Blah blah blah comics blah (2/6)
Blah blah blah comics blah (2/6)
Feb 06In this edition: Most of the same titles I write about all the damn time, because I have no interest in picking up random crap just to complain about it online. I can complain just fine about the carefully selected crap I purchase on a regular basis, thank you very much.
There’s a sense in which Batman 673 feels like Grant Morrison’s true beginning on the title, even though he’s burned through nearly twenty issues already. Nothing much has really coalesced, though, prior to this issue–there were a few arcs and a few more random issues, and weird prose experiments and an absolutely brilliant take on the “cozy” murder mystery starring the Club of Heroes, but it didn’t seem to be going anyplace.
Suddenly, the title has direction and drive, which is not to say it’s instantly brilliant–I think Morrison is still a ways off from bringing his A game to the title. As with his New X-Men run, it’s always felt as though tiny pieces were being dribbled out that would congeal into a larger whole when it was all done; unlike the New X-Men books, the individual bits just haven’t been as compelling on their own. I would expect DC is hoping Morrison will give them what he gave Marvel–a set of perennial trade paperbacks that can sit on the shelves at Borders and Books-A-Million for years to come and continue to bring in cash. It’s just that you will probably be able to toss the first trade, at least, and not miss much.
So if this is the start, what’s happening here? We finally get the story behind Bruce Wayne’s sojurn to Nanda Parbat in the pages of 52; we explore the latter days of one Mr. Joe Chill; Batman volunteers for an odd experiment; Bat-Mite; scary killer Batman has regular Batman strapped up in a torture chamber. End.
Again, the bits and pieces; again, the sense (hope?) that congealing isn’t too far off. Yet there’s also a seasoning of metacommentary here, with bits of dialogue from Bruce/Batman indicating that he is realizing the price he has truly paid by making his crusade such a dark, relentless affair. It makes me wonder if Morrison isn’t heading for his next storyline, “Batman R.I.P.” as a culmination, and that Batman/Bruce will spend this storyline realizing what he’s lost over the past decade of fighting the good fight.
In this issue, Tony Daniel finally starts to deliver work that seems worthy of both Morrison and the flagship Bat-title. He’s cribbing a bit from the Kubert playbook, but there’s an angular nature to his pencils that gives the look a distinct feel. That first two-page spread, especially, which was just another modern filter on Bob Kane–but a really good modern filter on Bob Kane.
Captain America #34 is the long-expected premiere of Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier as the new Captain America (oops, cave dwellers! OMG SPOILERZ!) and it stands out a bit from Brubaker’s run of late in that it feels a bit more…spacious? Light? Decompressed? Whether it’s fair or not, I always think of Brubaker’s Cap as being a bit of a talking-head book, not necessarily in a bad way, but there’s lots of exposition, intrigue, and relationships, which requires lots of talking and less of the kicking of the asses.
Here Brubaker and artist Steve Epting give us the new Cap on his first mission, and so there’s finally some solid full-on Cap action, with the shield bouncing off chucklehead skulls and the leaping acrobatics. Oh yeah, and the shooting, which is new, but fits with Bucky’s character. He’s not trying to duplicate what Steve Rogers was as Captain America; he’s trying to honor it, in his own way. That’s a nice character beat for Bucky and Brubaker plays it perfectly.
I’m a little less excited that the big shocking nefarious plot of the Red Skull amounts to the sub-prime mortgage crisis; was he somehow around to talk all those idiots into signing away their futures with variable rate mortgages? But I guess we’ll see how that plays out.
I found Garth Ennis: War Stories vol. 2 in a five-dollar trade bin a couple years ago, and loved it. He’s got a real gift for telling war stories and his research is always exceptional. So finding out that his Dan Dare #1-3 is basically a sci-fi war comic with a bit of politics stirred in for flavor–that’s pretty much everything I could hope for.
What I like best about it, however, may be the tone of the whole affair–this is not a dark, deconstructionist take on a beloved childrens’ hero. It’s smart, and mature without being vulgar, but it’s also bright and not afraid to hope, in spite of its apocalyptic backstory. This has as much to do with the coloring as it does the writing–it somehow still looks like a swashbuckling adventure out of the fifties, even though it’s very modern. All around, it’s a neat book that fits on the shelf alongside Ennis’ other war books.
Speaking of Grant Morrison, there’s a pinch of Morrisonian weird about this title now, and Geoff Johns as much admits so much in Green Lantern #27–the credits thank Grant Morrison for the Alpha-Lanterns, an idea just creepy enough to be a Morrison creation. Unfortunately, up until the big reveals of the last few pages, this is kinda incomprehensible, though I’ll take square blame for that as I always have a hard time following which Lantern is which. It all seems a little hastily assembled, too, like the Alpha-Lanterns are some kind of Guardians brainstorm when they learn they actually have a (gasp!) murderer in their midst. Maybe Sinestro Corps War ran long, and so Johns doesn’t have quite as much time to set up the concept?
Mike McKone’s pencils are solid, and his women even look sortakinda normal on the interior art…even if the cover depicts a gratuitous tits ahoy shot of one of the female Lanterns, leading with her bust and being held back as though her breasts are trying to run away from her own body.
And okay, I’m only about halfway through League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier…is it just me or is Alan Moore now totally obsessed with fucking? Every other page is sex. Mina can’t even have a conversation at this point without stripping down to her birthday suit so Kevin O’Neill can draw her pubic hair. Jesus.
Other than that, it’s quite good.
