Lost Vegas #3

"Third Hand  |  Down to the Felt"
written by Jim McCann
art by Janet Lee

As suggested by closing pages of Lost Vegas #2, by improbable happenstance and Roland's own oft-suppressed principles, his personal escape plan has evolved into an all-out rebellion.  His allies—once only telepathic roommate blob Ink, tech man Rinny, and fellow Janus exile Loria—are multiplying.  Now seemingly in collusion with Princess Kaylex, her physically imposing science deer, and apparently a Godspark itself, though its motivations are less clear than he would like, Roland finds himself on the same ship with Ensign Scotsorn, the military commander directly responsible for the complete Death-Star-like annihilation of his planet, the brutal end of the God-War, and the political and military composition of the galaxy.  And as much as he'd like to think he'd selfishly save himself, Roland, like Loria, can't pass up the opportunity for revenge.

We also finally learn Loria's history, in particular her history with Roland himself, with whom she fled her soon-to-be-destroyed planet, and the circumstances of her employment on the Lost Vegas.  It is, in all appearances, even worse than Roland's own, a series of exploitative foremen, near-rape, and betrayal jealous servant, before being marooned on the casino spaceship.  Her bitterness is easily understood.

For the most part, however, Lost Vegas #3 feels like a penultimate episode.  The confrontation between the clever and willful Kaylex and the cruel power-monger Scotsorn is satisfying, despite for the moment his victory.  As is her spat with the semi-desperate Loria, whose humiliation and frustration at her failure are palpable, but whose willingness to recover and make amends is admirable.  But its cliffhanger is both appropriate and well-earned.  Roland, the gambler, is set to make the "final bet," a gladiatorial-style combat in which he is hopelessly over-matched.

The Wake #1

Part One (of 10)
written by Scott Snyder
art by Sean Murphy

One part government conspiracy thriller.  One part evolutionary epic.  Two parts alien horror flick.  This new offering from masters of the medium Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy promises to match, if not exceed, its high expectations.  The Wake #1 offers just the right tease of mystery and suspense, dropping little plot breadcrumbs every couple of pages, so that by the time we reach the end of the issue, we are—like Dr. Archer—in far deeper than we'd anticipated. 

Archer is a strong protagonist, a capable scientist and researcher, strong-willed and protective of both her family and her work, whose fundamentally human motivations land her eye-deep in government secrets, illegal oil drilling, and face-to-face with an undocumented sea creature with a sophisticated call and apparently a long, bloody history with humankind.  She and her fellow experts, equally duped into accepting DHS's proposal, make up a team designed to analyze and respond to the ghost rig's deep sea discovery.  The team:  DHS special agent and team ring-leader, Astor Cruz, who's far more likable than a manipulative government suit should be; cetologist on the outs with the NOAA, Dr. Lee Archer; good-natured Professor of Folklore and Mythology, Dr. Marin; the laconic Meeks; and Dr. Archer's former NOAA boss, Dr. Bob Wainwright, by all accounts a pushy bastard, though his so-far unelaborated history with Archer might mitigate his attitude.

Structurally, The Wake isn't all that interesting.  It sandwiches contemporary events between a short prologue—a woman and her dolphin searching a flooded and abandoned city 200 years in the future—and an even briefer (and significantly more tantalizing) epilogue—a cave painter with an ominously anachronistic piece of murderous tech set 100,000 years in the past.  However frequently employed, particularly in sci-fi storytelling, it certainly gives The Wake a well-deserved scope, one as chronologically ambitious as topographically.  It's as long a story as it is deep.

[July 2013]

Deadpool Killustrated #2

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
"Chapter II:  Strong Temptations—Strategic Movements—the Innocents Beguiled"
written by Cullen Bunn
pencils by Matteo Lolli
inks by Sean Parsons
colors by Veronica Gandini

Where Deadpool Killustrated #1 was a witty cudgel, its follow-up is a thick, blunt club.  Once again, Mad Thinker's message, a de facto summary of the mini-series' conceptual premise, is the most thematically interesting bit of the issue.  Oddly enough, despite being articulated by another Marvel villain trying to sabotage Deadpool's mission, it attributes a kind of freedom-fighting meta-heroism to the kill-happy protagonist.  Imagining comic book characters as philosophically autonomous beings forced to endure the often ridiculous and needlessly cruel trials designated to them by their "progenitors"—the comic book creative teams dubbed by Mad Thinker as the "sadistic group thriving on the suffering of their creations" (Deadpool Killustrated #2, p. 2)—makes Deadpool's manic killing spree both ideologically sound, if lavishly bloody, and self-incriminating for the reader, who is necessarily inculpated in the newly imagined non-fictional bloodbath.

Deadpool's actual forays into the literary landscape—Mad Thinker's "ideaverse"—are, however, continually disappointing.  His battlefield swagger and casual bravado don't deliver the pointed barbs that they occasionally did in #1, and for the most part the kills themselves are humorous in their graphic farcicality but rather boring in their delivery.  The lone exception:  the single-page slaughter of Tom Sawyer, seen only as blood splatter and brain bits on a freshly white-washed fence.  The others—Captain Ahab, Dracula, the Headless Horseman, and the surprisingly resourceful fighters, the March sisters—are weak.

Bunn does finally start elaborating the thematic affinities between comic book characters and their literary predecessors, but these too seem mostly superficial.  Something meaningful might be made out of General Ross's transformation into Red Hulk as a thematic parallel to Ahab's obsessive quest for the symbolically chameleon White Whale, but the reduction of Elektra, She-Hulk, Black Widow, and Mockingbird to Little Women's March sisters simply because they are strong-willed and self-sufficient is almost insulting in its simplicity.  Others are more directly derivational, less interesting but more concrete in their cultural heritage.  To whatever other cultural figures he alludes, for example, Ghost Rider is certainly indebted to the Headless Horseman.

Sherlock Holmes's solution to Deadpool is, so far at least, also underwhelming.  Assembling a small team of characters picked out of literature to take the fight to Deadpool seems as equally blunt a plan as Deadpool's to simply annihilate the entire population of the ideaverse.  I expected better from literature's most famous deductive thinker.  The team, though is intriguingly hodgepodge:  Beowulf, Natty Bumppo, Hua Mulan, and, of course, Dr. Watson.

At its best, Deadpool Killustrated could be a clever and insightful deconstruction of literary inspiration and derivation, and the relative place of individual creativity in the larger cultural landscape.  In other words, just what exactly does Ghost Rider owe to Brom Bones?  Is every modern vampire causally dependent on Dracula?  Instead, Deadpool Killustrated has ignored some of the more interesting consequences of its own thinking in favor of brute force and a more or less ordinary superhero plot.

Locke & Key, Volume 3

Crown of Shadows
written by Joe Hill
art by Gabriel Rodriguez


Crown of Shadows takes place in the immediate aftermath of Head Games.  The night after Duncan's lover Brian is hit by a car and Zack Wells, formerly Luke "Dodge" Caravaggio, takes the memories or lives of anyone who knows his past, Nina must break the news to her children.  Meanwhile, life in the Locke family, particularly for Nina, is continuing to spiral.  Still traumatized by the death of her husband and her assault and rape, Nina continues to drink herself into crippling alcoholism.  Her actions—particularly her disabling self-hatred and irresponsible decision making—are beginning to alienate her children, especially the newly fearless (quite literally) Kinsey and Tyler, who's taken on several of the parental roles in the absence of his father and the poor state of his mother.  This portrait of a broken mother as both sympathetic and unacceptable is characteristic of what makes Locke & Key so excellent.  It does not make excuses for Nina, but it makes her human.  Because as an adult she is unable to recognize the keys' magic without being in an "altered state," Nina remains in many ways on the periphery of the series' central story—i.e., the rediscovery of the keys by the Locke children, the corresponding machinations of Zack/Luke/Dodge, and the slowly unveiling history of Keyhouse, including the childhood of Rendell Locke—but it does not deny her a full characterization.

Crown of Shadows also features the return of Sam Lesser, a ghost at the hands of Zack and left to haunt Keyhouse.  However, unlike the desperate, empty Sam of Welcome to Lovecraft, he now has a much clearer vision of himself, one that continues to feel more pity for himself than regret for his violence against the Locke family, but one that stands poised to act against Zack if he can find a way how.  We also begin to discover more about Zack himself, in particular the parasitic hardware in his back that seems to control his thoughts.  He is, as we have begun to suspect, not entirely human, and his increasingly desperate search for the mysterious Omega Key something to be genuinely feared.

Meanwhile, the newly fearless Kinsey begins to make her own discoveries about her family's past.  Her nearly fatal trip to the Drowning Cave reveals to her the names of her father and his band of high school friends, whose own trip in 1988 seems to have jump-started much of the current action:  Rendell Locke (recently deceased), Erin Voss (institutionalized), Kim Topher, Ellie Whedon (track coach housing Zack), Mark Cho, and Luke "Dodge" Caravaggio (Zack Wells).  More importantly, the reader (unlike Kinsey) sees a corpse at the bottom of the cave, one that looks suspiciously similar to Luke/Zack, particularly in his black dress from the Wellhouse.  All of which contribute to Locke & Key's general storytelling acumen and betray Hill's tight plot structure, which seems to have known all along EXACTLY where it was going and to have dropped hints, both textual and visual, from the very, very beginning.  Locke & Key is less a comics series than a long graphic novel, in the structural sense, each act building on the last, leaving no detail behind.

Rodriguez continues to prove his style perfect for Hill's particular brand of horror, which relies heavily on visual and cinematic strategies for its effects.  Some of Locke & Key's most frightening sequences are its silent panels, much like the first page of Crown of Shadows #1, which captures Zack's sneaking violations of the Locke family's home and heads.

The Keys:

Giant Key, an enormous wooden key which fits a lock-shaped window of Keyhouse, enlarges its user to gigantic proportions.

Shadow Key opens a small door in the basement of Keyhouse, which leads to the Chamber of the Living Shadows, which houses the titular Shadow Crown.  When fitted into the crown, the key activates it, allowing its wearer to control the newly animated and corporal shadows of the house.

Mending Key, when used with the iron mending chest, repairs what is physically broken or injured to its former state.

Collects Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows #1-6:  "The Haunting of Keyhouse," "In the Cave," "Last Light," "Shadow Play," "Light of Day," and "Epilogue: Beyond Repair"

ISBN:  978-1600106958

Lost Vegas #2

"Second Hand  |  Sharks and Whales"
written by Jim McCann
art by Janet Lee

Lost Vegas, which began as a rather straightforward heist-and-escape story, takes a dramatic turn toward espionage thriller in its second issue.  And, while the groundwork for this turn was well established in its opening chapter, it certainly comes as a welcome surprise.

Roland was undoubtedly the narrative center of "Stays in Vegas".  The motivations and agendas of the conspirators in his escape—mysterious, telepathic roommate Ink; quirky tinkerer Rinny; and clever dealer Loria—remained unclear.  "Sharks and Whales" develops that uncertainty.  As it turns out, Ink communicates independently with Rinny.  Loria knows more than she lets on about the politics on board the Lost Vegas.  And Roland's new acquaintances, Lady Kaylex and her stag-with-science Atho, have their own secrets.  Suddenly, the escape of a single indentured servant on board seems a small accomplishment among larger plans.

In a stroke of timing worthy of Roland's spectacular gambler's luck, in the process of his escape he finds that the Lost Vegas is itself being extorted by some of the galaxy's most powerful and corrupt war-mongers.  Forced to surrender a large portion of his ship's profits, to provide a de facto site for secret political meetings, and to give over his daughter Kaylex during her period of courtship, Admiral Kyule is strong-armed by one of the Post-God War's most notorious figures, Ensign Scotsorn, known as the Architect.  Not only this, his private security team of Nighthawks and fellow Akians are poised to transfer to him the Godspark, a thus-far unexplained weapon of unprecedented power.  Confronted with the creature who destroyed his planet, Roland makes a decision which, I suspect, surprised him more than the reader.

Spaceman #3

"Past 1,000,000" (3 of 9)
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Eduardo Risso

Orson and Tara may arrive back and settle in at Orson's place, a decision NOT to return her home that is simultaneously stupid and savvy, but Spaceman #3 is mostly about her pursuit, both by the cops investigating her supposed kidnapping and by the sheik who ordered it.  Azzarello's disheartening and satirical vision of a world in which well-meaning but vacuously beautiful celebrities preoccupy public attention and reality television is more powerful than news outlets continues here, but surprisingly it's also a world filled with people who are more or less competent.  Policeman Wade, for instance, seems basically capable at his job and invested in Tara's return.  The intentions of these characters and their faith in Orson seem by the end of the issue poised to be tested, when both the neighborhood kids friendly with Orson and his prostitute confidante become aware of Tara's temporary residence with him.

"Past 1,000,000"'s best surprise, one that continues to complicate the relationship between Orson's fantasies about Mars and the events surrounding Tara, comes in its final few pages, in which Orson's fellow spaceman appears as a notorious bounty hunter hired by the sheik to locate Tara.  Like the Mars mission, in which he finds veins of gold by exploding the terrain and repurposes his companions in a new mission while they await reconstruction of the greenhouse, Carter is primarily interested in money.  What makes this of particular interest is that Orson is currently unaware of his involvement, making his incorporation into Orson's dreams a difficult aspect to reconcile with the general perception of what those dreams actually are or represent.

[February 2012]

The Hood, Volume 1

Blood From Stones
written by Brian K. Vaughan
pencils by Kyle Hotz

Parker Robbins, The Hood's protagonist, is petty, criminal, cheating rake, who is as ignorant and unlikable a character as Vaughan dare to make the center of his anti-hero story.  The premise is excellent, if not entirely unprecedented.  In the Marvel universe—riddled with masked superheroes inspiring the awe of the country and with masked villains, who seem to appear out of a void one at a time to be their convenient counterparts—Vaughan imagines a criminal culture, one typically implied but not seen, or relegated to the background of most superhero comics.  For Robbins and his family, having grown up in the shadow of Kingpin and his criminal empire, theft is a way of life, and it's one he embraces fully.

His perspective changes, however, when in the middle of a heist with his cousin John King, he discovers a strange, semi-mechanical hooded figure in a cryptic, mystical circle.  After shooting the demon, seemingly dead, he then re-appropriates his boots and cloak only to discover that they give him special powers:  the abilities to fly and to turn invisible when he holds his breath.  Putting his new powers to good criminal use, Parker and John then stumble into the world of crime bosses, blood diamonds, and super-villains.  For the most part, the villains are uninteresting.  Madame Rapier, Constrictor, Jack O' Lantern and Shocker serve as suitable muscle and some mediocre thug-banter, but contribute little else.  The Golem—né Dennis Golembuski—is significantly more so, but it takes until the final few issues for the nature of his involvement—i.e., his coerced participation through his family's kidnapping—to become more clear.  In fact, despite being published as a mini-series whose follow-up didn't appear until 2006, The Hood reads more like a beginning than a whole story, one that ultimately repositions its characters for a longer vision than completing their story.

Most importantly, it redeems Parker somewhat.  Parker begins as an immature 19-year-old guy cheating on his pregnant girlfriend with a prostitute, committing armed theft with his recovering-alcoholic cousin, and habitually lying to his institutionalized mother about his career path.  In the course of his abbreviated run as a masked villain, he manages to piss off a notorious crime boss working for an unseen and even more terrifying master, to shoot and ultimately kill a beat cop (also cheating on his wife with his partner), and trade in blood diamonds.  However, his remorse about the cop and his loyalty to his similarly reprobate cousin lead him toward a more wholesome lifestyle, so that his final promise to his mother, though understandably unbelieved by her hospital's staff, seems sincere.  However, the damage is done, and just as a hero rises, a villain—in this case, the cop's wife, formerly a Stark engineer, transforms into White Fang—sprouts up to fight him.

As usual, Brian K. Vaughan is strongest in his dialogue.  The casual, pop-culture-ridden banter between Parker and John in particular is both character-appropriate and frequently hilarious.  It provides a levity his story needs and a kind of cultural embeddedness that ground its fantastic elements in a more relatable world.  Unfortunately, Hotz' artwork is less impressive.  It's good enough, but it does little to enhance the story, and his interior artwork falls well short of his stark, evocative cover illustrations.

Collects The Hood: Blood From Stones #1-6
ISBN:  978-0785110583

The Dream Merchant #1

written by Nathan Edmondson
art by Konstantin Novosadov

It takes nearly all of The Dream Merchant's double-sized inaugural issue for it to reveal its central, innovative concept, one that was unfortunately featured in its pre-release press, because this one's worth the wait.  Edmondson has been (with some justification) criticized for his meandering pace and extremely leisurely tempo, both a luxury and consequence of the capacious page-count.  But its pace and Edmondson's lyrical writing style both contribute to the series' dream-like tone, one that seduces the reader into the same manner of waking confusion that plagues its central character, the inability to perceive the differences between states, if not consciously discriminate between them.

Winslow—haunted by a recurring dream from his childhood and hospitalized because of the resulting insomnia—finds himself on the lam, escaped from the psychiatric institution and running from a mysterious band of cloaked figures he first sees in his dream.  For most of the issue, The Dream Merchant is a hybrid between chase thriller and supernatural mystery, both of which are governed by a kind of distant surrealism.  As a thriller, The Dream Merchant works quite well.  Winslow is a likable and vulnerable protagonist and his wraith-like pursuers are convincingly menacing.  But it's the titular Merchant of Dreams—wizened, tattooed, and peddling dream amulets out of a canvas-covered wagon—who gives the story its particular unearthly aura.

However solid Edmondson's opening chapter, it's newcomer Konstantin Novosadov's artwork that commands his debut.  His lines have a casual aspect—long, loose, and fluid—but they are deceptively sophisticated.  Protagonist Winslow, in his dream-avoiding insomnia, frequently looks weary and disheveled, the Merchant of Dreams aged and ragged, both suitable for Novosadov's style.  But it's his compositions and coloring that really dictate the visual tone of the issue.  In particular, the sometimes dramatic, sometimes quiet incorporation of pink—the color of Winslow's dreams—works both aesthetically and thematically.

All in all, Edmondson and especially Novosadov have put together a fine opening to what promises to be an intriguing story.  What it lacks in focus, it makes up for in momentum, bravura and eloquence.

American Vampire #3

Chapter Three:  "Rough Cut" and "Blood Vengeance"
written by Scott Snyder and Stephen King
art by Rafael Albuquerque

How can a vampire who retains its human memories and emotions also transform into a calculating, brutal killer?  It's a difficult line that Snyder walks to perfection in Pearl.  Skinner Sweet, however charismatic a character, was always an outlaw who unflinchingly murdered his enemy's lover, fed on an entire town of strangers, and shows no remorse for collateral carnage.  Pearl was not.  Her new strength and predatory acumen exists alongside her sisterly love for her roommate and her burgeoning romance with Henry.  Yet, she shows no hesitation in getting her revenge:  slaughtering the self-promoting movie star who lured her into the vampires' lounge, ripping the face off one of her attackers, and skewering another on cactus thorns.  That she is more discriminating than Sweet in selecting her targets doesn't make her any less intuitive about her kills, and it's precisely this that gives her transformation such credibility.

"Blood Vengeance" continues Sweet's story as told by Bunting, his personal feud with Jim Book in the years following his re-emergence.  However, it is his untold history with the European vampires, alluded to in "Rough Cut," that is intriguing in its suggestiveness.  Having once eluded assassination by the Europeans in America—indeed, having decapitated the lot—Sweet seemed to have come to some tentative agreement, the "Treaty," which seems to be on somewhat tenuous ground and on the verge of being broken at any moment.  The meeting of the vampires early in the issue also alludes to "the Vassals," presumably another rival vampire organization.

[July 2010]

As collected in American Vampire, Volume 1 (ISBN 978-1401228309)

Lost Vegas #1

"First Hand  |  Stays in Vegas"
written by Jim McCann
art by Janet Lee

Roland is a gambler.  And a cheater.  After being caught swapping chips and marking cards, his resulting debt is purchased by Nighthawks of the Lost Vegas spaceship casino, and he's forced into indentured servitude in the hospitality industry until he pays off his balance.  The casino has fixed it so that this never happens.  As the issue title suggests, once you're in Lost Vegas you "stay in Vegas."  Roland has other ideas, mostly escaping ideas.  He with a few conspirators—his mysterious, telepathic roommate Ink; out-moded technology tinkerer Rinny; and dealer and fellow cheat Loria—plan on taking the house, stealing a spacecraft, and making his escape.

As a heist/escape story, Lost Vegas has a fair degree of intrigue.  Some of McCann's conceits could fit comfortably in a tale of espionage.  The eerie, identical sameness of the enthralled employees under their holographic masks, fully disguising their identities and making them dangerous for Roland, since he cannot know which of them might recognize him or whether he might trust them.  Despite Roland's characterization of the scheme as "Clean, foolproof plan A.  Nothing left to chance" (Lost Vegas #1, p. 17), it's anything but simple.  Combine that with his growing sense of sympathy for his fellow inmates, his occasional ideas of a full-scale break, and his detection at the end of the issue, and Roland's plan has just about every chance of going wrong.

Although it's not particularly heavy-handed about it, Lost Vegas is also a critique of capitalistic exploitation.  That Roland is a degenerate cheat, if a charming and charismatic one, is certainly more true than not.  He'd already amassed a personal debt from his gambling habit before attempting to swindle Bisa and losing his debt to the casino.  But his work-scheme on the Lost Vegas is exploitative and predatory, eliminating any possibility of actually earning his freedom while perpetually holding hope of it in front of him.  It's a system the house is designed to win, and Roland is here to make sure it doesn't.  That he shows inklings of conscience and ideas of mounting a collective revolt against the casino guards is evidence of a social principle at work in some of his actions.

Janet Lee's artwork is mesmerizing, sometimes quite literally in a way that draws the eye out of the representation and into the shapes and colors independent of it.  Her use of texture and pattern—as in Rinny's dreadlocked hair or the piping on the ceiling of the servants' hallway—integrates the images into a more abstract, but equally beautiful, opening.  Sometimes the opening has its own narrative structure, and occasionally it's a unified representation, but in either case it has a visual coherence sometimes entirely divorced from the story it's representing.  Her differentiation of styles on the ship—a mechanical ulilitarianism in the staff areas; a lithe, organic art nouveau on the gaming and entertainment decks—reinforces McCann's thematic interests and provides credibility for the posh casino.  She also employs some interesting layout designs, including card-shaped image blocks in the "First Hand" portion of the issue.  The remainder continues to capitalize on this scheme, preferring small rectangles in short sequences overlaid on ostensibly full-page illustrations.

Lost Vegas #1 featured a number of variant covers—including quite excellent ones by Skottie Young and Francesco Francavilla and heavier, darker, angrier ones by Dan McDaid—but Janet Lee and Chris Sotomayor's wrap-around cover takes the prize.  It captures all the otherworldly background hubbub of the story, the futuristic luxury of the space casino, but it's Roland himself—all dapper swagger and suave, coolly staring down the viewer seated across the table—that, much as he commands the story, commands the page. 

Polarity #2

written by Max Bemis
art by Jorge Coelho

"Suddenly, I realize I'm sitting pensively on the edge of a tall building, overlooking the city and pondering life.  Only two types of people do this.  Suicide cases...and superheroes." (Polarity #2, p.18)

As likable and wry as Bemis's Dr. Mays may be, his delivery of Polarity's central allegorical conceit—that bi-polar artist Tim Woods is actually if improbably accruing supernatural abilities as a result of the chemical imbalance of his manic episodes—is clunky, even for exposition.  That said, once an enlightened and shirtless Tim returns home, loses his Jesus beard (no really, he thought he was Jesus), and goes back to living his life with only his normal discontent, Polarity regains its stride.  Once Tim, perhaps ill-advisedly, decides to embrace his superhero potential at a particularly awkward and vapid dinner party with hipster girlfriend Alexis, Polarity zips at a pace that lends credence to Tim's cocaine-induced, super-powered mania.

Having embraced his disorder's potential, Tim's life suddenly takes a dramatic turn for the better.  He dumps his pretentious, cheating girlfriend; his art—a clever homage to Irving's Polarity #1 cover—is well received by his admiring art agent, whom he puts into place with his mind-reading abilities; he returns to his former high school to rescue a young kid named Herschel from the latest crop of jock-bullies; and he musters enough ego and courage to ask out his crush Lily, who, it turns out, liked his not-manic personality.

If Polarity is Bemis's allegory for perceived invincibility caused by bi-polar episodes and its seductiveness, this issue tempts the reader as much as its protagonist with the promise of surging confidence and powerful singularity.  The high of his successes and limitless potential of the future are tantalizing prospects, ones we know to be fragile and dangerous but ones which expose our willful optimism and secret egotism.  We readers want to feel that too.  And ultimately, the audience is as inculpated in the same enticing delusion as Tim himself.

[May 2013]

Wonder Woman, Volume 2

Guts
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Cliff Chang and Tony Akins
(additional art and inks by Kano and Dan Green)

Azzarello's DCified take on Greek mythology continues to impress.  If his first Wonder Woman arc—Blood—distanced itself narratively and tonally, his second—Guts—finally leaves it behind.  It's not that he won't be able to integrate other DC superheroes later on, but that right now it's working so well without them.  He has immersed Diana in her mythological roots, taking her quite literally to Hell and back, and it's exceptional to behold.

Wonder Woman's gods simultaneously meet and defy expectation, both their characterization and their visual representation.  Eros may be blond, beautiful, and fit in a pair of skinny red jeans with his golden guns, and Artemis's steely allure may intimidate, but it's Hephaestus who steals the show here.  Tucked behind a charming jewelry shop in Firenze, the craftsman of the gods, Hephaestus mans his forge.  He is both impressive and vulnerable, broad and strong and wearing leg braces from his fall from Olympus.  He is also disarmingly generous and noble, disappointed by his Olympian family and disposed to help Diana for her principles rather than debt, loyalty or deceit.

Azzarello is also keen to humble his heroine a little, to provoke a little ambiguity in her principles, which are so characteristically steadfast and certain, and Hephaestus is a particularly appropriate tool to accomplish this.  Wonder Woman spends an entire issue attempting to rescue her brothers, the unwanted male offspring of Amazons bought by Hephaestus, from slavery only to discover that they were never slaves, more like adopted children of the mild-mannered smith.  Her embarrassment and shame at her actions is palpable, especially considering her increasingly knowledge regarding the occasional brutality and hypocrisy of her Amazon upbringing, which in part inspired her mission to emancipate the workers.  Hephaestus is also capable of calling her out on her tactics.  Having caught him asleep in his bedroom and bound him in her lasso, she quips, "You said my lasso isn't a weapon, but when one is entwined in it, they speak the truth.  And that—the truth—is my weapon."  But he, rightly is quick to point out her own hypocrisy:  "No...your weapon is intimidation.  You blame the rope.  That's the truth."

The collection's final showdown on Olympus, Apollo's ascendancy to the throne given the continued absence of Zeus, is quietly unsuspected.  From Wonder Woman #1, the god's ambitions of kingship seemed rash and presumptuous.  That he succeeds, to Hera's surprise more than my own, is cleverly straightforward.  No last minute intervention.  No disruption by Diana, who, to my continued pleasure, doesn't find it all that important and whose priority remains, as it always was, Zola and the child.  After it all, the cover to Wonder Woman #12 (pictured right) is still a mystery.


Once again, Cliff Chang's portions of the series--and his gorgeous cover art—outstrip the other artistic contributors, though Akins and (briefly) Kano do an admirable job bringing Hades to life, particularly given its highly abstract description offered by the story.  How, exactly, do you draw a world constructed out of souls?  Although it is, no doubt, scripted, they also execute a few good visual jokes.  Most obviously, Aphrodite.  That the god of love, beautiful and irresistible, cannot be illustrated in the more family-friendly DC universe, doesn't stop her from making an appearance.  Artists use panel edges to clip and overlay the offending body parts, but the result is both teasing in what it doesn't show and funny in how it does it.  It also deftly recognizes that the most beautiful goddess ever can't actually be shown.  No figure can be infinitely beautiful to everybody.  Not showing her, therefore, keeps her unfathomable beauty in tact.

Collects Wonder Woman #7-12

ISBN:  978-1401238094

Starman #1

"Oil (Paint) and Water"
Sins of the Father, Part Two
written by James Robinson
pencils by Tony Harris
inks by Wade Von Grawbadger

Still reeling from the Mist's full-on assault on the Knight family and the ongoing criminal chaos in Opal City, wounded younger son, Jack Knight, seeks out his father's hospital room.  Unlike his obedient brother David, who assumed without questioning or alteration his father's mantle of Starman, Jack is far more independent.  He's sees, for the most part, their actions for what they are and their devotion to an outdated idea of superheroics as somewhat foolish and not a little misguided.  Yet, Jack takes his father's undue criticism hard, and it's this family dynamic that makes Starman's universe so relatable.  Jack's struggle with his father's legacy—his current enemy, whose personal vendetta has enveloped the city, and his paternal disapproval at Jack's disinclination to be Starman—is the thematic center of #1.

However reluctant he may seem (to himself and his father), Jack continually seems to find himself being the hero...not playing it as David was accustomed.  His motivations, mostly family and devotion to the memory of his dead mother, still may be selfish or at least self-interested, but they are heroic.  And though his father may not see it, since his only idea of what a hero can be is the one that he once was, Jack may very well be the hero Opal City needs.  It takes an astute and charismatic former villain to realize it.  The Shade makes his debut in Robinson's Starman early, though with the Shade it can never be too early.  Unlike Theo Knight and the Mist's thugs, he sees Jack Knight for what he can be, and he sees something far better than his predecessors.  He's a hero, one who doubtless would decline the "superhero" moniker, but one who might deserve it for that very reason.

[November 1994]

New Avengers #1

"Memento Mori"
written by Jonathan Hickman
pencils by Steve Epting
inks by Rick Magyar with Steve Epting
colors by Frank D'Armata

The best that can be said for the first issue of Hickman's new New Avengers series is that Black Panther is a magnetic personality with a high ceiling as the leader of a new band of superheroes and that Black Swan is a complete badass.  For the most part "Memento Mori" is very standard superhero fare, passable but unimpressive.  The introduction of three young Wakandan novices just to have their maudlin deaths serve as emotional fodder—perhaps the titular "memento"—for Black Panther's rejuvenated willingness to team up with the Illuminati seems particularly contrived.  As does the ever-ballooning stakes of superhero worlds.  EVERY world in INFINITE UNIVERSES is at stake!  The continually elaborate hyperbole does little to enhance the emotional stakes or invest any real meaning into the enterprise.  Instead, it manufactures an empty obligation to care.

Epting's artwork follows in the same tone as Hickman's story.  It is, even at a quick glance, a typical superhero style.  It's lines are crisp, muscles and gear are prominent, and shadow is used liberally to heighten contrast.  Standing, or otherwise still, figures are statuesque, but characters in motion are sometimes awkward and stiff, such as Black Panther's assault on Black Swan.  The notable exception to this—and one of the best visual effects in the issue, though it's one common to Black Panther comics—is his swift, leaping attacks on multiple villains, which are quite kinetic.

[March 2013, digital]

Polarity #1

written by Max Bemis
art by Jorge Coelho

Polarity is a half-fictional, half-autobiographical dramatization of the protagonist's uneasy struggles with bi-polar disorder.  That Bemis speaks from his own experiences gives it a credibility and sincerity that's difficult to simulate.  His dialogue is simultaneously rich, densely clever, and entirely believable.  Timothy Woods'—Tim to everyone—relationships are well-defined:  his easy but loveless fling with pretentious girlfriend Alexis; his longing flirtation with Lily; his truthful, close, and occasionally hurtful friendship with devoted childhood "bestie" Adam; and his caring fondness for his therapist Dr. Mays.  If anything in Polarity rings false, it's Tim's place in the Brooklyn art scene.  Whether Creed albums or Ace of Base dancing, Polarity is tethered soundly in pop music, but its representation of visual art is casual and distant.  Bemis, former lyricist of Say Anything, is a musician, and whatever Bemis may insist on for his story, so is Tim.

It's also funny.  Tim's manic spiral and self-deprecating narration offer plenty of laughs, most of which endear him to the reader—and, by extension, Bemis, whose confessional candor is refreshing.  It's also a mildly scathing satire of hipster pretension told from the inside.  It's not hateful as much as sad, a desperate bid for recognition and relevance, but one that maintains hope of discovering something real.

Polarity's unexpected turn in its final few pages spring the series in a different direction, or perhaps onto a different interpretive plane.  For most of the issue, Tim's narration is distant from events, capable of recording his behavior and his feelings but from a more remote place, like—to whom, no doubt, the narrative voice is indebted—Bemis looking back on his younger self.  His paranoia and delusions are recognized as such.  Leaving home without his pants does not make him any more an invisible superhero than Apatow bromances confirm that he's reincarnated Jesus.  However, his belief—formerly dismissed as delusion—that he can read the thoughts of his neighbors and that one of them, who has a particular fondness for soggy Reubens, is watching him is, in fact, true.  It lends an unsuspected plausibility to Tim's delusions recasts Polarity, not as a distant description of living with bi-polar disorder, but rather as an allegory for it, a super-powered trip into the frightening and seductive promise of the incredible.

[April 2013]

Spaceman #2

"Chapter Two:  Missing Control" (2 of 9)
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Eduardo Risso

Orson may get badgered by the local kids for having the mental abilities of a child, but he certainly shows some swift thinking and a facility for deceit in his negotiations with Tara's kidnapper.  He feigns interest in his plan, lies about the strength of his "numb," and incapacitates him long enough to make an escape even if already being chased by another band of pirates drawn by the explosion.  If Spaceman #1 was about Orson's bravery—his willingness to rescue survivors of a boat fire at sea in hostile waters and his volunteering to brave the storm to save the Mars greenhouse—, then Spaceman #2 is about his keenness under pressure--his deception of the kidnapper and his quick-witted removal of his oxygen tank prior to the greenhouse explosion.

Although it still appears to be a fantasy world, i.e., Orson's imagining about the Mars mission he was engineered for, his exploits as a NASA astronaut are not as easily dismissed here as they were in #1.  Like the kidnapping plot, the trouble with the Mars greenhouse continues from the earlier issue.  Orson is not imagining independent adventures; he's imagining an entirely different plot, one that uses head trauma to connect with his current situation.  Either Orson is integrating or something more elaborate is going on here.

We also get, for the first time, a glimpse at Orson's past as a living genetic experiment caught in the throes of a culture war that simultaneously made him an outcast and a celebrity.  Their existence revealed at the edge of economic collapse and looming military threat from the Middle and Far East, Orson and his fellows get shuffled off into orphanages and forgotten with a tidy little news story.  It's precisely his tumultuous childhood that allows him to relate to the young kidnapped Tara, stolen as bounty for a pedophilic sheik after winning her celebrity adoption through a reality competition show.  It's not a relationship that demands investment yet, and the thematic strength of future issues will depend on whether or not Azzarello can credibly further their friendship.

[January 2012]

The Unwritten, Volume 2

Inside Man
written by Mike Carey
art by Peter Gross

Arrested and arraigned in Switzerland after the mysterious and murderous events at the Villa Diodati, perpetrated by The Unwritten's goon Pullman but pinned on Tom Taylor, Carey's protagonist is transferred at the request of the French to the Donostia, Maison d'Arrêt de Roncevaux, made famous by the massacre of Charlemagne's rear guard and its commemoration in the anonymous medieval poem La Chanson de Roland,  where he will stand trial.  Extradited with his future cellmate and (unknown to him at the time) undercover blog reporter, Richard Savoy, Taylor is forced to navigate prison life, at which to his surprise as much as the reader's he proves alarmingly adept; confront continued incursions of the literary world into his own at his command, sort of; and make his escape from bribed prison guards and agents of the Committee.  However, the "Inside Man" portions of Volume 2 are more about the transformation of prison governor Claude-Louis Chadron, whose love for his children and their faith in Tommy Taylor leads him to compromise his principles, cooperate with the Committee, and suffer the consequences of his interference.  Like Tom, who must face the ramifications of being written into and therefore transformed by his father's novels, Chadron becomes what literature tells him to be.  Bereft of his children and consumed by his blame of Taylor, Chadron becomes exactly the enemy that has already been written for him:  Count Ambrosio.  If literature can make and remake people, like Frankenstein's monster or Taylor himself, it can unmake others.

Following their escape, Tom Taylor, Lizzie Hexam and Richard Savoy find themselves IN Jud Süss, on a different kind of rescue mission, to reclaim the "unhappy novel," as Savoy calls it, from its unstable heritage.  A story whose multiplicity makes it a "canker," a monster created by conflict between its composition and its appropriation by Nazi propagandists.  Tommy, by virtue of his sporadically appearing and glowing hand-tattoo, restores the novel.  It is a prime example of the un-writing Paul Cornell points to in his short but unusually fine introduction when he comments, "The title of the series itself might refer not to something that hasn't been done, but to something that's being undone, a tapestry that's being unpicked."

However, the real gem in this collection is the final issue, "Eliza Mae Hertford's Willowbank Tales," which like closing issue of Volume 1—"How the Whale Became"—is tangential to the primary story.  A sort-of parody of children's animal literature (à la The Velveteen Rabbit or The Wind in the Willows) which is re-imagined as a singularly cruel punishment.  Pauly Bruckner, a man who crossed Wilson Taylor, is banished into a geographically finite children's story as a white rabbit in a waist coast named Mr. Bun.  Gruff and disgruntled at his capture, Bruckner repeatedly makes attempts at escape, always to find himself whisked back home for tea with the other forest animals.  If the premise is cruel, and the ending quite grim, its execution is very comical. 

Collects The Unwritten #6-12:  "Inside Man,"  "Inside Man: The Song of Roland," "Inside Man: Interlude," "Inside Man: Conclusion," "Jud Süss, Part I: The Liar," "Jud Süss: The Canker," and "Eliza Mae Hertford's Willowbank Tales"

ISBN:  978-1401228736

Dial H #12

"Conference Call"
written by China Miéville
pencils by Alberto Ponticelli
inks by Dan Green

First of all, welcome back Open-Window Man!  Fellow of Boy Chimney, member of Team House, defender against Rake Dragon!

In the words of Nelson Jent, "Seriously, what just happened?!"  Dial H has officially kicked its story into high gear.  Under siege from the Fixer and the Centipede—the Fixer's gopher, even though he imagines himself to be the Fixer's partner—Nelson and Roxie are forced to defend their H- and S-Dials in the helter-skelter of a manic attack and a bewildering rescue.  "Conference Call" is compact, swiftly paced, and initially disorienting, but it recovers its focus after "W. T. Flash?" and propels its characters straight into the Exchange.

Dial H #12's action sequences are a little difficult to follow.  The Centipede, by virtue of his superpower, is everywhere simultaneously, confusing the reader as much as the protagonists.  The Fixer keeps transforming into different hero-shapes:  among others, a zebra-centaur, a miner, a radar screen, an alien-faced cowboy riding a bullet, a surgeon, and a large, muscled, red dude, whom a bowling-hatted Yaaba (presumably, superhero Franz Kafka himself) distracts with—I kid you not—odradeks, Kafka's enigmatic creatures with as many interpretations as literary critics from his short story "Die Sorge des Hausvaters" ("The Cares of a Family Man").  The Fixer's distraught and plaintive response, "BUT - WHAT - DOES - IT - MEAN?", is therefore as justifiable as it is hilarious!  Characters keep jumping through or shoring up portals.  And we're casually introduced to a new Dial—the G-Dial for Gear (4-3-2-7, I assume)—and a host of new characters, mostly Dialers, with strange names and continually changing shapes.

Although Nelson's much-desired explanation isn't given here, I think we've just met the insurgency.  If the Fixer is the monitor and enforcer of the Exchange, this bunch seems to have followed in the footsteps of the mysterious "O," finding and rescuing Dialers and Dials from the Fixer.  They are Bansa, blue and four-armed; Unbled, keeping the Canadians from breaking through the door as Caryatid; odradek-hurling Yaaba; Ejad, who seems to man the controls; Dwan, whose autodial is glitchy; Nem, grey with a mohawk ponytail and in charge of the G-Dial; and a nameless dialer, currently wearing a bucket on his head and carrying a plastic shovel as Captain Sand.  Interestingly, they have the cooperation of Open-Window Man, an unusual but apparently legitimate hero in his own right, one eligible to be dialed up.

Amid all the madness and peril Nelson and Roxie seem to salvage their friendship after their night together, despite Nelson's continued deflections of Roxie's attempts to talk it through like adults.  However much befriending Roxie and being a hero has improved his outlook, including getting him back in the gym and apparently off of cigarettes, Nelson still has considerably low self-worth.  It perhaps doesn't help that Ponticelli continues to struggle drawing Nelson and Roxie.  Nelson's weight fluctuates by the panel, as does his frame and definition, so that sometimes he's little more than a shapeless blob, sometimes (and preferably) you can see the muscled former boxer underneath.  Similarly, Roxie's age is all over the place.  Dial H is not a beautiful book in any standard way, nor should it be, but a little more visual consistency for its main characters would be nice.

Superheroes:  Open-Window Man (as himself), Rustwork (and the rest of the Junkyard Posse), Franz Kafka, Caryatid, Magman, Captain Sand

Sidekicks:  Clinch

[July 2013]

Guide to the Editions: Watchmen

Watchmen
written by Alan Moore
art by Dave Gibbons

Published originally as a limited series in single-issue format, Watchmen #1-12 from September 1986 to October of 1987, by DC, Watchmen has continued to garner critical praise after its completion and is regarded by many as the premiere limited comic run in the history of the medium.  As such, it has received considerable attention in its publication after-life.

US cover for 1987 DC edition

Trade Paperbacks:
Immediately following its initial run in November 1987, Watchmen was published in a collected paperback edition almost simultaneously by sister company Warner Books (ISBN 978-0446386890) as well as DC (pictured, ISBN 978-0930289232).  It went through a large number of re-printings with some variation in cover designs according to printing number and country of release.  In 1995, a revised TPB edition was released with the same content and ISBN, which consequently did not disrupt the re-print numbering.  Likewise, neither did the improved coloring which it adopted for printings following DC's release of the Absolute edition.  Paperbacks with the re-mastered color should include a copyright credit noting Higgins' 2005 additional coloring and digital finishing.

In anticipation of the 2009 film release of Zack Snyder's Watchmen, in addition to an unprecedented number of paperback copies printed in the US, DC released an International Edition paperback (ISBN 978-1401222666).  As mentioned in their product description, it was designed for international release but was made available in the US, though it is now out of print.  It included the same content as the domestic paperback with the refinished coloring of the Absolute edition and a different cover design.

Hardcover Editions: 

2008 hardcover

In 1988, Watchmen was published in a collector's edition by Graphitti Designs, without an ISBN and in an unknown print run.  In particular, the number of "artist's proofs" or other copies with signed book plates—common for Graphitti publications at the time—is uncertain, though very occasionally these appear for sale through second-hand sellers.  The Graphitti edition was bound in black faux-leather with a matching slipcover.  It reproduced, by all accounts, the DC paperback edition precisely, including page size, paper stock and fly pages, but it added forewards by the creators and nearly fifty pages of supplementary material, including Moore's original and revised concept proposals, early art and character design by Gibbons, and promotional material.

Released in 2008, along with the International Edition paperback and the reprinted Absolute edition, DC released a hardcover edition (pictured, ISBN 978-1401219260) in the standard trim size.  Like all editions following the Absolute re-mastering, it includes restored and refinished colors.  It also includes limited supplementary content, including a few sketches.


Absolute Edition:
In 2005, in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the original run, DC released an Absolute edition of Watchmen (ISBN 978-1401207137).  Like the rest of the Absolute series, it featured a sewn, leather cover in a hard slipcase as well as an enlarged page format (8"x12").  It also included re-mastered coloring and digital finishing by Wildstorm FX and original series colorist John Higgins under the supervision of artist Dave Gibbons.  Its additional features included the supplementary material originally collected in the Graphitti edition, further character information in part assimilated from later Watchmen sources, and additional essays by Moore and Gibbons.  It was re-printed in 2008, along with several other editions mentioned here, in anticipation of the Watchmen film release, and again in 2011, though it is now once again out of print.

The Motion Comic:
Also developed in 2008, this animated edition—first available on iTunes and subsequently on DVD—adds motion and sound to the panels already defined in the comic publications.  As such, it's more a remediation of the original comic than an adaptation.  However, it's not for everyone.  All voice work, including female characters, is performed by the same actor, Tom Stechschulte.  The animation, which is overseen by illustrator Dave Gibbons, stagnates the pace of the story and prevents the reader from accelerating.

Deluxe Edition:
No doubt to both capitalize on and promote their July releases of the Before Watchmen Deluxe Editions, DC is also releasing a Deluxe edition of Watchmen (ISBN 978-1401238964, scheduled for release in June).  It will feature a hardcover binding, a slightly enlarged page format, the re-mastered coloring from the Absolute edition, and a few extras, including a new introduction by artist Dave Gibbons.  The remainder of the additional content remains unreleased.