Dr. Flem's Laboratory

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Manhunter #1-20

One of the things that I've always liked about the DC titles (and their now-assimilated 40's counterparts) is their general reliance on fictional cities. Marvel's reliance on the New York area had the effect of slightly alienating non-New Yorkers as well as overly raising a young kid's expectations for what New York would be like once I finally got there. Obviously, this isn't a problem with Metropolis, as Metropolis will always be just as I imagine it (and I don't feel resentment for Metropolis residents).

Additionally, the fictional city has the distinct advantage of giving a writer a whole lot of room to define their setting as much as they need. Obviously, Opal City is the benchmark here, but Vanity, Gotham, Metropolis, Hub, etc. all have their own characteristics that wouldn't be there if they were set in a real-life city. Of course, you end up running a bit of a risk of letting the city become largely flavorless and faceless (like Gateway City, Star City, Calvin City, etc.) or just flat recreations of existing cities. But, you don't end up distracting readers with mis-characterizations of cities readers are fully familiar with.

Which brings us to Manhunter. I lived in Los Angeles for about three years before moving to Portland, so I'm full of gripes as to how the city is portrayed. First off, do any native Angelenos go to Mel's Drive-In in a non-ironic fashion? Can assistants at the DA's office afford (or even get reservations) at Murakami? Are there a lot of vacant Chemosphere-knockoff houses that hallunicating ex-superheroes can easily squat in?

Setting all these questions aside, I really enjoyed Manhunter quite a bit, especially for a series that has the misfortune to launch in the midst of DC's cross-over mania. It integrates the required distractions (e.g., sudden appearances of OMAC's) into the plot nicely, without really feeling like everything has come to a dead stop to accomodate company-wide policy. My only real complaint (LA-based griping aside) comes from the shift of the focus of the series away from a courtroom drama-based superhero story into more of a story about a superhero who happens to be a DA.

I'm clearly a sucker for any series or story that deals with ramifications of superherodom in daily life. Gotham Central was really very good (once I got over the degree to which they were lifting from Homicide), so I was kind of excited to read a book that was going to do something similar for a legal drama. Later issues feature Kate's job as more of an annoyance - her boss is angry at her for not paying attention to her work - instead of as a fairly central part of the character.

All of which isn't to say I didn't like the series. I actually have a pretty good feel for the central characters. The dialogue is well-written (unlike a lot of what I'm encountering with my recent foray into reading every OYL title). Andreyko clearly enjoys having the whole DC universe at their disposal (quite literally - I can't recall another non-event title I've read that was so willing to kill off long-running characters). Maybe it's the rush on C-list villains from titles like this and Villains United that's driving people to Mike Barr characters...

Finally, I'm enjoying the re-appearance of Todd Rice. His storyline in JSA was pretty great, and his background rehabilition was handled well-enough over there that I'm very willing to buy his pretty major character realignment here (at some point, I'll get around to unearthing my Infinity, Inc. back issues to refresh my memory of what the character was like before Johns started messing with him).

Oh, and the highlight of the series, by far, is Damon's attempt to pick up Hawkman. I wonder if he gets that a lot. Wearing nothing but leather straps on your chest isn't really a look you see outside of moderate pride parades and WeHo nightclubs (again - WeHo? I've certainly seen it in print, but I've known a lot of people who lived in and near West Hollywood, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that out loud.)

Friday, March 24, 2006

Aftermath Bludhaven #1

Probably not good form to write up a review based on only a chunk of the first issue, but I was wondering earlier which of the cities dismantled by Infinite Crisis was going to serve as the New Orleans analogue. Looks like both Star City and Bludhaven are getting the "walled-in, quarantined city," though Bludhaven is marginally closer, as it's being (mis-)managed by the federal government. More troubling is the decision to bring back the Force of July (now given the equally horrible title of Freedom's Ring).

I'm not sure what the fascination with the horrible Barr-created villains of the 80's is. Maybe it's just coinicidence that I encounter the Duke of Oil and the Force of July in the same week, but shouldn't both have been stricken from continuity by now? What's worse is the introduction of a new character using the name Firebrand, who introduces himself with the following bit of exposition:

"The bomb changed all of us emotionally, but it changed me in other ways. I've been given this flame for a reason. I have to illuminate the truth. I am a firebrand."

Needless to say, he is creating a little fire in his hand while he says this. Now, I know Firebrand's a fairly long-running DC character (and, previously, a Quality character), it's just more than a little heavy-handed to introduce the character like this.

Incidentally, we also seem to meet the new Human Bomb (introduced with "As a result of the blast, he's become some sort of human bomb." - I suppose I should be thankful they didn't bold "human bomb"), so I'm assuming this is all going to be some kind of tie-in to the Palmiotti/Grey Freedom Fighters miniseries, but the dialogue is really very ham-fisted. I actually felt a little embarassed to be reading this. By the time the Nuclear Legion showed up ("We're the Nuclear Legion, and you're about to become little piles of ash") for a completely pointless fight with the Force of July, I was just about done with this comic.

Nightwing #118

I'm not really a regular reader of Nightwing - in fact, this is the first issue I've read. Nothing against the character, of course. I've been enjoying the other post-Crisis "sidekick assuming mentor's role" sort of stories (like the Messner-Loebs and , and the "sidekick assuming completely different role" has some potential, but he just always seemed like such a dull character back in New Teen Titans, I can't really get excited about a series starring him.

However, I'm kind of curious about the whole One Year Later concept, and, with the massive company-wide crossovers they've been doing, seems like a good excuse to check out all the DC titles I don't read. So far, I've been pleased. Green Arrow and Superman have both been at least interesting, but Nightwing is really kind of awful. I don't really think I'm missing much as far as backstory goes, and (thanks to Kalinara) I was prepared for the high levels of victimization, self-pity, and mopiness that apparently go with the character (which seems sort of out of character for this cheery kid - but I suppose that was pre-Crisis).

Still, none of that really prepared me for dialogue like this:



The combination of gasping and stuttering is possibly more than I can take. That, plus an ill-advised move to a real world city, an incredibly dull stolen identity plot, and WB-style self-pitying dialogue, mean I probably don't need to start reading Nighwing anytime soon.

Wanted #6

As I stated below, I'm not especially good about actually reading comics when they come out - I tend to stockpile things, so I can read a big chunk in one shot. That said, I did actually read Wanted each month when it came out, but it's taken me a while to really come up with an even partially solid opinion on it.

At first, I had some high hopes for the series. After the first issue (once I got past the kind of shameless decision to cast Eminem in the lead role), I was sort of convinced it had the potential to analyze the appeal of the trend towards anti-heroism throughout the 80's (which eventually pulled me away from comics in general). I'm not sure what sort of analysis I was expecting, given that this is Millar, but after a few issues, it became pretty clear that Millar mostly just wanted to write a "feuding crime elements" story.

Which makes the ending a little surprising. For those who haven't read it, Wesley (our protagonist who is following in the footsteps of his supervillain father), after making a variety of fairly amoral choices, spends the last couples pages directly confronting the reader for being (and I'm paraphrasing here) a fat, fearful individual who is wasting his time living vicariously through the story of an amoral, self-centered bastard, after which he (in a full-page splash), lets the reader know that he's the face of the man who's fucking the reader in the ass (again, paraphrasing).

It's certainly not a conventional way to end a series, but it's certainly direct. Like (I assume) most people, I sort of resent a story (comic or otherwise) resorting to a direct assault on the reader (and, of course, Millar's obsession with anal rape is troubling - between this, the ending of Chosen, and what I'm assuming is the many instances of anal rape I'd have found if I'd read more than three pages of The Unfunnies, I'm a little concerned by Millar's single-minded obsessiveness on the subject). After letting it simmer for a bit, though, I started thinking about the last time a comic ended with its foul-mouthed, blonde-haired protagonist directly addressing the readers.



Wesley really does seem like the complete opposite of Dane. Dane encourages the reader to engage in liberation through creation (which is a bit of an oversimplification, but works for this argument), whereas Wesley goes for liberation through materialism. Wesley's approach is a zero-sum-game; for him to win, everyone else has to lose (i.e., get fucked in the ass). All of which makes the series to date kind of a cohesive argument. The first few issues are kind of fun - Wesley gets to kill all the people who make his petty life unbearable, start sleeping with a Catwoman analogue, and generally act however he pleases - but by the end, we sort of forced to realize that such a path A) isn't achievable for everyone and B) is really kind of apalling (Jones really does a very nice job in making Wesley really unpleasant looking in that last panel).

Dane's path is clearly much more difficult. He spends most of the first volume on the run. His family betrays him. He experiences guilt the one time he does kill someone. Clearly, it would be much easier to jump on the path of amorality, but that's not going to get Dane where he needs to go. This isn't really a terribly new idea, of course, but I think Wanted actually illustrates the end result of the quicker, easier path pretty nicely.

I suspect I'm really giving Millar a lot more credit than he deserves.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Captain Atom Armageddon #1

First off, let me say that it's going to be incredibly hard for me to dislike a comic that features one of the old Charleston characters flying to stop a giant meteorite in a flying robot that looks like Composite Superman.


The best part is that no explanation is given in the course of the comic to explain why, exactly, they sent Captain Atom into space in a Composite Superman spaceship (or, for that matter, who "they" is).

The second half of the comic was also pretty enjoyable. Capt. Atom ends up in what I assume is the WildStorm continuity, fighting someone who looks vaguely familiar (in that I've probably seen him on a cover of a WildStorm title and ignored it). My own lack of knowledge about the WildStorm world (outside of the Authority and Planetary) certainly seems to be helping, as I'm as confused about everything as the protagonist.

ETA: I didn't even notice the welded-on spit curl on the Superman side of the head. Brilliant.

Green Arrow v3 1-60

Like everyone else with a comic blog, I grew up reading the satellite-era JLA, which is where I derived pretty much everything I know about Green Arrow. I'm pretty sure my dad had at least a couple of the Adams/O'Neil Lantern/Arrow comics lying around, but, as a kid, I tended to stay away from anything too gritty. Even by the time Longbow Hunters came around, even though I was 12, I didn't really feel a need to read an extra-grim Green Arrow story (which, having now read Longbow Hunters, was probably a good idea) So, pretty much my only exposure to Green Arrow as a kid was as the liberal argumentative hothead from JLA who was dating Black Canary (though, even as a six year old, I certainly got a vaguely creepy, lecherous vibe from Ollie). Not a very endearing role (at least when you're six), but not terribly offensive. Still, now that I am a liberal argumentative hothead, I have greater respect for the guy.

When I started reading DC stuff again, I wasn't overly depressed that he had been killed off. Major DC shakeups filtered my way from the handful of friends I had who still followed comics - I knew they'd killed off, then revived Superman, but that was really about it. The shock of learning that Ollie had been killed and replaced by his son didn't seem nearly as jarring as learning that Hal Jordan had turned evil, then transformed into the Spectre.

Then I read that issue of JLA in which Connor has to defend the Watchtower using his father's selection of trick arrows. That "Dad, you'll be the death of me" line, coupled with the rather dull concept of a new Green Arrow who does nothing but shoot boring old wooden arrows, really made me appreciate what had been lost - not just with killing off Ollie, but the whole Grellification of the character into a more realistic mode. A guy who just shoots arrows is both boring and credulity-straining if he manages to go more than a couple issues without killing people. A guy who can bust out handcuff arrows, screaming arrows, boxing glove arrows, etc. is a much more fun character to read about, as it effectively lets the writers come up with whatever crazy device they need to move the story along at any given moment.

(I should probably point out here that, due to my stretch of non-comic reading, I read almost nothing the way it was supposed to be read. I read the Morrison JLA stuff in 2002, about 2 years after Ollie came back from the dead.)

Last week, I decided it was time to read the Kevin Smith run, in which Ollie comes back from the dead. I got a little enthusiastic, and just kept going through the Meltzer run, into Winick and all the way up to the One Year Later issue that came out last week or so. The Smith run was really much better than I expected. Seeing the reunion between Dinah and Ollie was very sweet, and just about anything that is filled with longing for the way things were when I was reading comics as a kid is going to make me happy. The Meltzer arc was all right, though I still bear him a little ill-will about the whole anal rape thing.

Everything since has been all right. I really appreciate the degree to which they're building up a whole Green Arrow family. I understand they can't really use Dinah full-time (though, this is all based on hearsay, since I haven't quite gotten around to reading Birds of Prey yet), but it would be nice to give Ollie a female partner again. Still, the introduction of Black Lightning as a semi-recurring character is nice, though might make more sense from a narrative perspective to give him someone to argue against instead of someone who pretty much agrees with him down the line. Or, really just push the whole left-wing activist thing to a whole other level and bring in Brother Power to hang out with Ollie.

Really, my only gripe on the series is the decision to pit Green Arrow against giant hulking monsters as often as possible. We've had two fights with Solomon Grundy, a whole bunch of demons, and the African laborers who were turned into monsters. It gets a little repetitive (particularly if you read 20-30 issues a day), and sort of keeps the focus away from the more realistic villains you expect (slumlords, drug dealers, evil corporations). Yeah, I know at least some of those monsters are created by evil corporations, and it's really all allegorical, and, ever since Buffy, using monsters/demons to represent _____ is perfectly OK, but it gets old. Green Arrow doesn't really need a level of fantasy to make his stories enjoyable.

I realize now that this goes against what I was saying earlier about appreciating the overall wackiness of the trick arrow concept, which sort of goes against my push towards more realistic storylines for the character. Let me back up a bit. Green Arrow is basically a Batman knockoff - rich guy, wacky gadgets - but completely lacking the tragic, operatic elements of Batman's origin. Ollie decides to fight crime either A) for fun (in the Golden Age incarnation) or B) to right social injustice (in the Bronze Age incarnation). It's an interesting twist, since most superheroes are de facto upholders of the status quo (which they sort of have to be, or we end up in the Gaiman half of Miracleman). Having a hero who is sort of inherently opposed to the status quo really should be leading to more interesting stories that Green Arrow's been getting on this run. I would be perfectly happy if his storylines were less like Buffy, and more like Bendis' run on Daredevil (though it would be nice if a story arc could be completed in less than a year).

So, I'm pretty pleased with the One Year Later jump. Ollie as mayor kind of works for me, though I'm kind of curious to see how it ends up playing out. What isn't working for me is the decision to treat the destroyed neighborhoods more like a lawless, walled off city (which we've seen before, fairly recently) and more like a New Orleans allegory for governmental failure to protect and help its citizenry. Maybe they're planning to use Bludhaven in that regard, but, really, is there a better argument for the necessity of a liberal, Green Arrow-endorsed style of government than the response to Katrina?

Introductions

Seems appropriate that, upon starting a new blog to discuss comics and comics-related matters, I should probably provide a little history of my own relationship to comics.

I started reading comics pretty much as soon as I could read. Mostly Archie and Richie Rich at first, though I had switched over to DC superhero comics pretty thoroughly by 4 or so. I certainly recall reading DC Comics Presents and Justice League of America on a pretty regular basis up until I was 8 or so, at which point the Marvel stuff started to creep in (prior to that, it had mostly been confined to Spidey Super Stories, due to my love of the Electric Company).

Adolesence, and acquiring a step-brother who was really into Marvel, shifted me over pretty hard to the Marvel camp around age 10 or 11. At that point, I was reading plenty of Spider-Man, X-Men, New Mutants, Punisher sorts of titles, which continued up until I turned 14 or so. By then, I had pretty much run out of free spending cash that could be spent on comics, and gave up.

College reintroduced me to a couple titles - I had one class where we read Watchmen, followed by a class the next semester in which we read the Sandman graphic novel, Seasons of Mist, as well as the first few issues of Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. I wasn't especially moved by Sandman, but really liked the Morrison stuff, so picked up what I could off rec.comics.marketplace (or whatever it was that was the online comic vending forum in the pre-eBay days).

Comic reading didn't really resume until I was about 25 or so when, after the Singer X-Men movie got me all nostalgiac for my childhood nerdiness, I learned that Morrison was writing the New X-Men. Started reading that, then decided to work backwards on the Morrison bibliography, which led to The Invisibles, which led to me getting totally hooked on comics again.

Now, I've pretty much slid into reading a pretty wide variety of comics - most of the DC stuff, certain Marvel titles (particularly if they're written by Brubaker, Ellis, or Kirkman), some indie titles (Optic Nerve, Eightball, anything by Andi Watson, Lore, etc.) Mostly, I just wanted a place where I could post my thoughts on what I'm reading at the time, so this is that place.