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Mister Miracle #25 (1978)This is very close to a perfect super-hero comic of its era. With a stellar creative team and a wonderfully interesting plot and theme, Mister Miracle #25 is a forgotten gem.
Mister Miracle was named Scott Free. He was literally a New God, one of the greatest creations of the great Jack "King" Kirby and part of his epic Fourth World storyline. Kirby was a master at grandeur and excitement, the perfect man to tell a giant, epic story. But the Fourth World books had been cancelled for several years before Mister Miracle was revived in 1977. After several stellar issues by Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber took over the series.
Now, if you read Obsessed with Comics consistently, you know I'm a huge Gerber fan. gerber was quite simply one of the finest comics writers of the 1970s, bringing his own existential and complex thoughts to the world that Kirby created. The only thing is that the themes that Gerber explored were kind of the polar opposite of Kirby's work. Kirby was all about the big themes, while Gerber explored the inner world. It's not that Kirby was shallow - his "Glory Boat" from New Gods is justifiably well-remembered as an intelligent classic - it's more that the King moved so quickly and was so caught up in his action that he never had a chance to slow down.
Conversely, Gerber's writing was all about the absurd lives that we all live. That's why his Howard the Duck was such a unique and beloved series. As a duck in a world of humans, Howard was the ultimate outsider.
This is all a long way of getting to the fact that this issue was another masterpiece from the master.
Declared an outlaw by the two warring worlds of the New Gods saga, Scott Free has declared himself a messiah. He's a super escape artist, and he preaches that everyone can escape their chains. In the first scene, Scott calls to a rabid audience, "As I was constrained by links of metal - there are forces in the universe which seek to bind you! As I was sealed alive in a casket - there are forces which seek to suffocate you! But escape is possible!" These are heady themes for a super-hero comic from 1978, but for the man who made Man-Thing a star and who put Nighthawk's brain in the head of a deer, it was business as usual.
The art is by the spectacular team of Michael Golden and Russ Heath. I'm not sure if this comic came before Golden's star-making turn on Micronauts (ha, i almost typed Microsoft!), but the flash and energy and raw sense of style he showed in that book is on hand here. His drawings of Big Barda, Scott's gorgeous wife, are wonderfully exciting and exotic. And Golden's line work is clearned up and amplified by the longtime comics vet Russ Heath, who does a great job of staying true to Golden's work while adding a cleaner and more learned line than Golden provided.
Yeah, more great stuff from Gerber. Not much of a surprise there. Ganges #1 (2006)I take real pleasure in going against the conventional wisdom. I enjoy being holding a dissenting view, in going against the general curve. Kevin Huizegna's new book Ganges has been receiving rave reviews from every reviewer who's read it. Huizenga has been hailed as the next big talent, and his book has been hailed as the early front-runner for best graphic novel of the year. I think it's fair to say this has been the best-reviewed graphic novel since Craig Thompson's Blankets. Well, the conventional wisdom was right on Blankets and the conventional wisdom is right on Ganges. This is an absolutely amazing graphic novel, with fascinating depth and insight. Ganges tells stories of the inner lives Glenn and Wendy Ganges, a conventional couple living in an unnamed city. In the lead story, "Time Travelling," a walk to the library triggers some fascinating meditations on time, and some even more spectacular cartooning. Huizenga has a wonderfully cartoony style, which he uses to great effect in this story to show the multiplicity of time paradoxes within Glenn's mind. More than that, though, the story is a kind of meditation on routine, on the ruts we create for ourselves, without even explicitly calling out that point. In the second story, Glenn sees a boy litter on the street, which triggers all sorts of grandiose thoughts by Glenn about the litterer's childhood and how the littering begins a life that would eventually lead the boy to great success in his life. Ganges's bizarre thoughts are undercut by the subtle ending, where Glenn's wife Wendy quietly beings Glenn back to earth. In fact, the relationship of Glenn with Wendy is absolutely fascinating. In the third story, the pair just sit in their living room, reading. Glenn is reading a book about the history of mankind on Earth, while Wendy is lost in her work on computer animation. The pair live parallel lives, only briefly intersecting each other, and it leads one to wonder: does Wendy ignore Glenn because she's working on her project, or because they've been married a long time, or is there a bigger problem in their marriage? This question becomes poignantly fascinating in the last story, a gorgeously subtle piece where Glenn is fascinated by the sight of his beloved wife asleep next to him in bed. Glenn has gone to bed after WendY and tries in vain to have a conversation. Buzzing from the coffee he drank, Glenn imagines other couples who have slept next to each other for years: "'Last night I lay there and watch you as you slept.' It's like something out of a pop song... I guess it's a pretty common sort of setup. 'I lay there and watched the one I love sleeping.' So many people must have done the same thing... all those people - all those centuries." Glenn is connecting to the infinite, in an amazingly gorgeous and intimate scene. It's hard to find a scene in any art that so wonderfully conveys the intimacy and love that exists in a marriage. It only adds to the moment to know that the couple isn't as intimate as Glenn would like them to be. Huizenga’s art and the use of blue color is exquisite in this story, serving to deepen the quiet intimacy of the moment. There’s a full-page panel that’s brilliant in its subtlety and silence. Finally, what makes this book so special is its exquisite packaging. It's part of the Fantagraphics "Ignatz" line, and features black, white and green art, thick paper and a slipcover cover like a hardback book. The production on this book is perfect in every way, and adds to the overall feel of excellence here. This is sort of halfway between comic and graphic novel, but in every way, this comic feels like a complete package. Don't be put off by the quiet, domestic themes of this book. Ganges is subtle and complex, thoughtful and insightful. Huizenga is a master at taking ordinary situations and bringing profundity to them. I know it's only February, but the conventional wisdom is right: this is the comic of the year so far. 10,000 hits!My blog just passed its 10,000th hit this morning. Pretty cool. I had vague dreams of becoming the most popular comics-related blog on the web, but yeah right as if people would rather read my reviews of comics from 1974 instead of the latest news and gossip. Instead, I just decided to write about whatever popped to mind on the evening I was going to be blogging. That strategy's worked pretty well for me. I mean, this blog was mostly intended to be a place for me to spout off on whatever popped to my mind, and allow me to just have fun and write about comics.
Actually, writing in this blog has exceeded my expectations. I've found that I've become much better at articulating how I feel about comics, better at articulating abstract and complex thoughts in a generally coherent manner. That, in turn, has spilled over to my professional life. It's true what they say: writing is like a muscle, and the more time you spend exercising that muscle, the stronger it gets. My work related writing is clearer, and I find I'm much better at constructing coherent arguments about abstract subjects.
Thanks to all of you who have been reading my blog over the last eight or ten months. I hope you have fun with this blog, maybe get exposed to some obscure thing that you find interesting, and had some fun, too. The Losers #32 (2006)Last night I sat down and read a long run of this series. In doing so, I realized just how good it was. The Losers was a fun comic focusing on a group of characters, thought dead by the government, who spend much of their time trying to track down a nasty SOB called Max, who's the CIA operative behind a whole bunch of evil covert actions. The 32 issues of this series detail the team basically following Max in circles, trying to track him down while he tries to kill all of them.
Of course, in this final issue the team goes out with a literal bang. There's impossible odds and an atom bomb; there are impossible escapes and fates that can't be escaped. And there's a hilarious last page, funny out of context and perfect in the context of what had come in the previous 32 issues.
The series had a nice mix of action and humor. These are mercenaries, after all, who carry guns and kill the evil bastards who are after them. There are some amazingly violent scenes in this comic. Interestingly, many of those scenes are also howlingly funny as well.
Artist Jock (no last name) is a wonderful stylist. His cover art alone is just spectacular. The man was a master at creating fascinating images. If you get a chance, look his cover work up on the web. You'll be happy you did.
I didn't follow this series very closely - I could always count on finding issues of it in quarter bins at cons, so I never spent full price on it. In some ways, then, I was responsible for this wonderful comic dying. So writer Andy Diggle, I'm sorry. Artist Jock, I apologize. I was a leech, a silent reader from the secondary market. But I did like your work. Barney & Betty Rubble #10 (1974)"Flintstones, read the Flintstones..."
You know, I was actually kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed this little comic. Sure it's aimed at kiddies, but the eight stories are actually kind of fun. In one story, Barney gets a glider by saving up cereal box lids. I think that story's an actual swipe on an episode, but I'm not sure. There's a story that parodies Ewel Gibbins (sp?), a granola-crunching TV pitchman who was on TV all the time in the '70s. I have a very vague memory of him, and no strong impulse to look him up, but isn't it kind of cool to have an anachronistic reference in a comic that's all about anachronism? And there's a piece that compares modern art to a pizza - when's the last time anyone in the mass media culture even bothered thinking about modern art?
This was a throw-in on an eBay action if memory serves. I think it was for an issue of Hanna Barbera TV Stars that has a story by Steve Gerber. But for something I got basically for free, I really liked this comic. New Avengers #16 (2006)Warning - spoilers below! My fellow SilverBulletComicBooks.com reviewer Kelvin Green likes to call this comic Not Avengers, but for the first time it's literally true. Despite the nice cover illustration that shows Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America and the rest, only one Avenger actually appears in this story, and there only in two pages dressed in his human guise. This is the worst sort of bait-and-switch technique. I pity the young fan looking for his Wolverine fix and finding not a single panel of the Adamantium Avenger. This issue presents a decent story, but this technique of lying to the readers is reprehensible. That said, I gotta be honest here: I have not enjoyed most of the recent comics I've read that were written by Brian Bendis. His style has gotten tiresome for me over the last few months. It's felt like his style has become a cliché. Bendis loves to have his characters banter, even when it doesn't fit his characters, and then has long and quiet action scenes. He's also great at setting the scene for a story and awful at tying the story together at the end. There are actually no Avengers in this story. So the problem with banter doesn't really apply here. And New Avengers 16 is the beginning of a new arc, so we don't have to worry about the ending falling apart. This is actually a pretty intriguing first chapter. A hugely destructive force has crashed down to North Pole, Alaska, and is heading for America. That's pretty much the plot for this issue, aside from some tiresome banter between Tony Stark and the new head of SHIELD, but the sparseness of the plot is actually OK for a story like this because the threat seems so huge and overwhelming. The first eight pages of the story show the threat crashing to Earth and slowly emerging from its destruction, and the scene gives the comic a kind of epic feel that readers don't always feel when we're reading Marvel books. Because the threat builds up in a slow and intense way, the destruction he creates seems more real than it otherwise might have been. And when it wipes out the Canadian super-team Alpha Flight (are they really all dead? Just like that?), the threat just gets more real. Steve McNiven and Dexter Vines's art is decent enough. They're good at drawing the epic scenes at the beginning of the book, but there's something a bit stiff about their faces. Tony Stark almost looks like he's made out of plastic in his scenes, and the reactions of the SHIELD officers seemed a bit stiff as well. Still, he draws a nice epic story, and seems a good fit for this book. Bomb Queen #1 (2006)This is a really funny comic book. Turning the traditional Comics Code virtues on their head, Jimmie Robinson creates a world where the villain wins. Bomb Queen is an evil bitch with a ridiculous costume and a passion for blowing things up. Driven by her passions, Bomb Queen ends up being in charge of a large area of a New Port City, and turns the city into a lawless zone where anything goes. The mayor is on the take, guns are feely available, and underage kids are imported as sex slaves. TV shows are even hosted by naked women, and shows like "Crime Survivor" combine reality TV with a cruel, hard world. In the end, a hero is brought in to attack Bomb Queen, but who knows how it all will end?
This is a gleefully depraved series. From the title page, with its close-up of Bomb Queen's bustline, to the text page in the back, where Robinson explains that he's having fun exploring his bizarre new world, this comic is a joyful journey into the dark side. It's a wonderful satire of the power of super-villains in comics, and of the de-sexualized nature of characters who dress and act in very sexualized ways. When Bomb Queen takes a bath, Robinson does a funny take-off of the comics cliché of hiding the characters' genitalia. Here Bomb Queen's naught bits are hidden by a wine class, her hand, and some bubbles. Meanwhile, naked people are all over the TVs she watches. Of course Bomb Girl has to be covered - she's the main character in a comic book story. She can't be seen naked. But the characters on TV are unimportant, so their nudity follows different rules.
Bomb Queen is shown as a tremendously charismatic character. Despite her penchant for murder, she has enormous personal magnetism and energy. Readers believe she could be in charge of a major city because she seems to have the enormous vitality necessary to do such a job. As such, she presents a challenge for the readers. It's hard to resist lines like "I rule New Port City. The villain, get it? I don't make the trains run on time. I kill people who make them run slow." What a great laugh line! What a powerful character! What a frightening person she would be!
This is not a comic for the morality police to find. It's pretty depraved from cover to cover. But for comic readers who've craved to see the effects of a villain's immorality writ large, and a clever satire of comics clichés. If you're not sensitive, Jimmie Robinson's Bomb Girl is a real treat. Amazing Heroes #167 (1989)For a period of about two years, I was a writer for Amazing Heroes, which was for a time a biweekly magazine about comics. When I joined the magazine, shortly after this issue, it had just slipped into monthly status, which made a lot more sense. I mean, this issue sitting next to me on the dining room table weighs in at 106 pages, almost all of which is lovingly put together with great care and professionalism. That's amazing to me. With 24 issues coming out per year, it would have been easy for the husband and wife team of Chris and Lynette McCubbin to slack off and produce a magazine that didn't meet the standards of professionalism. But this was a very professional magazine: nicely laid out, with few or no typos, diverse content and good articles. And a great cover by Kevin Nowlan.
This was a news-articles-review sort of zine, and it's always fun to see what was big at the time. The big news article was that Rick Veitch, off Swamp Thing for just a short time, was starting his own line of comics. Not a big deal now, but at the time Veitch was a very controversial creator.
The big comics that were listed in the checklist were:
And featured reviews were of a mediocre X-Men Annual, an awful Rock 'n' Roll Comics and a great Little Nemo in Slumberland collection. Actually, it's surprising how few comics reviewed in this issue I even remember. Mai the Psychic Girl is the only comic from that review list that I remember enjoying at that time, and it's been years since I looked at that one. But hey, six or so issues later, my mediocre reviews joined this gang. And a year or so after that, some of the reviewers I got to join up were part of the review gang. Infinity Inc. #19 (1985)Twenty years ago, things were a little different. Todd McFarlane was illustrating this mediocre super-hero comic, The Justice League Detroit was active, and the final JLA/JSA team-up was afoot. Yeah, the '80s were pretty bad for comics, too... this resolutely mediocre comic was actually pretty decent for its time.
Actually, 'mediocre' might be too nice of a word. Muddled is better. Cliched. Plain bad. I think it's pretty much a given that most every comic with the Justice League Detroit was pretty bad. Funnier people than me have described this team, which contained Zatanna, Elongated Man and the Martian Manhunter, second-rate heroes but at least legit Justice League members, alongside fifth raters like Steel, a stars-and-stripes dunderheaded idiot, Gypsy, a gypsy dunderheaded idiot, and Vibe, a breakdancing dunderheaded idiot. In this comic, Steel's grandfather, an older stars-and-stripes dunderheaded idiot, travels from Earth-1 to Earth-2 (don't ask) in order to get a group of fifth-rate hotheaded heroes named Infinity Inc to fulfill the longstanding super-villain plot of getting heroes to fight heroes.
You'd think something headlined as the final example of a twenty-year tradition might be of better quality, but nope, this comic was of its time, for all the good and bad that that implies.
The more I read of it, the more I ended up being amazed by the tremendous mediocrity of this comic. Maybe it was hip at the time - Roy Thomas was once a hot writer, and Todd McFarlane would go on to be, you know, Todd McFarlane. But really, in every possible way, this is an astonishingly mediocre comic book at best.
I wish I knew what motivated me to wander out to the garage and unearth this "treasure", but maybe that's what makes me obsessed about comics and not just highly motivated about comics. Mage: the Hero Discovered #3 (1984)Man, I love this comic! When I discovered Mage: the Hero Discovered, I was in college. I felt I could identify with lead character Kevin Matchstick. Not because I had royal blood or a group of friends including a woman who drives an Edsel and carries a magic baseball bat, but because the story has real resonance. Kevin Matchstick is an ordinary man, to whom odd and amazing things happen to him. Soon, he's in the middle of a mystic battle, and discovers his true destiny.
Why wouldn't want that to happen to them? Who, especially in their early 20s, didn't want to become someone special, to transcend whatever upbringing he had in order to become great?
Plus there's some nice art in these stories, and stuff like that, too.
And magic is still green. Marvel Fanfare #40 (1988)David Mazzucchelli had a short but illustrious career drawing for mainstream comics. After a run drawing Daredevil with Denny O'Neil writing, Frank Miller took the title over, and Mazzucchelli illustrated Miller's epochal "Born Again" story. Miller and Mazz then moved over to DC, where the pair worked on "Batman: Year One", which was, in part, the basis for Batman Begins. Mazzucchelli then left mainstream comics, putting out out his own self-published comic before he most likely moved to bigger and better things. (There's a short bibliography of him here.)
Marvel Fanfare was an anthology title that Marvel released in the early '80s. Most of the issues included typical super-hero stuff, but occassionally, the stories went outside the box. There was a very nice Thing story by Barry Windsor-Smith in one issue, some fun Ken Steacy work in another. But perhaps the highlight of the series was the 14-page piece starring the X-Men's Angel in this issue.
The X-Men's Angel is a perfectly handsome and blonde man with wings on his back. As drawn by Mazzucchelli in this issue, he literally looks like an angel, who has fallen from the heavens after a horrible battle. The Angel crashes into the back yard of an old grandma who's been feeling used up, like time has passed her by. But the presence of the Angel and the blessings he brings helps to revive the woman and bring new joy to her life.
The story, by Ann Nocenti, is sweet and charming. More than that, though, it hints at the power of faith to help one gain new joy in their life. In the presence of a miracle, the grandma finds her faith confirmed and gains tremendous joy and energy from the experience.
The story wouldn't have worked without an artist of the caliber of Mazzucchelli. As he notes, the art seems influenced by the minimalistic power of Harvey Kurtzman's work - all simple lines of varying depths, conveying a mood and emotion more than a specific image. When the Angel appears he really does look blessed. Mazzucchelli shows the Angel's face from dramatic angles, posing him like an angel in a Renaissance painting and making him appear literally beatific. Readers believe the parable of the story because Mazzucchelli's art somehow makes it transcend its comic book roots. Hero for Hire #14 (1973)Yeah, well, okay, I'm not always right. My wife and kids remind me about that all the time, and of courser I feel that way at work, too. I just wish I were more right in my blog.
So last week I posted an entry about Power Man in which I referred to the title as "desultory", which MSN Encarta defines as
That's how I remember this series, but a read of Essential Power Man, Marvel's nice black and white reprint of Hero for Hire 1-16 and Power Man 17-27, shows that I was wrong. Compared to many similar series, this comic had a very stable writer/artist team - only four writers (Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Tony Isabella and Len Wein) and really only three artists (George Tuska, Billy Graham and Ron Wilson). Far from being desultory, this comic had a very stable creative staff that used the history of the character to create logical dilemmas for him.
Take Hero for Hire #14 as an example. Back in issue #1, the guy who would turn out to be Luke Cage was in jail at Seagate Prison, "Little Alcatraz". While at the 'gate, Luke and his fellow prisoners were routinely tortured by a sadistic guard named Rackham. After Luke escaped, changes were afoot in the prison, and Rackham gets laid off. Now, 14 issues later, the story of Rackham, and of two other prisoners, Comanche and Shades, is revisited. That's nice continuity: the history of the strip works as a background from which stories were created.
Comanche and Shades break out of jail and travel cross-country to try to track down Rackham. They seem to cross paths in New York, and then the story is continued. Amazingly enough, everything is handled pretty logically. But then writer Steve Englehart was always classy. Seven Soldiers #0 (2005)Well, the Seven Soldiers of Victory mini-series are winding down now. There are only four issues left of the sprawling series of seven mini-series and two bookend specials. With the series almost complete, this seems like a good time to look back at Seven Soldiers #0 and see how it reads.
Not surprisingly, it reads pretty damn well. Each of the minis, written by Grant Morrison, have had their own unique vibe, and this standalone has its own feel to it. Seven second-rate superheroes are gathered to fight evil. They almost seem to be winning until the evil they fight proves to be much more nasty than they had imagined. It's mostly light super-hero action, different from most of the minis. It's a nice post-modern take on the idea of heroes, with them being treated as drinking, sexually active jackasses who actually kind of think themselves cool. The issue succeeds on precisely those terms - it's exciting pulp action, drawn spectacularly well by J.H. Williams.
The one thing that did surprise me was that there was very little crossover with the miniseries. Aside from references to Solomon Grundy, I missed any other references to the minis.I guess it's appropriate that, like the minis, this comic stands on its own quite nicely.
I guess I'd hoped that I would have had more to say about this issue, but I don't. It's fun pulpy po-mo super-hero Grant Morrison goodness. Power Man #23 (1975)The other day I blogged about an issue of Power Man written by the masterful Don McGregor. I was right to praise the writing of Dandy Don, but in doing so I disparaged the work of others, calling the series "desultory", among other, non-SAT words. Tony Isabella, who wrote many of those issues (and who also writes the wonderful Tony's Online Tips these days) objected to my characterization. His objections pushed me to grab my copy of Essential Power Man and read a story that I remembered well from my younger days, a yarn called "Welcome to Security City." And whaddaya know? Tony was right. The story doesn't have the poetic majesty of McGregor's issues - but then Don was, and is, a unique writer. What this issue has is a nice bit of '70s characterization and social satire.
Traveling cross-country on Greyhound to find his lost love Claire Temple, Luke Cage and his friend D.W. Griffith are passing though the desert when the driver mentions they're soon going to pass a place called Security City. "Weird place, you know. They refused to let the bus company put them on the route, said they didn't want any riff-raff stopping in their town for any length of time." Soon the bus, having strayed too far to the city, is attacked by a group of armed security guards. They shoot up the bus, killing the driver, and unleashing the wrath of a very angry Luke Cage: "I don't usually play so rough, gents - but you just wasted my best friend and the driver of that bus - I figure you're getting off easy!"
Luke and D.W. wander to the gates of Security City, as the captions describe it; "The community of the future, some say. Two hundred families nestled together in a safe, protected environment. You feel so safe that, after awhile, you don't even notice the armed guards and the barbed-wire fences." The pair beat up the guards at the gate and wander into the town, only to be confronted by more and still more armed people. The story ends with a fairly predictible ending - the town is run by a bad guy - but the denoument is wonderful: the townspeople rebel against the authority, but, according to D.W., they get what they deserve: "When you really think about it, Cage, cities like Security City are a good idea. If you send all the jerks like Mace and all the clowns like the people who fell for his line of bull over there - maybe they'll just go after each other and leave the rest of us alone."
This story is a wonderful satire of Americans' never-ending quest for security. As such, it feels in many ways as fresh now as it did 30 years ago. The idea of trading personal freedom for personal security has great resonance in this era of the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay. 30 years ago, Isabella was asking readers to think about what we really wanted, what we were willing to trade for security.
So yeah, the McGregor issues were good. But the stuff that came before it was good, too. What is my blogging personality?Yeah, this fits me. Well, except for the part about brains. And brilliance. And insight. Damn, maybe this doesn't fit me.
Forever People #6 (1972)I haven't reviewed many Jack Kirby comics in this blog so far. Part of it is because his comics are so mainstream that they don't quite fit the quirky nature of this blog. But more than that, I generally try to stay away from people who are nicknamed "the King", because it's really dang hard to come up with a fresh take on anyone called "the King." Most Kings have big followings, great lovers of their work or teachings, and one misstep will bring wrath down upon the writer.
But I was in a Kirby sort of mood, so I picked up a middle issue of one of his famous Fourth World titles, Forever People. FP was one of four books in the line, and maybe the most obscure of the group. Where New Gods was epic, Mister Miracle was spectacular and Jimmy Olson wonky as heck, Forever People had a slightly different vibe. Good, but different.
The Forever People were hippies in a time when hippies were a normal thing. They were the rebels of New Genesis, the bohemian drop-outs, forced into a war with the evil Darkseid due to Darkseid's overwhelming evilness rather than their wish to fight a bad guy.
And Darkseid really is evil literally a force for evil and destruction. What's striking in this story is that Darkseid looks a little different than he looks now. Lately Darkseid is usually shown as enormous, at least seven feet tall, with a rocky visage and and black eyes that glow with dark evil. In this book, though, he appears a it short, more like six feet, with a more normal face and with eyes from which evil literally flows.
In this comic, Darkseid's minions have taken over a Disneyland sort of place, while the Forever People try to save it and all of Earth. It's a decent enough story, but it really only kicks into gear when Darkseid finally appears and attackes the FP. Finally the story gains in drama as Darkseid gets rid of the kids as easily as you or I would swat a fly. Not only is Darkseid the embodiment of evil, but he's amazingly powerful. He causes our protagonists no end of fear and agony as he attacks them. Tall or not, that's the Darkseid we all know. Batman #226 (1970)Today after taking my teenager daughter Robin in for a hircut (she cut off five inches of hair. Wow.), we stopped by Half-Price Books to buy her some more books by Ray Bradbury. Robin's in a Bradbury phase after reading and loving both Farenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles so we bought Dandelion Wine and The Illustrated Man. While there, of course, I had to check out the comics, and found this book. "The Man with Ten Eyes" is the story title, and caused a lot of fun banter between us. "Shouldn't he have twelve eyes, if he has one on each finger also?" "Doesn't he get dizzy all the time with how much his hands move around?" "What about when he reaches into his pocket, does he worry about eye injuries then?" Stuff like that.
I didn't expect the comic to actually be about a guy who could see with his fingertips, but I forgot somehow that 35 years ago, comics were made for kids. See, there's this Vietnam vet, nicknamed Three-Eyes, who was working as a security guard at a warehouse. A group of criminals attack the warehouse, setting some nitro to blow the door off of the vault. Batman swoops in as the nitro is lit. At the same time, Three-Eyes wanders into the same room, dazed since he was hit in the head with a brick. When the nitro goes off, both Three-Eyes and the Batman are blinded, Three-Eyes permanently and Bats temporarily. Batman stumbles away as the criminals grab Three-Eyes.
After the accident, Batman calls Alfred, who takes him to an eye doctor. Amazingly, the pair wander in with Batman in full costume. He doesn't change to Bruce Wayne or seek out a private doctor either, just some doctor with very long hours who happens to be open. In the coincidence to end all coincidences, the bad guys go to the exact same doctor at the exact same time. And the doctor has this experimental procedure that grafts optic nerves to fingertips and... oh god, is this stupid enough yet? Dear god, let me stop already.
It's a shame the story gets so stupid, because it starts out nicely. I love the Vietnam vet in a 1970 comic starting out as good guy, and Batman's attitude of helping the guy is so different from the way he's portrayed these days. Also, the Irv Novick/Dick Giordano art is professional as can be: slick, clear, with a traditional but not dull presentation for the reader.
But Frank Robbins's script is dumb, dumb, dumb.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, for those who care, there's a Neal Adams cover on this one. It's decent, but it doesn't really fit the story on the inside of the comic. Gotham Central #40 (2006)If you've been reading Infinite Crisis or reading any hype for the upcoming 52 series, you probably know what's been happening or is about to happen with Detectives Renee Montoya and Cris Allen in the greater DC Universe. These two Gotham City street cops are going to start to deal with experiences outside of their lives as police detectives. Those plot twists are all well and good for a comic that takes place in the super-hero side of the DC Universe, but they have no place in a street-level series like Gotham Central. Much of what's made Gotham Central such a treat is that the comic has given readers a normal person's view of the DC Universe, its threats and heroes. The series has always been about flawed people doing their very best to keep life in order in the DCU, even while greater menaces happen around them. I was afraid that this issue, the finale for Gotham Central, would offer a kind of transition, thereby ending the series on an odd note.
But my fears didn't come true. Greg Rucka has delivered a final issue that's very true to the previous 39 issues. This issue stays firmly in the more realistic side of the DCU, and offers a nice denouement to the plots that have run through the series. Corrupt cop Jim Corrigan is finally exposed, Detective Montoya's problems with anger are finally resolved to some extent, and the relationships between the characters are center stage. Issue 40 does present a transition with this series and 52, but it does so in a way that's true to the history of this series.
Kano and Gaudiano do their usual sterling job with the artwork. Kano's a terrific artist at conveying subtle facial expressions realistic characters. The art isn't flashy, fitting the series, but it perfectly fits the atmosphere that the story conveys.
This is a nice send-off to a wonderful series. It's too bad the status quo for Montoya and Allen has changed, but at least we have this nice send-off for them. Stalker #2 (1975)Beware the man with the stolen soul! You could use that phrase for many stalkers, but it's also the tagline for this very cool '70s barbarian strip. I guess 30 years ago the term "stalker" didn't have the weird sort of nasty-guy-after-a-relationship-ends connotations it has now, because nobody could call a comic that today.
Actually this is a wonderful sword & sorcery book, with wonderful art by the combination of Waly Wood and Steve Ditko. Wood and Ditko were an interesting pair the few times their paired up in comics. The combination of Ditko's storytelling with Woody's lush inks produced a unique combination that seemed grand and exciting and even a bit beautiful. There really is a sense of two masters at work here, and many sequences are just wonderful. There's a very nice three-panel sequence in page three where the team plays with movement in panels, and a wonderfully spooky silent scene where Stalker sneaks into a demon-worshipping temple in order to save a beautiful girl. Of course the girl is gorgeous, but the drama of the scene is equally so.
The story is nice enough, by then fan-turned pro Paul Levitz (who's now a bigwig at DC), but the lush art is the star here. I love the spooky supernatural cosmic scene on page 12 a whole lot. It's a combination of Ditko's weird worlds and Wood's great outer-space scenes.
This comic only lasted four issues, but the whole team worked on all four issues. All are a real treat. Power Man #28 (1975)Few comic writers have written with the poetic feeling or style of Don McGregor, and few have been more effective at conveying the gritty reality of life in New York as McGregor. In Power Man #28, McGregor tells a story about a nasty little conspiracy to truck a poison gas through New York, while Luke Cage, Power Man, fights a vicious little creature called the Cockroach. McGregor was always great at portraying life in New York as it really was, full of nastiness and grime, with danger around every corner, but still possessing an odd sort of beauty.
I just love his prose. Check this out:
See, nobody writes like that! And on a book like Luke Cage, Power Man, to boot - maybe the least thoughtful and most desultory of all of Marvel's '70s series, a comic created as part of the blaxpoitation wave and passed around from writer to writer since it was such a chore to write. Suddenly McGregor took the comic over and the whole thing came to life. The stories had passion and energy, recurring humor and great cliffhangers, elevating this mediocre comic into something approaching greatness. He only wrote five or six issues, but they were as fine as any comics of that era, full of grit and energy and passion.
McGregor embraced the hidden greatness of this series. Power Man had always had a bizarre street-level feel to it; McGregor embraced the street and strove to make Cage a man of the street, a hero for the people. He added humor and pathos, adding scenes dripping with local color. He even took the second-rate villains of the series and did the amazing balancing act of embracing the villains' cheeziness while giving them real pathos and interesting background.
Long before Moore took over Swamp Thing and Miller took over Daredevl, McGregor gave a textbook example of how to reinvent a series while being true to its roots. It's a shame he only did about five issues, because this is magic stuff. |
You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog.|
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