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Review: Detective Comics #1 - #6

2012-03-13T12:00:00Z

Detective Comics is a title that has seen some incredible highs in the last few years. Between Greg Rucka and Scott Snyder it was a book that deserved to be the headliner for the company. As one of the New 52, is it still as good? The answer to that is more complicated than I expected. The things I like about it are pretty good but the things that I don't like are really, really bad.

]]> A member of the staff at my local shop recommended Detective Comics by saying, "If you want a book that's actually about Batman going out and solving mysteries, that's the one. It lives up to the title in that it is about a detective." She was pretty enthusiastic in her endorsement of it over Scott Snyder's Batman, much to my surprise, but the staff at my local shop have tastes that mesh almost entirely with my own and I am usually quite happy to take them at their word.

Having read issues 1 through 6, I get what she was saying. It is, in fact, a book about Batman solving mysteries. I really like that it has shown us almost as much Bruce Wayne as it has Batman. This feels like the sort of book in which we could see Gaff Morgan show up. It also gets points for letting Bruce Wayne be a human being. People are quick to criticize him for being involved with Selina Kyle as Batman but I haven't seen the Internet's seas boil over his nooner with Charlotte Rivers - and that's a good thing! I don't want a Bruce Wayne that has been turned into a crime-fighting robot with a heart of obsidian. I want a Bruce Wayne that is passionate and fierce and still experiences some of the goodness in life that he fights to preserve for the innocents of Gotham. I also like the trend, thus far, of focusing on some of the classics of Batman's rogues. The Penguin is a fun character and I'm always glad to see him on the page.

There are some serious problems, though, and one of the first among them is Charlotte Rivers. There's already a journalist love interest floating around out there - one Vicki Vale - and she even shows up in Batman. I found myself more annoyed by the introduction of her as a new character with an established interest in Bruce Wayne's life than I probably have any right to be but this is the sort of thing that created all the narrative cruft DC sought to shake off with this reboot. Why make a new character when there's a perfectly good one hanging around waiting to be used? My guess is that it's so that Charlotte can be killed off and Bruce Wayne can be given something to angst about. After all, we've had the chance to see the two of them be something like happy together for five seconds and that's probably a death sentence. I might be OK with that, too. There's a fine line between spunky reporter and nosy adolescent sex doll and Charlotte doesn't seem to be able to stay on the interesting side of it. Other major problems include the dialogue, which veers off into tedious drivel from time to time and a touch of emo there that has no place wearing the Batsuit no matter how much I might want a Batman with the emotion chip installed.

All in all, it's not bad but neither is it good. It feels like a throwback and I wonder if that's part of what makes it appealing to those who like it. In my case, I gave it six issues and dropped it from my bag. It's possible that #7 will wind up in there anyway or that I'll come back for, say, #12, but I'm not in a hurry to think back on it fondly.

Review: Wonder Woman #1 - #5

2012-03-08T13:00:00Z

OK, so a couple of unkind reviews from me of late. Does that mean I hate the whole New 52? No, not at all. Does it mean that I only enjoy the new characters? Definitely not. Case in point: Wonder Woman is one of my favorite books of the relaunch. I think it's very good, with strong writing, an excellent ambience and fantastic art.

Read on for why this reboot is the first time I've ever subscribed to Wonder Woman!

]]> A year or two ago I listened to a great episode of the Comic Book Queers podcast in which it was observed that one of the things that sets Wonder Woman apart as a character is that she's the only readily-available character whose motivation is peace. This was, to me, a remarkably clever thing to notice and discuss and ever since I've been viewing her in that light and it's always worked. She isn't driven by an obsession with her past or the defense of her kingdom or the memory of her people or the mission given her by alien overseers or the death of her parents or any of that high-conflict jazz. Instead, she sought to reduce conflict. There's an argument to be made that the same has overall been true of Superman but his powers have nonetheless always been more useful for battle than for not and his stories have mostly been about defending all of humanity from one thing or another. Wonder Woman is the only protagonist I can think of whose powers at one time or another explicitly included the ability to make people speak the truth and that is some truly powerful stuff when one stops and thinks about it.

I have to confess that I find all of this compelling, in part, because Wonder Woman was one of the DC properties I encountered and loved without condition as a child. Lynda Carter will always be Wonder Woman to me and any Wonder Woman that doesn't look like Lynda Carter will somehow be subtly wrong. My point here is that I'm an easy sale when it comes to this book. It doesn't have to do much but be about Wonder Woman having adventures and thwarting conflict for me to get on board. Happily, this book has that in spades.

The main story itself does bear the burden of DC's new obsession with parenthood, yes, but it's potential parenthood and it isn't the main character having it thrust upon her so there's no kid running around on the page taking up precious dialogue and yes I am sufficiently mean that it makes a difference for me. More importantly, the pregnancy that occupies the story thus far, a fun slice of Schrödinger's cat that helps raise the questions surrounding any occasion in which the paths of gods and mortals intersect however fleetingly, makes a pretty great metaphor for that mission of Wonder Woman if we still view her as a force for peace rather than for the continuation of the status quo. A Wonder Woman who seeks to decrease conflict in the world is one always waiting and watching for something to go wrong, knowing that nothing and no one is ever perfect but hopeful enough to pursue the unattainable because she sees the good in everyone and knows this is the best way to draw that out. I've known plenty of expecting parents who found themselves reflexively adopting the same tense posture through long months of fretting and crossed fingers, knowing they would love any child they could have while inescapably imagining the one they hope to have.

The portrayal of the title character in this book is one I find very interesting and appealing, too. She's a warrior, yes, and she is happy to fight - takes pleasure in sparring, even, when she visits her sisters early on in the new series - but is also wry and witty and just as quick with her wits as she is with a weapon. She isn't all brute force and neither is she all cardboard cutout sex-kitten feminine wiles. She's as comfortable in the conversational tone she uses when discussing things with her ward as she is in the more stilted, challenging and challenging tones of her conversations with deities and their half-god offspring. Setting is used to excellent effect, too, as we see locations that occupy old or classical or even mythic corners of the mind's map of culture. There's a strong current of timelessness and history in this comic that works tremendously well to support its task of providing us with a modern hero who comes to us from ancient places and honors ancient ways.

There's a real sense of connection with the Greek myths, too, which is of course appropriate to Wonder Woman and very much in its tradition, especially its more recent iterations. When gods and their offspring appear, they are obvious, larger than life, monstrous and aged, a little tired, perhaps even a tad flustered by the modern world even as they squeeze various bits of it in titanic fists. There's a real sense of gravity to some of the deities portrayed on the page and I love that.

I've gabbled on enough, I'm sure, but I want to take a second to speak to the art, which has been fantastic. Cliff Chiang did the art on the first four issues, and I don't just mean the pencils. He does the inking and gets a coloring credit, too, and that - in my highly uneducated, half-assed opinion - makes for some really engaging and evocative art. The consistency of artist across all those steps of generating the book shows and it lends Wonder Woman a sense of artistic cohesion that not every book has had so far. The reins get handed off to Tony Akins as of issue #5 and the art is still good but I feel like the art on issues 1 through 4 is so good that it simply has to be pointed out.

I know that Gail Simone is a huge ally to our cause, and I very much enjoyed issue #1 of Batgirl, but this book is better in Brian Azzarello's hands than I've seen it in anyone else's. I've picked up an issue and flipped through it here and there throughout my time as an adult reader of comics and never once bought an issue until now. Now, I'm subscribed. I mentioned to someone at my local shop that this is my first time as a dedicated purchaser of Wonder Woman and she got a light in her eyes and nodded rapidly. "Me, too! Isn't it great?" She, too, had the gleam in her eye of the newly converted. This book is very good and if you haven't given it a chance, I think you should.

Review: Batman & Robin #1 - #6

2012-03-06T13:00:00Z

Grant Morrison's introduction of Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne as the new Dynamic Duo was one of the best things DC has published in the last ten years or so, right up there with Batwoman's reboot and some of the titles that made up Seven Soldiers. The book took a nosedive, however, once Bruce Wayne was back in the suit and it stopped being based on the entertaining interplay of Dick Grayson's good-natured inquisitiveness and Damian's humorous impassivity.

I had high hopes for this book as part of the New 52, hoping that sorta-mostly shedding the narrative dead weight of the setting's accumulated continuity would free the character of Batman to be a little more human and that this book could return to some of that high-flying fun. No such luck. Instead we get yet another title about the trials and tribulations of parenting an exceptional child.

]]> It really is startling how clearly DC has acknowledged the generational shift in their readership. Batman & Robin is about nothing other than the relationship between a troubled father and his troubled son. Oh, there's a lot of Batman drapery hung around it in the window, sure, but there is nothing else going on. In theory the story is also revealing to us some of the history of Bruce Wayne's training to become Batman but none of that is terribly interesting or illuminating beyond what could otherwise be communicated in a quick narrative text box and its only purpose as underpinning for the story at hand is to suggest that Bruce Wayne is a guy who has seen some people do some terrible things, make some terrible choices and come up with some terrible justifications for them. Not exactly the sort of news bulletin that interrupts our regularly scheduled programming if you ask me.

The art is beautiful, and I do want to take a second to note that. There are some absolutely gorgeous scenes on various pages but it all feels like wasted effort. The book isn't taking us anywhere we haven't been before. We've already seen a story about Batman (Dick Grayson) and Damian Wayne doubting one another. Likewise for stories about them learning to trust one another and even one about Damian appearing to have gone overboard in pursuit of a villain. This was a lot more compelling storytelling when it was about two people who were not just new to their roles but felt that the tables had been entirely turned: a Robin training a Robin and a psycho being trained for heroism. Now it just feels... I dunno. It feels done. Plenty about the Batman story is timeless and can be retold in infinite iterations without getting old but this story isn't one of them.

I gave it six issues but it's out of my bag going forward. DC is right that the reading age has shifted - I almost never see children in my local shops but I see plenty of 20- and 30-somethings - and maybe there is someone out there for whom this book is a deep and meaningful portrayal of a relationship that has defined their own real life but I am not that person and the book does not speak to me. Again, perhaps I lack empathy for the children of others, but my only emotional response to this book is annoyance.

Review: Catwoman #1 - #5

2012-03-01T13:00:00Z

Oh Catwoman, vanguard of controversy in DC's New 52, what did you actually have for us: a fun, dark adventure book or a terrible and exploitative abrogation of character?

Let the record show that not everyone agrees with me on this but I think Catwoman is a pretty fun title and I look forward to reading more. Most of all, in regards to the much-lambasted cat-on-bat sex scene in #1, I think the hype was overdone and the public response a little prudish. Not everything about this book is perfect by any stretch but it is admirably noir - in its story, not just in its presentation - and I see it as a solid result of DC's efforts as long as the overall narrative gets a couple of tires out of the mud. I don't just say that because Winick is such a long-time ally to the queer communities, either. I genuinely think this book has got some fantastic stuff going on.

]]> Let me just break it down.

The Good

This is easily the hardest and darkest of the noir I'm seeing come from DC at the moment. If the various iterations of Batman have to do with the ways Gotham's dark side manifests as over-the-top supervillains then this book is about the mad tribalism of the city's ordinary criminals who commit comparatively ordinary crimes. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a good solid work of noir is the way its central crimes are so petty, almost base: the old man gets thrown off the train for his life insurance or the older love interest talks the impressionable teen into offing their troublesome spouse. Although Catwoman is slowly - so very slowly - developing a narrative about a larger crime, page-to-page and scene-to-scene the crimes in this are surprisingly small in comparison. I love this because it brings the story down to a more personal, believable level and it gives the creators a wider range of stories they can tell. Not everything has to be about a ticking time bomb or an army of brainwashed minions or a plot to spike the city's water supply. Sometimes it's about fencing the stolen necklace or beating up just one really bad guy and sometimes it's about how quickly things go bad when the simplest of plans go pear-shaped, another of the classic noir tropes.

To that end, the story in this book so far is not fun. This is not a book in which Catwoman is sorta-kinda a hero or out to do good for others and steal a few things along the way or a vigilante animal rights activist or any of the other iterations. Selina Kyle is a burglar and a thief whose primary pursuits are pleasure, profit and revenge. She's not really a villain, per se, either. She does lots of individually bad things, yes, but they seem almost universally to be done to bad people or at least to persons it is easy to find unsympathetic: she goes after mobsters, she squats in the penthouse apartments of the mega-rich when they're away and she targets professional drug dealers when she needs easy cash. This running theme of crimes against other criminals is another nod to noir's recurring elements of betrayal and plans-within-plans. Anyone who's seen the classic noir and neo-noir films Double Indemnity or Diva, for instance, or read Brubaker's Criminal will recognize that characteristic of hoods, first and foremost, setting up another hood to be a fall guy, a dupe or a stooge.

One of the other advantages of letting the story be told across a range of larger and smaller scales is that it provides opportunities for humanizing Selina Kyle. There have been many efforts at that over the years and some of them have been extremely successful - the Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Returns incarnations will always be my favorites - but I found it very moving to see her friendship with Lola and the way Selina Kyle so quickly sees the few people and relationships she really values dissolve the moment she reaches for them, the way she's constantly having to burn down everything she cares for in order to get away. One isn't left with the impression that Catwoman leads a life of pleasurable glamour; rather, that she's incredibly alone. In that regard this is absolutely one of the most mature - in the admirable sense of being thoughtful, contemplative, even sentimental - of DC's current books. Selina's reactions to the tragedies that unfold are human and understandable and I ached a little to see her be happy for just a moment, something I know isn't really possible in this telling.

The Bad

The narration is going to drive me fucking crazy. Winick has written Catwoman's story extremely well but her internal monologue - not always, but often enough - sounds overdone, artificial and way more external to the experience unfolding underneath it on the page. Augh. Augh. AUUUGH.

Also, to be honest, I am a little frustrated at how slowly the overarching storyline seems to be developing. I know it's all out there and literally inescapably in the open by the end of issue #5, but it still feels a little slow. For all that I failed to get hooked on Animal Man, sure, one of the things I admired was how quick it was to get its main narrative onto the page. Likewise, Wonder Woman opens with its main story right out of the gate. To be fair, I often criticize books about being too obsessed with their own complicated metaplot so I do appreciate that this title's issues have had an episodic feel and that not everything is about the developing narrative, but I also feel like it has spun its wheels just a little bit. I can't imagine that will continue to be the case given the last scene of #5, but this impression of the story being slow to start has stuck with me well past closing that issue so I feel it's worth mentioning.

The Sex Scene

Now let's get to the real issue: the last page of the first issue, on which Catwoman has sex with Batman while they're both in their costumes. The internet nearly boiled with condemnation at the time it came out and some of the people whose opinions I most respect were contributing to that outcry. If nearly twenty years of online experience has taught me anything, though, it's that outrage is contagious and opinions are best considered and given context before being shared. Having read that issue and subsequent ones, and gotten a sense of the character Winick is portraying in this book, my reaction to that scene is big fucking deal.

From my perspective, that's a scene in which two consenting adults are having sex in costume. It isn't my kink but that doesn't make it bad. I don't really see it as exploitative, either. Catwoman is not being coerced. Grownup women get to have as much sex as they want with whomever they want to have it. It's okay for a female character to be sexy and to have sex. It's also okay for any character to be human enough to make bad choices or to pull stupid stunts or to do things that are just fine but to do them for terrible reasons. I think that, in light of the mindset and experience of Selina Kyle as it unfolds over the next few issues, that scene is a great illustration of the type of person she is: valuing pleasure over caution, finding pleasure in the extremes to which she goes for pleasure itself and choosing to find pleasure with someone who, if not necessarily safe, is at least no less aware of the risks they take than she herself accepts. In a lot of ways, I think, Batman is the only person to whom she can reasonably turn in search of the vulnerability, aggression and freedom of an anonymous cowl-on-cowl hookup and still feel some degree of safety and a sense of control. The two of them have a great deal in common, in terms of their lifestyles and occasionally their motivations, and Selina Kyle can also be fairly certain that whenever she is alone with Batman she is the one with the advantage when it comes to a willingness to accept risks, go overboard or otherwise walk the line between what might or might not be acceptable. Batman, after all, is the Dark Knight. He might be insane - perhaps even a monster - but he's also observably devoted to whatever personal code restricts his methods.

It's not like the idea of a relationship between the two of them is anything new. It's not like Batman is immune to love or lust. It's not like he hasn't pursued some pretty disastrous romantic parings in the past. It's not like Catwoman is a role model for good decision-making. It's not like their relationship has never been explicitly sexual, either, since last year we saw them toweled and physical in the pages of Batman, Inc. Neither is this scene that far removed from things we've all already long since accepted from other characters in other books - notably from other male characters. The current Batman storyline in at least one book and for several years now in other books is defined by his having fathered a child by falling into bed with a foe. Is this scene between Catwoman and Batman that much more unusual or outrageous than the scene in Watchmen in which Nite Owl II can't get it up without wearing his suit? No, it isn't - at least not in my opinion.

Honestly, looking over some of the objections that were raised at the time I am forced to wonder how many of the fanboys who lit up the Internet a few months ago were simply freaked out by the idea of a girl who fucks.

In response to the various people who have criticized it for portraying Catwoman as this flip, unwise, unfocused surfer on the tide of a short attention span, a headliner character making terrible choices and getting herself and others into all kinds of trouble, I simply say... have they ever met a cat?

In fairness, I want to point out that I do not believe everyone who disliked it is a prude or does so for invalid reasons or anything like that. For one thing, it's all subjective opinion and thus I am no more right than anyone else; for another, there are iterations of both of these characters for whom this behavior would be a significant deviation. Wootini and I were discussing this on Twitter and he put it very succinctly: "the Batman I know and love doesn't do that kind of thing." That is absolutely fair. Most people have a version of these characters that they identify as the "real" one. I like to say I don't hold such notions because I came to so many of these works as an adult but in truth I suspect Batman: The Animated Series or maybe Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns actually are "my" Batman myth, a symptom of which might be those iterations of Catwoman being my favorites so far. After all, I once scheduled an entire semester of classes to ensure I would be near a television at that time every day when BtAS was being broadcast.

Still, I just don't think it was that big of a deal. I think this book is very good and some tweaks to the voice used in writing it and to its pacing could make it great. I think the sex scene was nothing to get worked up about except to say that it was kind of hot to realize she has no idea who he is under the mask but her feelings are so strong anyway. Most of all, I think that if you've let the casual chatter about this book keep you away, give it a try, especially if you've been trying to find a title in the New 52 that isn't about having or mourning or defending a child and is, instead, about being an adult.

Random self-promo: you can always tell me and the world how wrong I am by following me on Twitter.

Show Kevin Keller Some Love Today

2012-02-29T16:04:26Z

I'm taking a quick break from burning through the first few issues of a ton of New 52 books to let y'all know that "One Million Moms" - the same organization that crafted perfect failcakes in their attempt to get Ellen fired as JC Penney's new spokesperson (warning: there's video that launches automatically above the text) - is today urging a boycott of Toys R Us and Archie Comics for featuring everyone's favorite imaginary boyfriend, Kevin Keller.

I haven't gotten around to reviewing Kevin Keller #1 or any of the Keller mini-series from last year and that's an oversight on my part but I've read them all and enjoyed them a great deal. There was one honest-to-gods laugh-out-loud moment in the issue about Kevin having to compete against a computer in a quiz bowl and the idea of turning Veronica into a larval-stage starry eyed fag hag is just freaking genius. I have all things Keller on my pull list at my local shop and I am always genuinely excited to see them show up. Kevin is portrayed like any other kid in Riverdale: bright, upstanding, wise beyond his years and gifted with moxie but very human and just as good at enduring foibles and self-doubt as any other member of the cast. I could have seriously benefited from access to this comic when I was a kid; heck, I'm benefiting from access to it in my thirties. Stop in at a local shop or hit their digital store or the Archie Comics app for iOS and throw a couple bucks at Kevin Keller (and the very kind Dan Parent, who is just a hell of a nice guy) to show a little appreciation if you can.

I just love this quote from the Bleeding Cool article, attributed to Archie Comics co-CEO Jon Goldwater:

We stand by Life with Archie #16. As I've said before, Riverdale is a safe, welcoming place that does not judge anyone. It's an idealized version of America that will hopefully become reality someday. We're sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people.

Review: Stormwatch #1 - #6

2012-02-28T13:00:00Z

I really want to like Stormwatch. I mean, who doesn't want to like it? It's Stormwatch! The Midnighter! Apollo! The Engineer! Jenny Quantum, who is at least a reminder of the awesomeness that was Jenny Sparks! Jack Hawksmoor! I am a huge, huge fan of Warren Ellis' original reshaping of the original Stormwatch book into The Authority but something about this book doesn't work for me. The characters don't click like I wish they did and the art? Ugh. Seriously?

]]> Whereas Animal Man is a reboot that just almost works for me without ever quite making it there, Stormwatch is just plain bad. I love Paul Cornell, obviously, and maybe there are people who just cannot get enough of this book but think Demon Knights is a waste of time - I'm open to that! - but I started out excited about this book and have slowly but surely grown to be embarrassed every time it shows up in my bag at the local shop. When I cancelled my subscription to it last week the staff member behind the counter paused, frowned, pitched his eyes away for a second and then quietly said, as though criticizing the dead at a funeral, "Yeah..."

I'm always primarily attracted to strong characters and characterization and this book's cast feels too muddled and diffuse for it to click with me. No one is that compelling, not even the stars like Apollo and Midnighter. The Engineer is one of my favorite characters of all time but here she's reduced to dithering over whether she should be the team's leader and campaigning for the job in the middle of a fight. The new characters have potential - particularly the woman whose power is to be constantly plugged into and able to shape global media coverage - but they never really take off for me. I never feel like I need to care about them. I never feel like they take on a life of their own that might make them worthy of more study or another chance.

Meanwhile, the art is just bad. I'm not saying I could do a better job and a lot of the settings and backgrounds are genuinely well done but the characters look terrible. There seems to be a basic inability to draw the human form in a way that is appealing to look at for 22 pages or however long. I referred to it as "looking like it was drawn by an 8th grader" and that same staff member nodded and expressed a regret that he had to agree. This book is easily the one I find most disappointing in the reboot. It's lovely to have them back and I'm all for there being more books in which Superman analogues and Batman analogues fall in love and/or bed with one another, sure, but I won't be reading it when it happens. This book hasn't worked for me in the half a year I've given it and I'm done burning $3 every month rewarding it for failure.

Review: Demon Knights #1 - #6

2012-02-23T13:00:00Z

I loved Paul Cornell's work on Knight & Squire and I was very, very excited to see that he was writing Demon Knights and that it featured two of my absolute favorite characters: Etrigan and the Shining Knight. I am thrilled to say that it has lived up to my high hopes. Cornell is a master of writing snappy, acrobatic dialogue that jumps between characters and scenes effortlessly. What I didn't expect was that he could wring six really solid issues out of the comics equivalent of a bottle episode.

]]> I don't even know where to start with this. I love this book so ridiculously much. I have been known to produce reflexive squeals of delight when the staff of my local comics shop present me with the latest issue of a title I particularly love and Demon Knights is definitely one of the squeal-worthy titles.

The standard measures of a good book are all easily met, issue after issue, in this title. The characters are varied and interesting and every single one of them conceals at least a couple of different secrets they'll do anything to protect. Most of them, in fact, are defined by intrigue or a past betrayal, to the point that six issues in we've only seen one "secret origin" issue and yet more than one of them has presented more than one cover story to explain away what others can't help but notice. I can't believe the patience Cornell is showing in unpacking these characters' troubled pasts and motivations. He isn't peeling them away like the skin of an onion; he's unwinding them slowly and patiently and oh-so-carefully like the peel of an apple he's trying to remove in one long, slow, spiraling piece. Mwah. That is the sound of me kissing the cover of the book where his name is printed.

The book so far is about the build-up to and beginning of the siege of a tiny village by a massive army and the defense of that village by seven heroes who may or may not be the titular demon knights. One of them is obviously demonic but the others range from connivers and heretics to outcasts, traitors and a knight on a sacred quest. They cover all the moral and ethical bases is what I'm saying here and they cover them in an entertaining and dynamic way. The interplay between the characters is fun and clever and wry, nimbly cutting back and forth across the lines of slapstick, action, intrigue and heroism. The dialogue always advances the plot or the characterization in some very meaningful way and delights as it does so. Rare is the page that doesn't reveal an action or a motivation that we didn't know before and by gods is it refreshing to read a book so eager to give the mind something to work on.

The art has also been consistently great. The action sequences are mobile, the faces deliriously expressive, the settings like painted landscapes. I found myself studying the roofs of village huts, a herd of horses, arrows in flight, eyebrows quirked in dark amusement, teeth ground together in avaricious grins.

How can one book be this good? This easily completes the trifecta of victory for the New 52. If DC needed to enter three books as evidence in a courtroom where it would be decided whether this was orth their time and effort they would only need Frankenstein, Batwoman and Demon Knights to build a very strong case that all of this has absolutely been worth it. Demon Knights isn't just a solid read; it's a book I would show to a friend to get them back into comics. If you aren't reading it, start. If you can't get the back issues, wait for the trade. No, pre-order the trade. It's worth it.

Review: Animal Man #1 - #5

2012-02-21T13:00:00Z

I spent last Tuesday writing a love letter to Jeff Lemire for his work on Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. but I'm afraid I can't do the same for his reboot of Animal Man. It isn't some fanboy loyalty to Grant Morrison, either, because I've never read his run on the character despite having read about it. For whatever reason, devoid of other context, when I read Animal Man I just don't find myself very engaged. I was really excited to try this title when it first appeared and I liked the first issue but since then it's been more and more of a chore to keep reading. Last week I gave it the axe from my personal pull list because I just didn't care to try anymore.

]]> I wish I could point at some aspect of this book and say, "That, in particular, is what turned me off," but I can't. Instead, it's a combination of this book failing to make it over the bar by just inches in multiple ways.

For one thing, to be blunt, I don't like the art. There's something about it that's too sparse or too simplistic or something. I like art that's either extremely realistic (Batwoman) or very slick and cartoony (Wonder Woman) and this art isn't really either of those. It's a little abstract, and I like abstract, but it just never has clicked for me. I don't get excited about the idea of sitting back and looking at this book and isn't that part of the point?

Another problem I have is the characterization. Animal Man himself is interesting enough. I can get behind the idea of a guy who thinks he's a little washed up and maybe never was that big a deal to begin with who finds himself called upon to do great things. That sounds interesting enough to keep reading, anyway, and that's what kept me coming back this long, but the other characters are at best irksome and at worst flat as a cardboard cutout. The wife struck me right away as being a little too much the harpy for my tastes and her mother, in the one appearance of her that I actually read, was nothing but a stereotype holding a cup of coffee. One of the kids is annoying and the other is creepy. Normally I would see a creepy kid as a draw but this one didn't work for me for some reason I can't quite explain.

Overall, the story never grabbed me, either. It's mostly driven by the main guy - see, he's my favorite character and I literally cannot remember his real name - being freaked out by his daughter's manifestation of the necrotic reflection of his powers of life and this world-threatening force called The Rot and then there's some stuff in, like, the rot dimension? or something? and then the pages are basically just red and brown and start looking like storyboards for a movie about a bad acid trip.

Yawn.

There are a lot of things about this book that are executed with skill and Lemire has become an instant favorite of mine with Frankenstein but I only read the first three or four issues of Animal Man before buying the fifth and then saying with a weary sigh, "I'm sorry, but I need to take this off my subscription list." I gave it several issues and it wasn't worth more of my time than that. I wish I liked it more than I do... but I don't.

Review: Batwoman #1 - #6

2012-02-16T13:00:00Z

OK, this book is also super-good. I get a little breathless when I think about it. I don't have a lot of ways to preface my take on it: I get gooseflesh when I read it. No other book in my bag does that to me. When I said earlier this week that Frankenstein has almost everything I want from a comic, that deep, gut-punch of sincere sentiment and chilly thrill is what's missing and Batwoman is the only book under DC's banner that can deliver it so consistently, effectively and beautifully. If this book came out every week I'd buy two copies. Ten years from now there are going to be people who say that Batwoman got them to start reading comics. It has the power to make new readers out of non- which was a part of the whole point of the New 52.

]]> When the eponymous Batwoman was the star of Detective Comics a couple of years ago I said that I could think of no way in which she does not fit the bill of being Batman's stand-in and I am prepared to say that, by now, Batwoman exceeds it. She's more Batman than Batman and I love it so much.

First and foremost, Batwoman features a lot of really strong and, importantly, mature relationships between the characters. Kate's relationship with her cousin, Flamebird, is a beautifully crafted mirror of the relationships between Batman and so many of the Robins, yes, but it has a life of its own. Flamebird isn't someone Batwoman recruited into the lifestyle of a superhero and she isn't Kate's child, either. The tensions and affections between them are unique to that among cousins, at least as experienced in my huge, sprawling, Southern family: they're not quite peers, not quite siblings, not quite rivals, not quite close, not quite one step removed from one another, not quite competitors and not quite helpers, either. Watching their partnership evolve is fascinating and believable and it portrays difficult emotional hurdles and sentimental strain without turning it into overwrought melodrama. Much like I cited in my valentine to Frankenstein, the emotions these characters feel drive them to action rather than self-pity and that is often the major dividing line between books I like and books I don't. These characters want to be heroes. They want to go out and kick ass and solve mysteries and fix problems. Doing that does't always do them any good, though, as Flamebird's story so shockingly illustrates.

Likewise, the relationship developing between Kate and Maggie is a unique twist on the old Batman/Gordon team. Williams and his co-creators have managed to depict a deep and intricately knotted complex of emotions at work between the two women: lust and manipulation and trust and betrayal and something like a new love. There aren't a lot of comic books that can pull off intertwined action sequences and sex scenes that end in a near-fatal mutilation and an orgasm on the same page but this one did.

The art of course remains unbelievable. Gods, I'm getting gooseflesh remembering it. This book remains full of mind-blowing two page action spreads, visual cues all the more effective for their understated presentation, finishing touches that shock the reader with the thought and creative discipline that must have gone into ensuring they wind up in the corners and backgrounds of pages that in any other book would be dominated by the gorgeous central actions and poses of the characters doing the talking. The pages that seamlessly flow from the emblem of Batwoman to that of Flamebird; the toy Batmobile in the bottom-corner of the scene in which Batwoman bursts through the window of Maria's father's apartment; the way the borders of the panels of that scene are also the folds in Batwoman's own cape...

Gods, I am seriously getting a little choked up just thinking about it! This book is so good! This book is so good that I am getting a little freaked out.

The stories are every bit as compelling as the characterization and art. It does fall into DC's new trap of making every story be about protecting or training or seeking to avenge a child - a consistent-across-the-brand sign of how the comics buyer has aged over time and DC is trying to do something to track that moving target by telling stories that appeal to their parenthood rather than their dreams of youth - but let's face it, the story of La Llorana is also damned creepy and I thrilled to see Batwoman's response to sorrow be confidence and certainty. The whole D.E.O. angle is not what I expected but I am only too happy to follow it wherever it goes.

Bottom line, this book is fine art. It's the Mad Men to most other books' Days of Our Lives. It is a remarkable accomplishment and it had better be selling like hotcakes.

Review: Frankenstein, Agent Of S.H.A.D.E #1 - #6

2012-02-14T13:00:00Z

Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli have given us a gift and there is no way for us to repay them with sufficient thanks. It really is that simple.

No, it's even simpler than that: DC could reboot the whole damned universe every year like clockwork and it would be worth it if it gave us something as good as Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. every time. This book is almost everything I want comics to be and there is no other medium in which this story would work as well.

]]> Let me try to enumerate the things that I love about it:

First, the characters are compelling and interesting and none of them are driven by angst. This is a super-team essentially made up of no less than the Universal Monsters - a wolfman, a vampire, Frankenstein, the (ex-)Bride of Frankenstein, a mummy and a shameless ripoff of The Creature from the Black Lagoon - and not a single one of them spends their time on the page whining about their state. They are, instead, active and outgoing and effective in their work. Oh, there are rivalries and plenty of snark and I love few things in comics more than watching the interplay between the cigar-chomping fratboyish vampire and the loyal, obedient, werewolf who seems ready at any moment to fetch someone's slippers, or the great relationship between Frankenstein and his ex-wife, but the book isn't about these characters' tiresome feelings.

Instead, it's about adventures and big, crazy, over-the-top locations and hordes of monsters and planets that are alive bearing continents literally covered, every square inch, in slavering enemies. It's about a mad scientist in the body of a little girl who loads monstrous heroes into an interdimensional life raft, shoves them through a wormhole and then tells them to kill everything in sight and make it back before the wormhole closes. It's about nanotech prisons inside cities that are, themselves, concealed by being kept at a microscopic scale. It's fun and funny and active. It's a book about the undead, mostly, but the story itself is just vibrantly alive and dynamic and exciting.

Would that more comics were like this!

Also, it's one of a tiny handful of New 52 books that aren't about protecting a child. Huh! The comics readership demographic really has shifted, hasn't it?

Seriously, if you aren't reading Frankenstein then you should be. Do you like outsized action and snappy dialogue and beautiful art and zany stories about mad science gone horribly awry? Run, don't walk, to your nearest comics supplier. This book is fan-fucking-tastic. It is just incredible. Read this book. Buy it in trades when they come out. Give Lemire a back rub. Send Ponticelli a box of chocolates. Do something to show your appreciation. Books like this are decidedly not a dime a dozen and they are worth anything else we must endure in order to get them.

Reviews Incoming! Take Cover!

2012-02-13T20:11:32Z

What, you thought I was dead or something?

No, quite the opposite: I've been reading more comics than ever, grad school or no, and biting my tongue about DC's New 52 until such time as I had enough material to be worth reviewing.

What constitutes enough? Nothing less than at least the first five issues. You see, the Internet's self-induced and -enforcing model of insta-reviews so that readers can be told what to buy or leave on the shelf before the shelves are even stocked just doesn't suit me and it sure as hell doesn't suit an event like The New 52. I'm not trying to oversell DC's event, mind you. Rather, I seek to acknowledge two things about the big reboot last year: first, that it was gutsy no matter the output because anything that hyped and weighted with that much potential for customer backlash is gutsy, period, and second that it needed time to develop its own merits before it could be properly judged on them.

A million blog posts were launched on little more than a first issue of one title or another and a shallow impression of what the future might hold for many of them but what the hell is that kind of review worth? I didn't want to know whether some fellow fanboy out there believed Catwoman was doomed from the get-go because they were freaked out by the last page of issue #1 and, similarly, I didn't want to shoot my mouth off about any of the books I've been reading before they had a chance to prove themselves or die trying.

So, as this goes up I am also scheduling automated postings of reviews of the first five or six issues (however many were available when I wrote them) of the following titles:

All-Star Comics
Animal Man
Batman
Batman & Robin
Batwoman
Catwoman
Demon Knights
Detective Comics
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
Stormwatch
Swamp Thing
Wonder Woman

I'm also going to be posting a round-up of the #1's I read that didn't make the cut, long-term, and the #1's I read and said, "I love this, but I have to wait for the trade," and why. I haven't given up on my non-DC comics, either, but I admit that those have been piling up waiting to be read. Once these are done I have, like, months of X-Factor and Secret Avengers and Young Avengers: The Children's Crusade and Hack/Slash (which is just crazy good and if you are't reading it then there is something wrong with the world - something you can fix by reading it).

It's ambitious, I know, which is why this isn't going up until I've got the reviews ready to go, too. Then, through the magic of post scheduling, they'll go up over the next few weeks for your perusal.

Fun!

Stocking Stuffer: Dispatches From Wondermark Manor

2011-12-13T15:48:48Z

Some years ago it was possible to purchase and read three novella-ish chapbooks of tongue-in-cheek steampunky Victorian adventure prose parody from the store of Wondermark. Those chapbooks are long gone but this year David Malki brought them back in one very large paperback called Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy. This massive tome, so very true to the "feel" of Wondermark, is over 500 pages in length and beautifully illustrated in his signature parody-Victorian style.

If you don't read Wondermark, at least give it a glance so you can see how it's put together. Malki painstakingly rescues half-destroyed print material from that era and, through physical and digital tools, rescues specific images, old fonts and anything else that looks like it could be salvaged and recycled rather than left to continue recycling itself in the back of a library book sale. There are those who have criticized him for destroying the materials he used for one specific project and his posted response reveals a thoughtful, cherishing, even nurturing view of the materials he uses in his work and makes for interesting reading by anyone who enjoys visual storytelling, a medium almost universally inherently rife with derivation and reuse.

That same gentle touch is reflected time and again in Malki's work, even when it's about needless violence. His sense of humor is as often subtly kind and quietly wry as it is absurd and unexpected. One of his most popular gags is a man bent over a rock, a piece of paper and a pair of scissors, screaming, "Stop fiiiightiiiing," a joke which is nothing less than a shouted appeal for peace. The catalogue text for Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy mentions that this book includes "casual mass murder" and I have no doubt that is true; half the joke of it is how surprised so many characters are by their own participation and their ironic glee.

This is highly recommended for anyone in your life who's way into the steampunk fad, especially if you're kind of sick of hearing about it from them.

Stocking Stuffer: Alter-Ego Prints by Danny Haas

2011-12-07T19:31:38Z

Let me guess: the comics fan in your life already has all the books you can think to get them and they don't need more; worse, you are the comics fan in your life and those shopping for you have no idea what to pick up in a comics shop or online. Solution? Something classy that they almost certainly don't have or to which they can easily be directed: alter-ego prints by Danny Haas on Society6.

The attractive Spidey sample to the right is a personal fave but there's really only one that doesn't work for me somehow. Almost all of them show great taste in art and design and they are easily recognized by anyone who's consumed popular culture in the last several decades. The purchase options are varied, too: everything from an iPhone skin for a few bucks up to a framed 26"x38" print for many, many more bucks than the iPhone skin. Way too hip to display anything other than stretched canvas? They've got you covered, though I note that not all options are available for all designs. Haas has a bunch of different pieces and by no means is he the only artist on that site. I particularly like the various riffs on popular culture being done by artist Powerpig though I confess that the name does elevate an eyebrow.

Stocking Stuffer: Promethea

2011-12-05T18:55:06Z

Say what one may about Alan Moore's current ongoing role as The Genius Who Hates Everything Including His Own Genius, he is widely lauded for his past work and rightly so. He also has a ton of work that has not yet been dragged into the mainstream and of which the comics fan in your life might never have heard. I had never heard of Promethea, anyway, when The Boyf pulled out a TPB of the first volume and said, "Oh, here's a book you might like." Like? I burned more midnight oil on this book than on any other in the last decade. I'll go ahead and link to all the books right here: Promethea: Book 1, Book 2, Book 3 and Book 4.

Promethea is about a woman who finds herself possessed (or channeling, or manifesting, or perhaps graduating into) a super-powered alternate persona and struggling to understand how and why this is happening. In some ways it's a retelling of Wonder Woman and in others it's a spiritual/psychological mirror held up to the bulging physicality of Thor. It's got everything: action in the streets, cross-dressing, a slightly dystopian future, previous incarnations shoving their way onto the page and chapter upon chapter of spiritual journey. Best of all, it's all intricately and hypnotically illustrated by none other than J.H. Williams III.

I'd argue that Williams' art on the new Batwoman book is more mature in some ways, yes, but when I read that current title I can easily see his work on Promethea reflected in the big two-page spreads. I can't imagine a better gift for the Kate Kane fanatic in your life.

Stocking Stuffer: Hark! A Vagrant

2011-12-02T15:00:21Z

You're reading Hark! A Vagrant, right? It's in your RSS feed or your Atom feed or maybe you just sit there refreshing the page obsessively, day after day, with a calendrical reminder in case you forget, right?

OK, maybe that's just me.

My first semester of grad school is over and NaNo is over and that means back to reading and thinking about comics, online and off. It's also time to spend money as a demonstration of affection and that means the return of Stocking Stuffers at Pink Kryptonite! Behold as I combine them all by recommending Kate Beaton's most recent collection of new and previous work: Hark! A Vagrant.

Beaton's work is "cartoony" in the very best sense: evocative and expressive and deceptively simple. It's also incredibly sharp and literate, a bit like Bugs Bunny with an advanced humanities degree. I cannot get enough of it - some favorites are here, here, here, here and here, though this one is also pretty freaking great and more than a little delightfully queer - and this book features work we've seen before and work that is totally new! I am especially pleased when some brilliant corner of the Internet colonizes fleshspace. Give it, now, to the person on your shopping list who wryly smiles when you allude to Nancy Drew.