Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Thanks, guys (and Lizzybeth) for all you do, and we’re delighted to still have you here as we enter 2004. Just publishing this column has driven me to at least buy trade paperbacks so I can read some of these stories without having to obsess over release dates. I’m enjoying it, too. Here’s what the gang’s got on their mind as they spread the comic love like peanut butter...
Cormorant here! First off, an appeal: luckless timing last week left one of our two columns buried beneath a sea of other Ain't-It-Cool-News stories, and I therefore invite you to rectify this tragedy by visiting the Sunken Column. It's like a trip to the Titanic, but instead of cool skeletons you get reviews of JLA, THE LOSERS, FANTASTIC FOUR, BATMAN/SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN: TRINITY, CATWOMAN, CODEFLESH, EMPIRE, UNCANNY X-MEN, and kick ya' ass bonus reviews of BONE and THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN Vol. 2, courtesy of special guest Alexandra DuPont. Don't let our deaths be in vain!
Now this week's a different story. Much smaller set of reviews, as the bulk of the TalkBack League of @$$holes are on leave (read: parole hearings), with only Liz, Vroom, and myself left to hold the fort. It's kinda like one of those superhero comics where a meager company of heroes ends up pushing their courage to the limits against some monumental villain far beyond their power. It's a little number I like to call, "The @$$holes Last Stand!"! We're the beleaguered heroes! You TalkBackers get to be the villainous hordes we stand ready to face…or die trying.
Before we begin, then, one request:
"Not the face!"
ULTIMATE X-MEN #40
Brian Michael Bendis: Writer
David Finch: Artist
Marvel Comics: Publisher
Vroom Socko: Angelic reviewer
A couple of months ago, as some of you may remember, I took a long hard look at the current stare of the X-Men - the schizophrenia of X-Treme, the drug induced Mary Sueism of New, and the mind numbing stupidity of Uncanny. Fuck it, I proclaimed, declaring any and all X-Books persona non grata. Ultimate X-Men, however, was the exception. This was mainly due to the Ultimate Team-Up feel of the first arc, what with Spidey and Wolverine running into Daredevil and the Black Widow, and appearances by several SHIELD heavies. Good stuff, but it didn’t feel like an X-Men book.
Not only does this issue feel like an X-Men book, it’s the best X-Men comic I’ve read in a decade.
This issue, the first part of the "New Mutants" arc, introduces us to Warren Worthington III. The son of a wealthy businessman, Warren has spent his life sequestered alone in one of his father’s more isolated homes. Of course, Mr. Worthington is more than happy to shunt Warren off to Xavier’s School, where all the female students (and Colossus) sit up and take notice. And so do all the nuts that usually see Jesus in a plate of hash browns. A mad congregation of demonstrators soon gathers at the school gates, demanding to see this Angel living among us.
Right from the start, you get why people call him an Angel. No, it’s not just the wings, although that’s definitely the main factor. In his first appearance in the book, flying in for a landing, backlit, hair flowing, his charisma leaps straight off the page. Finch gives him a presence that’s impossible to ignore. He just may have drawn the definitive Angel in this issue.
But the clincher, the bit that makes this issue so damn wonderful, is all the little nuances that Bendis throws into the mix. There’s Beast’s happy-go-lucky nature coming around to bite him in the ass, Rogue’s musings on being in the same school with an angel AND a demon (Nightcrawler), and the Professor's casual use of his powers at all times without coming across as a manipulative bastard. (Well, not too manipulative.) The stuff with Rogue is especially good, using the concepts of heavenly and demonic beings with a level of metaphor and sophistication that would make Chuck Austen’s brain melt.
And then there’s the conversation between Storm and Angel. Taking up around seven pages, this section is the sort of thing I’ve missed in the X-Books of late. What made these characters worth reading was more than just their battle with Proteus or the Phoenix saga, but the moments of downtime. The bits where Scott’s working on a fishing boat, the team plays softball, or Kitty tells a bedtime story to Illyana are the things that really stick out. These are the parts that made the X-Men more than superheroes. The talk that Storm has with Angel helps shine a light on him, sure, but we learn almost as much about her.
The “regular” X-books are still a mess, too wrapped up in insane concepts, larger than life theatrics, and just plain idiocy. But here, here I’ve rediscovered what made me love these characters in the first place: their multifaceted personalities and down to earth problems. I love that once again, it seems dangerous to be a mutant. It seems rare to be a mutant. And yes, it’s special to be a mutant.
And besides, this issue features yet another resurrected letter column, which includes one fella’s wedding proposal to his comics reading girlfriend. How can you not love something like that?
TALES OF THE VAMPIRES #1
Writers: Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard
Artists: Alex Sanchez, Paul Lee, & Cameron Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
If you're a real Joss Whedon fan and not some "left BUFFY during season four" poser, then you should already have purchased the most important Joss Whedon release of the last week or two…
The FIREFLY DVD boxed set! Buy it!
Ah, but if you're looking for some old-school vamp action, then maybe comics have something to offer beyond your fancy-schmancy electrified entertainment. What TALES OF THE VAMPIRES is is the thematic sequel to a cool prestige format one-shot Dark Horse put out a year or two back – TALES OF THE SLAYERS. TALES OF THE SLAYERS was an anthology showcasing the lives of some of the Slayers who preceded Buffy. The stories were a little short, but what made the special, err, special is that the writers were all drawn from the actual TV show (including Whedon himself), and the artist's were all "name artists" (as opposed to the solid-but-forgettable stalwarts on the monthly BUFFY comic). TALES OF THE VAMPIRES shares a similar pedigree when it comes to creators, with Whedon penning two of its three tales, and offers a flipside to the Slayers' adventures by shining the spotlight on the fang-toothed bastards that try to kill 'em.
The framing device is straightforward and clever: a group of Watchers-in-training – children, all of them – need to learn the nature of their enemy to better prepare for the war they're to wage against them. In the darkened chambers beneath what looks to be an abandoned cathedral, a chained, captive vampire gleefully tells them what he knows. This intro is Whedon's first contribution. I like the concept and I liked that the kids were given weapons even though the vampire was chained, but the dialogue veered into the cutesy a few too many times. Luckily things get better.
Tale #1 is by Drew Goddard. I never kept track of BUFFY writers, so I don't know his merits beyond the fact that he came in on BUFFY's seventh season (not a particularly auspicious debut). His story, "The Trouble With Vampires," follows the grueling torture of a vampire strapped to a blade-covered chair that Torquemada would've loved. The story's set in the indistinct past (1900's? 1800's? 1700's?), has some recognizable faces from the show, and some fairly pedestrian musings on love and death that did nothing for me. The art's a touch "Alex Maleev," the overall story not bad, but forgettable unless you're a huge fan of the recognizable faces in question (I don't want to give them away).
Tale #2 has Whedon back on the scene with a quite excellent story about a sci-fi-reading, Tolkien-obsessed, teenage geekette. Whedon's gift for evoking instant reader/viewer empathy's the key to this one, with the girl's internal monologue being a sharp blend of humor and teen angst. Like most geeks, she's just looking to find a group to belong to, but instead of hooking up with likeminded types at Ain't-It-Cool-News she has the misfortune to get bitten by a vampire. So how's a ren faire type react to suddenly finding herself part of the bloodsuckers set? It's worth reading to find out, as this is the story that redeems an otherwise mediocre issue. Doesn't hurt that the artist is Cameron Stewart, whose cinematic, Hernandez Bros.-esque art on CATWOMAN was among the year's best. He doesn't seem to be at his peak here, but he still offers up the standout visuals of the issue.
It's probably too early to judge this series (or is it a miniseries? I'm not sure). As with TALES OF THE SLAYERS, the stories seem all-too-brief, but TALES OF THE SLAYERS delivered something to the tune of eight stories, while TALES O' THE VAMPS only gives us two full ones – kinda limp, I'm afraid. I'm still recommending that BUFFY fans give it a look-see, though. The premise is good, the art well above average, the creators have obviously earned their cred, and that third story is pretty durn good. A series to keep an eye on.
DEMO #2
Brian Wood, Becky Cloonan
AiT/ Planet Lar
reviewed by: Lizzybeth
DEMO-graphic? DEMO-lition? DEMO-nstration? Okay, I haven’t worked out the significance of the title yet, but I do know that you will be hearing this title a lot. If nothing else, you’ll hear me talking about this title for some time to come. You see, I had to do my little Dance of Happy when I found out that these two people had a monthly series starting up, right there at the comic store counter. Unfortunately my Dance of Happy looks a lot like Elaine Benes’s Dance of Spazz, so then I had to leave with my coat over my head. But I’m still pretty pleased with this result – these first two issues are well worth the excitement.
It’s good enough news to get a new project from Brian Wood, creator of CHANNEL ZERO and COUSCOUS EXPRESS from Ait/PlanetLar as well as POUNDED from Oni and FIGHT FOR TOMORROW from Vertigo. He's one of the more talented comics storytellers of recent years. It’s even better news to see him continuing to work with Becky Cloonan, who teamed up with Wood earlier this year on JENNIE ONE. Her striking artwork on that book fits right into the CHANNEL ZERO style, enough so that one could have mistaken her work for Wood’s own designs in the original miniseries. But DEMO proves that Cloonan has a style all her own. Her characters are open-faced and expressive, with body language and clothing to fill in the little character details. I particularly like her rural landscapes in DEMO #2; one of the better representations of the vast open spaces and the lurking enclosures of an off-ramp town.
DEMO is traveling in more familiar comic book territory than most of Wood’s work, but of course he brings his own spin to the process. DEMO will be a collection of single-issue stories centering on young people coping with fantastic super-human powers. However, the other trappings of superhero-dom are nowhere in sight – these young people are striving not to fight crime or to save the world, but for survival. Issue #1 followed a girl with remarkable telekinetic powers long suppressed by a strict regime of medication; by escaping her family, she wins her freedom only to suffer terrible withdrawal and questionable control over her mental abilities. In this issue, we meet a character with the opposite problem – Emmy is trying to contain, rather than to free, her supernatural abilities. Her powers are summoned through her voice, and Emmy isn’t talking much by the time of this story. Before long, we start to see how a careless word from Emmy can cause permanent damage for whoever is unlucky enough to hear it. With a successfully invoked Twilight-zone mood, this largely silent issue creates a memorable character in Emmy and a cautionary tale for those who would believe that words can’t hurt you.
This is a great format for this writer-artist team to expand their abilities and is one of the more accessible efforts from the pair. Since every issue is a stand-alone story this will be a title to pick up on at any point, but why wait? Check out my favorite new title now, and maybe you’ll be doing a little dancing of your own.
WANTED #1 (of 6)
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: J.G. Jones
Publisher: Top Cow/Image Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
I don't think it was Mark Millar's official tag-line for WANTED, but a few months ago I heard the book billed somewhere as "WATCHMEN for supervillains." That was at least enough to get me to check it out, but naturally it turned out to be a specious lure. Millar's tale of an impotent assistant editor discovering he's the heir-apparent to a supervillain legacy has nothing of Alan Moore's complex structure or scope. It is, however, eminently readable and packed with eyeball kicks, memorably amoral badguys, and a nonstop stream of vulgarities that range from inspired to vapidly contrived in almost equal amounts.
WANTED #1 introduces us to Wesley Gibson, a lowly twenty-something schlub reminiscent of the most weasely portrayals of Clark Kent (think Harvey Kurtzman's parody, "Superduperman"). The opening gives us a whirlwind tour of his shitty life, a rapid-fire depiction of alienation that reminded me more than a little of the opening of Fincher's FIGHT CLUB. Gibson's a self-obsessed hypochondriac, verbally abused by his cartoonishly abrasive African-American boss at work, mocked by the local neighborhood gangstas for his wannabe hip-hop clothes, and repeatedly cheated on by his girlfriend (opening caption to the book: "This is my best friend having sex with my girlfriend over an Ikea table I picked up for a really good price"). Those opening pages had me wanting to tell Millar, "Okay, I get it! He's a loser!", but I quickly settled into his over-the-top approach; this isn't a series that traffics in subtleties.
What sets the story in motion is the death of the father our protagonist never knew, a man who walked out on an infant Wesley and his mother long ago. Turns out deadbeat daddy was the most feared assassin in the supervillain community, a subculture that, for reasons as yet unexplained, is wholly unknown to the general public. They seem to work behind the scenes, and as the Halle Berry-inspired villainess, The Fox, later tells Wesley, "Superheroes are no longer a concern, I'm happy to report." Apparently the bad guys have been running the show since '86 (does Millar see that seminal year that saw both WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS as the year when superheroes died?).
This is a very post-modernist, Tarantino-esque book, almost an exploitation story in its efforts to shock. For instance, before Wesley's dad gets lured to his doom in a hyper-violent rooftop shootout, we see him about to engage in a homosexual three-way. Not so shocking in and of itself, but Millar's contrived dialogue goes out of its way to raise readers' eyebrows:
"I'm not a homosexual, you understand. In fact, I've bedded over five thousand women in my fifty-eight years which makes me quite the opposite, I believe. I just like to do this gay thing every other year to whet my appetite for the pleasures of the fairer sex. There's nothing like the perfumed touch of woman after twelve months of heaving, sweating man-flesh writhing between one's sheets, you know."
In any case, Wes's dad – codenamed The Killer - ends up popped by a sniper firing from two cities away (a fun idea, reminiscent of some of Millar's more inspired superpower concepts in ULTIMATE X-MEN). Artist J.G. Jones draws all the sex and gore with the same shadowy realism he's displayed in both MARVEL BOY and WONDER WOMAN: THE HIKETEIA, and he's at least half the reason to be reading WANTED. Jones is to WANTED as Bryan Hitch is to ULTIMATES as Brian Bolland was to BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE – a realist grounding costumed anarchy in Hollywood slickness.
It turns out The Killer had a streak of sentimentality and left all his holdings to the son who never knew him, so Wesley finds himself catapulted into the GODFATHER-in-tights world of supervillainy. His guide is ultra-hottie, The Fox, a tough-as-nails babe who murders everyone in a café just to show Wes she's not screwing around. Again, we're veering into wild excess here, and even her dialog speaks to it: "Now get in the car while I still got this little miss patient smile on my face, asshole! You and me got a motherfucking business appointment!" Another misfire for me there, as was the bit with a toymaker-gimmick-villain complaining about catching Hepatitis B on an alternate earth, that kind of humor having pretty much reached its apex on THE AUTHORITY some years ago.
Still…still…I had a decent time reading this book. The decadent, wantonly violent behavior of the villains has a seductive quality to it, all the more so for its juxtaposition with Wesley's dead-end life. As with PULP FICTION, my sense is that readers aren't so much meant to judge the gleeful amorality of the story as just ride the rollercoaster. I can appreciate that, and I think readers looking for unadulterated shocks and thrills will be all over it, but I can't help but notice WANTED's track looks much more rickety than PULP FICTION's. I'm afraid I won't be buying issue #2, but (and don't tell anyone), I'll probably read a friend's copy on the sly. Consider that a very qualified recommendation.
PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY'S BEST BOOK EVER (TPB)
Writer/Artist: James Kochalka
Publisher: Alternative Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
Genius or just so-dumb-it's-funny?
This is the question I've asked myself whenever I've come across the strange, hilarious comics of James Kochalka (see also, MONKEY VERSUS ROBOT), but in a way it doesn't matter. Critical dissertations on an artist's work are all well and good, but one's ultimate reaction to a piece of art eventually boils down to a simple question: "Did you like it?"
And the answer is Yes. Hell Yes!
I'm relatively new to Kochalka's stuff, but the best way I can explain his approach in these PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY stories is to compare them to the "Will and Abe" segments of Matt Groening's LIFE IN HELL comic strip. Will and Abe were the two goofy rabbit kids – remember? - and I'm thinking of one strip in particular where (paraphrasing here) one of 'em asks, "Want to hear a joke?", and in the next panel exuberantly continues: "Booby!" He laughs hysterically as his brother just stares at him.
I think the gag went on from there, but just that one scene always cracked me up because Groening so perfectly captured in it the strange, ridiculous sense of humor of young kids. That was just one strip, though – Kochalka's particular gift is that he seems to be able to channel that weirdness constantly. In place of Will and Abe, we have Peanut Butter, a friendly and sincere cat, and Jeremy, the self-centered, trouble-making crow who's Peanut Butter's reluctant friend when he's not getting him into trouble. Their dialogue, coupled with Kochalka's ultra-simple, friendly cartooning style, is like a time warp back to childhood. Here's a typical exchange (the pair have just gone outside into the snow, and Peanut Butter's lost one of the mittens on his paws):
Peanut Butter: Oh no! I've lost a mitten! (He raises his de-mittened paw to show Jeremy) Help!
Jeremy: Tee hee!
Peanut Butter: No laughing!
Jeremy: *giggle* Hee hee!
Peanut Butter: I'm serious! My mitten is totally missing off my little paw!
Jeremy: Haw haw!
Peanut Butter: Jeremy! You're hurting my feelings!
Jeremy: Kaw! You're the dumbest cat ever times two! You're the dummy dum-dum cat who's super dumb! Kaw! You're the dumbity-dumb-dummiest dumbell of dumb-cat town! Haw haw!
Peanut Butter (defiantly): NO. YOU are.
And here again, I ask the question: genius or just so-dumb-it's-funny? A little of both, I'd actually say, but the only thing that's really relevant is that I laughed my ass off reading this comic! Peanut Butter ends up pouncing on Jeremy in the previous scene, which resolves itself like this:
Peanut Butter (pinning Jeremy down): Who's the dummy?
Jeremy: I am! I am! But… um… if you let me up I'll grant you three wishes. I'm an enchanted crow.
Peanut Butter: Really? Okay! (he lets Jeremy up)
Jeremy (flying away): Kaw! See ya! Wouldn't wanna be ya! Ya dumb-cat!
Peanut Butter (looking forlorn): Well… At least I'm not some fake magic bird!"
I swear, it's addictive, almost stream-of-consciousness hallucinatory, and as you can see, there's a distinct "Bugs versus Daffy" quality to these stories. The humor is purer in a way, though, with little discernable subversiveness and an almost total devotion to kiddie slapstick. There're occasional moments of mild satire – Peanut Butter wears a hat and tie, calls his offscreen owner "boss", and seems to think he's handling business accounts when he's usually just sleeping on files – but that's about it. It's very much its own world, with Kochalka's art style as simple as his seemingly written-on-the-fly stories. His cartooning style is actually very appealing, capturing the curious nature of cats with a bare minimum of lines and Jeremy's manic nature with little more than a black splotch with an eye. It almost a coloring book aesthetic, but Kochalka clearly knows layout and storytelling and how to "spot blacks", so it's really the deceptively simple aesthetic you find in the art of Shel Silverstein and other children's book illustrators. And yes, it's very cute, too, but in a non-commercial, non-cloying way.
There've been so many excellent trades this year, enjoyed on so many different levels – IRON WOK JAN for its manic cooking hyperbole, XENOZOIC TALES for its modernist take on pulp adventure, FLASH: THE ROGUES for its pitch-perfect superhero stories – but reading PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY stands out as the most unique experience of them all. With 270 pages+ of ridiculous confrontations, childish insults, and kid-logic, it's literally like returning to childhood when you immerse yourself in the book. Is it for everyone? Probably not. But for those willing to enjoy the simple humor of Peanut Butter introducing a chapter with, "The next one is our longest story yet, so you might want to go pee before we start" (Jeremy adds, "If you're a baby.")…you might just dig the hell out of this book. Your kids, younger brothers, and cousins will like it too.
CHEAP SHOTS!
GOTHAM CENTRAL #14: Fantastic issue in the Joker sniper saga. Rucka and Brubaker ably depict an entire city utterly paralyzed with fear, and artist Michael Lark provides some of the best atmospherics I've ever seen all year with his snow-swept, deserted cityscapes. Gotham's mayor is confident Batman will save the day as always, so he sets Gotham's finest to wasting their time rousting Joker groupies as a public show of force. Meanwhile the clocks on Joker's sniper-cams continues to tick, and the suspense is palpable. Terrific stuff. Joker terrifies with his unpredictability, and the ending has me on the edge of my seat to know his twisted scheme. Obligatory criticism: the book still needs a role-call. - Cormorant
STRANGERS IN PARADISE #61: Ten years after the character was first introduced, David Qin's backstory is finally being revealed. And it has all the impact of a raindrop on a windshield. Okay, I'm as guilty as anyone else of begging for more David in the story, but perhaps the time for this reveal is too long past. It would have been shocking years ago to see David as a young thug, but now it's just kind of sad to see such a unique character reduced to a yakuza cliché. This revisionism I have swallowed as a background detail, but Terry Moore has two more issues to convince me that it works as a story. -Lizzybeth
AVENGERS #75: The Search for She-Hulk ends here, (strictly speaking, the actual searching ended in the first issue, but...) and I am going to say something positive about it. Oh, the action and story are still horrible, but I am going to say something positive about this book. The art looks like it was done by a chicken with ink on his beak, but I am going to say something positive about this book. Jen continues to come across as an idiot, but I am going to say something positive about this book. Ant-Man continues to have the most horrid dialogue imaginable, but I am going to say something positive about this book. You see, at the end of the story, She-Hulk's transformations are reset to how they were before Johns started fiddling with her. While this does mean that the last four issues have been totally and completely pointless, they CAN be easily ignored and disregarded in the future. If that's not a positive thing, I don't know what is. - Vroom Socko
HELLBOY: WEIRD TALES #6: Gene Colan, P. Craig Russell, John Cassaday, and a Frank Cho cover! Of course it's good! Breakout talent of the year, Craig "Blankets" Thompson, steals the show with his grotesque, woodcut-style tour of Hell. - Cormorant
H-E-R-O #12: I haven't been following this book regularly, but I tuned in to this latest issue as a fan of all things prehistoric. Unlike most H-E-R-O issues, y'see, this one showcases the H-E-R-O dial turning up circa 20,000 B.C. Jumping back and forth in time, we see the actual deeds of the world's first superhero, a neanderthal Superman with the soul of an artist, and the modern-day archeologists trying to make sense of the evidence of his existence. Not great (though it could've been as a two-parter, I bet), but I found it memorable and even a bit touching. Series' artist, Kano, tries out a new style for the piece, and it falls somewhere between Guy Davis and V.T. Hamlin ("ALLEY OOP"). I think it looks great. - Cormorant
HEAVEN'S DEVILS #2: And now things get interesting. I thought the first issue of this series had a lot of promise as far as the premise (an interesting mix of eco-terrorism, viral warfare, and the occult); now, the promise already begins to deliver. The storyline is tightening and the characters are coming into clearer focus. We spend most of this issue south of the border, where a fever(which may have been engineered in a lab) is spreading rapidly and local authorities are ill-equipped to handle the situation. Madison Morgan has been sent by the FBI to investigate, and another American, Alan Wells, has arrived on the scene as something of an independent observer. We saw Alan trafficking drugs in the last issue, but here he is tending to the sick and wounded and showing surprising knowledge about both bacterial RNA and contacting the spirit world for advice. I like this book, I like the look and feel of it, the Mexican flavor and the topical punch. Nice work. – Lizzybeth
G.I. JOE: FRONTLINE #18: Who doesn't like the Joe team's heavy machine gunner and gourmet chef, Roadblock? Nobody, that's who! This issue shoots for laughs as he tries his hand at his own TV cooking show, only to have co-hosts, vomiting dogs, and Dreadnok attacks spoil his moment in the limelight. Has its moments, especially when it pokes fun at the Joe computer geek, Mainframe, but ultimately falls short of its premise. Check out this cover, though – damn near genius. – Cormorant
@$$HOLE REQUEST LINE!
Gruff-but-lovable TalkBacker, Mbeemer, has made a few requests that we post the shipping dates for the comics we review so as to facilitate finding 'em in his shop. The bad news is that we suck at record-keeping, but the good news is that we'll try anything once, so let's see what happens. Here's how this week's reviews break down:
Shipped 12-10-03: ULTIMATE X-MEN #40, TALES OF THE VAMPIRES #1, DEMO #2, WANTED #1, GOTHAM CENTRAL #14, AVENGERS #75, HELLBOY: WEIRD TALES #6, H-E-R-O #12, G.I. JOE: FRONTLINE #18
Shipped 12-3-03: STRANGERS IN PARADISE #61, PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY'S BEST BOOK EVER
Shipped 11-26-03: HEAVEN'S DEVILS #2
Happy hunting!
