Curmudgeonly Comments: New Year, Old Crank

Let's do a little more in-depth look at a few books rather than the broad commentary I've done of late.

Supreme Power 14: J. Michael Straczynski, Gary Frank, and Jon Sibal. Sibal's softer inks may be a bit of an improvement for Frank. Frank's style is the classic Adams-derived form. His only weakness has been that his figure pencils are so tight that they don't seem integrated into their environment, resulting in a certain amount of stiffness and disreality. Sibal's inks soften this, putting the figures more completely into the scene without sacrificing their intrinsic strength.

Two other artistic remarks, both essentially color-related: I lost track of who was who in the Hyperion/Redstone fight. It's not that it was staged badly or filled with art continuity errors; in fact, the artists clearly exerted effort to carefully differentiate the two. It's just that, at night, two brunet guys in t-shirts and jeans pretty much look alike, you know?

One of the reasons that superheroes have costumes (and soldiers and football teams have uniforms) is that distinctive designs and bright contrasting colors make them immediately distinguishable even in confusing circumstances. Now, in this series, Straczynski has clearly made a choice to use a particular level of realism that is different from the Big Two superhero consensus reality. (Note that I'm not suggesting that Supreme Power is in any way particularly realistic; it just isn't using the Big Two superhero consensus reality.) One way it's somewhat closer to objective reality is that its superhero characters use costumes sparingly, and the costumes they do use are based more in practicality than in visual distinctiveness. The result is trivially predictable--lacking the visual distinction of costumes, a superhero fight has a far greater risk of confusion. This is especially a risk in non-photorealist media like comics. Two actors would be immediately distinguishable in a vast variety of positions just by their faces, body types, and a myriad other small features that, as humans, we're softwired to look for. Two drawn figures don't have that, at least as much from the limitation of the form as from the limitation of the artist's skill.

My other thought is largely a repetition of my general invective toward modern coloring style. The color here is by Chris Sotomayor, and it is typical in pretty much all respects. When even an explosion is muted by the colorist, something is wrong in somebody's head. More to a specific point, most of this issue's fight takes place out of doors at night, and it is dark. Don't try to read this issue under a dim lamp, kiddos. To bifurcate my remarks again, I have two comments about nighttime coloring, both coming from the world of film: First, all of us have been raised on a steady diet of day-for-night shots, so we're used to the idea that night doesn't necessarily have to be dark; and second, probably all comic book colorists would benefit a lot from a course in lighting for cinema, where they could learn how to make sure enough light gets on figures and important objects without breaking the illusion that a scene is dark. For instance, a few episodes ago in Lost, Charlie and Jack were trapped in a cave. The cave was dark and we could see nothing, but not one member of the audience was confused, or upset, or even noticed, that in this dark cave, Charlie and Jack were still clearly lit.

As for the story, it's pretty good. Straczynski finally gets off his ass and puts a pretty fair amount of content into an issue, with the nucleus of the Squadron Supreme acting all together to take down a nasty supervillain, plus a significant B-story, and the groundwork laid for a détente between the nascent Squadron and Doctor Spectrum. Because of the amount of content, this is easily the best issue in a year. Don't mistake that for enthusiasm, however; Straczynski has to continue to perform to earn that. Mildly recommended.

What If Jessica Jones Had Joined the Avengers: I got this on a cross-pull and it's not bad. It's basically a Brian Michael Bendis wank-fest, though, twenty-four pages of him pulling his pud over how much he likes his own stuff. It recaps the fourth quarter of Alias, seques into the what-if scenario, then in a simple turn-around, it shows what a brainless clusterfuck the premise of Avengers Disassembled was, and ends on a bit of wish-fulfillment. You know. Crap. I hate BMB for making me enjoy reading crap. But the art is good, and I really like it (which are two different things, of course). And the framing device for the what-if is really pretty decent, and I like that it distinguishes between showing us imagination and showing us someone with imagination. And the turning point at which the what-if diverges is really well conceived. So, I guess, although it's relatively painful to say, this is recommended.

Ultra 5: I'm thinking this sucker would have edged over into highly-recommended territory if not for the last-page lesbian chic shocker, which is, really, a bit too unreconstructed fratboy. But, basically, I like this series a lot, with its superhero/working stiff/Sex and the City blend. In some places, it even looks like colorist Jonathan Luna is deliberately lighting scenes as if they were to be filmed (notably the fight scene), although in others (notably the locker room) he hacks in a job as unsaturated as any other modern colorist. (Hint: If it's important that a character is green, you need to turn up the green channel more than a few percent.) Since Ultra is supposed to be very good at her job, it would have helped if we'd had a fight scene earlier in the series, so that the fight in this issue would have more context, and we'd properly ascribe her rather dismal performance to her upset state of mind rather than to her ability in general. Sort of a Worf problem, really, you know, the way they'd show a bad guy on ST:TNG was tough by having him beat up Worf, except that the effect really was just to make Worf look like a shlub, since we only ever saw him getting beat up. All things considered, though, this is primo stuff. Recommended.

Legion of Super-Heroes 1: My god, that's a boring logo. I could have designed that logo. But mostly, here comes my big rant on what the saturation scale bar on your color chooser is for: This is the Legion of Super-Heroes, you moron, this is a shiny, happy future, with shiny, happy super-heroes doing exciting super-hero things. TURN UP THE COLOR! Watch a fricking Technicolor movie! I swear, I'm going to take all these modern colorists and stake 'em out in an intersection in rural Kentucky on a cloudless May day, with a field of sunflowers to the right, a field of roses to the left, and a field of alfalfa to the side, so they can see what the hell COLOR looks like. Sun Boy should be wearing crimson and yellow, not brick and old-gold. Phantom Girl should be wearing white, not grey. Have a look at that two-page spread on Lallor (what happened to page numbers?) and ask yoursef what it might look like with the yellow gel taken off the camera. (And what the grok is going on with the iridescent sky?) Sheesh.

As for the story: non-committal grunt. The young-rebels thing isn't too overblown, except for Cos, but this issue is about Cos taking the stick out of his ass. As noted in this space earlier, young-rebels versus stodgy-elders is going to be basically fatal for this series. Waid manages to spend an Imperial assload of verbiage on the political significance of the rebellion on Lallor without actually ever telling us anything useful, or, for example, why we should care. And, as a consequence of setting the Legionnaires' fight on Lallor as background imagery to the meaningless political babble between the UP and Cos, the fight on Lallor is stripped of any excitement, drama, or narrative power.

"Micro Lad" is a pretty stupid conceit. Denying Chameleon gender violates the naming rule, stripping it of strength literally one panel after it's introduced, and is pointless besides, since there's no compelling science fictional reason for a persistent pantomorph to be either gendered or genderless. And Waid needs to stop and think about his expressions a bit. What does "machines that could level a moon" even mean? In what way is a moon some kind of exemplar of unlevelness? ("Grav-impact bulldozers" remind me in a way of a Keith Laumer story about interstellar diplomat Retief, involving diverting some student/soldiers one way and some earthmover/battletanks another, but Laumer made them actually sound like something rather than a trio of unrelated buzzwords.)

But, still, it's the Legion, and it doesn't absolutely suck, and if Waid can control his impulse to stop combining words about A with pictures about B and try telling a story about A with words and pictures simultaneously, and if Kitson gives his characters combs, it might actually be good. Neutral recommendation.

Tom Strong 30: The conclusion to a two-parter is disappointing, really. First, while the whole story-within-a-story-within-a-story is kinda clever in terms of structure, it's pretty close to fatal that the middle story is Miracleman's origin, down to Gargunza/Saveen and comics/pulps. (And I would have recognized it even without having re-read all of Miracleman this month, nyah.) The philosophical point on which Brubaker has Tom Strong break his delusion--that a world in which life was empty, politicians were liars, people lived in loneliness and fear, and there was no sense of adventure or wonder was intrinsically foolish and overtly impossible--is a cute authorial statement, but ultimately unconvincing as a mechanism. Mildly recommended.

Onto the perfunctory comments section of our little program.

Not recommended:

Ultimate X-Men 53: Remember a couple of months ago, when I said I was happy that Gambit was a villain, and then a bit later, when I was less happy because he wasn't so much of a villain. Well, extrapolate that trend. Rogue leaves the X-Men to go off with Gambit. Blech. It is difficult to express how much visceral displeasure that particular denouement causes me.

Neutral Recommendation:

Rising Stars 22-23: Didn't I already read this in Squadron Supreme and Miracleman?

Superman/Batman 13: I continue to be astonished that not one word about Peter David's Supergirl was spoken in this story arc. I am ambivalent about the recent obsessive reintroduction of the Superman Silver Age. I'm willing to concede the possibility, but only the possibility, that Darkseid's Omega Beams, which can track you throughout all space, can be stymied by simple teleportation. But, mostly, the art sucked, and that's what I want you to take away from this commentary: The art sucked.

Mildly Recommended:

Astonishing X-Men 6-7: Hint: If you're using a fastball special, and you make a special point of noting that you're using a fastball special, then, goshamighty, use the words "fastball special". Don't be coy. There's not enough text in a comic book to be coy. Also: How could you leave Ben out of the FF #1 cover homage splash page?

Astro City: Local Heroes hc: There are some decent but not spectacular stories in here, and a couple of serious clunkers, notably the Supersonic story, which is reminiscent in a bad way of the Death of Superman in that just beating on the monster until it drops isn't a plan worthy of a superhero. The Roustabout story has a fairly skeevy jailbait relationship that goes unremarked. But the lawyer's story is a good example of what Astro City is good at.

Captain America and the Falcon 9-10: I'm not terribly fond of MODOK's speech pattern, but that may be a function of the mode in which he's operating. Joe Bennett draws a great, creepy MODOK, though, even down to scary orthodonture.

JLA: Classified 1-2: I have trouble keeping track of who's who; a little more exposition, a little less in the way of abrupt transitions, would be nice. Ed McGuiness reminds me a lot of Steve Skroce, but I think I liked Skroce better; what's he drawing these days? Can't argue with Super-Gorilla Grodd (but the anthropophagy thing is a bit disturbing) or with Grant Morrison, Man of Nearly As Many Ideas As Alan Moore or Jack Kirby.

Tales of the Realm tp: This has some extremely odd ideas about what it would be like to be a star of "America's Favorite Show", basically that it would be a position of no prestige or opportunity. Bwah? Otherwise, it's a pretty interesting modern fantasy, with good art. Dumb plot, though it's not inconsistent given the oddity noted above, but it is really dumb. The comic's sophistication is on about the level of the George of the Jungle movie.

Ultimates 2 1: Really pretty. Not especially offensive. Not much happens, though there's a fair amount of set-up. Also, when Cap rescues the aid workers? I think my remarks up in the LSH review just crystallized: You rob an action scene of all drama and impact when the pictures have no dialog and the captions aren't talking about the pictures.

Recommended:

The Art of Usagi Yojimbo hc: For Usagi fans only. Beautiful production design by Cary Grazzini; I especially like the parchment chapter title pages.

Batman: The Dark Knight Archives v1: At U$19.95, this is easily worth the price. Reprinting Batman #1-4, this is early enough in the Caped Crusader's career that even with Robin along, his adventures are still moderately pulpy and creepy, not yet the bright, childish drek of later in the 1940s. Batman #1, in particular, is probably the single most important Batman issue ever, featuring his origin, the first and second Joker stories, the story with Hugo Strange and the monster serum, and the first Cat[woman] story.

Fallen Angel 17-18: Well, I guess that final page resolves the question of whether the title is literal or not. I'm not especially enthusiastic about the revelation of the city's nature or of Juris'. This is still one of the best written, best drawn comics on the market.

Also read:

Not recommended: Doctor Spectrum 4.

Mildly recommended: Bart Simpson 21; Dr. Blink, Superhero Shrink 0; Girl Genius 13; Knights of the Dinner Table 97-98; PVP 11-12; She-Hulk 9-10; Simpsons Comics 100-101; Supergirl tp (David/Frank, reprinting 1-9); Supreme Power 13; Terra Obscura 4; Tom Strong's Terrific Tales 12; Ultimate Elektra 4; Ultimate Spider-Man 68-70.

Recommended: Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage tp; Doom Patrol: The Painting that Ate Paris tp; Nodwick 26; Plastic Man 13; Ultra 4; Uncle Scrooge 337 (Don Rosa's "Trash or Treasure").

Highly Recommended: PS238 9.

Posted by Greg at January 2, 2005 1:29 PM