Geniusboy Live On Demand Radio--Episode 1

Hot off the podcast presses! The new, eagerly anticipated first episode collector's item: Geniusboy Live On Demand Radio--The Podcast, Episode 1!

In this premier episode, listen to your host (me, Timothy Callahan), speak with reality TV czar Ryan Callahan about all things comic book and movie related. We talk about the upcoming Watchmen movie, my comic book collection, crazed Duncan Rouleau non-fans, and Flash Gordon, among other useless things. Plus, as a bonus, you'll get a comic book recommendation from a 6 year old and a Simpsons movie review from a 3 year old.

This is just the first in what looks to be a veritable mountain of great Geniusboy Live On Demand Radio podcasts. Don't be the last kid on your block to check it out!

Click on the title of this post to listen to the episode, or download it directly here: Geniusboy Live On Demand Radio Episode 1

EDITED TO ADD: The podcast is currently hosted by a free site, and it may not work all the time. Keep trying! We're going to get some real hosting sometime soon, but this free sit was working earlier...and now it seems to be working again. It's fickle. Thanks to Ryan, you can download Episode 1 more quickly from this page, actually (the link is near the bottom--ignore the ads): Episode 1, Now With Speedier Download!

Michael Allred's Religious Cosmology: Madman

I finished Madman Gargantua, and my final thoughts are the same (but enhanced) as they were yesterday. Michael Allred's Madman, contrary to popular belief, is a deeply religious quest for meaning in an absurd universe.

First, the popular belief. Here's a sample of some Amazon.com reviews of Allred's various Madman trade paperbacks, just to show what I feel is the way most of the comic-reading audience thinks about this series (even though three comments is by no means a truly representative sample--but the following statements seem to capture what I've heard others say about Allred's work):

"This collection is an excellent introduction to the bizarre world of Madman. Mike Allred delivers a brilliant homage to classic sixties 'silver-age' super heroes with all the staple campness and heavy melodrama but with enough early nineties indy-comic irony to keep it all in check."

"Combined here are four or five issues of absolute hilarity done in the pop-art style Allred fans have grown accustomed to. Also included is a little Madman finger-puppet you can cut out if you're in the nut-house. Definitely recommended for anyone wishing their comics to be as light-hearted as the super-hero books of the 50s."

"Fans of Allred's work on X-Force will definitely want to check this out. Madman lacks the cynicism and underlying complexity of X-Force, but Allred's optimistic, light hearted, hero shines in the Madman books. "

And then there's this guy:

"I read it and never got why people love it sooo much. And yeah, Alred is lame illustrator."

Now that last opinion is just wrong. I know some of you will say that it's impossible to be wrong with an opinion, but you too WOULD BE WRONG. Because Allred (or "Alred [sic]") is not a "lame illustrator" by any possible standard. He is one of the greatest comic book artists not only of his generation, but in the history of the medium. He's clearly superior in his artistic skills, but that's not what I'm writing about here anyway. (I just wanted to throw that last "review" into the mix to show you the variety of Amazon.com review standards--and that two sentence comment above was the guy's entire one-star review, by the way.)

What I want to discuss is the perception that Madman is primarily a fun, campy, light-hearted romp. After reading all twenty-seven issues collected in the Gargantua edition, I would say that perception is inaccurate.

True, it is a lot of fun, and it's campy at times and light-hearted at times. But Madman is PRIMARILY, first and foremost, at its core, essentially, a story about finding God.

Click on any of the images I've included here, and you'll see Allred exploring notions of a higher power, one that can by whimsically cruel, as in the top image, which shows the hand of God flicking Madman away from the gates of Heaven. Or as in the image on the left here, which shows a floating Dr. Boiffard describing his newfound perspective on the universe. He advocates a Transcendentalist doctrine--getting to "God" through sheer willpower, using your mind to rise above the physical bonds of the world.

Or, in this Neo-Existentialist splash page, as Madman, who has met "God" (or at least his cruel hand) questions the nature of identity, existence, and purpose in life. Throughout the series, questions are raised, and answers are teased. Just look again at the very top image I've included in this post. It says, in the NEXT ISSUE box: "The Truth about Everything and all the rest..." But, in the next issue, nothing definite is revealed. Just more theories and meditations and mysteries.

Madman as a series, and Madman, as a character, never finds the answers to these essential human questions. It's a story ABOUT the questions, and about the various possible answers, but it's not (at least not so far) about actually giving the answers. And for that I'm glad.

As a devoutly non-religious person, I don't want to read simple religious allegories. I don't want a creator to tell the reader what to believe or what not to believe. So I appreciate Allred's focus on the quest, on the eternal search for meaning in a meaningless world. And I hope the series never reaches a conclusion.

The First Half of Madman Gargantua

Madman Gargantua is the 852 page hardcover collection of Mike Allred's Madman series, dating from the earliest Tundra series through the 20 issue Dark Horse run. I'm only halfway through the book so far, but the earlier stories are shockingly different than I remembered. I actually bought the first, perfect bound, two color issue of Madman when it first premiered, because I had been a fan of Allred's work from what little I had seen fifteen years ago. (He was known as M. Dalton Allred in those days.) I have bought every issue since, although I missed one issue of Madman Adventures that I was never able to track down at a comic shop or a convention.

Nevertheless, I read the issues when they came out, loved the artwork, and didn't really pay too much attention to the story, since I could barely remember what had happened in the previous episodes. I never bothered to go back and read the whole series. Until now.

I've been buying the new stuff, by the way, Madman Atomic Comics issues 1-3, published by Image this year. And I've seen some online criticism about the meandering nature of the plots, and the heavy introspection and metaphysical dilemma in favor of action and zaniness. I haven't felt that way, personally, because I'm just waiting to see where Allred is taking us, and the artwork alone is worth the cost of each issue.

But here's what everyone should realize: The early issues of all the other Madman comic book series (in fact, the first half of the Gargantua) is all about a metaphysical dilemma as well. The entire series is based on it, actually, in addition to other religious concerns.

Yes, I would say that Madman, in retrospect, is a deeply religious work. It's higly concerned with metaphysics and the nature of identity, and it's highly concerned with morality, with Madman, at one point, pondering if good and evil are necessary and what the world might look like if evil were abolished. The notion of God is raised more than once, and none of these concerns or ideas raised by Allred receive any answers (at least in the first half of the book). The series seems to be Allred's attempt to probe the nature of these religious questions, to pose them, to explore them, and to find out where these questions lead.

All the "wacky" yo-yo fighting, disc-shooting, ginchy fun is in the service of this much larger quest for meaning. In fact, the childish toys Madman uses seem to represent his naive, innocent nature.

Except for that one scene in the very first issue where Madman rips a guy's eyeball out and swallows it. That's a pretty wild character inconsistency that we don't see in later issues. But, Madman was trying to find himself back on those first few pages, I guess, and eating eyeballs as a way to intimidate a bad guy was his wrongheaded attempt. He learned his lesson, and so should we: no eyeball eating for us, especially on the path to religious enlightenment.

Comics, Comics, and More Comics

On Thursday, I wrote: "Tomorrow, Judy wants to take the kids to a Children's Museum about an hour away. I wonder if there are any comic shops in that area?"

There WAS a comic shop in the area, and I got a chance to stop by. I thought it was going to be pointless when I saw the exterior, though, because it was all GAMES, GAMES, and MORE GAMES according to the posters and signage. And when I walked through the door, that's what I found: a gaming store that sold a few comics. So, I thought it was going to be a quick stop, but then my daughter (who's three) noticed the Greatest Wonder Woman Stories Ever Told trade paperback, and she shouted, "WOMAN Woman! WOMAN Woman!" (She used to call her "Wonder Melon," but it's advanced to "Woman Woman." She has no problem saying other superhero names, like Green Lantern or Superman, but she can't say Wonder Woman. She pronounces popsicle as popsicable, too.) Anyway, she loves Wonder Woman, although I don't know where that fascination came from, so I bought her that Greatest Stories trade paperback. Now that she had something to look through (and something my wife could read to her as I looked around), I could take more time. (My son got bored pretty quickly, even though he likes comics and games, but I think he was hoping to find video games in the store and was disappointed.)

So, even though I thought the shop would have nothing for me, I found the three glorious 50 cent boxes, tucked away, unlabelled. No sign indicated the cheapness of these comics, but each one was individually marked with a "$.50" sticker, and once I realized that, then I started digging. At first it was all ugly 90s X-Men stuff, but after that, the goodness began. I was able to pick up over 150 great comics, almost all late-Silver Age to mid-Bronze Age DC stuff, like a huge run of the Cary Bates Flash, a stack of Mike Grell Green Lantern/Green Arrow issues, Justice League of America comics from the low 100's up through the mid 200's (including a new copy of Justice League of America #200, which was one of my favorite comics as a kid--so much so that the cover of my copy has fallen off completely because I read it at least a dozen times over the years). Basically, stuff that hasn't really been reprinted, and runs I have read only bits and pieces of. My philosophy is that I'll gladly pay 50 cents an issue for Bronze Age comics I don't already own, so that's what I did.

The owner of the store seemed shocked I was buying such a huge pile of comics from those bins. He said, "I can never get rid of that stuff," and I just said, "yeah." What I was thinking was, "that's because nobody has awesome taste like me, AND you don't have any signs indicating that you actually sell comics." Anyway, it was surprising and cool to find so many comics at that store. That's the end of that story.

Here's another story: I'm going to quickly comment on the new non-Metal Men comics that actually came out this week. (And, no, even though some were excellent, none of them knocked Metal Men #1 off the Book of the Week ranking.)

Gail Simone's tone seems wildly inconsistent in ALL NEW ATOM #14. Not just within the issue, but compared to the previous issues as a whole. A strange installment on many levels.

John Rozum writes a pretty great Scarecrow story in DETECTIVE COMICS #835, and unlike the Ostrander-penned arc over in BATMAN, Tom Mandrake's art looks good here. It's the best work I've seen from him in years, as he rises to the challenge of Rozum's moody, chilling script. This was a really good issue all around. Nicely done, boys.

I probably would have liked JONAH HEX #22 more if it hadn't come out within the same year as Matt Fraction's FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE and Christopher Nolan's THE PRESTIGE. I'm a bit sick of Tesla vs. Edison stories all of a sudden. And Phil Noto's art in HEX is so dark that it's barely discernible. I liked the issue, and I liked seeing the character of Jonah Hex in that science-filled environment, but it's not like we don't already know that he's going to get transported into the future to a post-apocalyptic world where he must use his laser-gunslinging to fight fleshy headed mutants.

Jessie Chambers is badass, as JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #8 proves. This incarnation of the JSA, if you're not reading it, is the all-screwed up, all-the time version. Starman's bonkers, Damage is psychotic, and Citizen Steel has seen his family killed by super-nazis. Hourman's an ex-drug addict. And this issue is all about how Liberty Belle has mommy and daddy issues. I liked it quite a bit, but I'm a sucker for the Chambers family.

SCALPED #8 is another great issue of an excellent series. If you're not buying this comic, then you are dooming it to an early, undeserved death. Please, please buy it. I guarantee it won't last past issue #20 unless you start picking it up on a monthly basis. It's so very good.

I bought SUPERGIRL #20 because Tony Bedard has come aboard as writer, and he's going to tie this series into the Legion somehow, and he's apparently going to attempt to clarify who this new Supergirl is. He's done a great job in his first issue, which is actually the best Amazons Attack story yet. The only good one yet, to be honest.

IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #11. I still love this series, and I don't want it to end. Yet, because you haven't been buying it, you have doomed it (just as you will doom SCALPED). It only has one more issue to go, and you can be sure that I'll pick it up. Don't bother. It's too late for you (unless you bought it each month along with me, then you are awesome and deserve a slow motion high-five).

Aaron Stack seems out of place in MS MARVEL #18, but Brian Reed writes him well enough that it doesn't matter (and, the fact that he seems out of place is exactly the point). I have said it before, and I'll say it again, don't judge this comic by its cheesecake covers. It's good. One of the best Marvel produces.

I have no comment on NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI #4. It is what it is.

To wrap up this needlessly long post, I just want to say that the most surprising book of the summer is NEW WARRIORS. The newest issue, #3, is another very good comic. Paco Medina's art is fun, the characters are interesting, and I don't know who's behind all of the plot machinations. I don't have any feelings toward the original New Warriors at all. They were totally outside my comic book reading scope back in those days. I saw the issues when they came out, and I assumed that a comic book starring Speedball, Night Thrasher, and Nova was probably terrible. So I never opened an issue. Yet this relaunch is a lot of fun, in a dark, mysterious way. You should buy this one.

I need to buy a bigger house for all of these comics.

Book of the Week: Metal Men #1 by Duncan Rouleau

I've only had time to read one comic so far this week, but I'm going to go ahead and boldly declare that Duncan Rouleau's revamped (relaunched? reimagined? retroactive? rad?) version of the Metal Men deserves to have great sales (so buy it) and great acclaim (so rave about it).

To make this review all official-sounding, I'm going to apply the Seven Standards of Comic Book Goodness that I made up earlier this week.

One Standard at a time, let's see how Rouleau's Metal Men #1 holds up:

1. Art which helps to tell the story (and does not detract from it or cause unwanted confusion)
--Yes. Rouleau is an experienced artist who has developed his craft well enough to tell a clear story. The only bits that might be confusing are the bits which are clearly designed to present mysterious events.

2. Art which amplifies and accentuates the themes through visual symbolism
--Yes. Rouleau is a master of expressive gestures and he allows the images to tell key parts of the story (i.e. the ring in Young Doc Magnus's hand, and his nervousness about the whole affair, and the theme of human/machine conflict in the opening sequence, in the battle, and in the final image).

3. Stories which resolve in some way
--Not yet. But it's the first issue of an 8-issue series. And Rouleau sets up a LOT of stuff here, and he surely intends on paying it off. I have faith on this one.

4. Main characters who have more than one facet to their personality
--Yes. Not only do the Metal Men ACTUALLY HAVE personalities again (as they should, and DID NOT in their recent Superman/Batman appearance), but this entire series seems to be about exploring the conflict within Doc Magnus's personality. Is he a romantic? A genius? A cold-hearted egotist? A unselfish pawn? A lonely man who seeks only companionship? A stylish dresser? These are facets of his personality which are set up in just one awesome issue.

5. Something to say about one or more of the Essential Human Ideas (aka themes)
--Yes. By not only focusing on what it means for the robots to act "human," but also exploring Doc Magnus in so much detail (past, present, and future), Rouleau sets up an exploration of the themes of love, family, and most importantly: identity.

6. Narrative consistency (in character, plot, setting, and theme–jumps from one setting to another, for example, should be explained or alluded to)
--Yes. Rouleau does jump around, but he provides plenty of visual and written clues to indicate what's happening and when it's happening (except when he's being purposefully mysterious, once again).

7. Something new to say (about the medium, the genre, the characters, or the world)
--Yes. This issue has already shown aspects of Doc Magnus's past which we haven't seen before, and it seems like that approach will be the focus of the series. Metal Men seems to ask: Who would create a bunch of wacky, personable robots, and why?

So, by the Seven Standards, this issue passes the test of Goodness.

The fact is that there could have been a lot less going on in issue #1 and I still would have liked it for the vibrant artwork and the engaging personalities (and the return to robot on robot action that made this series such a classic forty years ago). But Rouleau includes that stuff PLUS a time travel mystery, a mystic legacy, a notion that things aren't what they seem, and a promise that future issues will reveal the secrets to these strange events.

It's so good, in fact, that I can overlook the strange continuity implications about Magnus being a young man just four years ago (along with, presumably, Ray Palmer). That timeline makes no sense at all, but perhaps that's one of the mysterious things we will have to explore in future issues. But, you know what? This first issue is SO DENSE with information, that I'm not too worried about that one strange time factor (and since time is a central plot point, I think it's logical that the inconsistency might actually be explained later.)

Metal Men #1. Book of the Week, and strong enough to stand up to the Seven Standards and say, "bring it on, because I am awesome."

Two Days, Two Road Trips: This One to Wolkville

So I didn't get to read any new comic yesterday because I was on a road trip with the family. Today, I didn't get to read any new comics because I was on a road trip by myself: a cross-state journey to listen to Douglas Wolk speak at the Brookline Booksmith, nearly three hours from my house.

I like Douglas, and I've worked with him on a Sequart.org piece (and an upcoming Legion project), but I wouldn't have driven all the way across the state just to hear him speak (although I did want to finally meet him in person). After all the great finds yesterday in the less-than-50-cent bin, I decided to spend the day on a trip to some of the comic shops in the state that I've never got around to visiting. I wanted to see what other inexpensive treasures I could dig up.

With the 7:00 PM Douglas Wolk reading as my final destination.

So, I mapped out my quest: First, I would hit my local comic shop to get the new releases I couldn't pick up yesterday, then I'd drive to Northampton and hit a few stores in that college town full of abundantly cool shopping. Kevin Eastman's Words and Pictures Museum used to be right there as well, and even though it's no longer open, downtown Northampton still has some of the hippest stores in the northeast.

Then I'd swing down to Springfield and that area, hit three of the stores down there, before driving over to Boston to visit some of the legendary shops in the Big City. One of the famous New England Comics Stores is, in fact, right across the street (give or take a short block) from the Brookline Booksmith--my very final destination.

Perfect.

You probably know how it's going to turn out.

First of all, after hitting the bank, and Best Buy (to pick up Hot Fuzz and 300, which I hadn't had a chance to get earlier in the week), and then the local comic shop--well, it was 2:00 before I even left town.

So I had to rush in the Northampton stores, not really having time to look through any bins, and managing to pick up what became my ONLY PURCHASES OF THE DAY. (And I had budgeted a few hundred dollars, figuring I could get a million cheap comics on this trip.) I bought a Catalan edition of Joe's Bar by Munoz and Sampayo, the collected Girl Crazy by Gilbert Hernandez, Archie Americana Series: Best of the Forties, Killraven, the McGregor/Russell graphic Novel, and a copy of Superman #400 which features pin-ups and stories by Bolland, Chaykin, Ditko, Eisner, Grell, Kaluta, Kirby, Miller, Moebius, Sienkiewicz, and Steranko, just to name a few. Really great stuff obviously, and I got it all for about $25 total. Good deal. And I thought that would be just the beginning of the cool stuff I'd find at other shops.

Well, it wasn't. It was the end.

Because I only had time to visit one Springfield shop before I had to drive to Boston, and that Springfield shop didn't even have a single sale. Not one back issue box, not a junky pile of old trade paperbacks. Nothing. Just new comics. At full price.

Then, I headed to Boston, except I realized that it was so late I wouldn't have time to stop at any store other than the one across from the Wolk reading. And my Google Maps directions didn't account for that. So I had no clue how to get from I90 to the Brookline Booksmith. I thought I could figure it out. I couldn't.

So I called my wife from the cellphone to see if she could Google Maps me back on course and navigate as I was driving. Yeah, I could have stopped and asked for directions, but I can never follow directions people give me verbally. Or I get the wrong directions. Or I don't trust people. Whatever. I called my wife.

She finally got be back in the right direction, but after an hour of sweating in my non-air conditioned car, utterly lost in Boston, I had missed my chance to even stop at the shop right across from the Booksmith. It was too late. I had to get into the Wolk reading.

And thus, my day-long comic book buying extravaganza ended with Douglas Wolk talking about why comics are so great.

And me? I was just sitting there, wondering when I'd be able to take another road trip to stop at all those other stores I missed.

Tomorrow, Judy wants to take the kids to a Children's Museum about an hour away. I wonder if there are any comic shops in that area?

Better than New Comics Day?!?!

I didn't actually get to pick up any new comics today because I was away from home (on a road trip with the wife and kids), and even though we stopped at a comic book shop on the way back, I couldn't buy anything from this week because the ever-loyal James Arlemagne of Fantasy Realms surely had a big stack of goodness held for me back in town. So I told my wife I would just run in to see what they had on sale. Luckily, my wife didn't feel like inflicting bodily injury today, because once I got into the store, I knew it would take longer than a few minutes. They had boxes of 12-for-$5.00 comics, and the boxes weren't just old Valiant and 90s Marvel stuff. I found some cool things at that great price, and so the family had to find something else to keep themselves busy while I waded through the white treasure chests. (And here's how they kept themselves busy: my three-year old daugher kept singing the "Spider-Pig" song from the Simpsons Movie, my wife looked through the homegoods store next to the comic shop, and my son begged for money to buy some candy. For an hour. Until they all got big lollipops.)

Here's what up at those less-than-50-cents-an-issue prices, and why:

G.I. Joe--Assorted issues, but basically the first year and a half of the series, including the 1st issue, which is certainly worth far more than two nickels. I have about a dozen issues of this series already, but none of the very early ones. I probably won't have time to read these issues right away--they are low on my priority list, but you have to respect the singular vision of Lara Hama and his creation. (Also, I have some vague notion of writing an extended piece on war comics, and this series would provide an interesting contrast to other more traditional tales of combat.) Plus, CO-BRRRRAAAAAAA!

A bunch of Flash comics, including a handful of William Messner-Loebs issues I've been missing and a couple of pre-Crisis Bates/Infantino comics. Here's my history with the Flash comics: I buy them for a while. Then I stop. Then I pick it up again a few years later. And I stop. Repeat. Because of that tendency, the only complete Flash run I have is from the recent travesty known as Volume 3 (also known as "The One Where They Screwed Up Bart Allen Forever and Killed Him To Make Up For It"), and even though I've been trying to fill in the gaps in Volume 2, I still have a few issues left to grab. So it was nice to find them in the bargain boxes.

Mighty Samson!!! Gold Key-tastic. I scored six of these comics from the late 1960s. Unfortunately, they aren't the earliest ones, drawn by Frank Thorne, but I think Jack Sparling worked on these stories (numbered in the teens), and they look to be amazing. My new philosophy is that I buy anything involving dudes with eyepatches and monsters on the cover (and if you can't tell by that image, Samson has an eyepatch--made of RED FUR!). That has yet to fail me as an aesthetic criteria.

My ever-loyal James Arlemagne keeps forgetting to put Jack Staff in my box, probably because I forgot to add it to my pull list and he doesn't order more than one copy otherwise. So, James, remember to add this to my pull list. Because I have the first six issues and I didn't stop buying it on purpose. Paul Grist is the type of artist I would be if I were way better at drawing comics. And, it's fun to see the Marvel Universe analogues pop up.

Comico put out a lot of garish junk, but they also produced some great comics in the 1980s. Jonny Quest might not be one of them, but it's Jonny Quest! And I was able to get an almost-complete run out of the boxes today. The covers alone are worth more than 50 cents each. Look at that Sienkiewicz coolness!

To go along with my ill-determined plan to eventually someday write something maybe possibly about war comics, I couldn't resist a complete run of the first two years of Marvels' The 'Nam. Michael Golden provides the art for the first dozen issues or so, and that makes it worth the price, and even if the Doug Wheeler scripts stink worse than the fetid stench of his Swamp Thing tales, at least I'll be able to look at those Tefe Holland issues more favorably.

When I saw Chase, in the first box I scanned, I knew it would take longer than a few minutes to dig for stuff in this store. I stupidly bypassed Chase when it first came out. I looked through the first few issues and thought "this looks GREAT," but it doesn't have enough costumes in it and I've never heard of it, so it probably won't last very long. Because I knew it wasn't commercial, I gave up on it immediately, rather than have my heart broken when it was cancelled. How dumb is that? I mean, I was right, but still! I should have bought it and enjoyed the stories while they lasted. I should have HELPED the comic survive by actually buying it at the time. I'm glad I'm so much smarter now, so series like Nextwave, Ant-Man, and Blade never have to face such early cancellation because I buy each title regularly.

More Commentary on Grant and Breyfogle's Detective Comics

A month and a half ago, I mentioned my interest in rereading the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle Detective Comics run from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Other diversions have popped up to push that little project aside, but I had a few minutes to look though some of those comics this past weekend, and here are some thoughts on issues #588-597 (originally published from July 1988 to February 1989).

1. Alan Grant seemed to get bored with Gotham pretty quickly. Within a year, Grant had Batman ditch Gotham in favor of a kind of world tour. The premise for Grant's whole series, at least in the early phases, was that it was supposed to be adventures from the "Batman Casebook." That way, the stories didn't have to tie into continuity as rigidly as they might have. So Batman could jump to England, Australia, and Cuba without having to explain his absence in the other Bat titles. The jaunts to England and Australia aren't particularly interesting, with Batman stopping a modern day Guy Fawkes in the former and a bunch of racists and a crazed Aborigine in the latter. The Guy Fawkes issue came out at the same time that DC was promoting the V for Vendetta series, but I don't know if Grant had that in mind as he was writing the story.

2. Bruce Wayne was notoriously absent from these stories. With a few minor exceptions, Bruce Wayne may as well not exist as far as these Grant/Breyfogle stories are concerned. They are all about Batman. And they don't really show Batman doing too much, except following clues to confront the bad guy. And by follow clues, I mean that he didn't even really do much detective work. He just noticed a clue, then noticed another clue, and it became kind of an obvious trail for him to follow. He didn't have to give these cases much thought.

3. Villains are tragic. Grant obviously wanted to tap into the core of the Batman mythos without actually using Batman villains, so his approach was to create a whole series of new, tragic villains. Many of them were just regular guys, twisted by fate or circumstance to commit evil deeds. Their defeat (or death) at the end of each issue was often followed by Batman's stern comment (to himself, in thought balloons) about "justice."

4. Dean Haspiel was quite a terrible super-hero artist. Haspiel, most famous for his work with Harvey Pekar, used to be the assistant to Howard Chaykin, and in the late 1980s he attempted to break into comics himself as a DC penciller. He was featured in at least two "Bonus Book" inserts around that time, one of which is printed in Detective #589. You can see the Chaykin influence, but it's just really flat, stiff, unprofessional work. He's improved tremendously since that time, and I'm sure he's not too fond of the style he used on the Bonus Books.

5. The best issues, BY FAR, are Detective #596-597 and Breyfogle didn't even draw them. In Breyfogle's absence, Eduardo Baretto drew two excellent issues featuring a unique (at the time) villain, in the form of a twisted videographer who got his kicks having his friends beat up on people and recording it. The story predicts future comic book scenarios like the recent "Film Freak" storyline in Catwoman, and it suggests the Bum Fight phenomenon along with the rise of YouTube. Baretto's art is elegant thoughout, and he draws a much sturdier Batman than Breyfogle (whose Batman is all motion and curved angles). The story explores the consequences of violence in a mature and thoughful way, and it also features a great scene in which the recovering Batman (who's in a hospital room), climbs out through the window as the Doctor shouts, "There's a door!" and then gives Batman his medical opinion: "No Batropes! You hear me? No Batropes!"

With that, I'll take a break from Detective for a while to do some of the writing (comic book scripts! Grant Morrison book number two!) that I should be doing (but that won't stop me from reading a huge stack of new comics on Wednesday!). When I eventually get around to posting more on this Detective run, I'll write about the giant Sam Hamm/Denys Cowan three-parter which lead into issue #600.

What Makes a Comic, you know, Actually Good?

After spending a couple weeks discussing ideas like "bad readers," "bad cartoonists," and "what should a good comic have," everywhere from Barbelith, to the Image message boards, to Sequart.org, I thought I had moved on to other concerns, but as I read Brian Cronin's recent post at Comics Should Be Good, I realized that I had discussed the topic but I hadn't actually reached a workable conclusion to the critical question: What Makes a Comic Good?

Here's what Brian posted:

After I recently named a CBR thread “Seven Standards,” everyone’s pal, Alex, posted what he felt (off the top of his head) were the

SEVEN STANDARDS for comics

Alex’s seven were:

1. art that has an evident level of craft.
2. stories that move in meaningful arcs, linear or not.
3. characterizations that are not contrived (unless that is part of the characterization itself!)
4. a sense of design that amplifies the themes of the content
5. thematic depth, so the comic works on many levels
6. thoughtful use of the medium itself to communicate
7. Cohesion of the above

I’d really like to hear what you folks (and any of you comic bloggers out there) would pick as your seven standards for comic.

Here's my response (slightly edited from what I posted at Comics Should Be Good to provide a bit more clarity):

I think Alex’s list is a noble starting point to start the conversation about what makes a good comic, objectively speaking.

I don’t think my feelings or the question of “how much I liked or disliked it” is as interesting as trying to evaluate the qualty of a comic from an objective position. I think it is important (and interesting) to evaluate a work against a set of criteria, and see how it stacks up, but, then again, as I said in a Sequart column, I don’t think a work of art (comic books included) has any obligation to “be” anything.

So any attempt to come up with an absolute list of “standards” is an attempt to slap your expectations onto someone else’s work. In a way, any single “demand” of a comic is as silly as saying, “to be a good comic, it must have at least one fight scene.” (Which was surely an in-house criteria used by mainstream publishers for years, but it’s not a criteria that necessarily helped make good comics. It just helped make comics with fight scenes in every issue.)

Yet, even though I believe the idea of placing expectations on what a work of art should be is severly flawed, I’d rather base an aesthetic judgment on some set of criteria rather than just say, “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” If your entire evaluation is based on thinking like that, then you might as well not say anything, because the automatic reply is, “well, that’s just your opinion.” And that doesn’t lead to much interesting discussion.

All of which is just a long-winded way of saying that I don’t believe that you can come up with Seven Objective Standards, but I’m going to list Seven Standards anyway, inspired by what Alex came up with, but reflecting my own aesthetic (not emotional) expectations:

To be good, a comic (and by comic, I mean the finished form of the work, which could be a single issue, but it could also be a trade paperback collection) should have:

1. Art which helps to tell the story (and does not detract from it or cause unwanted confusion)
2. Art which amplifies and accentuates the themes through visual symbolism
3. Stories which resolve in some way
4. Main characters who have more than one facet to their personality
5. Something to say about one or more of the Essential Human Ideas (aka themes)
6. Narrative consistency (in character, plot, setting, and theme–jumps from one setting to another, for example, should be explained or alluded to)
7. Something new to say (about the medium, the genre, the characters, or the world)

To me, it’s #7 that divides the good comics from the average ones.

That's where I stand on the topic as of today. Those are my Seven Standards. This week, I'll apply those standards to a few comics, and see what happens.

Readers, what do you think of those Seven Standards and which ones do you think need to be changed?

P.S. I also think those Seven Standards apply to prose literature as well, except I would substitute the word "Language" for "Art" in that case.

There's Always a First Time

I was looking at my bookshelves the other day, and this book cover jarred my memory, reminding me that the first thing I ever wrote for an online publication was a review of Consider Phlebas for the short-lived Grayhaven Magazine. I know some of the Grayhaven guys went on to write comics reviews for Aint It Cool News, but that's the last I've heard of them.

Anyway, if you'd like to read my very first book review, from about a decade ago, you can find it HERE.

Back in the day before I was setting the internet on fire.

The Finale: The Golden Age vs The New Frontier

My week-long exploration of Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier and James Robinson and Paul Smith's The Golden Age finally CONCLUDES with a look at the artwork in both stories as I reach my final verdict about these two graphic novels. Check out installments ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, and FIVE for my previous commentary.

The best way to comment about the artwork in these two books is to look at two equivalent pages side-by-side and discuss the techniques each artist uses to tell the story. So here we go, a quiet scene from The Golden Age illustrated by Paul Smith and colored by Richard Ory on the left, and a quiet scene from The New Frontier illustrated by Darwyn Cooke and colored by Dave Stewart on the right (click on the image for an enlargement if you wish):



The first thing you'll probably notice, seeing the pages side-by-side like this is how similarly the pages are laid out. Both artists use a three tier structure and both artists alternate camera distance to create a visual rhythm (by the way, I'll use cinema-related terms like "camera distance" and mis-en-scene as a critical shorthand today, I hope you don't mind). One major difference that these two particular pages don't identify is that Cooke (on the right) uses the three-tier layout almost exclusively throughout the story, maintaining this three widescreen panel look on nearly every page of the book, while Smith (on the left) returns to the three-tiers regularly, but he changes the layout on many, many pages, sometimes going with two or four tiers per page. He also uses more panels to break up the tiers, as you can cleary see in the example above. The effect of the smaller panels is an overhwelming sense of constraint, of visual claustrophobia, perfectly suited for the story. In Cooke's case, his widescreen panels match his boundlessly optimistic tone and the panoramic scale of his narrative.

Also notice that Smith may vary the camera distance from medium-long-close up-medium-close up-medium (with background action in the last panel), but he maintains the same camera angle. Our point of view is waist high (to Johnny Chambers), or the level of the seated and haggard Ted Knight. It never changes , allowing us to stare into the eyes of the lost scientist and see Johnny as a heroic, looming figure. Cooke, on the other hand, radically shifts from a top down establishing shot, to a close up, back to a long shot. The establishing shot-to close up panel transition is rare in comics (and such a transition is rare in cinema, but it reminds us of Sergio Leone, who mastered the technique). The effect on the page of such a rapid shift in narrative distance is to speed up a relatively slow scene. It's just two guys standing and talking, but Cooke makes it dynamic with that transition. His story is literally about acceleration, and his two characters here, Ace and Hall, are two of the most fearless test pilots in the world.

Smith's mise-en-scene seems to be all about texture. The wrinkled, stubbled face of Ted Knight. The folds of the clothes, the sheet hanging over the chalkboard in panel two, the stacks of random papers in panel six. All of this adds to the grunginess of the story, capturing that sense of human-level drama and despair. Cooke's mise-en-scene is all about geometric shapes. The nearly perfect 45% angle of the plane in panel one, the straight lines on the character's faces, the stark, relatively empty background in panel three. Cooke's world is an orderly universe, and only Ace's trail of smoke seems unwilling to fit into a rigid pattern. Cooke's powerful graphic style is simple on the surface, but his compositions give his pages amazing weight and energy. And this story, about technological and social progress, about the machinery of man and the order of the world, belongs as a widescreen, geometric story.

Before I move on to the other sample pages, I need to point out the drastic difference in the use (and quality) of the color. In The Golden Age, Richard Ory was using a relatively new (for the time), hand painted technique, and either the reproduction is absolutely horrible or his color choices are absolutely rotten. Either way, the garish use of yellow, not only on this page, but throughout, and the attempt to provide surface highlights (like on Ted's face in panel three), distract terribly from Paul Smith's solid storytelling and fine linework. Ory seems to want to use the color to add to the book's ground-level "realism," but it just looks sickly. I would love to see this book recolored without all the fussy yellow highlights everywhere.

Dave Stewart is the best colorist in the business, so anyone would look bad next to him, but see how pleasant the colors are in the page on the right compared to the Ory atrocity on the left. And Stewart perfectly captures both the melancholy mood of the scene and the geometric design of Cooke's page. Everything in Stewart's work is balanced, clear, and beautiful, even the painted texture of the runway and the mottled sky.



Here we have two more pages, this time from the climax of each story, and, once again the three-tiered structure remains consistent between both. Even the camera angles are very similar in the top and bottom panels on each page. The major difference in page layout is that Smith (on the left) breaks up the middle action into a before-and-after sequence, while Cooke (on the right) shows us on simple action. In fact, Smith tells more story in his panels, with Dynaman smashing of Green Lantern with a tree, then punching him as GL is trying to get up, then recognizing the arrival of more heroes behind him. Three distinct actions. One per tier, with that extra panel in the middle thrown in to show the evil of kicking a man when he's down. Cooke only shows two actions: Martian Manhunter flying, and Martian Manhunter tearing a beast apart. Once again, Cooke story (both in content and style) is about acceleration, and this page is no exception. Smith's story (with writer James Robinson) is about brutality and "reality."

Which ties into the look of the violence on these pages. Smith makes the violence look painful! His villains stagger and have swollen features and slices on their faces. His heroes are torn ragged and punched into the ground. Cooke, alternately, makes the violence seem heroic. Martian Manhunter is covered in far more blood in that last panel than Dynaman is on his, but the blood pouring over Martian Manhunter seems like more "action-shapes," that the insides of the creature. Note we don't actually see where the blood is coming from, although we can assume it's from that flying dinosaur thing from panel two. But Cooke keeps the focus on Martian Manhunter's face (and notice how he did that establishing shot-to close up thing again), and we see the struggle of the hero (THEMATIC!), not the suffering of the monster. Smith shows us EVERYONE suffering--everyone pays the price for the actions of evil men in The Golden Age.

Ory's color (left) is less of a problem on this page, but it still muddies the image a bit too much for my taste, especially in panel one, which shows a brown tree in front of a brown background. The darker hues on the costumed characters works for the tone of the story, which is fine, but I much prefer the bright hues of Stewart's palette (right) as the Martian Manhunter's red eyes seem ready to burst some heat vision right out of the page. Also, Stewart's blue sky is much prettier. Which is nice.

Paul Smith and Darwyn Cooke are both fantastic artists. Smith, as proven over his long and varied career, is capable of a wide range of styles and artistic approaches, while Cooke sticks to what he does extraordinarily well, a bold, deceptively simple style that somehow combines the best of Jack Kirby and Alex Toth and then makes it even better. I think Smith does an excellent job with the material he's given by James Robinson, and I think Cooke is one of the greatest comic book artists in history. So even though both artists approach their stories with different illustrative techniques, they both do so fittingly.

So the art (at least the linework) is not enough to declare one work clearly superior (although the coloring might be--and The New Frontier wins that one hands down), but I do prefer Cooke's style, personally. He is one of the most exciting artists working in the industry.

So, the final verdict, after looking at The Golden Age and The New Frontier for a week: Not much different than my initial assessment after reading them both last weekend. The Golden Age is flawed because of its inconsistent narrative point of view and it's cheap, brain-swapping revelations. Robinson and Smith capture the disillusionment and paranoia of the time quite well, but it all amounts to nothing except a superhero slugfest in the end. It's 80% of a great work, and 20% of stuff that doesn't quite fit (including the optimistic ending, which seems unearned). As part of a larger, genre-wide trend to make super-heroes more "realistic," violent, and depressing, I'm not a huge fan of its influence.

The New Frontier is flawed, but it's a flawed masterpiece, and I can imagine revisiting the story many times in the future (and I can't say the same about The Golden Age). Cooke tries to include too much in the narrative, and the main threat of Monster Island isn't presented as well as it needs to be, but the book contains dozens of amazing sequences, and it features sharp, engaging characters who flash in and out of the story. The speed of the narrative demands that the book be read quickly, and it works best when read this way, not because it allows the reader to gloss over the weak parts of the story, but because The New Frontier is an overture, and can be best appreciated when all of its notes are heard in rapid sequence. I didn't love it when it first came out, in the completely inappropraite floppy installments, but I loved it after reading the Absolute version a week ago, and I love it just as much after studying it closely all week.

As one final thought: Both The Golden Age and The New Frontier tap so deeply into comic book lore, and I am so deeply imbedded in it myself, that I wonder if either of these works has any merit for a "civilian" reader. And I wonder if, perhaps, the darker, more "realistic" tone would be appealing to a non-comics fan, more so, perhaps, than the wide-eyed optimism (tinged with bits of darkness) seen in Cooke's work. Or would the non-comics fan find both stories completely useless and without merit? Are both works examples of the snake swallowing its own tail? I've already been swallowed by the snake of comic book geekery, so I can't answer that one.

Characterization in The Golden Age: Dragging Heroes to Earth

Today, my week-long exploration of Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier and James Robinson and Paul Smith's The Golden Age continues with a look at Robinson's characterization of the WWII heroes. Check out installments ONE, TWO, THREE, and FOUR for my previous commentary.

While Cooke ignores anyone else's retroactive continuity to graft archetypal personalities onto the early Silver Age heroes in The New Frontier, Robinson takes characters stright out of Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron (like Johnny Quick on the left here) and Young All-Stars and sends them on a dark journey into the 1950s. Robinson does not reimagine these characters drastically, although he seems to do so with Mr. America (but that's part of his narrative ruse), instead, he takes their established characterization and expands upon it by adding seeds of self-doubt, paranoia, and despair as the characters face a world in which the villains are not as easily identified as they once were. Robinson misdirects the reader at first by pretending to adopt a simplified Watchmen approach, pretending that he's showing what these characters would have been like without costumed villains to fight or gangsters to punch, when, in truth, he's simply changed the nature of the evil to something more covert and less easy to spot. (Which might seem Watchmen-esque as well, except Alan Moore showed us that the heroes were the villains in that story, and here, Robinson ultimately reveals that secret villains with brain-transplant powers were behind the whole thing from the beginning.)

Here's a quick rundown of the central characters in The Golden Age:

Johnny Chambers, a.k.a Johnny Quick: Johnny not only provides the book-ends to the story, but as a documentary filmmaker, he provides the exposition which sets up the story context. One of the things Robinson does NOT do well here, by the way, is clearly distinguish between narrative voice (provided through whitle, rectangular caption boxes), and newsreel voice over (also provided by white, rectangular caption boxes), although perhaps the colorist was supposed to use different color cues for each and didn't. The CHARACTERS who narrate, like Johnny Chambers, each have their own style of caption--Johnny's are rounded and blue, as you can see in the image. Actually, it's not that it's so difficult to identify the narrative voice, it's just that there is an omniscient narrator who pops up every once in a while for no good reason, and tells us things about the story sometimes, while other times he sounds like he's trying to give us character thoughts but not really: the highly subjective "fingers...fumbling...focusing...trying to..." immediately follows the objective "a photographer lurks among the rubble." The photographer is the one who's fingers are supposedly fumbling as he tries to snap the photo, so why does the caption sound like a bad Batman internal monologue? This really has nothing to do with Johnny Chambers, but I just wanted to point out this major flaw in the narration throughout. With so many characters (Johnny being one) actually providing narration through captions, why does Robinson add an omniscient narrator also? It's jarring and ineffective. It's like he took the strategies of Watchmen with the multiple points of view, and then spliced the conventional narrator on top of it. It just doesn't work.

But a few more things about Johnny: He smokes, and he wears glasses. He still has his powers, but even though they would help him in his day job, he doesn't use them. And he's incredibly suspicious, which is the characteristic that makes him the character the reader most identifies with. He's also lost the woman he loves because he works too hard, although he gets her back in the end. In short, he's a slightly older (although he actually seems to get younger as the story progresses, perhaps symbolizing his return to heroic stature), slightly more sullen, slightly more flawed version of the character we saw in the comics produced in the 1980s (even though those stories were set in the 1940s). He refers to his costumed self as "That Jerk!" at the beginning of the story, but ends on a hopeful note as he describes a "new age...fresh and clear and bright...as sterling silver!" He's never really a cynic, but his pessimism and self-loathing turns to optimism in the end (even quickly dismissing the threat of McCarthyism to look ahead to the glowing future of super-heroics).

Paul Kirk, a.k.a Manhunter: If we play out the James-Robinson-is-trying-to-do-Watchmen-but-not-as-well game a bit more, we could say that if Johnny Chambers is the Dan Dreiberg analogue (the low-self-esteem voice of reason and calm) then Paul Kirk is clearly the Rorschach character. He's the crazy one who will surely upset the apple cart, yet isn't that what has to happen in order to get to the truth? That's his role, anyway. Unlike Rorschach (in his insane way), Kirk doesn't have a methodical approach to uncovering the truth. In fact, he's tormented by the truth, which lies buried beneath mind implants, exploding into awareness only through a series of horrible dreams. He seems deeply disturbed because of the War, but he's actually deeply disturbed because of the secrets he knows. He's another character, like Johnny, who seems to become more youthful and vibrant in the final Act, when he is able to unleash his demons through old-fashioned fisticuffs. Unlike Johnny, though, he visibly suffers for long time before he reaches the point of action. Here's a sample of his inernal monologue from one of his many tortured dreams: "Save the eagle. Save it. Save--n...no...nooooohhhh!!" Then he wakes up and thinks, "Still afraid." That's about the extent of his characterization. He's tormented, fearful, and knows he should be better than that. And "save the eagle?" geez, I wonder what in the world that could possibly mean in a book about corruption within the American government. Clearly, even though this book is directed at an older audience than the original Golden Age tales, Robinson keeps his symbolism quite simplistic.

Tex Thompson, a.k.a. Mr. America (on the left), and Daniel Dunbar, a.k.a. Dan the Dyna-Mite (on the right): These are the two characters most radically changed from their Golden Age counterparts. Mr. America was a whip-wielding patriotic hero and Dan was a kid sidekick who later, under Roy Thomas's writerly guidance, became one of the lead characters in Young All-Stars. In Robinson's story, Mr. America becomes a corrupt politician who seeks power by any means necessary, and Dan the Dyna-Mite becomes America's beloved Dynaman, the only active costumed crimefighter of the time. And, he snorts coke. And he's evil.

Neither of these two characters have internal monologues via captions for the reader, because that would give away the twist. Tex Thompson is not really who he seems, for he has the brain of the evil Ultra-Humanite (who has in previous stories adopted the forms of a gigantic white gorilla and a hot ex-starlet, among others). And Daniel Dunbar, who has fallen so far from grace in our eyes (a former teen sidekick with a drug problem whoring around) actually has the BRAIN OF ADOLF HITLER!

So there's not much to say about the characterization here, since these are two evil characters in the most simplistic way. What is interesting, though, is that (a) Robinson chooses one character, Thompson, who seems vaguely sleazy to modern readers anyway, what with that whip and the moustache, and when he's shown to be corrupt, we can buy into it, falling into Robinson's trap of thinking that it's just a regular dude becoming corrupted by power; and (b) Robinson's use of the pure and innocent Dunbar is also a good choice, because it is not only shocking to see him corrupted so extremely (before the truth of the brain-swap is revealed), but it's a nod to cultural expectations about former child stars, who, by the 1990s, were expected to grow up and become criminals or drug addicts or worse, at least by our tabloid-fascinated society.

Like a director who makes his film better through excellent casting, Robinson uses the right two ex-heroes in the apparent role of the villains. His bait-and-switch works, although I was personally disappointed that the threat turned out to be external (evil villains) and not the corruption of these characters from within.

Robinson uses other characters to show the corruption of innocence and loss of the heroic dream. Robotman, so noble in Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron, has lost any humanity by the time of this story--he's pure machine, while Alan Scott, Green Lantern is conflicted about his duty as a business leader and law-abiding citizen and his passion for ring-slinging and butt-kicking. Hourman is shown to be addicted to his Miraclo pills, while the man once known as the Tarantula is an egoist with writer's block. Ted Knight, Starman, who Robinson would go on to write with great depth and sensitivity in the ongoing series about Jack Knight, is a mad genius who is trying to put the pieces of this shattered world together through science.

I should add here that Robinson, unlike Cooke, isn't drawing from the original sources as the basis for his story. He's adapting his characterizations from the work done during contemporary comics, as Roy Thomas provided retroactive characterization (and explanations) for the WWII-era heroes. Robinson is building on the layers which Roy Thomas built upon the layers which Gardner Fox (among others) built.

Overall, Robinson does provide a sense of disillusionment in his characterizations in this story, even if his narrative technique is sometimes sloppy or inconsistent. Cooke tried to add a bit of humanity to iconic characters in his work, but he was mostly interested in the icons of the era. Robinson drags his characters down into the muck and then builds them back up again, hoping to show how their inner humanity wins out (with all of its flaws) in the face of systematic adversity. Cooke's characters inhabit the skies, the stars. Robinson's characters live on the ground.

Come back tomorrow for my final verdict on both works, as I explore the artistic storytelling (comics have pictures too!) and pull all my thoughts together into an overall evaluation.

Grant Morrison's Final Crisis

This isn't completely shocking, since Morrison claimed to be working on the big crossover event for 2008, but it's been confirmed at San Diego.

GRANT MORRISON IS WRITING FINAL CRISIS.

Yes. That is very good news. Not just because that means I can look forward to a good story, but because Morrison isn't going to use the event to get rid of the multiverse (which he obviously adores) or add a dose of "realism" (which he hates).

Here's what we can expect: a fun, cosmic, apocalyptic, symbolic Silver Age-style imaginative romp, maybe with more than a bit of the Kirbyesque.

Here's what we can be safe NOT to expect: Superman crying, heroes slowly dying of cancer, pointless rape, governmental registration of super-heroes, bad dialogue, everyone turning out to be a Manhunter, neon green ink, stupidity.

I'm sure Morrison will have some things to say, at least some hints, this weekend, but for now, at least we can read what artist J. G. Jones has to say: Final Crisis should be good.

UPDATED TO ADD: This comes from Newsarama: "Morrison said it would have Anthro the First Boy on the first page, and Kamandi the Last Boy on the last page." Yeah, that sounds like a suitably epic time span. And, Kamandi!

The Unstoppable Force of Progress: Characterization in The New Frontier

Thus, my week-long exploration of Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier and James Robinson and Paul Smith's The Golden Age continues. Check out installments ONE, TWO, and THREE for my previous commentary.

Since both The New Frontier and The Golden Age reimagine comic book chronology through one part actual U.S. history, one part comic book history, and one part imagination, it's not surprising to find both Cooke and Robinson taking liberties with the characterization of these pre-Silver Age heroes. Both creators ask the question asked by any creator attempting to retell stories from the past: Okay, this is how they were portrayed, but what were the characters who did these things REALLY like?

I'll start by looking at The New Frontier. Cooke doesn't focus his story on one dominant point of view the way Robinson does (with Johnny Quick), but he tells his story through a few central characters:

Rick Flagg: Leader of the WWII-era Suicide Squad (and presumably the father, or grandfather, of the Ostrander-penned incarnation). Cooke presents him as a tough guy cliche. He's a Hemingway hero--he does what needs to be done and doesn't whine about it or waver in his determination. In Act III of the narrative, his position in the story is replaced by the similarly-characterized King Faraday, who also does what needs to be done, although he seems to have more internal conflict that Flagg. Faraday is a spy, after all, not a soldier. But both characters represent a government which has the best interests of the country in mind. If they hurt a few individuals along the way, that's a necessary sacrifice for the good of the many.

Hal Jordan: The man who would be Green Lantern is NOT portrayed as a cocky rocket jock, as he usually is in contemporary interpretations. Cooke turns his lack of fear into a self-destructive streak stemming from his face-to-face act of self-defense in Korea. In Cooke's universe, Jordan doesn't immediately become a hero just because an alien handed him a ring. It takes time for Jordan to learn that he deserves to be a hero, and that's a large part of what The New Frontier is about. He doesn't reveal himself in Green Lantern costume until AFTER he risks his life to save the world working as a pilot. The two-page "hero shot" of the characters walking towards camera (a la The Right Stuff) shows some costumed heroes, but Jordan is wearing a flight suit. Cooke seems to be showing that he needed to prove himself TO himself before he could accept his new identity, but his reluctance to use the power of the ring leads to Nathaniel Adam's death. (Adam is later reborn as Captain Atom in the comics, but that doesn't happen in this story, and as far as Jordan should be concerned, Adam is dead.) Cooke doesn't provide Jordan with any time for remorse, though, since he needs to use his ring to kick alien butt. The ring, by the way, is also shown as a symbol of destructive energy. When Jordan first uses it, he cannot control it, and it causes great damage. Cooke, then, seems to indicate that the ring might symbolize nuclear energy, and the subtext would be that Jordan's hesitance to use it led to another hero's death. Ultimately, Jordan is Cooke's symbol of the Kennedy era: conflicted, yet determined to bring forth a positive future--harnessing great powers for the good of the nation (and the world).

John Jones, the Manhunter from Mars: Jones says, "...this is a world where good and evil struggle in all levels of existence. I want to be a force for good." That's a simplistic view of humanity, but it's one seemingly shared by Cooke throughout this work. Good and evil may not be easily discernible on the surface, and Cooke gives us the threatening-looking John Henry (with a hangman's hood) as a hero and a little blonde girl as a villain, but the line between good and evil is absolute (and, in fact, John Jones assumes the role of a film-noirish detective so he can find the evil beneath the surface appearance of the world). Jones defines this ethical stance for the reader, and it represents the code of Golden and Silver Age comic books, which lacked anything but absolutes. Even though Cooke might try to provide some not-so-subtle shades of grey (Jordan as a murderer, Wonder Woman as feminist avenger, an undercurrent of xenophobia), his view of history seems to echo the simplicity of the comic book stories of the era. Individuals may not have always done the right things at all times, but it was an era of progress, and good triumphed over evil. The subtext could also indicate that governmental order triumped over chaotic nature, with the unified heroes, under the leadership of the U.S. government, destroying a threat that wasn't so much malicious as it was animalistic.

Even though Cooke's characterization of some of these characters, Hal Jordan in particular, might not match traditional representations of these individuals, I think it works in the context of the story. The characters serve the story and add a few layers to the text, but it's primarily a historical action spectacle, a celebration of progress over stagnation, and Cooke's characterization unifies the text. I don't think his characters have many hidden depths, but I think their lack of depth matches a story which is primarily about the grand force of history.

As one final observation: Cooke is actually better at small character moments with the minor characters than he is at developing convincing lead characters. The death of Johnny Cloud, Jimmy Olsen's eagerness, the sassiness of Carol Ferris, and several other character bits show Cooke's facility on the small scale, even if his epic narrative doesn't provide the opportunity for subtle nuances with the major characters.

Come back tomorrow for my look at Robinson's revision of the WWII heroes in The Golden Age.

Legion, Star-Lord, and All-Star Batman: Special Bonus Review Section--Number Three of Three

I couldn't decide which of these titles to review in this last slot (and I wanted to give myself a finite amount of review space so I wouldn't spend all day writing blog posts), so decided to go with some three-way action here today and cover Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #32, Annihilation: Conquest--Star-Lord #1, and All-Star Batman and Robin #6.

Unlike my last two entries on Morrison and Brubaker/Fraction which deal with self-contained flashforwards or flashbacks, my post here deals with three comics which are part of larger story arcs, and all three of which might read better if not read in isolation.

But how do they rate as chapters in larger serials? Flawed, all of them. But interesting.

I wrote about Morrison's Batman and Brubaker/Fraction's Iron Fist first, not just because I was most excited about those two issues (even though I was), but because I think both of those issues (and surrounding stories by those creators) belong in the top tier of super-hero comics. As disappointed as some people have been with Morrison's run on the title, I think, by the time he's finished, his tenure on the series will be considered one of the major Batman contributions ever. People will look back on this stuff in 10, 20, 30 years time. And the same goes for the Iron Fist stuff coming out now. It's some of the best stuff ever produced at Marvel (a company with relatively little top-tier work, once you get past the early stuff from Kirby and Ditko and Miller's Daredevil). If the current Iron Fist series keeps going as it has, it will be remembered as one of the great comics of all time.

These next three comics belong in the second tier (and my tiers are pretty large, as you can probably guess, but I do think of comics in this way--For example, I'd put Gaiman's Sandman in the top tier, his Books of Magic in the second tier, and his Eternals in the third tier.) These are some interesting comics, but they aren't anything I'd give to someone as an example of super-hero comics anywhere near their best.

Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #32 is a back-to-Legion-basics story by new writer Tony Bedard (featuring some strange, wildly inconsistent artwork by Dennis Calero). While the Waid/Kitson run featured a large cast of characters and an exploration into social dynamics and intergalactic threats of destruction (or oppression), this first part of a two-part storyline features a handful of characters on a much smaller "mission." It's reminiscent of the old 8 or 12 page Legion stories from the late Silver Age, and the content of the story matches that style, as Bedard brings back some of the classic Legion concepts like Lightning Lord and Validus. Calero's art, though, looks too rough in some panels, and too photo-real in others. Particularly jarring are the first panel on page 2, with Mekt Ranzz's bed-head, the two side-by side panels on the top of pages 7 and 8 which look as if Calero scanned the same exact pencils into the computer and then used it for two different panels but added different facial details and a different haircut on Mekt Ranzz, and the constantly shifting lightning design on the shoulders of Mekt's costume throughout the issue (why the Mekt hate, Dennis?). Calero does a nice job with Tenzil Kem throughout the issue, and I've enjoyed his artwork elsewhere, so I'm guessing he was rushed on this particular story. Nevertheless, his Mekt-related problems ruin the narrative consistency and distract from Bedard's story--which is quite good.

Star-Lord #1 doesn't actually have a cover that looks anything like this image, but I already showed the cover for this issue in my enthusiastic preview of this story, and I didn't want to put the same image up two days in a row. Plus, it's important to the new Star-Lord series that you consider how dorky he used to look back in the Bronze Age. He looked less like a Star-LORD and more like a Star-Speed-Skater. And he also killed thousands of people in an attempt to save millions. Such is the backstory given to us at the beginning of this new issue #1. I'm not a big fan of multi-page exposition to start a story, but writer Keith Giffen gets the backstory out of the way so he can show us a bit about Peter Quill's tortured past and his lack of eagerness about the future. The exposition establishes Peter Quill's self-depracating tone, at least, even if the narration goes on a bit longer than it needs to. The rest of the story is great. We're introduced to the members of Star-Lord's strike team, who will undertake a suicide mission against the Phalanx threat. These strike-team members are all Kree prisoners: a big tree dude, a Captain Universe, Mantis (from the Avengers), and Rocket Raccoon to name a few. Quill makes a Dirty Dozen reference, and that's clearly the archetype Giffen's drawing upon for this series. Sounds good to me! Although this series, coupled with the Wraith comic, which is also part of the Annihilation crossover and is clearly a homage to the "Man with No Name" Spaghetti Westerns, makes me think about what movies the other two Annihilation series are referencing. Here's my guess: Quasar is Thelma and Louise in space, and Nova is Rebel Without a Cause except James Dean gets replaced by a girl halfway through.

All-Star Batman and Robin #6 is finally here, and I'm not going to make any jokes about how late this series has been running, but it is rather difficult to even remember how the series first began those many years ago. This issue features a sensitive portrayal of two important female characters, Black Canary and Batgirl. Both characters have long been an integral part of the Batman mythos and Frank Miller and Jim Lee allow for enough tender moments to reward the close reading such a dense story requires.

Who am I kidding? You guys know that's all a total lie. All-Star Bats #6 is a ridiculous mess, and what does Black Canary have to do with anything? When she first appeared in the series, a few issues ago, she seemed unrelated to the main "plot," and now that her "storyline" has converged with Batman's, she still doesn't seem to fit. And now she's Irish too?!? I though Frank Miller was just being verbose with her speech on page 13 (or I thought he was referencing some bad film noir dialogue), but I guess that was his attempt at an Irish cadence. What's that about? And we get more close-ups on Vicki Vale's ass! Oh, and Batgirl appears! And there's some attempt to establish a theme of "youth, hope, inspiration" and then there are some swear words crossed out.

Everyone seems to have a theory about this comic. Some say it's Frank Miller taken to the extreme, some say it's his attempt to subvert his Dark Knight work, some say the whole thing's a satire of super-heroes. Here's my theory: Frank Miller wants to make Jim Lee draw stuff that makes my eyes bleed and he wants to make me even more thankful for the really great Morrison work on the character. Why else would he so strategically time the slow-release of this title to coincide with Morrison's run? Think about it.

I also lied about All-Star Bats being a "second tier" comic. It's not. It gets a tier all to itself. A very, very low tier. Right between Liefeld's X-Force and Bilson and DeMeo's Flash.

Batman #666: Special Bonus Review Section--Number Two of Three

Wheee! Comics are fun! First Iron Fist and now this! (Actually, I read them in reverse order--Morrison always goes to the top of the stack in my house, are you surprised?)

Batman #666 begins with a Golden Age homage to the origin of Batman, featuring the words "Who He Is and How He Came to Be" just like in that classic Bob Kane story. And because Morrison only has one issue to tell this tale--the story of Damian, the son of Batman, and how he took over as...BATMAN--he dispenses with the origin of this Future Batman in six terse panels and accompanying captions: "When the world's greatest crimefighter and the daughter of the ultimate criminal mastermind got together, there could be only one result" etc etc.

You can see that the tone of these captions recalls the straight-faced hyperbole of old television shows (or radio shows, probably, although I haven't heard any except some of the Lone Ranger episodes and maybe a Shadow excerpt), and by getting the "origin" of Future Batman over with quickly (and he's not called "Future Batman" in the story, obviously, because that would be lame; he's just "Batman"), Morrison can focus on the mood, the action, and the symbolism.

As I've said before and shown, extensively, in an entire book on the subject, Morrison revisits his favorite themes and motifs again and again throughout his career. Batman #666 is no exception, of course. You can see right on that cover image that he's playing with the old-fashioned apocalypse theme with the city on fire, and he's even got his costumed-dude-wearing-a-jacket-or-trenchcoat motif with Future Batman's FUTURE TRENCHCOAT/COSTUME. Nice. But in this case, Morrison seems to be using the apparel not to signify "coolness" as he did with Zenith, or embarrassment (as he did with Animal Man or Cliff Steele), or functionality (as he did with the X-Men), but, instead, he seems to allude to the pulp nature of Batman's origins. This Future Batman looks like an old-fashioned character (he looks very much like the Gotham by Gaslight or Batman/Houdini elseworlds incarnation) because Damian is a classic, old-school Batman. He blows up stuff and punches people first, then does the detective work later. I'm oversimplifying here, but Morrison clearly establishes Future Batman to be very much in alignment, as far as his ruthlessness, with Bob Kane's first year of Batman stories.

Sure, Morrison throws in some Tarot symbolism (the "Hanged Man" on page 8), literary allusions (to Yeats), and some doubling (the Anti-Christ Batman vs. Future Batman), like he usually does, but this story is filled with enough action and brilliant throw-away ideas: the wheelchair-bound Police Commissioner Gordon, Phosphorus Rex, the Hotel Bethlehem, an ape in a clown costume with a submachine gun--to turn the whole thing into a high-speed carnival ride. I love the way he layers the subtextual depth beneath the veneer of a classic super-hero thriller (and finishes it up in a single issue).

It's probably the most accessible and most enjoyable issue of Morrison's Batman yet.

It doesn't matter how this story fits into continuity (answer: it doesn't) or how it relates to the Kingdom: Son of the Bat story by Mark Waid (answer: it doesn't, although I'm sure a comparison would be interesting, but I'm not going to dig that one out of the longboxes tonight). What matters is that Morrison tells a great Future Batman story that illuminates the present.

Just like Brubaker and Fraction used a story of a past Iron Fist to add resonance to the Iron Fist mythology of the current Marvel Universe, Morrison shows us a glimpse into Damian's future to add resonance to the Batman mythology of today.

Batman #666. You don't have to like it, but if you don't then you're wrong. Because it's REAL GOOD.