What really makes Steve Rogers Captain America?
Some might say that it’s not the crazy steroid stuff coursing through his veins, but his spirit.
I would probably say that the mega steroids that enhance every single aspect of his physicality probably have something to do with it. I mean, come on. Spider-Man without the spider bite? Daredevil without the toxic waste spill?
I have to say, it’s always weird when superheroes do those Very Special Issues where they do things like tell kids not to take drugs. Sure, kids probably will just end up huffing paint out of a paper bag. But on the other hand, they may become one of the greatest heroes of all time. An icon! “I was a mild-mannered junior high student until I huffed paint out of a magical bag I found buried near the mall. Something in the Krylon spray paint must have activated the ancient magicks in that old bag, and when I inhaled I became…The Inhaler!”
How does Captain America tell kids not to do drugs? Doing drugs is the best thing that ever happened to him. And frankly, if he’d been straight edge, the Red Skull would have blown up America.
If’n you’re looking for a good drug story, I have to recommend Batman: Venom (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10…) Okay, it’s not the greatest story ever written. But at the very least it makes a case for not using enhancing drugs. And I think I would have gotten more enjoyment out of this than all the stupid videos I watched in school, the ones where a multi-ethnic group of children, one of whom was most certainly in a wheelchair because this was the 90’s, come across drugs and end up having all these negative effects.
Seriously, I think the goal of 90’s parents was to scare the holy shit out of us when it came to drugs. Some guy would take a drug (almost always a pill because I guess they didn’t want us to know how to actually consume drugs), turn into a complete moron, giggle, then fall into a chasm or accidentally launch a nuclear weapon or something. Seriously, watch this episode of Captain Planet to get an idea of what we were exposed to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwDB20…). Especially enjoy the clothes that druggy kids wore. What appears to be a skull wearing a party hat? Oy.
Anyway, back to the book at hand. I think that I’m over comics where the main character loses his/her powers. It’s kind of an old trick, and one that doesn’t satisfy. Because when I read something called Steve Rogers: Super Soldier, I’m going to be let down when he is not a super soldier. Spider-Man 2? Why with the losing of the powers? I want to see a dude swinging around like crazy, not strolling in nerd journalist clothes.
So let’s try something else. And if you want to scare me about drugs, here’s an idea. Find the druggies in junior high right now. Take pictures, do a short interview. Then catch up with them every five years. When we see that most of the people who were getting stoned in junior high aren’t dead because they tried to run through traffic, but instead they are managing a Red Robin and paying child support to a kid they never even wanted, that might help me think twice.
~
A good read. Warren Ellis’ roots come from reading serials that changed things up every issue, and this was a nice way to explore that style.
Uh, have to say, I nominate parkour as the cultural reference that aged before its time. It’s like the attractive 40-something who did too much tanning and too much makeup and somehow became old at a time when it’s really not.
~
Oh, Catwoman!
Apparently at this point the world thought Selina Kyle was dead and that she was pushed off a roof by Catwoman. I don’t know how that move was pulled off, but it seems that she got by just fine. It’s not like she’s Peter Parker trying to get a science degree. She’s an International Jewel Thief. As opposed to a Tri-State Area Jewel Thief. So her human alter ego probably doesn’t really matter too much.
At one point in this particular caper, she assembles a crew of three crazy dudes, and as they prepare for the big job they check into a fancy hotel where Catwoman promptly retires to the bathtub in order to study some files.
I DO find that nothing helps me unwind from being a Jewel Thief with 3 strange men in the next room who may try to kill me, nothing helps me unwind from that better than a nice bubble bath while reading files.
I have to ask because I just want to make sure I’m not way outside the norm here. What is the average person’s ratio of bubble baths to non-bubble? Because I don’t think I’ve ever taken a bubble bath since I’ve been old enough to purchase bubble bath. Is Mr. Bubble still a guy? Is that a preferred brand?
Because in TV and comics it seems like every bath is a bubble bath.
I DO darken the water with dye so as not to be disgusted by my repulsive nude body. But that’s just me.
~
Ohhhhh, this was actually pretty good.
Quick premise summary: There are a bunch of Earths. Things got screwed up somewhere, so Earths are basically crashing into each other. The Avengers face a difficult problem. Can they figure out how to stop this happening over and over, and at what point do they consider destroying the other Earths (and, presumably, all the beings living on it)?
It’s a darker story, and it exposes the darker side of some characters.
This is the best version of Mr. Fantastic I’ve ever seen. He seems smart for once. There are some really great scenes where he’s interrogating a prisoner.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes. A really good choice if you can handle seeing wholesome characters behaving in practical but cold-hearted ways.
~
A very good ending to a very good series.
Ending something people like is always tough. Ending shitty things is easy. You just stop. But when you have to end something that’s good, there’s pressure. Because if you eat a great meal and end it with soured ice cream, part of that last lingering taste is always going to color the experience.
Jeff Lemire did a great job with this one. The ending was satisfying. The way things ended for characters didn’t have you shouting about how this or that was unfair or disappointing. I mean, yes, to some extent that means there aren’t a lot of huge surprises. But honestly, I don’t read to be surprised for the most part. Novelty just doesn’t do much for me anymore, and so often I see something that shot for novelty as in Newness and ended up hitting novelty as in Cue the Circus Music. So it was a safe ending, and that would be the main criticism I could give. But honestly, I became attached to the characters, and an outrageous ending that denied who they were just wouldn’t have made me happy.
Anyway, I don’t ruin this by saying anything about it really. If you haven’t read this series, it’s a great, short series that is written and drawn by the same character, a situation that can sometimes result in a very pure vision. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes bad. In this case, the art and writing work well together, and it’s the kind of story that really springs from a consistent, centered source.
I somehow suspect the series might become somewhat forgotten. I don’t think it changed the landscape of American comics. I think there was still some heart to Lemire’s Essex County that didn’t come through in Sweet Tooth 100%. However, if it is forgotten, I would say it was unfairly so.
So for fans of apocalyptic fiction, it’s a must. Animal lovers too. Oh, and the other group I would suggest is anyone on the planet Earth who reads.
~
I’m going to say this as a fan of comics and someone who respects what the artists and writers do:
I don’t get the Bros. Hernandez. I just don’t. I don’t really understand what’s happening in Love & Rockets, I didn’t really understand what I was to draw from Palomar, and in this book, though there are some very real moments, I just found it…forgettable.
Maybe a good comparison is Harvey Pekar. That guy writes about the mundane as well. Almost as though he’s intentionally trying to make things less exciting. But there’s something I GET about what he’s doing. I think, while reading Harvey Pekar, I feel the way he would intend for a reader to feel.
That’s part of the disconnect for me here. I don’t think I feel the way they were intending, or, and this is a lot to parse, I don’t feel like they have planned to try and make me feel something in particular.
I’ll probably give Love & Rockets another try just because it’s such a piece of comic book history, and I can understand that maybe there’s a cultural significance, being a white boy or growing up in a different time, that separates me from what’s being said. But honestly, I’m not a man with extendable adamantium claws or The Comedian or Guy Delisle or Chris Ware, yet those things speak to me.
I suppose that to me, Marble Season DID feel a lot like the other works by Bros. Hernandez, so if you wanted to wade in it might be a nice way to give it a shot.
~
You know what every apocalypse has? One big huge asshole who seems dead set on doing whatever the polar opposite of the protagonist is doing. Why? There’s always got to be some asshole ruining the fun for everyone.
Apocalypse books are kind of all the rage right now, or maybe that’s just starting to die down, but part of me wonders whether those kind of people would really show up? More to the point, who are all these crazy assholes they always get to hang out with them?
“Hey Pete, it’s the apocalypse. We could head into the mountains and live in peace. Or we could sign up with the dude wearing a Jason mask and a sash made from bullets. What do you think?”
Well, nameless questioner, I think we’ll just go ahead and let bullet crazy man drive towards the abandoned nuclear plant or whatever damnfool plan he’s got and wait for him to die. Everybody else seems to be dying without trying, and this guy seems to be ACTIVELY doing things that would have gotten him killed before all this apocalypse business. Sooooo I’ll take my chances by not taking my chances, thanks.
~
DMZ is a book of real highs and lows for me.
The lows come in because sometimes I’m straight-up lost in the plot. Which I think is common. Because a lot of the plots revolve around big conspiracies with double-crosses and unknown entities, how is a person ever going to keep it all straight?
The highs are situations like the end of this volume. In essence, a lot of bullshit is blamed on the wrong guy, a soldier in this case. And I think that’s where DMZ speaks to something very real and true.
The big, over-arching ideas in DMZ that mirror our own, the ones about corporations being in bed with government and essentially profiting from war and violence is just old news. It’s sickening news, it’s the oldest story in the book (I’m sure some asshole made a shitload of money selling armor to knights and shit too), which is why it doesn’t do a whole lot for me.
But the ideas that get smaller, when the book focuses in on individuals, I think that’s where it finds its footing.
This book in particular sends a couple messages in a very effective way.
1. It really IS easier to write off victims of war violence who are categorized as collateral damage when they speak a different language, wear different clothes, and live in places that just look so Other. I’m sorry, I have a bad brain, but it’s much easier for me to not imagine someone as having a life when that life is so different from my own, and when all you really see is quick flashes of streets filled with rubble. Setting the book in Manhattan, the America-est of American cities, flips that whole idea.
2. People really talk a lot about supporting the troops, but I think that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the military works. I’m not going to get into it on a big scale here, but here’s what I want to say: You do not support troops by giving the people who boss them around carte blanche. Underequipped, undertrained, outnumbered, young men are not done any favors by you not questioning the people who send them to fight. As an American citizen, the government is your employee. If you owned a McDonald’s and saw a manager assigning one of the cashiers a useless, pointlessly dangerous task, you would not just let that happen for the sake of maintaining harmony at that McDonald’s.
Anyway, that’s enough of that.
~
Paul stories are always pretty darn good. I can appreciate them. They really are underrated in terms of being in the mix with something like Blankets. I think they feel very honest, and Michel Rabagliatti has a knack for capturing memories and turning them into moments on the page. Which makes most of his work feel very authentic while not having that feeling like it’s really reaching, a feeling that can mess with the ability to enjoy it.
In this volume we watch the decline of Paul’s father in law. It’s a sad, fairly slow death, although it’s not graphic or tedious. I think it makes a great point of demonstrating how the death of someone close is difficult, and when there’s a long leading up to that death we end up spending a lot of time still dealing with our lives. Doesn’t it seem unfair that you still have to put gas in your car when your mother dies? Shouldn’t there be some kind of cosmic week off from all that kind of shit?
While reading this, I was also listening to the album Southeastern by Jason Isbell. It’s really great. You should absolutely get your hands on it.
I had it playing on the old boombox I’ve had since I was in grade school. There are still hash marks of permanent marker I used to mark favorite radio stations. The sound kind of fuzzes out here and there, but it’s a comfort in some ways. It’s pretty amazing that the thing still runs. I mean, shit, it’s been at least 15 years.
After listening to an album a few times I pick out a few favorite tracks. One of my favorites off Southeastern is “Elephant”, a song that’s also about death. Rather than explain it sonically, I’d recommend taking a listen, being aware that he uses the word Fuck once towards the beginning, just in case you’re at work or something (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClugMh…)
In particular, these words struck me:
I’ve buried her a thousand times
giving up my place in line
but I don’t give a damn about that now
There’s one thing that’s real clear to me
No one dies with dignity
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
It’s surprising at first, but the more I think about it, the more it’s really not all that surprising. How many people really die the way they would choose to? Let alone when.
My grandmother passed not too long ago. I know that when she died she wasn’t ready. She’d made some peace with the fact that her children were grown and all taking care of themselves. But that’s probably the most one could say.
The way this relates to the Song of Roland is that the death in this book is fairly gentle, expected, and, well, dignified. And that may be how it happened. It’s no secret that Paul represents somewhat of an avatar for the author in most of the books, and in this case I’m sure it’s the same situation. I’m sure some people DO go that way.
However, I think the song was comforting for me, and I wonder if there’s room in fiction for people to die in pain or feeling that it’s not time. I think that although we don’t like to imagine our loved ones passing that way, it helps to know that they weren’t the only ones. That to some extent, just as we don’t get to choose our death, we might not get to choose how we react to that death in the moment either.
~
Crazy lady goes real crazy? Next thing you know she’ll be running around in the wallpaper.
Okay, real quick, all you English majors out there had to read that Yellow Wallpaper business about nine times, right? Man, that thing drove me nuts.
“Was she really in the walls, or was it just a manifestation of her madness?”
“Uh, I think you mean WOMANifestation!”
Then I used the circles from inside a 3-ring binder to pierce the arteries in my neck and end that class forever.
What works about this memoir really well is that I feel like, in reading it, the author has a good distance from her craziness. It’s clear, and she doesn’t do a lot of justifying. There’s a very strong distinction between the Ellen Forney narrating the story and the Ellen Forney going through some pretty terrible sicknesses. There’s many a memoir out there regarding craziness, but oftentimes you’ll put it down feeling like the writer must still be in the throes of it because they sure skimmed right by a thing or two that seemed pretty goddamn important.
“This is a book about my eating disorder. P.S. I DID get married 7 times since this book was published, but that’s totally unrelated.”
Uhhhhhhhh…..
These kinds of books are, in my opinion, good for you. When it’s done right, you get a glimpse into what someone else is going through. I don’t think most of us will understand what it’s like to be manic-depressive, but this book will help people at the very least understand what it was like FOR HER. There aren’t really spots where she says that You Just Wouldn’t Understand or I Can’t Figure It Out. It’s a pretty active exploration.
~
A female superhero story penned by a female author? Someone finally recovered the memo that fell behind a desk at Marvel in 1972.
What I liked:
Captain Marvel is pretty cool. The dialogue in this book is good. The character feels like a real person, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sad, nice, all that human emotion stuff.
What I Didn’t Like So Much:
It’s rough to start a book with time travel. In a fashion similar to Superman Time & Again, we bounce around through time, but the problem is that it’s hard because I felt like I was still getting a grasp on the character. Superman? We ALLLLLLLLL get it. Captain Marvel? As in Carol Danvers who replaced the original Captain Marvel after gaining a version of his powers during a machinery explosion? Not quite there yet. On the one hand, I can see how being in an unfamiliar setting at the same time as the character can help you get to know that character better. On the other hand, I still struggled.
The other thing is that the volume was definitely focused on women and their abilities, specifically female pilots and how they were just as good as men if not better (I really don’t know. I have no idea. Whether or not a lady makes a better pilot than a man is a complete mystery to me. MANY things about the opposite sex are a mystery to me purely because, well, I’ve had a good amount of time to come to term with all my stuff. Theirs? Barring a few exceptionally generous ladies, not so much. However, I can probably come up with a list of ladies who would almost certainly be better at landing a plane than I would. So that’s something).
It’s cool, I get it. I mean, comics themselves are a male-dominated field. No doubt. However, I think the big breakthrough I’m waiting for is a comic with a female protagonist where the being female isn’t the story. In other words, a character like Spider-Man doesn’t necessarily wrestle with his masculinity very often. Yes, there’s romantic dating stuff, but I think that could be done from a male or female perspective with equal effectiveness. And frankly, I’m not interested in Spider-Man wrestling with his masculinity. He’s ripped, he has pretty girlfriends, and he takes good care of his Aunt May (when she’s alive, anyway). He’s the male ideal, really. Both to men AND women, I’d think.
I don’t know if I’m going off the reservation by saying that many female characters in comics are also in the ideal female category. Often strong-willed, sense of purpose, someone that anyone could look up to, beautiful, smart, fearless- what else is there?
What I’m getting at here is that it can be tough to read about the male or female ideal wrestling with male/female issues. I just have a hard time feeling much for them. It’s like…I’m sure Brad Pitt has days where he feels unattractive. Because he’s human. But I don’t have much interest or sympathy for the guy who has been one of those Sexiest Sexy Men listers for over a decade. I just don’t. Call it a weakness in my personality, but there you go.
Yes, I recognize that Male is the default in comics, so it’s hard to stray from the default without addressing it. But…maybe try?
~
Weird.
Not a spoiler because it’s how the volume begins, but what you should know is that Doctor Octopus has put his mind into the body of Peter Parker, Spider-Man.
It’s one of those nightmare scenarios, where you’re watching Doc Ock (yeah, wer’re tight, I call him Ock) ruin Peter Parker’s life because he comes at it the way he does his own. The thing is, Ock is really smart and kind of an asshole. Peter Parker is really smart, but absolutely not an asshole.
It’s a book that tackles that old question. Haven’t you always wondered if your life would be better if you were 10% more of an asshole? If you just cared a little less about what people thought and instead just did things because you felt like it? Because Ock isn’t necessarily TRYING to ruin Peter Parker’s life. It’s not one of these situations where he’s impersonating Spider-Man so that people will continue to call him a Menace. Or a Dennis. Or a…well, you can do the math on combining those terms. No, Ock is planning to remain as Peter Parker forever. He’s in it for the long haul.
The experiment is interesting. Is there something essential to the characters that made them who they are, or could anyone be Spider-Man given some web shooters and a rad pair of pajamas?
Either way, between this and Brand New Day and Spider Island, for better or worse, I have to admit that I appreciate the people at Marvel being up for experimenting and trying some wild ideas with this character. Most of them, on paper, don’t actually work. I mean, mind swap? This is the ultimate soap opera nuttiness. As is having a clone. Or secret agent parents. Hmm…
But really, even though the ideas sound pretty stupid, I end up enjoying where they go with them. Rather than take a big story (X-Men fighting the Avengers!? WHAAAAAT?!!!) and have the one-sentence premise BE the entirety of the story, the spider books do a good job of making the premise nothing more than a platform and letting the story go from there.
~
Why do I feel like I’ve read a lot of stories about the Mole Man lately? Is it just bad luck or is he everywhere all of a sudden?
It happens from time to time. There was a period in the late 90’s where I felt like I couldn’t turn around without reading something about the Absorbing Man. The guy who can turn into any material and also feels the need to carry around a ball and chain.
And I know we’re getting a little deep here, but the ball and chain? That was a real stupid idea. Your plan to hobble a prisoner is to attach him to a minimum of two weapons? What’s next? “Oh, we make our prisoners carry a very heavy set of knives. Keeps ’em from running away.” Good one, the law.
It’s also strange that the Mole Man has those weird mole people who seem to worship him. I mean, I don’t really know how this happened. And it’s weird because, you know, he was a total knob on the surface, but then he gets down there and everyone thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas, the cat’s meow, the feline AIDS (I made one of those up. See if you can guess which one!). It’s sort of like…imagine if people in Belarus decided that Billy Ray Cyrus was the coolest dude ever. And that they thought Billy Ray Cyrus was the coolest guy ever in America. And then, some dude from Belarus comes to America and suddenly realizes that almost every other American is cooler than Billy Ray Cyrus.
That’s what I imagine it would be like if a moloid came to the surface. That Mole Man wouldn’t seem so rad all of a sudden. In fact, he might be one of the least rad people of all time. Green pants, green shirt, and a green cape? Please.
~
Daniel Clowes does some weird stuff. I don’t know how someone who doesn’t read a lot of comics would take it. Maybe it would be easier because you don’t have all these ideas about capes and underpants and muscles and stuff. On the other hand, maybe someone who doesn’t read a lot of comics would find his stuff just completely bizarre. I just don’t know how integral it is to read some comics before really getting into his stuff.
That said, I read this one in the middle of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago where they had a special Clowes exhibit.
I went with family, and here are general CAM reviews:
Mom: “The exhibits rotate. You just have to roll the dice, and sometimes you get lucky.”
Uncle: “This whole place could burn down and they wouldn’t lose anything of value.”
If I could give one piece of advice to artists, make art that people can sit on. Seriously. There’s nowhere to sit in these fucking places. You’re standing there looking at a bunch of stuff piled onto a platform. I guarantee a sitting area that’s also art would be the most popular exhibit in the joint.
Anyway, I like Clowes, but it’s hard for me to say why. He’s a talented artist, for sure, and he’s not afraid to go into a dark place. It’s just not for everyone, I’m thinking.
That said, if someone wanted to give him a try, I think this is one of the more accessible titles. See, do you see what I picked up at the art museum? That’s an “accessible” piece. I’m smart as all shit now!
~
Good story, nice way to go about making a big change. Some really solid Spider-Man stuff in there.
You know one of my top pet peeves in comics, something that goes down in this book? When they reprint an entire fake newspaper or magazine page within the comic. This might make me sound like a total shit, but I came to read comics, not magazines, and especially not a magazine that’s 100% fictional.
There’s something weirdly OCD about me where I feel like I have to read every word on the page. It’s gotten better over time, really. This was a big problem when I was young, though, because comics will do something like throw a guy out of a plane and have something like this going down the page:
No
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
you get the idea. And as a kid, I would read every single one of those No’s. Why? Honestly, because I was insane? I don’t actually have an honest answer for that. It just felt like something unfinished if I didn’t read it.
As a minor psychological breakthrough, I did manage to skim the fake magazine pages in House of M. So congratulations to me and I hope that nobody put too much effort into them.
~
Another pretty good volume. What’s fun about it, again, is the switch. We get events from the Hulk’s perspective, which is a great swap because…
Okay, for those of you who know nothing about the Hulk, I’ll break it down.
Bruce Banner is a dude. When Bruce Banner gets upset or injured, he turns into the Hulk. The Hulk is essentially a separate entity, so when we look at things from the Hulk’s perspective, he “wakes up” in the midst of a terrible situation that he probably had nothing to do with.
Imagine waking up every morning to some new disaster. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know why Captain America is punching you in the head. You don’t even know if you’re going to be wearing any sort of pants.
All of a sudden we start to see thing not from Banner’s perspective, a guy trying to rein in a monster, but from the Hulk’s perspective, who is born always of chaos and therefore has kind of a terrible life, especially when one considers that he turns back into Banner as soon as he’s not angry anymore.
Kind of a terrible life. Wake up pantsless and getting punched, then live out the worst 20 or so minutes of the day, then sort of fall back asleep, only to be awakened the next time someone tried to stab your alter ego with a piece of rebar.
~
That kind of sucked.
Marvel, it’s time to slow down with the big crossover events. They can be fun. They can be REALLY fun. But part of the fun is that you don’t go from one huge crossover to another. You have to give us some time.
However, it seems like you insist. So maybe we could lay some ground rules that I think would be mutually beneficial?
1. Let’s try to have the maximum number of characters in their default state when it comes to these huge crossovers.
What I mean is that we have these big events, so for the most part they aren’t about one or even a handful of characters. They focus on a dozen or even more. What I’m asking is that we do our level best here to try and have those characters be in their most recognizable form.
Classic example: the Captain American and the Avengers beat-em-up arcade game. Awesome game, players could be Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, or…the all-beige, Speedo-wearing version of Vision?
What the hell?
It was unfortunate, but the game came out during a period when the Vision looked like that instead of like this:
Okay, maybe not the raddest costume. But it was the one we all liked, and part of the fun in the game was being these cool characters. So it’s a real shame when I have to play weird albino Speedo man instead of, you know, killer android.
In Avengers vs. X-Men, we have a few of these going on. Most notable is the Red Hulk, who is not actually the Hulk but a guy who really hates the Hulk. We don’t need to get into it here, but the point is, the dude’s not the Hulk, and I want the goddamn Hulk. Real Hulk shows up later, but by then it’s only more confusing.
Or Colossus. Who is apparently possessed by the Crimson Gem of Cytorrak. You don’t need to know what that means, but it does make a great declaration in the workplace (“By the crimson gem of Cytorrak!”).
2. Can we make these stories so that we don’t have to assume one character becomes a complete, unmitigated dick?
Because that’s what happens a lot. In order for these good guys to fight each other, someone has to start acting like a real ass. It was Iron Man in Civil War, and it’s Cyclops here. I mean, they start out okay. Iron Man just wanted some good stuff to happen….theennnnnn started putting people in an interdimensional prison. Cyclops just wanted to protect a child….thennnnn he mostly focused on burning people alive.
It just doesn’t make sense. One character always ends up so hardline that it completely denies everything that’s happened before. For some reason, it just doesn’t seem possible for folks to write a story where one can see both sides of an issue and understand why both parties might start punching each other and destroying flying aircraft carriers.
3. Give me someone to care about.
I know, it’s my own fault. Comics storylines and characters are like the law. Knowing the law is your responsibility. But in this case, Hope Summers, a girl who I gather was a baby born sometime after one of the last couple big crossovers, who was then raised in the future(?) by Cable(?) and taught to survive some kind of apocalypse(?)
Again, you don’t need to know anything about that beyond the fact that it has spawned what I consider to be one of the most hilarious X-Men images of all time:
Anyway, just not someone that I really care about. Sorry. And if I don’t care about the focus of all this, or more importantly don’t even really know anything about her or understand what she is, it’s tough for me to care.
I’m not saying it’s always got to be Wolverine or Captain America. But if you’re going deep, you’d better give me some solid character moments with this person in order for me to be on board.
~
Overall, the crossover thing is killing me a little bit. There are always great moments.
But for the most part, the drama getting there doesn’t add much to the moment. Which is really sad because these are the sorts of things that should be enhanced by the rest of the story building to them. That, to me, is the whole idea behind a mega crossover event. And that’s what they are almost always missing.
~
Very cute, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. Like when I see someone park real shitty and have to come up with a criticism. For some reason, “Wow. Real cute” is the one that comes to mind. Curious…
Anyway, what I liked about this book is that it talks about some of those common superhero tropes (flying versus leaping, ninjas, the Great Boob Window Debate) in such a way that it’s still a fun read for comic aficionados, but I think it would be pretty good for newbies too.
Does the word “aficionado” get used for anything besides that cigar magazine? And do they have a “Cigar Newbie” magazine? “Cigar Mildly Interested”? Because I might want to get into it, but I’m not ready to research at the aficionado level.
Anyway, a lot of stuff like this addresses the same issues in the same way, and it all ends up sounding like a warmed-over Kevin Smith script. What? You wonder about Superman’s penis? What an idea! Haha, oh man, that’s both transgressive AND aligned with something everyone knows about.
The problem is, these ideas are funny once, but then they lose something. And believe me, if you’ve spent any of your youth talking about comics, you’ve already covered the various genitals and find the intriguing questions go much deeper than Superman.
Ghost Rider? Does he even have a penis? Is it aflame?
Batman’s nipples, when he had that batsuit with nipples, was it important to him that those align with his actual nipples?
What would happen if the Hulk turned back into Bruce Banner in the middle of defecating? Would he just explode with feces?
THESE are the questions of our lives. They have nothing to do with Superhero Girl other than to say I enjoyed the way Faith Erin Hicks talked about some of those superhero quirks, and I think you will too.
~
This volume contains all the things that normally drive me nuts in a comic. Cloning, time travel, alternate dimensions.
And you know what?
It’s fucking awesome.
I laughed. I cried. Actually, no I didn’t. I’m not a CHILD. I just laughed, but I did it a lot. Even the running commentary, usually a single sentence at the bottom of each page, made me laugh my ass off.
Truly, truly hilarious. It runs to the edge of being to off-the-wall, but it always comes back.
Read this one.
~
A good little series, but here’s a HUGE problem with comics and the amount of big crossover events going on.
In order to read this series in trade paperback form, here’s what you have to do:
1) Read vol. 1
2) Read vol. 2
3) Read Fear Itself: Avengers Academy, the AA portion of the large storyline Fear Itself. So that means you could JUST read the AA portion, OR read the entirety of Fear Itself.
4) Read vol. “Second Semester”
5) Read the Avengers vs. X-Men crossover issues collected in the Avengers vs. X-Men trade paperback, which means probably reading all the Avengers vs. X-Men trades.
6) Read AA vol “Final Exams”
This is warping my goddamn brain.
I know that big crossover events can be fun, and they work. Sometimes. But sometimes I want to be able to pick up a series where I can start at the first issue and read through without knowing the last 50 years of Marvel history. It’s a very difficult line to walk, I know. How do you build on a story without including pieces of the past?
But isn’t there room for the fan of comics like myself who loves reading them, but who loves reading the ones he loves? I don’t give a fuck about the West Coast Avengers and what they’re doing in space. I don’t really care about X-Force because there’s some different incarnation every couple months. I’m sure there are people who don’t give a damn about Avengers Academy who were forced/tricked into reading the portions that cross over with the other big Marvel events.
It’s a total business move, which to me, is the ultimate downfall of comics. The problem with comics isn’t going to be solved by creating these big events and forcing people to buy multiple titles just to get the whole story. How about this novel idea: WRITE GOOD COMICS. Instead of trying to make it seem like I can’t read one without reading three others, put out four legitimately good comics that I WANT to read. I WANT to throw my time and money into comics, but only if they’re good.
~
Another really good volume in the set.
The only thing that concerns me, because I’m a worrier (sometimes misheard as “warrior” which is hilarious because quite the opposite) is that this series makes a lot of promises, or at least sets up a lot of interesting stuff. Which always worries me because then you have to wonder
A) if the series will ever actually come to a conclusion.
B) does the high level of intricacy mean take us always further from the possibility of a satisfactory ending?
For example, in Marvel’s Civil War event we had Spider-Man revealing his secret identity. Which was pretty cool, but because Amazing Spider-Man is an on-going series in which the secret identity business plays such a big part, it’s difficult to enjoy the fun of having the reveal when you know that it will be undone sooner rather than later.
Lost is another classic example of a storyline that was so complex that it was nearly impossible to end it in a way that wasn’t outright terrible.
However, Locke&Key is pretty awesome so far. And Joe Hill writes some tense novels. So it’s not out of the question to assume that the ending will be good. He also, as of 2010 or so, had a definite timeline/plan for where the series would end, which I honestly believe is the hallmark of many a good comic. If the writer has a beginning and doesn’t plan to be working on the end for the next 50 years, that says to me that we’re dealing with a fully-conceived narrative instead of a premise that has to continue looping and warping in order to put a book on the shelves every month.
I guess I’m just damned to loving comics, which means that it matters to me how they turn out. Which means I worry about it the way a prospective parent worries about the health of an unborn fetus. I end up scouring the internet for rumor the way that parent scours the ultrasound for what may or may not look like the first ever in utero pegleg.
~
This series just continues to impress me. It’s so different from just about anything else out there. It’s got the ability to go between wild fiction to real moments of pain. It runs the gamut of emotion, and at the same time it’s a legitimately fun read.
This volume focuses mostly on Tony Chu’s sister, Antonia. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff online lately that questions female comic book characters, especially the way they appear and the way they dress. I have to say, Antonia is one of the better female characters I’ve seen in a while. Not because she does or does not fall into typical stereotypes, but because in just a few issues here I really came to like her as a character. She adds a great deal to the fictional world here, and she does so through her personality.
Chew makes a really interesting entry into the discussions about imagery in comics and what these images mean.
For starters, Chew does feature characters with *ahem* let’s call them “un-nuanced proportions”:
Buuuuut this is, played up for comic effect oftentimes. It’s kind of an interesting way to do it because the artist gets to have his (cheese)cake and eat it too.
There’s really a lot of play with the art when it comes to proportion all around. Take this character, for example:
Every time he shows up, I swear to god that the artist makes a big point of trying to show off how huge this guy’s gut is. For the love of god, it’s coming out of the bottom of his flak jacket. And look how short his legs are.
The thing is, when you read this book you get the sense that the artist is having actual fun illustrating this book. Like he enjoys drawing the characters. At first glance, it feels like, “Oh, jeez. Another comic book that is all about huge breasts.” However, this is also a world in which there is a deadly cyber-rooster, the FDA is the equivalent of the FBI, there are vampires(?), and the romances are somewhat atypical. What I’m saying is that the world only vaguely resembles our own, and it would be a lie if the characters looked like people we knew.
Which is kind of what I think about when people talk about the outfits superheroes wear. It’s true, Power Girl probably does not require a boob window according to our standards of dress. However, we do not live in a world where people regularly wear capes, fight intergalactic evil, or temporarily become the guardians of a city contained within a bottle. Sure, we’ve all had to city-bottle-sit for a friend here and there, but that’s mostly just making sure it doesn’t fall off the counter. I generally try to not get involved with the actual citizens if at all possible.
So why should the outfits and bodies of people who are not real and engage in activities that do not resemble our own have anything to do with our current dress codes? I mean, if we were going to be realistic, wouldn’t Superman just fight crime in sweat pants and a baseball hat? He’s wasting valuable time putting on his outfit, an outfit in which underpants have belt loops. Or how about the Hulk? Does it make sense for the Hulk to be anything besides completely nude?
Honestly, if we need a Why here, I could hazard a guess:
I think comic book characters are drawn this way because it’s fun to draw and because Power Girl sales would probably not increase if her shirt was filled in.
You know what I think would be a great marketing idea for DC comics? Sell two subscriptions to Power Girl. They have the same storylines, same dialogue, but one features a modest Power Girl, one the traditional. People can then choose to subscribe to 12 issues of whichever Power Girl they prefer. THEN, we see what percent from each, the regular and the modest, renew after a year. That makes it pretty easy, in my opinion.
But whatever. It’s not that important to me. Power Girl is not really my type. What can I say, gentlemen prefer women who haven’t been mind-wiped 37 times by post-Crisis-on-Infinte-Earth continuity changes