East of West #16

Sixteen: Let It Burn
written by Jonathan Hickman
art by Nick Dragotta
colors by Frank Martin

Texas falls.  It falls quickly.  Bel Solomon, still with the seditious spirit of the assassinated Cheveyo whispering in his ear, and his Rangers do their best to stave off the onslaught of the Endless Nation's machines of war, but they are overrun.  And War, Famine, and vaunting Conquest come to glory in their victory and the devastation that the war leaves in its wake.

These three Horsemen are crude instruments.  Like the self-aggrandizing humans they scorn—foolishly imagining themselves above the petty, animal motivations that instigate such savage conflict—they think themselves great, above the self-flattery and self-deceit that governs the "meat," the "apes," drinking blood from the sun-bleached skull, Conquest riding his bicycle-bars-bridled giant.  If Conquest is triumphant, War is seductively blissful.  Satisfied, and luxuriating in the blood of the battle-slain.  So begins the second year of the Apocalypse.

The White Tower of the Union is besieged from within.  Still fighting semi-organized insurgencies and widespread political unrest, still financially weak and beholden to the Kingdom of New Orleans for credit, and now unable to broker any peace with the Endless Nation, who beheaded their diplomatic emissary, President LeVay with her untrustworthy Chief of Staff Doma Lux finds herself vulnerable to the interference of foreign powers, who may very well be supplying insurgent efforts with weapons.  But from her office in Washington, LeVay might very well exist in an entirely different world from the hangings in Texas.  It's a testament to Hickman's storytelling that the commingling of such disparate genres blend with as great an ease as they do, that a political thriller could sit alongside public lynchings.

The last Ranger, formerly tasked by Solomon to kill the Chosen, returns to save Solomon from the gallows...for the time being.  As ever, his robot dog is the charismatic lead in the rescue, slinking among the crowd in a cloak shitting decoy and distraction bombs, lassoing Solomon and dragging him away from danger.  Hickman's mechanical Nation representative, spouting ironic doctrine and decrying the tyranny of the former governor, is a worthy villain for the moment.  When the Ranger later chastises him—Where was I born, Bel?  Did I not wear the star?  It's not your nation... It never was.  It was the people's" (East of West #16: 26)—his arrogance is laid bare.  Whatever Solomon's crimes, the rest of Texas did not deserve its fate.  But Dragotta's near-wordless account of the rescue is spectacular.

Meanwhile, the most welcome return, spotted on the horizon—a metaphor that Premier Xiolian is likely to entertain, like hope or an illusion—is her husband Death.  "I think hope will be the death of us" (24), she thinks.  But the Nation have come calling.  Unsurprisingly, they too overestimated their power, and underestimated the need for soldiers as well as weapons in their war. 

[December 2014]

The Fade Out #2

"The Death of Me"
Number Two
written by Ed Brubaker
art by Sean Phillips

There's a barely sub-textual irony in systematically blacklisting artists for their fascist sympathies.  Whatever else post-war Hollywood was, in Brubaker and Phillips' murder noir, Hollywood is a wasps' nest of bullies:  Gil Mason is blacklisted for his supposedly communist sympathies, turned in (by their mutual agreement) by his former protégé Charlie; Charlie and the other writers are browbeaten by directors regarding their scripts and the creative directions of their movies; directors are man-handled by executives laboring under deadlines and anti-trust legislation chipping away at their monstrous profits; movie stars manipulate and exploit their doubles; and a starlet is murdered, and possibly raped, but it is covered up by a corrupt, self-righteous, money-obsessed industry.  (It's a statement of character reinforced by the issue's concluding reality fable, the unjust, sensationalized fall of silent film comedian Roscoe Arbuckle.)  That's Los Angeles.

Valeria Sommers—née Jenny Summers—is a difficult woman to get a read on.  Dead at the start of the series, we only get short, remembered moments of her, reminiscences offered by other characters.  She might very well be the sweet, naive ingénue that Charlie imagines her to be, an innocent young life, a promising talent, and a beautiful face caught in the Hollywood machine.  Jack Jones certainly remembers her with unassuming fondness, a friendship that apparently extends to childhood.  But her seduction of Charlie, attempting to get her dialogue improved, is practiced and could easily be as calculating as it could be artless:  sitting close to him on his sofa, leaning in and stealing his cigarette, sliding her head down on his leg, complimenting his perhaps unexpected handsomeness.  It's less a criticism of Val Sommers herself, whose sexual appetite and flirtatiousness are her own, than it is an indictment of the men's inability to see women beyond types, beyond the roles they write for them in the movies they sell.

In the wake of her funeral, a gathering of suspects in her murder, Charlie and Gil work themselves into a self-abusing, self-defeating stupor, Gil more than Charlie.  But their mutual cowardice, self-hate, frustration at the impunity with which their studio bosses do whatever they want, it all is also working them into a righteous frenzy for justice.  Once the hangover subsides and the bruises heal.

Sex Criminals #8

"Robert Rainbow"
written by Matt Fraction
art by Chip Zdarsky

It's a terrible name.  A wonderful, terrible name.  Laid back, covered with a green "Sexual Gary" hospital gown, legs splayed wide, Suzie meets Dr. Rainbow, her fill-in gynecologist.  And he's fairly devastating.  Good-looking, well-dressed, quick-witted, generously easygoing about potentially awkward sexual health questions, and unusually admiring of Suzie's perfect cervix.  It's no wonder, then, that Suzie quickly takes to fantasizing about the fine doctor stripping down out of his well-tailored clothes.  It's also no wonder that she, newly semi-single after a tumultuous taking-a-break fight with Jon, invites him to coffee.  It's far more surprising that Robert Rainbow is an old friend of Jon's, and they stumble into one another—Jon in some fairly spectacular running gear—outside that very same coffee shop.

There's a history there.  It turns out, being dismissed by Robert Rainbow on the very same KISS-clad Halloween that landed him egged in the woods was Jon's first experience of rejection, as he remembers it, insulted and stood up by a friend.  But Rainbow's evening had been quite eventful: the discovery of his parents engaged in moderate bondage, mild S&M, and play with penetrative toys.  His slightly traumatized, mightily embarrassed response was startlingly mature:  "I'm sorry.  I don't know what I was doing.  I should've knocked.  You and mom don't have anything to apologize for" (Sex Criminals #8: 11).  Between that and his older brother's hot girlfriend's insult to his KISS face paint, it's not surprising he bailed.

Jon, meanwhile, meets his next shrink in the food court after his longtime therapist proved an ineffectual nitwit.  Two homework assignments:  exercise and make a friend.  Enter Robert Rainbow back into his life.  It's no wonder Suzie was instantly attracted to Bob; he and Jon are two peas in a pod.  But any potentially rivalry or competitiveness is cut short when Suzie and Jon find the Sex Police demolishing Suzie's library.  Whatever they are, whatever their idea of their mission is, they are not above being petty.

Black Science #11

written by Rick Remender
art by Matteo Scalera
colors by Michael Spicer

The threats that have been gathering for since the scientists first launched the pillar come to a head in the end to Black Science's second arc:  the army of mind-reading, nihilistic millipedes; an alternate-dimension Grant and Sara McKay, decorated with onion logos taken as trophies off other dead McKays, looking to save our Pia and Nathan by kidnapping them; the fiery plant spirit possessing Chandra, "savior of a dying people" (Black Science #11: 14), is finally confronted by Rebecca who catches her making schematic notes about the pillar; the other onion-less McKay tracking them all down across worlds.  The convergence of these threats doesn't exactly resolve itself.  And the convergence of no less than three different pillars—and one detailed blueprint with instructions—doesn't exactly diminish the threats themselves.

And above them all, watching these different iterations play themselves out in mirrors across worlds, is the winged mantis.  By the time renegade McKay announces that they must "go to the center of the onion" (28), we've already begun to suspect that this might just be it.

If Black Science's dimension-jumping conspiracies are hopelessly contorted versions of familiar sci-fi ideas, compelling but tortuous, its characters are exceptionally well-wrought, sometimes infuriatingly credible.  And yet, Remender has a habit of keeping the narrative voice off balance.  When Black Science #11 opens—"If you run on lies long enough they become your truth" (1)—it could be nearly anyone.  After all, lies more or less drive the characters of Black Science, lies to themselves as much as anything.  Even after learning that it is Kadir, echoes of McKay are easy to hear.

Colorist Michael Spicer takes over this issue for paint artist Dean White, and while he does an admirable job approximating the series' characteristic aesthetic, Black Science's art lose something in its depth, palate complexity and texture, especially in its larger illustrations.

FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #15

"Standing on Shoulders," Part 2 (of 2)
written by Simon Oliver
art by Alberto Ponticelli

There's something sincerely credible in a contingent of bullied science nerds concocting an elaborate plan to accomplish what is essentially a grandiose pun:  "THE ATOMIC WEDGIE" (FBP #15: 1).  When Cicero Deluca switches majors to field agent training, he's honestly disappointed by the lack of ingenuity in the jocks' retaliatory pranks.

The field utility evaluation—the "Fuck U 48" to field agent trainees—makes evident just how unfamiliar and unpracticed Cicero is with group bonding.  His role ring-leading the wedgie prank against popular jock Hunter and his subsequent transfer to their program made him a marked man.  The hatred is probably more or less genuine, but, to Cicero's surprise, the jocks have his back even as they force his inequitable risk-taking.  Maybe they want him to fail, or they don't care if he does, but maybe they also need him to make amends.

Then there was the burn out.

As the older, far wiser Cicero-narrator recognizes, "I was still too caught up in my own shit to stop and ask myself why any of them had joined up...and I should have..." (13).  Hunter's personal history, the loss of his sister to a physics-related phenomenon, made Cicero's self-interested career planning seem uneventful.  No less noble, but far less tragic.  When they both rise to the challenge of being actual agents, of warning a local town of the approaching burn out, they each prove their mettle, and each exorcise a few demons.

It would have been easy to kill Hunter off a hero, saving a young kid as an act of restitution for his sister, entirely redeemed.  The truth, as Oliver writes it, is far more brutal and far truer.  He loses his quarterback arm, carves out a lackluster but respectable career as an FBP agent but without the crusading inspiration he once showed, settles into a life built on who he once was, and watches it deteriorate underneath him, alone.

[January 2015]

Colder: Bad Seed #3

written by Paul Tobin
art by Juan Ferreyra

The horror of Colder has always relied on destabilizing the familiar, transforming something ordinary and comfortable into something threateningly strange.  Juan Ferreyra's homage to Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World—which imposes a depression-era Declan, a hatchet-wielding, shotgun-toting, long-john-wearing Sam Elliott look-alike, and a murder of crows hovering over the faraway barn into the oppressively sparse landscape—is just the same.  You know it, but you don't know it at all.

The explanation offered in Colder for Declan's extraordinary ability to heal the insane has never quite been satisfactory.  Why Declan?  Nimble Jack fed on so many, but none of them ever showed Declan's skills.  He touches people and cures them of their insanity, growing slightly colder with every touch.  That his fingers might not be entirely his own, that his history with the finger-obsessed farmer Swivel might go back farther than his history with Nimble Jack, makes some sense of the origins of his talents.  That is, of course, if the vision in the Hungry World can be believed.

Swivel's reign of urban terror remains a bizarre spectacle.  In each issue, he roams the streets, leering at hands, collecting fingers in his planting pot with his harvesting knife, leaving behind him a wake of bleeding and horrified victims as he slinks away unimpeded.  It's like walking through a nightmare.  We may imagine them un-restored, but there's some necessary illusion required to keep his reputation from outing him, like the unassuming invisibility of Nimble Jack.  And now we know that might somehow be the case.

"Barton has my gifts.  He is my hand.  And he is my grasp."  (Colder: Bad Seed #3: 16)

Declan keeps finding the same tenant building, some mirrored bridge between the real world and the Hungry World.  And he finds inside a collection of versions of himself, or perhaps just a hall of mise-en-abyme mirrors.  They show him himself, and himself doesn't have his own fingers.  Interrupted by a disorienting but resolute Reece, the couple go searching the building to find the truth, if the truth can be found in the Hungry World.  What they do find is a horror fable, featuring a dull-minded thief Declan Barton and a ruthless farmer with an axe.

Tobin's nightmarish villains may be the charismatic appeal of his horror story, but the companions-turned-friends-turned-lovers Reece and Declan are its heart.  Their gentle flirtation and easy intimacy in brutal circumstances make their love affair compelling, but Reece is weary of the danger and fearful of losing her mind again.  And Declan is little help in clarifying his own past, which continues to be unknown to him.  By the end of Bad Seed #3, paralyzed and consumed by Swivel, the Hungry World is no longer his to navigate.  Instead, it falls to Reece, should she choose to do so.

A door appears out of thin air as Swivel strides away with Declan in his belly.  "That doorway works.  You can show yourself out." (23)

Revival #25

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

Part of what makes Revival so credible as a social satire, a sometimes devastating critique of American dysfunction, is the plethora of motivations always in play:  petty, predictable ones, like money, that leave unprincipled mercenaries like Reviver facility guard Kyle open to bribery; bitter, vindictive ones that spur Ed Holt into revolutionary action; desperation; avoidance of public humiliation; faith; compassion; love; grief; a desire for death; shame; obligation; betrayal.  It's not particularly surprising, then, to discover that Jess Blackdeer isn't the prime force behind the Revival conspiracy.  He was instead its first victim.

Warned by his bought guard at the holding facility that his strong-arm Reviver hadn't yet returned and rounds were about to be conducted, a black-clad, gloved, reflective spectacled conspirator hunts him down at his daughter's funeral.  And he (probably he, though it's not definitive) has no difficulty in wrestling Blackdeer to the ground.  His promise: lasting death.

Meanwhile, protesters arrive at the facility, followed shortly after by the sheriff.  Aided by Jordan Borchardt's father, Ed Holt enlists the help of Jeannie Gorski and the Revival Support Group to stage a demonstration for the release of the Revivers being held there.  The sight is a grotesque with the wide- and vacant-eyed Revivers singing spirituals and crucifying Gorski just outside the gates.  And like it or not, deprived of the threat of death, the protesters don't have all that much to fear from the armed guards.  It also brings the unknown facility and quarantine practices into the view of Sheriff and Dana Cypress.  And he more than holds his own.

Unfortunately, the same discovery alienates Dana from Ramin, who as an agent of the CDC was fully aware of the facility's existence and practices, though he didn't exactly approve.  She rightfully feels betrayed, especially given her confidence in him regarding her sister.  After growing closer in the last few issues, sharing phone calls interrupted by dead toads in the washing machine and staying the night with pillowtalk and take-out, Dana pulls back.

But the most tantalizing promise Revival #25 makes is the hunt for Aaron Weimar, father to Reviver Em's baby and known (by readers) to have been killed by Blackdeer a while back.  With his involvement not yet resolved and the reemergence of Blaine Abel, it promises to be quite the search.

[November 2014]