Comixtime: “Taste JUSTICE, impostors!”
Well, I spent a while without doing these capsule reviews. But for a long time I was buying the same comics, with more or less the same rate of returns. But there’s enough variety in my comics this week to merit a new post.
Batwoman #5
J.H. Williams III (Co-writer/Artist), W. Haden Blackman (Co-writer), Dave Stewart (Colours), Todd Klein (Letters)
Publisher: DC
As this issue ends the first arc of Williams and Blackman’s relaunched Batwoman series, it’s as good a time to check back in as any. I’ve enjoyed the series; Williams is one of the best artists working in American superhero comics today, and his talent shines on every page. The writing is less great, but still serviceable. As a whole it’s a perfectly fine comic - which makes it stand out like gold dust against most of DC’s New 52 outpost.
I’ve had issues with the pacing, but Williams as the artist feels able to luxuriate in his process, as opposed to when writers like Morrison or Rucka cram as much story as possible into the few issues they have Williams for. But I like that hyper-compressed style, and the five issues of this series end in a glorified shuffling around of pieces. After a damp-squib showdown with the Weeping Woman, Batwoman and government agent Cameron Chase finally meet, setting up a new status quo for our hero and her supporting characters.
Williams’ art is predictably gorgeous, particularly the neat trick of adopting different styles for drawing Kate/Batwoman, Bette, Sawyer and Chase, which emphasises the feel of different storylines converging and colliding. And the panel borders featuring Batwoman facing off against the Weeping Woman, which change from jagged lines (Kate’s side) to fluid Art Nouveau-esque boundaries. But great art alone doesn’t make a comic a must-buy, particularly as Williams is taking a break from drawing the series after this issue. It’s good, y’know? I just wish it could be better.
Mudman #1 & #2
Paul Grist (Writer/Artist), Bill Crabtree (Colours)
Publisher: Image
Writer/artist Grist delivers an unashamedly British take on superheroes in the first two issues of this new series. It has a clean-cut “kids’ comics” sense of storytelling that manages to be more alive and enjoyable than the sex’n’gore “mature” cape books that make up a lot of current DC/Marvel output.
Grist’s deliberately basic art camouflages an excellent grasp of visual storytelling and panel composition. And the dialogue is very funny, whether doing a Grange Hill-style take on the schoolboy hero’s civilian life, or fleshing out two seemingly-disposable criminals in issue #2. It’s great fun, and I’m onboard for the duration.
Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #1
Mike Mignola, John Arcudi (Co-writers), Tonci Zonjic (Artist), Dave Stewart (Colours), Clem Robins (Letters)
Publisher: Dark Horse
Hellboy and the surrounding universe is kind of a blind spot for me, mostly because the main series and its spin-offs present such a daunting amount of comics to get stuck into. I picked this up on a whim after hearing about the ridiculously talented Tonci Zonjic on art. I wasn’t disappointed. The story’s set in the 1930s/40s, which gives Zonjic a chance to cut loose with his wonderful clear-line cartooning, while incorporating vintage pulp-noir stylings; guys in fedoras, dames in cloche hats.
The story itself is neither here nor there - you get a breif glimpse of Lobster Johnson, the ostensible “hero” of the piece, but the His Girl Friday-style female journalist gets central billing in this first issue. There’s definite potential for a decent story here, but right now I’m buying it as an art showcase, and Zonjic is more than up to the task.
Fatale #1
Ed Brubaker (Writer), Sean Phillips (Artist), Dave Stewart (Colours)
Publisher: Icon
Brubaker and Phillips’ latest series is billed as a departure from the regular crime-fiction fare. Not so much, from the latest issue; it’s a very noirish story so far, with some occasional horror flourishes to let us know it’s not a Criminal story. This first issue suffers in comparison to the excellent “Last Of The Innocent” Criminal arc, which was one of the best stories Brubaker/Phillips have ever done.
This drop-off is mostly due to the fact that this issue is split between two stories, a present-day prologue featuring one of Brubaker’s archetypal noir heroes and the mysterious titular femme fatale Josephine, and a 1950s crime story with Josephine involved with a crusading journalist and a corrupt detective.
The creative team work predictably well in tandem, matching Brubaker’s moody noir narration with Phillips’ shadowy art. Phillips doesn’t vary his style as much as on ”Last Of The Innocent”, but he still stages some excellent talky scenes and action sequences, equally at ease with 2010s and 1950s America. This first issue may not have set my world on fire, but there’s potential here. And I trust Brubaker/Phillips enough to stick with this series.
A Metaphysics of 2001 in Three Cuts
“2001 is not merely a science-fiction film or a film about science; it is a film in which the force of science is the protagonist. It is this force’s point-of-view depicted most often by the camera’s eye, which we had previously mistaken as impartial and reportorial.”
Source: landlessness
Lost and the machinery of storytelling
More on Lost, inspired by the Shades of Caruso take on the finale:
The finale also put the rest of the series into a new perspective, now we can stop fretting about whether the show would answer all of the mysteries, and instead revel in the game that can now be played with its Swiss Cheese structure. Instead of a solid block of story we got something riddled with holes, but though critics would charge the holes go nowhere — a consequence of the show being made up on the fly with no coherent mythology inside it – I think it’s just like that cheese in that the holes connect with each other, and we’re able to use those links to get a better idea of what the island is.
In addition to the Island-as-show metaphor I floated below, what if the narrative itself also functions as a kind of machine? The thematic and character connections provide the electrical impulses across gaps that provide the energy to drive the plot forward. Looking inside the holes in the cheese allows us to see the machine’s inner workings.
And given all the flashbacks, flashforwards, and time travel throughout the show’s run, I’m reminded of the Hand of Glory from Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles: “Its moving parts are the days of our lives”. The Hand features in the comics as a cross-section of a very complicated machine protruding into three-dimensional space. The Island in Lost is home to a overwhelming and overlapping number of myths and stories, from Egyptian gods and Biblical allusions to Star Wars. Can it be a protrusion into “normal” space from a place of pure fiction, where narrative is made real? Its moving parts are the stories we tell ourselves.
On the Island, wounds are healed, the characters can work through their tormented pasts, and they can find the role they were born to play. They get to write their own, better, endings to their stories. That was the overall point of the Alt-Verse storyline - to bring our heroes to the point where they “fixed” themselves. The fan theory that Hurley, blessed with his new powers as guardian of the Island, “wrote” the Alt-Verse to give all his friends a chance at happiness, fits neatly into this interpretation. For a show that thrived on fan speculation and interpretation, thinking of its most prime location as a home of all stories adds resonance to all the discussion and debate that took place outside the show. The “Light” that can’t be allowed to go out is the original fire, in a Promethean sense - that of invention and creativity, that has influenced human civilisation up to this day.
End of Series Review: Lost (Part One)
Before I get into why I think the final episode of Lost was the perfect capper for an incredible series while also being an exasperating near-failure that seemed determined to grasp defeat from the…
Excellent piece. I heartily agree that the eventual resolution to the Alt-Verse was a misstep - I felt it detracted from the importance of the resolutions to the characters’ stories in the “real world”. I never really thought of Lindelhof and Cuse as geniuses, but I expected them to write a decent story: the care and attention they’ve put into the show and characters shines through from first to last.
An odd thought: perhaps the “no one really understands what the Island is/does” thread running through Season Six is an oblique commentary on Lindelhof and Cuse’s experience as showrunners? Two guys tinkering with a complicated and unpredictable bit of kit, unsure of what results will be produced, but knowing there’s a lot of pressure on their shoulders…
Source: shadesofcaruso
Book review: Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk
I’ve only been “into” comics for about two years, and my reading habits have been fairly piecemeal - it’s a big medium, and there’s so much interesting-sounding material out there. (Plus, I can’t buy new stuff all the time.) So I’m grateful I came across Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work And What They Mean in the library, because it’s a neat introduction to some important concepts and creators I hadn’t heard of before.
I’m suspicious of “academic” criticism of “pop” cultural artifacts, because it can come across as condescending, like a “serious” critic dipping their toe in something “frivolous”. But Wolk can do high-flown without being pretentious - at least for the most part; I rolled my eyes when Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement got name-checked yet again.
And his love of comics crosses the familiar genre/indie divide. While most of the creators he profiles are “art comics” writer-artists like Chris Ware and the Hernandez Brothers, he also provides in-depth chapters on Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. And a great section near the beginning unpacks Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s run on Daredevil, explaining how creators can put their own auterish stamp on a company-owned product.
It’s a fun book, unashamed to be clever and able to hold your attention. And it’s provided me with some new additions to my list of comics to check out. I’d recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in comics.
