The Factual Opinion

My Wife: Will Always Have Brubaker's Back

Winter Soldier #1
Art by Butch Guice & Bettie Breitweiser
Written by Ed Brubaker
Published by Marvel Comics

I'm actually going to talk about the art in this one first. That's weird for me, right? Maybe, but I don't think I have much of a choice: it's quite striking. There's something about this art that has me thinking I'm reading an "old school" comic book that's also totally new at the same time, in the same panels. The people, are drawn "normally", by which I mean realistic. Body parts are generally in proportion, facial features have naturalistic details. But there's an overall manner to the characters, a vibe that has me flashing back to 1960's & 70's era James Bond movies, with a bit of a Rockford Files vibe here and there as well. I love that the general palette is a washed out red, white and blue--it's very subtle, but very clever. You don't necessarily notice it while reading, but upon flipping back through the comic, it's evident throughout.  

It's funny to me that I like the art, because the old 60's & 70's comic book style could probably be blamed in large part for turning me away from comic books. It's not that the style is bad, I hope that's clear. It's just the sort of thing that I saw in comic books when I was younger, and I think I associate that art style and comics with something that I didn't read or like that much. It's a sort of learned rejection, not always tied into actual evidence. But in this case, I was drawn in. Some of the things that drew me were the way the frames were played with - on the first page, our main characters are are in these great catalog poses, with The Black Widow depicted too large for the frame in which she's drawn (love that!), and there's a lot of fun being had with frame size, shape, insert and overlap, teasing out things that draw the eye in. It just made me want to find the flow of the page and see what else was going on. And, of course, I loved the romantic scenes between Bucky and Natasha. They're really intimate and sensual, and yet there's nothing X-rated (not even R-rated) about those drawings. I think that takes real artistic talent to be able to draw intimacy with such restraint.

So, anyhow, that's the art! And now, onto the story. Although it's clearly a storyline that's grown out of another story that must have been going on for a while, it's not at all difficult to catch up with. Everyone thinks Bucky is dead, but he is actually trying to save the world. He's teamed up with Natasha, the Black Widow, and they are trying to find and "catch" (I'm pretty sure they're just going to kill whoever they find) some sleeper agents (who are actually sleeping - Cold War agents of destruction who've been put to sleep in sleeper tube-things and kinda forgotten about after the Cold War ended and it looked like they weren't going to be needed) before the other side finds them and actually uses them in some kind of destructive way. There seems to be a couple of problems when they find the tubes, because they are empty. The big surprise of the issue is who shows up at the end. He's a gorilla warrior.  No, I didn't spell it wrong. He's not a guerrilla warrior, he's an actual gorilla. And he's a gorilla that screams in Russian at that! Neato!

The only funny little problems I had with these parts of the comic were when some of the fight scenes occurred. I couldn't always follow the action. That might be on me, but half the time I saw all the bullets and legs flailing about, I kinda gave up trying to follow it. Instead, I skipped to the end of the scene to figure out what happened by looking at the end results. Then I went back and tried to map out what I was supposed to be seeing. I suppose if it were a little clearer, I'd look at it more. I can't figure out what I really need changed though, because the problems I had with the fight scenes seem to stem from the same experimentation that I liked so much in the more intimate, talky scenes.

The other thing that seemed kinda, um, unrealistic sandwiched within the realistic art is that neither Natasha or Bucky ever seem to get hit. I finally asked my husband if they had some kind of unspoken magical powers or something, because...seriously. Is there something I don't know? Because Natasha seems to just back flip over every bullet that ever comes her way, and Bucky never seems to get hit either. They seem to be completely invincible. Is that the case?

Apparently, its not true. I'm told that she doesn't age normally, and maybe that's what keeps her so agile, and I've read (and extensively analyzed) about Bucky's robotic arm before. But they are not magic.  

All that aside? I found Winter Soldier to be an entertaining and somewhat thrilling read. It's got one heck of a cliffhanger, too! A maniacal machine gun toting Russian Gorilla screaming "DEATH TO AMERICA!!!" It definitely makes one wonder, "What happens next?"

-Nina Stone, 2012

My Wife: And The Meandering Dead

The Walking Dead #93
Art by Charlie Adlard
Written by Robert Kirkman
Published by Image Comics

Hey hey, Party People. What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on with me. I just had a new experience. I read The Walking Dead. Yeah...I don’t think I’ve ever read a single issue of it in these last 3 or 4 years of my comic book reading tenure. I did see some of the TV show, the one shot down in Georgia with all those British people pretending to be American. It kinda lost me after a bit. Not “lost” like I couldn’t keep up. No. It lost me because my mind wandered away, because although they set up a conflict, the story never moved faster than a snails pace. I think I'm remembering that correctly. I remember not being very grossed out by the show, which I thought was strange. It was pretty gruesome stuff, blood and gore all the time...but it was just kind of there on the screen. I felt like the violence on that show was an alarm going off, and then you'd hit the snooze button and the show would go back to sleep for ten minutes. (When I first wrote this paragraph, I actually thought the show wasn't on television anymore, but then I found out that it still is. Am I really that out of touch? I'm going to watch the wolves versus Liam Neeson movie this week. I still watch Justified and Parks and Recreation. Stupid zombie tv show. You make me feel old.)

Anyhow. I wasn’t sure what I was in for here. I was pleasantly surprised to find out the comic was black and white. Normally, I don’t know that I would like that, but for some reason it drew me in. As a matter of fact, the first page drew me right in. It's issue 93, does not start with any kind of recap, has no weird catch-up narration. It just jumps right in with Rick talking to this dude he just met, and the dude is telling him about this large community situation they have going on that he’d like Rick and his friends to be a part of. I don’t know if was somehow by design, and if it was it is GENIUS, but on the first page (!) I was saying to myself “Hmmm....I don’t know. I know I don’t really know anything about this situation, but I think this might be some sort of trap, Rick. You should tread carefully, as I believe this man may not have your best interests at heart.” And right there on the next page? Rick has a physical reaction that lets me know he was having the exact same thought I was having (by "physical reaction", I mean that Rick fakes a handshake and knocks the guy out). I found myself first thinking “see! I was right!” and quickly switching sides to “Wait! Aren’t you being a little hasty and paranoid?” I found that very entertaining. So much melodrama and conflict in just a few pages!

But I think there's a bad side to that as well.

Why? Look: it's good to get me so fully on board this comic's plot from the jump. I didn’t have to read a bit to find my way in. But the bad thing is that turned out be the only real conflict in the entire issue. By page 2, the whole thing is decided: some people are out there, and either this guy is lying about them or he's not. But by page two, Rick's already decided how he's going to handle that situation--he's going to go and be a badass--which means the next 20-some pages are just a bunch of place-setting type scenes--delegation of duties, game plans, declarations of love - and then the last few weird pages where Rick recaps his feelings on what it means to be a person who has to live with zombies all the time. Yes. Reflection on Life with Zombies. On who they’ve become. On how they respond. On maybe it being time to get outside of the walls and see A LARGER WORLD. (Which is...the title of the story.)

Yeah - it was kinda weird for me. It's about five pages of "stuff" dawning on him and him realizing that maybe the guy that he knocked out and has tied up in a chair “back at the ranch” might be honest and offering them the very thing that he just realized they needed. Cue violins. That’s where I suddenly realized that the the whole comic was just, like, this big set-up for the two page spread of the LARGER WORLD, and to introduce this new mini-series THE LARGER WORLD. And that maybe these characters need to get back to living life rather than fighting the dead.  Get beyond the little community they built and back to.....yes, THE LARGER WORLD. (Again: that's the title of the story.)

So, like, this comic went from feeling clever and fun to feeling like I was being spoon fed the writer’s pitch for this new series. It was a quick read, though, and I guess I enjoyed the art. It felt kinda easy on my eyes, in black and white, which I did not expect. But it seems like the comic book series might be similar to the TV show: it starts off with some engaging excitement and then digresses into a slow, meandering story. And then, on the last page, it promises to do something really important...at some later point. Perhaps? I don’t really know. What do you think?

-Nina Stone, 2012

My Wife: Tracked Down An Old Flame

Whispers #1
By Joshua Luna
Published by Image Comics

Oh man! Opening up to that first page and seeing that Luna art felt like coming home. Home! I had wonderful flashbacks to my time with The Sword. Gosh, did I enjoy that comic. I’d almost forgotten how much until I opened Whispers.

So here we are! Issue one in what I hope will be a long series. So far, it's mostly set up: introducing the who, the what, the where, the when and the why for the series. There are definitely some similarities to The Sword in story tactics (is that the right way to say it? You’ll see what I mean.)

You see, back in The Sword, our main character was a wheelchair bound girl who found a sword that gave her magical powers such as giving her the ability to self-heal, or massive amounts of strength. In Whispers, we have a young man who seems to be "crippled" by his OCD, and we see him developing a magical power that's sort of like astral projection: the ability to hear loved one’s thoughts as well as possibly influence their behavior.

And, yes, it looks to be a hero’s journey of sorts. In the Sword, Dara used her powers to go and avenge her family’s death which she witnessed just before finding The Sword - the very thing the killers were after. This powerful weapon had a story that spanned history, a whole mythology that served as the original source of conflict for the whole story.

So far, in Whispers, the set-up is not as dramatic. So far! I’m saying that because, well, I read the first third of The Sword in the trade format. My recollection of it as one overall story comes from that fact, that I read most of it in very quick succession. Reading Whispers, I realized that it might have taken a couple of issues to really set-up the story, something I wouldn't have noticed. Reading it like this, in a smaller chunk, I wonder if I might be giving the information (the piece of story I just read) more emphasis than it really needs. If, for example, I was reading a collection of multiple issues of Whispers, would I be stopping to wonder why Sam (the main character) and Lily recently broke up? Or would I just acknowledge that bit of information (okay, they broke up) and keep moving forward? Would I get as irritated with Rico (a character that picks on Sam for his behavior), or would I just keep reading, having faith that Rico's behavior is necessary to the story and not something I should get that worked up about?

I don't know. It's worth thinking about, but it would be a tough thing to test.

And that brings us to....Astral Projection. Yeah. That’s kinda what this is about. That makes me a little bit worried. I’m sorry, but it does. See, with The Sword, even though it wasn’t “realistic” or “plausible” it was easy to understand. The Sword made her strong. Without it she was weak and vulnerable. Being able to visit people while you are sleeping/dreaming in a way that they can’t see you - I don’t fully yet understand how to grasp hold of it. Sam will be armed with information and therefore truth? He can influence events, perhaps? I’m not entirely sure. It's not like vampires. I wasn't sitting here reading Whispers and remembering all those awesome astral projection movies I watched when I was a kid. I don't have a bunch of daydreams about invisibly floating around in people's bedrooms. (I have a few, of course.)

But I remember how much I loved the Sword, and looking at these very first pages of Whispers...I want this to be that good. I would love to fall in love with something like that again.

Fingers crossed.

-Nina Stone, 2012

The Wife: Likes Life More Because of These Johnny Wander Comics

I’m having a really cool week. And it looks like it's going to keep getting better.

Historical background: in my upper-middle-class, predominantly white-collar, Land's End infected, mega- conservative High School, I was considered artsy and “different”. And while that’s cool and all, I wouldn’t necessarily say that was a label I earned by doing anything particularly dramatic. I just happended to be living in a town/situation/cultural environment with an ingrown animosity towards creativity. I mean, it had to engage with these things in some fashion, if only to meet college preparatory requirements. And yet, even in the one tiny area where creativity was the actual purpose, it still operated with the strictest of observations. Channeled into the fewest possible outlets the community would allow, it ended up being: dancing school, band, choir, and a tiny bit of theatre. That was it. I don’t know what fine art students had on offer, if they could even find the support and guidance other communities provide with which to nurture their art. And when I decided that I wanted to be a dancer, that, by neccessity, took me away from school in a way that prevented me from participating in any extra-curricular school-related activities. The simple fact that I went somewhere other than the primary place that almost everyone went was all it took for me to earn the label as an "artsy" person.

I had an outlet for creative expression, sure. But, as I've come to realize, it was usually someone else’s creativity that I was expressing. That's what we were all taught to do there--to be the release for someone else's dormant fantasies of what a life of art might have been like for them. I don't regret it, and I can't say that I was cognizant enough at the time to have been disappointed it--I loved dancing--but enough time has passed for me to have no problem admitting that it might not have been the ideal situation for any of the parties involved.

Which leads us to this week: I’m having this late-bloomer, um, blossoming right now. I’ve dance and sung all my life, but my inner musician has always been there, aching to get out and replace the words of others with notes of my own. And now she’s out! Here I am, in Brooklyn, and just last night I enjoyed the first meeting of the new songwriter circle I’m now a part of (I even shared my latest creation!). Today I had a guitar and theory lesson, and with my new knowledge of some music theory (as well as some improvising), I came up with a bass line for my new song. Following that, I had an actual gig--I got paid to go rock my pink guitar and sing songs to children and their families. And I'm having so much fun doing all those things!

And the icing on the cake? Tonight I am reviewing Johnny Wander - Volume 2: Escape to New York, the night before I get to attend the release party for this comic and actually MEET Yuko Ota, Ananth Panagariya, and hopefully the rest of the gang. I am SO excited!!! Who’s having the time of her life??? That would be me. Totally me.

SO here we all are - the Johnny Wander folks and myself -- doing our thing ('s?) in Brooklyn. Doing my "thing” has also led me to reviewing comics with my husband's encouragement and support, and being so fortunate as to actually seeing a blurb of my review of Johnny Wander Volume 1 end up on the back cover of Johnny Wander Volume 2. (That’s all because I have the most awesome husband in the world.)

It's a great week, right?! In case it's not obvious, I am so thrilled to write about all of this right now. I loved this volume of Johnny Wander as much as the last. It is a 100% pleasure to read. Before sitting down at the computer to write this, I sat on the couch saying to my husband, “Oh and this one! Come look at this one! Isn’t that hilarious? Oh wait - you also have to look at this thing about Garies.”

Once again, as reader, I got to be a fly on the wall in the world of Yuko, Ananth, Conrad, John, Mike, Rook, and sometimes Evan and one time George’s. All that life is in this book. Is it weird to say that reading about their life made me want to stop and really observe my own a little bit more? It's not that I don’t. But from reading this comic, I feel like these are friends who really know how to enjoy their time together. It makes me want to be sure I'm doing the same. I realize that they are just showing us snapshots of part of their day(s) that, perhaps, are not all that special to them in the moment they are happening. However, writing and illustrating a series of vignettes about one’s life seems like a great way to capture time in a poignant way.It's way more poignant than taking digital photos or creating “clever” Facebook status updates does. (I'm not making fun! I'm talking about me.)

I’m sitting here, right now, flipping through the book in an effort to come up with my “favorites” to tell you about. And yet, with every page I’m like, “oh yeah....I LOVE that one! OH - and that one too....”

So let me gather myself up, again, and tell you about this book in case you’ve never read or seen it before.

Ananth, Yuko, Conrad, John and Mike, all live together (or did at one time) in an apartment in Brooklyn. And although along the way, some people move out and some move in, they all stay friends and hang out quite bit. This book is a series of one and two page vignettes, as I call them, illustrating their experience living in New York. Brooklyn, specifically.

We are treated to illustrations of things like their coffee mug collection, or the preparation or eating of a meal - as well as its aftermath - art about doing art, backstories such as Yuko’s “traumatizing dental misadventures”, excursions, and interludes about the newest addition to their home - the cat, Rook.

(I have to say that this might be my new favorite part. Anything about Rook. I’m a sucker for cats. Every single section that was about Rook and his quirkiness, or about cats in general, always had be laughing with recognition. I love that they’ve captured some uninterrupted cat behavior and brought it to life. Rook is drawn so well. The subtle changes of the height of his ears, the way he cocks his head when he’s inspecting something, the tiny little adjustments that cats make? It's all really well drawn. I adore him. (So if ya’ll ever need a cat sitter - I’m your girl.)

As a matter of fact, I continually find myself stopping to enjoy the facial expressions as they are drawn. Each individual comic seems to be set up with an opening frame that delivers the who, what, where and when. Then there is the conflict or the joke, and somewhere in the final frames is a close-up on the facial expression of one of the characters. And its often so subtle - just a stare, or eyebrows drawn slightly closer together - but every time it lands like a punchline. I LOVE it! (I find it hilarious how John so often is drawn with a bothered expression.)

The experience of reading Johnny Wander Volume 2 makes me understand why people like reading graphic novels and comics. And that’s a big thing for me to say. I’m not one who grew up reading comics, and I feel like if you didn’t grow up reading them, it's not something you get into later in life. But I’m finding that I thoroughly dig autobio comics, especially in this form. This material is so relatable, and like I said, it inspires me to observe and enjoy my own life more.

Perhaps that’s why this week is so cool. It's not necessarily cooler than any other week that I’ve been having. But as I’ve been reading Johnny Wander, I’ve stopped to observe the vignettes I get to have in my own life, I get to reflect, and I'm finding myself enjoying it even more.

It is an exceptionally cool week, however!!!! And I cannot wait for tomorrow night to hang out with these folks. It's gonna be like walking into a book and hanging out with my favorite characters. Who gets to do that?!?!? Me, that’s who. :)

-Nina Stone, 2012

My Wife: Nails The Costume Description

When one's husband hands them a comic and says that this comic was one of his favorites from "when he was a kid", one assumes it will be light and, perhaps, even silly. One does not expect it to feature criminals engaged in homoerotically honest discourse about "The Place" where they were both incarcerated.

As you can see, that's what I got. I got Deadshot. And although on the cover, Deadshot looks like a cross between Shazam and C-3PO, the similarity ends in appearance.

Ha - I just now looked at the cover and caught for the first time that there's a box in the lower right hand corner that says "DC Comics Aren't Just For Kids!" I guess that would have been a clue, had I seen it. It's white letters on a white background, with only a shadow black outline, and it's on the bottom corner. If that was 1988's way (Wait. 1988? I just became painfully aware, again, of our age difference. Gulp.) of rating a comic "mature", I think it's sort of failed. 

Anyhow - now that I got all of that off my chest, I have to say I really enjoyed this. The paper is newsprint-y, and I usually find that so irritating that I cannot really focus on the comic. But that was not the case here. I got so sucked in to this dark gritty tale of the ex-con-turned-narc-turned-suicidal-sociopath, that the pages didn't bother me.

It's a well written comic book. Just when you think you know what the story is, that these two guys who knew each other in jail are hooking up to do some crime, it turns out to be about a guy, our own Deadshot, on what is essentially a suicide mission offered to him by the Feds. One that if he survives - and they paint it like it's really iffy - he'll be a free man. And as it goes along, we come to learn that Deadshot just doesn't really give a fuck about anything anymore.

Or does he?

Because, yes, there's a love story, people. His ex-wife is trying to find him. His psychiatrist--who looks a lot like his ex-wife, of course--might have fallen in love with him. Another interesting twist. See, that's what's great about this writing. The story sheds light on the back story and history of the characters, but only in these flashes, and it makes it pretty clear that they're maintaining that delivery because that's what Deadshot is, a guy who lives in shadows and obscurity. There's no need for forced editorial narration to spoonfeed us the story, or the theme. It's all there in the way it's drawn--the deep, heavy shadows are where the action occurs, where all the choices are made and the difficulties are engaged. In the light, people just do things. It's a comic book that assumes its readers are smart. While it seems that a lot of today's comics like to assume that we are idiots who don't get things unless we're hit over the head with them.

Am I wrong? I'm sure there's exceptions. God knows that ya'll read more comic books than I do, you would certainly know better. But it seems to me that the trend has been in overtelling a story, and subtlety has been abandoned.

Speaking of things that have been abandoned: Columbia House ads?! Remember those? Okay, I liked them from a nostalgia point of view, sure. But I also liked them because they were clearly advertisements. They look NOTHING like the other pages. Whereas today, often, an ad page has the same colors, and lines and look of the comic book's page before it, and I've definitely gotten confused once or twice. I mean, not THAT confused. But still, in this case, I knew to just flip all three pages of "12 Hot hits for a cool Penny" - because it looked like an ad, not a comic. I'm almost embarrassed I'm complaining about this. "Even the ads used to be better, because they looked like ads!" Is that what I'm really saying? I guess it is. Have fun with that.

Oh, I should mention that, despite the weird C3P0-like costume, Deadshot is a total BAD ASS! He has no fear; no fear of death, or loss, nothing at all and it makes him one free and scary mother fucker. He'll get the job done, and then some. I have to throw in a shout out for how the artist drew the guys on the plane vibrating with fear after El Jefe says "the cabin is pressurized! One stray shot - one tiny hole in the fuselage -- and we ALL DIE! Yourself included." and Deadshot literally just says, "so?". And then, all hell breaks loose and Deadshot murders absolutely everybody. He doesn't banter with any of them--except for the one guy he used to get here--and he doesn't wait to figure a way out. He just kills all of them, immediately.

Yeah, this was a good comic book. What happened to this character? I've never heard of him, so I'm just assuming he and his comic book have been gone for a long time. But - wow. This was a good story. And it's a four issue mini-series - with SO much in just the first issue. 

Kudos to Ostrander, Yale & McDonnell! They did nice work.

-Nina Stone, 2012

My Wife: Understands The Cosplay Impulse

Before I delve in here, I must come clean about a coupla things. 

First - I don't really know anything about Wonder Woman except for what I remember of the Linda Carter TV show, and what I remember of that show is that I watched it, and it was a television show.

Second - I don't really know my mythology. My mythology is familial, my mythology is World War 2, it's Russia, it's stereotypes. Greek stuff? I don't know Greek stuff.

Sooooo.....there's a lot in this comic that I didn't totally grab ahold of.

That being said? This was a delightful read! While I didn't get all of the reference, I enjoyed spending time with such a cool story. There was so little dialog and narration here and when there was dialog, it wasn't a literal, redudant explanation of what was on the page--which I feel like happens in comics way too often--but instead, the language and writing expanded it in a way the art couldn't, making it even better. (That first time it happens, when the line "...sun of a king" shows up was particularly awesome. There's no way to draw that the guy is toying with the girls he's about to kill by letting them know he isn't human, and there's no way we would hear the distinction in a movie if an actor said the word "sun" instead of "son"--it's only going to happen here, in text. Knowing where that scene goes at the end, that line gets even cooler.) And the final reveal of where that narration comes from--wow. That was really awesome, and so dark. It wasn't what I expected, and I loved it.

And yet? I have to say that my favorite parts of this comic were the one's without any words. For instance, there's a series of frames where a woman clad in a hooded cape of peacock feathers, uses a scythe to kill a horse. Whoa. The colors of that cape, juxtaposed with the barn and the horse. That blade swinging amongst all the softness and silence, sharply singing its song. The frame where you the horse neighing, yet there's no sound effect written - I loved it all. 

Now, how about those two horse-people-mythological-figures bustin' down the door! I stared at that for, like, five minutes. The harnesses, the legs of the horses, the violent charging. There's so much "motion" in one page, it's like--have you ever been around horses? They have the most intense presence, with all that power caught up in their muscles. It's unreal, being close to them, realizing that they've just agreed not to "attack", that domestication is just a promise between us and them, a promise not to run us down. I look at the legs on those centaurs and they've got that kind of power. They're scary.

What about Diana? Wonder Woman herself? I just love all the angles that she's drawn from - her long hair flowing down her back as she looks over her shoulder, opening her serious closet full of serious equipment; the intense look in her eye. I especially love the frame where she's jumping in the air to protect the chick in her underwear, how she blocks and destroys an arrow that was coming straight toward her. YES. See, now I get why you would wanna be Wonder Woman for Halloween. Before, it seemed like a costume. This seems like something more...badass.

The end of this comic, which I alluded to before is depicted in such a cool way that I want to go dig up some mythology books and learn a thing or two. I stared at that last page for what felt like hours. Those girls got burnt to a crisp. I love that the last frame is one of their falling, fiery bones. Just a dark piece of confirmation that yes, those three girls are completely burnt up and dead. Make no mistake, accept no substitute. RIP.

This was a delightful read. I came in not knowing a lot about Wonder Woman or Greek Mythology, and nevertheless, I was able to enjoy this comic. I guess that means that you've got a successful #1 on your hands.

-Nina Stone, 2011

My Wife: Finally Read Something By Warren Ellis

Hey hey hey! This comic was almost right up my alley.

That's gotta count for something!

Secret Avengers #16
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Jamie McKelvie
Published by Marvel Comics

My take on the rules is this: if you're going to read a comic book, then you're implicitly agreeing to suspend your disbelief and say, "Okay, I'm in. I'm taking the ride." If you're not willing to do that, then come on--the idea of super heroes alone is going to send you right out the front door, right? There's no point at sitting down for poker and then making fun of the concept of playing cards. As readers, we have an unspoken, unwritten contract with the creators/companies/artists that says we are here to play along.

And since that's the agreement, I picked up this issue of Secret Avengers, and I was all in.  

You're in a city built a mile below Cincinnati? Of course you are!

The car you're driving in is somehow atomic? Absolutely! This makes perfect sense, and I have no problem with the concept. 

You engage on a logic and emotional level with a talking blue cat the size of a man? Hey, who wouldn't do the same, if the possibility presented itself.

And then, of course, there's the big conflict of the plot: the Von Doom field that will destroy the planet! (Or at least Cincinnati...)  Oh no! Oh no! Hey, Secret Avengers, do WHATEVER IT TAKES to handle the Von Doom Field!

I (we) never question any of this. We never stop to say, "now wait a second.....wait a second. How do you even turn on an atomic car without it blowing up?" Neither do we try to poke holes in the plausibility of ANY of the stuff about the Beast, who is a big blue talking cat. Why would we?

I don't have any problems with that part of the comic. I'm being a bit sarcastic in the way I present some of its major (and minor) points, but none of it bothered me. No, what bothered me showed up right in the middle of all the funny, pulpy, sorta cool/sorta crazy stuff, right in the middle of the good time I was having  riding the wave of fiction, when the dialogue turns to the subject of time machines.  

Let's all agree on something right now, at least so any potential review reader who happens to be kind of crazy goes away for a bit: in real life, there is no such thing as a time machine. Oh, I know - I wish they did too! Soooo much! I'm the descendent of a bunch of Jews who bailed for America with Nazis in the rearview: you think my people aren't thinking about time machines? We think about time machines all of the fucking time.

But they don't exist. We know they don't. That's part of the reasone they always show up in stories like this. You think would sit around and read about fax machines? There's no mystery to a fax machine. My mother threw a perfectly good fax machine away after the hospital she volunteers at told her they couldn't find a use for it: fax machines are boring as hell.

Now time machines--that's a topic for a fun story involving underground cities, talking blue cat men with senses of humor. Time machines can only amp up a story of this genre.

And yet, when we read about the topic of time machines, The Beast (our talking cat friend) decides to instruct everyone in the fact that they are an incredibly complex and dangerous weapon. Oh yes! How so?   How so, talking cat-beast, are fictional time machines incredibly complex and dangerous weapons? Well, because "a time machine is also a space machine. As we go forward in time, we move forward in space: the Earth moves around the sun..."  he goes on (and on, and on) to say, "So to go back in time on Earth, you have to also be sent to the postion your target was at that time in the past."

Hmmm. This seems very right and true and scientifically sound, I guess. Mmmm-hmmm. YES! Logic!  

Wait a second. LOGIC?

That's the problem.

In the midst of a fun, silly, fictional comic about the Secret Avengers plummeting below the earth's crust, one mile down to a whole other secret city built beneath Cincinnati to drive an atomic car (read: bomb) to deactivate a Von Doom field to keep the world from exploding, we the reader are suddenly burdened by made up logical explanations about made up things, and it's the reading equivalent of somebody taking the book you're enjoying out of your hands and forcing you to listen while they spell out the letters that are found in the words that make up the remainder of its sentences.

It's a buzz kill, and something tells me that the highest possible achievement a comic book like this is going for is to keep that buzz going on until the last page.

Seriously, ya'll, this irritated me. I was in the zone, you understand. My head was in the right place. This slick blond dude in his crazy suit is shooting his disc gun while this goofy British (Tucker said he isn't British, but that's got to be a mistake on his part) blue cat sputters and says "But I have paws" and everybody is so sexy and funny and crazy and it's set under Cincinnati and I even started thinking "Is this why I think Cincinnati is so uncool, because I've never imagined what exists under its surface" AND THEN: you start trying to make sense out of the nonsensical?

It breaks our contract. It destroys our agreement. It makes me think this comic was only sexy and cute and cool on accident, when what it was really supposed to be was about What If This Shit Was Real and that is so--god, that is so not fun at all. That is so much not interesting. I was loving being on board, and I buying whatever story you told. I didn't break my end of the deal. You did. You started poking holes in the plausibility of things, and then, well, I have to. I have to start thinking about time machines, and science, and then "is there enough oxygen underground for a city?" and "How did they build a mile below the earth without disturbing the surface" and "what exactly is a Von Doom field and how will it destroy anything?" Wah - wah. Game over. C'mon, comic book. You're way too short to win me back.

And all of a sudden, what was fun moments before is now totally unfun. I've not only lost interest, I feel complete disdain for the comic and how stupid it suddenly seemed, I feel mean, and I feel bad for feeling mean, and I wonder why the hell I showed up in the first place. And I'm saying that just to illustrate how only moments before I thought it was totally fun and creative, and that something in the writing caused me to turn on this comic book.  

I know it's not fair. Feelings are weird, right?

I'm kinda sad about that. Sad? Yeah, I'm sad. Sad enough that it took me several tries (and days. Weeks?) to write this review. The whole thing was just kind of a bummer. Ah well. Better luck next time, Mrs. Stone. 

-Nina Stone, 2011

My Wife: Just Found Out About The Samurai Rabbit

Usagi Yojimbo #139
By Stan Sakai
Published by Dark Horse Comics 

Well, here's a comic that starts right in the middle of the action! 

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I was a little confused at first. But I think that would be expected of anyone who is completely new to reading this comic--it is, after all, issue 139. So my hat is off to Stan Sakai for giving the characters very distintive differences so that, by the second page, I could tell who was fighting whom, even if I didn't know who they were yet. On top of that, it's all in black and white - so there was no "the guy in the green against the guy in the red," shortcuts to be had. It was the little things--amongst all that energetic drawing, it was clear that the guy with the super thick black eyebrows was fighting the cat with the black top knot. I know that sounds simplistic and maybe even insulting to the art. I don't mean it that way at all! I think it's a genius move on the part of Sakai to make page 2 of issue 139 easily accessible to a person, such as I, who is picking up this comic for the first time. 

And I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was fun to "watch", or rather, read this fight. The reason I can't believe I'm saying that is because, well, the fighting doesn't usually do it for me. I mean, its fun to watch some criz-azy martial arts stunts in some of those samurai movies....but not that often. In print, it usually doesn't thrill me. But I found myself intently pouring over these panels to see what happened next.

I found myself along for the ride of this jaunty comic without even thinking about it. It was so enjoyable. From the personification of animals to that levitating death symbol hovering above a character's head to let us know that he/she is dead--there's all kinds of stuff in here to enjoy. But it was the second part, the section that takes place in the dining room of a small inn, that I loved the most. 

That second section of the comic features what you might describe as an accidental dinner party--a bunch of strangers, stuck together due to circumstance. Everyone is uber-polite as they introduce themselves except for those who end up being ultra-rude, mostly due to class. Like in this case: "I am travelling to visit an important customer, Lord Yamaoka. Accompanying me is my daughter, Ayano.....and my useless assitant, Hoku." It's the same kind of lowkey humor you see in British costume dramas, accented here by the fact that all the characters are animals.

Even better, there's the narcissism of our "poet" and his horrible, horrible poetry! Many years ago, before Myspace and Facebook (even before Friendster! ask your gramps!) I hung out on Craiglist all day while I was at work. I know that seems odd, but it was a proofreading job. You learn about yourself when you're a proofreader. Like, how do you hang out on Craigslist, for one. Well (and I think I mentioned this in a review a long time ago), the Missed Connections board used to be wildly active and creative, until everybody got blogs. Aside from trying to find and hook-up with people via this message board, many a writer and/or comedian would come and write posts about having a Missed Connection with their pants, or their future, etc. Somewhere along the line, one day (or one week) haikus turned into a thing. Missed Connections in a haiku format. I was all involved in that (again, proofreading!), and I can tell you this because I had a mini-crash-course from a guy in haiku writing. And while I might not be an expert haiku critic, I can, with all accuracy, recall how the haikus in this part of Usagi Yojimbo would have been treated on "the boards". NOT WELL! God, I LOVED this part. It was like getting an inside joke. Kind of. Also: animals!

And spoiler alert: it all reminded me of a murder mystery movie, as it should since this issue is a murder mystery. I didn't expect it to have that whole feeling looking at the cover or laughing along with it, but having finished reading it, I can see how everything was perfectly set up to tell that story. And while this is a comic book with a lot of fighting and (sort of) violence, I found it really cute. I think it's a great comic for kids as well as adults. I was just really pleasantly surprised by the whole thing. How have I not read this before? Will I read it again?

I sure hope so.

-Nina Stone, 2011