Revival #9

written by Tim Seeley
art by Mike Norton

Nine issues into Revival's run and it's more evident than ever that Seeley has recreated a believably diverse Wisconsin town with very little fanfare.  The ethnic tensions and prejudices prompted the suspicion of the Hmong family in the slaughter of the zorse in Revival #1, and though their prominence in the series has waned in recent issues, it remains integral to the characterization of the town.  Rothschild is as likely to have an anti-semitic, anti-government nutjob—Edmund Holt—as it is to have a half-closeted, half-out gay policeman—Officer Gunderson.  It's often played for social critique, but just as often played for humor, such as Sheriff Cypress's misinterpretation of Ramin's search for a fallen sugar cube as Muslim prayer in the police conference room.

Unfortunately, this credible diversity is also symptomatic of one of Revival's structural weaknesses.  It's got too many plots and too many characters simultaneously in play.  Juggling these multiple threads has watered down its excellent story plotting.  It's a strategy that would hold up spectacularly in a television drama, which Revival often feels like anyway.  Revival has many narrative fronts, all suitable to the situation and part of the series' plausibility:  the combination of the increasingly bizarre behavior of the "revivers," each of whom seems to be unraveling in his or her own unique way, both physically and psychologically; the growth of criminal enterprises capitalizing on the event; cabin fever accumulating from the weeks of CDC quarantine; and rising tensions along the barricade with increasingly fanatical and belligerent religious zealots.  However, it's not a story particularly suited to the medium.  Much like The Walking Dead and other long-form serial comics, Revival may be better suited for trade publications, in which the complex narrative arcs spanning months in the comics are gathered in more logical and closely proximate units.  The lack of major resolutions to many of the arcs even within a generous publication period may make even these somewhat less satisfying than one would like.  Seeley and Norton are telling a very good story, but it's coming too slowly and in pieces that are too small.  I suspect that the ultimate payoff of this series will be well worth the wait, but I also expect to enjoy it much more re-reading up to its major moments than reading it monthly.

Note:  It's also about time to bring attention to the excellent cover art of Jenny Frison, whose rich and elegant coloring and fine lines consistently make the most of their macabre content.

[April 2013]

Dial H #3

"Come here!  I need you!"
written by China Miéville
art by Mateus Santolouco

After two episodes of Nelson's bumbling around with the Dial, making innovative use of whatever crazy hero he dials up after being unwittingly thrust into a criminal world of conspirators and non-humans he's not prepared to deal with, he finally meets fellow dialer Manteau.  Unfortunately, during a gunfight with X.N.'s goons, Nelson's Dial gets shot up.  Short on time and down a Dial, Nelson and Manteau make their escape to Manteau's house.  Now forced to trust one another the two begin to discuss the Dials, Nelson's de facto orientation to Dial history, and Manteau proves particularly knowledgeable.

Miéville's investment in the mythology of the Dials is brief but intriguing.  Manteau—a blend of historian, antiquarian and engineer—compiled a relatively detailed history of telephony, as she calls it, and relates it directly to strange and privately recorded conversations by the telephone's most famous and influential innovators, including Bell, Edison, Drawbaugh, Meucci, Reiss, and Gray, with a mysterious figure they each call "O".  Her conclusion:  "the entire history of telephony is a byproduct.  Of someone else's research.  Research into something else altogether" (Dial H #3, p. 9).

Meanwhile, Ex Nihilo and the Squid move closer to bringing back what they've been researching, Squid's companion Abyss.  Sensing remnants of himself in those he previously visited, using them as conduits for his return, he finally bursts through.  However, his relationship to the Dials remains very enigmatic.  Although he intuits their importance, Squid is unfamiliar with the Dials.  However, in her research on Dial activity, Manteau detects correspondences between the appearance of Abyss and clusters of Dial action, and she remains convinced that their is a connection and that it is also related to the shadowy figure that appears briefly when she and Nelson dial a new hero.

Although the main story remains strong and the revelation of Abyss a pleasant surprise, the greatest strength of Dial H continues to be Miéville's thoughtful exploration of the unexpected consequences of using the Dial.  Even after only a little while with the Dial, Nelson is already losing himself, collecting memories belonging to other heroes—most notably, Boy Chimney and the rest of Team House in the battle against Rake Dragon—making it increasingly difficult for him to differentiate between his own and others experiences.  In his continued insistence on thwarting comic expectations, including gender, Miéville also has Nelson dial up a woman.  His alarm and Manteau's sharp criticism of his overreaction were some of the issue's most thoughtful and funny moments.

Superheroes:  [Unnamed Fire Hydrant Hero], [Unnamed Twig Hero], Boy Chimney, Open-Window Man, Eavesdropper, Spiralstair, Door-Pilot, [Unnamed Muscled Hero], [Unnamed Condiment Hero], Baroness Resin, Giant Metal Spring, Super-Disco Dancer, Boomerang

[September 2012]

East of West #2

Two:  Above All, Few Are Chosen
written by Jonathan Hickman
art by Nick Dragotta
colors by Frank Martin

In the wake of Death's assassination of the President, a new one must be sworn in at the White Tower, capital center of the Union and Hickman's futuristic, alternate-world White House.  Unfortunately for the politicians in the order of succession, the newly resurrected horsemen of the apocalypse—Famine, War, and Conquest—have come to personally select the most suitable replacement for the former President.  Looking for a believer in The Message, someone with more faith than politics, they decide on Secretary of the Interior, Antonia LeVay, a statuesque if  severe and skeletal woman with long, streaked hair.  Her first task is to meet with her predecessor's fellow apocalyptic conspirators, presumably those on Death's hit list provided by the Hunter, at Armistice, the wasteland at the heart of the continent and neutral territory for the surrounding nations' representatives.  Her meeting also provides the reader with a swift introduction to East of West's primary players in the apocalypse and political leaders of the Seven Nations of America:  (1) Ezra Orion, Premiere of Armistice and Keeper of The Message; (2) Hu, House of Mao, Security Minister of the People's Republic, the large territory west of the Rockies and presumably descendant of the final prophet of The Message, Mao Zedong; (3) Cheveyo of the Endless Nation, the plains nation of Native American tribes originally coalesced under Red Cloud; (4) Andrew Archibald Chamberlain, Chief of Staff at the Black Towers of the Confederacy, most of the American South east of Mississippi, identically coiffed if not related to prophet Elijah Longstreet; (5) John Freeman, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of New Orleans; and (6) Bel Solomon, Governor of the Republic of Texas.

Unlike the opening chapter, whose storytelling sequence is exquisite if chronologically and geographically dizzying, the structure of East of West #2 is surprisingly linear.  Hickman seems to have settled himself into a sustainable mode, one dense with characters but one that clarifies the main narrative thread.  East of West is fundamentally a vendetta western with apocalyptic stakes.  Despite its considerable ambition, the series already shows focus and nuance, qualities that promise to keep it from spiraling into an unsustainable narrative mess.

Though his siblings show little complexity—not unexpected for "characters" defined as personifications—Death is gratifyingly sophisticated.  Crow may simplify him—"You cannot ask fire not to burn, brother...and Death is an Inferno" (East of West #2, p. 12)—but he shows wit, intelligence, foresight, and occasionally restraint.  And, we discover in the final pages, the ability to love and to seek vengeance on account of it.  His conversation with Chamberlain, second on his hit list, further hints at Death's mysterious past.  If Death's appearance on earth before his siblings were already puzzling, his attachment to the world, which Chamberlain alludes to—"Just as you did" (East of West #2, p. 22)—certainly is.  Their tenuous alliance, if Death chooses to accept it, would itself test Death's patience and facility to deal.

Once again, Dragotta and Martin provide exceptional artwork.  Where East of West #1 executed eerie and beautiful spacescapes and carnage, #2 delivers sleek and elegant futuristic cityscapes.  Full-page illustrations of the White Tower and the Black Towers, as well as the half-page depiction of the desolate monument in the Armistice, built in the comet's crater, are other-worldly and yet provide a credibility to Hickman's re-imagined America.  Ironically, given the Golden Bridge's location in the so-called Burning Plain, it's the most naturally beautiful landscape offered in East of West.  Bison still graze in the lush grassland, and the night sky is a vivid shade of azure blue.  Compared to the dense, urban cities surrounding the Towers, it seems a no man's land, one suitable to Death and his companions and their western-styled vendetta.

[April 2013]

Spaceman #1

"Chapter One:  This I Land" (1 of 9)
written by Brian Azzarello
art by Eduardo Risso

"My life didn't come true" (Spaceman #1: 9).

Azzarello's vision of the future in Spaceman is singularly bleak.  The world is over-populated, over-polluted, and distracted by reality entertainment, sex, and drugs.  His protagonist Orson is a by-product, an apish man—with a heavy brow, a protruding mouth, large shoulders, long arms, and generous body hair—with low intelligence, engineered for travel to Mars, though his assignment never happens.  Instead, he's a fisherman whose confidante is an electronically facilitated distance-prostitute and whose friends are primarily drug-dealing kids, still dreaming of his would-be Mars mission, or with a little chemical stimulus imagining himself very literally on another world.  Though he's polite, gentle, and despite his intellectual shortcomings, fully understands his own position, there's little to redeem Orson's life.

By the end of Spaceman #1, though, Orson may have his opportunity to do and be something extraordinary.  Fishing well outside waters considered safe, Orson stumbles across a boat explosion.  In his efforts to help, he discovers the abducted adopted kid of mega-celebrities—chosen to be adopted, it should be noted, on a reality competition show—and, presumably, at least one of her kidnappers.

Azzarello's certainly got some interesting ideas in play with Spaceman, and though it's at times distracting, it probably helps that his futuristic slang slows the reader down.  The premise of a hero genetically designed for a specific purpose he is unable to realize is potentially fertile, and his depression and disappointment are inevitable, but the world Azzarello's built for Orson is so numbing throughout the issue that it's difficult to imagine relief for it.  It will take at least another issue or two to know whether his gamble with the tone pays off.

[December 2011]

Northlanders, Book Two

The Cross + the Hammer
written by Brian Wood
art by Ryan Kelly

Set against the tumultuous beginning of the 11th century in Ireland, in the immediate approach to the Battle of Clontarf in April of 1014, The Cross + the Hammer recasts these tensions as the pursuit for a single Irishman Magnus Mag Rodain, a skilled killer and former Cistercian monk, and his young daughter Brigid by Viking mercenary and forensic specialist in the service of Sigtrygg Silkbeard, Ragnar Ragnarsson.  The "cross" and "hammer" respectively, these two men—metonymic substitutes for their races, cultures and religions—engage in a bloody game of cat-and-mouse, which leaves a trail of bodies, both indigenous Irish and occupying Vikings.  Despite Wood's meticulous research and inclusion of detail, the central story itself--mostly on account of the extreme anachronism of Ragnarsson's criminal profiling and forensic expertise--rings as more modern than historical.

Unlike Wood's first major Northlanders arc, Sven the Returned, which provides the reader with the necessary historical information relevant to his story, The Cross + the Hammer demands a fuller independent knowledge of events to follow and appreciate the parallels between the wider political conflicts and the singular chase of the fictional Magnus. In fact, Wood provides no narration for the Battle of Clontarf despite its tactical complexity, including the feigned flight and relocation of a number of the Viking forces via the River Liffey to the north of Dublin, so that it must be understood only through its visual depiction.  That the combined armies of Máel Mórda and Sigtrygg lost to the forces of Boru in a battle with extensive casualties on both sides, for all intents and purposes breaking Viking rule in Ireland and returning the island to its previous political status quo of small competing kingdoms and creating a number of significant power vacuums throughout, is indicated by little more than the laconic "The end of the occupation" (The Cross + the Hammer: 125 [16:3]).

Despite the ostensible victory of the Irish over the Scandinavian invaders and their Viking mercenaries, The Cross + the Hammer is a tragedy of Magnus, who even after the liberation of the island is forced to face is own deeds and losses immediately before his execution by his Viking pursuers.  Wood's twist is solid if not entirely original, and it does reshape earlier episodes, inviting the reader to revisit them with a new eye.  Though never without an ambiguous sense of morality, Magnus is, for most of the arc, the hero, a one-man insurgency against tyrannical occupying forces.  He targets only agents of Sigtrygg, once killing a Viking pedophile whom even his own people acknowledge "will not be missed" (46 [12: 17]).  However, his increasingly dark, arbitrary, and berserking behavior makes him a difficult hero to endorse, and one who by the end proves impossibly so.  Viking forces may have been overwhelmed, but the legacy of their settlement is inextricably rooted in the new Irish landscape, even in Magnus's own family.

Kelly's artwork—more characterized by heavy shadows and strong lines, thick bodies, and a boxier design—gives The Cross + the Hammer a look distinct from earlier Northlanders issues.  It's less elegant that Gianfelice's graceful portraits and stark landscapes, but it's well-suited to the visceral texture of the story.  Similarly, Brigid, the story's only female character, is soft, unlined, and delicate, standing sharply in contrast to the story's brutish male figures.  And, in contrast to Sven's Orkney, Ireland is lush, full of vegetation and wildlife.  Colorist McCaig, also responsible for Sven the Returned, gives this book a ruddier, richer, and warmer palate, equally beautiful if widely divergent in tone. 

Collects Northlanders #11-16:  "A Rising Tide of Falling Blood," "Slayings + Prosecutions," "Over the Broad Green Sea," "Heart of Oak," "The Red Road," "Brigid's War"

ISBN:  978-1401222963

The Black Beetle #3

"No Way Out" (3 of 4)
by Francesco Francavilla

If Black Beetle's real identity seemed cloaked in earlier issues, it's even more so here.  Continuing his investigation as a gentleman patron of Fierro's night spot, the Coco Club, the Beetle quickly orders a bourbon and strikes up a flirtation with the club's singer, a stunning woman named Ava—an allusion to Ava Gardner as Julie in MGM's 1951 Show Boat remake, a black woman passing as white to keep from being charged with miscegenation for her marriage to her white husband, and whose most famous song "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" she was just singing.  It's a scene that could have resonated far more than it did, a heated and interracial flirtation ostensibly in 1941, and Francavilla makes them charming but little else.  And, largely because of his "job," as the Beetle calls it, he offers up nothing sincerely, only a false name—Ray Steves—and swift lie.  Even, we later discover, his "face" is another mask.  It seems the Beetle is nothing but masks.

Their romantic meeting is cut short when the Beetle eyes from across the room a man who looks just like Fierro, presumed dead in Spencer's Irish bar fire.  Though he chases the gangster into an alley, his pursuit is cut short by a band of thugs.  The remainder of the issue tracks the Beetle's detective work to confirm his suspicion that Fierro, colorfully nicknamed Faccia d'Angelo, is still alive.  And, for the most part, this portion of the story is serviceable but unimpressive as a mystery.  It follows the right breadcrumbs but is disappointingly sequential, and it thereby loses some of its vision of the whole, i.e., it can't see the forest for the path.  Its conclusion, however, promises to recover this vision, reassembling the pieces of the mystery—only some of which are recalled in this issue—into a coherent story:  the Hollow Lizard; the identity of Labyrinto, particularly if we are less inclined to take the Black Beetle's assumptions for truth; the conspiracy surrounding the Spencer's fire; the mysterious Angitia disciple, whom we see briefly in the intermezzo, and his connection to Antonia Howard; and even, perhaps, what all this has to do with Nazi werewolves.

As ever, Francavilla's artwork and design is immaculate.  His color schemes are beautiful and variable, and his visual pacing perfectly matches his storytelling.  Each issue has had a slightly different panel design scheme, and here it exploits the box, both within and across the page boundary, to great effect.  However Francavilla may conclude his pulp mystery, he's certainly established a tone and aesthetic with storytelling legs, and a hero whose own mystery is even more intriguing than his quarry's.

Hawkeye #3

"Cherry"
written by Matt Fraction
art by David Aja
colors by Matt Hollingsworth

"Cherry" is Hawkeye's homage to classic chase movies—Vantage Point and The Italian Job, in particular—and earlier Hawkeye incarnations.  That it doesn't miss a beat between issues is a testament to the flexibility of tone in the series and the unwavering cool of Fraction's Barton.

Like each of Hawkeye's issues so far, the chronology is fractured.  The reader enters in media res, in the middle of a Bullitt-style car chase with a maybe-hostage, four Cooper Minis, and a Barton wielding a bow and hanging out the window of a 1970 Dodge Challenger.  Structured as a "dumb idea" countdown—nine total—Barton recounts the somewhat unlikely events of the day.  The issue's nostalgia is initiated by Barton's own dumb decision to organize and label his stash of trick arrows, gimmicks both clever and unwieldy from earlier Hawkeye stories, and Kate, Clint's younger protégé, is less than impressed by the collection.  The collection:  (1) net arrow, (2) bola arrow, (3) acid arrow, (4) tracer arrow, (5) putty arrow, (6) sonic arrow, (7) explosive-tip arrow, (8) cable arrow, (9) smoke bomb arrow, (10) rocket arrow, (11) suction-tip arrow, (12) electro-arrow, and (13) boomerang arrow, because Fraction really believes in Chekhov's guns.

To Clint Barton's credit and frequent confusion, he surrounds himself with women who are much cooler than he is.  Kate Bishop is, as Barton himself expressed it, "perfect".  She shares his talent and his wit, and is far less prone to common stupidity and bad luck.  She is, though not the original, in many ways as much Hawkeye as Barton, and by the end of "Cherry" the hero of the issue, and Barton doesn't let her or himself forget it, a superhero equal and a good friend.  She doesn't hide her attraction to Clint, but it doesn't—at least for now—interfere with their friendship or partnership.  Though she's much more likely to articulate their partnership—such as shared coffee stashes—Clint seems continually flattered and happy that she would do so.  Hawkeye #3's new girl is the titular Cherry, a mysterious redhead with a classic Detroit muscle car and an equally classic leather jacket, part fatale part action badass.  Best of all, at the conclusion of the episode, she remains as mysterious as ever, and the reasons behind her pursuit by the "tracksuit Draculas" remains unexplained.

[December 2012]

As collected in Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon (ISBN 978-0785165620)