Comic Book Resources

What Are You Reading?

Welcome to What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is blogger Tim O’Neil, who can frequently be found offering insightful comics commentary on his blog, The Hurting. Today he’s using the comics on his reading table to go into an in-depth examination of Blackest Night vs. Seige, and why one works and the other doesn’t.

But I’m not doing a very good job explaining this. To see what I mean, and to find out what everyone else is reading, click on the link below.

Sean T. Collins: Golly, I did a lot of reading this week. First up are the subjects of my three weekly reviews over on my dayblog:

GoGo Monster, by Taiyo Matsumoto: A slow-burn story of damaged children and the threatening fantasy world they may or may not have invented as an escape. Innovatively told and beautifully drawn.

Green Lantern #43-51, by Geoff Johns & Doug Mahnke: The newly minted Chief Creative Officer for the DC entertainment empire crammed so much of his reinvigorated Green Lantern mythos into these event-comic issues, I’m surprised he didn’t give Hal Jordan’s kitchen sink a power ring too. Wall-to-wall craziness and I enjoyed every minute of it. Doug Mahnke’s a real MVP, too. And I’m struck by how different in style and tone this is from Blackest Night proper when read separately.

Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco: Jesus, what a shattering book. After I read it, I just sat there staring at my computer screen for a while before I could collect enough thoughts to start writing about it. Last night when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, the people in this book flashed before my eyes.

Elsewhere, I read a little comic that Robot 6 readers might be familiar with called Strangeways: The Thirsty by Mr. Matthew Maxwell, Gervasio, Jok, and Luis Garagña. I’m slightly biased given that I was compensated financially for this read-through, but I assure you that I’ve never seen vampires handled quite this way before, and handled well at that. The set pieces are memorable and the mechanics of the monsters quite compelling. But you probably knew that already.

Finally, I’m a couple chapters deep into historian John Keegan’s The American Civil War: A Military History. Yes, I’m becoming one of those people who reads books about war. What strikes me most about the “story” so far is that the facts of slavery in this country are so horrifying and bizarre and I can barely process that it really happened. It feels like some nightmarish work of science fiction.

Tim O’Shea: Readers may notice that I like superhero comics that make me laugh. This week’s batch proves it by what I found worthy of comment.

Avengers vs ATLAS 2 (of 4): Jeff Parker-written comedy in the heat of battle moment this week goes to Gorilla Man for catching Cap’s shield and throwing it away from him by skipping it on the water like it was a giant rock. Artist Gabriel Hardman really sells the comedy by the way he plays the scene out with a few panels. When Silver Age Era/Time Displaced Era Iron Man is losing to M-11 and asks: “How is he not losing power?” Parker again, giving Ken the best lines, answers: “Because his armor is filled with more machinery instead of boozy billionaire, bum!”

Justice League of America 42: James Robinson’s penchant for the obscure digs up a favorite of mine, as he ever so briefly features Kurt Busiek’s Power Company in this issue. Did I miss the memo where the Shade was a recurring character in the DC universe again. Understandably when Robinson dropped off of comics radar for several years, so did Shade. Nice to have Shade back, really, and interesting to see him interact in the world of heroes without Jack Knight. In other news, I cannot be the only person that appreciates Mark Bagley allowing the current Batman to smile. The book (I assume in an effort to keep it on schedule) sports three inkers–Rob Hunter, Norm Rapmund and Jonathan Glapion. I wish I knew which was which in terms of styles, but Bagley’s art benefits throughout the book. Don’t get me wrong, Bagley’s a great artist–it’s just interesting to see how his art looks while inked by a variety of folks.

Incorruptible 3: It seems like that Mark Waid’s been waiting a lifetime to get to write an underage female sidekick. Wait — that came out wrong. Seriously, Waid’s penchant for comedy comes out in this series (let’s not forget this guy once wrote Impulse)–and so far he’s giving Jailbait some of the best lines and scenes. Though this issue they break into the Lieutenant’s house, giving Max a chance to have the laugh line. In response to the cop’s rage that his door had been damaged, he accuses Max, prompting the hero to say: “Not me. Little Miss ‘I gotta pee’. I’ll reimburse you.”) The use of comedy disarms me, as just as many times as he goes for comedy, Waid throws in some drama and conflict that reminds you fairly horrific (see any issue of Irredeemable) have made him become the hero, Max Danger. Through flashbacks, it appears Waid will also be reminding us just how ruthless a villain that Max Damage was. Timeline-wise it’s interesting to find out in this issue that the series is currently occurring 37 days after the Plutonian’s rage against the world began.

Power Girl 9: Why do I read this book every month? For the tossaway visuals that Amanda Conner puts in every issue — and yet more than that. This issue, I can’t decide if my favorite scene is Power Girl/Karen Starr talking to Doctor Midnite on the phone is my favorite — it shows one way that both heroes despite all the technology they may access, opt for the simplicity of a phone. Back to the scene, Mid-Nite is in full costume except for his fringed fuzzy slippers. The second scene played for subtle comedy, while at the same time, sending a message about the character is on the subway. Consider that, if you will, our hero can fly–she could get to work in milliseconds. But creators Justin Gray/Jimmy Palmiotti and Conner reveal that Starr
chooses to take the subway (allowing for the second tossaway scene of her throwing a “pervy jerk” off the train). Karen Starr is a hero that craves normalcy in her civilian life and how this creative team goes about showing it, without having the character say out loud: “I want a normal life.” is refreshing.

Joe the Barbarian 2: I’ll likely resume telling you how much I love Sean Murphy’s work when issue 3 comes along. But with issue 2, I have to just focus on how great a colorist Dave Stewart is. He proves it in every assignment he does, but in this issue he gets to do some really funky work, including multi-colored trees and sprawling complicated landscapes that must have been hell to color. Letterer Todd Klein gets to have some fun as well. As much as I love Klein’s ongoing analysis of the art of lettering at his blog, I am grateful whenever I see his name in a book.

Chris Mautner: This week I read Our Hero: Superman on Earth, the new book by Tom De Haven, best known for his comic-related novels like Derby Dugan’s Depression Funnies and (more recently) It’s Superman!

This particular book isn’t a novel, but more a short essay, examining the history of Superman and how and why he’s managed to be so popular over the years. De Haven retell a lot of familiar stories — anyone who’s heard the basic tale of Seigel and Shuster’s woes won’t necessarily learn anything here — and he relies quite a lot on previous books on the subject, especially Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow, but he remains a really entertaining, insightful writer. The book’s worth reading (and it is a quick read) just to get his take on the current state of the comics industry (“To follow superhero comics these days, Superman titles included, is to make a commitment of time and concentration the equivalent of a second job. Which you’ll also need to pay for all of the three-dollar comic books you have to buy just to keep up.”), or delve into his lengthy kvetch about the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie (“Was there a lot of coke on the set, was that it, or was it just what always seems to happen to a movie whenever the source material is comics, rampant Adult Attention Deficit Disorder?”). It’s a fun read, and certainly a must for anyone who’s a big Kal-El fan.

Tim O’Neil: Unfortunately my reading lately has been painfully limited by circumstances. Although I have a number of good books waiting to be read — specifically, I’m looking at a pile of 2009 notables A Drifting Life, The Book of Genesis, and Bloom County 1981-82 teetering on the corner of my living-room futon — I haven’t had the energy for more than casual flipping. This is where I must once again confess my guilt at being a bad comics reader: it takes a lot of work to keep up with the Joneses these days, with so many good comics being released on a regular basis. It’s enough to make you blasé. Most of my comics reading is done purely for relaxation in spare moments during the work week, therefore most of what I read and enjoy these days tends to be pretty frothy.

I’ve remarked recently in a couple different contexts that I’ve really been enjoying Blackest Night despite my own initial reservations. It’s crass as all hell, it’s so over the top that the tone could best be described as grand guignol, and I won’t even try to make any predictions as to how it’ll hold up in collected form six months or years down the road. But dammit if you don’t walk away from every issue of the main series – and a surprising number of the crossovers – thinking that something actually happened that was worth your time to read about. It’s very filling. People who complain about the constant, money-grabbing crossovers in mainstream comics seem to ignore the fact that crossovers are pretty much the optimal framework for experiencing superhero stories these days: sales and fan reaction being what they are, readers and publishers have been trapped in a feedback loop of ever-rising stakes. Books that refuse to participate in the overall mega-narratives have a steep road to climb to convince readers that there’s any point in investing their time and money in a story that doesn’t hold the promise of looping back in to participate in some significant fashion in the next megastory.

DC took their time to build up Blackest Night, and that preparation has paid off in a way that the half-assed build-up to FInal Crisis — whatever your feelings on Final Crisis may be — did not. Even better, it feels surprisingly organic, as if the events of Blackest Night were a natural outgrowth of years of well-received Green Lantern stories, not to mention (as we later saw) years of Flash, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and JLA stories. (Who remembers the methodical build-up to Infinite Crisis, stretching through seemingly hundreds of secondary and tertiary mini-series in order to painstakingly set-up a pile of unrelated and uninteresting plot-threads which were subsequently smashed together in the most haphazard way possible in the actual event?) It’s a cool feeling when all the pieces fall into place, and even cooler when pieces that you didn’t even realize were pieces of the puzzle you were playing suddenly appear on the table: who didn’t gasp when they saw the Specter (momentarily!) become a Red Lantern? Who isn’t dying to figure out just why it was that the Black Lantern Rogues were stopped in their tracks when the Black Lantern ring tried to assimilate a still-living Reverse Flash? And, hell, who didn’t get a kick out of seeing Black Lantern Jonah Hex, even if only for a few panels? It only took them half-a-dozen tries this decade, but DC finally made a decent event.

I have always tended towards the belief that superhero books work best on big canvases, when they can deliver the type of epic, slow-burn-but-huge-payoff serial thrills that remain unique to comics. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have made Marvel’s cosmic books some of the most enjoyable books on the stands precisely because they understand the nature of this kind of big-picture architectural storytelling: they have a small family of books in which to play, but in the context of Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, and whatever miniseries or events that may spin-off, everything counts. I can’t imagine reading Nova without also reading Guardians, and I can’t imagine wanting to, either, because the stories DnA have to tell require more than book. I’m in the tank.

This is the problem with Siege: it barely feels like it has enough story for a single issue, let alone four, let alone the supposed culmination of years of build-up. Bendis has a customary rhythm, and after a number of similar events I think we can say with some justification that these rhythms don’t work for event comics. Siege didn’t have to be bad: on paper, the ingredients could have worked. But it needed to be faster and denser: right now, each issue of Siege has centered around one central story “beat” — as opposed to the multiple beats per page that Blackest Night delivers. The series could have been so much better with some significant changes. First, all the sub-plots and flashbacks in Dark Avengers and New Avengers should have been condensed into the main series. Second, only about half of the “List” books had any relevance to the Dark Reign megastory, and those that did should have been collapsed directly into the build up to Siege, so that instead of a series of unrelated events the stories built off one another in quick succession. As it reads now, Siege is literally only the story of Norman Osborn trying to conquer Asgard, but in order for that to have any meaning they should have showed all the events leading up to this move in a much more coherent and compact fashion. As it is, the book reads like late-era Boondocks, filled with people sitting around televisions reacting to stuff happening elsewhere, or waiting for someone to tell them what to do so they can fulfill their function in the plot.

Imagine if Siege had begun, instead, with the Punisher’s death – Osborn’s harshest move yet against the superhero community – flowed swiftly from there to the events of Spider-Man: The List and the Siege: Prologue book – with Doom vs. Osborn and Spidey vs. Osborn flowing one into another in such a way that you really believe Osborn might just be getting frazzled enough to start listening to Loki despite his better instincts. And then, there are all the other tertiary plots which aren’t even being addressed in Siege but which could easily have added density to a flimsy plot: what about the Kingpin’s moves against the Hood, and Osborn, in the pages of Daredevil? What about J. Jonah Jameson as mayor of New York putting political pressure on Osborn, who he should surely recognize as the kind of authoritarian thug he spent years fighting as a muckraking journalist (go back and read Born Again if you don’t believe me)? What about the Hulk, for goodness’ sake? Sure, he’s got his own event, but if Siege is mainly dedicated to reuniting the Avengers, why not use it as an opportunity to really reunite the charter members of the team? I know they’re probably saving the green Hulk’s return for his own book, but in all seriousness, how much cooler would it have been in the pages of Siege? Osborn reinfected Bruce Banner with Gamma radiation in the pages of the Hulk’s “List,” so they already had a means: have Osborn’s infection of Banner happen in the first pages of the event, and then have the Hulk’s eventual return be a ticking time bomb through the whole story, finally exploding in the final issue alongside the reunited Avengers, the Sentry’s secrets, the fall of the Dark Avengers, and any number of other plot threads. Hell, put Deadpool in there too – the more the merrier.

The point is, Marvel made Siege short because – as they have said – they perceived a growing degree of event fatigue on the part of readers and retailers, and wanted their next “big” event to be shorter and smaller. Perhaps they knew, based on declining Dark Reign sales, that it was going to underperform next to Blackest Night, and wanted to minimize the potential damage — I have no idea. But if the success of Blackest Night proves anything, it’s that there is no such thing as event fatigue — people like events, Hell, people love events. It’s not that we have event fatigue, it’s that we have bad event fatigue. Blackest Night is succeeding because it is meeting and even exceeding people’s expectations regarding what this kind of story should be and how it should work. Siege is a dud because it undersells what should be the biggest event in years. In the case of Blackest Night, I am genuinely excited to read how the story will unfold and how it will end; with Siege, I just want it to be over so we can move on to something else.

It didn’t have to be that way, and that’s kind of a shame. When you have a canvas this big on which to stretch your stories, you should be exploring these ideas in every possible permutation. Blackest Night is getting more mileage than I would have thought possible out of a strong central concept; Marvel, on the other hand, have been telling stories about Norman Osborn ruling the world for over a year, and with Siege they’re still leaving a simply deplorable number of obvious, interesting ideas on the table, untouched. That’s just lazy.

I think the most purely enjoyable reading experience I’ve had in the past few months was going back through Jack Kirby’s original 1970s run of The Eternals. Kirby’s mid-to-late 70s work has been enjoying a steady critical reappraisal for the last few years, and I firmly believe that the Eternals is his strongest work from the period, and perhaps his last truly great sustained effort. The interesting thing about the book is that it works so well despite the inarguable fact that the Eternals are not very compelling characters. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that with the exception of Thena, they’re all entirely useless, less characters than recognizable heroic archtypes. That is an intentional effect, of course: part of the series’ gimmick is that these Eternals have been used as the basis for myth and story dating from the dawn of mankind – so if Ikarus reminds the reader more than a little of any number of other super-strong, stoic Aryan gods — Nietzsche’s classic “blonde beast” — then you’re reading correctly. But the story itself exploits their generic featurelessness by offering up a never-ending parade of classic concepts against which the bland Eternals can react.

Deviant society is far more interesting than stuffy Olympia. Having been destroyed many thousands of years earlier, the remnants of the grotesque Deviant society have been forced into subterranean caverns underneath the ocean. We see busloads of monstrous mutations carried to crematoriums in the name of genetic purity; we see life-or-death gladiator matches between desperate outcasts and suicidal freaks; we see the ruins of self-annihilating fascism, a society in the last stages of a long and bloody war of attrition against itself. The series’ standout character is Warlord Kro, an immortal Deviant whose remarkably long life enables him to perceive the folly of his race even if he is helpless to effect change. He is a most compelling villain: a black-hat who plays the role with a studied disinterest, trading on cultural notions of evil and the Devil to comic effect even as he acutely feels his own damning lack of motivation.

But even more than the City of Toads, the series’ greatest appeal lies in the enigmatic Celestials. These guys may not be quite so scary now after three and a half decades of sitting silently on the sidelines of huge cosmic crowd scenes, but reading their earliest appearances restores much of the glamor. In a word, these guys are terrifying, giant mute space gods with no obvious motivation, near-infinite power, and an incomprehensible agenda. The arrival of the Celestials’ Fourth Host is the catalyst for the series’ events, which essentially feature every living being on the planet collectively shitting themselves at the fact that there are twenty-story-tall aliens poking around the planet like it was a cheap terrarium, casting aside nuclear warheads like their were water balloons.

This is powerful stuff. Kirby’s pacing is brisk enough that the reader really starts to feel breathless, almost as if the end of the world really was just around the corner, inscribed on a giant space god’s outstretched thumb. How would you feel if God and his angels descended from Heaven to judge our world? Jack Kirby thinks you’d be pretty freaked out by the experience, and I think he’s right. (Although, the ability of everyday denizens of the Marvel Universe to dismiss even the most spectacular extraterrestrial events as movie promotions and advertising gimmicks is itself pretty hilarious – I have to admire Kirby for his faith in humanity’s inherent skepticism!) Even next to cosmic luminaries such as Galactus and Darkseid, the Celestials are unrivaled as avatars of pure cosmic fear. Galactus may be scary, but he expresses himself with an eloquence that verges on the biblical; the Celestials don’t say a word. Kirby understood that human understanding of God is essentially one of blind terror leavened with hopeful confusion; his genius was such that he was able to distill the most ominous, ambiguous experience of religious ecstasy into the kind of breakneck pulp narrative than even an atheist can enjoy.