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A Life Lived in Comics Day 12: I Add My Voice

April 25, 2012

I’m trying to not get into trouble. I really am.

I’ve been ignoring Before Watchmen for the most part, because I still can’t entirely accept it’s real. It does seem implausible when you stop and think about it, doesn’t it? But I’ve followed Chris Roberson’s admirable decision to break from DC over it, and today’s interview with Roberson on The Comics Journal put it back in my head.

It’s weird: I’m not even that big a Watchmen fan, to be honest. I mean, I have the Absolute Edition, but that’s more because of my sense that it’s an important addition to a collection (and my buying it before they announced the cheaper hardcover edition) than my overwhelming love for it. For supposedly the best graphic novel ever, it’s not that hard for me to think of others I prefer. Hell, I can think of other superhero comics I prefer, and other Alan Moore comics. But publishing a prequel still seems so tasteless, obscene even. Not to mention publishing seven, which just really underlines the complete crassness of the whole program. You don’t even test the waters with one? You pump out as much as possible all at once? Doesn’t sound like a publishing plan meant to do anything but take the money and run before the readership realizes they’ve been duped.

Because here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if I love Watchmen. I love the idea of proper stories, the kind that have a beginning, middle, and end, and before Watchmen—shit, those two words used to be things you could just type; now they’re gross—UNTIL Watchmen, that wasn’t particularly valued in comics. The important thing about Watchmen isn’t that it’s the greatest, but that it is a complete story. Truthfully, I can’t help but feel that saying it’s the greatest works against it both by sounding like hyperbole on one side of the argument and justification for making more on the other. What matters is that more isn’t necessary. A novel doesn’t have to be your favorite to not need to be messed with.

DC has taken a huge step backwards in the way they discuss the reasons for Before Watchmen. It’s not being sold as a continuation of a great story, but as a continuation of great characters. But the characters aren’t all that great. Out of context, they’re pretty interchangeable with dozens of other superheroes, and a Rorschach story or Night Owl story outside of Watchmen are just two more superhero stories, hardly worth the attention these are getting.

It ignores the fundamental, inconvenient truth: whatever value Watchmen has comes not at all from Doctor Manhattan and the Comedian and entirely from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The book hasn’t stayed in print nearly 30 years because of its characters, but because of its perfectly controlled artwork and intricate writing, because even for someone like me who’s never been all the way convinced, it rewards rereading and has passages revelatory in their thematic and emotional payoff. By contrast, DC’s barely even hiding the fact the Before Watchmen is solely a cynically produced product.

I don’t know this, but I believe that everyone who signed the original contract for Watchmen, Moore/Gibbons and DC alike, thought that the deal would result in the reversion of rights to Moore and Gibbons within a few years when the book went out of print. No comic book had ever stayed in print longer than that before. I can’t know what debate went on within DC when it became clear that they would benefit in an unforeseen way from the language of the contract, but the ultimate decision was to not renegotiate, even though it was on the basis of Moore’s and Gibbons’s talent that the book has remained the success it has. And that decision was made again and again over the years.

So now, insult to injury, the instant that Paul Levitz, who held firm against prequels and sequels, stepped down, the process began. It’s been a mix of the predictable claims that good characters shouldn’t be left on the shelf, despite Watchmen’s consistent sales surely beating so many newer properties hardly qualifying as being “on the shelf,” the thoroughly shocking claims that the past outright theft from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster mitigates this unethical behavior now, and a series of frankly irrelevant attacks on Alan Moore.

(Seriously, the use of public domain characters is comparable to the creation of unwanted “official” prequels? Honestly, contributions to characters like Swamp Thing that were created to be part of a shared universe is indistinguishable from expanding on a novel with a beginning, middle and end? Really, the fact that Moore has had fallings out with other creators is somehow at all relevant? I once had an argument with a prominent comics journalist about Moore and DC, and she kept trying to push me to acknowledge that some of the things Moore had publicly said made him sound like a jerk. Sure, I said, he had said mean things in public. As far as she was concerned, she’d now won the argument, regardless of the fact that we were talking about the ethics that DC was displaying in their treatment of Moore and the fact that he had reason to doubt DC’s honesty in its dealings. Oh, well, he’d made reference to hack comics writer Geoff Johns being a hack comics writer, so whatever.)

Chris Roberson derived a portion of his income from DC, and given his contract to write an arc of Vertigo’s Fairest, DC was apparently happy to continue paying him, but Roberson decided he preferred to take the risk of losing that income by breaking with the company. I’m very happy that it seems to have paid off with offers from other companies, but I admire him for making the decision even though that wasn’t a certainty. My relationship to DC is the opposite; I sometimes give them my money, but if Roberson can make the move he’s made, it’s considerably less onerous on me to not buy their comics, and I wonder if it’s something I should consider.

Not withstanding the fact that I would never read, much less pay for, Before Watchmen, I’ve already opted out of any Superman comics after DC’s disgraceful behavior regarding the Siegels’ and Shusters’ claim to the copyright of Action Comics #1 and share in derivative concepts. It’s not really a debate with two sides. Copyright law is very clear that, in cases where copyright has been transferred, the original copyright holder has the right to reclaim copyright during the period of renewal, and the Siegels’ half of the copyright to Action Comics #1 was granted to them in court. It is only the fact that Time Warner and DC have the money and lawyers to throw at the case that there is even still any contention over the matter. The subsequent countersuits directed at the families’ lawyer is nothing but malicious obfuscation of the legal process. When the original ruling came down, it was part of a period of things in comics starting to feel better and more just, and a lot of what’s happened since feels like losing ground.

The upshot is that, as much as I love Grant Morrison’s work, I have skipped his, by all accounts, excellent work on the relaunched Action Comics. I’m also missing Art Baltazar and Franco’s Superman Family, which I would certainly pick up under other circumstances. I’m not someone to tell other people what they should do, so it’s not really a boycott, but it comes down to the fact that I would feel bad buying these comics that I would otherwise love to read.

Which makes me wonder, if I can skip these comics that I would surely enjoy if the ethics of the situation didn’t make reading them unenjoyable, maybe I can skip the rest of DC’s output too. I’ve been looking forward to Morrison’s relaunched Batman Incorporated, but if I’m not missing Action Comics too much, maybe I won’t miss that either. Bob Kane’s family is fairly well taken care of, but that’s a fluke of him being able to consult a family friend who was a lawyer and getting to renegotiate his contract under threat of it being void, since he had no birth certificate (it was destroyed to help him avoid the draft). DC and Marvel both still make most of their money on characters created before the more favorable deals offered to talent today. Is it possible that they put more marketing muscle behind those old characters because their success is more profitable than the success of new properties? I wouldn’t put it past them.

I’ve generally felt okay about buying creator-owned series published by DC and Marvel, under the theory that part of voting with your wallet is voting affirmatively when a company does something you like. If sales of Superman went down while sales of Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth (a favorite of mine) went up, the smart company would do more of the latter and less of the former, right? I’ve also really enjoyed the first two issues of Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly’s Saucer Country, and have been buying Matt Fraction and Gabriel Bá’s Marvel series Casanova digitally. This is one I’m still wrestling with.

Don’t get me wrong. There are things my own employer does that make me uncomfortable (does anyone agree 100% with everything the company they work for does?), but those things aren’t remotely in the order of magnitude as DC and Marvel continuing to deny proper compensation to the families of the men who created their foundational characters. Marvel owes the vast majority of its characters to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, yet Lee had to sue for proper compensation and Kirby died never receiving his. DC has a better track record after a certain point, but its treatment of the Siegel and Shuster estates and of Alan Moore are bringing the period before that time back to the forefront.

DC can legally publish any kind of Watchmen-related material they want, but it is unethical to do so under the circumstances that they came to hold those rights all the way through 2012 and it is immoral to do so in the face of Alan Moore’s very public wish that they not compromise his novel. I hope Chris Roberson is only the beginning.

Tomorrow: less of a bummer, I hope.

Why’m I doing this, again?

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Posted in Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, DC, One Month of a Life in Comics | Leave a Comment »

Forget it, Jake. It’s Comics.

August 15, 2011

It’s been a depressing time to care about comics. Between Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment fighting long and ugly to deny the heirs of Superman co-creator and writer Jerry Siegel money they are legally entitled to, Disney and Marvel Entertainment (boy, not as many companies with “Comics” in their name as there used to be) fighting long and dishonest to deny the heirs of Marvel universe co-creator Jack Kirby the money and credit they are morally (and perhaps legally) entitled to, Marvel’s hypocrisy in the wake of Gene Colan’s death, and surely even more things I’m forgetting, I can’t remember a time it’s been this hard to feel enthusiasm for this field that I’ve loved since I was 11 and which I later chose as my profession.

I’ve often referred to the treatment of Siegel and artist Joe Shuster over their creation of Superman as comics’ original sin, and it fits the bill, in that it’s not just a terrible injustice, but one that has loomed over the field ever since and still, over 70 years later, occasionally rears its head to bring us all back to that time. This has been on my mind since the release of Action Comics #900, when I noticed a caption thanking me for my “support” of the series. While I’ve no doubt that this copy was thoughtlessly inserted by an editor or assistant editor to mark the anniversary, not a call for me to support DC and Warner Bros., Superman’s current owners, in their fight against his creators, it nonetheless got me thinking, coming as it did during the increasing acrimony in that fight, about what I was supporting, and that’s what matters. Because I can’t do it anymore.

Back when I wrote about that, I said that I didn’t think I could read Superman comics anymore, but I wasn’t sure if I was really the type to call a boycott. Fortunately, someone with greater moral conviction than myself has done just that on a related matter. Following the recent summary judgement for Marvel against the Kirby estate, Steve Bissette put out a call to boycott all Marvel products derived from the massive portion of its holdings derived from creations or co-creations of Jack Kirby.

Why now? DC has been denying the Siegels and Shusters their due for years, and Marvel has systematically diminished Jack Kirby’s role in the creation of its empire while refusing his family any royalties for nearly as long. What is different today? Nothing, really, but we’ve had a wake up call. These legal cases have been fought at the same time, with the latest decisions in each (allowing Warner to use stolen documents in its case against the Siegels’ lawyer, the summary judgement against the Kirby Estate) so close together, during the same summer that three movies based on Kirby characters have been so successful. We should have been angry all along, and many were, but this summer has been a perfect storm, so it should come as no surprise, really.

I’ve been deeply heartened to see Bissette receive a good deal of attention, at least within the comics world, for his call to arms. In an environment where fans denounce the creators of their favorite characters as greedy leeches for asking for a fraction of their due, and when even major comics websites ridicule Alan Moore for his legitimate distrust of DC (most recently when he rejected the publisher’s offer to return him his rights to Watchmen so long as he agreed to make those rights worthless by ceding his authority over whether sequels should be made to DC), I admit I was far from confident that Bissette would receive any better treatment. The boycott is far from being a movement, but it has picked up more momentum than this sort of thing usually does.

At the same time, I’ve been saddened by the intelligent, thoughtful, moral people I know who don’t seem particularly troubled. The people, not much older than me, who tell me that creative fields always work this way, that the talent always gets screwed, that this is the way of the world and not worth missing an issue of Iron Man over. They think it’s a damn shame, but what can anyone do about it? Essentially: “Forget it, Brendan. It’s comics.”

I’m 27. I feel it when I talk to people. I’m on that precipice, around 30, when half the people who don’t feel like I do insist that I’ll grow up and become jaded and get that this is just how it is, while the other half wonder why I haven’t already, how I can still be so naive as to think it can be any other way. Hopefully I’ll continue to disappoint them.

I’ve been thankful the last few weeks for the knowledgeable people who have helped me understand what the actual cases are about. I got that in the case of the Siegels and Shusters the law changed in the 1970s and this was why they could try to reclaim Superman now, but I didn’t really know what the nature of the change was. Here’s my understanding now: When the Copyright Act of 1909 was passed the term of copyright was 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. The reason it wasn’t simply a single term of 56 years was to allow, in the case of copyright transference, for the original owner to renegotiate the deal when it was time to renew. This was a protection for the original owner if the creation they sold turned out to be worth much more than either party realized. However, buyers of copyrights began to include an automatic right of copyright renewal without renegotiation into contracts, defeating the purpose of the renewal. The Copyright Act of 1976 sought to correct this by making explicit the right to renegotiate or take back the copyright during the renewal period. That is what the Siegels filed for and won in court a few years ago. Warner Brothers and DC have spent the years since attempting to get around the fact that they no longer have any legal right to the Siegels’ half of the copyright to the original Superman stories and will soon lose the Shusters’ half as well. Their behavior has been disgraceful.

The Siegels won their initial case because Superman was not created as a work for hire. The original story was completed by Siegel and Shuster and then offered to several publishers. Eventually DC bought it for $10 a page and the copyright was transferred to the publisher. I get upset when people arguing DC’s side take the position that, “Well, some people are bad businessmen. That’s how it goes.” I confess that I don’t know much about Siegel and Shuster’s business acumen, but I don’t think that it matters very much, since that doesn’t come into play when all the power in a deal rests on one side. When the people sitting on one side of a desk have bills to pay and children to feed and the people sitting on the other side have access to the printing press, the deals tend to come out one-sided.

Unlike Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby co-created the majority of the Marvel characters that still dominate its publishing line without a contract, just a page rate and a series of verbal promises. He had no doubt seen what had happened to people like Siegel and Shuster, and he asked repeatedly for better credit and better compensation. The recent Kirby Estate lawsuit attempted to follow the Siegel strategy of filing for termination of copyright because there actually is a case to be made that he did not initially do the work in what we would recognize as a formal work-for-hire situation. None of the extra money or credit he was promised ever materialized, and when the Marvel lawyers realized in the 1970s that the characters weren’t protected by contract, they made signing retroactive work-for-hire contracts a condition of getting paid for work that had already been done. In Kirby’s case, the longstanding fight to reclaim his original artwork became a factor as well. He believed he was owed his artwork and he had a family to feed, and so he signed. It’s far from an open-and-shut case, and the verdict in Marvel’s favor probably didn’t surprise anyone, but Tom Spurgeon has put it best when he’s lamented the fact that it had to come to a lawsuit at all. Kirby and his family should have been properly compensated in the first place. Even if Marvel ultimately doesn’t have a legal obligation to do it, it is the right thing.

I get it. Capitalism is about profit, not the right thing. But companies are run by people, people in this case whom I hope care about comics and understand the debt that they owe to Jack Kirby, without whom they would not be in the position that they are. The company compensates Stan Lee with an honorific title and a sizable stipend (he’s surely due more, but it’s enough to provide the kind of comfort that makes fighting for more less appealing than simply enjoying being Stan Lee). True, he had to fight for that in court, but with that precedent in place, it would cause the company no pain to extend the same to the Kirby Estate.

And that’s why we’re where we are today. Because if DC made right by the Siegels and Shusters and Marvel made right by the Kirby Estate, they wouldn’t be quite as profitable as they possibly could, but it would be by such a relatively small degree for, let’s not forget, subsidiaries of the first and second largest media companies in the world, that their continued refusal to make good adds considerable insult to injury.

But that isn’t their instinct. Just as the artists with no power weren’t necessarily bad businessmen, the publishers with all the power weren’t necessarily good businessmen. When he bought the rights to Superman, Harry Donenfeld had no more idea than Jerry Siegel or Joe Shuster that the character would go on to earn billions. He just had the instinct that many businessmen have of own everything, keep everything. Disney/Marvel isn’t denying Kirby credit and compensation because it would ruin their quarterly reports, Warner Bros./DC isn’t holding up justice for the Siegels because it would go out business. In both cases it’s that the corporate instinct to own everything, keep everything dies hard. They have to have another reason to change.

Which is the other reason we’re here. These companies will never do the right thing on their own. It will only happen if they suffer the right combination of bad press and the threat of a loss of profit large enough to make them blink. And that’s hard to accomplish, especially with a fandom that can’t imagine not buying the next issue of The Avengers or Superman, has never not bought the next issue, but it’s not impossible. It doesn’t have to be enormous. A movie doesn’t have to fail. It just needs to be the difference between a #1 weekend opening and a #2 weekend opening. What do we have to lose?

I don’t kid myself that there’s any bravery in not buying a comic book or not going to a movie. But something doesn’t have to be brave to matter. It just requires clear vision and a goal. If we want publishers to stop denying talent what they are owed, we need to make it clear that they have more to lose by doing the wrong thing than by doing the right thing. At any other time, I would be ecstatic that my favorite superhero writer, Grant Morrison, will be relaunching Superman, the character that he has spoken of having a vision for for years, and which he wrote in the greatest superhero comic of the last decade, All Star Superman. But with the current treatment of the Siegels and Shusters and after the bad taste left in my mouth by Action Comics #900 thanking me for my support, I would feel terrible if I bought that. I was looking forward to catching Captain America: The First Avenger and next year’s Avengers in the theater, but now I will be skipping both. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself if I went.

(I’m disappointed in Grant Morrison. He’s clearly an ethical writer and an ethical person, but I think he’s badly off the mark in his reaction to the current situation. I don’t know (who outside of DC can?) if part of the impetus behind the DC relaunch really is to diminish the Siegels and Shusters’ share of Superman by claiming the new iteration is a new, derivative character, but this is still an even more dubious time than usual to take over the property. When asked about the legal case over Superman, Morrison punted, getting into his theory that the character is older than most of us, and will probably outlive all of us, and so is bigger than a dispute between its creators and owners. I take Morrison at his word that he believes the character transcends and is not simply compromising himself for the chance to take his dream writing job. But his answer is wrongheaded enough and surprisingly callous enough that it’s another reason for me to have nothing to do with his take on the character. It will be the first series written by Morrison I’m skipping in over a decade.)

Will it make a difference? Probably not. I hope so. But I’m with Caleb Mozzocco. That’s not the only reason we do this. We hope others will join, and we hope it’s enough, but we have to live with ourselves, and we have to do what we believe is right. I’m in this for real now—I am done with Marvel superhero comics and movies, and despite DC’s much better track record with giving credit and compensation generally, their unconscionable treatment of the Siegels and Shusters means I am done with Superman as well. And despite my earlier hesitancy to do so, I am now joining the hopefully growing chorus to ask others to do the same. I don’t know if it will make a difference, but I can tell you that not buying a comic book, not going to a movie is such a small sacrifice, so why not do it? More than any attempt to change the behavior of media companies, I am doing it because I wouldn’t like what it said about me if I didn’t do it. I hope that if you consider these issues you’ll come to the same conclusion.

As Steve Bissette suggests in the post that started this all, go to your comic book store and let them know what you are not buying and why, and buy something else instead. If they’ve ordered something for you and will lose money if you don’t buy it, go ahead—maybe you need a last goodbye issue—but after that choose something else and tell your retailer that you are buying it instead of a Marvel Kirby comic or a Superman comic, and that’s what you plan to do until things change. I’ve been picking up Kirby Genesis to get my superhero fix and am trying new creator-owned series like Terry Moore’s Rachel Rising instead of the comics that make me feel gross.

Will missing the next issue of X-Men really hurt that much?

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Posted in DC, Essay, Jack Kirby, Marvel | 3 Comments »

The “Action Comics” #900 controversy that should have been

May 16, 2011

When I read Action Comics #900 a few weeks back, I raised my eyebrows exactly once. The lead story was fun enough, as I’ve come to expect from Paul Cornell’s run, though I find that I can’t bring myself to care at all about the “Reign of Doomsday” storyline, so I’m done with the title for now. Maybe permanently, considering what it was that caused the eyebrow raising.

As I mentioned, it was a few weeks ago, but what I saw has stuck with me since then and continued to bother me, even after I sold off the comic along with the rest of the Cornell/Woods run (not a protest, just recouping some of my money after enjoying the comics but not expecting to read them again). So time to see if anyone else had this reaction.

First of all, obviously, it wasn’t this:

Was this, in reality, a controversy? It was widely noticed in the comics press, but let’s be honest. The term “slow news day” was made for comics. It’s simply not a particularly big or particularly important field. A full news day is a rare thing. The same is true of Fox News, the network that purportedly lost its head over Superman renouncing his citizenship in a backup story, but for a very different reason. Almost no matter what happens in the world, it is hard to fill 24 hours, every day, so naturally all the cable news networks spend an inordinate amount of time on stupid shit, but they quickly move on to new stupid shit. I doubt anyone at Fox News remembered the story the next day, meaning that while the comics world convinced itself that Fox News was making a big deal out of nothing, I wonder if it was in fact the comics Internet making a bigger deal out of less.

No, what got me was on the last page of the lead story, the cliffhanger, if you will:

Not this, because whatever:

It was this:

A Superman comic just thanked me for my support. Which maybe isn’t a weird thing, but it struck me that way. In truth, of course, whenever we buy something, we’re supporting it, but we usually prefer to think of purchases more strictly transactionally. That is, I’m not buying this comic book because I approve of and wish to support the practices of Time Warner and its subsidiary companies, but rather because I am paying the company for a service in the form of half an hour’s entertainment. To think otherwise, I have to consider whether I want to support and approve of the practices of Time Warner.

While I’m sure that the editor or assistant editor who wrote that little bit of text wasn’t considering the semantic implications of thanking me for my support, if you do think about it, it’s a weird thing for a corporation to put out there. I assume that people who run large companies usually prefer to keep the relationship with customers transactional, rather than encouraging them to consider the company’s policies. Sure, they’d like you to buy the world a Coke, but they don’t actually want you to think about the labor practices of the Coca-Cola Company. DC wants you to prefer them over Marvel, but I doubt they want you to think hard about what they do with your money.

Because in this case there is something going on in the real world in which you can choose to support DC, or you can choose to support the families of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. And the money you spend on DC comics enriches Time Warner, which is paying expensive lawyers to fight the fight against the Siegels and Shusters on its behalf. There are a lot more layers than that, and your money doesn’t really directly go to efforts like attempting to get the Siegels’ lawyer thrown off the case, but “support” is a strange word for DC to be throwing around at a time like this. It may be a stretch, but I was made a little uncomfortable when a Superman comic thanked me for my “support” as the fight over the character continues to get more and more bitter.

I’m conflicted over the moral and ethical implications of my feelings about DC’s and Time Warner’s treatment of the creators of Superman. Does it mean I shouldn’t spend my money on creator-owned books like Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth or collections of significant classics of the medium like Alan Moore’s (another creator whose record at DC is less than encouraging) Swamp Thing or particularly beloved superhero series by well-compensated creators like Grant Morrison’s Batman Inc. (another comics exploration, after WildC.A.T.s 3.0 and Invincible Iron Man, of the fantasy of the benevolent corporation) (actually, if Morrison left DC, the question of whether or not to buy new DC comics would become about 75% easier), to name three that I currently regularly purchase.

I enjoy them all, but taking a stand isn’t meant to be easy, right? You are supposed to sacrifice. But what about the compensation Lemire, Morrison and, hopefully, Moore get from my purchase? Or is that a rationalization? And would any of it make any difference anyway? Is it okay to buy them used? This is one of those times I wish I posted more often and so had more readers and commenters, as I’d really like someone smarter and savvier than me to take up this question.

So, yeah, not all the way there on what to do about DC (and Marvel, and others) generally, but in the current climate, after the way that word “support” has stuck with me, I know that I at least can’t buy any Superman comics while this trial goes on. Sorry, Mr. Cornell, Mr. Woods. I was enjoying your run, but if I’m going to read anymore, its going to have to be from the library, and even that might feel too gross right now.

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A History That Serves No One

January 20, 2011
Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics
Written and directed by Mac Carter
$24.98

For all of the mainstreaming of characters and concepts that have their basis in comics, the actual comics field is still small enough that there is no money in any kind of serious historical documentaries about its people or institutions. With the exception of personality-driven examples like Crumb, which has only a limited interest in comics outside of Crumb’s own work, the best work has often been done for the supplementary material of comics-inspired movies’ DVD releases. While these rarely go beyond hagiography and official history, there is the occasional surprise like the entertaining Jack Kirby: Storyteller, included on the Fantastic Four 2-disc special edition, which includes a surprising amount of criticism of Stan Lee and Marvel, as well as some genuine discussion of Kirby’s style and admissions by several comics professionals that they initially found it off-putting.

Despite the fact that it is produced by Warner Bros., parent company of DC Entertainment, the fact that Secret Origin is sold as a standalone product led me to expect slightly more of it than I would a supplemental documentary accompanying another film. This is, after all, something that its producers expect people to pay for (or in my case find at the library) and sit down to watch as a main attraction, not simply something to occupy an extra 30 minutes of a viewer’s time should Batman Begins make them curious about Batman’s comic-book origins.

However, a glimpse at the box is all it takes to see that the film is a hastily compiled piece of work pushed onto market in time for DC’s 75th anniversary with surprisingly little care. The first hint is the lack of any original art on the box, though far more telling is the absence of any supplemental material whatsoever. Last year’s Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist offered little in the way of original insight on its subject, but made up for it by filling the disc with a commentary track, a gallery of Eisner artwork, and several previously unheard interviews between Eisner and other comics greats recorded as part of his “Shop Talk” series. Secret Origin’s lack of extended interviews, digital comics, interactive timeline or literally any other type of supplemental material both added to the feature’s feeling of being itself a supplemental film without a home while placing additional pressure on it to itself justify the time and money its producers were asking audiences give it.

In that, Secret Origin fails, delivering even less than I anticipated in the way of useful history, and doing a disservice to the flawed company that it hopes to represent. To be sure, DC and its parent company are large corporations, and so are guilty of putting their own bottom lines above the interests of the people that work for and with them, who created everything that they are, but DC has in recent decades made a good-faith effort to be more equitable in its dealings, and has been more clear-eyed than rival Marvel in its own depiction of its legacy, and so Secret Origin’s whitewashing of DC’s past sins also eliminates all examples of DC overcoming those sins. I had thought, for instance, that the deal struck with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for Superman, which essentially amounts to the theft of a property that went on to be worth billions, was so well established that it had become part of even the official history, but in an era when Warner Bros. is taking a closer hand in running DC and the rights to Superman are being challenged in court, the documentary simply ignores it. Instead, after every other publisher rejected Superman, DC is treated as the hero for finally putting it into print. DC would go on to belittle, marginalize, and finally fire Siegel and Shuster, but under pressure the company did make an effort to do right, giving the pair credit and a stipend, and treating contemporary talent somewhat better. All of this is erased along with the original wrongdoing.

Even before this point, details have been elided, or included only enough to spice up the story, while skipping over their implications, as when the mob connections of National (DC’s forebear)’s founders is mentioned in passing, to give a taste of the era, while what if anything that meant for the company’s early days goes unmentioned. Considering that so much of that era’s history comes in interviews with Gerard Jones, who wrote a book that covers the mob’s role in early comics companies, Men of Tomorrow, it’s a subject that the documentary had the resources to explore, but chose not to, instead including it just to lend a bit of sex to the proceedings.

(Actually, Jones could have cleared up a lot of the errors in the early portion of the film. As it goes on, Bob Kane’s age at the time of Batman’s creation is misstated as 18, which seems like a small detail until one discovers that his receipt of a better deal than any other creator received for decades was due to the fact that his age was unknown because his father had made his birth certificate disappear to help him avoid the draft. A few years after his initial deal with DC, Kane claimed that he had been a minor* when he signed his contract (though he may have been as old as 22), meaning it was void, and opening DC up to the loss of Batman if it didn’t renegotiate with Kane, all covered in Jones’s book.)

Later, the film will refer to Neal Adams as a rabble-rouser, but will completely neglect to mention why, detailing the controversial stories he illustrated, but ignoring his efforts on behalf of aggrieved artists working for the company (including Siegel and Shuster). Later still, Alan Moore comes up, but is shuffled offstage as quickly as possible, so as not to sully the triumph of Watchmen with the decades of double-dealing and resentments that followed.

None of this should be terribly surprising in a corporate product created to promote that corporation’s image and products, but the fact that nearly no one else has the resources to make and sell documentaries about comics history makes the false image of comics history that it peddles all the more significant. And again, it is such a strange failure, as DC is, for its flaws, a much, much better company that it used to be, and removing references to its past only prevents it from highlighting the ways in which it has periodically led the field in improving treatment of the creative people that are its lifeblood.

Secret Origin’s other serious flaw is its essential confusion as to what its message is. Half the time the narration asserts that comics can be about anything, while the other half of the time, and notably in its conclusion, it glories in the premise that DC’s superheroes will never die. Well, which is it? Is DC’s main accomplishment an expansion of the possibilities of the comics medium, or the continued financial success of the same few characters and same single genre that the company has published since the 1930s and ’40s? The two messages are radically different, and while they’re not necessarily diametrically opposed, for such a short and superficial documentary, the sloppy back-and-forth between the two leaves the narrative badly unfocused.

Which is not to say that the film is without any virtues. Much of the archival footage was interesting and new to me. The film does a good job of capturing the emotional connection readers and talent alike develop with DC’s characters. Most memorably, Louise Simonson appears close to tears as she talks about what Superman means to her and other writers, and how that sentiment influenced the room in the writers’ summit that planned 1992’s death of Superman. But sincere moments like that feel rare in the middle of this 90-minute commercial for a soulless corporation that barely resembles the real DC.

*Correction 9/4/11: The original version of this post stated that Kane was 17 when he signed the contract, but in fact his age at the time is unknown. A recent reread of Men of Tomorrow cleared this up.

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The Kids(’ Comics) Are Alright and The Fantastic Four of Old – My Week in Comics September 19-25

October 1, 2010

This week: More on all-ages and kids’ comics, the most honest assessment of DC’s recent changes on the Internet, what the Fantastic Four looked like in the heady days of 2001, and What I Read.

ALL-AGES FOLLOW-UP

It was a weird process that produced last week’s piece on all-ages comics. I sat down to write about how I wish there were more of them, then started to think about my own reading history and how little it lined up with what I was writing about, then thought about what sold in bookstores and wondered if I was unfairly dismissing it because it wasn’t to my taste. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series sells in the millions, and if people want to think of them as comics, then I am happy to claim them, even though I’ve never read one and don’t really know what they’re like (something I will correct as soon as I can get the first book from the library). I hope comics stores stock Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, because it is so popular that its main character is being added to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a second movie is coming out early next year.

The whole thing made me feel as foolish as the people who complain that superhero comics aren’t aimed at kids anymore because they want their kids to read the same thing they read as kids (ignoring the fact that superhero comics are the way they are because those same readers didn’t want to change their reading habits as they grew up, making the whole argument somewhat hypocritical). Having written 1,500 words at that point, I didn’t want to scrap everything even though I now doubted my initial premise, so I reframed the whole thing in terms of my uncertainty as to what the problem was and if there even was a problem.

Still, it got some play on other sites (who oddly, all excerpted the same paragraph about sales, one of several contradictory points I was trying out over the course of the piece), and I was really pleased that several commenters mentioned Disney Adventures and its spinoff, Comic Zone. I’ve heard Disney Adventures mentioned elsewhere, but never noticed a copy in grocery stores or anywhere else while it was being published. However, it does sound like it was an excellent mix of corporate- and creator-owned material, which clearly kids liked. Landry Walker chimed in to note that Disney Adventures enjoyed something like a 25% sales bump when the phrase “Comic Zone” was added to the cover, which is wonderful. We all want comics stores to do well, but it is tempting to forget that the goal is to attract readers, whether it’s within the Direct Market or out of it and whether it’s through a publisher we think of as being within the industry or some other entity (though as the new corporate parent of Marvel, Disney could now easily be thought of as within the industry).

Monday also saw Skottie Young post about the kid-friendliness of his work, despite it lacking a classification as all-ages material. He also echoes my mention of Spawn as something not aimed primarily at kids that nonetheless appeals to them (or at least did in the ’90s), since kids like more grown-up material than they are generally given credit for. His post is worth a read, and I think he’s mostly right on, though I do think that there is plenty of room for comics aimed at kids in addition to ones that are simply appropriate for them.

Meantime, I’ll be tracking down the collections of Comic Zone, which each look very cool and several of which include work from cartoonists I enjoy.

WHAT DO ALL THESE CHANGES AT DC REALLY MEAN?

I don’t know.

THE LAST DAYS OF OLD MARVEL: A CASE STUDY

  • Fantastic Four Annual 2001 & #46–#49 by Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Marín, Jeph Loeb, Kevin Maguire et al.

As part of my ongoing efforts to better balance my budget, along with getting more comics from the library I’ve lately been more diligent about reading the unread comics I have lying around instead of buying more. This week I pulled these Fantastic Four issues out of a box, and sitting down with them found myself more interested in their place in Marvel history than in the (convoluted) story itself. These issues were published after Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas became the Editor in Chief and President of Marvel, respectively, but don’t yet show their imprint. Curious about how the transition between #49 and #60 went, and realizing I owned the issues in between, I dug out #50–#59 to reread as well.

By the time the first of these issues came out, the Ultimate Universe had been launched, Grant Morrison was writing New X-Men, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon had finished their Punisher maxi-series and starting an ongoing continuation, J. Michael Straczynski was writing Amazing Spider-Man, and Brian Michael Bendis was just about to take over Daredevil. I had forgotten that Fantastic Four was one of the last of Marvel’s major franchises to get the New Marvel “back to basics” treatment. FF finally got its New Marvel makeover with issue #60, the beginning of Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s run on the series, which also inaugurated the New-Marvel-style taunting of DC, published with a nine-cent cover price a few months after DC released Batman: The 10-cent Adventure.

This then is the beginning of the end of the Old Marvel Fantastic Four, with this arc and the next tying up the loose plot threads and clearing the decks for a fresh start. By contrast with where the title would be a year later, these issues read very ’90s, with Image-influenced art, overdone coloring and lettering effects, and an absurdly complicated story that resolves, somehow, with a giant explosion that reverts everything to normal. Some of these comics have cover credits, some don’t—it was becoming standard at Marvel, but wasn’t quite there yet.

As the story opens, Ben can change into the Thing and back at will, Johnny wears a different uniform to help him control his powers, which he can’t do on his own, and Sue and Reed (or Sue and Doom; I’m not entirely clear) have an adult daughter who dresses like Doom. By issue #60, all of this will be gone. Interestingly, the fans don’t seem to have had time to entirely grasp the New Marvel aesthetic, as one fan letter requests an Ultimate Fantastic Four, the first choice for artist being Rob Liefeld. Pacheco’s art here isn’t unpleasant, though he’s since gotten a lot better, but it is overly busy compared with Kevin Maguire’s work on the Annual that begins the story, and the fill-ins every other issue don’t help.

The story involves a dead Galactus from another reality landing on Earth, and the death of the FF’s reality Galactus leaving Earth open to attack from the being that killed him. A variety of characters from other realities show up and do battle with the FF. Reed’s eventual plan involves finding the three pieces of the location of the Ultimate Nullifier hidden in the Johnny Storms of three other realities, so they can be beamed into their own Johnny’s head and he can return it. Why are the pieces of the location hidden in these other Johnnys? It’s not clear. Why are there three pieces? Because with Johnny on his way to the moon to collect the Nullifier, that leaves three members of the FF to look for them. The plot is on about that level. Which is not to say that there aren’t some pleasures in the strange different worlds the Four find themselves in, but it’s all pretty thin stuff, motivated by the needs of the plot rather than the characters.

As evidenced by the different realities in play, the plot is the kind of continuity mashup that scripter Jeph Loeb currently specializes in, though Loeb isn’t responsible for the plot here. These issues mark the end of Loeb’s tenure scripting over Carlos Pacheco and Rafael Marín’s plots. Loeb famously wrote the book for one dollar, though his role seems to be limited to trying to make sense of the plots and turn the explanation into something approximating dialogue, a feat Karl Kesel would have slightly more success at in the next arc. Loeb’s more recent, nonsensical work for Marvel feels like a bit of a holdover from the pre-Quesada era, and I wonder if some of the habits he now frequently exhibits were learned on this run.

  • Fantastic Four #50 by Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Marín, Jeph Loeb, Tom Grummet et al.

Issue #50 is the epilogue to Pacheco, Marín and Loeb’s last storyline, but is pretty much wasted, thanks to its timing during the “’Nuff Said” gimmick, a month in which all Marvel comics contained stories without dialogue. Being an anniversary issue, there are also backups, which do have dialogue. They’re all fluff, but some have nice bits. The first is a painfully unfunny update of Lee and Kirby’s “This is a Plot?” from FF Annual #5. The only part of the humor backup I laughed at (a tiny bit) was the page making fun of the letterers, which highlights the early ’00s’ lettering excesses by giving each character a different font, though to be honest it’s not very different from the rest of the issue. I’ve always wondered what Johnny’s flaming word balloons are supposed to sound like. Tom Brevoort, who took over as editor midway through the previous arc, appears as a character, which is notable in that he has gone on to be a major player in New Marvel and was likely a prime mover in FF’s overhaul. The second story is a nice, retro pastiche from Fabian Nicieza and Steve Rude, and the third is a cute but thin story by Udon Studios about Ben and Johnny shopping for Reed and Sue’s anniversary.

  • Fantastic Four #51–#54 by Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Marín, Karl Kesel & Mark Bagley

These four issues are the actual conclusion of the Old Marvel FF, with Loeb replaced by Karl Kesel, and the interlocking Mike Wieringo covers point to where the series is going. Wieringo already has the characters down, drawing them essentially the same as he will when he takes over the interiors six months later. Like the issues themselves, the interior art of this run straddles the line between New and Old Marvel, as it is provided by Mark Bagley, a longtime Spider-Man artist who was also the debut artist on Ultimate Spider-Man. Bagley pulled double duty for the course of this arc, which began the same month as Ultimate Spider-Man #17, a few months before that series started shipping 18 times a year. The work looks pretty similar to Ultimate Spider-Man, with a similar emphasis on simple page layouts and frequent extreme closeups highlighting the character interaction.

Pacheco and Marín’s story continues a thread from the previous arc and another from an Inhumans miniseries they had written previously. I didn’t read that, but everything pertinent to this story is explained well enough. As for the continuation of this series, we pick up with Sue and Reed’s grown-up daughter gone and Sue is instead pregnant with the same daughter (it’s not worth going into how these things happened, but they mostly make sense). In the last issue, Doctor Doom arrives to deliver the baby and restore Johnny’s control over his powers. In return for saving the baby, he takes the right to name her and chooses Valeria. Their connection will be the most significant holdover from this era to make it into the Waid/Wieringo run. Otherwise, the story is very dense, but manages by the end to have simplified the status quo.

Issue #54 is a “100-Page Monster,” triple-sized anniversary issues containing few ads and many pages of classic reprints at only $1.25 extra. Considering the state of Old Marvel’s trade paperback program, these were probably really welcome. They’re obsolete these days, and the two issues included here, FF Annual #6, featuring the birth of Franklin Richards, and FF #176, have both been reprinted into trades since then, but I don’t know if either were available, at least in color, at the time.

  • Fantastic Four #55–#56 by Karl Kesel, Stuart Immonen & Scott Koblish

The letter column insists that the next five issues aren’t “fill-ins,” but of course they are, keeping the schedule until the next ongoing creative team of Waid and Wieringo take over—not that there’s anything wrong with that. These five issues are my favorites of the ones included here. Kesel is the go-to FF fill-in writer, also writing two issues between the end of the Waid/Wieringo run and the beginning of the Straczynski run. Kesel has a good handle on the characters, and generally builds his stories around their personalities. These two are no exception, the first being a romp in which Ben and Johnny are sent on a wild goose chase to get them out of the Baxter building, and the second a character piece about Ben’s boyhood on Yancy Street. #56 might also be the first issue to make a big deal out of Ben being Jewish, if I remember correctly. The first story is a lot of fun, once one gets over the fact that the plot is instigated by the entire Baxter Building somehow having only one TV, and Immonen brings a lot of energy to Ben and Johnny’s subsequent run-in with the Skrull “Grand Acquisitioner.” Immonen also turns on a dime, bringing a much moodier look to the second story, which is darker and more emotional. If Kesel sometimes hits the psychoanalytical button a little too hard in both stories, his dialogue is still generally looser and more realistic than when he had to explain Pacheco and Marín’s complex plot machinations in the previous arc.

  • Fantastic Four #57–#59 by Adam Warren, Keron Grant & Derek Fridolfs

Man, the Thing has a lot of catchphrases. It’s something you notice when they’re turned into constant background noise, as happens here when they’re repeated ad nauseum by an army of semi-aware Thing clones. Not surprisingly, the Thing is the lead in this story, which is called “The Ever-Loving, Blue-Eyed End of the World,” and it ties up the last of the details of the run that doesn’t mesh with the classic Four, Ben’s ability to change back and forth into the Thing at will. Since it’s written by Adam Warren, this bit of tidying up is done in a very weird, self-aware and amusing way: clones of Ben’s rocky shell attack him because they’re tired of him being able to will his shell into nonexistence, which they find abhorrent, shouting, “Ya know what it’s like to suddenly not exist? And to somehow know that ya don’t exist?”

As befits an Adam Warren story, this one is full of crazy ideas, like a future projection TV that predicts probable futures in the form of a TV news broadcast, which Ben watches as he falls asleep, and which later keeps the story feeling urgent as it announces Ben’s impending death and the destruction his clones will wreak on earth once they defeat him. Along with Keron Grant’s pleasantly off-model, manga-ish artwork, the whole thing feels completely unlike the issues before and after it, but are funny and exciting. The only problems I had were that it’s a little overlong and Sue and Johnny play no role in the proceedings beyond telling each other how serious everything is. Overall, though, like the two issues before it, this story is a great breather between the continuity-heavy Old Marvel approach of the Pacheco/Marín issues and the back-to-basics New Marvel approach, giving a writer and artist with unique sensibilities three issues to go wild.

READ THIS WEEK:

  • Almost Silent by Jason
    Of the books collected here, I had only previously read The Living and the Dead, which is okay, but I really loved how silly and funny the gag strips and love stories of the other three books are.

  • Batman: Streets of Gotham #11–#14 by Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs, Marc Andreykoet al.
    These are perfectly fine Batman comics. While Grant Morrison does his own thing in Batman and Batman and Robin, this seems to be the repository for the long-term soap opera, and there’s a place for that. I’m also looking forward to reading more “House of Hush,” since Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen’s previous “Heart of Hush” from Detective Comics was one of my favorite trashy superhero stories of recent years. I mean, c’mon, Hush has plastic surgery to look just like Bruce Wayne so he can mess with him, plus steals Catwoman’s heart for good measure. It was crazy and hard not to love in how messed up it was.
  • Buffy Season 8: Riley by Jane Espenson & Karl Moline
  • Deadpool Team-Up #899 (from Deadpool Team-Up: Good Buddies) by Fred Van Lente & Dalibor Talajic´ (library)
    Grabbed this from the library just for the Hercules team-up. I doubt I’ll read the rest, because I don’t care. However, this issue was the most I’ve enjoyed a Deadpool comic, as Incredible Hercules co-writer Fred Van Lente comes up with a clever device that actually forces Deadpool to confront himself in an interesting way. Hercules’s inclusion works quite well, and in keeping with the way that Incredible Herc is structured, his motivation and challenge flows organically from mythology.
  • Doom Patrol #13–#14 by Keith Giffen, Matthew Clark, Ron Randall & John Livesay
    In a weird way, this is mirroring Morrison’s Batman run, bringing in every previous incarnation of Doom Patrol, notably Morrison’s, and fitting it all together. But more importantly, the recap page is in song form, presented by Ambush Bug.
  • Fantastic Four #583 by Jonathan Hickman, Steve Epting & Paul Mounts
    The current model FF. I’m torn. After a first arc that I really enjoyed, virtually everything else has felt like issue after issue of setup. Now that everything’s in place that may change, but I was surprised how much this issue, the first of the long-hyped “Three” storyline felt like a traditional first issue of an arc, with all the setup that entails. Hasn’t there been enough? I’m going to see “Three” through and decide if I want to keep reading after that. Also, the recap page failed me, as it doesn’t really explain when or why Doom lost his intelligence. Even wikipedia didn’t make it clear to me if it was a part of Dark Reign or a part of Seige. I get that those big events need to have consequences, but it is jarring when following a series like FF and not the big events to learn that something like that has happened to a significant cast member in a completely different series.
  • Guy Gardner: Collateral Damage #1–#2 by Howard Chaykin & Michelle Madsen
    Great match of character and artist. Nice, trashy fun. Ostensibly a tie-in to The Rann/Thanagar War, but my knowing nothing about that series didn’t hurt at all. By the way, is this the first story ever to be narrated all the way through by G’Nort?

Images of Gorilla Gorilla © Disney. Images of WildC.A.T.S. and Batman: Streets of Gotham © DC Comics, Inc. Images of Fantastic Four © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Alan Moore Vs. DC, Punisher Vs. the World – My Weeks in Comics August 29–September 11

September 16, 2010

This week: Alan Moore doesn’t owe DC anything, Garth Ennis finishes his Punisher run in style, and two weeks of What I Read.

IT’S NOT PARANOIA IF THEY REALLY ARE OUT TO GET YOU

WHEN IT WAS FIRST REPORTED in July that Alan Moore had turned down DC Comics’ offer to return the rights to Watchmen to him because the rights came with requirements he considered undesirable, the derision from fans loyal to corporately owned characters over actual people was instant. I noted the kerfuffle in this space only in passing, as I was amused that many commenters spoke of Moore as though he was a figure from the past, though he had a new comic out that week from Avatar.

But now, after his recent interview with Bleeding Cool, in which he provided additional context for that decision, and spoke of several encounters with DC and with Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons that took place around the time of the Watchmen movie adaptation and since, the volume has turned up. And more disturbingly, the tone-deaf criticism of Moore is no longer coming exclusively from the subterranean realm of web comments sections, but from comics news outlets themselves.

The most prominent example is probably ComicsAlliance, which ran an article headlined “Alan Moore Goes Beyond Paranoid in His Latest Crazy Old Man Rant.” In a piece that completely ignores the history of DC’s dealings with Moore and his legitimate problems with the publisher, instead weakly stating that Moore “feels ripped off by DC,” David Uzumeri accuses Moore of “petty douchebaggery” and goes on to cherry-pick quotations from the interview, a few of which he misrepresents. The reason this is so disappointing is that ComicsAlliance has in many ways been a continuation of the editorial vision of Comic Foundry magazine, at which ComicsAlliance Editor in Chief Laura Hudson served as Senior Editor. As I’ve written before, Comic Foundry was a magazine about the creators of comics, not its characters or corporate entities, and I’ve always felt like ComicsAlliance continued that tradition admirably. I’m surprised and disheartened that this article about Moore made it onto the site.

Much more reasonable readings of the interview come by way of Tom Spurgeon on his Comics Reporter site and Susana Polo on Abrams Media Network’s Geekosystem, both of which put Moore’s comments in their proper context. Polo actually praises Moore’s restraint, while Spurgeon points to Moore as an example of the ways that comics writers and artists are still treated poorly today and says that he should be listened to rather than mocked.

I’m going to put it even simpler than Spurgeon and Polo. I have no real interest in litigating each of the claims Moore makes in the interview, but what Uzumeri and the “fans” who side with corporations over people fail to understand is that Alan Moore simply doesn’t owe DC the benefit of the doubt. DC doesn’t deserve it from him. End of story. DC may not have been quite so underhanded in each instance as Moore interprets, but many of the incidents he details indeed sound very fishy, and the publisher has been dishonest and manipulative in its dealings with him in the past. Nor could his reactions have been particularly surprising to DC; no one has been more clear than Moore about his disinterest in engaging with the company, yet still they contact him directly and indirectly about a project he has all but disowned. It’s distasteful to say the least.

Whatever one thinks of Moore, he has been far more respectful of DC than DC has been of him. Many, many creators have received similar treatment or worse, and Moore’s response only seems unreasonable in that it is unusual. If everyone with similar experiences spoke as frankly as he does, this kind of behavior from publishers would probably be far rarer. But I understand the fear of speaking out when there are reprisals from not only publishers, but from fans as well. I don’t expect fans to change anytime soon, though I do hope ComicsAlliance’s response is simply a lapse and not an indication of more derision of legitimately aggrieved creators to come.

READ THIS WEEK 8/29–9/4—THE PUNISHER

  • Punisher MAX HC vol. 5 by Garth Ennis, Goran Parlov & Howard Chaykin

  • Punisher: War Zone by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon (library)
  • Punishermax: Kingpin by Jason Aaron & Steve Dillon (library)

(I read the first few volumes back in July.)

THE END of Garth Ennis’s Punisher MAX does not disappoint. The series narrows as it goes on, but in typical Ennis fashion this feels like the necessary consequence of what has come before rather than becoming insular. This version of Frank Castle has spent a relatively small amount of his time fighting the mob and other street crime, and a lot more of it involved with military and intelligence affairs, the distinction between soldiers (noble) and company men (venal) frequently highlighted. In this final volume, the degree to which Castle is a liability to the latter comes to the forefront, as both stories involve attempts by a group of generals he ran afoul of back in the second hardcover to kill him.

In the first story, they send a man who previously nearly killed Castle after him: Barracuda, introduced a few storylines ago and apparently eaten by a shark (how he survives is detailed in Punisher MAX Presents: Barracuda, but remembering that to be pretty shallow when I read it from the library years back, I skipped it this time around). This time we learn Barracuda’s origin, and while it’s different from Castle’s (with the military the common denominator), it’s clear that the reason he is so dangerous to Castle is the thing they have in common: neither are at all interested in the political games played by men like the generals, instead methodically focused on what’s in front of them, even though Castle’s approach is grimly serious and Barracuda’s is jolly. Once again Castle barely survives his encounter, though this time Barracuda is definitively dead.

The final storyline pits Castle against the generals more directly, as they decide that sending U.S. soldiers after him is the one way to ensure that he won’t fight back. This backfires when the leader of the team sent after Castle has less tolerance for their motives than they anticipate, but the more interesting thing about the story is the framing device that structures each chapter. Throughout, Ennis includes excerpts of a book about the Valley Forge firebase where Castle served in Vietnam, written by the brother of a character who appeared and died in Punisher MAX: Born, bringing the series thematically back to where it began.

The decision by Ennis and Marvel to maintain that Castle is a Vietnam veteran, while other Marvel characters have had their origins updated to be tied to more recent wars, casts a shadow over the entire series. The Punisher is a product of Vietnam, a war fought for political ideology rather than necessity, and here he represents the enduring legacy of Vietnam on the U.S., a reminder of the ugliness unleashed by men like the generals and who must be destroyed so that they can do it again. A woman interviewed in Valley Forge, Valley Forge, the book-within-the-book argues that similar horrors will be coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Incidentally, it was around this time in the real world that the debate over ending the Iraq war began leading to claims from the Right that the U.S. lost in Vietnam because the Left refused to let it win by engineering a loss of will at home and was doing so again today.

What’s fascinating is that Castle is never shown in any moral high ground. He can’t be; he’s a mass murderer. But his experiences in Vietnam and since have uniquely positioned him to be the enemy of those who make war for profit. Punisher MAX views them as no different from the mobsters Castle also fights, but with a veneer of respectability. When the generals give their reasons for coming after him, Castle notes that they sound like businessmen, not soldiers, and he is a problem for them for no better reason than that someone who won’t play politics with them is bad for business.

As I mentioned, Ennis’s stories often have an inevitability to them. His stories end the way they must, despite any character’s efforts to the contrary, and it’s usually clear how they must end early on. The drama is in the twisting of the knife. The conflict Castle finds himself in in the final story was explicitly set up early in the series and seeds of it were planted in Born. Of course, the Punisher is a company-owned character, so he can’t die like Hitman’s Tommy Monaghan or ride into the sunset like Preacher’s Jesse Custer. He just continues, which is his tragedy. But thematically Ennis’s run is closed, and successfully so.

Most of the book is drawn by Goran Parlov, who drew much of the series, and his work has almost an old-school look to it, bold and simple, with some quirky flourishes like Barracuda’s giant arms and tiny head and hands, that make it feel unique, and the fact that virtually every panel (maybe every panel?) is page-width marks it as modern. Despite a lack of detail, Parlov’s art can get awfully grimy, and proves a great fit. Oddly, Howard Chaykin provides the first chapter of the Barracuda story. I love Chaykin’s work, and it looks great here, but man is it different from Parlov. You can tell a Chaykin page by the layout alone, and it’s unlike anything else in the Punisher MAX run. I can’t complain about Chaykin showing up anywhere, but why a single chapter has a different artist is confusing to me.


OF COURSE, Ennis did write one more Punisher story, but it was a return to the Marvel Knights version of the character, with all the broad comedy, focus on the mob, and character reprisals that implies. This was serialized to coincide with the movie of the same title, and it’s an odd choice, as it’s so overtly a sequel to a story from ten years before. It’s pretty much fluff after what’s come before, but not an entirely unwelcome breather after the deep thematic darkness of MAX. It’s also fun to see Ennis reunited with Steve Dillon, the artist on Ennis’s original Marvel Knights Punisher run. The incongruous restraint of his artwork still heightens the feeling of violence and makes otherwise juvenile humor feel a little more dignified and therefore all the sillier. This story couldn’t live up to what’s come before, but neither did it leave a bad taste in my mouth.


AND THEN Punisher MAX was relaunched as, strangely, Punishermax. The old series actually continued without Ennis, but no one’s had anything positive to say about any of that material, and Marvel seems content to forget it happened, so I skipped to the beginning of Jason Aaron’s run. Steve Dillon has come along as well, drawing the MAX version of the Punisher for the first time. Interestingly, even though both versions of the Punisher have aged in real time since Vietnam, Dillon draws him noticeably older and more tired-looking here than in the War Zone series he drew less than a year earlier.

Aaron has been tasked with bringing some of the Marvel wackiness to the Max playground, and comes up with a clever way to bring in the Kingpin, considering that no such single figure has ruled the mob thus far in the series. Next up will be Bullseye. Aaron’s well on his way to a comfortable middle ground between the Max and Marvel Knights tones, but there’s not yet any sign of a greater ambition than that. Where Ennis transcended the Punisher to write about war, crime, business and the intersections of the three as they affect the American way of life (and which he is now satirizing in a different form in his broad comedy series The Boys), Aaron is so far content to stick within the usual Punisher milieu, though he’s doing so excellently.

READ THIS WEEK 8/29–9/4—EVERYTHING ELSE:

  • 20th Century Boys vol. 10 by Naoki Urasawa
    Please just read this. You’re hurting me, you’re hurting yourself, you’re hurting future generations—it’s just not doing anyone any good, you not reading it.

  • Aliens Omnibus vol. 1 by Mark Verheiden, Mark A. Nelson, Den Beauvais, et al.
  • The Authority: The Lost Year #10 & #11 by (Grant Morrison,) Keith Giffen & Brandon Badeaux
  • Batman Beyond #2 by Adam Beechen, Ryan Benjamin & John Stanisci
    Mixed feelings. Cool to see this world again, and a bit of a mystery, but really the stakes feel very low. The victims so far are Batman villains and the suspect is an old Batman villain who only ever went after Batman himself. What I meant above by insular; the genre eats itself.
  • Booster Gold #33 & #34 by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, Chris Batista, Rich Perrotta & Prentis Rollins
  • The Incredible Hercules: Dark Reign by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Takeshi Miyazawa, Rodney Buchemi, Dietrich Smith & Ryan Stegman (library)
    I think this is the second “Dark Reign”-branded collection I’ve read (the first being Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four one, which is sort of a prelude to his run on the series proper). (No, wait, I forgot Zodiac.) I had assumed “Dark Reign” was just a status quo, but in both of these collections the titular hero actually fights Norman Osborn, DR’s big bad. I wonder if he shows up in all of them. That would definitely keep him busy. Anyway, his inclusion here feels organic enough, and the story that is actually the bulk of the collection, Herc and Amadeus entering the underworld to find Zeus, is fun in the series’ usual comedy/action way, with lots of tidbits from Greek mythology mixed in. The art is sadly uneven, though, with a different artist drawing just about every chapter.
  • Orc Stain #1 by James Stokoe
  • Stumptown #4 by Greg Rucka, Matthew Southworth & Rico Renzi
    Satisfying ending. If you haven’t, check out my recent interview with artist Matthew Southworth.
  • Superman #700 by James Robinson, Bernard Chang, Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund, J. Michael Straczynski, Eddy Barrows & J.P. Mayer
  • Sweet Tooth #13 by Jeff Lemire
  • Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley (library)
    If someone asked me what the cliché notion of a Marvel comic is, I’d probably show them X-Men Forever. If they asked the same question of a DC comic, I’d lean toward Identity Crisis. Ask me for a Fantagraphics one, and Wally Gropius fits the bill pretty well.

    I expected to like this, like, y’know, everyone else did, but it did pretty much nothing for me. The craft that’s gone into it is undeniable, but it’s in service to not much at all. It claims to be a satire, but appears to be one without a point, unless “rich people can be jerks” merits 60 pages. Did I miss something?

READ THIS WEEK 8/15–8/21:

  • Action Comics #892 by Paul Cornell, Pete Woods, Pere Pérez, Jeff Lemire & Pier Gallo
    I think it’s really smart how this take on Luthor is completely divorced from Superman. You can forget that he sometimes thinks about other things. Definitely along for the ride.

  • Adventure Comics #517 & 518 by Paul Levitz, Kevin Sharpe, Marlo Alquiza, Jeff Lemire, Mahmud Asrar & John Dell
    I’m cooling on the Legion feature just as I’m warming to Lemire’s take on the Atom. Equilibrium, people!
  • The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects by Mike Mignola
  • Casanova (2010) #2 by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Bá
    Weird how they’re just smashing two of the old issues together with just an ad in between. There must be a better way to do the transition. I had to turn back a page to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Fraction and Bá are both better today, but I’m enjoying this revisit to the original series, and am definitely primed to see what the new material will be like.
  • King City #11 by Brandon Graham
    Can’t wait to see how this ends.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes #4 by Paul Levitz, Yildiray Cinar, Francis Portela & Wayne Faucher
  • Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolo Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos & Annie Di Donna
    This was a real page-turner with beautiful art, even as I was conflicted all the way through. I think I’m okay that it didn’t contain much actual math or logic, since the story of the people developing modern logic, chiefly Bertrand Russell, is pretty riveting and the book bends over backwards to tell you that this is a human drama rather than a textbook. Still, it was weird how much the authors had to insert themselves to explain the import of various events and provide background. I think they explain more of the math than Russell does. The whole book has a double framing sequence, with Russell telling the story as a lecture and the authors of Logicomix discussing the whole thing—the lecture and story within—on top of that. If it is to work as drama, I wish the authors hadn’t interrupted it so often. However, the notes in the back are illuminating, so I’m inclined to think of this as an intro to the topic and a guide as to what to read next in the field.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. Director’s Cut #1 & S.H.I.E.L.D. #2–#3 by Jonathan Hickman, Dustin Weaver & Christina Strain
    Silly Marvel. Comics don’t have directors!
  • Strange Science Fantasy #2 by Scott Morse
  • True Story Swear to God #13 by Tom Beland
    I had been reading this in collections, but it’s been over three years since the last one, and since Image vol. 1 collected issues #1–#6 of the Image series, I figure vol. 2 will collect #7–#12, making this the perfect place for me to start with issues. Hopefully vol. 2 won’t be too long now.

    Anyway, this issue. Generally liked it. Beland’s pacing and storytelling are excellent, his art keeps getting smoother, and I support his switch to computer lettering. The lettering was sometimes a bit tough to read in the first half of the Image series, and the font he’s using now is very readable and quite pleasing to the eye. The story, about Beland dealing with erectile dysfunction with Viagra, is sincere but never humorless, and Beland draws bugs eating his own brain really well. Beland also doesn’t allow the problems he has with the drug—primarily debilitating migraines—to become monotonous, breaking the story up with a B-plot about losing his one football buddy in Puerto Rico to a breakup. Still, I had the feeling that a scene or a line was missing toward the end, as his problems stop without much explanation. Which perhaps is what actually happened, but someone remarking upon the fact would have made the read a bit smoother. Still, I’m very happy to revisit this comic, and the rest of the story completely had me.

  • What If… vol. 2 #18 by Dwayne McDuffie & Luke McDonnell
    “What If… the Fantastic Four Battled Dr. Doom Before They Gained Their Powers?”

    Long before his brief run on The Fantastic Four, McDuffie already had the characters’ voices down, with more Stan Lee added in, likely because he was writing a younger version of the FF. Being a What If…, it still ends reaffirming the status quo—the four still become the Four and Von Doom still becomes Doom—but it’s a cute story.

  • Zatanna #1–#3 by Paul Dini, Stephane Roux & Karl Story
    The comic Paul Dini has been waiting his whole life to do, and it’s . . . a little boring. Stephane Roux brings some nice draftsmanship, but his panel-to-panel storytelling has some problems. Dini’s idea here is to make Zatanna more familiar to superhero fans by pitting her against a villain more like those fought by other heroes, in this case a cypher gangster, just with a mystic bent. The result is that it’s not sufficiently unique. I liked the more cosmic bent Grant Morrison brought to his Zatanna series, but Dini’s grows more firmly out of stage magic and the result is bland. Given Dini’s well-publicized love of the character, he may just have too much affection for her to actually do anything interesting with her.

Poster from Watchmen Movie © Warner Bros. Images of The Punisher © Marvel Characters, Inc. Cover from 20th Century Boys vol. 10 © Naoki Urasawa. Cover from True Story Swear to God #13 © Tom Beland.

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Posted in Alan Moore, DC, Garth Ennis, My Week in Comics | 5 Comments »

Public Reading and Out-of-Control Homage – My Week in Comics August 22–28

September 1, 2010

This week: Hanging with the King on Read Comics in Public Day, raining on the Internet’s parade, and What I Read.

I READ COMICS IN PUBLIC ON SATURDAY. LIKE USUAL.

I FORGOT ABOUT Read Comics in Public Day until I was walking home from Powell’s Books with a copy of Matt Kindt’s Revolver under my arm. Deciding whether I felt like stopping to read it in the park across the street from my apartment or inside, I remembered the event commemorating Jack Kirby’s birthday. Since the King was the inspiration for the choice of date, it seemed appropriate that I read something of his, so I stopped inside and brought out two issues of 2001: A Space Odyssey along with Revolver (I also cheated, finishing a George Saunders short story collection in between the two).

During the time I was out and about earlier in the day, I didn’t see anyone else participating, but having forgotten, I wasn’t paying attention, so who knows. There didn’t appear to be anyone else reading comics with me in Jameson Square by my apartment, so I took a space on a bench and jumped into 2001.

To be honest, it didn’t feel all that momentous. I read comics in the park all the time, and don’t feel any judging eyes on me when I pull out an issue of Batman on the bus. The realization that this wasn’t particularly different from any other lazy weekend when I felt like lying in the park made the whole occasion feel somewhat dated and defensive. If the notion is that a day in which a lot of people are spotted outdoors reading comics normalizes the sight, I think that train has already left the station. We’re well into the era where, at least in cities like Portland, no one cares if you’re reading comics, largely because they don’t care about comics at all.

Of course, Portland could be exceptional in that regard. Certainly comics are a major subculture here. Which is why I certainly don’t condemn the holiday, and I did participate afterall, even if it’s just as likely I’d have read Revolver or other comics in Jameson Square whether I was asked to or not. On Journalista, Dirk Deppey ridiculed the event for its lack of perspective, “Team Comics boosterism,” and its encouragement that fans “[act] like sheep.” While he’s completely right that it’s shameless boosterism, Deppey seems to have lost perspective himself slightly if he’s actually that annoyed.

I doubt I could be convinced an event like this is necessary these days, and it does have the usual defensive ring to it, but I have a hard time being bothered by it, as it’s clearly harmless and judging from the many photo galleries online people enjoyed themselves. Seems like that’s enough.

And now a message from the “Brendan hates fun” department . . .

WHEN IMITATION IS NOT FLATTERY

LESS HARMLESS is the unrelenting culture of homage in comics. The prevalence of homage in comics of all kinds is no surprise when nostalgia is such a force in comics generally and the largest companies still depend on decades-old characters for survival, but the reflexive way it is embraced is still unfortunate.

The most recent example is the “Joker and Lex” story in Superman/Batman #75, one of a number of two-page strips filling out the extra-sized anniversary issue. The Internet pretty much peed itself over the story, with several comics sites reprinting the story and writing it up in pieces that said little more than that the story existed and was awesome. So, homage mission accomplished. But putting aside the tiredness of the Calvin and Hobbes parody and the cynical way it hides a weak punchline behind a conceit sure to play on readers’ nostalgia, when reading this I couldn’t help but wonder how Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, might take the story.

Not well, I suspect. Watterson was an outspoken critic of what he saw as a lack of creativity or ambition in newspaper comics, and it’s hard to imagine him being all that amused by a writer and artist riffing on his characters using a set of even older characters. It’s hard for me to see this much differently from the bootleggers who made Calvin and Hobbes merchandise when Watterson himself chose not to.

All of this is before even mentioning that Lex Luthor and the Joker are characters from the superhero genre, about which Watterson said this in the The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book: “You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a ‘graphic novel,’ but comic books are still incredibly stupid.” So would Watterson be impressed by a genre he hated “homaging” his creation to squeeze a little extra nostalgia out comics fans? Not likely.

That’s one of the things that bugs me about the culture of homage in comics culture. It’s so ingrained that it’s basically assumed to always be flattering. Comics creators and fans alike seem to have lost the ability to tell when an homage is appropriate and when it might actually be insulting. I’d like to see a lot more consideration before these sorts of things are published in place of original stories. I expect I’d see a lot fewer homages in general if that happened.

READ THIS WEEK:

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey #5 & #6 by Jack Kirby
    These issues turned out to be especially apt for Read Comics in Public Day, set in a 2040 (making them the first post-2001 issues) in which comics-style escapism is played out in elaborate, paid-for superhero experiences. “Comicsville” provides a costume, an enemy and a princess to save, letting people live out a fantasy of being a hero. The character playing the game at the beginning of the story looks like Captain America if he were a New God, but when the fantasy proves not enough, he joins the space program, where he encounters genuine alien weirdness and the Monolith.

    The “next issue” box says it will reveal more about the Star Children, but in the meantime, Kirby is really taking his time exploring variations on the themes of 2001, so I’m glad to get to read these relatively fast compared to their original, monthly schedule. I’ve begun to think of Kirby as an early practitioner of what we now call decompression in comics storytelling, probably because he wanted to let his cosmic style breathe. Just compare the number of splash pages and double splash pages in his 1970s Marvel work to the work he was doing with Stan Lee in the ’60s.

    It’s also been interesting to read through the letter columns in these issues. So far, a few people are asking where the series is going and why it doesn’t progress, but none seem upset by the relatively relaxed pace of the stories within each issue (still quick by modern standards—these two issue arcs would likely be longer today). If anything, they seem concerned that it’s coming out too fast. A letter in issue #6 complains that 2001 and a few other contemporaneous Marvel series debuted monthly, rather than the tradition of starting out bimonthly and speeding up once sale warrant it. I had no idea this was ever something that bothered people.

  • Batman #702 by Grant Morrison & Tony Daniel
    I’m really enjoying the threads coming together. The three interconnected books (this one flashing back to Bruce Wayne in Final Crisis, Batman and Robin seeing Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne putting the pieces together in the present, and The Return of Bruce Wayne following Bruce on his journey through time) add up to the most ambitious superhero epic since Morrison’s own Seven Soldiers. This doesn’t have the grandeur that had, but it is a wild ride.
  • Fantastic Four #532 by Jonathan Hickman, Neil Edwards, Scott Hanna & Paul Mounts
  • Gantz vols. 5–11 by Hiroya Oku
  • glamourpuss #7 by Dave Sim
  • Justice League: Generation Lost #8 by Judd Winick, Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan
    I think I’ll enjoy this more in collected form. From the library.
  • Monster vols. 12–13 by Naoki Urasawa
    Just keeps getting twistier and larger in scope. Love it.
  • Predators Film Adaptation by Paul Tobin & Victor Drujiniu
  • Predators: Preserve the Game by David Lapham & Allan Jefferson
  • Red Hood: The Lost Days #2 by Judd Winick & Pablo Raimondi
  • Revolver by Matt Kindt
    Kindt has to be the best American cartoonist currently making poignant character dramas that look and act like genre stories, not entirely unlike Jason, though going for elaborate design and plots rather than Jason’s deadpan fables.
  • The Smurfs: The Smurfnapper by Y. Delporte & Peyo
    I’ve never read any of this before. It’s funny and really nicely drawn. At a dollar this was a steal, and I’d pick up more. Also, they smurfing use “smurf” in smurf of other words a lot. And surprisingly often in place of words that could really only be expletives. All the smurfing time.
  • Superman/Batman #75 by Paul Levitz, Jerry Ordway, et. al
    Complaints about “Joker and Lex” aside, this was slight but fun. The main story is perfectly of a piece with the Levitz Legion of Super-Heroes series that I’m enjoying, and many of the shorts, like Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen’s “It’s a Bat” are very cute. More of Duncan Rouleau’s “Krytpo vs. Ace” right now, please.
  • What a Wonderful World! vols. 1 & 2 by Inio Asano
    I really enjoyed this quiet, slice-of-life manga that’s actually grappling with much bigger things than it lets on, following a bunch of “ronin,” kids who have failed their school entrance exams and return again and again to cram schools to try again, and an assortment of other people living in the same neighborhood. It’s a short story collection, but the stories are loosely connected by the setting, some recurring characters, and themes of growing up, being stuck in a rut, old ties rejoined, and death. Watching over the whole thing are two shinagami, spirits of death, the treatment of which signaled to me just how opposite the tone is from mainstream manga. In Death Note, shinagami urge people to become mass murderers and take pleasure in the outcome; here a shinagami in the form of a young girl weeps at the death of a homeless man. It’s quite moving, and I’ll be looking for more work like this.

Images from 2001: A Space Odyssey © MGM, I guess. Rights issues are why this hasn’t been reprinted, right? Let’s say MGM. Images from “Joker and Lex” © DC Comics. But come on. Really. Images of Subarashii Sekai (What A Wonderful World!) © Inio Asano. Nice and simple.

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Posted in DC, Events, Jack Kirby, My Week in Comics | 3 Comments »

DC’s rosy view of the past and R. Crumb’s Genesis – My Week in Comics July 4–10

July 12, 2010

This week: Crime goes up in the DC Universe while it goes down in ours . . . A report on the R. Crumb Genesis Exhibit . . . What I read, with notes on some . . . The best digital comics format gets pushed to Next Week.

DC COMICS’ CULTURE OF FEAR

STILL READING STARMAN. This week was volume four of the current Omnibus reprints, and it got me thinking about superhero comics’ approach to the past: essentially that the decades associated with the beginning of the genre—the ’30s through the ’50s—were a better and simpler time. Sure, everyone remembers the time that they came up in through rose-tinted glasses, but superhero comics cling especially fervently to a “kinder, gentler” fantasy. The ways in which Starman both upholds and subverts this trope got me thinking about the broader implications of looking at the past this way.

To begin with, building identity around the past is endemic to superhero comics, which still takes their cues from a time when teenagers and people barely past their teens auto-didactically created the superhero genre, generally working with more raw, primitivist enthusiasm than genuine writing or drawing skills. Even genre progenitors Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster don’t seem to have been entirely sure what they’d created in Superman or how they’d done it, if their subsequent creation Funnyman is any indication (which is not to diminish the fact that they did create Superman and deserved much better treatment for it than they got). In retrospect, many of the writers and artists of this era are important for creating things that later writers and artists built on, but the time is remembered as the Golden Age.

These stories were also created in a time of much greater censorship, the era of the Motion Production Code, which forbade such perversities as suggestive dancing, lustful kissing, childbirth and miscegenation. Before the Code, American films were actually fairly bawdy, more so than they would be again until the MPAA rating system replaced the code in the late ’60s. It took until the EC Comics of the ’50 for comics to become risqué enough for a similar code to be enacted.

So superhero stories of the day would revolve around bank robberies and bloodless efforts to conquer the world, realistic depictions of crime a rarity. Today’s more lenient restrictions allow comics supervillains to engage in all kinds of explicit violence, but the demands of continuity have made it a given that it was not always so. Occasionally heroes will lament that homicidal maniacs have replaced the purse-snatchers of yesteryear. In reality no such increase in violence has occurred, but DC’s approach to crime mirrors the popular perception that crime is up. As Barry Glassner noted in The Culture of Fear, the reportage of crime and fear of crime have increased as crime itself has gone down. (There are a lot of reasons for this, and this isn’t the place to go into it, but one thing that sticks with me is an article in the Willamette Week from five years ago in which the news director of Portland’s Fox affiliate defends his stations all crime-news local broadcast by saying, “I’m competing against CSI and other prime-time shows.”)

That’s right, in addition to creating boring “Old Man Comics,” the integration of older stories into modern continuity also contributes to the false notion that crime is up, when statistically the opposite is the truth. Organized crime and corruption were just as bad in the first half of the twentieth century as they are now, and when’s the last time a mob hit was described as a massacre? Seriously, holding up the days of WWII as a more innocent time has always struck me as weird (while later wars have been more complicated in terms of our involvement, few have been as horrific. We seem to gauge our innocence only in terms of our own feelings, not the overall effects of history.)

A more recent approach has been to inject darkness into the old stories, but this still has a tired feel to my mind. Starman works better for me by creating new stories set in an earlier era to work greater crime and intrigue into, rather than pulling contortions like heroes mind-wiping violent offenders to make them into non-violent offenders (really, how does that make sense? If you can change their personalities like that, how about just making them, I don’t know, not criminals?). Grant Morrison’s Batman run (will I ever go a week without mentioning it? I don’t know) takes an interesting, experimental approach by incorporating every previous Batman story, but couches it in the stages of life of a single man and investigating how the events of the stories change him, and surrounding him with bizarre pathologies like the Joker, who is in a constant state of transformation. But it’s still not uncommon to stumble on a DC comic, even those written by Morrison or other continuity archeologists like Geof Johns, in which a character says something along the lines of, “I miss the crazy costumes and loony schemes to rob Fort Knox.”

(Oddly enough, this is less an issue in Marvel comics, which make less use of legacy heroes and have a more explicit sliding scale timeline policy—it’s been a long time since WWII was a part of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm’s history. Marvel notes they’ve never had a Crisis, and the result is that they are much happier to simply chuck out their history rather than integrate it. I still sometimes get a “past was better” vibe from some of their stories, though.)

When the tedious argument as to whether superhero comics are liberal or conservative comes up from time to time, the focus is generally on whether the actions of the heroes is fascist or not, but I think the obsession with a mythical past is just as telling, and it’s unfortunate that DC has chosen to contribute to this ahistorical fantasy of a more innocent time.

R. CRUMB’S GENESIS AT THE PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

SPENT THE FIRST WEEK OF JULY on vacation in glamorous Portland, OR, seeing the sights and enjoying the culture. Technically, I spend the vast majority of my time in Portland, since I live and work here, but the annual Waterfront Blues Festival seemed the perfect event to build a vacation around, and while I was taking the time off I decided to treat the time like I was from out of town, seeing sights like the Grotto (they have one of only twelve bronze copies of Michelangelo’s Pietà) and eating at different restaurants and breweries than normal.

One thing I’d have taped a “Kick Me” sign to my own back if I visited Portland and didn’t see was the exhibit of R. Crumb’s original artwork from his recent adaptation of the Book of Genesis, which is showing through September at the Portland Art Museum. As it happens, I went the same day as I visited the Grotto, making July 6 the most religion-infused day I’ve had since, well, maybe ever.

The first thing that struck me was how much smaller the pages were than I expected, not a lot bigger than they were reproduced in the book. I would have assumed they were drawn two up considering how detailed they are, but Crumb actually just drew this book that tightly. In fact, it seemed that he’d drawn too tight in some places, as I found that some panels lose detail in the book, particularly in the case of the most intricate crosshatching, which has closed up somewhat. That’s somewhat surprising from such a seasoned cartoonist, but it could be the reproduction itself that’s to blame for all I know.

I also found myself surprised by how much whiteout there is, as I thought I’d heard someone say there was very little. Since comics come to us with all of their mistakes hidden by reproduction and digital manipulation, I’m always fascinated by the errors and corrections revealed in a viewing of original artwork. Here props and characters were sometimes completely reconstructed after being whited out, corrections were made to the lettering, which is inked directly on the art (early on, God’s creation of the universe is accompanied by corrections to each of the numbers of the days—“On the Third Day,” etc.—did Crumb write in the wrong numbers or decide after the fact to give First, Second, Third, etc. a different font from the surrounding words?), and in at least one case, Crumb has done the painstaking work or reinstating small white dots in a small section of a crosshatched background that had closed up. Talk about attention to detail!

I’m a novice when it comes to Crumb’s work outside of his collaborations with the late Harvey Pekar, and the Underground period in general is one of the biggest gaps in my comics reading, so while I have seen Crumb’s artwork and could easily pick it from a selection of styles, this was the first time I’d ever spent a lot of time looking at it in detail. The nervous texture that I expected is there, as are the thick-legged women, but I had no idea what a master of composition and depth Crumb is. Most panels are layered, with foreground, middleground and background, and characters have a three-dimensionality and weight to them. The storytelling rarely draws attention to itself, as Crumb sticks with functional page layouts simple rectangles for panels, but there are occasional tricks added in to heighten the effect of a scene. The result of Crumb’s labor is not only beautiful, but also a much more engrossing version of the stories contained in Genesis than I have ever encountered.

The exhibit arranges all of the pages from the entire in book in order, sometimes left to right and sometimes right to left, depending on the needs of the maze-like exhibit gallery. I was conscious the entire time of how difficult it can be to soak in the art from consecutive comics pages without getting wrapped up in the text. We are so used to experiencing comics as mechanical reproductions and bound together in sequence that it can be difficult to know exactly how to interact with framed, isolated original in a museum setting. The Genesis art is extraordinary, and I wanted to study it without being too distracted by the narrative, outside of general context. To that end I found it useful to go through some sections of pages backwards so that I always knew what I was looking at, but was always focused on the art first.

Perhaps I did too good a job of drinking in each page, as after what felt like about half an hour, I was informed that I had been there nearly two hours and the museum was about to close. I was a little more than halfway through the pages, and had to rush through the second half, including two small cases of research and sketches, the only context provided outside of the art itself.

I do wish more contextual material had been included, since there must have been so many notes and sketches and more that could have enriched the experience. An exhibit like this one is a step in the right direction for the public study and appreciation of comics, but most other exhibits I’ve visited provide more than just art. I learned a lot from studying the pages, but for the most part I’ve developed a sense of what to look for in comics. For museum patrons with a more casual interest in comics, I can’t imagine just the pages themselves saying as much as they said to me.

Still, an amazing experience. I hope to make it for the museum’s free day at the end of the month to soak up the second half of the exhibit. I may even have actually read the book, which I’ve had for months, by then. And I look forward to seeing more exhibits like this make it to traditional art museums. Seeing original comics art is large quantities is still a rare privilege, and I hope that museums take a greater interest in it in the future, rather than so much of it being locked up in private collections.

READ THIS WEEK:

  • Batman and Robin #13 by Grant Morrison & Frazier Irving
  • Casanova (Icon version) #1 by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Bá
    I was planning to buy this reprint series just to help ensure it survives long enough to get to the new material, but having seen the new colors and lettering, I’m happy to experience this alternate-universe version of the Casanova I remember—appropriate since alternate universes are such a big part of the series. Also made it to the release party for this and got to chat with Fraction and tell him how much I enjoy the series.

  • Doom Patrol #12 by Keith Giffen, Matthew Clark, Ron Randall & John Livesay
  • King City #10 by Brandon Graham
  • Mr. A by Steve Ditko
    The day after I read this I saw a movie that is the anti-it, Please Give, which is entirely about the grey areas Mr. A abhors. It’s all about what it means to be a good person and what it feels like to think you’re falling short. Its also very funny, and I recommend it to anyone in a city where it’s playing. As for Mr. A, it actually surprised me in acknowledging that most people do both good and bad all the time. However, Mr. A is pretty strict about demanding people ultimately pick one and stick with it, and they pretty much have to do it at a time of his choosing rather than any standard timeframe. Gotta admit, he sounds perfectly reasonable when Ditko gets to write the bad guys expressing his talking points for him. Great art and storytelling, though.

  • New Avengers (2010) #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Wade Von Grawbadger & Laura Martin
  • Punisher Max (oversized HCs) vols. 3 & 4 by Garth Ennis, Leandro Fernandez, Goran Parlov & Lan Medina
  • Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark by Ryan Ottley & Jason Howard
    They got mixed up.

  • Starman Omnibus vol. 4 by James Robinson, Tony Harris, Mike Mignola, et al.
    I was amused that producer Don Murphy concludes his introduction by stating how proud he is of the universally panned League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie and exhorting fans of Starman to seek it out.

  • Sweet Tooth #11 by Jeff Lemire
  • The Trials of Roderick Spode “The Human Ant” by David Mamet
    In which the acclaimed filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist brings the silly fun.

  • Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason

Images of Superman © DC Comics. Images of R. Crumb’s Genesis © R. Crumb. Images of The Trials of Roderick Spode © David Mament

Posted in DC, My Week in Comics, R. Crumb | 2 Comments »

My Week in Comics: June 20–26, 2010

June 28, 2010

Learning on the job how to do a weekly thing! Try to be short, try to be pithy! Working on it (though one of next week’s items will be long). Try to be interesting . . . that one might take a bit longer.

This week: Why I’m getting back into single comics . . . DC’s digital announcement . . . Jack Kirby talks about his work . . . What I read, with notes on some.

Next week: Why Garth Ennis’s Punisher is not a force of nature, and prose features in comics.

SINGLES: APPARENTLY I LIKE THEM AGAIN

UNUSUALLY LARGE WEEK FOR ME AT THE COMICS SHOP; bought seven single issues, including two not on my pull list. I’ve traditionally preferred trades for all the usual reasons: complete story, no ads, bookshelf-friendly. But it’s not the only format out there, and lately it’s seemed silly to do so much of my comics reading in only one format regardless of content.

I’ve always been unable to wait for collected editions of a few people’s work, especially Grant Morrison (who is represented twice—sort of three times if we believe the marketing—in the “Read” section below), but a few years ago I’d have read Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four in trade. But lately I’ve rediscovered some of the joy of serialization (though down the line I likely will trade the singles for the trade). And keeping up with it, anticipating what will happen next, discussing it monthly with people at work, has been a lot of fun. The water cooler aspect is probably a big part of it. Before going into comics as a field, few of my friends were comics people.

I’ve also come to realize over time that some things don’t really need to be on my bookshelf. It’s easy to lose sight of that fact when virtually everything gets collected these days, but most of this stuff is disposable entertainment, which isn’t such a bad thing. It’s equally weird to me how virtually all television shows seem to make it to DVD now.

Despite the $1 savings I’d have enjoyed getting the Marvel Divas paperback rather than the issues, I think I’m content to have read it and put it away; no need for a permanent edition. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it. I’m a Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa fan and really liked Tonci Zonjic’s art, which was nothing like the covers the series had. Several coworkers found it amusing that I was the only person they knew buying the series, but I did end up lending it to a few of them, who generally agreed that it was a fun trifle, with a pretty decent action-y ending.

So, looks like I’m back in the singles habit, after a bit of a lapse. Just in time for digital to kill the format.

UNORGANIZED THOUGHTS ON DC’S DIGITAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

HOW ABOUT THAT for a segue? Bam!

Digital comics are a weird thing for me. I believe the digital format is essential for comics if we hope they’ll sell beyond the current market, and that there’s no denying this is how many people want to read today. On the other hand, I’m not one of those people, so I find myself in the position of being a passionate proponent of something I myself don’t particularly want. It feels a bit weird, but there’s no denying the future.

DC’s entrance into the digital comics market seems to have been pretty successful in terms of both its particulars and its unveiling. It’s true that they didn’t make much noise up until they were ready to announce, but it’s good to see that any potential concern that DC was sitting it out until someone else established a model were unfounded. Other companies announced first, but between the amount of material that was immediately available and details like the retailer incentive program, it’s clear that this announcement has been in the works for quite a while.

I was very impressed that DC was ready to do simultaneous release of a series on day one, and after hearing some of the rationale for choosing Justice League: Generation Lost, I think beginning with a biweekly series makes a lot of sense. After all, most of the podcast I subscribe to update once a week or more (I think the only one I do that’s monthly is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast). Makes me think that Marvel’s three-times-a-month Amazing Spider-Man might also be a good choice, moreso than an Iron Man comic debuting months after the movie.

The price being the same online as in stores might make sense for the convenience of instant gratification. However, with printing costs removed (though these aren’t as significant a part of the budget of monthly comics as some commentators seem to think) and distribution costs diminished, I’d like to see DC and Marvel eventually embrace the Internet model of volume over price and go lower. Regarding the $2.99 price point, does anyone actually pay that in stores? Every comics shop I’ve ever been a regular at has had subscription boxes offering between 10% and 20% discounts, so I’d love to eventually see a digital subscription option with a comparable discount.

The other weird thing that came out of this was Marvel’s reaction to DC’s royalties announcement. We now know that Marvel has a system too, or is in the process of implementing one, but having never mentioned it before, it was strange how they took issue with DC’s claims to be the first to announce a royalty plan. Whether Marvel already had one or not, either way DC did in fact announce a plan first. Marvel can hardly blame DC for making hay of being the first to announce such a plan when Marvel was so tight-lipped about their own.

I don’t own an iPad and I have no plans to get one (though the same was true of the iPod up until I suddenly had to have one and the iPod touch until one came with my computer), but this is something I’ll continue to be a fascinated spectator to, even if it won’t immediately impact how I read.So that’s round one done, now for everyone to improve on each other.

JACK KIRBY IN HIS STUDIO (1993) @ YOUTUBE

I DON’T THINK I’ve ever seen video of Kirby before. Less than a minute, but there he is, that little, gruff guy you hear about; equal bits artist and tough guy.

First he talks about how his art connects with regular people, which is an intriguing thing for him to emphasize. He’s right: it’s straightforward and powerful, and easy to understand. But at the same time the content of his work is so far from the common man, getting bigger and more cosmic with every story as long as he lived. An interesting little paradox I hadn’t thought about that before.

I can’t help but wonder what question he’s answering in the second half. Very diplomatic talk about the popularity of science fiction in movies and the more widespread acceptance of the kind of themes found in Kirby’s work. Felt very restrained coming from a guy who felt so ripped off all his career, and whose New Gods is a huge uncredited inspiration for the biggest SF franchise of them all, Star Wars.

Check it out.

READ THIS WEEK:

  • Authority: Lost Year #8 by (Grant Morrison), Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, David Williams & Kelsey Shannon
    Still has Morrison’s story credit. Are they really still going from his outline, and is this really all part of it? Even the “bwahaha” version of the Authority they’ve brought DeMatteis in to co-write? I wonder if they’re just taking “the Authority faces different versions of themselves” and figuring that’s enough to put his name on the cover.

  • Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne #3 by Grant Morrison, Yanick Paquette & Michel Lacombe
    While this issue was as good as the series has been, continuing the fun and “oh shit” moments of the last two, I really can’t wait for Jonah Hex vs. Batman next issue. My love of Hex can’t be damaged by the movie, as I have no intention of watching it (see last week’s “why does everything have to be a movie?” piece).

  • The Black Cat #1 by Jen Van Meter, Javier Pulido & Matt Hollingsworth
    After the whole Marvel Divas thing, the folks I hit the shop with on Wednesdays pretty much knew I’d be getting this.

  • Detective Comics #866 by Denis O’Neil, Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs
  • Fantastic Four #580 by Jonathan Hickman, Neil Edwards, Andrew Currie & Paul Mounts
  • Hazel is White by Hazel Newlevant
  • Joe the Barbarian #6 by Grant Morrison & Sean Murphy
  • Justice League: Generation Lost #4 by Judd Winick, Keith Giffen, Joe Bennet & Jack Jadson
    Still reading this one on paper.

  • Rapture by Taki Soma & Michael Avon Oeming
    Missed the signing Saturday at Things From Another World. Oops.
  • Starman Omnibus vols. 2 & 3 by James Robinson, Tony Harris et al.

Images of Fantastic Four and Marvel Divas © Marvel Characters, Inc. Images of Superman and The Authority © DC Comics.

Posted in DC, Digital Comics, Jack Kirby, My Week in Comics | Leave a Comment »

My Week in Comics: June 13–19, 2010

June 20, 2010

Since posting has slowed to a crawl, thought I’d try something different, see if I can keep up a weekly column. The format is up in the air, and it may not ultimately end up posting on Sundays, but this what I’m going to try for now. Instead of a “Week in Comics” news-style column, since a lot of people already do that better than I could, I’m going with “My Week in Comics,” one to three short essays on whatever I’m thinking about related to comics that week. This could be mini-think-pieces, or things like events I attend that I might not have written up if I felt like I had to do a full-length piece on them, plus a list of what I read that week, maybe sometimes with brief comments. Not this time anyway.

This week: Scott Pilgrim the movie versus Scott Pilgrim the comic and my experience trying out the new Legion of Superhero comics. Future weeks: things that are better, as I get the hang of this.

Thoughts on the Scott Pilgrim movie

I’VE DEVELOPED SOMETHING of a reputation among the folks my age at work for hating both fun and joy, which may be fair, but I’d like to think isn’t. It seems quite natural to me that a guy seeing TRON for the first time at twenty-six won’t get as much from it as those who first saw it when they were five.

Anyway, the latest thing that gives me pause in outright denying the charge is that I seem to be the only person in comics not terribly excited about the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie. Which is not to say I’m particularly against it—I’ve thought the trailers have looked fine, and of course I’m happy for Bryan Lee O’Malley and everyone at Oni for the Hollywood windfall and for the attention it’s brought to the books—but it would never have occurred to me that Scott Pilgrim needed to be a movie, and I simply don’t find myself anticipating it very strongly, in spite of my affection for the series and love for previous Edgar Wright films.

It’s Edgar Wright’s involvement that has been the strongest argument from a friend as to why the movie is worth anticipating. But I’d rather see him do something original, something that’s meant to be a movie, than an adaptation of something so unique to its creator and so thoroughly designed to take advantage of the comics medium. In short, why does everything have to be a movie?

A Scott Pilgrim movie will be missing O’Malley’s artwork, which is what makes Scott and his friends unique and charismatic. In the trailer, the characters all appear sullen and dumpy, and since they’re played by real people, are no more or less interesting-looking than kids in any other movie. Fitting the six books into a single film will also necessitate speeding up the series’ relaxed pace and focusing more closely on the plot—of which there is quite little—at the expense of the pace and tone I enjoyed in the comics.

It’s interesting to me that I haven’t had a similar apprehension to other types of comic book movies. Sure, I wouldn’t miss the various Bat-Spider-Iron movies that much if they were gone, but neither did I feel like they were a bad idea. I think the difference is that a character like Batman is already just a product, with as many interpretations as there have been writers and artists working on the character, so the movies are really just one more. I think it would be different if the studio chose a particular version to interpret. I imagine I’d feel much more trepidation if the next movie were to be specifically based upon The Dark Knight Returns or an adaptation of Grant Morrison’s current run.

In short, without O’Malley’s artwork, unique sensibility, and the fun he has playing with the medium, I don’t know what makes this any more or less worthy of anticipation than any other Summer movie. If the exact same movie weren’t based on a comic I like, I doubt I’d even notice it was coming.

Legion of Superheroes relaunch

LOOKING FOR A NEW superhero franchise to try out, this week I read both of the Legion of Superheroes comics released in the last month, Legion of Superheroes #1 and Adventure Comics #12 (which a ghost number behind the “12” tells me is also #515). Each is written by Paul Levitz, who had a fondly remembered run on the series decades ago, and his return coupled with a new #1 seemed like an inviting place to give the concept a try. While neither of the issue numbers on Adventure were a #1, it also appeared to be a new beginning, Levitz’s first, and the first to feature the Legion as the main attraction; previous issues were dedicated to the current iteration of Superboy.

I’ve been reading comics long enough to know that a #1 on a cover—even one announcing “An all-new era begins!”—is no guarantee that the contents of the book will actually be the beginning of a story. In this case the change of writer from the last few series the Legion has appeared in and my apparent misunderstanding of the point of Legion of Three Worlds—I only read the first issue and found it impenetrable, but had thought that part of the point of it was to clear the decks for a restart—led me to go in expecting something a little more new-reader-friendly. And while I wasn’t as lost as I was reading Legion of Three Worlds, I still had to navigate references to plot threads from that story, a recent Superman or Action Comics arc involving the Legion, and, I think, Blackest Night. Some interesting ideas and compelling character moments popped up in between, but so many balls were already in the air that the overall effect wasn’t inviting.

These aren’t full reviews, but I bring the two issues up because I found it ironic that the much more new-reader-friendly of the two issues was the one that wasn’t a #1. A standalone issue that introduces the many Legionnaires more gradually and uses Superboy (the classic Superman-when-he-was-a-boy version) as a familiar point-of-view character, I enjoyed the story in Adventure Comics much more and felt eased into the world more smoothly. The story, Superboy visits the future for a day and is able to be himself in ways he can’t in twenty-first century Smallville, while perhaps not the kind that can fill every issue, had much more charm and was a satisfying whole.

Compared to the other series’ grown-up Legion dealing with the fallout of several half-explained events from other series, it was an intro that made me want to read more. Now if only the art in Adventure were as good as in Legion. I like how Kevin Sharpe makes Superboy actually look like a kid, but Yildiray Cinar does a much better job differentiating the many characters and depicting their individual facial expressions and body language in Legion.

I’ll likely give Legion another shot to see if it works better as it moves further from those past events, but I’m actually looking forward to checking back in with Superboy and the younger Legion next month.

Read this week:

  • Adventure Comics #12/515 by Paul Levitz, Kevin Sharpe, Mario Alquiza & Marc Deering
  • chapters from Essential Defenders vol. 2 by Steve Gerber et al.
  • Fear Agent vol. 2 by Rick Remender & Jerome Opeña
  • Fortune and Glory (color edition) by Brian Michael Bendis
  • Freakangels vol. 2 by Warren Ellis & Paul Duffield
  • Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow
  • Legion of Superheroes #1 by Paul Levitz, Yildiray Cinar & Wayne Faucher
  • Other Lives by Peter Bagge
  • Private Beach: Secret Messages by David Hahn

Images from Scott Pilgrim © Bryan Lee O’Malley. Images from Scott Pilgrim movie © Universal Studios. Images of Legion of Superheroes and Adventure Comics © DC Comics.

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Posted in DC, Movies, My Week in Comics, Oni Press | Leave a Comment »

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