Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I can’t believe the size of today’s update. I’m not going to waste more time writing an intro for these guys when you already know them so well. Just dig in and enjoy!
"Everybody needs a little time away..."
Hello everybody, this is Chicago frontman Peter Cetera. My good friend Village Idiot asked me to kick off this week's column, and to let you know that even though he needed a little time away, the doctors have released him into his family's custody and now he's ready to resume his pseudo-intellectual yet highly skimmable reviews.
And you know, when I'm not singing my own brand of treacly retro adult-contemporary at medium sized outdoor venues near you, I find that nothing really compliments my comic reading like @$$hole. You could almost say that it's the meaning in my life, it's my inspiration. Just take this week for instance.
Jon Quixote reviews RAWHIDE KID, and baby what a big surprise, he liked it. Meanwhile, Vroom Socko looks at RAWHIDE KID as well, and he doesn't. Village Idiot takes a shot at UNSTABLE MOLECULES. We break new @$$hole ground as, hot on the heels of being named the most dildo-like hero in an AICN talkback, GUY GARDNER (in action figure form) is reviewed by Ambush Bug. Plus more -- a whole lot more. I'm telling you, it's more fun than a duet with Amy Grant and Cher put together.
So keep reading. And remember: If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me. And I'll be playing the Humphrey's By the Bay in San Diego this Valentine's weekend; tickets are still available via Ticketmaster. Thank you.
(Celebrity voice impersonated.)
GREEN LANTERN GUY GARDNER
Distributor: DC DIRECT
Reviewer: Ambush Bug
I want to start out by saying that I do not normally buy action figures. Sure, there was a time when I could proudly say that I had an entire collection of GI JOE, STAR WARS, and HE-MAN figures. I remember the summer mornings when I would debate which set of figures I would play with on that particular day. Was it going to be the swivel arm battle grip, full throttle, military action of GI JOE versus COBRA? Or would Han and Luke have to save the Princess from Zuckuss and Dengar in a STAR WARS laser melee? Or maybe it was a day for the muscle bound He-Man and my favorite figure, Moss Man (which was just a repainted version of Beast Man, but somehow seemed a whole lot cooler to me), to open up a can of whup-@$$ on Webstor and Trap Jaw and save all of Eternia? Decisions, decisions. My living room was transformed into a battlefield where the forces of good faced the forces of evil on a daily basis. I would spend hours upon hours setting up elaborate scenes and scenarios only to have the figures and their vehicles piled up into a mound fifteen minutes after I yelled action. Ahh those were some fun times, but alas, I’ve grown up and don’t do that any more.
I also have to say that I am not one of those collectors who has a pile of unopened toy boxes gathering dust in a closet. When I buy something, I open it, and look at it. Kooky, ain’t I? Why buy something and not open it? Sure there are those who think they are going to cash in on their secret stash someday, but I don’t look at things that way. I buy things to enjoy them. I buy comics to read. Sure I might collect them, but it’s the stories that have a special place in my heart. I don’t buy stuff just to say I have it. Whatever it is has to mean something to me in order for me to spend my hard earned cash on it.
So you may be asking yourself, what the hell are you doing writing a review of an action figure, Ambush Bug? Fair enough question. Let me answer it.
Atop my desk stand quite a few texts on writing, psychology, film, and other various subjects of interest. I also have an hourglass, an old hand held movie camera, some beads left over from a unforgettable trip to New Orleans, a Chicago Cubs hat, a diploma, and a slinky. These are precious objects to me. They represent good times and put me in the mood to write these reviews you all read every week. I also have what I’d like to call the Desktop Protectors. These figurines stand tall along the top shelf, poised to attack if the accursed writer’s block or any other dastardly foes rear their ugly mugs. Charles Barkley, a Bob Dole hand puppet, a McDonald’s Grimace figurine, a giant sized talking Tick, and the aforementioned Moss Man are perched at strategic points on my desk to inspire me and make me feel comfortable as I tap at the keys of my computer. As of this week, another protector has been recruited into the ranks. His name is Guy Gardner.
So who is this Guy Gardner? There are those who would liken Guy Gardner to a vibrating power tool kept in the bottom drawer of a women’s nightstand, but I see Guy differently. Guy made his first appearance waaaay back in 1968 in GREEN LANTERN #59. Even though Hal Jordan was destined to wear the emerald ring of the Green Lantern, the Guardians had a back up plan just in case Jordan was unavailable. Guy was that back-up plan. When the Green Lantern Corps. expanded to protect the entire galaxy, Guy was finally granted a ring of his own. Almost immediately after attaining the ring, Guy was whisked away to the Phantom Zone and suffered from brain damage at the hands of Sinestro, enemy to all Green Lanterns. The mild mannered, All American football star/ school teacher returned to Earth a very different man. Guy came back cocky, arrogant, mean spirited, and hard to get along with. He would be the first to tell you that he was the best damn Green Lantern ever to don the ring of power. Hal Jordan had the will. John Stewart had the heart. But it was Guy Gardner who had the balls. He’d never be afraid to tell it like it is to friend and foe alike.
But there was another side of Guy. He was a noble hero, a determined warrior, and a person you would want to have on your side when the shit hit the fan. And that’s what I liked about Guy. Guy was…a regular guy. He wasn’t a squeaky clean farm boy or a brooding billionaire. He would be the type of guy you would want to down a few beers with at a bar and talk shit till the ugly lights would come on. Guy was a major player in the Giffen/ DeMatteis/ McGuire JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL comic released in the late eighties. He provided much of the comic relief for that book and eventually was granted his own series. Unfortunately, Guy lost the ring and was revealed to be part alien, morphing into a tattooed giant with guns for hands in the final issues of his series. I choose to forget those issues and focus on the Guy I know and love with the power ring and the attitude. To me, that version of Guy brings back all of those good old feelings I had as I kid, reading comics on my stomach in the living room with all of my toys scattered around me. And that’s why I bought the GUY GARDNER action figure.
DC Direct has been making a lot of cool figures lately, but Guy is the first one I have purchased. The figure comes in a resealable package for those of you who don’t want to damage the box the toy comes in. The Guy Gardner figure sports those trademark moon boots and Moe haircut. His ring hand is balled into a fist, while his other hand is formed to carry the power battery lantern accessory that comes with the figure. With 11 points of articulation and a smart ass smirk on his face, Guy Gardner is by far the coolest figure to decorate my desk. As an added bonus, the figure comes with your very own plastic Green Lantern ring. And I think that’s pretty damn cool too.
Some of my most favorite moments in comics star Guy Gardner. Who could forget the one punch showdown between Guy and Batman? Or his arguments with the Big Red Cheese, AKA Captain Marvel? Or Guy’s first date with Ice? Those were truly entertaining stories filled with characterization and fun. Guy’s been out of the spotlight for a while and he’s been sorely missed by this Bug. With the series, FORMERLY KNOWN AS JUSTICE LEAGUE soon to hit the stands under the direction of McGuire, DeMatties, and Giffen, I can only hope that Guy will be making a comeback too. Until then, all I have to do is look at the top shelf of my desk to see the best damn Green Lantern ever.
RAWHIDE KID #1
Ron Zimmerman: Writer
John Severin: Artist
Marvel MAX: Publisher
Vroom Socko: Frontier journalist
“I’m not a FAG! But I’ve heard a lot about it, and the repression’s got me kinda horny. I just wanna try it and see how bad it really is.”
--Lenny Bruce as the Lone Ranger.
Why did I start with a quote from ol’ Dirty Lenny? I did it to show that a story about a well-known cowboy being gay can be amusing. I have no problem with taking an established character and changing aspects of his personality for the purpose of humor, as long as the person doing it is funny enough.
Ron Zimmerman is not funny. Ron Zimmerman will never be funny. Ron Zimmerman wouldn’t know funny if it walked up and gave him a decent shave.
Much of the alleged “humor” in this book surrounds the usual shortcut Zimmerman uses instead of creativity: pointless name-dropping. The entire end of the first issue is nothing but Rawhide Kid telling a group of curious children about all the different gunfighters he’s met over the years. “Is that all you boys are interested in, celebrities?” he asks. When they answer in the affirmative, he replies “Me, too. Let’s talk Buffalo Bill.” There’s even mention of Lonesome Dove’s Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, only their names are misspelled. I don’t find any of this amusing, and I’ll bet Larry McMurtry doesn’t either. I’m not even going to start with the town sheriff’s girlfriend, one Laura Ingalls.
But you folks just care about the whole gay angle, don’t you? Well, it looks like Zimmerman’s going for something along the same line as SNL’s Ambiguously Gay Duo. The main problem with this, (aside from the fact that Zimmerman’s no Robert Smigel,) is that once you have everyone from the New York Times to CNN saying that yes, this cowboy is gay, the ambiguity is gone. Where goes the ambiguity, so goes the humor, and we’re left with an endless stream of stupidity. Then there’s the ending, where the Kid, wearing a black leather duster and not much else, is sitting around a campfire with half a dozen small boys. Real charming, that part.
So this book is the usual Zimmerman piece a’ shit, right?
Yes and no.
First thing in the plus column is John Severin. His artwork is unquestionably brilliant, and it’s wonderful to see this old EC vet drawing cowboys again. If there’s a reason to buy this book, it’s Severin.
As for Zimmerman… he may actually have some potential.
The first half of this book, excluding the bits of name-dropping, is actually pretty good. The setup of the town residents is well handled, and the introduction of the book’s villain, one Cisco Pike, is properly chilling. This guy is one vicious scumbag, even if his name is taken from a couple of Star Trek captains. I was honestly beginning to enjoy myself. Then the Rawhide Kid shows up. People start remarking on what a FAAABULOUS dresser he is, and the book goes straight to hell. And no, it’s not just because of the presence of the Kid. There’s a conversation between the sheriff and his son after the Kid shows up that has to be the most banal, insipid bit of dialogue I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. Apparently it was meant to be amusing. It wasn’t. But before that… I really was enjoying myself.
I don’t hate Zimmerman; I just don’t think that the writer/producer of The Michael Richards Show is the best person to be writing humor. In the first eleven pages of this book, however, he showed a real knack for writing drama. It’s not exactly a fine tuned talent, but it’s there. Zimmerman’s never going to be the equal of Bendis, Gaiman, or Moore, but if he applied himself, focused on learning to write genuine dialogue, left both humor and name-dropping behind him, and actually tried to bring something fresh to the world of comics, he could become someone on or above the level of Karl Kesel, Dan Jurgens, or Roger Stern. (Hell, just moving away from humor would elevate him a thousand places above Bill Jemass, whose “writing” is about as fun as watching home movies of Estelle Getty masturbating with a baseball bat.)
Zimmerman could become a good writer, but I don’t think he will. I don’t think he has the drive, the desire to do so. If all I had to go by was Sweet Charity, I’d say who the hell cares. After reading this book, I’d consider it a loss. He’s not there yet, but he could be in a few years. The problem is that I don’t get the feeling that he gives a damn. And that’s a shame.
RAWHIDE KID #1
Written by Ron Zimmerman
Art by John Severin
Published by Marvel Comics
A Jon Quixote counterpoint
Oh children, we’ve had some fun with my active dislike for the writings of Ron Zimmerman. Marvel tried to force their “next big thing” on an unsuspecting public with all the subtlety and grace of a car salesman with a gambling problem, but no amount of free undercoating could make Porsches out of the Pintos that were Sweet Charity and Get Kraven. And I trembled with dread at the potential for fingernails on a chalkboard awfulness that lay within a book about a gay cowboy, written by a man who once called the star of In & Out “Joan Cuntsack,” and passed it off as a joke.
I tried to keep an open mind, I really did. I picked up Rawhide Kid #1 more out of morbid curiosity than anything else; I saw that big Explicit Content banner and expected a nauseating string of cock jokes and “pistol” puns. And while I did withhold public judgment without evidence, I’ve never made a secret of my low expectations and general disdain for Zimmerman’s abilities and potential.
In case any of you are wondering, crow tastes a little like toucan, only less fruity.
Rawhide Kid is…not bad. Actually, it was kind of sweet, and, dare I say, even a little charming? It’s no more offensive than an average episode of Will & Grace, and certainly a noticeable improvement over the writer’s previous body of work.
Zimmerman has, in the past, confused name-dropping with joke telling, but here the celebrity references feel as though they’re poking fun at our celeb-obsessed culture, instead of trying to squeeze it for laughs. The anachronistic quality of frontier people wanting to do little more than sit around and gossip about celebrities is sweet, smart, and even a little bit telling. It’s the satirical bent that has been missing from many of today’s pop-culture heavy comics.
But perhaps the most noticeable improvement is that Rawhide Kid doesn’t come across as though it’s desperately trying to be funny. Instead of trying to cram every panel with a joke or line of “witty” dialogue, Zimmerman sets up the few jokes with leisure and goes for a smile rather than a guffaw. I don’t know if I laughed out loud once during the read, but by the end I was grinning pretty hard.
The book isn’t hilarious. It’s not great. It’s not amazing or a “must buy.”
It’s pleasant. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Choosing to have the story narrated by the sheriff’s young son was an excellent choice, as there’s a sense of wonderment and naiveté that seems particularly appropriate to both the setting and the subject matter. I’ve heard some complaints that the child seems unbelievably precocious and articulate – much like Hank Kipple in Ultimate Adventures – but I didn’t get that impression at all; it’s certainly not any more evolved then 90% of other young narrators in fictitious works written by adults.
The whole enterprise is helped along tremendously by the glorious art of John Severin, one of the few artists working today who can make a pen and ink double-take work, and worth looking at. There’s a charm and innocence to Severin’s art as well, and in conjunction with Zimmerman’s PG-light jokes and a friendly story about hero-worshipping and family, it works to give the whole book the aura of a very good issue of Crack’d.
Plus, the whole book has pretty solid crossover potential. Perhaps, if Marvel wants to expand its audience, it should focus less on trying to turn its superhero comics into talky, self-aware melodramas, and more on new – and surprisingly innovative – ideas and concepts like Rawhide Kid. I’ll be passing along issue #1 to Jan Quixote, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she insists that I pick up issue #2. This would be fine with me.
I’m planning on buying it anyway.
WAY OF THE RAT #10
Writer: Chuck Dixon
Artist: Jeff Johnson
Publisher: CrossGen Entertainment
&
R.A. SALVATORE’S DEMONWARS #3 (of 5)
Writer: Scott Ciencin
Artist: Ron Wagner
Publisher: CrossGen Entertainment
Reviewed by Cormorant
In last week’s TalkBack, I gave in to my base impulses and had a little fun at CrossGen’s expense. Blame the cartoony little personification of Satan that occasionally alights on my shoulder, but blame CrossGen too. Several years into their run and they’re still shoehorning their magical sigil-bearers into every genre they can get their hand on, still hiring middle-of-the-road writers who can’t hope to match their stable of elite artists, and still dragging out their stories to ridiculous lengths. On the other hand, I’m a big fan of irony, so howsabout we take a look at two CrossGen books that are so far from sucking that I dare to call them…cool!
First up, we’ve got WAY OF THE RAT, CrossGen’s answer to all those Hong Kong martial arts movies staged in ancient China. The setting is the frontier city of Zhumar, stunningly depicted by series’ artist Jeff Johnson in this amazing splash page. Zhumar’s a Casablanca-style mixture of civilization and lawlessness, still recovering from a siege by barbaric hordes in the first storyline, and home to the accidental hero of that battle – Boon Sai Hong. Boon’s a vagabond thief and not the brightest bulb in any room, but he’s a likeable scoundrel, his naiveté somewhat balanced by the irascible Po Po the talking monkey, who’s rightly gaining his own cult following among readers.
If I have any complaint about the series, it’s that periodically it seems to fall into the typical CrossGen trap of middle-of-the-road storytelling that’s lacking in the emotional highs and lows that make a compelling yarn. Such has been the case with this second arc, focusing on various parties competing for ownership of the imaginatively titled magical scroll, “The Book of the Hell of the Hungry Dragons”. Unfortunately for the good folks of Zhumar, the scroll has found its way into the hands of the scheming city leader, Judge X’ain, and the result is the accidental summoning of the biggest honkin’ Chinese dragon I’ve ever seen in my life. Oops! I’d been wavering on this title a bit for the last few issues, but the dragon’s appearance is so amazing and terrifying that I’m glad I stuck around. In the latest issue, all hell breaks loose: X’ain comes face to face with his monumental folly, sad-sack Boon can’t even convince a street vendor to give him a sword to challenge the dragon, Po Po yells a lot, and the dragon begins stomping the living shit out of the city. The one hope of stopping the dragon is to retrieve the scroll, but as Po Po explains to a rightly disheartened Boon, the scroll is now in the dragon.
Based on the slightly lackadaisical pacing of the previous few issues, I’m betting that trade paperbacks will end up being the best means of following the series, but in this latest issue Dixon makes a helluva return to the classic “what happens next?!” incentive that marks the best serialized storytelling. It’s a strong shot in the arm for this solid series, and I recommend backtracking to issue #7 to get in on the action from the start. This arc sports a rare, cool cover gimmick: all the covers link to form the elongated body of the dragon in question! Genuinely fun stuff, and the finite image serves as a nice reminder that WAY OF THE RAT’s stories are far more self-contained than most of the CrossGen line-up.
Speaking of which, the Dungeons & Dragons-esque DEMONWARS runs a mere six issues, likewise bucking the CrossGen trend for long-winded soap operatics. In the third issue, our heroes find themselves embroiled in a clash between a barbarian war party and a manipulative faction of magic-using clerics thought to be in league with the Frost Giants. The good guys include a studly ranger with conveniently modern morals and a deadly enough blade that you better not call him a PC wuss; a babe missionary who’s beginning to see that her order, while not aligned with the giants, is about as upstanding as the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Church; and a self-centered (but not necessarily irredeemable) outcast from a faction of evil dwarves.
This is the midway point of the story where several of the rival factions stop chopping each other to pieces and decide to unite against a common enemy. There’s no doubt that internal power struggles will still rise to the fore even if they’re victorious, but I like the disparate group of priests, barbarians, and one or two genuinely moral heroes trying to keep the whole thing together. The giants are the wild cards, having once been a proud civilization, now turned bloodthirsty and desperate after barbarian encroachment drove them to the verge of extinction. Suddenly they’re dabbling in magic and demon summonings they can’t handle and destabilizing the entire area; it’s not too hard to overlay the real-world allegory of your choice to lend this fast-paced story a bit of relevance.
DEMONWARS isn’t revolutionary and it’s not trying to be, but honestly, for those with a taste for LORD OF THE RINGS-style fantasy without the constipated solemnity of that otherwise terrific saga, it’s a fun read. The good guys are really good, but an air of coolness protects them from becoming Dudley Do-Rights; the bad guys are slimily bad, but the realistic motivations to their actions prevent them from becoming sneering mustache-twirlers. Action sequences in particular are fast-paced and brutal, reminding me more than a little of Roy Thomas’s work on Marvel’s CONAN comics of the 70’s and 80’s. The art is uniformly professional and the coloring typically excellent CrossGen work.
The only weak point of the series is that it’s almost too fast-paced, meaning that you can breeze through an issue in a matter of minutes and it feels somewhat insubstantial. DEMONWARS’ drive is the opposite of the slightly meandering WAY OF THE RAT, but the end result is the same: the series will likely read best as a trade. That said, we’re only three issues into the series, so if the genre interests you, nab an issue or two and give it a go. Remember how awful that DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movie was? I don’t, because I wouldn’t go near that hunka hunka burnin’ poop if Jon Quixote’s life depended on it. But I do like the non-pretentious swords ‘n’ sorcery genre, and DEMONWARS strikes me as the kind of source material that I wish Hollywood would look to as producers search frantically for a hit to follow in LORD OF THE RINGS’ wake.
Iron Wok Jan Vol. 3
Writer/Artist: Shinji Saijyo
Publisher: ComicsOne
Reviewed by superninja
I am officially addicted to the Iron Wok Jan series. Cormorant already did a fine job of reviewing the first collection, which you can read here.
It's that review that turned me onto this series, and made me finally explore manga. I'd pretty much written manga off: "Why does everyone look like a pissed off Precious Moments figurine in a battle to the death?"
Lone Wolf and Cub was where I drew a line in the sand - serious, mind-numbingly satisfying epic drama. Basically, if manga didn't touch Lone Wolf, I didn't want to read it. There's still nothing that tops it, but Iron Wok Jan introduced me to a happy medium between cartoon and drama. Since then I've branched out to the excellent series Eagle, about the first Japanese-American presidential candidate.
Iron Wok Jan is one of those books I have difficulty persuading people to pick up on sheer enthusiasm alone, because it's so quirky and it centers on the passions behind the culinary arts. If you're not interested in this sort of thing, chances are you're just not going to get wrapped up in the nail-biting climax of what amazing dish can be made from shark fins. But it's still entertaining as hell, cooking aside.
The title character, Jan Akiyama, is the Anakin Skywalker of Chinese cooking. Jan is such an incredibly arrogant bastard, but so gifted at cooking, that almost everything he touches is magic. And everyone hates him. They should - he's a bastard. In Vol. 2, Jan wins a cooking competition by making a dish out of mushrooms with psychedelic properties that stone the judges into submission! He will do anything to win at any cost. Cooking is his way of life and his legacy, beaten into him as a young boy by his grandfather, the legendary master of Chinese cuisine - a man whose cruelty is only matched by his own arrogance.
Jan's main opponent is a young woman who is the granddaughter of his enemy, Kiriko Gobancho. She's by far my favorite character in the title. Like Jan, she's spent her entire life in the kitchen, but her belief is that cooking comes from the heart, and that Jan's arrogance and desire to win is a perversion of the honorable profession of cooking. She's also not afraid to call him out on it, and throw a punch or two when her temper reaches the boiling point.
Vol. 3 picks up where the previous left off, in a Dragonball-Z style arena cooking competition. Every young chef in the competition comes from different cities in Japan, with their own unique (and sometimes bizarre) culinary styles in a battle to determine who is the best. Although tailored to cooking, the archetypes are familiar and yet very Japanese. The art is wonderful; especially the almost superhuman displays of cooking methods and the detail lent to the ingredients as you watch it all come together into a culinary work of art.
If you're entertained by the Japanese T.V. import Iron Chef, you'll no doubt fall in love with Iron Wok Jan. When you put it down, I guarantee you'll have a craving for Chinese.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR: UNSTABLE MOLECULES #2
James Sturm – Writer/Designer/Layouts
Guy Davis – Pencils/Inks
R. Sikoryak – “Vapor Girl Archivist”
Published by Marvel Comics
Reviewed by Village Idiot
Among those in the know, word has it that Houghton Mifflin Co. is planning to release a series of books based on the real inspiration behind H.A. Rey’s CURIOUS GEORGE children’s stories. Called simply GEORGE, this upcoming series will explore the true story of a young native from the colonial Congo brought back to Belgium to work as a servant for wealthy importer. The book concentrates on the difficulties of the real “George” and his forced assimilation to 20th Century European culture, including his repeated “getting into mischief”; mischief that sometimes included public intoxication and brushes with the law; both which often required the patient intervention of his kindly but unwittingly oppressive Belgian benefactor (who incidentally had a penchant for cream colored fedoras).
Well, okay, not really.
Although H.A. Rey’s works have long been deconstructed as a colonization parable, to my knowledge he had no real-life models to accommodate the analysis. In lieu of this, I manufactured some. This is the same business that James Sturm is about in his UNSTABLE MOLECULES limited series, offering not just a deconstruction of the Fantastic Four, but really, an extrapolation of deconstructed themes; going from character to archetype to character again, but in a context where the connection between the character and the archetype is more directly realized.
By now, many of us are familiar with the legend of Stan Lee and the Fantastic Four: Lee intentionally set out to create a set of comic characters with greater emotional realism, ones that would reflect a real familial relationship, complete with discord. But on a more deconstructionist level, one can look back and see that social forces at the time may have had an impact on Lee’s creative choices, perhaps beyond his own awareness. Sturm’s deconstruction, similar to others I’ve read before, draws on the set of archetypes that seem to conform to a critical social theory framework for middle-class America in the 1950s. That is, Lee’s characters reflected the social roles of the era; roles that are often deemed repressive, forcing people to live lives that they did necessarily want to live and preventing them from self-actualization and leading to neurosis.
Thus scientist Reed Richards, a quiet intellectual, feels himself uncomfortably stretched beyond his role as mere researcher, fulfilling the demands of his superiors and possibly the U.S. Government. Johnny Sturm (nee Storm) burns with adolescent alienation. And Sue Sturm, the primary character in UNSTABLE MOLECULES #2, causes her own identity to vanish as she tries to assume the role of middle-class housewife. In fact, women are said to have felt this self-denial particularly acutely, pursuing marketed and false womanly virtue in what feminists Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English call "masochistic motherhood."
And so Sue is miserable. All her social cues push her into a life where her needs are unmet by and her true self is diminished; a situation that includes the suggestion that any affection for Reed springs from a social obligation to be with a good provider. Both Johnny and Reed seem not to notice her unhappiness. She’s objectified by men outside the home. Her attempts to break out, introducing PEYTON PLACE to her reading group, are thwarted. By the end of the story, she falls asleep crying on the couch with a plaintive, helpless cry in her internal monologue: “I do not like my life and I want it to change.”
And it all seems terribly overwrought. There’s no question as to the cleverness: Sue’s ability to render herself and her needs invisible is portrayed quite keenly. To drive the point home even further, James Sturm created a Silver Age comic called VAPOR GIRL provide oblique commentary throughout the story (reminiscent of WATCHMEN’s “Black Freighter” element); a move that ironically brings the story back around to a comic fantasy analog. But I found the net effect of Sue’s tribulations more depressing than compelling. Certainly her alienation from herself seemed unrelenting.
And of course, there’s the ideology of the criticism. The fifties in America weren’t Happy Days for everybody, however Sue’s middle class angst seems a little too pat, keeping her closer to the archetype and less of a character. As I said before, Sturm’s deconstruction is consistent with a critical social theory view of the 50s middle class, very consistent, and as a result the exploration felt more like a polemic. Polemics aren’t intrinsically bad, but I felt my investment in the story suffer from the drag of a noticeable ideological weight.
At the end of the book, I was still wondering what I had gained from the exercise. A deeper understanding of the source material? Well, deconstructions will only get you so far, and in this case, not much further than mild interest. Social agenda? Not as ham-fisted as, say, the movie PLEASANTVILLE, but not the model of subtlety either. I suppose the book could bring to life more vividly the grief experienced by women of the time about their prefab lives to those unfamiliar, but the take didn’t seem new enough to be vital for me. Interest for interest’s sake? Without the Fantastic Four hook, I don’t think this is a book I would seek out or maintain. UNSTABLE MOLECULES made strides in all these directions, but not to the extent or manner that I could honestly call satisfying. What was gained from the exercise was, by my estimation, “not enough,” and subsequently, I probably won’t be around for issue #3.
MARVEL DOUBLE SHOTS # 4
Published by Marvel
Reviewed by Buzz Maverik
DR. STRANGE, MASTER O' THE MYSTIC ARTS in THE BOTTLE IMP!
Story & art by Michael T. Gilbert.
I would like to thank writer/artist Michael T. Gilbert and editor Mark Sumerak for the story featuring my all time favorite Marvel character Dr. Strange. This is a fun, little short here, accessible through its' wry, gentle humor. Hey, it's Dr. Strange battling an imp...what did you expect, HELLBLAZER?
The story does feature one scene of horror, a flashback to the treatment received by the imp's victims. But the imp himself is cartoon wacky. Like Jack Nicholson in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, he's a horny little devil.
Gilbert portrays Doc in the way that Doc is usually done best: a loner, out of step with the world, yet one of Marvel's most intrepid and straight forward heroes. The fine art is almost Ditko doing manga.
Hey, Marvel! Give Dr. Strange his own book and get Michael T. Gilbert to do some issues!
THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN: MAN OF IRON
Writer Greg Rucka is certainly doing a lot in comics today. This is my first Rucka-written story and I can see why he's a fan favorite. The man has a real gift for character. He touches on Tony Stark's underlying loneliness, hints at the ways that the handsome billionaire genius playboy is unable to connect with the world and might be using him as a metaphor for we comic readers, who are often out of touch and armored inside our fantasy worlds.
Rucka and a character in the story quotes Edward Arlington Robinson's poem RICHARD CORY, which probably stood out to most of us when we had to study it in school because of the ending. Tony's friend Gabe MacGregor, who has an apparent obsession with the poem, is, in a subtle way, creepier than a trade paperback full of supervillains. And also more tragic.
The great Klaus Janson does the art. Klaus -- inker of Miller's first DAREDEVIL, inker of THE DARK KNIGHT, penciller of some fine Mike Barron scripted PUNISHER stories. Klaus -- a master of mood, and like Greg Rucka, of character!
Overall: I dig the anthology format. It makes me miss MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS.
30 DAYS OF NIGHT
Written by Steve Niles
Art by Ben Templesmith
Published by IDW
A JonQuixote ramble.
With Insomnia keeping Oscar voters up late at night, Bachelorettes in Alaska still making everybody say “American Who-dol??”,and King Crab selling for $5.99/lb at the Foodway, it’s pretty safe to say that Alaskamania is sweeping the nation. Not since a young Paul Hogan threw his shrimp into Barbie has a foreign country taken America by storm like this. And with 30 Days of Night hitting bookstores everywhere, it’s safe to say that America’s love for the land of ice isn’t about to cool off anytime soon.
Because, baby, this book is hot. And by hot, I mean chilling. Because this is a scary comic. And by scary I mean both “gives you the heebie jeebies” and “Holy Guacamole, Sam Raimi bought the rights for HOW much?”
One. Meeeeeellion. Dollars.
That’s a One followed by six Zeroes. Eight, if you roll pennies.
Think about what you could buy for a million dollars. You could buy commercial time during the Super Bowl and press ham against the screens of 300 million television sets for 12 seconds. You could finance Clerks 2 through 41, though you’d probably run out of Star Wars jokes before then You could bribe the Editor-in-Chief of the world’s biggest comic book publisher to let you write Ultimate I can’t believe it’s not Batman for a year or so (dammit, I’m gonna have to stop doing those jokes. When’s Liefeld coming back to comics again?).
Or you could put out a trade paperback that charges curious Canadians near double for what they would have paid for the comics first run. I guess as a penalty; “fuck you for not being psychic and seeking out our very cool comic before anybody ever heard of it.” Sort of like that chick who wouldn’t sleep with you when you were a nobody, but now that you’re “Hollywood” and she’s all over you, you’ve realize you’ve left your depravity limits in your other pants. “Oops, boy is my face red…you still want it though, don’t you?”
Yeah, I do. And those bastards are lucky that this is a damn good comic, because otherwise…well, let’s just say that there would have been some impotent rage, brilliant blazing impotent rage the likes of which had not been seen since Murder, She Wrote went gently into the good night.
“Jon,” you say, “you’re stalling. Talking about film options, and King Crab, and Angela Lansbury. Tell us about the comic! What happened in it?”
Well, I can’t tell you what happened. I don’t know what happened. The art was all scribbly and shit. Er, atmospheric. The art was all atmospheric and shit. Gloriously, scribbliously atmospheric. Sure, maybe I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but in many ways that made it creepier. Much, much creepier. I don’t scare easy – hell, I went out and bought Rawhide Kid without any prodding or forcing – but 30 Days of Night comic scared me.
Okay, for those not in the know: Barrow, Alaska, deep in the land of the midnight sun. But it’s winter, so instead of being the midnight sun, it’s the, uh, moonlight noon. No sunrises for a month…and then the town invaded by vampires. Scary, Nosferatu-looking vampires. And the vampires start killing the townsfolk by ripping open their chests (or maybe the people just explode, I dunno…scribbly). And there are these two cops, a husband – who sometimes looks like Ernest Borgnine and sometimes looks like Rupert Everett – and a wife – who sometimes looks like Uma Thurman and sometimes looks like Rupert Everett – and they’ve got to stop the vampires. But it’s hopeless…Night of the Living Dead hopeless.
That’s perhaps the coolest thing about 30 Days of Night. The best elements of the best thriller/vampire movies are woven into the story. Living Dead. Lost Boys. Near Dark. The Taking of Beverly Hills. It’s like a doctoral thesis on horror – Niles and Templesmith know what works and know what doesn’t, and they cram so much of what works into each page that there’s no room for anything that doesn’t. And whenever something doesn’t work…you have no idea! Scribbly! Hell, the entire thing could even be about the local hockey team playing the Rangers. Boy, would that make me blush.
Reading 30 Days of Night is an experience. It is innovative; different in look, texture, and mood than any comic I have ever read.
They may have jacked up the price, but it’s still worth it. They could have jacked it up more and it would still be worth it. Something this unique needs to be owned.
Don’t worry if you can’t always tell what’s going on. That’s what the movie will be for. I think.
STAR WARS: EMPIRE #5
Writer: Randy Stradley (with situations and dialogue from the Star Wars radio dramatization by Brian Daley)
Artist: Davide Fabbri
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
Star Wars comics get a bad rap, but I’ve recently peeked in on a few of them to find that they’re largely carried out with the same craftsmanship as the average superhero comic. They do feel a little straightjacketed by the rules of playing in such a regimented universe, and sometimes even a decent story comes across as flat because it fails to capture the precise feel of the films, but overall…not too shabby. Elevating the current crop of Star Wars comics are some of the best artists I’ve ever seen working film-property spin-offs. Kinda leaves the BUFFY comics hung out to dry with forgettable pencil-pushers, but then again, BUFFY doesn’t quite generate the same revenues as STAR WARS, does it?
Now let’s get up to speed: the monthly STAR WARS comic has long since given itself over to prequel-era adventures and recently switched names to STAR WARS: REPUBLIC to indicate the focus. That’s all well and good, but even though writer John Ostrander is doing solid work on that series, the era I’m interest in is the “original trilogy” setting. Enter the recently-launched companion title, STAR WARS: EMPIRE. I flipped through the latest issue and the lush art - slightly reminiscent of Chris (TOM STRONG) Sprouse - caught my attention along with a focus on Princess Leia. Leia’s always been one cool-as-hell dame, all the more so in light of how lame her mother, Queen Amidala, has been presented in the prequel movies.
The title of the story is “Princess…Warrior”, and it sets out to showcase Princess Leia’s transition from diplomat to Stormtrooper-blasting rebel leader just prior to the events of STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE. Cool by me. The story opens with Leia’s blockade runner setting down on an Imperial-controlled planet to distribute relief supplies to a beleaguered populace. The situation’s tense, as the Imperials don’t quite have enough power to openly refuse Leia or outright acknowledge that they’re turning the planet into one big prison camp, but they can still provide plenty of harassment. Complicating matters is the fact that the Imperial officer in charge of the occupation has more than a professional interest in the lovely princess.
A small band of rebel guerillas hit the Imperials during the negotiations, creating enough distraction to get a bit of vital information to Leia, and she manages to achieve a pyrrhic victory before the decidedly unromantic Darth Vader arrives and forces her ship to depart. She’s troubled because she’s becoming such a beacon for Imperial attention. Good people are dying because of their association with her, and her humanitarian efforts are being stymied as a result. Is it time to drop the Mother Theresa routine in favor of a little gunboat diplomacy? Oh hell yes! Hopefully that’s the side we’ll see more of next issue when the story concludes, but I still got a kick out of Leia’s lone moment of “fuck you” payback in this first part. What can I say – there’s just a special pleasure that comes from seeing Stormtroopers, those mindless personifications of fascism, get blasted to Kingdom Come.
Now according the credits, the basics of the story are taken from the 1981 STAR WARS radio dramatization which provided more background information on Princess Leia than the film gave. Having never heard it, I have no clue as to how accurate the comic is to its source material; it certainly seems to stand on its own well enough, though. My small beef with the story, common to many Star Wars comics, is that the dialogue and action staging sometimes leans more towards comicdom’s particular style of melodrama than the films’ particular style of melodrama. The difference is nowhere near as egregious as in the old Marvel comics, and sometimes, but it’s noticeable. The only Star Wars comics I’ve ever read that just utterly nailed the tone of the movies – this in spite of some cartoony art – were the Dark Horse-released manga adaptations of the original trilogy.
Final judgment: With the exception of the aforementioned manga volumes, I’ll probably never be able to call a STAR WARS comic “brilliant”, but if you’re in the mood to relive some Original Trilogy action, this story’s a nice fix. The art in particular is very detailed and the colors vibrant. Plus, I’ve just got to know if the hot blond planetary ruler who provides refuge to Leia is trying to put the moves on her or just being an extremely gracious host! I know, I know, it’s base and vile to assess things as such, but the Star Wars series is generally so devoid of sex appeal that I’ll take even imagined hints of it!
TALES FROM THE CREVICE: BOOKS THAT FELL THROUGH THE CRACK
By Vroom Socko
I have just seen the light. My true calling has been revealed to me. No longer shall I toil as a lowly @$$hole, no, not I. I have just visited the website of the Universal Life Church, and am now the Reverend Socko. From now on, my life belongs to God, and the only comic I’ll be reading is Picture Stories from The Bible.
Originally published by EC comics back when the E stood for Educational, these stories are currently available in two hardcover volumes. Laid out by story name instead of book name (The Story of Noah vs. Genesis ch.6-9, for example,) each chapter reflects the time it was written; the stories are very simple in their narrative. Simple, however, is a strength instead of a weakness when it comes to tales of morality.
These stories of faith are some of the greatest ever told. Anyone who doesn’t have them on their shelf has an incomplete comics collection. As for me, this is the last Tale From the Crevice I’ll be writing. All my free time will now be devoted to spreading the word of Christ. Thank you for reading.
Update:
The preceding was written almost two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve received my certificate of Ordination, organized a congregation, and then, been caught in a heap o’ trouble. It came in the form of last week’s review of Housewives at Play, a pornographic comic. Once the word got out that I was the author, the parish board set me on fire, threw me into the parking lot, and stoned me.
Wait, sorry, memory’s playing tricks on me. What happened was I was fired, so I went out into the parking lot and got stoned. The point being, I’ll be showing up next month with another Tale From the Crevice. I’m sure you’re all disappointed, especially The Village Idiot, who thought he’d be taking over from me. Even thought I’m back to my old ways, however, I still stand by my recommendation of Picture Stories from The Bible. Hey, if you can’t trust The Bible to have good stories, what book can you trust?
On the plus side, I can still perform weddings.
Question For Discussion
What comic do you compare reading to a religious experience?
