The REBIRTH of My Love for DC Comics?

Often my blog posts these days don’t really begin as such. Sometimes a note in my journal about something I’ve just seen or read grows to the point that I decide to share it with the world (or my two or three readers) here; The same sometimes happens with an email – which is what happened here.

A couple of months ago, an email from one of my Facebook friends (literally – we’ve never met in person, and only spoken on the ‘phone once – but have gone from a Facebook acquaintance to periodic, sometimes lengthy and deep email exchanges on a variety of subjects) elicited from me a pretty strong condemnation of DC Comics and dismissal of their upcoming Rebirth event … which I just more or less ended up retracting.

Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (Warner-DC 2015)

Directed by Ethan Spaulding, "Inspired by the Graphic Novel, 'Justice League: Throne of Atlantis'"

A few evenings ago, I watched the newest DC Animated Movie, the second “New 52” offering, Justice League:  Throne of Atlantis.  I enjoyed this one much more on the initial viewing than I did the first [LINK].  Even though I’m still irked they replaced Aquaman with Captain Marvel “Shazam” in Justice League:  War, it allowed them to give the King of the Seven Seas a really good story in this one, being introduced and discovering his heritage right along with his teammates-to-be (because he’s been admitted to the still-new Justice League” by the end).  It also gave his mother a larger, and heartbreaking, role in the story (but still better than how they’re currently treating her in the comics, although that story is still playing out).  Of course, it simplified and streamlined the story as it appeared in the comics, even beyond the necessary changes to the storyline.  Mostly it worked, even though Orm comes off as nothing more than a villain here, with no redeeming qualities as he’s been given in the comics.  Mera's comics origin seems to be completely negated here.  And there was ‘way too much continuous fighting toward the end – inevitable especially when you’ve got such a large cast to juggle.  I was reminded of Man of Steel.  Overall, however, I really liked this movie.  This was the Aquaman I would like to see on the big screen.  Although I try to give Zack Snyder the benefit of the doubt in what’s coming for Superman V. Batman:  Dawn of Justice, Jason Momoa is just nothing like the Aquaman I would like to see – he may do a fine job (he does seem to have enthusiasm for the role), but the image they released last week ... 

...was the first thing connected to the upcoming movie that I’ve just had a visceral “No!” ripped from me over – literally, sitting with my wife, waiting for an appointment, paging down my Facebook feed, I blurted out a strangled “No!”  … She did not understand even once I tried to explain.  But I think I could show her this movie and maybe she would get it….  I definitely will be watching and enjoying this movie again.

Cheers! ... and Thanks for reading!

(N.B.:  I have no idea what is up with the duplication of the title "Throne of Atlantis" for two different graphic novels.  I have the original comics, in which the story arc crossed over between the two ongoing titles.  Did DC publish all of the chapters in each series' collections?  Or, horrific as it might sound, did they only the chapters proper to each series in that title's collections?)

Green Arrow (New 52), Volume 4: The Kill Machine (DC Comics, 2014)

Reprinted from issues #17-24 and 23.1 (2013) by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino

Green Arrow has never been a character I really followed. I liked him well enough in the context of Green Lantern's “hard travellin'” partner in the classic Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams stories of ca. 1970 (which I didn't really read many of or appreciate at all until much later, but I was only eight years old), in the context of the Justice League (especially as Hawkman's political opposite – although I was always far more on Hawkman's conservative side than Green Arrow's liberal side), even occasionally in his own stories (e.g, The Longbow Hunters), but beyond that, not so much. It was mainly as a second-tier character that he worked best for me. I had no interest in the new, beardless, younger Green Arrow of the series which came in with the New 52 in 2011, and frankly found him an uninteresting character those times he did appear in titles I did get. Green Arrow can be interesting – I particularly liked him in the Smallville TV series, and when I first heard that the CW was developing a [Green] Arrow follow-up, I was quite disappointed that it would be an entirely new reimagining of the character with no connection to Smallville. I've written elsewhere of my revulsion at the debut of Arrow in 2012 [LINK], but in the same place of my giving it a second chance at the end of the first season such that it became one of my most highly anticipated shows through the second season. It's surprisingly good, with a rather broad appeal. I was surprised along the way to find that my parish priest watches it, as well as our parish liturgical director and his wife (who are avid archers themselves); my wife doesn't actually follow it, but she will watch it with me if she happens to be in the room; the show is a runaway success by CW standards.

Batman Eternal #1-4 (DC Comics, June 2014)

By Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Jason Fabok, and others

DC Comics are trying to recapture the magic they inadvertently stumbled on back in 2006 (eight years ago?!) in the year-long weekly 52. As usual these days, it seems they are blundering right in with little thought – in the next few months no less than three (is that all? – this one plus Future's End and Earth 2: World's End) new weeklies will be going. Hey! – If one is a good idea, three must be a better idea, right? – Throw 'em at the wall and see what sticks! – Whether they will “stick” and be going “strong” is another matter, but I am happy to say that this first one out the gate is a winner in my book. I'm not going to say a whole lot about it, except that this is the kind of Batman story I like – characterization and action, fast-paced, an intriguing mystery, involving both the full range of primary Bat-family characters (including the New 52 debut of Stephanie Brown!) and secondary (sometimes new, sometimes just New 52 reintroduced) characters including the Gotham City Police – all graced by dark, moody, but cleanly realistic art. Makes me wish I had a local comic shop so I could be there every Wednesday for the newest chapter rather than waiting until the end of the month for my mail-order subscription service to dump them all on me at once. Which is part of the strategy of the weekly model in the first place – to encourage that weekly compulsion to get thee to a comic shop! I'll make do, but at the moment, just four weeks into the story, Batman Eternal has catapulted to the top of my short list of titles I'm really looking forward to each month. It sets a very high bar for those to come.

Cheers, and Thanks for reading!

Reviews [LINK]

Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy (Dark Horse, 2009)

Reprinted from three six-issue comic-book miniseries (1995, 1998, and 1999) based on the prose novels by Timothy Zahn (1991-1993), adapted by scripter Mike Baron and various artists

I was there, nigh on two and a half decades past, when Star Wars seemed a fad of the past after a dearth of several years in the late 1980s after the completion of the “trilogy” with the appearance of Return of the Jedi in 1983. Little if any merchandising was being published when suddenly there appeared in 1991 a new novel, Heir to the Empire. I was there … but I didn't actually pick it up until it appeared in paperback the next summer, and read it during that bit of a lull in my graduate studies between finishing up my M.A. thesis and beginning my doctoral studies. I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course, picked up the paperbacks of the sequels – Dark Force Rising and The Last Command – as they appeared in paperback the next two summers. Together, they told one long, fast paced, intricate story that basically created what came to be known as the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Characters, worlds, concepts, a history spanning millennia would be elaborated by many other creators in both prose and comics – some even being “canonized” by incorporation into the revived film series, most notably the Imperial Capital of Coruscant, which was first named and described in Heir to the Empire.

The Beginning of the Modern Titanomachy

Exactly one year ago I commemorated “The Birth of the Modern Mythology” on or about 18 April 1938 [LINK]. I based that date for the release of Action Comics #1 (June 1938) upon a flurry of other websites' and bloggers' celebrations that appeared then although, as I noted, my customary “go to” source for such historical data for DC Comics – Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics – cites 3 May as the “Approx. On Sale Date” for that epochal event [LINK]. Since “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (Ralph Waldon Emerson via my 9th-grade Algebra teacher Mr. Kemper), this year I am going with Mike's Amazing World for the 75^th anniversary of the second most important event in comics history, the appearance on newsstands of Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) [LINK] even though the “flurry of other websites' and bloggers' celebrations” appeared a couple of weeks ago, 'round about 30 March, e.g., at Bleeding Cool [LINK]. That latter posting does give the rationale for the earlier date, basing it upon an official catalogue of copyright entries, and I suspect the mid-April 1938 date for Action Comics #1 comes from a similar source. Bearing in mind what I said last year regarding the haphazard nature of newsstand distribution during the early years of comics publication, however – and based on my virtually nonexistent knowledge of how these things actually work – I imagine the earlier date is when a just-printed, hot-off-the-presses magazine would have been submitted to the copyright authorities and was just entering the distribution chain, which back then would take weeks to ripple copies out across the country. More than likely, however, by two to three weeks later – 18 April 1939 – most outlets would probably have gotten their copies, and grubby little fingers everywhere could be scrounging up dimes to find out about “The Amazing and Unique Adventures of The Batman!” The short story that they would find therein, Bill Finger's and Bob Kane's “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” was a barely-disguised rip-off from an adventure of the pulp juggernaut The Shadow of a couple of years before, November 1936's Partners in Peril [LINK], and frankly gave little hint of the greatness that would eventually come – but it's been reprinted many, many times and can be most easily read (for free) via Comixology [LINK]. There was little indication that as the Olympians overthrew the Titans of old, Batman would one day outstrip the previous year's Superman in popularity, although not (I would argue) in historical significance.

Captain Midnight, Volume 1: On the Run (Dark Horse, 2014)

Collects story from Dark Horse's Free Comic Book Day 2013 offering and Captain Midnight #0 and 1-3 (2013)

I've been aware of the name “Captain Midnight” all my life. It confused me somewhat when I was a kid, but already familiar with the DC Comics Golden Age character “Doctor Midnite” from the annual Justice League/Justice Society cross-overs as well as reprints featuring the “Earth Two” heroes, that my father would occasionally make reference to “Captaaaaaiiiinnn Midniiiiiight!!!” All I knew then was that he was an old radio serial character from Daddy's youth, and until just the last few years that remained all I knew.

In my rediscovery and exploration of the wondrous world of pulps a few years ago, I found that many of those old closely-related radio serials are now available free on the Internet in various places, including iTunes. The Internet is a wonderful thing!! At the time, I was doing a lot of driving, and over the course of a few months I listened to a fair number of old shows, including Captain Midnight. I also came upon a copy of Moonstone's Captain Midnight Chronicles at a book store, a collection of modern prose short stories by various comic-book and neopulp authors, which I greatly enjoyed while observing that there are significant differences between the classic audio and modern prose stories – the latter are, I believe, more in line with Fawcett's Golden Age Captain Midnight comic-book adventures (of which I've only read a couple, although they are available for free from the Digital Comic Museum [link]); I presume the same to be true of this new series from Dark Horse Comics.

The Multimedia Honorverse

Not really frequenting the rather extensive web pages and fora of author David Weber [link] except during those intermittent periods when I'm reading one of his books, I haven't really been aware that an Honorverse movie was more than remotely in the works. Then my heart leapt in my chest the other day when I was perusing the latest issue of Diamond Distribution's Previews and came upon a solicitation for this:

Actually taken from the Image Comics web site [link]; Note that the covers are in reverse order:  D, C, B, A

I am on this! Even some deterioration of the tone on Weber's message boards [link] over the past couple of days from excitement to a degree of rancor that the imagery departs fairly radically in certain ways from the textual descriptions in what has hitherto been solely a prose body of work has not cooled my excitement. I've been wanting to see the adventures of Honor Harrington in live action for the fifteen-plus years since I discovered the series, and it looks like that is indeed the endgame here, but along the way it looks like we could get so much more – a truly multimedia experience. I've never really been into role-playing games (and it's my understanding that some form of those exist already, and have for some years), but I might even check those other dimensions of this initiative out, just for the heck of it – and to show my support. It all kicks off with a comic series that debuts in only a couple of months, and will hopefully blossom from there into something truly magnificent. Only time will tell.

Shazam! (DC 2013, The New 52!)

By Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. Reprinted from Justice League #7-11, 0, 14-16, 18-21 (2012-2013)

Well, nobody's more surprised than me that I ended up buying this collection, and in hardcover to boot! From the very beginning of the New 52 version of The Hero Formerly Known As Captain Marvel, I found so many things to dislike about Geoff Johns' portrayal, mainly centering on the surly characterization he imparted to Billy Batson, which seemed very much a stereotypical obnoxious brat just like his similar and nearly simultaneous portrayal of young Bruce Wayne in Batman: Earth One. That wasn't the only aspect of the “updating” of the story that I didn't care for, to be sure. The new Dr. Sivana, bulked up and looking more like a cheap Lex Luthor knock-off, also rubbed me the wrong way. And the mess just seemed to get worse and worse as month after month of the back-up series appeared in the pages of Justice League, what with Billy and Freddy first attempting to capitalize on Billy's new powers to make money, then considering Billy's new adult appearance as a way for them to get alcohol. For someone like me, who loves the simple, almost childlike wonder and charm of the original Captain Marvel, which has, however imperfectly, informed most of DC's portrayals of the character hitherto (Dark Mary Marvel and subsequent developments being lamentable departures from that model, essentially exceptions that prove the rule), it seemed like these newest horrors were just going from bad to worse. It was heartbreaking.

And then...

Wonder Woman, vol. 3: Iron (DC, 2013 – The New 52)

By Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. Reprints issues #0, 13-18.

It's actually been several weeks since I read this volume, as part of my new luxury of reading the current month's batch of comics quicker and leaving time to pick up various collections. I think I read it early in Thanksgiving week, but the latter part of that week's family activities followed by the next two weeks finishing up the fall semester, with all the papers and final exam grading which that entails, as well as my son's soccer season kicking off (pardon the pun) and a fairly miserable head cold over the past week left little or no time for blogging. This will likely be a short entry – no worries about spoilers!

I've mentioned several times how my regard for this series has shifted radically, from high to low, and back to high with a realization that, for me at least, Azzarello's tale is much more readable and enjoyable in large chunks, which led me to drop the monthlies after the first dozen or so to wait for the collections. This is the first volume to pick up after the point I had gotten to about a year or so ago. It took a little review to get back set to proceed, but once I settled into it I really enjoyed this batch of stories. It definitely is not your standard super-hero fare, and doesn't mesh very well in terms of tone with Diana's other appearances in the new DCU even though it is during this period, especially with the re-introduction of the New Gods in the pages of this book, that it becomes clear that the events of this book are indeed contemporaneous with the rest of the DCU. But taken on its own terms, and with the possible exception of the introduction of Orion of the New Gods into the story, Azzarello is crafting a tale that is considerably more mythic – no pun intended – than your standard, run-of-the-mill super-hero fare, one that easily stands on its own. It's complemented very well by Chiang's straightforward artistic style. This series has been polarizing among Wonder Woman fans – my own reaction has run the gamut – but I think it will ultimately go down as one of the high points in the character's long history. I'm definitely looking forward to future volumes.

I liked this one so much, indeed, that I have already pulled out the previous twelve issues and prepped them for library-binding – one of the thinnest volumes I've ever had bound, but I would like to have those issues standing beside this one and future collections in this series.

Cheers! – and Thanks for reading!

DC Comics – December 2013, New 52 Month 26

A record of the DC Comics that I read that were released during October that I received near the beginning of November. Caution: Linked reviews may contain spoilers! [Link to previous month]

Well, as I hoped, I did enjoy this batch of comics better than previous months. Simply not feeling the constant pressure to read overly critically (in the technical sense of the word) and take notes geared toward having something “meaningful” to say about each and every issue was liberating. And it sure did speed me up! I can't tell you how relieving this is. Comics have been part of my life, to one degree or another, all my life, and while I couldn't imagine giving up on them entirely, working my way through that stack every month was really getting hard. Plus the prospect of six or eight hours, all told, composing that bloated monthly roundup post that I had been doing....Putting together the illustrated list with review links is, comparatively speaking, a piece of cake. Not that everything was bad, it just wasn't fun anymore. This month was different.

"What's this you say about binding comic books...?"

... as in several of my past posts concerning one of my far too many intermittent obsessions (see various posts with key-word "library-bound comics" [link])...?  Well, here's a little something more, courtesy of a video blogger who posts various comics/pop culture stuff under the name of "ROH," from ComicFest 2013 back in June.  About five minutes about Herring and Robinson Bookbinders [link], whom I use for my comic binding, starts about 1:14 into the video:

Fascinating stuff!  Top-notch craftsmanship by incredibly nice people.

Makes me want to get off my duffer and finish prepping my latest volumes for binding....

Cheers! -- and Happy Thanksgiving to all!

DC Comics – Announcing open-ended hiatus on blogging the New 52

If you've been reading my increasingly delayed blog posts regarding DC Comics, over the past few months you've doubtless perceived my discontent with the direction the company and its stories have taken. [Last month is here - link.] That discontent really goes back virtually to when I began this blog, which was almost coincident with the announcing of the New 52 at the end of May 2011 [link], only a few months before its actual advent in September of that year. Last year I posted a fairly substantial summation of how I saw the situation a year into what DC insisted was not a line-wide reboot, and yet clearly was – what I sometimes called the “Nottaboot” [link]. While I have changed my mind on certain points (most notably gaining a new respect for Azzarello's Wonder Woman through a complete rereading only a few weeks after posting that review [link]), in general I have come to like much of what I've been reading less and less. In fact, it staggers me to see how many of the points I actually did approve of a year ago that DC seems to have discarded! If they were actively trying to drive me away as a reader they could not do much better.

It occurs to me that the burden I took upon myself in attempting to blog about these comics month after month has perhaps contributed toward my decreasing enjoyment of them. I finished reading September's “Villains' Month” stunt a couple of weeks ago, but although there were individually good issues I disliked the concept so thoroughly that I have been unable to bring myself to the keyboard to compose a post about it. Its cornerstone, Forever Evil #1 kicking off the latest-in-a-series-of-events-collect-them-all, wasn't much better – an okay story but ultimately going forward will depend on a plot device so laughably stupid that I am aghast somebody didn't catch it. Or do they not care? If they do not, it's hard for me. And so I have decided it's time I gave up that blogging commitment. My hope is that by simply reading the comics I am getting – which do look to be fewer in number over the coming months than it has been, given some shifts in story-direction in some titles I've been reading that I really have no desire to continue with [e.g., link] – perhaps I can recover some of that enjoyment. I sincerely hope so. There are some titles I have continued to enjoy and intend to stick with, but I will henceforth only blog about any that strike me as truly worthy of my time and effort to write about. Even among those that I am enjoying, there are frankly not that many.  And given what I perceive, rightly or wrongly, as almost contempt on the part of DC for its readers, especially those like me who have been with the company for decades (45 years in my case), I don't see that situation changing very soon.

So for now, at least, I'm done with blogging the New 52.

DC Comics – October 2013, New 52 Month 24

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the DC Comics that were released during August that I received near the beginning of September. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [ Link to previous month ]

Here's the link to the October solicitations (for comics to be released mostly in December): (link).

I only made note of a couple of news items. One is that Smallville Season 11 is shifting to a “series of miniseries” format, dropping the “Season 11” branding and sequential numbering, supposedly to remove a perceived bar for new readers picking it up (link). This mainly irks me because it will make the weekly purchase from Comixology quite a bit more cumbersome, especially since they just a short while ago introduced an efficient “subscription” function which automatically purchases each week's installment for me and has it ready for me to download whenever I want, rather than having to manually go in and make the purchase each week. Being title-based, the subscription will no longer work. Also, it will be harder (impossible) to keep reading order straight if you're not purchasing them week-to-week. Yeah, that helps the new reader.

Secondly, and we're far enough along into October as I write this (the 12th) that sales data for September has been released, it seems that the September-released “Villains' Month” stunt paid off big time for DC. More next month, maybe – except that DC's immediate exultation really rubbed at least one retailer the wrong way (link). By all accounts, the retailers were the ones who really got screwed in the resulting debacle.

Whatever, before “Villains' Month,” there is this one more month of story-driven rather than stunt-driven comics to get through....

DC Comics – September 2013, New 52 Month 23

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the DC Comics that were released during July that I received near the beginning of August. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [ Link to previous month ]

I am 'way, 'way, 'way behind this month, so this write-up may not be much more than a fleshing out of my notes, without much expansion along the way....

In the news over the past month or so: 1) The September solicits went up mid-August per usual [link]. 2) The Justice League 3000 fiasco [link], wherein DC fired or drove off another high profile creator, Kevin Maguire, replacing him with Howard Porter, and lost this sale to me. 3) Batman was cast for Man of Steel 2 – Ben Affleck [link]. Outcry ensued [link]. I actually can live with this. He's a capable enough actor. My main problem with him would be The Voice. He really should study Kevin Conroy's portrayal (the voice of Batman in the animated series) – not Christian Bale's. 4) The Justice League of America is emigrating to Canada [link]. 5) Rumors flew but ultimately no real clarification on whether Bryan Cranston will play Lex Luthor in Man of Steel 2 [link]. I like Breaking Bad, but I'm not sure I see him as Lex Luthor. 6) DC drove off another set of Batwoman creators – J.H.Williams III and Haden Blackman – allegedly over whether to marry Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer [link]. It may or may not have been because of the homosexual nature of the relationship; they tapped Marc Andreyko, who is homosexual himself, as the new writer [link] (possibly keeping me on the title since I loved his Manhunter), and proclaimed their stance as that the Bat-family's personal lives have to be sucky, and heroes can't be married [link], both of which I think are stupid as mandates. They also announced their intent to pull Batwoman closer into the rest of the Bat'verse. 7) Finally, another blogger put the sad state of affairs regarding DC Editorials' bad relationship with creators and the general chaos that has plagued the company since even before the New 52 into a timeline that makes for terribly depressing reading [link]. Something is definitely rotten in Denmark.

Let's discuss some comics:

Comics Other Than DC – September 2013

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on comics by publishers other than DC that were released during July (mostly) that I received near the beginning of August. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [Link to previous month] [Link to this month's DC Comics]

Buck Rogers #1 of 4 (Hermes Press)

They say that a functional definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. I may fit the bill. I have never cared for the writing of Howard Chaykin – and yet I have tried various of his comics over the years thinking that if he's as great as everyone thinks he is maybe I'll like this one. His art I actually kind of like, and in fact think it fits very well for something like we have here, the retro-flavored attempted revival of a beloved quasi-pulp character who deserves much more modern exposure. But I find myself invariably put off by the generally politically-charged revisionism that he usually imposes on such projects as he undertakes, which is invariably pretty much diametrically opposite to my own values. Add to that my belief, based on various things I've read and heard about him (seemingly confirmed in an about-the-author blurb appended to a two-page interview here, that “[h]e has a terrible reputation among fans for profanity, limited patience with nonsense, and spite”) as well as from him (see below), that I would not like him very much as a person, and I can't give you a good reason that I keep giving him repeated chances. But I do. Almost invariably with the same result as here – visceral revulsion.

Comics Other Than DC – August 2013

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on comics by publishers other than DC that were released during June (mostly) that I received near the beginning of July. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [Link to previous month] [Link to this month's DC Comics]

It seems that my monthly purchases from Dynamite Comics are dwindling away, but I'm branching out slightly with some upcoming purchases from other publishers besides the 95%-plus that are always DC Comics. So I've decided to rename this monthly round-up post to include all of them rather than potentially have two (as this month) or even three single-comic posts.

For a post logo I've “repurposed” a slightly edited logo from a venerable Silver Age Marvel title, Not Brand Echh!, whose tag line used to say, “Who says a comic book has to be good??”  (Any implication regarding the current state of affairs with DC Comics is intentionally subtextual....)

DC Comics – July 2013 New 52 Month 21

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the DC Comics that were released during May that I received near the beginning of June. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [ Link to previous month ]

Here I am, back again, a little late because we had our family vacation at the beginning of June which put me behind getting and starting to read my May-released comics. Then, by the time I finished the Man of Steel post (link) I was a bit blogged out.

And, not really meaning to start out on a downer (again), because there are a lot of things I liked in the comics I read, the various news items that hit in the past month or so make me less and less able to get excited about DC Comics as a brand. Particularly damning was yet another disheartening creator rant, another creator basically walking out and telling DC (and Marvel) “A pox on all your houses!” (link) This time it's Paul Jenkins, who wrote Batman: The Dark Knight for a while after David Finch figured out writing is a lot harder than it looks as well as Stormwatch after Paul Cornell left that title. Whether or not I really cared that much for what he wrote, in either case, is immaterial – something is dreadfully wrong there. A company can't piss off that many creators otherwise. Where there's smoke....

Dynamite Comics – July 2013

Reviews, commentary, general reactions, and random notes on the Dynamite Entertainment comics that were released during May (mostly) that I received near the beginning of June. Caution: Spoilers ahead! [Link to previous month.]

Cover D (25%) by Francisco Francavilla

Masks #7 of 8

I'm not sure what was different this time, but I found this penultimate issue a bit chaotic and hard to follow. The art seemed rushed – sometimes facial expressions seemed downright goofy (see in particular the last page) – and the action sequences degenerated into almost random images with no narrative value. For instance, how did Britt get loose? – and What's with Kato rubbing his nose in the midst of the action? Surely that latter had significance as a signal of some sort, but what exactly it was I couldn't tell. The story logic breaks down as well: Could the Spider possibly have liberated a prison camp upstate and crossed the countryside toward New York City, gathering more and more followers along the way, without the Master somehow getting word?

These are criticisms from someone who knows and loves the source material and hitherto has been willing to “fill in the blanks” from what I know of the original Spider “Black Police” trilogy, but most readers of this series do not have that advantage. And it's a dubious advantage in the end, because for me there comes to mind the biggest deviation from the original, implemented certainly in an effort to bring some kind of modern sensibility and “rationality” to what motivates the Master – who is now finally discovered in-story to be indeed the former crime-fighter known as the Clock – who ends up being another “noble” but insane villain, considering his ends to justify his means. In the original, part of a series which drew things in terms of stark black and white, good vs. evil, the whole Black Police movement was purely a criminal enterprise. Admittedly, when I assessed that original pulp trilogy a couple of years ago (link), I argued that a fascistic state such as that could not be set up without positing some higher value than pure avarice, no matter how warped in our minds that “higher value” might be, but I can't say I buy the simple imposition of order on disorder as proposed by the Clock as any more convincing.

Marvels: Eye of the Camera (Marvel 2010) – The Marvels Project (Marvel 2011)

Last week we were on vacation, enjoying a very nice vacation house that my wife and her siblings rented in Hancock, Maine. Anywhere I have to wear a jacket in June is fine by me! I didn't actually get as much reading done as I intended, although I did finish Sean Howe's Marvel Comics (see just previous blog entry, link). Knowing myself too well, that I tend to be a “binge reader” – that is, I'll obsess over something in particular for a while – I knew that reading the somewhat checkered history of Marvel Comics would send me off into one of my intermittent immersions into that company's properties, I had gone prepared, carrying along a couple of collections that I had purchased some time past. I make no secret of my preference for DC Comics, and to be honest I see little in current Marvel comics that I'm interested in reading (and their pricing structure, even in digital, provides further disincentive), but these two books were perfect for scratching that Marvel Comics itch.

Eye of the Camera is Kurt Busiek's, along with Roger Stern's, quasi-sequel to the near-twenty-years-old classic by Busiek and Alex Ross entitled simply Marvels, which mainly retold the 1960s “Silver Age” of Marvel Comics from the perspective of a photojournalist, Phil Sheldon. It was, of course, Alex Ross's big splash onto the comics scene, beautifully rendered in his practically trademarked fully painted, photorealistic style, but the approach to the story as written by Busiek was, I think, an underappreciated aspect of its success. Between the two of them, Busiek and Ross made the fantastic seem so very real. Well, Ross is not along for this later story, although according to Busiek's afterword he had input into the original idea and gave his blessing to it being developed, and surprisingly, I think that works. No question, I love Ross's work, and I think that it was perfect for the original Marvels, but this is a very different story and I think that Ross's clean, ultimately bright and shiny, often iconic images would be less appropriate for Eye of the Camera than is artist Jay Anacleto's and colorist Brian Haberlin's darker, grittier, more down-to-earth and moody style.