Four-Color Critiques #5: This Column…ADVANTAGEOUS!

Four-Color Critiques #5: This Column…ADVANTAGEOUS!

Jun 03

I recently spent the better part of a weekend trapped deep in the bowels of my ancestral home in South Holland, IL, helping my parents clean their basement in preparation for a move.

This involved a couple things: I inhaled whole spoonfuls of mold and dust, I disposed of stacks upon stacks of Choose Your Own Adventure books and college mixtapes, and I sorted the last of my teenage comic book collection into two “keep” boxes and two “ditch” boxes.

Boy, was that a trip down memory lane. I came up in the speculator era; my most enthusiastic reading period was from about 1989 to 1994, or from age 13 to 18. This is the exact target age group for marketing ploys like “HOLY SHIT THIS COVER GLOWS IN THE DARK AND IF YOU SCRATCH OFF GHOST RIDER’S FACE MAYBE YOU’LL SEE JESUS OR TOM DEFALCO.”

Which means I found piles of quadruple and quintuple copies of many, MANY comics. I even somehow bought doubles of random issues in the midst of runs–like I have two copies of stray issues of Detective Comics, out of nowhere. Did Wizard tip me off that these would be “hawt” comics, or did I just buy them on accident? Who knows?

Spider-Man 1 was published in 1990 with something like fifty thousand slightly different covers, all of which I purchased, and some of them multiple times. As of this writing, I own three different versions; I’m keeping one, and consigning the rest to the dustbin of history.

The early issues of that Spider-Man title define the nineties’ EVENT COMIC. Written and drawn by Todd McFarlane, the debut issue of what was at the time the FIFTH Spider-Man book quickly became the highest-selling single issue of all time. As I understand it, X-Men 1 would come along just a year later and shatter that record.

I decided to sit down and re-read Spider-Man 1-5, or “Torment,” McFarlane’s first arc as writer-artist on the book, mostly because these comics exist in my mind more as EVENTS than artistic product. It’s one of those things where everyone somehow collectively decides, “Okay, we don’t give a shit if this is any good; we just all LIKE IT A LOT, and we will BUY A LOT OF IT. Hooray.” (Or more accurately, some shadow council of old white men sit in a semi-lit room and determine what we will like, and then commit massive resources of money and manpower at MAKING us like those things.)

But really now, are these comics truly the nadir of the speculator era’s emphasis on style and outrageousness over substance?

Probably. Damn, though, if they weren’t kinda fun to read.

I’m having a hard time figuring out WHY I enjoyed reading them, so let’s talk first about why they’re shitty, which is an easier conversation to have.

Comic book artwork of the 1990s is sorta like bell bottoms, or pet rocks, or keyboard ties–you know it was considered Really Popular and Totally Awesome back in the day, but now, it just looks like a horrifying mistake.

McFarlane’s work on these issues is no exception. There’s some decent artistic concepts here–McFarlane reimagines Spider-Man visually as very spider-esque, complete with wild body contorsions and webbing all over the place, which is a neat idea.

It’s just that there’s so much damn…DETAIL. For an era of comic books remembered best for its grim ‘n gritty “realism,” it’s more than a little ironic, cause there’s absolutely NOTHING even remotely realistic about the way anything looks in this book. In fact, there’s plenty of pages where there’s absolutely NOTHING even remotely clear about the action and who’s doing what; many was the time I’d flip to a spread and spend a few minutes just staring at the art, hoping it would coalesce into something I might recognize, before hastily skimming the meager word balloons and narration boxes and turning the page.

I gotta confess–I bought so many of these comics, and I read them, and I must have found them KEWL as a wee lad. Today, at least from a strictly visual perspective, I cannot imagine what I saw in them. There’s not even THAT much boobage in them, at least, compared to today–I’ve read modern issues of Superman that have more gratuitous near-nudity than Spider-Man 1-5.

From a storytelling perspective, this is McFarlane’s first go at writing, and man, it’s rough. Talk about decompression–everyone blames that shit on Warren Ellis and Brian Bendis, but this story is SERIOUSLY dragged out over five issues. There’s barely a half-issue worth of story in the whole damn thing.

The “superhero” part of that story involves, if I recall correctly, Spider-Man spending a lot of time in agony being tortured by the Lizard and some busty lass who I think is…Kraven’s daughter? Lover? Sister’s cousin’s hairdresser once removed? Then there’s a “subplot” which involves Mary Jane going out dancing alone. This portion of the story might be the most aimless bit of business ever committed to paper; MJ goes out dancing, gets hit on by a guy, has a good time, misses her husband, takes a cab home…and that’s about it.

If it’s meant to contrast MJ’s relatively “normal” evening with the nightmare her husband goes through, well…that could have been done in a couple pages. Instead, it seems to go on FOREVER. And it’s not even like this is McFarlane’s excuse to draw MJ with bodacious ta-tas and a rockin’ ass; she’s just sorta…THERE. It’s weird, and unaffecting, and weirdly unaffecting, all at once.

I’m thinking now that I don’t even know why I’m bothering to write this; I started doing these lil’ columns to give me a chance to flex my critical muscles more substantially, and it’s already devolved into yet another blogger who decides it’s prudent to talk about why shitty comics are, in fact, shitty.

So enough of that. These are shitty comics. We all know that.

Why, then, did I enjoy reading them, not just as a snot-nosed fourteen-year-old boy, but as a snot-nosed thirty-one-year-old man?

Independent of the art (which is impossible to enjoy) and the story (which is ham-handed and tedious), these comics have MOMENTUM that comes straight from CONVICTION. I believe McFarlane had a bit of a reputation during this era as being a dick; I don’t recall either way. Whatever his personality, you can’t read these comics without believing that McFarlane worked REALLY hard on them, and he wanted them to be REALLY good.

That doesn’t mean he deserves a critical pass, although who gives a shit either way if you give him one now–these comics are almost twenty years old, and anyone who wants them probably has them, and if you’ve read them, you’ve long since made up your mind, and there’s nothing so revelatory or innovative about them that there’s much to be gained from analyzing them. (Yes, I know I just spent several paragraphs analyzing them. SHUT UP.)

It does mean that as much as you may dislike these comics, it’s hard to disrespect them, because to me at least they really seem to come from a place of sincere passion for the medium, and a desire to tell a really good Spider-Man story. This is a young, incredibly successful artist moving into new territory and he wants to impress. He doesn’t, and that’s fine, but you can’t fault him for trying–if the neighbor kid comes over to sell you raffle tickets, and he pukes on your lawn cause he’s nervous, you gotta at least respect that he was serious about what he was doing and sincere, even if you hate having to hose the regurgitated graham crackers off your grass.

There’s that, and there’s nostalgia…sorta, but not really. Huh? Wha–? Exactly.

As I get older and think way too much about stuff like “why I like comics,” I realize that there is a heaping helping of nostalgia at play, but it’s not for specifics–it’s for the whole general mess. There may be a handful of comics I attach specific memories to, and details of joy or pleasure, but mostly I just remember COMICS. The smell, curling up in air conditioning on a summer Saturday to read them, stashing cash in an envelope for my yearly excursion to the Chicago Comicon every July, sitting cross-legged on the cold tile floor of our basement as I sorted and bagged and re-read my books–it’s all a glowing blur.

I can’t really say that I have some kind of nostalgic attachment to Spider-Man 1-5, so I can’t claim to have enjoyed reading them for that reason. I can say that I have a blanket nostalgia for the whole comics shebang, which is why I sometimes find myself buying shitty event books I have no real desire to own, or clinging to crumbling floppies that have no artistic merit whatsoever. Like these five comics–I can objectively state they stink, and subjectively say I kinda liked them, which is enough to get most comics chucked from my collection.

But I’m keeping them. They mean nothing, but they kinda mean SOMETHING, know what I mean?