Unqualified Offerings

I’m just gonna pull ‘em off the stack to my right and tell you what I think of them.

Great Lakes Avengers 1 of 4, by Dan Slott and Paul Pelletier. Black humor from a writer known for his light touch. GLA on one level is a spoof of recent trends in corporate superhero comics, specifically the mania for “darkening” continuities with “shocking” deaths and other crimes. On another level it’s a spittle-flecked tirade against those same trends. But the recent comic it most recalls is the X-Force/X-Statix series by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred. In both books, goofy, sad-sack protagonists deal with how poorly either they or life itself fit the tropes of heroic adventure. Milligan and Allred used mutant heroes to satirize the love/hate relationships on both sides of American celebrity culture. Slott and Pelletier use the misfit toys of the GLA to satirize – contemporary comics. This is a lesser concern in the grand scheme of things, and so far GLA suffers by comparison. But there’s at least a chance that Slott and Pelletier have a bigger game in mind, where the continuing, absurd reversals of the stock superhero soap opera, post-9/11 edition, become a metaphor for an existential futility that afflicts us all (in certain moods). Thus viewpoint character Mr. Immortal, who can’t be killed, spends the first issue wishing for a death of the same finality that keeps coming to his loved ones. Keep an eye on this book. It may go somewhere.

Klarion the Witch-Boy #1 of 4, Grant Morrison and Frazier Irving. Part of Morrison’s Seven Soldiers venture. Klarion lives below-ground in an isolated village that may be descended from the Lost Colony of Roanoke. If so, Morrison seems to be confusing puritan New England culture with Cavalier Virginia. (Foreigners! What do they know?) The satirical theme is that the villagers dress, act and organize their society like Baroque-era witch hunters while being themselves witches. That part works pretty well. And there’s some real pathos to the story, especially the “Grundies.” The dead of the village rest not in perpetual slumber – in time, the villagers dig them out and make them, as zombies, “work . . . until [they] crumble.” And these days the villagers give their dead less rest than ever. The grundies have enough consciousness to resent this, and at least one of the living, Klarion’s father, has tried to escape past the borders of their underground realm. Klarion dreams of following him. Frazier Irving’s art is perfect, somehow midway between caricature and woodcut, and his blue, streaky palette heightens the effect. This is easily my favorite of Morrison’s Soldiers comics so far. I even feel a mild regret at the elements clearly meant to tie it into the other titles (the appearance of one of the “Sheeda,” who are the Big Threat in the maxi-story), since so far the metaplot hasn’t grabbed me.

Zatanna #1 of 4, Grant Morrison and Ryan Sook. Another Seven Soldiers series. Morrison is tapping his line of credit here. He produced two of the best superhero series of the last couple decades in New X-Men and JLA. His recent killer robot animal miniseries with artist Frank Quitely, We3, was a masterpiece. The Filth was a challenging and rich, if flawed, work. But what we have here is a female hero in stockings and bustier who has lost her powers, and because of Man Trouble too. It may turn out that Morrison is using the dreariest clichés of superhero comics’ treatment of female characters rather than exemplifying them – that is, Zatanna may well develop into a metafictional critique of the “women in refrigerators” tendency. But on my reading he sure hasn’t foreshadowed that direction. It could be even worse. There’s a long sequence in a mystic realm where various characters debate belief systems and the nature of magic. Apparently this reads like a commentary on later issues of Alan Moore’s Promethea comics, issues I haven’t read thank you very much. But it worries me, because maybe Morrison wants the series to be about The Truth About Magic. Magic is a perfectly fine, if dangerous story element. Even authors who believe in that sort of thing can produce good work if they use their superstitions as lens rather than subject – Yeats believed the most damfool things and wrote great poems. But writing a fantasy adventure whose point is what magic is really like bears all the promise of a version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that aims to convey the facts of social relations at the North Pole. I’ll give this one at least another issue, but only because Morrison has earned some benefit of the doubt.

Ex Machina #10, Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris. The continuing story of a former superhero who becomes Mayor of New York City after saving one of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. (The “present” of the book is Spring 2002.) Unlike some readers, I have no problem with the blending of urban politics and shakeycam superheroics. Let’s fess up: that kind of thing is meat and drink to me. What the book will not bear is the admixture of grisly horror in the current storyline, involving the alien artifact that gave the Great Machine his powers and seems to drive others mad. It’s one element too many. What Vaughan has here is a fundamentally sweet book – in a good way – and too many dismemberments sour it fatally. Plus, the deranging effect the extraterrestrial glyphs have on their victims rob the “villain” of agency, and thus the main plot of any weight. I recommend you pick up the first collection and only venture into the current arc if horror is your ketchup and you’ll eat it on anything. Tony Harris draws wonderfully, all big open faces and angular perspectives, and JD Mettler’s colors make the book.

Conan #15, Kurt Busiek and Greg Ruth. “Wolves in the Woods” is a non-canon interstice between adapted Robert E. Howard stories. These have been hit or miss – sometimes Busiek’s outlook is just too modern and, well, liberal, to fit either Howard’s own perspective or Conan’s fictional milieu. “Wolves” suffers minimally from this problem, though, and has to count as one of the better issues in the new series. All I’ll say about the climactic battle, between a nine-year-old Conan and the alpha dog from the wolf pack, is that it does not lack for ferocity. Busiek does a creditable job of conveying the cultural morés of a clan-based hill society too. Greg Ruth paints the interior art, but uses the black brush enough that it seems more at home on the comic book page than is sometimes the case with painted comics. The back of every issue has a two-row biographical comic strip by Jim and Ruth Keegan, adapting incidents from known episodes of Howard’s life. I think I’d enjoy seeing them get a chance to do, if not full issues of Howard bio comics, at least an entire page at a time.

Hercules #1 of 4, by Frank Tieri and Mark Texeira. Marvel’s version of the Son of Zeus is hanging around between the denial and anger stages in his grief over the death of Marvel’s version of Thor, in circumstances that probably don’t bear discussing, especially since I don’t really know what happened. The conceit of the miniseries is that, in between binges and sexual harrassment suits, Herc has signed on to do a “reality series” updating the ancient Twelve Labors laid on him by King Eurestheus. It’s reminiscent of Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus series, except not as out there. Hijinx ensue, though I think you’ll have to get updates on the ensue part elsewhere, as I’m not moved to buy the rest of the issues based on this one. Just kind of blah.

Manhunter #9, Mark Andreyko and Javier Pina. This series deserves a wider readership, and the author even offers a buy-back guarantee. There’s a lot to like about this book, which I’ve followed from the first issue. It’s a female protagonist who didn’t order her costume from the Victoria’s Secret catalog or her boobs from the staff surgeon for Vivid Video. The stories move pretty briskly – there’s no 23 pages of a bunch of characters getting ready to have a story about them. I’m not altogether sold on Javier Pina’s art, but he’s a functional storyteller who pulls off occasional nice panels and the odd well-designed page. There’s a nice drawing of boys kicking a soccer ball, and a four-panel page of an SUV sailing between two buildings that was three-fourths gold. (I think the last panel could have had more impact.)

Black Panther #3, Reginald Hudlin and John Romita Jr. Paul O’Brien just published an essay wondering just how much wish fulfillment fantasy is left in superhero comics any more – really, since the 1970s – given the predominance of soap opera and angst. There’s a complicated answer to his question that I’d like to get to some time, but the simple answer is, I got your wish fulfillment fantasy right here! It just doesn’t happen to be your wish fulfillment fantasy, unless this site’s readership skews much more heavily to African-American teenaged boys than I assume. The fun thing about this relaunch/revamp of Marvel’s first black superhero is just how gloriously it meets its aim of power fantasy for black kids. I’m the sort of libertarian who has, in times past, found flavors of afrocentrism alarming. No, the Egyptians didn’t have flying magnetic cars. No, it’s not even sensical to say the ancient Greeks “stole” their culture from northern Africa. No, Pharoanic Egypt and Imperial Ethiopia had fuck-all to do with the Western African cultures from which most American blacks descend, nor did they speak swahili etcetera etcetera. Some elements of afrocentrism, as belief systems, are not just bad history but pseudo-science, and I neither thought nor think that seriously believing in such things can help anybody. That said, not only are the most outrageous tenets of afrocentrism no sillier than things believed by any number of white and Asian cultures, they’re a promising source of premises for fantasy stories, and good fantasy literature can do all kinds of people all kinds of good. Hudlin, I should say, goes lightly on doctrinaire afrocentrism. His fantasy of an unconquered black kingdom that, because of its splendid isolation, is able to pursue its cultural evolution to the utmost, fits poorly with what we understand about how real civilizations evolve – the more geographically connected you are, the more your technology and arts evolve. Hudlin’s Wakanda flies in the face of that understanding. Nor do I go for his potted socialist economics. But you can see the appeal to the readership Hudlin has in mind, not only an unbowed black superhero but an unbowed black nation behind him. And Hudlin brings a light enough touch to avoid alienating at least one retrograde aging white-boy reader. Plus, Batroc zee Leapair! You freakin’ can’t beat that. The downside is that, while Hudlin comes to comics from movies, his comics pacing is very much in line with current trends. In other words, it’s Issue 3, and our villains are still getting ready to attack the Kingdom. Good book, though. Hudlin has satire and sympathy for everyone. I’ve always thought that only the thinnest of edges separated the most boosterish side of afrocentrism from a pretty sharp self-loathing. Thus when Hudlin’s King T’Chaka (T’Challa’s father) rebukes a gathering of G-7 countries with “I understand your frustration in dealing with a black man who can’t be bought with a truck full of guns, a plane load of blondes, and a swiss bank account, but hold on to what little class you have,” the jibe cuts in two directions, and when Hudlin gives us a corrupt African dictator later in the issue who joins in the plot against Wakanda, we realize that he’s in complete control of his material. (”Klaw, my friend!” “Ah, I take it the check cleared.”) I’m impressed that Marvel is not making Hudlin be completely namby-pamby on the book’s racial text and subtext. John Romita Jr. gives us great faces. I’m not so far as sold on his action sequences. Since we’re about to see Klaw, the Rhino, Batroc and some psychic vampire chick attack the Panther’s kingdom, that may change.

More comics in a couple of days, I hope. This item is already overlong.