I try my hardest to remove myself from my reviews on comics. Analysis works best with a sense of objectivity, especially when the object under review is laden with the creator's personal intimations, as comics often are. Most cinema is made with an attention to the collective viewing experience - and all of television too - but with comics, especially in creator-owned titles, there is only you, passively receiving what the author wants to tell you.
Autobio comics can amplify this effect, as direct reportage of the creator's life story, like heat-seeking empathy missiles that might hit close to home, or at the very least, dazzle you with their alienated force. In Rick Worley's collected A Waste of Time (graciously given to me by the fine guys at the NYCC Prism comics booth, thanks y'all) the diary-like webcomic of the same name re-formats the strip into an epistolary to all of Rick's twink groupies. But it's more than some San Fran gay's catalog of lovers. Its extra-wide presentation allows the four-panel strip to breathe, so that when the seamlessly-integrated full-page portraits make their appearance, it's as if you were flipping through Rick's actual sketchbook. To see the characters talk about the preparation for a sketch, followed by the sketch itself, you're struck with a feeling of veracity. Take the authenticity of Pekar's American Splendor, and blend it with classicist artcomix values, and you get an idea of the beauty behind Rick's book. He even goes so far as to invite all his readers so moved by his work to contact him and be his groupies. Literally fucking with your audience. It's genius.
Fan interaction has been present in comics since the days of the letters columns, but it's come to a head with the reprints of Matt Fraction's Casanova. So far the backmatter has regaled us with Matt's tales of drug addiction and recently, the psychological impact of an accident in his youth. The 2.5 volumes we've seen have always been a post-modernist backlog of Fraction's favorite comics-cultural references, but the most recent issue, Avaritia II, straight up features Fraction himself, interacting with fans at a con before his creation comes to shoot him down. Casanova Quinn's mission is to eradicate all instances of his arch-nemesis Newman Xeno across the multiverse, and wouldn't you know it, a surrogate for Matt himself falls on the hitlist. Newman recurs as a creative type in any universe, and Fraction uses this to explore some very personal insecurities involved in the creative process, whether or not they apply to him directly.
After probing their authors, both these works turn the bloody forceps on us, and ask to dig a little deeper. There's a bit in universe 9.999 (The Fraction/Xeno reality), where, realizing disappointment in an encounter with a fan, pseudo-Faction/pseudo-Newman despondently claims, "OH GREAT." "YOU'RE GONNA GO HOME AND BLOG ABOUT THIS OR WHATEVER". Which describes, too perfectly, my reaction last year to my meeting with series artist Gabriel Bá. This is precisely when comics are at their most beautiful. When the story gets all bug-eyed and sentimental and all you can mutter is "but...me too...". Whether you're inspiring your readers to draw nudes of their boyfriends, or bitching about how hard it can be to write stuff, those are the moments where the emotional investment pays off. Thank you Rick. Thank you Matt. Thank you comics.
Oh, honey, my feet are still tired. I have finally administered myself enough medicinal martinis to get back in the game, though, and I have to tell you I had a pretty freaking fabulous time at Dragon*Con 2011. I did take pictures and you remember that part where I said my phone camera was good enough? Yeah, not so much. Next year I'm sucking it up and taking the real camera. That I am already thinking about next year should be taken as a sign of the kind of time I had, though: a very good time, indeed. The Rainbow Flag Party was packed and lots of queer cosplayers were happy to pose for your intrepid reporter; the gaming track was fantaaaaaaaaaaaastic OHMYGODSOMUCHFUN and I only got in one shoving match with other Con-goers which, given my redneck roots, I count as something of an accomplishment.
Read on for the skinny on this year's trip! Oh, and here's an early caveat: the con staff themselves were extremely and very personally rude to me this year so I feel no real compulsion to be nice for niceness' sake. Every opinion expressed in this post is (a) mine alone and no one else's and (b) as honest as it gets.
Tyler Clementi's suicide last year led to one of the most tumultuous times on campus I've seen during my tenure as a Rutgers student. It was a time of vigils and executive emails to the entire student body, it sparked debates among friends and lent momentum to the "It Gets Better" campaign. This is the landscape emulated in this week's Generation Hope #9, with the mutant-as-gay-allegory featured prominently, and in my opinion, with its most appropriate usage in recent memory. Though I haven't had any previous exposure to the Generation Hope series, there was never a doubt that the Gillen/McKelvie collaboration would handle the issue with delicacy and poise. What I didn't expect was the faithfulness in the recreation of those emotions I felt during the real-life tragedy, rendered with such raw power so as to elicit flashbacks to last September.
I am woefully behind on my comics. I don't know any other way to say it: I am so behind that I am full of woe. Can you hear my lamentations? No, but you can read them. The bottom line is that I am a staff member at a university which is a bit like working tech in a stage production: when the lights are up the and the curtain is down is when things backstage are positively bustling. My point here is that summers are a busy time and this summer especially so. I did find time to sit down and steal an hour the other day during which I read the most-dated unread issues of my current favorite comics: American Vampire, Detective Comics, Ruse and the absolutely magnificent Xombi.
Does that last title make your pulse quicken? Does it bring a flush of desire to your cheek? It should. Good gods but it should. It is absolutely this year's American Vampire: a bolt-from-the-blue shock of stark quality. It's a comic so good it makes one look at the other books on the shelf and wonder what the hell their creative teams are doing all damn day. Issue #3 came out in May and issue #4 is sitting on the shelf right now and if you have anything like a soul you will go buy them from a store that deserves your dollars to show some pittance of gratitude for what we're being given in its pages.
I am also absolutely terrified for Xombi's future. I don't mean I fear the contents of its narrative; I mean that a part of me is pretty sure it's getting quietly cancelled in the September reboot.
Alpha Flight's kicked off yet again, with its premiere issue as a Fear Itself tie-in. I've mostly enjoyed my new approach to this summer's blockbusters, catching up with the going-ons in the periphery without needing to know who's dead or responsible for the mayhem in the larger soap opera. On its own, the writing lags under the sheer weight of the team, as the narrative tries and technically succeeds in splitting up page-space among its eight characters. But I'd bought the title primarily to see how Northstar was handled. With the Fear Itself banner hampering my expectations, I'm glad to say that this 8 issue mini is off to a strong start, dedicated fairly to Northstar and his compatriots.
The latest issue of Grant Morrison's highly enjoyable Batman Incorporated is out and everyone I know who's reading this comic has said of it, simply, "Finally, I feel like I know where this story is going!"
My reaction to that, having read the book yesterday, is... really? You do? I definitely picked up a sense of momentum having begun to build but I still don't know exactly what's going on.
Peter David is absolutely one of my favorite writers in comics at the moment and X-Factor has been a consistently entertaining book for years now. It's one of the books I'm most excited to see show up in my bag: like, bounce up and down and make squeeeee noises levels of excited.
Issue #217 was well outside of what one might expect of an action-y comic such as this but it was absolutely classic Peter David: that mix of retro soliloquy and modern sensibility that leads iconic characters to remind us that when the present was still the future it was supposed to be a lot more interesting and advanced than it is. Throw in that great scene of Monet taking on the protesters to remind them that plenty of Muslims are on their side, too, and it became about as fun as a soapbox comic can get.
It was pretty into that soapbox, though, and that made the surprise ending all the more shocking. Peter David didn't just use it to present another great progressive perspective on recent events; he let the delivery of that perspective lull us into reading for ideas instead of actions and then, blam (literally), he pulled a fast one and hit us with a cliffhanger.
So what about #218? I only care about two things in that whole issue - just two! - and one of them is as spoilery as it gets but it's all I've got room in my brain to think about.
My reactions to these two titles, which kick-off Marvel's big summer storyline, Fear Itself, couldn't be more different. I closed Fear Itself: Book of the Skull and thought, "Damn! That Brubaker can write the hell out of some crazy Nazis! Also, nice of Namor to stuff his bikini for us."
When I closed Matt Fraction's Fear Itself #1 I had two conflicting reactions: "Oooooh, pretty..." vs. "Hurrah. Another Thor book. Hang on, I'm sure I've got a party hat with little horns on the side around here somewhere. Oh, that's right, I still have the one I bought last year for Siege and never bothered to take out of the package."
Read on for more thoughts on two very different comics!
I was browsing the shelves of my local shop last week and happened to notice Charismagic because of its beautifully illustrated cover. I picked it up and a member of the staff nearby said, helpfully, "Real magic exists and it involves Las Vegas." My mind immediately latched onto it as a successor to my favorite doomed-too-young title of recent years - Spellgame - and I bought issues #0 and #1 to dive in with both feet.
To be honest, there are ways in which the writing is really mangled - literally, sometimes the words on the page don't seem to add up to language - but the art in this book is so overwhelmingly beautiful that I've added it to my bag anyway. In a lot of ways it struck me more as the new Elephantmen than the new Spellgame but that's based purely on its lush, dark, dense visuals and its sense of characters who are aloof and brooding and aware of their status as Others in our midst.
Yet again it's super-easy for members of the queer communities to see themselves as the shunned and powerful outsiders on the page and - yet again - that just totally works for me.
I can hear you now, and I know what you're saying: Surely, you say, Klarion cannot be reviewing a comic that just came out yesterday. He's supposed to be reviewing something that came out, like, seven weeks ago. Well, cats and kittens, the simple truth is that I am all over some Young Avengers - The Children's Crusade and the moment I saw that in my bag on Wednesday evening I carted it home and read it immediately.
So what do I think? The short, non-spoilery version is that I think shit is about to get exceptionally real and I am thrilled. Allan Heinberg delivers some great stuff in this book. It changes things - or at least seems to change them - for the whole Marvel universe, not just this one team of youngsters. This is the kind of crossover event I like, where the putative stars are the ones driving the action in a way that impacts the overall narrative rather than just unleashing some big names to stomp around for a while, sell some tie-ins and leave without much of anything happening. It's a solid read and it builds to an inevitable ending that still makes an impression.
For the spoilers-heavy review, click the shiny blue candy-like button.
A few weeks ago my local comics shop posted on Facebook a photo of the first in a four-issue mini-series they had bought from a patron looking to unload some old books: a 1991 revival of the old The Wild Wild West television series. Please do not make the mistake of associating this comic book with the horrendous film from 1999. Don't get me wrong, I will take literally any opportunity to admire Will Smith, for whom I've always sported a weakness, but that movie was bad and misinterpreted, ignored or otherwise squandered everything good about the original show.
This comic book, from the now-defunct Millenium Publications, is based on the original 1960's TV show, a unique mishmash of old west, science fiction and knockout finishes. That show was more like a comic book than any other property original to television that I can readily name - something the makers made explicit with the illustrated bumpers around commercial breaks - and it turns out the adaptation to comics is a genuine treat, a last episode to be savored by the part of me that's still eight years old and watching reruns on the old console TV.
If I spent Wednesday evening just falling all over myself to praise Grant Morrison's work on Joe the Barbarian, it's with a somewhat heavy heart that I come to the subject of Batman Inc. #4. This book should have been an instant winner for me and, OK, there were things I liked, sure, but I did not love it. In fact, I'm not sure that taken as a whole I liked it. Something about it felt too... random.
Read on for more thoughts on the weakest issue of what's been a really great series: Batman Inc.!
Review: Stormwatch #1
Stormwatch #1, the first of DC's new 52 to feature LGBT characters (before the reboot, at least) is out to add a new cosmic dimension to the post-Flashpoint universe. There isn't much to be said for our beloved broship yet (though the last page shows a handshake between Apollo and Midnighter and promises a "Big Bang"), but the issue is a great gauge for whether or not you'll want to stick with the series to see the romance purportedly unfold....
