Trees, Vol. 1: In Shadow by Warren Ellis
My rating: 0 of 5 stars
Huh. This isn’t one that I would rail against, and I probably still won’t, but I see a lot of people I follow on Goodreads rated this really highly. I like Warren Ellis a lot, and I figured this one would be a slam dunk.
The quick version here is that I count 5 storylines (Utopia Sex Town, NYC, Africa, Arctic, South America) and 2 of those 5 were compelling to me.
NYC made no sense to me. At least one of the trees (these giant alien things that plant themselves into the Earth) vented a bunch of acid all over the place. Would people really stick around a Manhattan where there was one of these things in the middle of the city and one just offshore, possibly on Staten Island? What becomes of Wu-Tang?
By that same token, Utopia Sex Town made sense. If no one wants to live near the trees because it’s dangerous, it totally makes sense that societal outcasts would make a home near the tree, where no one else wants to live and no one else would bother them. It’s kind of poetic and romantic, this idea that people who had to hide and be in danger in regular society found a home somewhere that EVERYONE was unsafe and nothing was certain. So that story worked, but more on it in a second.
The Africa thing I didn’t get. They put missiles on top of one of the trees? So fucking what? I don’t understand the significance here. Could be my density, but how is that different than just building a really tall thing and putting a weapon on top of it? Or more to the point, weapons in space? I might have missed it. The significance could be on the page and I missed it.
The Arctic story worked because they were in the area specifically to study trees. Rad. I get it.
The South American story I understood, but just didn’t care about. A girl who is some gang member’s old lady is swept up by this old man who teaches her how to be a magic spy while they’re in Aleister Crowley’s house? To what end? Why is any of this happening?
That’s a 2 out of 5 for stories.
But then there was another thing.
This story begins ten years after the trees hit Earth. But the actual excitement starts near the end of this volume, so I would argue that the STORY starts ten years and ONE WEEK after the trees show up. I could have used some compression on this timeline.
That’s Trees. Now should we have a discussion about race in comics?
My sister sent me an article related to this topic last week, and we had a bit of a text row about it. The short version, I got all in a tizzy because the HuffPo version of an article did some things that I thought were lacking in journalistic integrity, but that’s not important and I don’t want to replay a whole text conversation here.
What I do want to do is give comics a little credit.
In general, there are a lot of active discussions about race portrayals in media. That’s a no-duh statement if there ever was one. And the more I thought about it, the more I think comics are doing a better job of embracing multiculturalism than most other mediums. I’m not saying that they are doing things perfectly, but I still think they’re actually making some pretty big steps.
For example, I have trouble thinking of a medium that has made more serious efforts over a longer period to reach non-white fans. I think this is something that comics genuinely care about.
I’m not a historian here, so I might screw this up.
Let’s start in the 60’s and 70’s. I’ve been re-reading Amazing Spider-Man comics from this era, and there are multiple stories about social and political issues. Panels like these are not unusual:
These panels, to me, are quite reflective of some of the discussions I see today. And let’s keep in mind that these are occurring in The Amazing Spider-Man, the book about a boy bitten by a radioactive spider who fights a guy named Dr. Octopus. This isn’t taking place in some weird indie book about feelings and first loves and shit. Nobody is mentioning Peter Parker OR Spider-Man.
In 1972 we saw the introduction of John Stewart, a black Green Lantern, and I thought this quote about his creation was really interesting:
The decision to make the character black resulted from a conversation between [Green Lantern co-creator Neal] Adams and editor Julius Schwartz, in which Adams recounts saying that given the racial makeup of the world’s population, “we ought to have a black Green Lantern, not because we’re liberals, but because it just makes sense.”The character was DC’s first black superhero.
I think what interests me is that even in this time, people were talking about politicized agendas and whatnot. Also, that it wasn’t en economic decision, which some comics fans accuse comics of making. It’s not a grab for money.
During the era of 1984-1986, Stewart was THE Green Lantern, replacing Hal Jordan.
There were several other black characters in the 60’s and 70’s, which I think were underused at the time, but have found more play today. They include Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage (a personal favorite in his more recent appearances), Falcon, War Machine.
And then there a couple in the 90’s that I find particularly interesting. Spawn, from the early 90’s, was a black man who returns from the dead hideously burned. What existed of his black skin is nothing but scars upon his return. Spawn #1 sold over 1.7 million copies, which is unheard of today. Marvel’s Secret Wars #8, the top-selling book of December 2015, sold just under 170,000 copies.
Deathlok is also an interesting one. He’s the cyborg, technological counterpart to Spawn’s mysticism, and a product of the late 80’s who carried his own title.
I find these to be really interesting cases because the characters were black, they held their own books, and the question of what race means after coming back from the dead is kinda fascinating. Screw post-racial America, what is post-life America, and how does race fit in? That, to me, is a really interesting question, and the kind of things comics can do that other mediums don’t.
But here’s where I think things get really interesting, mostly in the 90’s and 2000’s, and where we see what comics (and comics-based movies) have done that others haven’t.
Characters that were white don’t always stay white.
This is a good thing to my mind, but something that I don’t think we’ve given comics adequate credit for.
Nick Fury, Captain America, Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, The Human Torch, Heimdall. Characters that were white and then weren’t. Also, there are some change-em-ups that should be noted, such as the new Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which replaces Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur, and the change of Thor to a woman.
The reason this is something I bring up is because not only are comics putting black characters in their pages, but on the covers, with the names of formerly white characters.
And the reason I bring that up is to ask the question, What other medium has made this leap?
I don’t recall any characters from Friends being replaced with a black person. Was there a black Joey I don’t remember?
I don’t believe we’ve seen a black James Bond as of yet, and there are 23 of those movies at this point?
Where’s the black Super Mario?
Comics still have a long way to go, like everyone and everything. No doubt about it. But I feel like comics have been pushing the boundary a lot more than other media has, and they’ve been doing it for a long time. They’ve tried some different methods, black lead characters, black B plots, and more recently, utilizing existing characters to put more books with black characters into readers’ hands.
And I will be an outspoken member of the comics community in saying that this is not a bad thing to do. It’s a bad thing to do when the stories are a naked cash grab, when the only purpose is to make another issue #1 because those always sell better. But if the stories are good and the art is good, then that’s all Win to me. And having read a lot of the titles listed above, I don’t feel that naked cash grab describes what’s happening today, nor does it describe any of the things I’ve talked about so far.
I’m not saying we should stop asking comics to get better. I’m merely saying that, from my perspective, comics are moving faster and working harder than other media, and they’re taking a step that others have not.
And with that in mind, I’d like to make two lists here.
List the First: My Favorite, Less-Often-Thought-Of Black Superheroes:
Jack-in-The-Box (Astro City)
Cyborg (Teen Titans animated)
Blade
Tesla Strong (Tom Strong)
Venus Dee Milo (X-Statix)
Cloak (especially in Marvel Civil War)
And now, an irresponsible list, some black superheroes whose names could EASILY have made for the titles of Blaxpolitation films:
Sistah Spooky
Catspaw
Jakeem Thunder
Shango The Thunderer
Black Ice
Bling!
Midnight Sun
N’Kantu, the Living Mummy
Coal Tiger