Infinity Inc. #1-16

As I mentioned a while back, I decided I should probably take a pass at re-reading Infinity Inc since many of the characters are getting worked back into continuity. As a kid, I was always very curious about the series, but could never afford it. If I recall correctly, it was the first of DC's titles to be published in the premium format (or at least the first one that wasn't doing the year-delayed reprints that Legion and Teen Titans did), so given the choice between buying three regular comics or one issue of Infinity Inc, quantity always won out. Towards the end of one summer, however, I found a comic shop that was dumping its back issues for bargain prices, so picked up what was just about a complete run on the title.

I was certainly a sucker for anything Earth-Two as a kid. Some of my earliest superhero comic memories are of the "Countdown to Crisis" JLA/JSA crossover, and I started reading All Star Squadron as soon as it was available. So, you can imagine my excitement when I got my hands on the run of Infinity Inc.

However, I remember the acquisition much better than I remember actually reading the comics. Which, rereading them as an adult, makes perfect sense. The issues themselves are eminently forgettable. Particularly brutal is the initial 10 part story arc that kicks off the series. And it's a stupid story arc. The JSA members drink from the waters of the Stream of Ruthlessness and turn evil. There's some really pointless time travelling thrown in there as well, but, really, it's an unbelievably pointless story arc. I supposes it introduces the characters, but most of the characterization is pretty flat - Todd's got a chip on his shoulder, Hector is a preppy asshole, Jenny likes to talk to herself in thought bubbles at great length. It's rough going. Last time I tried reading it, it was enough to get me to stop reading comics for a week. Fortunately, once the brutal opening arc gets out of the way, things start to pick up. Surprisingly, what really gives the series a kick is Todd McFarlane.

Now, don't get me wrong. I hate Todd McFarlane. I hate his art. I hate his litigiousness. I hate his overwhelming ego. But, his art here? It's not bad. There's certainly some Chaykin/American Flagg influence, but also a pretty odd idea of how to construct panels. Part of this may be due to some very sparse scripting, but it's kind of interesting. Especially for 1985.


I'm not saying it's groundbreaking, but it certainly gives the series more energy than it had before. Which is probably good, given the general turgidness of the plots and characters. Of course, no amount of interesting panel layout is going to compensate for the McFarlane costume design (Chroma, Mr. Bones, pretty much everyone in Helix).

Really, the stumbling block on the series is Thomas' writing. I'm really torn on the guy. He certainly gets a whole lot of points in my book for keeping up interest in the Golden Age roster throughout the 80's. Without him, I'm not sure we'd have the interest in the characters to support the current JSA series. Or at least not the editorial willingness to publish it. On the other hand, his writing is unforgivably dated. Really, none of the characters feel remotely real, except for Nuklon (though, I'm not sure why Thomas wanted to cast Al in the role of fish out of water - wouldn't the guy from the hidden island of birdmen be a better candidate for that than the nice Jewish boy from Florida?). The characters spend an inordinate amount of time arguing, which tends to slow what little plot there is to a crawl. I may continue for a few more issues, just to see where it goes (It ran for over 50 issues? Really?), but I've got better things to read.

ETA: OK, so a few issues after the bit I included above, McFarlane apparently decided to start doing Miller. Or maybe Giffen doing Miller. Honestly, I think I prefer his attempts to be someone else than his "personal" style.

100 Bullets #1-67

The stack of new comics continues to overwhelm me, so I turned my attention in the last week to the 9 volumes of 100 Bullets the Multnomah County library provided me with. I had tried reading the series a year ago, but only made it a couple story arcs in before I got bored with the seemingly unrelated structure of the stories.

This time, though, I pushed on enough to realize that this story - which seems, on first reading, like an anthology series based around a common narrative element - turns out to be more complex than it seems by several orders of magnitude. Characters that appear as background figures in one story show up years later as central characters in another. And stories that feel like they should be throwaway stories end up being critical to the overarching plot - a plot which didn't really show up at all for the first 9 issues. From a narrative structure standpoint, this is possibly the most impressive comic I've read.

Often, when shooting for a fixed run, writers seem to run a little dry (see my complaints about Ex Machina below - or, for a more dramatic example, reflect on the endless cycle of "Jesse leaves Tulip behind, Tulip gets angry, Herr Starr gets anally raped" that dragged Preacher out well beyond its natural story cycle). So far, Azzarello's 2/3rds of the way done, and nearly nothing in here seems to be wasted. Sure, there are one-off stories that (so far, at least) are just that, but they're still good. And, really, sometimes we need a little break from a main story as headache-inducing as the one he's telling.

All said, it's not quite perfect. Risso's art works well most of the time - the jagged minimalism is a great pairing when Azarello really cuts loose with noir-inflected narratives - but often it can be a little hard to distinguish between hulking, black-suited men. This may be deliberate (and is certainly exacerbated by Azarello's tendency to refer to characters by nicknames with no easy relation to the characters to which we've been introduced), but, given the complexity, seems a little cruel.

But, really, I'll forgive almost any series that gives me an awesome faux-Steranko cover like this:

Original Art

In general, I try to stay away from the original comic art market. It's way too expensive, and, knowing my somewhat poor money management skills and borderline-obsessive tendencies, I can see myself spending way too much on such things.

That said, when a friend told me a page from Doom Patrol #63 was up on eBay, it was hard to resist. So, roughly $100 later, I am now the proud owner of the art (inked and lettered and signed by Case) for this page from what may well be my favorite single issue of a comic:

Comic-Related Movies

Most comics bloggers seem to have posted some summary of their thoughts on the big comic movies of the summer, but I have yet to see X3 or Superman Returns. The former mostly on an extremely negative recommendation from a friend whose taste in movies I tend to trust; the latter due to a strong dislike of seeing movies while children are in the theater. Fortunately, there are plenty of 21+ theaters in Portland, so I'll see it as soon as it makes its way down there.

Still, just because I haven't seen those, doesn't mean I can't write about comic movies here. Last weekend, I went to see Art School Confidential, based loosely on the comic by Daniel Clowes. I tend to like Clowes' work, even if I haven't quite read all of it and find much of it fairly depressing (though, as far as depressing comics go, Chris Ware has set the bar so high it makes it hard to say that anyone else even counts). The movie was pretty awful. I've liked all the previous Zwigoff films to date,but this one was just awful and feels like something a first-year college student might have come up with. I mean, I'm pretty bitter about my college experience, but I've moved on. It's sort of sad Clowes hasn't been able to do that quite yet.

After that, watched A History of Violence, which was similarly disappointing. I read the graphic novel a few months back and, upon getting to the end, could finally see why Cronenberg might think this would be exactly the right sort of project for him. Except the film didn't contain the rather grisly elements that meshed so well with Cronenberg's long-running interest in the human body as a source of terror. I'm trying really hard here not to spoil things for people who haven't either read the graphic novel or seen the movie, but I never thought I'd see the day that the Cronenberg adaptation of a work is significantly less troubling and disturbing than the source material.

Last Saturday, went out to Beaverton to see Krrish. Pretty darn enjoyable, if maybe a little overlong. By far, the highlight of the film was the incredible dance number at a circus (right before the hero first dons his mask and adopts the Krrish identity). I learned, after seeing it, that it was a sequel to a wildly popular E.T. knockoff. Without that knowledge, the off-handed explanation of how our hero got his special abilities (i.e., his brain-damaged father befriended an abandoned alien who made him unnaturally smart) was pretty wonderfully strange. Overall, I enjoyed that quite a bit and would certainly recommend it if you get the opportunity (and are predisposed to want to see a Bollywood superhero movie).

Ex Machina #11-21

All right. I'm back from vacation and have a truly daunting stack of comics to read. Perhaps most daunting was the stack of Ex Machina's, for which I sort of lost enthusiasm about a year ago (right at the end of the "Tag" storyline). Don't get me wrong, I was enjoying the series quite a bit - I just couldn't really get into it on a monthly basis. So, I let it build up for a while, and, after a while, the size of the built-up stack got overwhelming and I continued to ignore it, leaving me with no other option but to read a year's worth at one shot.

It's certainly a more enjoyable series to read this way. The double plotlines that each arc contains (generally a political storyline and a superhero-y storyline) are easier to follow in immediate succession. Vaughan seems willing to make some big jumps in narrative (i.e., the off-issue funeral of Journal and introduction of her sister) which, when reading serially, make the reader (or at least a simple-minded reader like me) pause and try to remember if he missed an issue.

Like I said, I'm enjoying the series, but there's something not quite there. It's the same sensation I've been getting from Y the Last Man, namely that Vaughan has an idea of how the series is going to begin and end, but is a little fuzzy about the middle. Both series focus around one key set of mysteries ("What killed all the men?" and "What is this thing that fused with Mitchell?"), and I'm not sure Vaughan knows how to dole out the answers in little bits. Instead of the normal mystery progression of "clue one leads to clue two leads to clue three leads to solution," he tends to just have his characters wander around for a while until, presumably, the mystery will be revealed at the end.

During the first couple arcs, it looked like we were going to get some faster explanation. Mitchell's explanation of what exactly the project he and Georges were working on consisted of in the middle of "Tag" boded well, but then we've sort of dropped that altogether (except for a brief allusion during a dream sequence).

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm certainly OK with series taking breaks to build character, explore random stories that occur to the writer, etc. Milligan's Shade really only got going once he gave up on a central storyline and mostly just had the characters hanging out. But, if your entire series is built around a central mystery, completely ignoring that for a year at a time is going to leave some very frustrated readers. Maybe this new treachery/mole angle they've got going is going to lead somewhere, but my faith is a little shaken.