they're largely interchangeable cyphers. The same can be said of Gunner and Sarge, who are kind of the Johnny Storm (youthful exuberance) and Ben Grimm (sincere, stolid neighborhood fella) of the quartet, but much more hastily sketched. If the missions were more boilerplate and without Kirby's range and grandiosity, the thin characterization would be more of a problem, but most of the time readers will just be enjoying the imaginative action sequences to care.

Once again, few other war veteran cartoonists would be able to ignore their own backgrounds to create such bigger than life fantasy, but I think "would be able" is the wrong way to put it. I think this is how Kirby saw the world, and even his past went through this filter where every detail was enlarged, foreshortened, warped for maximum drama, or swapped for something better, like his subconscious was rewriting his own history. It's enjoyable to try to pick up the few bits of less-submerged feeling here, such as his obvious affection for the science fiction comics-obsessed soldier in 'Devastator," who obviously is meant for better things than war but will do his part regardless, or the obvious contempt for Nazi cruelty, and ceremony over compassion, in the first and arguably best story here, "Kill Me with Wagner."

Final Days of the Emergency Dental Comic Sale!

Please click over to my blog for a list of remaining comics and graphic novels, which I'm selling way below cover price to try to raise funds for my daughter's dental work later this week. Take a look and see if there are any titles that interest you, and thanks for your support!

Daily Breakdowns 058 - The Death of Captain America Omnibus

The Death of Captain America Omnibus
Writer - Ed Brubaker
Pencilers - Steve Epting, Butch Guice, Mike Perkins, Luke Ross and Roberto de la Torre
Inkers - Epting, Guice, Perkins, de la Torre, Rick Magyar and Fabio Laguna
Publisher - Marvel Comics. $64.99 USD

A common thread running through much of Ed Brubaker's work is redemption. Those who noticed this from as early as Lowlife and Deadenders up through current series like Criminal may have wondered what he could bring to Captain America. Cap is Marvel's Superman, not in terms of power but in leadership and impeccable moral fiber. Cap has rarely needed to redeem himself for anything, although now and then he takes it upon himself to try to redeem America's values.

Whether consciously or not, Brubaker's first two years on Captain America found him using Cap as the ultimate support system to help other characters redeem themselves. There is no character in the Marvel Universe who has given more idealistic speeches over the years, but Cap's best moments as a character are usually one on one, when he holds out a hand to help someone who's lost their way. This has happened with Hawkeye, Falcon, Nomad, and after an exciting two years of surprises, it happened for his first partner, Bucky. Or, it was starting to happen, and then Cap was shot and killed.

Death is rarely permanent in the world of superhero comics. Indeed, Bucky Barnes was one of the few Marvel Universe characters no one tried to bring back until Brubaker, probably because his death added a gravity to Cap and the otherwise boyishly gregarious exploits of the WWII depicted in Cap's Golden Age adventures. It's not for me to spoil anything that happens after issues #25-42 collected here. Whether Steve Rogers is dead or not is hardly the point, anyway. The stories here are about the redemptions of Bucky Barnes, former mind-controlled Soviet assassin Winter Soldier, and current mind-controlled SHIELD agent Sharon Carter, who killed her lover, Steve Rogers at the prodding of Red Skull and Dr. Faustus.

Reading this in collected form is a treat. After the shock of Cap's shooting, Brubaker doesn't offer any surprises on the level of the return of Bucky or the Red Skull's unusual sharing of his enemy's body, but he keeps a very consistent groove of just enough plot development per chapter, mixed with fairly strong character work. He's working with the inevitable but keeping it interesting. After all, if you're going to bring back Bucky and make him bad, there has to be a chance for him to become good again. As mentioned above, that's what Cap is all about, seeing that spark of goodness in someone and bringing it out again. It's just that this time, Cap's gone, and Bucky has to do it on his own. It's a very clever idea to have Cap have written a letter to Tony Stark to look out for Bucky. It not only shows how much more fatherly and compassionate Steve Rogers is than most superheroes, but it also gives Tony a chance to honor Steve's memory and mend some fences. Redemption all around. It's also pretty believable that the pragmatic, manipulative Stark would convince Bucky to take on the mantle of Captain America as well. As Bucky goes from murderously vengeful to honored, intimidated and eager to impress Cap's former partner The Falcon, it's impossible not to root for the guy. And the retcon of a past, unresolved love affair with the Black Widow is a terrific idea for both characters. Most writers haven't known what to do with her, romantically, aside from having her show up now and then to get her ex Matt Murdock to come out for some fresh air.

Sharon Carter's own redemption arc is a bit more problematic. Her horror at what she's done and her lack of control of her own body and mind are well done, and her comeback moments are fine, too. Why she had to wear the Sterankoesque '60s butt-hugging body suit, I'm not sure, and her brief pregnancy with Steve's baby was maybe a bit too much tragedy piled on top. It's more acceptable for Bucky to define himself by his relationship to Steve, because he was his sidekick and doesn't remember much of his life after that. It's a little different for Sharon, who has had many clearheaded adventures and lived most of her life away from Steve, so it would be nice if Brubaker would delve into her personality and history more rather than just seeing her as Steve's girl and a sleeper agent. That said, Brubaker has done an excellent job of making her, Bucky, Widow and Falcon a tight unit of caring professionals, so the groundwork is laid for many more good stories for them. And for that matter, who doesn't want to see Skull, Sin and Crossbones come back?

So, overall it's quite a successful continuation of an already acclaimed run. Cap's death and Bucky's return are not just gimmicks but the bases for compelling stories with good characterization. Brubaker works in some elements of the current Marvel Universe, namely Stark as SHIELD director and the Superhuman Registration Act, but there are no guest stars or digressions away from the main story. Helping keep the momentum up over the eighteen issues here is once again, Steve Epting, but he's also aided by Perkins, Guice and de la Torre, all of whom keep to the basic template Epting has created. That's pretty tough to do, so some credit has to go to editor Tom Brevoort for picking the right guys with complementary styles. Alex Ross and Epting came up with the final version of the Bucky Cap costume, and aside from a perhaps unnecessary shininess to it, it's mostly successful, the bottom black half symbolizing the darkness Bucky brings to the role while that same darkness highlights the chestplate/shoulders, which, as always, symbolize Captain America's ideals.

So Long, Mr. Salinger!

A couple years ago I wrote a review of Grant Morrison’s controversial prose issue of Batman (#663) which, despite its excessive length, I was quite proud of. The basis of my analysis was a comparison of Morrison’s story, especially his unusual use of narration, to J.D. Salinger’s infamous “Hapworth 16, 1924.” Salinger has long been one of my favorite writers; so much so that several years ago I voraciously tracked down and read all of his unpublished stories online. I also reviewed Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters here. Although I am saddened by his death, like most fans, I’m also excited by the prospect of 50 years worth of stories finally coming to light. Imagine if Alan Moore had stopped publishing after Watchmen and you kind of get a sense of the anticipation most Salinger fans have lived with for decades. Anyway, despite the fact that it's mostly about Grant Morrison, in honor of Mr. Salinger's passing, I’m reposting my review here unedited.

Batman #663
By Grant Morrison and John Van Fleet
Published in March 2007 by DC Comics, US $2.99

Believe it or not, Grant Morrison’s “The Clown at Midnight”, published in Batman #663, has a lot in common with J.D. Salinger’s final published short story, “Hapworth 16, 1924.”

Having crafted The Catcher in the Rye, one of the most celebrated American novels of all time, Salinger was at the apex of his profession when he wrote “Hapworth.” But when the story first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker in June of 1965, the initial critical reaction was one of distinct outrage.

The crux of the problem was Salinger’s unconventional use of language. “Hapworth,” which is the sixth published tale in Salinger’s series of stories focusing on the eccentric Glass family, (the others include “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Franny,” “Zooey,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” and “Seymour: An Introduction”) is extremely long-winded, with paragraph-length sentences often encompassing dozens of only tangentially related ideas. The story is written in a manic, rambling, almost incoherent stream-of-consciousness style, in this case as a letter from seven-year-old “wise child” Seymour Glass to his parents from summer camp. The voice Salinger evokes is so academic, so laden with obscure literary references, faux-religiosity and neo-classicism (which, even allowing for creative license, seems implausible when attributed to a seven-year-old) that most readers, even those with Ivy League educations, felt lost and frustrated with the “impenetrable text.” As Janet Malcolm of the New York Times Book Review writes, “it was greeted with unhappy, even embarrassed silence…The critical reception…was more like a public birching than an ordinary occasion of failure to please.” As a direct result of the story’s unprecedented critical backlash, Salinger famously decided to stop publishing his writing.

Of course, the comparison of J.D. Salinger and Grant Morrison, a literary master to, of all things, a Batman writer, may sound absurd, but the strong public outcry against Morrison’s story within the online comic community is not unlike “the public birching” that Malcolm describes. For example, FreakComics.com’s Joe Louis writes in his review, bluntly titled “Batman #663 Sucks REALLY Badly,” “For those of you who didn’t have the extreme displeasure of reading Batman #663, don’t bother. It is not a comic book, it is a novella, and a badly written one at that. Yep, that’s right I said it: Grant Morrison wrote a terrible short story and it got shoved in to the pages of Batman #663 with some horrible art by John Van Fleet.” Tucker Stone, of the Factual Opinion, writes a similar, if less reactionary assessment, stating that the story “seems a bit thrown together, like a late night prequel while (regular artist Andy) Kubert finishes penciling the upcoming chapters,” and goes on to call the issue “a bit off-putting.” Even Joe McCulloch (of Jog The Blog), the comic blogosphere’s critic-laureate, proclaims that the book “winds up about fourteen pages over my personal limit of overextended metaphors and raised-eyebrow faux-pulp.”

But as Janet Malcolm wrote about Salinger’s reviled and misunderstood “Hapworth,” “negative contemporary criticism of a masterpiece can be helpful to later critics, acting as a kind of radar that picks up the ping of the work's originality. The ‘mistakes’ and ‘excesses’ that early critics complain of are often precisely the innovations that have given the work its power."

“The Clown at Midnight” features the highly anticipated return of the Joker, who has been absent from the DC universe after being shot in the face. More significantly, however, this issue marked Morrison’s return to the character after an 18 year gap since his Arkham Asylum graphic novel with Dave McKean was first published in 1989. Though critics remain divided as to the quality of Arkham (interestingly, Jog describes it as “the single shittiest comic Morrison has ever written on his own”), few can dispute that its portrayal of an insane Joker leading a veritable circus of lunatics running loose in the asylum was, if nothing else, unforgettable.

Yet within days of its release, the flood of critical disdain for Batman #663 began. Like Salinger, by far the overwhelming majority of these criticisms focused on Morrison’s unusual prose style. At his excellent blog, “I Am Not the Beastmaster,” Marc Singer writes that “the faux hard-boiled narration…is just bad,” also describing it as “overheated” and “overbaked.” Other critics found similar dissatisfaction with Morrison’s excessive use of metaphors and description. Jog calls the book a “soggy shock show” that’s “just badly written,” while Don MacPherson, at his “Eye on Comics” blog, complains that the book is “marred by…unnecessarily verbose descriptions of peripheral details.” Several critics even extracted individual sentences which struck them as particularly potent examples of Morrison’s “mistakes” and “excesses” and cited them, out of context, as evidence of their conclusions.

While these criticisms are not without some merit, Morrison’s language is actually perfectly suited for its subject matter. The writer uses this “overheated” narrative style not simply as a vehicle for moving the story forward, but as a tool to infuse it with a frantic mania, giving the story an overall sense of insanity. While, admittedly, on an individual sentence by sentence basis, some of Morrison’s conjured images do fall flat (Chapter 2’s descriptions of Gotham City are probably the most glaring examples), the onslaught of outlandish metaphors has the overall effect of creating the sound, rhythm and mood of a madman’s ranting. For example, in Chapter 6, Morrison takes us first inside the Joker’s cell at Arkham, and then drops us right into his head, at the height of his madness. Morrison’s prose matches the chaotic mood one would expect of such a bizarre setting. He writes:

“In the white empty cell, the flat, pressurized silence is relieved by these three things only – the crawling ticks of fluorescent lighting, the slow crackle of breathing – if breathing sounded like paper being torn and torn again and torn again, obsessively, into tiny scraps – and the pin-thin whine of a mosquito that rode in on Batman’s cape and now finds itself locked in a madhouse with something bad for company.

No movement registers either until you look very closely to see the jaws working in stealth beneath surgical gauze and pins. Don’t even think about those sly mandibles chewing down on some poison mantra as the dreadful eyes track the poor mosquito’s lazy flight-path, the way a spider’s might, triangulating its victim.

He’s scrolling through a list of things that make him laugh. Blind babies. Landmines. AIDS. Beloved pets in bad road accidents. Statistics. Pencilcases. BRUNCH! The Periodic Table of the Elements.”

Morrison’s style here is as intentional a device as it is fitting, and like the Joker has done time and time again, it happily calls attention to its own eccentricities. The sheer stylistic madness of the narrator shares an element of the Joker’s madness, crafting wildly imaginative, disturbing and hallucinatory metaphors that are both cringe-inducing and absolutely perfect for this particular tale. Despite the many complaints about Morrison’s use of “purple prose,” it is this wholly distinct and original voice that is the book’s greatest strength.

Another of the common criticisms leveled at Batman #663 is that Morrison offers nothing new in the Joker/Batman paradigm. Jog refers to the issue as “a rather typical Joker story,” adding that “by the final page it’s pretty clear that it’s just more Batman, more Joker, more Harley Quinn, another slugfest, another imprisoning, another run around themes that have been worked out a dozen times before.” Marc Singer expresses a similar sentiment, citing that “Instead of break out of that paradigm, ‘The Clown at Midnight’ looks for a new way to present the same old homicidal Joker” (referring to the classic take on the character established by Denny O’Neil and Neil Adams in the late 70s).

Of course innovation in mainstream superhero comics is a difficult proposition. The editorial constraints inherent in writing superhero books are daunting. You cannot kill off characters (with the rare exception), good must triumph overall, status quo (usually that which was established within the character’s first year of existence) must always, eventually be restored, and action (specifically violence) must govern each story. In addition, most of the more well-known mainstream books have been around for nearly a half century – Batman for more than seventy years – so the volume of back-story, continuity, and popular understanding of a character of such iconic stature greatly limits a writer’s options. This sentiment was perhaps best expressed in Steven T. Seagle’s classic Charlie Kaufman-esqe graphic novel, It’s A Bird, in which the writer’s struggle to find anything original to say took center stage, while the character of Superman became merely a prop.

Yet, despite the claims of some critics, this latest Joker story is much more than a simple variation on a familiar theme. Morrison has delivered a unique and wholly original take on the character which not only takes this weight of history into account, but attempts to do something new stylistically as well. The key to Morrison’s new Joker is the concept that he is perpetually reborn, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Using this idea, Morrison has found a clever way to reconcile the cumulative history of the Joker without changing the fundamental elements of the character, nor discarding any of the variations that have come before. He has also created a novel approach to explain the Joker’s progressively deteriorating state of mind, while also commenting not only on the fixed, cyclical nature of the Batman/Joker duality, but on the nature of mainstream superhero comics in general.

This concept of “perpetual rebirth,” as applied to the Joker, was first introduced in Morrison’s own Arkham Asylum graphic novel, though back then he referred to it as a “superpersona.” Buried in the middle the Arkham’s erratic script, Dr. Ruth Adams, a psychotherapist to the criminally insane, first introduces Batman, and readers, to this theory on the Joker’s “super-sanity”:

“Unlike you and I, the Joker seems to have no control over the sensory information he’s receiving from the outside world. He can only cope with that chaotic barrage of input by going with the flow. That’s why some days he’s a mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer. He has no real personality. He creates himself each day.”

Though Arkham Asylum did not explore this idea of the Joker’s perpetual self re-invention further, (focusing rather on the duality of Batman’s identity), the concept of rebirth remains a familiar theme in Morrison’s body of work. As Timothy Callahan, author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years, points out, “ritual and transformation are the centerpieces of (“The Clown at Midnight”), just as they are in Arkham Asylum, only this time it’s the other side of the mirror that’s featured.”

But what exactly is this transformation the Joker undergoes? How exactly does he “create himself”?

The key to understanding this concept requires an understanding of another related theme that pervades much of Morrison’s body of work: the blurring of the popularly understood concepts of space (the “universe”) and time (“continuity”) in the fictional world of comics. In Morrison’s classic run on Animal Man in the 80s, the writer deconstructed the largely artificial concept of “continuity,” expanding the borders of the superhero universe to include, quite literally, everything that has ever been written (though, no doubt for legal reasons, this concept was confined to the "DC universe” only), regardless of continuity. His “comic book limbo,” where long-forgotten characters reside, waiting until they are resurrected by modern writers, was one of the most novel concepts from that revolutionary series, and the idea that stories could intersect in ways that were previously unimagined, is a theme that continues to influence Morrison’s current writing.


In “The Clown at Midnight,” Morrison returns to this idea again, but here the writer takes it one step further, granting the Joker, not macro-awareness of the real world, as he did with Animal Man (in the classic final issue of Animal Man, the main character meets Morrison, his creator, face to face and suffers the ultimate revelation: that he is merely a fictional character), but rather an acute self-awareness of his broader context, his full history. Jog picks up on this as well, noting that “the Joker is acutely self-aware of his many different characterizations over the years, and…his lack of any ‘core’ personality has dropped him into a pattern of necessary reinvention.” This is a key point the casual reader may have missed in the deluge of prose. Morrison’s Joker is not only aware of his colorful history, he has full memory and perspective of his many different incarnations throughout his seventy years of existence. Indeed, in Morrison’s story, this revelation is the very source of the Joker’s madness.

Morrison sheds light on this self-awareness in Chapter 8 by acknowledging the major historical transitions in the Joker’s character:

“His remarkable coping mechanism, which saw him transform a personal nightmare of disfigurement into a baleful comedy and criminal infamy all those years ago (he is, here, referring to the Joker’s origin and early exploits in the late 30s and 40s) – happily chuckling to himself in the garage as he constructed outlandish Joker-Mobiles which gently mocked the young Batman’s pretensions in the Satire Years (presumably the 50s) before Camp (undoubtedly the 60s), and New Homicidal (from Denny O’Neil forward), and all the other Jokers he’s been – now struggles to process the raw, expressionistic art brutal of his latest surgical makeover.”

In a scene which Marc Singer describes as “arresting,” Morrison goes on to describe the Joker’s frightening transition and rebirth:

“Multiple Joker voices vie for control as he prepares to give blasphemous birth to himself like the Word of God in reverse. His only regret is that Batman isn’t here to witness his obscene display, his rampant pathology in full flower.”

Ultimately, the Joker’s rebirth is a physical manifestation of the creative process, a painful awareness of new hands pulling the strings, accompanied by a profound sense of disillusionment that none of it matters, for the cycle will begin anew before too long. This new spin on the Joker explains not only his varying depictions over the years, but casts the character’s evolution and 70+ year history into a new light. The ultimate irony, of course, is that Batman has not been granted such self-awareness, and, as the Joker points out in his endless frustration, all he wants is for “the goddamn Batman to finally get the goddamn joke.”

Morrison also uses this concept of “rebirth” as an interesting and unique way to pay homage to many of the past Batman creators. His prose narrative with scattered spot illustrations, which is more short story than sequential art, is not actually a unique concept. As Timothy Callahan notes, “this issue pays homage to a prose Batman story, entitled ‘Death Strikes at Midnight and Three’” published in 1978 in DC Special Series #15 by Denny O’Neil and Marshall Rogers. “Both titles share the word ‘Midnight,’ which probably isn’t a coincidence,” Callahan notes. Callahan also points out that Morrison himself attempted a similarly-styled Batman story in an obscure UK publication very early in his career. “Two years before he published Animal Man and Arkham Asylum with DC Comics, he contributed a prose story entitled “The Stalking” to the 1986 Batman Annual published in England. The story, a three-page narrative with illustrations by Gary Leach, describes Catwoman’s excursion into the Batcave as she attempts to uncover Batman’s secret identity.”

But “The Clown at Midnight” actually pays tribute not just to the prose writers of the past, but to every creator who has worked on the Joker since his first appearance in Batman #1 in 1940. From the more obvious artist references like “Aparo Bridge” and “Finger Street,” to the more obscure inclusion of two minor characters from Alan Moore’s classic one-shot, The Killing Joke (circus sideshow henchmen, Solomon and Sheba), Morrison is clearly going out of his way to acknowledge the many great Batman creators of the past. In fact, this issue contains many familiar elements that can be traced all the way back to the Joker’s earliest appearances. In Chapter 2, for example, Batman displays a playing card discovered at the clown funeral massacre which is a clear indication that the Joker was behind the murders. The card Batman holds contains the very first image of the Joker from Batman #1, the famous playing card face by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson. Marc Singer also calls attention to the similarities this current Joker story has in common with the classic “Joker’s Five Way Revenge” (from Batman #251) by Denny O’Neil and Neil Adams, which “recast the Joker as a vicious murderer for the first time since the early forties.” In that story, which was deservingly included in DC’s Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told anthology, the Joker murders four of his ex-henchman, each in a cruel and creative manner, all the time leaving carefully crafted clues to lead the Batman on a chase like some helpless rat struggling through yet another booby-trap laden maze. “The Clown at Midnight” clearly draws its underlying “henchman murder’ sub-plot from this classic issue. And as noted above, Morrison even pays homage to himself. “Morrison attempts to canonize his Arkham Asylum interpretation of the mutable multiple-personality Joker who burns through ‘superpersonas’ like a Vegas dealer runs through decks of cards,” Marc Singer notes.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Morrison’s concept of “perpetual rebirth” is also a keen commentary on the enduring status quo of iconic comic book characters. Mired in countless origin stories, series re-launches, new creative teams and endless retreads, the classic DC and Marvel characters (not to mention all the superhero rip-offs published by others) are all, in a sense, stuck in a cycle of endless rebirth. Each writer and artist brings to the character a slightly different voice, a different look, a nip here and a tuck there, but for the most part, these changes are cosmetic. They are never drastic enough to fundamentally change the character’s core personality or appearance, which, in the strict editorial shackles of a licensed and copyright-protected corporate property, cannot be altered. But it is these subtle variations, the result of decades of storytelling by hundreds of different creators, which Morrison refers to when he discusses the “multiple Joker voices” (in fact, it is these varying styles that infuse most superhero comics with what little entertainment value they still retain). It is a particularly apropos analysis of the state of superhero comics, and Morrison’s exposure of this deeper truth within the thematic layers of his “rather typical Joker story,” shows the writer’s superb understanding of the nature of the industry.

John Van Fleet’s artwork has also been the subject of much scorn by several prominent online critics. Marc Singer referred to it as “plasticine” while Jog wrote that “the thoroughly disappointing illustrations…weigh the story down with computer-augmented chintz.” Don MacPherson calls the art “stiff” and “confusing,” while Joe Louis complains that it “looks like bad video-game screen cuts (which) don’t capture any sort of drama, suspense, or action that normal comic art might do.”

While, of course, in comics, as in all art, there is always subjectivity and bias on the part of critics regarding the aesthetic value of the work in question, there is no doubt that Van Fleet’s computer animation style is well-crafted. The artist’s style, which relies heavily on photo manipulation, painted art and CGI-like effects, may not appeal to everyone, but his compositions, figure poses and characters are competently rendered, and his use of colors, lighting and perspectives is impressive. At its best, it’s imaginative and downright creepy. His image of the Joker, having just removed his facial bandages after extensive reconstructive surgery (above) is perhaps the single most horrifying portrayal of the character, and certainly conveys the insanity that befits Morrison’s script.

The main problem is that Van Fleet’s art struggles to justify its own existence. In such a dense narrative script, the artwork is almost irrelevant. In a more traditional comic, with actual panel to panel action, the artist’s digital style works much better (see the artist’s work on the Vertigo mini-series Shadows Fall for an example), but here, Van Fleet is forced to punctuate a story which already overwhelms the reader. As a result, the art feels crammed into the text, squeezing out what little space it can find on the crowded pages. At best, these are visually striking spot illustrations whose sole purpose is to give readers a breath before the next dose of “overheated” prose.

Another area where the book falls short, inevitably, given the volume and function of the script, is the interplay between art and text which the best comics (of which Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen remains the gold standard) use to convey story elements. Here, Van Fleet’s art carries absolutely none of the storytelling responsibility, and, as such, serves simply to break apart long blocks of words at its best, and as a distraction at its worst. If there is a failing in the book’s execution, this is it. Even in Neil Gaiman’s similarly-formatted illustrated novel, Stardust, the author knew when to step aside and let his artist convey that which simply could not be as effectively or beautifully conveyed with text.

The other main failing of this particular issue lies not with Morrison or Van Fleet, but with DC’s editorial and design staff who chose the utterly banal and “pedestrian” Andy Kubert cover to hide what is one of the most original Batman stories in years. The stock cover is nothing other than another in an endless string of clichéd Batman vs. Joker images, with nothing new or interesting whatsoever about it. There is no hint of what a radical departure from the previous 662 issues lies behind its cover. It’s not even an aesthetically appealing image, with Batman in an awkward, shadowy action pose staged against the backdrop of a giant, hovering Joker card, inexplicably crying tears of blood. When the editors were willing to take such a bold step as to green light a story which is so far outside the norm of the typical Batman comic, it seems preposterous to then shackle the book with such a mundane cover. It undermines the creators’ attempts at innovation, and is the kind of frustrating, counter-intuitive decision that induces fits in longtime readers and retailers.

If there is one other complaint that has been written time and time again about Grant Morrison, it is that he often bombards readers with dozens of new and interesting concepts, but never lingers on them long enough to flesh them out. This was his fatal flaw in Arkham Asylum, in which he never (until now) explored his own concept of the Joker’s madness. His New X-Men and Marvel Boy runs, for example, were also riddled with seeds of ideas that were never developed. At his best (We3, Kill Your Boyfriend, Animal Man), Morrison has focused on his “bizarre ideas” long enough to deliver a clear and logical conclusion, but whether he fleshes out his new “Clown Prince of Cruelty” long enough to take advantage of his own interesting premise will go a long way in determining this issue’s place in history. Twenty years from now, if readers have a better sense of a Joker whose multiple identities can manifest themselves into a single, ever-evolving character, then perhaps this issue will be looked upon as one of the greatest Joker stories of all time. However, if Morrison, as the writer is prone to, simply abandons this idea, and moves on, then this issue may forever be seen by readers as, at best, a curious anomaly, at worst, a self-indulgent excess and a failure. Don MacPherson expresses this skepticism of Morrison’s commitment to his new Joker, stating that “it’s a novel and compelling take on the character, though I honestly don’t expect the notion to be explored beyond this self-contained story.”

In general, superhero comics are usually too afraid to branch out this far from the norm, and, judging from the general reaction of righteous nerd-rage, for good reason. Comic fans, for all their posturing and angry demands for new and innovative storytelling, do not embrace change. Sure, some minority of them does, but the continued survival of corporate superhero books proves that a built-in nostalgia market will continually consume the products and stories it loved as children. This is not necessarily bad, but the point is that it is often difficult for a market so classically conditioned, so Pavlovian in its blind loyalty, to swallow such a strange and bitter pill as “The Clown at Midnight.” In reality, superhero fans want just enough maturity and characterization sprinkled into their children’s stories to make them feel good about their childish hobby. They want to delude themselves into thinking that comics have grown up, and that the stories are much better than we remember them as kids (which is debatable), but the fact is that superhero comics have not grown up and will never grow up. The “Ultimate Universe” is no different than the regular Marvel universe, and “Infinite Crisis” is just a repackaging of “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”

So in the end, I understand why readers had a hard time with this issue. It’s different, and takes the typical comics reader way outside of their comfort zone. There are no panels, text balloons, or any of the familiar storytelling tropes, and where readers are used to consuming their comics in quick, ten minute snacks, this issue demands your attention for an hour or more.

In that sense, Morrison’s Batman story fails. It is not a comfortable, familiar, predictable reading experience. Nor is it consistent like a bag of Doritos or a Big Mac, where we know what we’re getting even before we’ve consumed it. What’s worse, it’s smart and sarcastic and not quite straight-forward. It looks and feels like no other Batman comic that has ever been published, and like the best David Lynch movies, it requires real thought, a second (and perhaps third) reading, and certainly some degree of imaginative interpretation. It is different, and it is challenging and it knows exactly what it is doing.

Ultimately, while it may not be perfect, “The Clown at Midnight” is utterly original, and as Salinger’s young Seymour Glass writes to his parents in “Hapworth,” "close on the heels of kindness, originality is one of the most thrilling things in the world, also the most rare!"

ADD's Emergency Dental Sale UPDATE!

Please click over to The ADD Blog for a list of the remaining titles in my comic and graphic novel sale, to help raise money to pay for some much-needed dental work for my daughter.

Daily Breakdowns 057 - The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century

The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century
Writer/Artist - Dash Shaw
Publisher - Fantagraphics Books. $19.99 USD

I was rather alarmed to search online and realize I never got around to reviewing Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button, one of the best graphic novels of 2008. This is quite a different animal from that 720 page sprawling seriocomedy/weird romance/exploration of divorce, but that's probably to be expected. After such a huge work, it's natural for authors to scale back, do some shorter stuff, try out some different ideas without the commitment a graphic novel requires. That's sort of true of this book, but it can't be said that Shaw is resting on his laurels, goofing off, or coasting. If anything, the handful of short stories here represent great leaps in, or at the very least previously unseen examples of, his innovative approach to comics coloring, as well as some inventive storytelling techniques. He also swings and misses once or twice, too, but that's fine.

First, though, we have "The Unclothed Man..." to examine. Not a short story, this was originally a series of four two minute animated shorts written and directed by Shaw (with additional artwork from Jane Samborski) for the Independent Film Channel about a rebel in the future bent on bringing humanity back to the almost impossibly automated life in the 35th Century. Shaw's is not a dystopian future in the sense of it being apocalyptic, irradiated and doomed. Rather, it's a placid, dull, unchallenging existence, with the passions and survival instincts of our ancestors largely bred out of us. The first 24 pages of the book are devoted to the series, with some lovely paintings and studies for the series alongside three one-page strips that inspired the shorts, but the majority of the work here are storyboards, often 24 per page. The process is mildly interesting, but ultimately frustrating because Shaw's directing notes are hard to read in this small format, and because storyboard artwork is never meant to be as good as comics or the final animation product. One could question why so much space was given to this, but the IFC logo on the front cover is a good clue. Whether they had anything to do with the book, I don't know, but it's not at all a bad idea to have that logo on the cover, which is striking in itself, its acetate suggesting the qualities of an animation cell. I could easily see someone picking up this book in a bookstore, curious about the IFC connection.

Speaking of the shorts themselves, which can be viewed here, Shaw turns out to have great promise as a director, and his comics strengths are displayed well. Shaw is not really a futurist, but part of the charm is the silly retro quality of some of the designs--both here and in one of the short stories, characters wear helmets of great power and technical sophistication, but they really just look like children's toys, or the designs a child would make of a cool spaceman. I like that Shaw hasn't lost that, even as he playfully lingers on the rebel character clipping his pubic hair to complete his disguise as an art model-droid. The animation itself is jerky, organic, trippy but low-fi, totally in line with the humanistic theme of the shorts.

As with "Unclothed," the short stories are variations on the theme of a man trying to find or retain his identity in a confusing, cold world. There's often a satirical element, as in "Terra Two/Terra One," which has The New Yorker giving an enthusiastic review of a dance performance only unique because it is performed backwards. Perhaps on some level Shaw realizes the story itself, underneath strong art and attractive coloring, is a gimmick more than anything else, a la Benjamin Button, or dare I say, Mork & Mindy? And I say attractive coloring, as it's nice, but I don't see depicting the backwards-living man in blue and his forwards-living paramour in yellow as having a deeper significance, not the way David Mazzucchelli dug deeper with color choices in Asterios Polyp. Still, while it isn't poignant, it's still pretty funny.

Alternating various story/timelines/levels of reality with fields of cyan, magenta or yellow, "Satellite CMYK" is a more successful effort, harrowing, disorienting and sad. Shaw has a gift for finding horror and despair in a simple, friendly drawing style here that would normally be suited to a '60s teen humor comic. The blending of the colors and then the descent into darkness are masterful, with an ending that's nicely ambiguous--it could be hopeful, or just another illusion meant to keep them in line.

"Cartooning Symbolia" looks to be one of the older pieces here, from 2005. It's a long series of funny words invented to convey various emotions, with complex, often brilliant, visual signifiers of those emotions in comics form. Think of a light bulb or broken heart symbol over a character's head, taken to the third power. Some of the other stories almost strike me as juvenilia because of the wild shifts in style and tone, but based on several being from 2009, it seems they're experiments, and produced at a fairly rapid pace. This intense work ethic may explain a certain "living in his head" quality to the work itself (it's nitpicking, but salsa is packaged in jars, never cans), as well as all the protagonists being males, often around Shaw's age. There's a real sense of working through artistic problems and challenges first, with the story second, as in the tale of the would-be screenwriter/gofer on the set of James Cameron's The Abyss, where Shaw employs a series of circles (water tank, salsa lid, hot tub, tape reel, etc.) to little effect, although the dialogue is comparable to a Dan Clowes loser study, or "My Entire High School...Sinking into the Sea!," a flight of fancy that boils down to an escape sequence with triangular panels, an unsure attempt at inking waves, and a particularly ugly coloring decision to do everything in a Photoshop airbrush effect. But that's what experimentation is about. Judging from the examples here, Shaw doesn't seem to repeat things that aren't working.

Much better are stories like "Blind Date 1" and "Galactic Funnels," the latter of which was selected for The Best American Comics 2009. "Blind Date 1" adapts a real episode of the syndicated show, and Shaw lets the awkwardness, forced gaiety and psychological impediment to happiness (the guy, anyway--what's his problem?) speak for themselves, while his cool blues, moody shadows and abstractions add a jazzy sensuality the shot-on-video game/reality show lacks. "Galactic Funnels" is justifiably acclaimed, an assured King of Comedy-style romp through the hollow life of a young man who finds an artist he admires, imitates and eventually tries to absorb. Full of dazzling color choices and smart storytelling that firmly deny this is a satire of the art world, the two key panels are, appropriately, near the beginning and right at the end. We see young Stan Smart toiling away, trying by repetition to lock into his hero Don Dak's real inspiration, galactic funnels, represented by Dak as circles. The splashes of color on Dak's face and the intense look in his eyes makes clear who the real artist is. Dak is obsessed, inspired. Stan is hip, a planner. He slavishly copies, with a compass. His worship appeals to Dak's vanity, briefly, but Dak's muse wins out. There can be only one funnel artist, and his love is sincere. Even when Stan tries to make a small innovation, a new wrinkle to call his own, he succumbs to the impulse of the hack: do the same thing, only bigger.

Shaw ends with what appears to be a new story in storyboard form (although drawn and colored with more of an eye towards publication than the "Unclothed" storyboards) that's another story of disconnection, finding a sort of "Joe the Plumber" instant celebrity trying to deal with his new fame. What's funny is that while his new manager is undeniably a crass womanizer giving him advice that may not help him find a genuine soulmate, the advice is much better for at least getting the ball rolling and starting a relationship than Joe's naked sincerity. It ends up as a nice visual bookend to "Unclothed," a reassuring piece of self-examination from an artist whose star is on the rise, and in its comics/storyboard hybrid format a fork in the road for where his career may take him.

Courtney Crumrin and the Knight Kingdom.

See the finished piece and the sketches throughout this post? Click to see them bigger. Chances are, if you follow comics websites, you probably have at least seen this excellent illo by now. They're all by a personable fellow by the name of Ted Naifeh, whose name should be familiar to you through his wonderful Courtney Crumrin series Oni Press releases, as well as his Burton-meets-Barrie Polly and the Pirates (from Oni as well), and stints drawing Nocturnals spinoffs for Dan Brereton, as well as the first place I saw his stuff, the goth-oriented Gloom Cookie. He is quite simply one of the best artists (and a damn good writer as well) in the field right now, in my opinion; his style is distinctive and idiosyncratic-- you won't mistake it for anyone else's-- with dynamic poses, adroit staging, and sharply realized expressiveness in his figures. As an inker he is a master of contrasts and blackspotting, in the same discussion with the likes of Mignola and Jaime Hernandez, to name a couple. Guess you can tell I am an admirer.

So when I see, on his website's blog, that he is putting these illustrations and sketches out there just in hopes, hat in hand, fer chrissakes-- that someone at DC might deign to give him some work...well, that just blows my head right off my shoulders. From where I sit, why in God's name wouldn't they want him to take a shot at a character, who, along with his extended family, has proved itself to be extremely amenable to widely (and wildly) different interpretations, from the stodgy old Sheldon Moldoff, bland Irv Novick, and dynamic Jim Aparo to the grotesqueries of Kelley Jones and angular Marshall Rogers, from the Kirby-worshipping nostalgia of a Bruce Timm or Darwyn Cooke to the 70's funk of a Neal Adams or Dick Giordano? They should have been calling his number a long time ago- can you imagine the recent Batman: RIP series with Naifeh's art, with the imagination he could bring to bear in interpreting Morrison's scripts, instead of the barely-competent and resolutely mired-in-DC-House-Style-circa-1987 Tony Daniel?

I don't know. Perhaps it's the DC editors' reluctance to look outside the superhero-creators' community; Naifeh may be regarded as an "Indie Guy", and not suitable for a Batman comic, any more than a Seth or Dan Clowes, unless they condescend to start up another Bizarro Comics-type anthology. If so, this, I think, is a mistake. Perhaps they think Naifeh's style would be a turnoff for the modern comic shop patron, who thinks George Perez or (shudder) Ed Benes is the absolute apex of everything comic book superhero art should be. As Ian Anderson once stated on the inside of one of his Jethro Tull albums, "People are geared towards the average rather than the exceptional". Perhaps Naifeh has only just now made his intentions clear, and the brain trust didn't know. By taking this tack, I hope Naifeh has made them aware!

So yeah, not to put too fine a point on it, but I sincerely hope to see a Batman series or story or something with Naifeh illustration work someday. I won't stand on one foot waiting, because it just makes too much sense. But a guy can hope, can't he?

And while I'm at it, even though the man himself has told me he has no interest in the character, I would absolutely love to see a Shade (you know, from Starman) series with James Robinson scripts and Naifeh art. Oh yes, I have a dream.

VON ALLAN: the road to god knows...

I don't often get excited about things any more. Maybe it is my ongoing depression, maybe it is being tired from the sad things of the world, but whatever the reason, it always surprises me when my heart skips a beat. When I got the opportunity to interview a new voice, Von Allan, about his work "the road to god knows" I got excited. Maybe because he speaks in his work about something I am moved by, the plight of others, and my own plight with mental illness. I should say, I have great hopes for this work, and look forward to everyone reading it, especially those who need it. -- Alex Ness

Alex Ness: Your story, "the road to god knows" involves mental illness from a very personal perspective. How did you decide to do it, and why?

Von Allan: When I had gotten my writing and art to a point that I thought I was ready to take a stab at a graphic novel, I knew I needed to tell a story that I could remain passionate about through the entire process. Mainly because I knew that process would be bloody challenging; I was setting out to do something I've never come close to trying before and the personal challenges would be pretty high. Since I came to art late, there would be a steep learning curve in rendering the entire story in pencil and ink. And comics, despite how they've been dismissed historically in North America, are a remarkably challenging medium. There's a lot you need to be able to do – and you need to be able to do it in such a way that it not only doesn't distract the reader from the story but tells the story in a readable way. That latter element, “storytelling,” is something that I find endlessly fascinating.

Anyway, when I was musing about what story to do I explored a lot of different thing. Everything from doing a riff on super heroes to fantasy, but I ruled them out pretty quickly for a variety of reasons. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that the old saw “write what you know” was probably not a bad idea for a first book. Mental illness and schizophrenia is something that's surrounded me for most of my life and it also wasn't a topic that was covered in comics all that much. I figured those two points would serve me well and I think, in hindsight, it was a good choice to make.

Is mental illness more of personal issue to deal with in that it is family, or do you see the need to deal with it as a community more? The reason I ask is that many people who advocate for a cause have a family member who is affected, but to some it is just who they are to reach out.

Oh, I definitely see a need to deal with mental illness on a community (and societal) level. But the most important thing is for someone who is mentally ill to get the help they need and get healthier. While I think “normal” is open to interpretation, being a functioning member of society is one of the the goals of being healthy, I think.. Maybe being one of the results of being healthy, too. Now, getting healthy can certainly be accomplished in-house with family members without involving the community at large, at least in the early goings. I don't know if I'd say it's a prerequisite for getting healthy in the first place and it probably depends on both the individual and the illness.

The problem, though, if it's kept to a more personal and private basis is that the community at large may not be educated that mentally ill people are, for the most part, simply troubled human beings that deserve our compassion and support. Fear, misunderstandings and stereotypes can easily result and that obviously can create feelings of isolation in the mentally ill that doesn't help anyone. The mentally ill person's goal is still to get healthy, but when they eventually start to interact with other members of their community it would be nice if they weren't confronted by fear or hostility, y'know?

In my mom's case, she had an anxiety disorder that went along with the diagnosis of schizophrenia and that only got worse as time went on. She retreated a lot from people around her and that eventually became close to a paralyzing fear of the world. I've never experienced anything like that, but I could see her battling and it was devastating to watch. I often wonder if perhaps there had been more people looking out for her, welcoming her in various community events and the like, things wouldn't have gone that far. I'm speculating, of course, but I do know there really wasn't any type of community outreach in the neighborhood we lived in. And, to be fair, it's a bit of a chicken and the egg argument; it's possible that no amount of outreach would have been able to combat the anxiety disorder at all. Her health was also pretty bad at times and that certainly didn't help the situation, either.

To put it another way, we're better together. Communities are stronger when all its members feel that they're a part of it. People can't be forced to join in (nor should they be), but stronger community ties would probably go a long way.

My mom has Alzheimer’s and thought in her earlier stages she could hide it, as if there were shame attached to it. By portraying your mother, does it not expose her to others in a way she might be saddened? I am not saying it is bad for you to do, but, did she have a sense about her challenges that would make what you are doing uncomfortable?

Well, this is tricky. My mom died in 1994, long before I set out to do this story, so I really have no idea what she'd think about it. I don't think I'm telling tales out of school so to speak, but I'm so close to the work that I could be easily mistaken on that front. If she was still alive I suspect I would have made sure she was OK with some of the depictions in the story. But that said, it's also a fictional work and not pure autobiography. While I drew a lot on my own experiences to tell the story, I certainly played with time to a large extent. That meant that certain events were more compressed than what actually occurred in real life. But the events did happen – it's just a matter of when they happened. Which, of course, kicks the whole thing around again!

So yeah, my suspicion is that I'd have given the final draft of the script to my mom to see what she thought. And then possibly tinkered with it based on her feedback. I certainly don't think she would have hated it, but I could be wrong about that. Would I have chosen not to proceed if she was? Dunno. Possibly, but I believe pretty strongly in this story and even if my mom wouldn't have supported it I suspect I might have gone forward anyway. That said, I think she would have believed in the sincerity of it even if she disagreed with a few things here and there.

In your experience does the health system in Canada respond well to mental illness? You may not know, but if you do, how would it compare to the US?

I don't think our health care system does a particularly good job, but I'm looking at this from the hindsight of my own childhood experiences combined with the media coverage of what the current situation is now. My mom didn't seem to be particularly well consulted with what was happening to her – or if she was, she couldn't communicate details all that well to me. I do know that none of her doctors ever pulled me aside and really explained what was happening with her to me. I also vividly remember my sudden awareness that her own doctors weren't really talking with each other, either. A few issues came up with drug conflicts because her prescriptions weren't being communicated adequately within her network of doctors. I think this is something that's being handled much better now, but is kinda scary in hindsight.

I don't have any experience with the American health care system, so I can't comment on that one.

Do the various systems failures that every health system experiences show through in your work, the layers of mistakes, missed chances to fix something, more?

No, this was something I deliberately avoided, mainly for two reasons. The first is that the story is from the point of view of Marie, so she wouldn't have (just like I didn't) a lot of knowledge of what her mom's care was like. Secondly, I didn't want the story to be commentary on the Canadian health care system without a great deal more research on my part. I was far more comfortable telling the story from the point of view of one family than anything else.

Also, the story is set in the late 1980s, so it would have taken a degree of historical research that would have taken some doing and perhaps not been quite as relevant to the health care system as it currently stands. While I think improvements could (and arguably) should be made, I don't think it would have been fair to make that argument through the prism of the past.

What is your goal for this work?

To tell a compassionate story with believable characters. If it gets people talking about schizophrenia and mental health, then great! If it helps someone in a similar situation to Marie feel less alone and trapped, then that's great, too!

On a personal level, I wanted to do a story that would help me grow as both a writer and artist and hopefully set the stage for future work. From that point of view, I think it succeeded in spades.

What would you say beyond your mother’s experiences were your main motivators to enter into the field of comics with such a work?

Well, I think when you're a new voice and you're trying to break into a new field, you face a number of creative choices. The big one is do you do what the mainstream is doing and try to follow along, or do you set out on a more individual path, knowing that there's more risk and probably fewer sales? In the case of comics, it's pretty simple: do you try your hand at genre work, knowing that more established and seasoned creators have already mined that ground pretty extensively and probably better than you can? Or do you go a more independent route, risking sales potential but doing something very individual and distinctive? I chose the latter, mainly because I knew that sales would be a challenge no matter which path I followed so I might as well do a story that means a great deal to me and one I could be enthusiastic about for the duration of the project. I also knew there would be a lot of bumps and hiccups along the way (whew, boy, was it ever bumpy!), so that enthusiasm was pretty important.

I love comics. I just never thought I could make comics. That I've learned to do it is amazing to me. The learning will never stop, but I'm doing things now that I never dreamed I could do when I was teenager.

What artists or writers or what the hell, just creative people are your inspirations and who would form the most powerful of influences upon the work you do? ...

Well, no single artist or writer made me think, “I gotta do that stuff.” I came to art very late and it was only my growing awareness that most artists are made and not born that made me set out on this journey in the first place. That said, there are many creative people I like: Shane MacGowan, Harry Harrison, George MacDonald Fraser, Matt Wagner, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Shooter, Aaron Sorkin, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Lambert, John Byrne, Mac Raboy, Robert Holdstock, Andrew Loomis, and on and on! Again, not one of them made me think I had to do this, but collectively they all helped shaped a lot of my thinking on art, writing and storytelling.

I'm also going to quote Walter “Killer” Kowalski here: “I credit my success to the practice of ‘Kowalski-ism’: What I thought, I became; What I felt, I became; What I said, I became; I am my inspiration.” Yup, that's it right there. It probably sounds arrogant, but meh – it's true.

Where do you live, are you married, cats, dogs, ...?

Ottawa, Ontario. And yup, married to the very lovely Moggy and we have two cats (a tabby named Reilly and a calico named Bonny) and a husky dog named Rowen.

Does being Canadian help or hurt your ability to reach an audience in the US?

I don't think it matters, though there are pesky details when it comes to currency that can be tricky. The exchange rate makes thing a bit tricky. I'm actually printing the book in the United States for a variety of reasons, but that makes getting it to US-based comic shops very, very easy. Interestingly, I've had a lot more luck getting the book into US stores than I have in Canadian ones (though perhaps counter-intuitively, the Canadian stores are doing extremely well with it). Getting the word out is always the challenge – if enough people are interested in the book, then the customer demand will help build retail support.

The internet, though, also helps a great deal on this front. If someone wants a copy of the book but lives in a city that doesn't have a store carrying it, then there's always Amazon and whatnot to turn to. That's a major change to what retailing used to be like prior to the early 90s.


Von Allan

Quote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Beckett)

My original graphic novel, the road to god knows... (ISBN: 978-0-9781237-0-3) is now available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Barnes & Noble, and other notable retailers.

Click here

ADD's Selling Comics and Graphic Novels CHEAP

Click over to my blog for details on the emergency comic and graphic novel sale I have just posted. Short version is, daughter needs some pricey dental work, so the comics are going cheap. Click over and see if there's anything that catches your eye, and thanks!