The Factual Opinion

Batman Year 100

By Paul Pope
Published by DC Comics

Paul Pope makes comics that hurt.  His work comes out, sporadically, (not sporadically like a Fugazi album, sporadically like a Sopranos season) and forces you to read it, to bend it back and forth, to flip it upside down and read it right to left--what the hell is that, why's it there, what's he doing?  His art, his aggro-sex storytelling, all of them are the kinds of things that would make him welcome on any comic, anywhere.  You look at enough of his work and you start fantasizing about how exciting a book this cat could make--if he wanted to, Pope can convince you of just about anything.  (Try asking any self-respecting man or woman where their disposable income went after Pope drew life size ads for the New York Diesel store--and that was for Diesel, who's clothes are well-known to reduce the sex-drive of dead people.)  Pope's a living embodiment of the change in talent since the inception of comics: if you get good enough, you'll quit working on the studio's property.  Nowadays, when a successful creator wants to make a whole lot of money, they'll helm one of DC or Marvel's big guns--a Batman, a Captain America, etc.  When they want to experiment with art and ambition, they do it on a book where they'll own the character.  Safely put, Morrison's work on Batman and Superman is in line with the Japanese Caloriemate commercials featuring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer--they're what you might call "boat" money.  (Although it's hard to imagine Morrison owning a boat, he certainly could--he could call it the LoxSet 9th Dimension World Wind.)

That's what makes Batman Year 100 such a thrill--it's totally Batman, yet it's totally Pope at the same time.  Like Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers, it's a project so immersed in an artists love affair with genre that it bleeds inspiration and admiration.  Whether it's the little twists (like the grotesquely frightening mouthpiece that Batman wears) or the layers of filth and darkness that coat every piece of the landscape from the characters to the furniture, Batman Year 100 is one of those rare pieces of superhero comics--a work that's been fully realized from beginning to end.  There's nothing wasted in it, nor is there a willingness to acclimatize the work to the readers taste: Pope absolutely refuses to do anything here than tell his own Batman story.  It's a work uninterested in interesting new readers, it's a work uninterested in motivating happy readers to purchase any other comics work (try saying that about any of 2006's superhero "graphic novels") and it's a work that is necessitates re-reading.  It's an art comic masquerading in spandex, or vice-versa.  What make it even more surprising is how enjoyable it is just as a stand-alone work--the most un-hero comic to be enjoyable as a hero comic.  The only bad note it strikes is that, if anything, it increases the ticket price for Marvel and DC to get Pope to sign the contract--and those boys are loath to part with pocket cash.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Kramer's Ergot 6

Edited by Sammy Harkham
Published by Buenaventura Press

Kramer's Ergot is an anthology of comics, drawings, and cartoon art.  Kramer's Ergot is referred to by various critics as "cutting-edge," and "avant-garde."

In other words, it's weird.  Like all anthologies, judging something like it means judging a compilation of images and narrative that is widely divergent in style and quality.  Anthologies are more indebted to the personal experience than other graphic novels--the pages that one flips rapidly through, the stories that are less involving than the rest, and, as is expected with any contemporary art, the art where one's response is less "how interesting" and more "what a piece of shit."  Kramer's Ergot, by sheer force of volume, is an exciting and pretty fascinating book--but there are portions of Kramer's Ergot that are just uninteresting, portions of the book that bring about the classic criticism of avant-garde works: the moments when the audience realizes that they don't "get it."  So either the lavishing praise of critics and artists that one admires is based on an intelligence or aesthetic that the individual doesn't (and will never) possess, or it's the sheer lack of explainability or reason that is giving the work acclaim.

That's a truncuated and ill-informed version of the debate, but it's all this writer is giving out now--the central point is this: is Kramer's Ergot 6 good?  Because the thing here is, that question is enough to keep anybody who spends time with it up for awhile, as long as they have nowhere to be.  Asking that question means having to answer the question of what you think "good" means--do you think a comic is something that can be art?  If you do, than can an anthology be art, in the same way that a museum showcase of a style can--a show where you might ignore some of the Warhol's because you like the Pollacks, or skip both because you get off on Diebenkorn?  Or do you prefer when it's just one artist filling a room, and it's set up chronologically?  What about reading--does it need to make sense?  Does it need to have a plot that moves, a resoultion, identifible characters?  Do you care if the bad guy from the first Robocop movie shows up, or if somebody rips off lame Seinfeld jokes?  What if it's nothing but pages of intricate drawings of cartoonish structures, with random chunks of text?  How do you read this stuff, anyway?  Are you supposed to spend fifteen minutes a page, even when you gathered that all that lady is doing is drinking a urine rainbow?

There's plenty of people, we're sure, out in the world that will be able to explain Kramer's Ergot 6--they'll come up with plenty of reasons and reviews that will make us feel dumb for not reading deeper, or being smarter.  That's fine--because Kramer's Ergot doesn't feel like something that was written for the masochists who listen to SYR5, or watch Brakhage in silence.  (I for one, need some music, even if it's just City of Syrup.  Brakhage numbs me out.)  It feels like something that was put together to remind people that the extreme forms of art don't have to stay locked up in museums, laughing at us for being too ashamed to openly admit that we don't give a shit about the Turner awards.  Kramer's Ergot isn't for intellectual wiseasses.  It's for people that are tired of reading autobiographical comics about loneliness and super-hero soap operas, and people who want to believe that there might be some more great comics out there that aren't written by people with names like Crumb, Ware, Campbell, Clowes--and it's for people who don't know any of those names. 

In other words, it's for you, you fuckers.  Get some Kramer's, and get grateful.  This shit ain't gonna be out there forever.

-Tucker Stone, 2007, who's desperately trying to get back on schedule.

Fell # 8

Written by Warren Ellis
Art & Cover by Ben Templesmith
Published by Image

It would be a hell of a criticism to call the latest issue of Fell a "return to form," but that's what it felt like.  Last time the book hit stores, and it's been awhile, the only flaw in the issue was a "seen it coming from a mile away" plot twist that strained all credibility when it surprised the books narrating main character.  Still, Ellis and Templesmith have yet to turn out an issue, #7 included, that hasn't humiliated and castrated 99% of what's on the shelves.  Like 100 Bullets, All-Star Superman, BPRD or anything that Chris Ware produces, it's incredibly mean to compare these books to those it's shelved alongside.  Of course, that's a complaint that's rendered moot simply by the fact that they are shelved next to them, and non-comics readers aren't going to be able to discern that one is operating on a higher creative playing field than the other.  (The fantasy of a comics shop that only sells quality work seems even further now than ever before.)  But why is it Fell is so much better?  Make no mistake, regardless of the use of the word Opinion at the top of the page, Fell is worth any intelligent, normal person's time.  It's not just a "good" comic, not just a book out there that's a little smarter than Ghost Rider (well, a lot smarter), no, this a piece of fully-formed imaginative literature, exceptional graphic fiction, goddamn it, let's not fuck around.

It's ART--more so than Chabon's Final Solution, more fully realized than the last White Stripes album, it's fucking UP there.  Part of it's due to the nature of the structure-solid tales with a beginning, middle and (remember these?) end, another part is the fact that catching up with a unified vision from authors is rare in any comic, non-existent in all but the most independent, self-aggrandizing film, and hasn't been around in any music (excepting jazz) in the last twenty years.  Fell embraces only the slightest bits of culture, fully immerses itself in the most sub-realities of our darkest histories (like #8's mention of a man arrested for sexually assaulting department store mannequins, another of the "this really happened" pieces of weird crime news Ellis is constantly finding)--Fell isn't about Ipods, or celebrities, or what's new and what's hip--but it's not about violence or sex either.  Like The Wire, another incredible piece of "trash" culture that's never had a taste of the ratings of the abysmal Lost or the asinine Grey's Anatomy, Fell doesn't strive to teach, or to introduce: it just shows the reader the path it's characters follow and let's us get to them while they deal with their world.

A lot of people, this writer included, have grown so sick of the serialized nature of today's mass comic books that they've started "waiting for the trades."  (For those who don't know, that means that instead of blowing disposable income on a regular wednesday drug habit, you save your cash and blow it on an eightball of collected editions every few months.)  For some series, this is pretty much a must--as wonderful as Mignola's work can be, Hellboy and The BPRD' work always reads better in a trade.  The same could be said for 100 Bullets, although most Bullet Junkies need a monthly fix.  Right now though, there's three comics, two of which were released yesterday, that not only don't need or demand a collection, but work better on a stand alone basis.  Those comics are, surprise, All-Star Superman, Casanova and, of course, Fell.  It would be nice to pretend that, with the recent spate of comics-related films, that one we're living in a new golden age of the medium...but we're not.  We're watching it's embarrassing attempts to become hip--like when you're dad bought that Corvette.  So, after you get done reading the latest issue of Fell, take all that excitement you've got from a "good" comic and buy a Peanuts collection.  It's getting ugly out there.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

-It should be acknowledged that, if Brian Azzarello's back up feature Dr. 13 was a full-length work, it would be fighting for a spot on these pages.  If you've got the money to burn, you can find it at the end of the totally revolting Spectre mini-series Tales of the Unexpected.  Word to the wise--just read Dr. 13 a couple of times and try to ignore everything else in the comic.  Unfunnily, a book with the word "unexpected" in the title is predictable, every month it comes out:  it's going to be gross, it's going to be boring, and you're going to be really angry at yourself for reading it.

Blood Knot

Written by Athol Fugard
Starring Andre Harris and Marty Brown
Directed By Matt Hancock

Marty Brown is certainly no stranger to those who have hit upon these pages before, and for the more discerning reader, nor is Andre Harris.  (If by more discerning one implies "those who read the comments left by others." We do mean that, so good for you. Of course, considering Marty Brown is, at current, the only other writer for these pages, should one discontinue with the usage of "we?")  Many things to consider, none of them as interesting as the recent weeks theatrical performance of Athol Fugard's Blood Knot.

Blood Knot is, at it's heart, one of those sort of stories that the stage is probably best designed to hold.  Trying to recreate it's immediacy in film would probably come across rather sensationalized, yet presenting the stories nuance would become sparse and less complex on the page.  In a way, Blood Knot is similar less of the type of African pieces of literature by authors like Chinua Achebe and J.M. Coetzee, closer instead to (no surprise) Sam Shepherds seminal brothers work, True West.  It's not to say that Fugard is less "African" a writer than Coetzee or Achebe, but that this specific work is less interested in what race does to a nation than it is in what race does to brothers.  Whereas Achebe and Coetzee often dally in the worlds of the individual, they are nearly bereft of the type of focus that Fugard places on the ever slippery relationship between the two brothers that Blood Knot has at it's center.  To find someone that interested in Cain and Abel stories, one has to leave the apartheid behind--which, excitingly and surprisingly, Fugard chooses to do.  It's so rare to see a play set in a place with the problems that this era of South Africa has that doesn't focus exclusively on those problems, it causes Blood Knot to become compelling by default.  These two brothers, while certainly not in ignorance of the hideous nature of the society they live in, harbor no open desire or ambition to change it--and Fugard is skilled enough to hide his own feelings from the type of explicit condemnation other playwrights are often guilty of.  At no point in Blood Knot is the audience treated to a preachy monologue decrying the lack of rights in the land: no, Fugard is full aware that any sane person already grasps the inadequacy of the law, and he chooses instead to leave the sentimental claptrap out.   Instead, we're treated to an examination of two brothers separated not by the line of poverty (they both suffer on that front) but instead by the possibilities that their skin tone offers them.  Here, the man named Zack (played by Andre Harris) and his brother Morris (Marty Brown) don't look very much alike.  In fact, Morris can easily pass for white, if he so chooses (and apparently, he has.)  Through a relatively simple piece of plot mechanics, Morris and Zack go through the regular motions of stage work: the arguments, the monologues, the credibly built but still cliched "dramatic arc."  By the close of the show, which admittedly left this reviewer craving a bit of bloodshed, very little has changed--the brothers carry ill will towards one another, but they're not about to change things very much.

One of the more complicated aspects of this performance of the show, and one someone with more intelligence might want to examine, is that Marty Brown is not black--not half, not a quarter.  Mr. Harris is--so when the late stage role playing begins in the second act, what the audience experiences is not a black man pretending to be a black man who's pretending to be a white calling a black man pretending to be a black man a "nigger," what you actually have is a white man pretending to be a black man who's pretending--c'mon.  Go with it.  Although it's neither offensive, nor difficult to swallow or accept, it does add a certain additional layer to the plot, one that was probably just as present in the play's Broadway premiere (which had a white man in the Morris role as well.)  It makes for compelling work, especially in the hands of someone as skilled as Marty Brown: and here's where one has to get a bit personal.   Marty's skills are most blatant in work like this--talky, emotive work that would get bogged down by someone trying to suppress writing with their own personality.  It's not mentioned enough when actors decide to take the mature road and allow writing to shine through--Marty could just as easily tried to show off and distract, but he doesn't, and that's commendable.  Even now, a few days after watching the show, what stands in memory is less his "performance"--one instead focuses on who the person Morris was--where that man is now, and what his relationship is now like.  Yet Morris isn't real--he's just words on a page, and the only reason we know him is because he was so effectively brought to life by Mr. Brown.

Andre, with apologies to Marty Brown, has a somewhat more difficult task to attempt: after all, Harris is, by his own nature, a rather sweet and gentle young man, and no accent is going to conceal that effectively.  And while Zack can be sweet, there's a hard edge underlying most of what he does, and it's in capturing that where Harris has his largest challenges.  Happily, he succeeds in doing so, and he hits some incredibly fearsome moments due to that.  Although the ending of the play seemed somewhat neutered, with it's "all things go around again" conclusion, it seems more to me that the reason it was hard for this writer to buy the lack of murder was due to the earlier sequence in act one where Zack, by Andre's brutal force of personality alone, makes Morris write the second, implicitly sexual letter to his new pen pal.  The scene is a nasty one, and when Zack restrains himself from fratricide at the close of the show, it's more than a bit jarring--but not for the reason the writer probably intended.  It's difficult to watch because (despite an excellent performance) Zack's restraint doesn't flow out of any specific motive.  He doesn't kill his brother...because the writer didn't want him too.  This audience member felt differently.

Sadly, this performance of Bloodknot was also it's farewell to the stage for it's superb cast.  Hopefully, Mr. Brown and Mr. Harris can be persuaded to bring it out again at a later date.  If and when that happens, you're recommended to remedy the mistake of not seeing it when you had the chance.  Neither of these gentlemen can be expected to work around your schedule.

-Tucker Stone, 2007