{homage: Philippe Mayaux}
(As always, click to view full-sized.)
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
"Miss X" vs. the Silver Age
A non-comics reader's adventures in midcentury modern
Most comic book readers have a friend or two like "Miss X". These friends are intelligent, aesthetic people who usually share some interests with the comics readers in question. Yet, for whatever reason, these friends do not read comics themselves. Predictably, the topic of what comics to give these neophytes so that they may be properly "turned on" is a popular one amongst comics fans. (Obviously -- how many copies has Watchmen sold??)
In an effort to get some answers to this longstanding question, I persuaded Miss X to participate in a study with me. I chose a few comics from different eras and genres, grouped them into categories, and, once Miss X had read the comics, sat down with her over tea and cookies to discuss which among them had struck her comics-free fancy.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I made no attempt to pick groups of comics that were wholly representative of their respective "categories" -- just comics I like and would consider showing someone who didn't already read comics. Hence, no Neal Adams or Spider-Man in this Silver Age survey, et cetera.)
"The Pact" in New Gods #7, by Jack Kirby. DC.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Probably the best of Kirby's post-Marvel work, the King's fans are split on whether his work on New Gods is better than the classic runs on Fantastic four, et cetera, with Stan Lee. It's agreed that this work has more raw power, more searing emotion, more flash and dazzle, more of what makes Kirby Kirby. But many also believe that the lack of Lee's more understated contributions to the Marvel stories Kirby did makes these books seem hollow in comparison.
MY TAKE
Damn the torpedoes, give us all the Kirby we can handle! It's true that this isn't as slick or polished as the Marvel stuff, but I don't read Kirby for anything even resembling polish. All the massive, epic storytelling, the big ideas, the near-abstract pop art, the Shakespeareanly overboiled characterization, is here in more abundance than anywhere else. Work like this is what made Kirby unique. This is as pure a dose of his soul-pounding vision as anyone could be expected to handle, like opening your brain to the brilliance of a feverishly blazing sun.
MISS X'S TAKE:
MS: So, what did you think of "The Pact"?
MISS X: I am not a big fan of the art. It's blocky, difficult to tell what you're looking at at times. There are a lot of colors, there are a lot of shapes, it can just be too much. And... the storytelling isn't very good. There are a whole lot of concepts that aren't being executed that well and the writing is really hard for a non-comics reader to understand.
MS: Ha. But conceptually?
MISS X: I think the story has definite merit and it's interestingly conceived, but it's not well done. He has a better idea than he's able to execute here.
"Adam Strange: Menace of the Aqua-Ray Weapon" in Mystery In Space #69, by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino, and Murphy Anderson. DC.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Adam Strange is one of DC's classic "second-rate" Silver Age books -- the ones acknowledged to have just as much aesthetic merit as any of the company's big books from that era, but not as fondly remembered due to a lack of commercial success. Perhaps the most elegant and lyrical comic of the Silver Age, it was a showcase for career-best art from Carmine Infantino, as well as intelligent if formulaic plots from Gardner Fox. This short story is one of the more obscure Adam Strange tales, revealing as it does that the Rannian people Strange so zealously offends once participated in genocide. Oops.
MY TAKE
If you wanted to explain DC in the Silver Age to someone, this would be as good a story as a any to show them. Plotting that stays just this side of ridiculous, a very "early '60s" moral simplicity, plenty of spaceman camp, and Infantino art worthy of museum display. "Menace of the Aqua-Ray Weapon" has almost a Winsor McCay vibe, the action unfolding in a giant cavern made of ice crystals with a villainous race that look more like mischievous imps than fierce conquerors challenging our hero for supremacy. Infantino fully embraces Art Nouveau here, with decorative ice patterns framing every panel and water and steam effects taking the shape of fanciful curlicues. A delectable, sugary treat that bears almost no resemblance to reality but is as absorbing as life nonetheless. The addition of Rann's shadowy, genocidal history only deepens the story's power.
MISS X'S TAKE:
MS: Adam Strange; what were your thoughts?
MISS X:I loved the art -- it's clear what's going on, the storytelling is good in that you know where your eye is supposed to move on the page and it's easy to understand what's going on in each panel. There's a connectedness throughout.
MS: And the plot?
MISS X: I didn't think the plot was that memorable, but it was well done. Really well executed, even though the concept wasn't that strong.
MS: So like the opposite of the Kirby?
MISS X: Uh huh.
MS: A lot of people say they find DC Silver Age stories really staid and stuffy, what do you think of that?
MISS X: Yeah, there's a spontaneity in the Kirby that's almost like outsider art... it's like the difference between a Rembrandt painting to a Rousseau painting, there's a lot more immediacy, there's more spontaneity, there's something more people can connect with maybe in a Rousseau or a Kirby, but it's not as technically good or as well-concieved as something like this. I feel like this might be a more mediocre story, but the way that it's executed it easier to understand and as somebody who's not a big comics reader it's a lot more fun.
MS: Like the Infantino art?
MISS X: Mm-hm!
"The Return of the Question" in Mysterious Suspense #1, by Steve Ditko. Charlton.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Ditko's big step away from Marvel and Stan Lee's antiheroes, this is also a coming-out party of sorts for his Objectivist philosophies, and the beginning of the forty years he has spent exploring them in his comics. It might not be as entertaining as his run on Spider-Man, but this work is much more forceful and assured; Ditko is finally in complete control of what he's doing in his his comic, both formally and rhetorically. Incredibly influential, this comic paved the way for a million grim, driven heroes after it, from the Punisher to Watchmen's Rorschach to Ditko's own, even more extreme Mr. A.
MY TAKE
Effectively Ditko's last influential mainstream work, this comic is the pinnacle of everything he was trying to say about morals and heroism, everything he was using the comics medium for. It's worth reading only for the outrageous rebuttal of everything Ditko thought was wrong with Stan Lee's Spider-Man scripting, but the real meat here is how much Ditko transcends his more famous Marvel work on a story he can put his heart as well as his drawing hand into. The art is buttoned-down and tightly wound; free of very many decorative elements or lineweights(perhaps because of Charlton's notoriously shoddy printing), it assumes a masterful minimalism that almost resembles woodcuts, serving the story better than any art Ditko did before or since. And what a story! This is perhaps the best-written mainstream comic of the Silver Age, Ditko's terse scripting communicating a desperate urgency as it spins the tale of a man fighting the entire world, determined to win and refusing to compromise in the slightest. A perfect mixture between primitivism and virtuosity, this story holds up better today than almost any other comic of its time.
MISS X'S TAKE
MS: Steve Ditko's Question.
MISS X: It was one of my favorites. I like the kind of kitsch factor it had. Everything was really clear, everything just serviced the story well. I didn't think the art was gorgeous but it worked for this comic. The story was concise, well-considered, and very well executed.
MS: What did you think of the political/moral content?
MISS X: Um, I didn't give much thought to it, it was very much from a different era and I wasn't as interested in that part of it. What I did like was that it had a clear message, it stuck to that message, and everything seemed well put together.
MS: Did you like the Question as a character?
MISS X: Not really, I don't think he's a compelling character. He was well written.
MS: His moral standpoint didn't bother you?
MISS X: No.
MS: The "kitsch factor" you mentioned -- is there more of that in something like this for you than there is in something like Adam Strange?
MISS X: It's different. This was more like a "Twilight Zone" episode, with that kind of "Rebel Without A Cause" writing, whereas something like the Infantino has more of a '60s space age age appeal. This had more of a '50s kitsch, the other one had more of a '60s kitsch to me.
"The Galactus Saga" in Fantastic Four #48-50, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Marvel.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
The peak of Marvel in the '60s as well as the Lee/Kirby partnership, this is the perfect marriage of Marvel's cosmic and human sides, an epic in which the compassion in humanity finds a way to triumph over the disdain of a god. Usually referred to as the peak of Kirby's artistic career at Marvel, and often as the best thing Stan Lee wrote for the company as well.
MY TAKE
The "Sgt. Pepper" of comics, "The Galactus Saga" does everything right, encompassing all that's appealing about Lee and Kirby in equal measure. The Kirby/Joe Sinnott team would go on to gel better together, but never again to create such purely iconic pages. Kirby, often said to be the "cosmic" side of Marvel while his writing
partner took care of the "human" half of things, beats Lee at his own game here with the creation of the Silver Surfer, an unfeeling alien whose sudden discovery of emotion forms the emotional core of the story. A watershed moment in superhero comics that deserves every sentence of praise it's gotten.
MISS X'S TAKE
MS: Let's talk about "The Galactus Saga".
MISS X: I liked it. It's really well done. I liked the Kirby art a lot better in this comic -- it was clearer, serviced the story better... fewer colors, more streamlined figures. It worked, there was more of a flow between the panels. I liked the development of the Silver Surfer's character. It was just well done.
MS: A lot of people think that in Kirby's Marvel work there was more of a humanistic side to relate to.
MISS X: Yeah, I agree. What bothered me about the Fourth World was the absence of a human side an the overabundance of craziness that I find hard to figure out.
MS: What did you think of the FF as characters?
MISS X: I really didn't like Ben (The Thing), I thought he was gross. The Richards couple were OK, and the kid (Human Torch) didn't have any personality. I mean none of them had very much personality, it just seemed like they were there to service the story. Ben had the most personality and he was just yucky.
"The Girl in the Golden Flower" in Strange Adventures #18, by Robert Starr, Alex Toth, and Sy Barry. DC.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
I don't know if there is any. I've never seen any criticism on this story, it just kind of pops up as the clear stunner in the "DC Pulp Fiction Library: Mystery In Space" collection from about a decade ago.
MY TAKE
Stories like this are as good a reason to read comics as any other -- tiny works of genius that appear in the most unexpected places. This little pearl is a Ray Bradbury-flavored six-pager about Brad Mulford, a lonesome astronomer who discovers an unusual flower in the window box of his remote home one morning and resolves to care for the strange beauty. As he does so, his dreams become an odd storyline that simply continues whenever he goes to sleep, concerning his romance with a beautiful inhabitant of an alien planet.
Toth's art is incredible. Wide-open and color-drenched, it has all the strikingly minimalist quality of his more famous later work, but here the artist's famous inkiness gives way to a pastoral high focus which wears a Bernard Krigstein influence very much on its sleeve. His articulation of the disconnect between Mulford's slick, Eisenhower-era home environment and the serene, achingly sparse beauty of his dream-world imbues the story with lilting, wistful strains of emotion that seem to drift on the air currents, affecting to the reader without your knowing quite why.
The story is remarkably delicate in its spare construction: only two characters, one of whom exists solely in dreams, share its stage, and Toth's graceful figurework links them far more effectively than thought balloons declaring love could do. The understated script edges in on the artwork only when necessary, as when Mulford realizes the flower in his window box is telepathically communicating its physical needs to him by invading his dreams in the guise of his beloved one ("Flora"), and when, inevitably, the flower dies, leaving Mulford alone in his dreams forever. The waking-life segments of the story never leave Mulford's little cottage (beautifully designed in Danish-modern style by Toth), turning it into a prison in which he waits to fall asleep again. Even the device of telling the entire story in round-cornered flashback panels adds to the nostalgic, sensitive aura that perfumes its pages.
Rather than explain the story's happenings with DC scifi's usual textbooky bluster, Starr reaches out for a much more beautiful reason for what is going on -- Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius' theory that "seeds of life" roam our universe, looking for habitable planets to grow on. It's a charmingly antiquated idea that almost has the ring of magic about it, taking Mulford's dreams out of the cold, spacey realm that Adam Strange and his ilk inhabit, and into a more hermetic, alchemical place, one where magical-realist miracles seem entirely possible. It also takes the story itself to that same place, removing it from the legion of zany '50s scifi comics and placing it in the rarefied atmosphere of EC's Bradbury adaptations, or the better-drawn issues of Classics Illustrated. That is, in the pantheon of early, truly literary comic books.
There is no real conflict here, no soul-shattering declamations -- nothing, in fact, but beautiful art and emotion, a comic that would be surprisingly mature even today, but stands head and shoulders above its contemporaries in terms of using the medium to create literary value. The personification of a man's sexual desires -- yearning, really -- in a flower, is first-class stuff, a perfectly elegant way to get around the expected romance fare of the time. It's infinitely touching to watch Mulford care for his flower as though his life depends on it, to watch his heart break whenever it sheds a petal. A little gem out of a clear blue sky, "The Girl in the Golden Flower" is just about as good as it gets.
(It has a cop-out ending, of course, in which Mulford meets a real girl just like the one from his dreams, but it take up all of two panels, disrupting the story's emotional reality not a whit.)
MISS X'S TAKE:
MS: What did you think of "The Girl in the Golden Flower"?
MISS X: I thought it was creepy; I thought it was weird that he was in love with a flower. I also wasn't quite sure what the story wanted you to believe -- at the end the flower dies but then the girl comes back, it was very confusing and it wasn't clear what the continuity was supposed to have been with that. And it was awfully convenient that he'd heard about the possibility of spores from space landing on other planets.The way he was interpreting that bit of information and deciding that this weird flower had to be an alien flower -- just because there's a flower that you've never seen growing in your garden, you usually wouldn't assume it was an alien spore. And -- were his dreams real, were they not, it was just kind of strange. And I didn't think he was a likable character.
MS: What'd you think of the art?
MISS X: It was decent. I thought it was definitely working for the story but I didn't think either the art or the story was anything special.
"My Heart Broke In Hollywood" in Our Love Story #5, by Stan Lee and Jim Steranko. Marvel.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Steranko's final Marvel story, this exploration in psychedelic, poster-art aesthetics is a bold experiment in storytelling and graphic design, but an unoriginal script hampers it from going where it could have.
MY TAKE
Despite the now-dated novelty look of Steranko's Peter Max-ish graphics, it's still the work of a master at the top of his game. Beyond the static figures there are beautifully-designed pages, a fauvist use of color, an approach to spotting blacks that is both innovative and breathtaking to look at, and the extension of Steranko's attempts to solve such problems as animation of figures and creating dramatic impact with layouts. This is a Steranko who has worked entirely free of the Jack Kirby influence that powers much of his earlier work, an artist creating a new kind of comic entirely, unlike anything else that came before it. As such, it's doubly sad that this story is hampered with one of Stan Lee's worst-ever scripting jobs, with every line a clunker and every plot development a cliche. No wonder Steranko left comics shortly afterward, only to make the briefest and most sporadic of returns from then on. This story, at least in the pictures, remains, however -- a look into what might have been, and a testament to the utter genius of one of comics' less-praised virtuosos.
MISS X'S TAKE
MS: Finally, we've got Jim Steranko's "My Heart Broke In Hollywood."
MISS X: Uh, really creepy, really sterotypical. Kind of all style over substance, I guess. It felt like "Valley of the Dolls" or something.
MS: What'd you think of the art?
MISS X: Mm, really psychedelic, like '60s ad art. Which is a cool aesthetic, but this wasn't like great art for me. And I don't think it works well to tell a story -- it's very static. There's almost no human movement, the panels where the characters are moving look really awkward. He draws like he's just studied mannequins. And the story was vapid, misogynistic, and rather insulting.
MISS X'S RANKINGS (best to worst):
1. "The Galactus Saga"
2. "The Return of the Question"
3. "Adam Strange: Menace of the Aqua-Ray Weapon"
4. "The Pact"
5. "The Girl in the Golden Flower"
6. "My Heart Broke In Hollywood"
Next: the Golden Age!
Most comic book readers have a friend or two like "Miss X". These friends are intelligent, aesthetic people who usually share some interests with the comics readers in question. Yet, for whatever reason, these friends do not read comics themselves. Predictably, the topic of what comics to give these neophytes so that they may be properly "turned on" is a popular one amongst comics fans. (Obviously -- how many copies has Watchmen sold??)
In an effort to get some answers to this longstanding question, I persuaded Miss X to participate in a study with me. I chose a few comics from different eras and genres, grouped them into categories, and, once Miss X had read the comics, sat down with her over tea and cookies to discuss which among them had struck her comics-free fancy.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I made no attempt to pick groups of comics that were wholly representative of their respective "categories" -- just comics I like and would consider showing someone who didn't already read comics. Hence, no Neal Adams or Spider-Man in this Silver Age survey, et cetera.)
"The Pact" in New Gods #7, by Jack Kirby. DC.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Probably the best of Kirby's post-Marvel work, the King's fans are split on whether his work on New Gods is better than the classic runs on Fantastic four, et cetera, with Stan Lee. It's agreed that this work has more raw power, more searing emotion, more flash and dazzle, more of what makes Kirby Kirby. But many also believe that the lack of Lee's more understated contributions to the Marvel stories Kirby did makes these books seem hollow in comparison.
MY TAKE
Damn the torpedoes, give us all the Kirby we can handle! It's true that this isn't as slick or polished as the Marvel stuff, but I don't read Kirby for anything even resembling polish. All the massive, epic storytelling, the big ideas, the near-abstract pop art, the Shakespeareanly overboiled characterization, is here in more abundance than anywhere else. Work like this is what made Kirby unique. This is as pure a dose of his soul-pounding vision as anyone could be expected to handle, like opening your brain to the brilliance of a feverishly blazing sun.
MISS X'S TAKE:
MS: So, what did you think of "The Pact"?
MISS X: I am not a big fan of the art. It's blocky, difficult to tell what you're looking at at times. There are a lot of colors, there are a lot of shapes, it can just be too much. And... the storytelling isn't very good. There are a whole lot of concepts that aren't being executed that well and the writing is really hard for a non-comics reader to understand.
MS: Ha. But conceptually?
MISS X: I think the story has definite merit and it's interestingly conceived, but it's not well done. He has a better idea than he's able to execute here.
"Adam Strange: Menace of the Aqua-Ray Weapon" in Mystery In Space #69, by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino, and Murphy Anderson. DC.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Adam Strange is one of DC's classic "second-rate" Silver Age books -- the ones acknowledged to have just as much aesthetic merit as any of the company's big books from that era, but not as fondly remembered due to a lack of commercial success. Perhaps the most elegant and lyrical comic of the Silver Age, it was a showcase for career-best art from Carmine Infantino, as well as intelligent if formulaic plots from Gardner Fox. This short story is one of the more obscure Adam Strange tales, revealing as it does that the Rannian people Strange so zealously offends once participated in genocide. Oops.
MY TAKE
If you wanted to explain DC in the Silver Age to someone, this would be as good a story as a any to show them. Plotting that stays just this side of ridiculous, a very "early '60s" moral simplicity, plenty of spaceman camp, and Infantino art worthy of museum display. "Menace of the Aqua-Ray Weapon" has almost a Winsor McCay vibe, the action unfolding in a giant cavern made of ice crystals with a villainous race that look more like mischievous imps than fierce conquerors challenging our hero for supremacy. Infantino fully embraces Art Nouveau here, with decorative ice patterns framing every panel and water and steam effects taking the shape of fanciful curlicues. A delectable, sugary treat that bears almost no resemblance to reality but is as absorbing as life nonetheless. The addition of Rann's shadowy, genocidal history only deepens the story's power.
MISS X'S TAKE:
MS: Adam Strange; what were your thoughts?
MISS X:I loved the art -- it's clear what's going on, the storytelling is good in that you know where your eye is supposed to move on the page and it's easy to understand what's going on in each panel. There's a connectedness throughout.
MS: And the plot?
MISS X: I didn't think the plot was that memorable, but it was well done. Really well executed, even though the concept wasn't that strong.
MS: So like the opposite of the Kirby?
MISS X: Uh huh.
MS: A lot of people say they find DC Silver Age stories really staid and stuffy, what do you think of that?
MISS X: Yeah, there's a spontaneity in the Kirby that's almost like outsider art... it's like the difference between a Rembrandt painting to a Rousseau painting, there's a lot more immediacy, there's more spontaneity, there's something more people can connect with maybe in a Rousseau or a Kirby, but it's not as technically good or as well-concieved as something like this. I feel like this might be a more mediocre story, but the way that it's executed it easier to understand and as somebody who's not a big comics reader it's a lot more fun.
MS: Like the Infantino art?
MISS X: Mm-hm!
"The Return of the Question" in Mysterious Suspense #1, by Steve Ditko. Charlton.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Ditko's big step away from Marvel and Stan Lee's antiheroes, this is also a coming-out party of sorts for his Objectivist philosophies, and the beginning of the forty years he has spent exploring them in his comics. It might not be as entertaining as his run on Spider-Man, but this work is much more forceful and assured; Ditko is finally in complete control of what he's doing in his his comic, both formally and rhetorically. Incredibly influential, this comic paved the way for a million grim, driven heroes after it, from the Punisher to Watchmen's Rorschach to Ditko's own, even more extreme Mr. A.
MY TAKE
Effectively Ditko's last influential mainstream work, this comic is the pinnacle of everything he was trying to say about morals and heroism, everything he was using the comics medium for. It's worth reading only for the outrageous rebuttal of everything Ditko thought was wrong with Stan Lee's Spider-Man scripting, but the real meat here is how much Ditko transcends his more famous Marvel work on a story he can put his heart as well as his drawing hand into. The art is buttoned-down and tightly wound; free of very many decorative elements or lineweights(perhaps because of Charlton's notoriously shoddy printing), it assumes a masterful minimalism that almost resembles woodcuts, serving the story better than any art Ditko did before or since. And what a story! This is perhaps the best-written mainstream comic of the Silver Age, Ditko's terse scripting communicating a desperate urgency as it spins the tale of a man fighting the entire world, determined to win and refusing to compromise in the slightest. A perfect mixture between primitivism and virtuosity, this story holds up better today than almost any other comic of its time.
MISS X'S TAKE
MS: Steve Ditko's Question.
MISS X: It was one of my favorites. I like the kind of kitsch factor it had. Everything was really clear, everything just serviced the story well. I didn't think the art was gorgeous but it worked for this comic. The story was concise, well-considered, and very well executed.
MS: What did you think of the political/moral content?
MISS X: Um, I didn't give much thought to it, it was very much from a different era and I wasn't as interested in that part of it. What I did like was that it had a clear message, it stuck to that message, and everything seemed well put together.
MS: Did you like the Question as a character?
MISS X: Not really, I don't think he's a compelling character. He was well written.
MS: His moral standpoint didn't bother you?
MISS X: No.
MS: The "kitsch factor" you mentioned -- is there more of that in something like this for you than there is in something like Adam Strange?
MISS X: It's different. This was more like a "Twilight Zone" episode, with that kind of "Rebel Without A Cause" writing, whereas something like the Infantino has more of a '60s space age age appeal. This had more of a '50s kitsch, the other one had more of a '60s kitsch to me.
"The Galactus Saga" in Fantastic Four #48-50, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Marvel.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
The peak of Marvel in the '60s as well as the Lee/Kirby partnership, this is the perfect marriage of Marvel's cosmic and human sides, an epic in which the compassion in humanity finds a way to triumph over the disdain of a god. Usually referred to as the peak of Kirby's artistic career at Marvel, and often as the best thing Stan Lee wrote for the company as well.
MY TAKE
The "Sgt. Pepper" of comics, "The Galactus Saga" does everything right, encompassing all that's appealing about Lee and Kirby in equal measure. The Kirby/Joe Sinnott team would go on to gel better together, but never again to create such purely iconic pages. Kirby, often said to be the "cosmic" side of Marvel while his writing
partner took care of the "human" half of things, beats Lee at his own game here with the creation of the Silver Surfer, an unfeeling alien whose sudden discovery of emotion forms the emotional core of the story. A watershed moment in superhero comics that deserves every sentence of praise it's gotten.
MISS X'S TAKE
MS: Let's talk about "The Galactus Saga".
MISS X: I liked it. It's really well done. I liked the Kirby art a lot better in this comic -- it was clearer, serviced the story better... fewer colors, more streamlined figures. It worked, there was more of a flow between the panels. I liked the development of the Silver Surfer's character. It was just well done.
MS: A lot of people think that in Kirby's Marvel work there was more of a humanistic side to relate to.
MISS X: Yeah, I agree. What bothered me about the Fourth World was the absence of a human side an the overabundance of craziness that I find hard to figure out.
MS: What did you think of the FF as characters?
MISS X: I really didn't like Ben (The Thing), I thought he was gross. The Richards couple were OK, and the kid (Human Torch) didn't have any personality. I mean none of them had very much personality, it just seemed like they were there to service the story. Ben had the most personality and he was just yucky.
"The Girl in the Golden Flower" in Strange Adventures #18, by Robert Starr, Alex Toth, and Sy Barry. DC.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
I don't know if there is any. I've never seen any criticism on this story, it just kind of pops up as the clear stunner in the "DC Pulp Fiction Library: Mystery In Space" collection from about a decade ago.
MY TAKE
Stories like this are as good a reason to read comics as any other -- tiny works of genius that appear in the most unexpected places. This little pearl is a Ray Bradbury-flavored six-pager about Brad Mulford, a lonesome astronomer who discovers an unusual flower in the window box of his remote home one morning and resolves to care for the strange beauty. As he does so, his dreams become an odd storyline that simply continues whenever he goes to sleep, concerning his romance with a beautiful inhabitant of an alien planet.
Toth's art is incredible. Wide-open and color-drenched, it has all the strikingly minimalist quality of his more famous later work, but here the artist's famous inkiness gives way to a pastoral high focus which wears a Bernard Krigstein influence very much on its sleeve. His articulation of the disconnect between Mulford's slick, Eisenhower-era home environment and the serene, achingly sparse beauty of his dream-world imbues the story with lilting, wistful strains of emotion that seem to drift on the air currents, affecting to the reader without your knowing quite why.
The story is remarkably delicate in its spare construction: only two characters, one of whom exists solely in dreams, share its stage, and Toth's graceful figurework links them far more effectively than thought balloons declaring love could do. The understated script edges in on the artwork only when necessary, as when Mulford realizes the flower in his window box is telepathically communicating its physical needs to him by invading his dreams in the guise of his beloved one ("Flora"), and when, inevitably, the flower dies, leaving Mulford alone in his dreams forever. The waking-life segments of the story never leave Mulford's little cottage (beautifully designed in Danish-modern style by Toth), turning it into a prison in which he waits to fall asleep again. Even the device of telling the entire story in round-cornered flashback panels adds to the nostalgic, sensitive aura that perfumes its pages.
Rather than explain the story's happenings with DC scifi's usual textbooky bluster, Starr reaches out for a much more beautiful reason for what is going on -- Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius' theory that "seeds of life" roam our universe, looking for habitable planets to grow on. It's a charmingly antiquated idea that almost has the ring of magic about it, taking Mulford's dreams out of the cold, spacey realm that Adam Strange and his ilk inhabit, and into a more hermetic, alchemical place, one where magical-realist miracles seem entirely possible. It also takes the story itself to that same place, removing it from the legion of zany '50s scifi comics and placing it in the rarefied atmosphere of EC's Bradbury adaptations, or the better-drawn issues of Classics Illustrated. That is, in the pantheon of early, truly literary comic books.
There is no real conflict here, no soul-shattering declamations -- nothing, in fact, but beautiful art and emotion, a comic that would be surprisingly mature even today, but stands head and shoulders above its contemporaries in terms of using the medium to create literary value. The personification of a man's sexual desires -- yearning, really -- in a flower, is first-class stuff, a perfectly elegant way to get around the expected romance fare of the time. It's infinitely touching to watch Mulford care for his flower as though his life depends on it, to watch his heart break whenever it sheds a petal. A little gem out of a clear blue sky, "The Girl in the Golden Flower" is just about as good as it gets.
(It has a cop-out ending, of course, in which Mulford meets a real girl just like the one from his dreams, but it take up all of two panels, disrupting the story's emotional reality not a whit.)
MISS X'S TAKE:
MS: What did you think of "The Girl in the Golden Flower"?
MISS X: I thought it was creepy; I thought it was weird that he was in love with a flower. I also wasn't quite sure what the story wanted you to believe -- at the end the flower dies but then the girl comes back, it was very confusing and it wasn't clear what the continuity was supposed to have been with that. And it was awfully convenient that he'd heard about the possibility of spores from space landing on other planets.The way he was interpreting that bit of information and deciding that this weird flower had to be an alien flower -- just because there's a flower that you've never seen growing in your garden, you usually wouldn't assume it was an alien spore. And -- were his dreams real, were they not, it was just kind of strange. And I didn't think he was a likable character.
MS: What'd you think of the art?
MISS X: It was decent. I thought it was definitely working for the story but I didn't think either the art or the story was anything special.
"My Heart Broke In Hollywood" in Our Love Story #5, by Stan Lee and Jim Steranko. Marvel.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Steranko's final Marvel story, this exploration in psychedelic, poster-art aesthetics is a bold experiment in storytelling and graphic design, but an unoriginal script hampers it from going where it could have.
MY TAKE
Despite the now-dated novelty look of Steranko's Peter Max-ish graphics, it's still the work of a master at the top of his game. Beyond the static figures there are beautifully-designed pages, a fauvist use of color, an approach to spotting blacks that is both innovative and breathtaking to look at, and the extension of Steranko's attempts to solve such problems as animation of figures and creating dramatic impact with layouts. This is a Steranko who has worked entirely free of the Jack Kirby influence that powers much of his earlier work, an artist creating a new kind of comic entirely, unlike anything else that came before it. As such, it's doubly sad that this story is hampered with one of Stan Lee's worst-ever scripting jobs, with every line a clunker and every plot development a cliche. No wonder Steranko left comics shortly afterward, only to make the briefest and most sporadic of returns from then on. This story, at least in the pictures, remains, however -- a look into what might have been, and a testament to the utter genius of one of comics' less-praised virtuosos.
MISS X'S TAKE
MS: Finally, we've got Jim Steranko's "My Heart Broke In Hollywood."
MISS X: Uh, really creepy, really sterotypical. Kind of all style over substance, I guess. It felt like "Valley of the Dolls" or something.
MS: What'd you think of the art?
MISS X: Mm, really psychedelic, like '60s ad art. Which is a cool aesthetic, but this wasn't like great art for me. And I don't think it works well to tell a story -- it's very static. There's almost no human movement, the panels where the characters are moving look really awkward. He draws like he's just studied mannequins. And the story was vapid, misogynistic, and rather insulting.
MISS X'S RANKINGS (best to worst):
1. "The Galactus Saga"
2. "The Return of the Question"
3. "Adam Strange: Menace of the Aqua-Ray Weapon"
4. "The Pact"
5. "The Girl in the Golden Flower"
6. "My Heart Broke In Hollywood"
Next: the Golden Age!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday Roundup: "Blackest"
New Comics Day 1/27/2010: what I got, how I felt about it, and why you should (or shouldn't) care.
Batman & Robin #7, by Grant Morrison & Cameron Stewart. DC.
This issue was incredibly refreshing, a breath of cool, Altoid-scented air after the hot stench of that Philip Tan-drawn "Revenge of the Red Hood". Beside the relief of seeing a comic I buy in competent hands once more, there's a general feeling all over this issue's pages that Batman & Robin has made a decisive 180 and is taking quick, deliberate steps in the opposite direction of the yawning abyss that was its last storyarc. "Revenge of the Red Hood" was easily Grant Morrison's worst work since I've been reading him (New X-Men #114), and reading this coupled with Joe the Barbarian last week makes me feel I can anticipate his books with the unreserved optimism I carried for him through the last decade once again. Thank God.
But the big story here is Cameron Stewart, who's finally getting his long-deserved spot in the limelight of DC's flagship book, and it's a chance he seems to be relishing. He's pared back the minimalism of his work on Seaguy 2, which was almost Harvey Kurtzman-esque at points in the determination of its unbroken figure outlines and solid spotting of blacks, to incorporate a little of Frank Quitely's thin-lined lumpiness. It's more than welcome, as Stewart's Quitely's quotes extend further than just the way he draws lips and chins, resulting in some great moments.
Yes, I'm definitely going to come forth with the assertion that this is a Nirvana's "Nevermind" homage and a riposte to Quitely's "Purple Rain" callback on issue #6's cover. It's almost enough to make me forget Tan ever drew this book. Whereas last issue Tan's art wore an "I'm-on-deadline-I-don't-really-have-to-finish-this-panel-do-I?" laziness on its sleeve, in this issue there are very definite signs that Stewart is drawing at 110% effort, whether they be little swipes of Quitely's deconstructed approach to action
or perfect, character-defining backgrounds (you know, the parts of the panels that Tan forgot to draw).
Morrison's scripting seems reinvigorated, too. The minimalism of last week's Joe issue was welcome in that book, but it made me nervous that his B&R writing would remain of the sluggish, grunt-fest variety he showcased last issue. Happily not, as we get a Bond-ish action scene full of devil-may-care zip to kick things off, and a high quotient of Morrison's idea-choked A game for the rest of the issue. (If we don't see Dai Laffyn as a villain in this arc, I will be very disappointed indeed. A Welsh Joker? The mind boggles...) The spate of guest-stars this issue feels good as well, as we get some great dialogue that's hardly bothered by the lettering errors, and the promise of an utter melee next issue, as, of course, drawn by Stewart.
Morrison may be hitting many of the same notes as he hit in the first issue of his and Stewart's Manhattan Guardian collaboration, but, to stretch a metaphor, that was a good song and I won't mind hearing a variation-on-theme. All in all, a very satisfying issue that seems to have this book back on track. Good show, gents.
RATING: 8.5 out of 10 (the .5 is for this not tying into "Blackest Night" as I dreaded and feared it would).
Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. Adhouse.
Jesus. Would it be gauche of me to exclaim "Sweet Christmas"? This left-field stunner is a blaxploitation homage that manages to transcend pastiche and satire, achieving its full potential as the latter-day equivalent of what it's imitating.
In this case that's Marvel's Bronze Age klatch of "street level" hero books like Shang-Chi or Power Man & Iron Fist. Afrodisiac's titular bad mutha is more of a Shaft than a Luke Cage, but the blood of that era's comics-literate hack/savants like Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy runs hotly through his veins, as evidenced by his pimp-suited encounters with aliens, Death herself, and thinly disguised versions of Marvel's C-grade characters. This is no nostalgia-trip book, though, or at least not entirely. Afrodisiac is a bravely formalist, balls-out trip into the sleazyass imagination worlds the trash-encrusted New York vistas of those old Marvel books transported their readers to. Entering this book is like being handed a ticket into the brain of a hyperactive six-year-old as he flips through his tattered Hero For Hire collection. These are the comic book-versions of those '70s trash-culture comics, with all the sex and violence and drugginess and questionable racial philosophizing exaggerated to superheroic, benday-dotted proportions.
To accomplish the taffy-like stretching of genre tropes that is Afrodisiac's main trick, Rugg and Maruca to step outside the comics form for long stretches of the book. Instead of panels and word balloons on every page, we are treated to a host of incidental material -- letters pages, covers, t-shirt and animation designs, original art -- from the decade-or-so-long run of this completely hypothetical 1970s comic. Jog made comparison to Al Columbia's recent art-comics terrorfest Pim & Francie, and it does resemble that book in the scattershot, cut-up approach it takes, of which the actual comics are only a part. Both books are certainly more than mere story vehicles -- they are objets d'art. Afrodisiac showcases the full flower of its auteurs' talents -- drawing styles galore, design skills blending into page layouts, consciousness of comics history beyond a single corner of Marvel's superflyest decade.
But if I may, I'd like to offer my own comparison -- this book reminded me most of Brendan McCarthy's issue of Solo. One of the things that comic had which struck me as utterly unique was its fetishizing of other comics. Afrodisiac, too, is a comic about comics, striving not to create a self-contained little world for the reader to be sucked into, but rather to send you scrambling for your Master Of Kung-Fu back issues. This book's aim is to take all the little bits that were cool, sexy, weird about the Bronze Age's exploitation-style comics, and make a comic that contains nothing but them -- a comic where the main character and plotline is that very weirdness. A celebration.
It's a raging success. Rugg is certainly capable of skillfully approximating the look of Marvel in the '70s, as evidenced by Afrodisiac's faux-Steranko title pages, as well as the Brother Voodoo short he and Maruca did a few months back for Strange Tales -- basically an Afrodisiac story in all but name.
But in this book he doesn't go quite as far into copying that Gene Colan look, retaining a small something of the modern in his drawing. In many places, the closest comparison to be made is with Dan Clowes, another nostalgia freak who creates today's classics by tunneling deep into yesterday's filth.
The effect of the modern alt-comics influence is to turn the '70s tropes into amplifiers for Rugg's own expression, rather than blankets underneath which to hide his style. Indeed, newsprint and off-register colors have rarely looked so good -- what were once unfortunate side effects of comics' cheap printing process are here reclaimed on glossy paper as essential elements of the dizzying funk exuded by the newsstand thrillers of yesteryear.
The art-book style assemblage of Afrodisiac does more than just attest to all the different styles Rugg can draw in, though -- it does serious things to the book's structure. The amount of actual comics packaged in Afrodisiac is relatively slight -- eight short stories, only one of them approaching the length of the typical pamphlet. But the incidental material does more than compensate. The cover gallery takes us on a journey through the entire run of the comic, giving us Afrodisiac's secret history (including stints as a romance book, a glossy monster mag, and a Love & Rockets-ish alternative comic), while also coding the information of entire stories into striking single images. Some are classic comicky-type covers, where you get all you need to know up front...
... others, gag covers that approach the efficiency of one-panel newspaper spots...
... others still, testaments to the changing styles time brought the fictional series through.
And let's not forget the plethora of scissored-out story panels, which also boil down pages of plot to the single necessary images. Yes, Afrodisiac and Richard Nixon were on a tag wresting team together.
It turns the economy of actual comics material into an asset. In between the funky-fresh genre stories, you're treated to condensed versions of (just to pick a few) the '80s Afrodisiac manga, the crossover epic between our man and his kung-fu counterpart Dragon Fly, and the original art for an unused time-travel adventure's cover, complete with pasted-up indicia. It's world-building of a different kind, an exercise that makes you believe in the Afrodisiac comic's reality, rather than that of the character and tropes within it.
In the thick of such an intoxicating brew the stories, the comics themselves, could easily become forgettable, but virtually every short adventure rises out of the book's cauldron to be counted as a lively, engaging artifact. They all subscribe to the same basic formula, though that works quite well as Bronze Age verisimilitude; however, each one contains doses of strangeness or originality that keep them from all fading into one another. Whether it's the sudden adoption of a turn-the-book-on-its-side vertical orientation, the phasing in and out of retro color filters, the abrasion of Rugg and Maruca's brazen take on the 1970s' approach to race in fiction, or the increasingly ersatz nature of the villain encounters, every story keeps you slightly off-balance amidst the chocolatey groove of the book as a whole.
There are things being innovated within these panel borders, too, whether they're a great take on sound effects
or just a new way to draw cars speeding by.
Innovation mixed in with nostalgia not for the reality of yesterday, but for our strange memories of it. It's a recipe for comics that are not only fun and catchy as hell, but that show their readers a thing or two they haven't seen before. It's the recipe for Afrodisiac... bitch.
RATING: 9 out of 10 (10 would be a comic that's on like the Krazy Kat level, but damn if this didn't come close at points).
Batman & Robin #7, by Grant Morrison & Cameron Stewart. DC.
This issue was incredibly refreshing, a breath of cool, Altoid-scented air after the hot stench of that Philip Tan-drawn "Revenge of the Red Hood". Beside the relief of seeing a comic I buy in competent hands once more, there's a general feeling all over this issue's pages that Batman & Robin has made a decisive 180 and is taking quick, deliberate steps in the opposite direction of the yawning abyss that was its last storyarc. "Revenge of the Red Hood" was easily Grant Morrison's worst work since I've been reading him (New X-Men #114), and reading this coupled with Joe the Barbarian last week makes me feel I can anticipate his books with the unreserved optimism I carried for him through the last decade once again. Thank God.
But the big story here is Cameron Stewart, who's finally getting his long-deserved spot in the limelight of DC's flagship book, and it's a chance he seems to be relishing. He's pared back the minimalism of his work on Seaguy 2, which was almost Harvey Kurtzman-esque at points in the determination of its unbroken figure outlines and solid spotting of blacks, to incorporate a little of Frank Quitely's thin-lined lumpiness. It's more than welcome, as Stewart's Quitely's quotes extend further than just the way he draws lips and chins, resulting in some great moments.
Yes, I'm definitely going to come forth with the assertion that this is a Nirvana's "Nevermind" homage and a riposte to Quitely's "Purple Rain" callback on issue #6's cover. It's almost enough to make me forget Tan ever drew this book. Whereas last issue Tan's art wore an "I'm-on-deadline-I-don't-really-have-to-finish-this-panel-do-I?" laziness on its sleeve, in this issue there are very definite signs that Stewart is drawing at 110% effort, whether they be little swipes of Quitely's deconstructed approach to action
or perfect, character-defining backgrounds (you know, the parts of the panels that Tan forgot to draw).
Morrison's scripting seems reinvigorated, too. The minimalism of last week's Joe issue was welcome in that book, but it made me nervous that his B&R writing would remain of the sluggish, grunt-fest variety he showcased last issue. Happily not, as we get a Bond-ish action scene full of devil-may-care zip to kick things off, and a high quotient of Morrison's idea-choked A game for the rest of the issue. (If we don't see Dai Laffyn as a villain in this arc, I will be very disappointed indeed. A Welsh Joker? The mind boggles...) The spate of guest-stars this issue feels good as well, as we get some great dialogue that's hardly bothered by the lettering errors, and the promise of an utter melee next issue, as, of course, drawn by Stewart.
Morrison may be hitting many of the same notes as he hit in the first issue of his and Stewart's Manhattan Guardian collaboration, but, to stretch a metaphor, that was a good song and I won't mind hearing a variation-on-theme. All in all, a very satisfying issue that seems to have this book back on track. Good show, gents.
RATING: 8.5 out of 10 (the .5 is for this not tying into "Blackest Night" as I dreaded and feared it would).
Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. Adhouse.
Jesus. Would it be gauche of me to exclaim "Sweet Christmas"? This left-field stunner is a blaxploitation homage that manages to transcend pastiche and satire, achieving its full potential as the latter-day equivalent of what it's imitating.
In this case that's Marvel's Bronze Age klatch of "street level" hero books like Shang-Chi or Power Man & Iron Fist. Afrodisiac's titular bad mutha is more of a Shaft than a Luke Cage, but the blood of that era's comics-literate hack/savants like Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy runs hotly through his veins, as evidenced by his pimp-suited encounters with aliens, Death herself, and thinly disguised versions of Marvel's C-grade characters. This is no nostalgia-trip book, though, or at least not entirely. Afrodisiac is a bravely formalist, balls-out trip into the sleazyass imagination worlds the trash-encrusted New York vistas of those old Marvel books transported their readers to. Entering this book is like being handed a ticket into the brain of a hyperactive six-year-old as he flips through his tattered Hero For Hire collection. These are the comic book-versions of those '70s trash-culture comics, with all the sex and violence and drugginess and questionable racial philosophizing exaggerated to superheroic, benday-dotted proportions.
To accomplish the taffy-like stretching of genre tropes that is Afrodisiac's main trick, Rugg and Maruca to step outside the comics form for long stretches of the book. Instead of panels and word balloons on every page, we are treated to a host of incidental material -- letters pages, covers, t-shirt and animation designs, original art -- from the decade-or-so-long run of this completely hypothetical 1970s comic. Jog made comparison to Al Columbia's recent art-comics terrorfest Pim & Francie, and it does resemble that book in the scattershot, cut-up approach it takes, of which the actual comics are only a part. Both books are certainly more than mere story vehicles -- they are objets d'art. Afrodisiac showcases the full flower of its auteurs' talents -- drawing styles galore, design skills blending into page layouts, consciousness of comics history beyond a single corner of Marvel's superflyest decade.
But if I may, I'd like to offer my own comparison -- this book reminded me most of Brendan McCarthy's issue of Solo. One of the things that comic had which struck me as utterly unique was its fetishizing of other comics. Afrodisiac, too, is a comic about comics, striving not to create a self-contained little world for the reader to be sucked into, but rather to send you scrambling for your Master Of Kung-Fu back issues. This book's aim is to take all the little bits that were cool, sexy, weird about the Bronze Age's exploitation-style comics, and make a comic that contains nothing but them -- a comic where the main character and plotline is that very weirdness. A celebration.
It's a raging success. Rugg is certainly capable of skillfully approximating the look of Marvel in the '70s, as evidenced by Afrodisiac's faux-Steranko title pages, as well as the Brother Voodoo short he and Maruca did a few months back for Strange Tales -- basically an Afrodisiac story in all but name.
But in this book he doesn't go quite as far into copying that Gene Colan look, retaining a small something of the modern in his drawing. In many places, the closest comparison to be made is with Dan Clowes, another nostalgia freak who creates today's classics by tunneling deep into yesterday's filth.
The effect of the modern alt-comics influence is to turn the '70s tropes into amplifiers for Rugg's own expression, rather than blankets underneath which to hide his style. Indeed, newsprint and off-register colors have rarely looked so good -- what were once unfortunate side effects of comics' cheap printing process are here reclaimed on glossy paper as essential elements of the dizzying funk exuded by the newsstand thrillers of yesteryear.
The art-book style assemblage of Afrodisiac does more than just attest to all the different styles Rugg can draw in, though -- it does serious things to the book's structure. The amount of actual comics packaged in Afrodisiac is relatively slight -- eight short stories, only one of them approaching the length of the typical pamphlet. But the incidental material does more than compensate. The cover gallery takes us on a journey through the entire run of the comic, giving us Afrodisiac's secret history (including stints as a romance book, a glossy monster mag, and a Love & Rockets-ish alternative comic), while also coding the information of entire stories into striking single images. Some are classic comicky-type covers, where you get all you need to know up front...
... others, gag covers that approach the efficiency of one-panel newspaper spots...
... others still, testaments to the changing styles time brought the fictional series through.
And let's not forget the plethora of scissored-out story panels, which also boil down pages of plot to the single necessary images. Yes, Afrodisiac and Richard Nixon were on a tag wresting team together.
It turns the economy of actual comics material into an asset. In between the funky-fresh genre stories, you're treated to condensed versions of (just to pick a few) the '80s Afrodisiac manga, the crossover epic between our man and his kung-fu counterpart Dragon Fly, and the original art for an unused time-travel adventure's cover, complete with pasted-up indicia. It's world-building of a different kind, an exercise that makes you believe in the Afrodisiac comic's reality, rather than that of the character and tropes within it.
In the thick of such an intoxicating brew the stories, the comics themselves, could easily become forgettable, but virtually every short adventure rises out of the book's cauldron to be counted as a lively, engaging artifact. They all subscribe to the same basic formula, though that works quite well as Bronze Age verisimilitude; however, each one contains doses of strangeness or originality that keep them from all fading into one another. Whether it's the sudden adoption of a turn-the-book-on-its-side vertical orientation, the phasing in and out of retro color filters, the abrasion of Rugg and Maruca's brazen take on the 1970s' approach to race in fiction, or the increasingly ersatz nature of the villain encounters, every story keeps you slightly off-balance amidst the chocolatey groove of the book as a whole.
There are things being innovated within these panel borders, too, whether they're a great take on sound effects
or just a new way to draw cars speeding by.
Innovation mixed in with nostalgia not for the reality of yesterday, but for our strange memories of it. It's a recipe for comics that are not only fun and catchy as hell, but that show their readers a thing or two they haven't seen before. It's the recipe for Afrodisiac... bitch.
RATING: 9 out of 10 (10 would be a comic that's on like the Krazy Kat level, but damn if this didn't come close at points).
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A Blog Post About A Cartoon About A Comic
Review: "The Late Mr. Kent"
Superman, for all that he is the most recognizable fictional character in America, has fled pop culture – his recent movie such a resounding disappointment as to torpedo hope for any more in its vein, his television show an unrecognizable, grotesque parody, his presence hardly felt these days even in the comic books that bear his name. The Man of Steel’s stock has rarely been lower, which is why now is a good time to examine it.
Since the 1970s saw a severe contraction of the comic book marketplace and a phenomenally successful big-screen debut for Superman, the attitude of his owners DC and Time Warner has been thus: such a big character’s natural place is the movies. The comic books have slowly been reduced to a bizarre, very popular form of copyright maintenance, an idea-farm that will occasionally permit addition to the Superman mythos, but no subtractions or changes. Superman must remain unsullied for the silver screen, whether he resides there for the moment, or (as has more frequently been the case) not. As such, when examining the state of the character and all the baggage he carries on his spandexed shoulders, the moving pictures have perhaps always been a better place to look than the comics. Comics are too weird, too quirky a place for Superman the mass media icon – they are the natural environment of the auteur rather than the unwieldy production team, and despite Superman’s origin in comics, he has flown to some of his highest heights onscreen.
However, Superman’s sequential-art heritage determines much about his portrayal in the pictures. If comics have acted as Superman’s “R&D department” rather than his spot in the limelight, this is not to say their role in the creation of everything we know as Superman has been anything but pivotal. In developing the Superman mythos, serialized comics have given the world one 20-or-so-page chunk of story at a time for the past 70-plus years. So much water has passed under the bridge that Superman and comics form that the character has naturally evolved to fit best in comics and comics-style storytelling and scenarios. This is why his movies fail more often than succeed, why the multi-part epic crossovers never seem quite right when applied to him. Superman is the favorite son of the pamphlet comic, and its length, economy, and storytelling style have evolved (and evolved him) to fit perfectly. Perhaps one day someone at WB will realize this and act accordingly… but I digress.
A character groomed for the mass media, but best portrayed in quick, absorbable bursts: perhaps the TV show was always the best home for Superman, and more specifically the animated TV show. Here the succinct storytelling needs of the character could be fulfilled while the profit-turning needs of his corporate owners were also satisfied; here he could be stripped of the strangeness that the comics medium holds for those unused to reading it while still receiving the high dosages of pure art that have sustained him for so long. Superman has had many TV shows, and undoubtedly there will be many more. Most have adhered to a very high standard of quality. But one rises above the rest.
In comics criticism it is never anything less than high fashion to call Superman a static anachronism, a corporate-owned, editorially-controlled, focus-grouped franchise, more property than character, weighed down so heavily by seventy years of backstory that it has become impossible to tell a new and relevant story starring the Last Son of Krypton. There is truth to this characterization, except for the last bit. It only takes artists to make art, and like with any other corporate franchise, on Superman artists can be few and far between. Superman’s naysayers, no matter how intellectualized their arguments, would do well to direct their attention to “The Late Mr. Kent,” episode 35 of the “Superman” animated series that ran from 1996 to 2000. No mere kids’ cartoon, “The Late Mr. Kent” showcases true achievement in art and incredible depth and nuance of storytelling while still deftly functioning as a 20-and-a-half minute childrens’ show. Brilliantly subversive, it contains the most noncommercial free expression and pure artistry that has ever made it into Superman products outside of comics’ safe haven.
Opening with the episode’s ominous title, itself a subtle nod to the notion that the Superman character is the product of an antiquated world, the narrative begins with a scene of Clark Kent's funeral. Paradoxically, Superman watches the proceedings from far away. His narration takes us back to where the story began: with Kent interviewing a convicted murderer, a few days away from dying for his crimes, but adamant that he was wrongfully accused. Clark/Superman is impressed with the man, and decides to requisition his trial transcripts from the case’s lead detective, Bowman. Looking over the transcripts back at the office, Clark is admonished by Lois Lane that he is wasting his time, that the conviction is in place and out of his hands.
A cold vision suddenly gets colder. The same plucky gal reporter known for standing up to injustice now swishes out onto city streets for a bite to eat after telling her co-worker that the sensible course of action would be to let a man die. This is the world of today, and this depiction of Superman’s city of Metropolis has grey skies that neatly offset the monolithic concrete buildings and chilly art deco glass arcs. Here, the Metropolis police headquarters looks like a functionary building out of Nazi Germany, complete with austere coat of arms. This Clark is a beaten-down newshound with everything set against his righteous path. This Lois sleeps in a high-ceilinged room beneath a poster for the German industrial noise band Einsturzende Neubauten. And this cartoon’s generation of children are being given a vision of a vastly different existence than those of the Fleischer Studios days – an existence, however, that has unmistakable parallels in the real world.
Looking over the transcripts, Clark discovers that proof of the prisoner’s innocence resides on a years-old computer disc stored in a pizza joint. Visions of Metropolis’ squalorous ghettoes assail the viewer. Once again the message is that this could be your real life – but the landscape of “The Late Mr. Kent” is not an aspirational one, it is the aspects of the world around us which we are trying to forget.
Driving to deliver the disc to the Governor, Clark is car bombed in an act of violence so lacking in glamour or fantasy it could have come from the evening news. “I could have flown the evidence to the Governor as Superman…” the narration muses “but I wanted this to be Clark’s victory.” Suddenly the notion of Clark as “the man who could be you” is given a disturbing twist. This Clark is powerless, vulnerable to designs on his unwitting life. In order to preserve his secret identity, Superman must stage Clark’s funeral and give up his human side. The message is as cynical as could be: humans fail in this world, and only the immortal Superman can actually achieve good when he tries. Other humanitarians end up in the same crumpled, twisted car wrecks as the real-life martyrs. When Superman flies to his/Clark’s apartment to pick up what clues he can, the apartment too is bombed.
Were it not for the cartoon’s virtuoso, Kirbyist animation and tightly wound plot, retreat from this world would seem a natural impulse. Escapist entertainment is only palatable when the escape is to something better. However, the cartoon’s visuals are like a silken pillow the viewer is borne on through the gloom of the episode’s subject matter. Whether it’s the expert staging of Lois and the detective on the staircase or the Krigstein influence evident every time Bowman makes a facial expression – every time he comes on screen, actually – or the monochrome moment of the car bombing or the rolling rhythm of silence and impact as Superman confronts a missile-equipped helicopter, “The Late Mr. Kent” positively drips with capital-A art, standout sequences to rival pretty much any virtuosity displayed in the Superman comics.
The trail leads back to Detective Bowman, who is soon implicated by Lois not only as the bomber but as the murderer in the case Clark was investigating. The patsy is cleared. Superman reappears as Clark, explaining that he faked his own death in the car bombing to avoid further danger. It feels like a real-world happy ending, gritty and true-to-life, yet morally very satisfying. But the cartoon isn’t over.
Detective Bowman takes his seat in the gas chamber. He hunches over, defeated and terrified. Drops of sweat roll down his forehead. “How could he have survived that car bomb?” he mutters. Clarity hits. “He’s Superman!”
Then a hand pushes a lever and the whooshing hiss of cyanide gas fills the screen with blackness. The death penalty is visualized as the embodiment of the justice Superman delivers. Killing is acceptable – but only when it is deemed morally right. It’s the furthest into these issues a Superman story has ever gone, probably the furthest Superman can go before his stories begin seriously alienating people. Paradoxically, it’s an episode in one of the biggest media platforms the character has ever enjoyed. It’s what I watched as a kid on the show that taught me wrong from right. It’s one of the strangest pieces of American pop culture ever created, right up there with Jack Cole’s Plastic Man and Steve Ditko’s Question stories. It’s a masterpiece, and probably the essential Superman story of the last three decades of the 20th century. It’s something you need to see.
Superman, for all that he is the most recognizable fictional character in America, has fled pop culture – his recent movie such a resounding disappointment as to torpedo hope for any more in its vein, his television show an unrecognizable, grotesque parody, his presence hardly felt these days even in the comic books that bear his name. The Man of Steel’s stock has rarely been lower, which is why now is a good time to examine it.
Since the 1970s saw a severe contraction of the comic book marketplace and a phenomenally successful big-screen debut for Superman, the attitude of his owners DC and Time Warner has been thus: such a big character’s natural place is the movies. The comic books have slowly been reduced to a bizarre, very popular form of copyright maintenance, an idea-farm that will occasionally permit addition to the Superman mythos, but no subtractions or changes. Superman must remain unsullied for the silver screen, whether he resides there for the moment, or (as has more frequently been the case) not. As such, when examining the state of the character and all the baggage he carries on his spandexed shoulders, the moving pictures have perhaps always been a better place to look than the comics. Comics are too weird, too quirky a place for Superman the mass media icon – they are the natural environment of the auteur rather than the unwieldy production team, and despite Superman’s origin in comics, he has flown to some of his highest heights onscreen.
However, Superman’s sequential-art heritage determines much about his portrayal in the pictures. If comics have acted as Superman’s “R&D department” rather than his spot in the limelight, this is not to say their role in the creation of everything we know as Superman has been anything but pivotal. In developing the Superman mythos, serialized comics have given the world one 20-or-so-page chunk of story at a time for the past 70-plus years. So much water has passed under the bridge that Superman and comics form that the character has naturally evolved to fit best in comics and comics-style storytelling and scenarios. This is why his movies fail more often than succeed, why the multi-part epic crossovers never seem quite right when applied to him. Superman is the favorite son of the pamphlet comic, and its length, economy, and storytelling style have evolved (and evolved him) to fit perfectly. Perhaps one day someone at WB will realize this and act accordingly… but I digress.
A character groomed for the mass media, but best portrayed in quick, absorbable bursts: perhaps the TV show was always the best home for Superman, and more specifically the animated TV show. Here the succinct storytelling needs of the character could be fulfilled while the profit-turning needs of his corporate owners were also satisfied; here he could be stripped of the strangeness that the comics medium holds for those unused to reading it while still receiving the high dosages of pure art that have sustained him for so long. Superman has had many TV shows, and undoubtedly there will be many more. Most have adhered to a very high standard of quality. But one rises above the rest.
In comics criticism it is never anything less than high fashion to call Superman a static anachronism, a corporate-owned, editorially-controlled, focus-grouped franchise, more property than character, weighed down so heavily by seventy years of backstory that it has become impossible to tell a new and relevant story starring the Last Son of Krypton. There is truth to this characterization, except for the last bit. It only takes artists to make art, and like with any other corporate franchise, on Superman artists can be few and far between. Superman’s naysayers, no matter how intellectualized their arguments, would do well to direct their attention to “The Late Mr. Kent,” episode 35 of the “Superman” animated series that ran from 1996 to 2000. No mere kids’ cartoon, “The Late Mr. Kent” showcases true achievement in art and incredible depth and nuance of storytelling while still deftly functioning as a 20-and-a-half minute childrens’ show. Brilliantly subversive, it contains the most noncommercial free expression and pure artistry that has ever made it into Superman products outside of comics’ safe haven.
Opening with the episode’s ominous title, itself a subtle nod to the notion that the Superman character is the product of an antiquated world, the narrative begins with a scene of Clark Kent's funeral. Paradoxically, Superman watches the proceedings from far away. His narration takes us back to where the story began: with Kent interviewing a convicted murderer, a few days away from dying for his crimes, but adamant that he was wrongfully accused. Clark/Superman is impressed with the man, and decides to requisition his trial transcripts from the case’s lead detective, Bowman. Looking over the transcripts back at the office, Clark is admonished by Lois Lane that he is wasting his time, that the conviction is in place and out of his hands.
A cold vision suddenly gets colder. The same plucky gal reporter known for standing up to injustice now swishes out onto city streets for a bite to eat after telling her co-worker that the sensible course of action would be to let a man die. This is the world of today, and this depiction of Superman’s city of Metropolis has grey skies that neatly offset the monolithic concrete buildings and chilly art deco glass arcs. Here, the Metropolis police headquarters looks like a functionary building out of Nazi Germany, complete with austere coat of arms. This Clark is a beaten-down newshound with everything set against his righteous path. This Lois sleeps in a high-ceilinged room beneath a poster for the German industrial noise band Einsturzende Neubauten. And this cartoon’s generation of children are being given a vision of a vastly different existence than those of the Fleischer Studios days – an existence, however, that has unmistakable parallels in the real world.
Looking over the transcripts, Clark discovers that proof of the prisoner’s innocence resides on a years-old computer disc stored in a pizza joint. Visions of Metropolis’ squalorous ghettoes assail the viewer. Once again the message is that this could be your real life – but the landscape of “The Late Mr. Kent” is not an aspirational one, it is the aspects of the world around us which we are trying to forget.
Driving to deliver the disc to the Governor, Clark is car bombed in an act of violence so lacking in glamour or fantasy it could have come from the evening news. “I could have flown the evidence to the Governor as Superman…” the narration muses “but I wanted this to be Clark’s victory.” Suddenly the notion of Clark as “the man who could be you” is given a disturbing twist. This Clark is powerless, vulnerable to designs on his unwitting life. In order to preserve his secret identity, Superman must stage Clark’s funeral and give up his human side. The message is as cynical as could be: humans fail in this world, and only the immortal Superman can actually achieve good when he tries. Other humanitarians end up in the same crumpled, twisted car wrecks as the real-life martyrs. When Superman flies to his/Clark’s apartment to pick up what clues he can, the apartment too is bombed.
Were it not for the cartoon’s virtuoso, Kirbyist animation and tightly wound plot, retreat from this world would seem a natural impulse. Escapist entertainment is only palatable when the escape is to something better. However, the cartoon’s visuals are like a silken pillow the viewer is borne on through the gloom of the episode’s subject matter. Whether it’s the expert staging of Lois and the detective on the staircase or the Krigstein influence evident every time Bowman makes a facial expression – every time he comes on screen, actually – or the monochrome moment of the car bombing or the rolling rhythm of silence and impact as Superman confronts a missile-equipped helicopter, “The Late Mr. Kent” positively drips with capital-A art, standout sequences to rival pretty much any virtuosity displayed in the Superman comics.
The trail leads back to Detective Bowman, who is soon implicated by Lois not only as the bomber but as the murderer in the case Clark was investigating. The patsy is cleared. Superman reappears as Clark, explaining that he faked his own death in the car bombing to avoid further danger. It feels like a real-world happy ending, gritty and true-to-life, yet morally very satisfying. But the cartoon isn’t over.
Detective Bowman takes his seat in the gas chamber. He hunches over, defeated and terrified. Drops of sweat roll down his forehead. “How could he have survived that car bomb?” he mutters. Clarity hits. “He’s Superman!”
Then a hand pushes a lever and the whooshing hiss of cyanide gas fills the screen with blackness. The death penalty is visualized as the embodiment of the justice Superman delivers. Killing is acceptable – but only when it is deemed morally right. It’s the furthest into these issues a Superman story has ever gone, probably the furthest Superman can go before his stories begin seriously alienating people. Paradoxically, it’s an episode in one of the biggest media platforms the character has ever enjoyed. It’s what I watched as a kid on the show that taught me wrong from right. It’s one of the strangest pieces of American pop culture ever created, right up there with Jack Cole’s Plastic Man and Steve Ditko’s Question stories. It’s a masterpiece, and probably the essential Superman story of the last three decades of the 20th century. It’s something you need to see.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Wednesday Roundup: 3 Comics, Quick Thoughts
New Comics Day 1.20.2010: what I got, how I felt about it, and why you should (or shouldn't) care.
Since I just finished doing a lot of exhaustive reviewing, I'm going to keep this inaugural edition of "Wednesday Roundup" quick and to-the-point. So get your windbreakers on.
The aim of this series is simply to provide a computerized version of what I liked best about working at a comic store back in high school: being able to come in on the day after the new comics arrived knowing everyone else had read what you had, and picking it all over behind the cash register. So here we go with what I got this week -- a thought or two on each book, hopefully enough to get you going on what you liked about these books, or whatever else you picked up on Wednesday.
Joe The Barbarian #1, by Grant Morrison & Sean Murphy. DC/Vertigo.
Good on Vertigo for these $1 introductory issues -- I would have been there for this comic at pretty much any price, but it feels quite friendly to get something you've been eagerly anticipating for pocket change. Unfortunately, that bargain price is the only thing that kept me from feeling like I got ripped off with this book, at least as far as script goes. Oh, it was a fine comic, well-written, with a few great character moments (how many comics have the main character announcing they're a "predictable stereotype" before the first issue's half over?), but it's a victim of its own advance publicity. Not in the sense that it's been made out to be better than it actually is -- this is intriguing stuff, fully whetting my appetite for more. However, in my eagerness for this book I read every online promo piece and interview I ran across, and in so doing, I learned everything that happens in the issue months before it came out. As such, the inaugural issue of this series was basically an illustrated version of the promotional material -- no shocks, no surprises, nothing I hadn't already heard about.
This is hardly Grant Morrison's fault, nor is it that of anyone involved with the creative side of the book. But whoever's in charge of PR at DC should be a little more careful about what information they let out about upcoming series. I was given enough plot information in advance to be excited about reading Joe The Barbarian -- but the in-story delivery of that info was the entire content of issue #1. I'm left knowing nothing about what's going to happen next, after a first issue filled with nothing new. First issue scripts should be more carefully scrutinized to make sure something unexpected is always left for street date.
Not the best way to kick a series off (for me), but I'm around for #2 regardless. Morrison's writing here is sparer than it's been since WE3, the absence of his usual hyperkinetic amphetamine scripting style casting gloomy negative space over what is there -- a "teen" story that gets to the core not only of how depressing teenagerhood can be, but how those depression-holes can just swallow your life completely. Type 1 diabetes is a great metaphor for the teenage doldrums, and when you add in stuff like
this
it's pretty intriguing, to say the least.
With Morrison's script bordering on minimalism, the clear star of the show here is artist Sean Murphy, whose scratchy, black-dappled linework conveys incredible detail while avoiding any hint of clutter. It's downright elegant in places, with the atmospherics slowly going off the charts as Joe slips into a diabetes coma.
Murphy's detail-obsessed, craftsmanlike "On The Ledge" essay at the back of the book, which he spends discussing basically nothing but why he drew the furniture in Joe's house the way he did, attests to the presence of a serious talent here: he's telling us in so may words that he's going to be thinking through the art for this book at least as hard as Morrison thought through the script. It's an exciting proposition, providing at least a little something unexpected to get me more amped for issue #2 than I was for this one. More, please.
RATING: 8 out of 10 for content, 4 out of 10 for overall reading experience (couldn't they have just started showing sketches or something at some point instead of continuing to reveal plot wrinkles?).
MOME #17, Winter 2010, by various. Fantagraphics.
Story "Resolution", by Dash Shaw and Tom Kaczynski.
This is what I buy MOME for: every issue contains something I've never seen the like of before. A collaboration between two of the anthology's best regular contributors, "Resolution" is a hell of an experience for both the reading mind and the viewing eyeballs. Set in a future where the vast majority of humanity has opted for a Sims-esque video game existence over life in "hard copy", it melds paint, 8-bit graphics, and gorgeously wide-open layouts into a heartrending, gorgeous whole. There seems to be more of Shaw's style in here than Kaczynski's, the juxtaposition of aching love and ridiculously high-concept futures being practically his stock-in-trade at this point. Regardless of who did what, though, it's a very memorable little piece of comics art; a finger pointed at the heart within the void, a story that is to be felt more entirely than it is to be understood. Instant classic-level scifi.
But the story itself isn't really what I want to talk about. There's something else about "Resolution" that seemed very "Dash Shaw" to me, and it comes before the story even begins. The credits line tops the first page of the story, and it contains the part that excited me most.
It reminds me of the way Shaw opened another story of his that I just read; "Cartooning Symbolia" in the recent "Unclothed Man" compilation. There, Shaw also opened with a reference to a mainstream comic:
But the five years between now and then has made all the difference in the world. Where a '60s Fantastic Four reference is certainly interesting in the context of a formalist art-comic, it's also a little cute: showing awareness of the medium's history and giving a tip of the hat to mainstream influences is to be applauded, but FF #1 is about the safest mainstream comic a Fantagraphics artist could give a callback to -- everyone has read Kirby, everyone is influenced by him, he's totally canon, and as such playing up that influence adds little of interest.
It's a fascinating idea, though, incorporating direct acknowledgment of previous masterworks into the body of the story. "Resolution" and its callback to Heavy Metal take the idea and run it to the goal line, the (presumably) bogus assertion that the story was originally created to run in that anthology instead of this one instantly changing the milieu of the story. It isn't a "typical-MOME" artsy exercise anymore: readers are coerced into experiencing it instead as a hard-SF exploration in the tradition of Druillet and Moebius. And you can see the similarities, when prompted: it's a drug-trip-styled scratch at the boundaries of "what is real", complete with deeply psychedelic art and some frigging bizarre, slightly overdone sex scenes. Shaw and Kaczynski are carving out a unique space for their work, a space that lies beyond: both a part of the alt-comics community that MOME is, but also crossing over into the territory of more mainstream comics. These, that crossed-out title says, are the comics of the future. Well done, gentlemen -- I'm on board to see how it all turns out.
RATING: 9 out of 10.
Glamourpuss #11, by Dave Sim. Aardvark-Vanaheim.
What do you know, this book has been leading somewhere! Sim's ramblings about the masters of newspaper-comics photorealism have been pretty uniformly engrossing, but this issue provides quite the crescendo, as Stan Drake receives a request to discontinue his use of perfectly-drawn facial expressions. Sim might not be using typical panel-to-panel storytelling much with this series, but he certainly knows how to orchestrate a cliffhanger -- the panels spiral into the end of a page, spurred forward by terse, almost whodunnit-esque narration, and then... bam! The villain stands revealed in the most shocking comics moment 2010 has given us so far, and he's none other than:
It's gonna be clash of the titans next issue...
Glamourpuss is such a delicate balancing act -- a serious historiography of an overlooked corner of the comics medium done with a soap-opera inflection, and the most sarcastic humor bits to get on the racks this millennium. It's a testament to Sim's skill in constructing each issue just so that the laughs always come where they're supposed to and the history lesson hangs together. This is truly a comic like nothing before it, and the irony is that Sim's creating vital-but-overlooked art as he explores other examples of that very thing.
RATING: 7 out of 10 (8 for the history, 6 for the "Classic Corvettes in Crisis" gag comic, which fell a little flat in my opinion).
Saturday, January 23, 2010
The Compleat D.O.A. --
-- my thoughts on the demise of the pamphlet as a format for comics, as well as my "Best of the Decade" list, can be found here.
Feel free to tell me what you think of my choices, or my dim outlook on the pamphlet's destiny.
Feel free to tell me what you think of my choices, or my dim outlook on the pamphlet's destiny.
D.O.A.: The "Comic" -- Exhibit IX
The ninth and last in a series of posts on my favorite pamphlet comics of the decade
Jonah Hex #35, by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and JH Williams III. Published by DC Comics, November 2008.
The pamphlet spent this decade dying. Everyone knew it, not everyone cared, few did anything about it, and the ones who did tried their hands at evolving it into something that might stand up better against the new millennium. Sometimes this produced interesting results, but sometimes not. None of them succeeded. The pamphlet is still on its way out. Further gone every Wednesday.
Maybe the only way to save it would have been to simply ignore the quibbling about the format's inadequacies, to simply believe in the pamphlet as it stood and produced comics that showcased its greatness, rather than trying to change it into something else.
Maybe they should have made more comics like this one.
Here we are at the end of a series of posts in which I've tried to explore the deep end of the pamphlet, the permutations it undertook as attempts to survive what continues to seem an inevitable death. But the point, the real thing I've been trying to say here, is that the pamphlet is being unnecessarily buried. That it was the very best, and it could still be, if our medium's geniuses only gave it their patronage. Jonah Hex #35 is the most ordinary kind of pamphlet -- standard price, standard page count, a non-anniversary and non-round-numbered issue of an in-continuity ongoing series. The only thing to distinguish it from everything else on the rack that week was its content. Just like it's been for the decades of history the pamphlet's seen through. Just like the other works of genius that this format produced.
In simpler times, when pamphlets were it as far as comic books went, there was a way to do things. The writers would write a genre script that was low on pretention or fat and high on excitement, and then they would hand it off to an artist who knew what he was doing and be shut of the thing, knowing it was in good hands. A method that produced classics that range as wide as this one's -- from "Master Race" to "Flash of Two Worlds" -- is a tough thing to put out to pasture, and as it happens, here it produced one more piece of stone cold comics greatness.
Sometimes in this medium the best script isn't the Alan Moore opera or the Neil Gaiman flight of fancy, but the simple done-in-one comics issue. The story that's perfect not because of its virtuosity but just because there isn't anything wrong with it. That's the kind of script writers Palmiotti and Gray turn in here. It's a classic hard-boiled Western, complete with plot twists, double-crosses, nasty fights, and just the right amount of cheeky character bits. The story is almost crude -- it lurches into a kind of asymmetrical three-act structure, blurting out violence and snapping off memorable lines when least expected, approximating the tone of a vintage tall tale with a shambolic bluntness that at times seems like it must be accidental. It concerns a couple of days in the life of Jonah Hex, DC's resident lone-wolf, bounty-hunting badass, opening up with a gun-battle scene that falls just short of half the issue, continuing through a scandalous encounter between Hex, Marshal Roth, the provider of the bounty for winning said battle, and his wife. A quick, downbeat ending is included more than flowed into, and then the credits roll unceremoniously.
What might be missing in this description is that such a mess of a script is perfectly suited to the kind of down-and-dirty Western comic that Jonah Hex is, making up in crudity and grit what it lacks in schooled slickness. Like a Johnny Cash song, it might not be the prettiest thing in the world -- but it's got soul, a rare thing to find in comics writing.
If Palmiotti and Gray have an instinctive -- even iconoclastic -- understanding of the Western, that's not enough to make a good comic by by itself. Such purposefully atonal yarn-spinning could easily be ruined by a bad artist, or just an unsympathetic one. Fortunately Palmiotti is in high standing with the powers-that-be at DC Comics, and for this issue was able to requisition one of the best.
JH Williams III is a world-class comics artist, but he also does more for the stories he draws than most writers do for the stories they script. If Palmiotti and Gray understand how to write a good Western, Williams understands not only how to draw one, not only how to make all the facets of it shine their brightest, but also how to bring out facets in it that are all his own; that weren't even necessarily always there. He understands the comics medium with a skill that only comes along very rarely, and uses this comic, a random single issue of a low-selling cowboy comic, to cut loose with a murderous ferocity, tearing holes in the already ragged script he is entrusted.
Part of understanding the medium is understanding what kind of story you're drawing, and from page one it's obvious that Williams has his boots on. He drops his usual fine pen line for a crusty, brush-inked action-flurry, evoking John Severin and Alex Toth with linework so grimy you can feel the dirt on your fingers as you turn the pages. It's quite a metamorphosis of style, but it's easy to skim right over it because it serves the tone of the comic so well, and through it all Williams' illustrative grace remains.
Williams plays fairly straight with the layouts here, and it's a good thing. Whereas normally his pages read as more designed than broken down, and thus occasionally lose the flow, here his panels snap to the staccato beat of gunfire, exploding in violent bursts of experimentalism as warranted.
But there's more going on here, a lot more, as we get a four-panel sequence that takes seven pages to unfold, running as an unobtrusive parallel to a sequence where Jonah Hex takes a gang's garrison by storm, rescuing a cadre of marshals hemmed in by machine-gun fire. The sequence in question, however, executed in a very modern ink wash that makes a striking contrast with the rest of the crudely-brushed art, has little to do with that rescue. Instead, it forms a mini-story that gives an
entirely
metaphorical
interpretation
of the events occuring in the main plot. It's a vicious, unexpected burst of pure artistry, something almost no other artist would bother with, and beside emphasizing the drama of the proceedings, it gives a clear message about what kind of comic this is going to be: balls-to-the-wall uncompromising. Not only that, it shows Williams' versatility in how he depicts what happens in a comic. For the classic Western shoot-out, he adopts a rough-hewn, classic style. But for the modern, left-field bits, he draws like a pure virtuoso.
Another style change quickly follows, as the scene shifts to dinner with Hex, Marshal Roth, and his wife Marcy. Tension is palpable -- Hex is ill-at-ease with people, only wanting his money, and there's something weird going on with the Marshal and Marcy -- but everyone is too polite to break it. This isn't the kind of scene you'd see in a Silver Age Western; too slow-moving, too atmospheric. Williams switches it up accordingly, to a slightly more detailed style recalling Moebius' work on Blueberry, which was exactly the kind of comic you'd get a scene like this in. The inking gets more intricate, the compositions get weirder, and Hex's facial deformities get worse as the story gets more adult.
The men move out onto the porch to smoke and drink, and the art gets even darker, more detailed, and grimier -- Tim Bradstreet-esque -- as the plot goes even more "mature readers". Turns out the Marshal is sterile, his wife wants a baby, and Hex is an ideal surrogate. Turns out they've drugged his whisky to make extra sure he'll comply with the plan.
Suddenly Williams' full style bursts forth along with the drug's hallucinations, amplified by Dave Stewart's blazing color work. This is a modern comic now, with a thoroughly twisted modern plotline, and it looks for all the world like one, with computer effects acting like killer guitar distortion --
-- and perhaps the most intense psychosexual image ever published in a DC Comic.
Hex fights off the date-rape before it can occur, and the dawn comes up like thunder as he vomits out the poison.
The conclusion goes back to classic Western territory, as the Marshal plans revenge on Hex but can't bring himself to act, and the hero rides off into the sunset. Williams settles on a fusion between his modern, thin-line style and the cruder style he started the story with, as if the simplicity of the end has been tainted by the shocking plot complications that preceded it. The final panel sums up the conflicting classic-modern flavors of the book more elegantly -- crunchily-inked leaves falling over a delicate ink-wash hawk. The past and the future together, each a part of an austerely gorgeous whole.
It's also about as good a panel as you could choose to illustrate the way things were for the pamphlet in the 2000s -- virtuosic, modern stabs at a venerable format. Artworks worth returning to again and again. The promise of more to come, just like at the end of any comic issue, but -- and from here looking forward it looks to be a sad certainty -- this is really the end. So if it is, and if we find it hard to toast the 2020s with a list of pamphlets because there are none to be found anymore, let these beautiful images the pamphlet has shored up for its decades of existence speak loud against its demise. Here, in our industry, in our medium, in our art, in our lives, there once stood a format that gave us beautiful dreams. It seems that it will die -- it is dying -- it is not dead yet. Let us enjoy it while it lasts, and never forget what it has given to us, even in its waning days. Let us never forget that it can always give more, if only we allow it to.
Jonah Hex #35, by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and JH Williams III. Published by DC Comics, November 2008.
The pamphlet spent this decade dying. Everyone knew it, not everyone cared, few did anything about it, and the ones who did tried their hands at evolving it into something that might stand up better against the new millennium. Sometimes this produced interesting results, but sometimes not. None of them succeeded. The pamphlet is still on its way out. Further gone every Wednesday.
Maybe the only way to save it would have been to simply ignore the quibbling about the format's inadequacies, to simply believe in the pamphlet as it stood and produced comics that showcased its greatness, rather than trying to change it into something else.
Maybe they should have made more comics like this one.
Here we are at the end of a series of posts in which I've tried to explore the deep end of the pamphlet, the permutations it undertook as attempts to survive what continues to seem an inevitable death. But the point, the real thing I've been trying to say here, is that the pamphlet is being unnecessarily buried. That it was the very best, and it could still be, if our medium's geniuses only gave it their patronage. Jonah Hex #35 is the most ordinary kind of pamphlet -- standard price, standard page count, a non-anniversary and non-round-numbered issue of an in-continuity ongoing series. The only thing to distinguish it from everything else on the rack that week was its content. Just like it's been for the decades of history the pamphlet's seen through. Just like the other works of genius that this format produced.
In simpler times, when pamphlets were it as far as comic books went, there was a way to do things. The writers would write a genre script that was low on pretention or fat and high on excitement, and then they would hand it off to an artist who knew what he was doing and be shut of the thing, knowing it was in good hands. A method that produced classics that range as wide as this one's -- from "Master Race" to "Flash of Two Worlds" -- is a tough thing to put out to pasture, and as it happens, here it produced one more piece of stone cold comics greatness.
Sometimes in this medium the best script isn't the Alan Moore opera or the Neil Gaiman flight of fancy, but the simple done-in-one comics issue. The story that's perfect not because of its virtuosity but just because there isn't anything wrong with it. That's the kind of script writers Palmiotti and Gray turn in here. It's a classic hard-boiled Western, complete with plot twists, double-crosses, nasty fights, and just the right amount of cheeky character bits. The story is almost crude -- it lurches into a kind of asymmetrical three-act structure, blurting out violence and snapping off memorable lines when least expected, approximating the tone of a vintage tall tale with a shambolic bluntness that at times seems like it must be accidental. It concerns a couple of days in the life of Jonah Hex, DC's resident lone-wolf, bounty-hunting badass, opening up with a gun-battle scene that falls just short of half the issue, continuing through a scandalous encounter between Hex, Marshal Roth, the provider of the bounty for winning said battle, and his wife. A quick, downbeat ending is included more than flowed into, and then the credits roll unceremoniously.
What might be missing in this description is that such a mess of a script is perfectly suited to the kind of down-and-dirty Western comic that Jonah Hex is, making up in crudity and grit what it lacks in schooled slickness. Like a Johnny Cash song, it might not be the prettiest thing in the world -- but it's got soul, a rare thing to find in comics writing.
If Palmiotti and Gray have an instinctive -- even iconoclastic -- understanding of the Western, that's not enough to make a good comic by by itself. Such purposefully atonal yarn-spinning could easily be ruined by a bad artist, or just an unsympathetic one. Fortunately Palmiotti is in high standing with the powers-that-be at DC Comics, and for this issue was able to requisition one of the best.
JH Williams III is a world-class comics artist, but he also does more for the stories he draws than most writers do for the stories they script. If Palmiotti and Gray understand how to write a good Western, Williams understands not only how to draw one, not only how to make all the facets of it shine their brightest, but also how to bring out facets in it that are all his own; that weren't even necessarily always there. He understands the comics medium with a skill that only comes along very rarely, and uses this comic, a random single issue of a low-selling cowboy comic, to cut loose with a murderous ferocity, tearing holes in the already ragged script he is entrusted.
Part of understanding the medium is understanding what kind of story you're drawing, and from page one it's obvious that Williams has his boots on. He drops his usual fine pen line for a crusty, brush-inked action-flurry, evoking John Severin and Alex Toth with linework so grimy you can feel the dirt on your fingers as you turn the pages. It's quite a metamorphosis of style, but it's easy to skim right over it because it serves the tone of the comic so well, and through it all Williams' illustrative grace remains.
Williams plays fairly straight with the layouts here, and it's a good thing. Whereas normally his pages read as more designed than broken down, and thus occasionally lose the flow, here his panels snap to the staccato beat of gunfire, exploding in violent bursts of experimentalism as warranted.
But there's more going on here, a lot more, as we get a four-panel sequence that takes seven pages to unfold, running as an unobtrusive parallel to a sequence where Jonah Hex takes a gang's garrison by storm, rescuing a cadre of marshals hemmed in by machine-gun fire. The sequence in question, however, executed in a very modern ink wash that makes a striking contrast with the rest of the crudely-brushed art, has little to do with that rescue. Instead, it forms a mini-story that gives an
entirely
metaphorical
interpretation
of the events occuring in the main plot. It's a vicious, unexpected burst of pure artistry, something almost no other artist would bother with, and beside emphasizing the drama of the proceedings, it gives a clear message about what kind of comic this is going to be: balls-to-the-wall uncompromising. Not only that, it shows Williams' versatility in how he depicts what happens in a comic. For the classic Western shoot-out, he adopts a rough-hewn, classic style. But for the modern, left-field bits, he draws like a pure virtuoso.
Another style change quickly follows, as the scene shifts to dinner with Hex, Marshal Roth, and his wife Marcy. Tension is palpable -- Hex is ill-at-ease with people, only wanting his money, and there's something weird going on with the Marshal and Marcy -- but everyone is too polite to break it. This isn't the kind of scene you'd see in a Silver Age Western; too slow-moving, too atmospheric. Williams switches it up accordingly, to a slightly more detailed style recalling Moebius' work on Blueberry, which was exactly the kind of comic you'd get a scene like this in. The inking gets more intricate, the compositions get weirder, and Hex's facial deformities get worse as the story gets more adult.
The men move out onto the porch to smoke and drink, and the art gets even darker, more detailed, and grimier -- Tim Bradstreet-esque -- as the plot goes even more "mature readers". Turns out the Marshal is sterile, his wife wants a baby, and Hex is an ideal surrogate. Turns out they've drugged his whisky to make extra sure he'll comply with the plan.
Suddenly Williams' full style bursts forth along with the drug's hallucinations, amplified by Dave Stewart's blazing color work. This is a modern comic now, with a thoroughly twisted modern plotline, and it looks for all the world like one, with computer effects acting like killer guitar distortion --
-- and perhaps the most intense psychosexual image ever published in a DC Comic.
Hex fights off the date-rape before it can occur, and the dawn comes up like thunder as he vomits out the poison.
The conclusion goes back to classic Western territory, as the Marshal plans revenge on Hex but can't bring himself to act, and the hero rides off into the sunset. Williams settles on a fusion between his modern, thin-line style and the cruder style he started the story with, as if the simplicity of the end has been tainted by the shocking plot complications that preceded it. The final panel sums up the conflicting classic-modern flavors of the book more elegantly -- crunchily-inked leaves falling over a delicate ink-wash hawk. The past and the future together, each a part of an austerely gorgeous whole.
It's also about as good a panel as you could choose to illustrate the way things were for the pamphlet in the 2000s -- virtuosic, modern stabs at a venerable format. Artworks worth returning to again and again. The promise of more to come, just like at the end of any comic issue, but -- and from here looking forward it looks to be a sad certainty -- this is really the end. So if it is, and if we find it hard to toast the 2020s with a list of pamphlets because there are none to be found anymore, let these beautiful images the pamphlet has shored up for its decades of existence speak loud against its demise. Here, in our industry, in our medium, in our art, in our lives, there once stood a format that gave us beautiful dreams. It seems that it will die -- it is dying -- it is not dead yet. Let us enjoy it while it lasts, and never forget what it has given to us, even in its waning days. Let us never forget that it can always give more, if only we allow it to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
