The Factual Opinion

The Virgin Read: Are You There Clark? It's Me, Nina.

All-Star Superman # 10
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely
Published by DC Comics

Holy Superman. You may be wondering why, I, the non-fan of superhero comics would pick The Superhero Of Superheroes to read and review this week. Then you will also be struck by the fact that I totally loved this comic. Now, I’ve come to learn a little bit about comics in the last bit of time, and I realize that Grant Morrison is one of the "great" writers. So, I shouldn’t be surprised that this comic is so good. But it is really wonderful! It is a succinct, well written comic, with Superman’s stellar (often called Boy Scout-ish) character shining through, and with such fun bits of science fiction running through out.

When I say "It's succinct," I mean that it’s a full, full comic that leaves no questions unanswered. Well, with the exception of the giant cliff hanger -- is he really going to die?! The whole issue is complete from start to finish. One wouldn’t need the entire series, or several trades to make a movie – this single issue is all you’d need. (If each Grant Morrison Superman issue is like this, then my compliments go on and on). If you were a person who’d been living under a rock for your entire life and this was your first contact with or knowledge of this Superman person, you’d have nearly everything you need to know. You learn in few frames and minor exposition that he’s dying, he’s from the Planet Krypton, there’s a world in a bottle, and they’re on his side, Lex Luthor is his archenemy, and that he luuurrrvvvs Lois Lane.  And if you’d had any question why this person is so Super, you get all you need to know in various frames of great acts of heroism – flying a bus to safety, rescuing a plane – sprinkled throughout that lead to other great acts, like saving a girl from jumping to her death.

Which brings me to my next gleaming point about Superman. His character. Now, I did a little Wikipedia homework, and looked up a few things. So, I know that the overall character of Superman – his commitment to serving the common good, using his powers for the good of all humanity, etc. – has been part of his story for a long time. (But not the entire time. Did you know that the first Super Man was an evil villain in a Sci-fi series?! You probably did. I forget, I’m the one who’s new to all of this.) But you have to commend the writers who stay true to this so well. I mean, here he is, dying. And he’s with his lady love (after saving her), holding her in his arms, and then duty calls. I mean, it doesn’t call. His Super Ears overhear a lot of people’s pain, and he feels/knows he’s the only one to help.  No one would fault him if he decided that just this one time, since he’s dying anyway, he’s going to serve his own needs and desires, and spend his last hours (hours?) with Lois. But no, he is committed to his duty, He completely believes in his higher duty, and leaves to go save someone else.

Any of you watching the John Adams mini-series on HBO? I’m reminded of George Washington (David Morse) when I think of the aforementioned scene. I cannot remember anything exact about the mini-series scene, except that it was the way George Washington said to John Adams, in regards to what was going on in Boston, something to the effect that "Without a doubt [he] would go to Boston and fight to protect it." He said something about it simply being "the only right thing to do in service of the States."  Let me tell you, I am doing a huge DISservice in how poorly I am conveying this powerful scene.  Washington’s true passion and belief in his duty to serve is what he has in common with the Superman of this comic book. That’s all I’m sayin’.

The other thing I found so enjoyable about this is its cleverness and imaginativeness. I mean, I’m grasping that what that really is, at the core of it, is basic Science Fiction. But I just found it all so clever. Small worlds, alternate universes, teeny tiny superheroes fighting cancer. I mean, I guess Superman has always been a science fiction sort of thing. Again, reading about it on Wikepedia I learned how "the costume design was based in part on the costumes worn by characters in outer space settings published in pulp magazines.”  More to the point of the roots of Science fiction is this nugget of information: “.Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first created a bald telepathic villain bent on dominating the entire world. He appeared in the short story "The Reign of the Super-Man" from Science Fiction #3, a science fiction fanzine that Siegel published in 1933.”

I keep being surprised how much I enjoy Science Fiction. I mean, I wasn’t big into Star Wars or Star Trek. But ask me how much Battlestar Galactica I’ve watched in the past week. Oh, yeah, And do I dig a little of the ol’ X-Files? Yes I do.

Back to Supes. Er, um, I mean, In conclusion, I found this Superman comic brilliantly written, drawn so well, so clearly, in a way that not only supports the story, but helps to keep things very clear for a new reader such as myself, true to the hopeful, godlike character that Superman’s been for so many years, and just totally clever and enjoyable.

But, seriously….is he really going to die?!

-Nina Miller, 2008

Other reviews of this comic from Jog & Tom Spurgeon

Comics Of The Weak: Mommy Kisses Deep Thinkers, Kisses Them Like A Lizard

Speak Of The Devil # 5
By Gilbert Hernandez
Published by Dark Horse Comics

This entire issue reads like a comic book based off Raymond Pettibon's drawing of Maureen Hindley and Dave Smith, or at least it does to this reader.  That's a good thing.  Although we'd agreed to just wait for the trade of Speak Of The Devil after checking out the first issue, this one ended up in the pile due to the ridiculously attractive neo-spank hepcat cover, and we're all the better for it.  Consisting of some brutal murders and mutilations, reminiscent of some early Palomar stories, Speak of the Devil is one of those comics that's yet another reason why Gilbert Hernandez is a masterful storyteller--it's a nasty piece of work though, opening with a nonchalant "She's behind that mound" directed towards a young boy about to discover the still-warm body of his mother, stabbed to death by our trio of protagonists.  The first of multiple random murders in the comic, it's a moment of throw away cruelty that isn't topped throughout the issue, a selfish remark that's left unexplained, but serves to spotlight how insular the world that these characters have created has made them.  They show no concern for their own safety, no worry that the little boy might be able to describe them later--his mother is dead, her eyes gouged out.  Why not send him over the beach to find her?  Why not ruin his vacation, his life, even more?  Even later, when Paul says "No more messing around with kids," it seems like a convenient way to end the discussion, not a real statement of intent--something made even more obvious when, after a particularly brutal (and difficult) murder of an old woman, he expresses his true feelings:  "I hope she's somebody's mother."  Although the predictability of the romantic triangle is pretty routine stuff, Speak of the Devil is far better than a minor, non-Love & Rockets series.  If this is the way Gil wants to spend his time when he and his brother aren't playing around in that universe, then comics readers are all the better for it.

Usagi Yojimbo # 110
By Stan Sakai
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Stan Sakai has been churning out well researched and relatively entertaining stories about his samurai rabbit for over twenty years now.  They always serve as reliable palate cleanser when dealing with the meandering silliness that makes up most of the comic books that line the shelves--but there's got to be quite a few people out there who wonder "Is this it?"  Is this really all Sakai has to offer?  Twenty-odd years of well researched stories about a samurai rabbit?  He's a brilliant artist, in a class by himself, that's a given--but after twenty issues or so of Usagi, who besides the fanatic can actually find themselves excited to read another one?  As time wears on with this series, it's less and less enjoyable, and more interesting mainly in it's value as a paragon of simplicity and consistency.  That doesn't really make it compelling.

Batman: Confidential # 15
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Rags Morales, Mark Farmer & I.L.L.
Published by DC Comics

If this is to be the way it is from now on, then here you go:  that night Bruce Wayne was orphaned?  Well, across town, that same evening, a young Jim Gordon (of Commissioner fame) orphaned another little boy, this one the son of a corrupt cop.  Jim killed the kids parents in front of him, blistering that child's psyche in the same way that lil' Brucie's was.  You read something like this--something so completely uninspired and heavy-handed, coupled with drawings of an adult Gordon given the same haircut seen on 7 year old boys and 16th century monks--and you can't help but experience a little bit, or a lot, of joy when you look at the plummeting sales of DC figures for their comic books.  This is the sort of comic book that makes it hard to imagine how much longer super-hero comic book companies can survive on their mid-30's fanbase:  because there's no way in hell that any children are going to get the spandex addiction off something this stilted and thoughtless.

Legion Of Super-Heroes # 40
Written by Jim Shooter
Art by Francis Manapul, Livesay & J.D. Smith
Published by DC Comics

Francis Manapul's art on this series is pretty much the only draw to this comic, oddly enough.  It is all a bit incomprehensible why Jim Shooter exactly wanted to do this--pretty much the only fathomable reason, as it stands, is for the money, although we can't imagine that "the money" couldn't have been gotten in an easier way.  (Eliot Spitzer?) There's just nothing here.  Like last weeks Justice League, a comic where "stuff happened" and no one cared, this comic spends the entire page count where "stuff" doesn't even attempt to happen, and when it reaches the climactic cliffhanger moment of drama--it cuts away before it occurs.  The issue closes on a radio communication of the event, an off-panel murder, and then it's over.  In yet another moment of ludicrousness, the "Next in Legion of Super-Heroes" blurb uses the phrase "As if things weren't crazy enough already..."  But here's the thing:  things aren't crazy.  Not in the slightest.  For "things to be crazy" there have to be "things" happening, or at least a semblance of "things" on the horizon.  Instead, it's just a bunch of pages of Manapul experimenting with how to differentiate between a bunch of characters who, excepting the Karate Kid and Brainiac, all seem to have the same haircut.  He goes the brunette/blonde route, in case you were wondering.

Ganges # 2
By Kevin Huizenga
Published by Fantagraphics & Coconino Press

Opening with an imaginative portrayal of one of those Mortal Kombat style fighting games, this one populated by Huizenga's cartoon rendition of what looks like Larry Marder's Beanworld characters combined with a pantheon of Hindu deities, Ganges eventually settles into a pretty straight-ahead anecdotal story about main character Glenn's employment at a dot com start up in the late 90's, and the predilection of its employees for another video game, a first person shooter called Pulverize.  You can pretty much rest assured that this is the sort of comic that will be mentioned as one of the best of the year next January, and it deserves the name--Huizenga, an artist who is more welcoming and easier to embrace than an Adrian Tomine or a Joe Matt, continues to be one of the most exciting voices in any description of what people call comics.  Whether it's the touching moment of affection thrown out for a soon-to-be-fired employee, or the pointless dishonesty of the protagonist in his attempts to conceal his current addiction to late-night video game parties from his girlfriend, Huizenga is able to maturely detail something that's truthful, funny, and gorgeous to look at. Ganges # 2:  it's as good as you hoped it would be.

Transhuman # 1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by JM Ringuet
Published by Image Comics

Jonathan Hickman's Nightly News was a surprising mini-series released last year that consisted of one of the most bitterly cynical takes on the news media that could only come from a huge investment of time in reading Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent--thankfully, Hickman included some pretty intriguing visuals and plenty of violence, which made those six issues a lot less didactic than they probably sound.  Where he plans to go this time is a bit of an unknown--unlike News, which carried a strong emotional voice, Transhuman has less humor, short of a two-page sequence that consists of monkeys with super-powers and the reactions of researchers hired to analyze them, and the comic carries none of the pseudo-monologuing with the reader that made News a bit easier to swallow.  The main problem with Transhuman, the one that News avoided, is probably going to be that Hickman's writing comes across a bit like every obnoxious grad student anyone's ever met--proselytizing big ideas and succeeding only in irritating everyone around them.  Someday, one hopes, people with masters degrees will hopefully realize that if the revolution were to come, they happen to be card-carrying members of the first group to fall. 

Daredevil # 106
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Paul Azaceta & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics

If you've got the opportunity to work with a talented artist like Paul Azaceta, a guy who's doing the best work of his career on the current B.P.R.D. mini-series, and you've got the opportunity to showcase his talent on a decent selling super-hero book from Marvel, then you'd probably give him something that's really diverse and unique to do, right?  Or maybe you'll just pull a Brubaker and fire off one of those issues of Daredevil that, for some unfortunate reason, make up about 20% of the previous 400:  the stale epilogue to the tragedy issue, where Daredevil punches some people too hard and comes as close to producing tears as he can with his sightless eyes.  Its one thing to take a oft-used story trope and write something enjoyable, and it's totally another to churn out yet another issue that's reminiscent of someone explaining that Bruce Willis is a ghost really loudly while the credits roll and you struggle to find your jacket.  We get it.  Matt's sad and fucked up about his wife being crazy.  We don't need another 22 pages telling people why.  Or, at the very least, we don't need it every thirteen months.

The Mighty Avengers # 11
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley, Danny Miki, Allen Martinez, Marko Djurdjevic & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

It doesn't serve Mighty Avengers well to come out on the same day as New Avengers and Ultimate Spider-Man, books that, even at their worst, are always far more intelligent, cohesive and entertaining than anything this series has produced so far--this issue, while continuing the recent trend of not being completely terrible, just "sort of terrible" is a fine example of why:  because Mighty Avengers reads like a combination of New Avengers (with it's own internal long-range plotting) and Ultimate Spider-Man (with it's hammy attempts at "contemporary" dialog.)  The assistance of Mark Bagley doesn't serve the book either--while he's certainly a good spandex artist, his work screams the sort of immature pop youthfulness that made it such a perfect fit for Bendis' Spider-work.  Here, it only succeeds in showcasing how dull and unimagined all of these characters are.  Excepting the silliness of Dr. Doom, who hasn't been this entertaining since the 60's, this is just another attempt to give second string characters some relevance, and it's a miserable failure.

The New Avengers # 39
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by David Mack & Jose Villarrubia
Published by Marvel Comics

Complaints about who David Mack swipes from are one of those things that remind this reviewer that, just because people are completely ignorant about how absolutely every visual medium is constructed, from television commercials to fashion ads to, yes, you idiot, comic books, that doesn't mean that the reviewer should tell them that they're complete fucking idiots.  But yes, if you're seriously looking at the New Avengers and calling what Mack does copyright violation, than you pretty much are a complete fucking idiot.  But hey, that's not funny.  Beyond that, it's very possible that what Bendis is doing here--with the maybe-gotcha-fooled of whether or not Echo is a Skrull, and whether she knows the truth or not--that this is one of the best pieces of writing the guy has done that wasn't connected to Ultimate Spider-Man.  Even if the comic isn't as much the subterfuge that it appears to be, it's still a clever little story, told well.  That makes it even more disappointing that the main noise being made about it comes from a bunch of loud mouth fools who have never been near an art department.

Ultimate Spider-Man # 120
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics
With Apologies to Francine Pascal

Beautiful and ruthless, Peter Parker is determined to be chosen queen of the fall dance at Queens Valley High.  If he can win the contest, he's sure to win Liz Allen, the most sought-after girl in school.  The only person standing in Peter's way is Magneto.  When Peter discovers the truth about Magneto's past, he knows the crown is within his grasp.  He doesn't care that Magneto is his girlfriend Mary Jane's best friend--or that revealing the secret may cost Magneto both his reputation and the girl he loves!  Only Mary Jane can save Magneto from Peter's vicious gossip--but can she stop her scheming B.F. in time?

Loveless # 23
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Daniel Zezelj & Lee Loughridge
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Reminiscent of the classic Marilyn Monroe story from early in 100 Bullets, this issue of Loveless is, no bones about it, a tour de force of self-contained storytelling.  Eked out in the brilliant art of Daniel Zezelj, an artist who, God willing, never leaves Vertigo to draw Batman & The Motherfuckingoutsiders, coupled with Azzarello's always superb dialog, Loveless # 23 makes the case for this being the other Vertigo book, besides Exterminators, that should be purchased, and read, by a hell of a lot more people.

The Authority: Prime # 6
Written by Christos Gage
Art by Darick Robertson & Tony Avina
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics

This comic is a complete piece of shit.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Links To Watch Out For: Volume II

Let's get this started: second verse, same as the first.

Link:  Jerking Off To Our Main Writer Edition

If you want a taste of the Tucker's written word, but you can't handle the magic of this site and you like spending money on pretty books filled with pretty pictures, than you'd best spend seventy-five dollars and buy a copy of this, otherwise known as the first full-on monograph for seminal fashion photographer Bob Richardson, who was, and due to his impact, still is, a big fucking deal.  Even though he is Totally Dead.  Another Dead Hero to people with too much disposable income, and little interest in super-heroes?  Well, that would have to be Andy Warhol--coming in less than a month is Ron Gallela's latest monograph: That's Great!  Tucker handled some of the heavy design lifting on this one, so don't expect it to read like a Jeph Loeb review.  Do expect it to be lots of pictures of sexy people who are now dead.  No, he doesn't get paid extra if you buy these books.  And for the win, you can catch up with Tucker and super-hero babblings at his comixology column, which now includes extra sass.

Link: You Will Need Some Time

For those who don't know the music of William Basinski, this is not a recommendation that you go running to check it out.  Not because you won't like it, but because you Probably Won't, as Basinski's work isn't much like anything else out there.  For those who do, all his work has recently been added to the catalog of mp3s at emusic, which, since Emusic operates under a fixed price for a fixed number of mp3s, regardless of length, means it's a ridiculously cheap way to pick up a lot of the dudes work. So, if you're in need of hour long tracks exploring the soundscapes of disintegrating tape loops, then this is the cheapest way you're ever going to be able to do that, short of stealing it.  (Which you could do just as easily, but William Basinski isn't exactly the face of evil corporate music.  He's a dude who makes hour long drones of disintegrating tape loops.  Help a brother out.)

Link: The Gay Utopia Part Deuce

Obviously, you've already gone to the Gay Utopia, as it's still as great as the last time we linked it.  And although it's a great source for smart-y pants-y articles, you're not really culturally in the know until you take another look at the team-up between Noah Berlatsky and Johnny Ryan, which resulted in something like this. Did you click it?  It's called "Alpha Male...In Don't Be Gay!"  You should just click it.  Again.

Link: The Return of the Nabin

The world cried some tears earlier this year, when the AV Club's Nathan Rabin finished up his magnum opus "My Year of Flops," but he's happily started up a new feature, which is almost as good, and just as funny. I Watched This On Purpose  Go. Justice Served.

Link: Totally Inside Baseball

Postmodern Blarney is that site you wish you'd thought of yourself, while being reminded you're just not that fucking clever at the same time.  While you might not know exactly who's he joshing on here, it'll probably still make you chuckle.  Either way, the Man of the Moment is always pretty hot.

No Pictures: Salinger & Chandler Are Kind Of Tools, Hammett And McEwan Are The Opposite

The Simple Art of Murder
By Raymond Chandler
1939

Raymond Chandler didn't just write about Philip Marlowe--sometimes, he changed it up to write about other guys who handled things in pretty much the same fashion that Marlowe would have, but they had different names.  Of course, that's not the sort of cover blurb that sells books, but then again, it's not like anybodies going to use this book as the jumping off point to dive into Chandler.  It's a compendium of short stories, each notching up around 50-70 pages of nasty dudes, nasty ladies and guns.  Sure, it's not bad.  But it's a bit of a slog, and only about half the stories match up to Chandler's best.  Still, it's not like it takes a lot of time to read this stuff, and for the time investment involved it's a hell of a lot better than Dean Koontz.  What does Dean Koontz write about anyway?

The Continental Op
By Dashiell Hammett
1923

On the other side of the coin, you've got a Dashiell Hammet collection of short stories, and none of them match up to the Maltese Falcon.  However, they're all about the same dude, the unnamed "Continental Op" of the title, and he's a delight to follow around.  Described as squat, which makes him sound like some kind of frog, the Op just trips around, fucking with people, fucking people up, and generally just making you wish Hammett had written in a day and age where the Op could have said "fucking" a lot.  Unlike Maltese, there's no higher literary art being reached in these pages, but these stories kick the hell out of Chandlers in the "kick the hell out of" contest, and they're all drenched with so much greasy cynicism that it's sort of like hanging out with writers for the Economist at a low income public school science show. 

The Comfort Of Strangers
By Ian McEwan
1981

Another really uncomfortable study of violence among people who's lives were designed to live without it, courtesy of Ian McEwan.  Interestingly enough, this book was made into a film by Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader, featuring Christopher Walken in a role the book clearly describes as a swarthy Italian with the requisite cheeseball necklace.  Whether the film also includes the brutal sexual violence described in some of the books later passages is unknown to this writer, although it's probably safe to assume that it doesn't--if the film version is absurdly faithful to the book, it would certainly be a notorious film instead of one that's pretty much unknown.  Strangers is a hell of a book, but it's not for everyone--which, in a way, is sort of a spoiler.  After all, it starts off, and spends more than half of it's page count, behaving like a book for everyone.  But, as the Bard once said, shit gets hectic.  And then things get a hell of a lot worse. 

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
By J. D. Salinger
1955,1959

According to Wikipedia, which is kind of like saying "more accurate than your parents, not as accurate as reality," Salinger has some kind of weird filing system describing what will and will not be published of his secret filing cabinet of finished books.  Hopefully, one of them will be a longer version, like a Tolstoy long version, of the Glass family.  As it is, both Roof Beam and Seymour are pretty terrific pieces of that story--on their own, they are over-analyzed New Yorker pieces that sell based on the fantasy of whatever it was Salinger was planning to do with this Tenenbaum like family before his grip on his importance as a writer took a vacation from reality.  Yes, they're good.  But they're as good as a short piece of fiction published in the New Yorker is--better than most, that's for sure, but pretty slim pieces of work.  But here's a little-known fact:  the most irritating people you'll ever meet are the people who read and then want to talk about the navel-gazing whitebread bullshit fiction that the New Yorker publishes.  Being a good New Yorker short story is sort of like being the best poet at your high school.  Sure, you're the tops, but you're the tops at something that makes everybody want to throw you down a flight of stairs.  So, J.D. Salinger, if you're googling your own name, because everybody knows that you fucking ARE, because you're FUCKING CRAZY, this reader would enjoy nothing more than to throw you down a flight of stairs.

Introduce that, bitch.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Off The Shelf: All Greg Rucka, All The Time

Whiteout/Whiteout:Melt
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Steve Lieber
Published by Oni Press, 1998 & 2000

What is there to say about Whiteout that hasn't been said before?  It's a book that got some near-universal praise, from diverse publications like the Comics Journal, Onion's AV Club, and, in a totally out-of-left-field surprise, from the jack-off wank fest that is the Comics Buyers Guide.  It is, as they say, a critical favorite.  Whether or not the sequel, Melt shares the title is beyond the reach of this journalist's research--our impeccably filed database of comic book reviews only goes back to 1999, missing Whiteout: Melt by a scant year.  We'll assume that the response was resoundingly negative.  Or positive, it doesn't really matter.

Both Whiteout stories consist of four-issue mini-series surrounding two characters--one being Carrie Stetko, a freckle faced federal marshal, and the other being that oft-underutilized continent Antarctica.  The first story is a straight up murder mystery that morphs into something more, and the other is pretty much a dogged chase book.  Rucka isn't shy to grab onto story tropes here--whether it's the big mistake that his cop character is running from or the early reveal of the villain, neither book is shy to operate within conventional lines.  That's part of Rucka's greatest strength as a writer, and one that's on display here, in his first major comics work.  Greg is able to maintain a level of pacing and structure that speaks to a faith in reliability: his thrillers are thrillers that operate by the numbers from a plot point of view, leaving him free to explore the dynamics of the human relationships on stage.  While Carrie has the aforementioned character-defining-on-the-job mistake that resulted in not only displacing her to Antarctica (in what one imagines isn't the sort of job any US Federal Marshall would be lining up for, Tommy Lee Jones  films notwithstanding) but her temper, and the destruction it wrought, leaves her basically friendless and haunted by nightmares.  In the initial Whiteout mini-series, one of those classic figure-out-why-somebody-is-dead whodunits, Carrie's difficulty to trust the right people or her instincts nearly gets her killed multiple times.  By the factory edition of a conclusion, Carrie hasn't even "found" herself again, if anything, she's produced more ammunition in her struggle to rely on anyone.

Melt is far less of a whodunit, and is actually more similar to the sort of awestruck special forces writing Garth Ennis flirts with--here, Carrie is again the main character, but she's sidelined by some well-trained black ops teams as they kill their way through Antarctica in pursuit of nuclear weaponry.  While Rucka uses the landscape of Antarctica mostly as setting in the original series, Melt is far more dependent on it for the story to work--it's impossible for someone in love with realism, as Rucka is, to believe that Carrie, even with help, could stop the sort of antagonists she's dealing with.  While the initial mini-series dealt with the simplicity of paranoid civilians in hopes of getting rich, these are the sort of men who appear in Jason Bourne movies.  A federal marshal, even one with some experience with firearms, couldn't hold their own.  Fortunately for Carrie, there's very little wetwork that goes on at the bottom of the world, and machine guns and Spetsnaz training can't defeat subzero temperatures.   

These aren't comics that expand the language of the medium, even by the kindest estimation.  The pleasure here is in the reading of a tightly wound narrative complimented by the sort of unusually static artwork that Rucka seems to prefer--if you've had any experience with his super-hero work on Batman or Wonder Woman, it's unlikely that you've found his work to be preferable when drawn in a more explosive fashion.  Much like Queen & Country and Checkmate, Rucka's writing on Whiteout shines far more when given the sort of gritty simplicity of Lieber's design.  While it does no favors to the action sequences, Whiteout isn't the sort of story that would be better told if everyone was jumping 20 feet into the air or punching each other for 6 pages.

Queen & Country Volumes 1-3
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Steve Rolston, Brian Hurtt, Bryan O'Malley, Christine Norrie & Leandro Fernandez
Published by Oni Press, 2001-2003

Queen & Country isn't the sort of thing that one imagines would have much of a place in the mainstream comics market--even at it's most basic, the stories are dark, difficult pieces of reality, told at only two speeds: breakneck and molasses.  Tara Chace, the main character who appeared throughout the 7 year run of the series, is a quiet construction of seething emotion, a woman no stranger to drink or violence.  Dealing with her contradictory behavior is no different from accepting the basic asshole-a-tude of any major character in spy or detective fiction--but unlike those sort of stories, Tara and her MI-6 compatriots very rarely get the chance to succeed.  As is made clear in the second volume of Rucka's series, the job deals with people who will be "exemplary in the field...until there's nothing left of [them] to use."  It's not that it's "impossible to retire" from being a spy, it's that none of those that survive ever get the chance to become actual human beings.  Tara's relationships with men are some of the most painful portions of the series--when she can be honest about who she is with someone, it's usually someone who is suffering on the front lines beside her, or it's a passionless one-night-stand with the sort of drunken assholes that she can find at a bar to participate in passionless one-night-stands. 

Of course, that's part and parcel of the story Rucka clearly wanted to tell.  As is mentioned in the second voume of Queen & Country, there are people who exist who enjoy the sort of assassination Tara performs in Rucka's first story--but that's not what he wanted to write about.  Quite a relief, actually--while it's difficult at times to see the horrors at which Tara participates in, it's far preferable to yet another story about the sort of cold-blooded violence wrought on television.  And again, like Whiteout, Rucka only deals with one artist that is willing to draw that sort of kinetics--if 24 wanted to be a successful comic book, it could do far worse than to hire Leandro Fernandez.  (However, Fernandez doesn't totally work--his being the only chapter in the Queen & Country saga where Tara is drawn in tight pants with erect nipples.)  Otherwise, this is a series that ignored titillation completely, preferring to immerse itself completely in the stories of spies and their behavior, with a muted style of art from some real talents, including a Bryan O'Malley before the Scott Pilgrim explosion.  Although the body count of these first three chapters is lower than some of the later chapters, the raw quality of the stories arrived fully-developed.  Unlike Whiteout, where Rucka told entertaining stories with little impact, the entire run of Queen & Country stands as some of the best comics of the decade, and is one of the few things that will be still considered valuable when the 2010 books start showing up.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 1

Animal Collective
Strawberry Jam

Imagine Animal Collective as the Lost Boys from Peter Pan—orphaned by their babysitters and living as eternal kids on an island in their own imaginations.  Strawberry Jam could only have come from a set of truly youthful minds.  Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakon (all names that could exist right alongside Tootles, Nibs, Slightly Soiled and Curly) collaborate with the freedom of elementary-schoolers:  one wants to be cowboys and indians, but one wants to man a spaceship, so they end up chasing each other through the future armed with bows and arrows and Colt 45s.  In their hands, collaboration resists becoming a unified whole, and instead becomes a barrage of distinct voices—each tumbling over, bouncing off and clashing with the others.

Looking back, 2007 was a year of quiet successes.  Generally, our favorite artists refined the things that they had always done well—and frequently ended up with career albums.  Jay-Z shed his persona as a sociopathic rap juggernaut and finally dropped an album that surpassed The Blueprint.  Radiohead channeled their last ten years of experimentation into an album about love and making love.  James Murphy found room within his caustic rants for genuine sentiment, while Sam Beam found room within his pure sentiment for a little boogie-woogie.  This kind of thing happened all over the rock landscape, and 2007 rolled deep.  Even the also-ran albums—Good Bad Not Evil, The Flying Club Cup, Graduation, The Big Doe Rehab, Double Up, to name a few—all packed a mean punch.

Amongst all these quiet successes, a shitstorm of brand new ideas sticks out dramatically.  Strawberry Jam may not match the consistency of any other album in our Top 30, but it brims over with youthful exuberance and experimentation where 2007’s other offerings feel studiously conservative.  When it succeeds, it does so loudly—the album’s best moments sound unlike anything else in pop music.

Yes, *pop* music.  It may seem strange to label Animal Collective with that adjective, but Strawberry Jam—at its best—wrestles with the limits of accessibility.  “For Reverend Green” has Avey Tare frequently bursting into screams.  Each scream simultaneously interrupts and punctuates the lines.  It’s a virtuosic performance—one whose potential abrasiveness gets offset by the folksy melody and the buoyant backing “Whoo-hoo-hoo”s.  “Fireworks,” the subsequent track, begins with a propulsive march of a drumbeat and similarly precocious “Whoo”s before launching into the album’s catchiest song—it builds from a singsong melody to a series of yelps, then jumps back to melody.  Back-to-back they give the one-two punch of Sound of Silver’s “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” a run for its money.

“For Reverend Green” and “Fireworks” showcase Animal Collective at the height of their powers—raucous and loose, propulsive and dynamic, fearless.  The rest of the album aims for similar grandiosity.  While it’s hard to top the 13 minute centerpiece of those two songs, it’s constantly fun hearing them try.  The songs often use simple, catchy verses to build and sustain a rhythm before exploding into surprising fits of music.  Frequently, they manage to create stunning moments—most notably on the album closer, “Derek,” which transforms from a goofy jingle into a stadium-sized stomping chant of “When you count/ when you count/ when you count/ when you count/ count on me/ count on me/ count on me/ count on me.”

Though the members of Animal Collective tug and fight for creative space throughout Strawberry Jam, they all seem to take on the perspective of a pre-pubescent kid.  A new type of pop music could only come from that mind—uncluttered, obnoxious, sweet, optimistic, playful, abrasive, and honest; lost, maybe, but not in any hurry to be found.

-Marty Brown, 2008

Stunt Casting: Marty Brown Versus Everything That The Factual Opinion Stands For

This time, Stunt Casting hooked up with somebody who has read a comic or too.  Which, of course, means sometimes we talked about the latest issue of Maintenance, but mostly we got off track and focused on cartoons, cursing, Squadron Supreme and, for some awful reason, the Larry Stroman X-Factor. 

TFO:  First off, let's get a little background on your comics experience.

Brown:  I started reading comics when I was in the 6th grade.  Me and my best friend, on a whim, went a picked up a couple issues of the X-Men and I became an avid collector until I was a freshman in high school.  I probably have a good four of those...not longboxes, I never got that.  But I have four packing boxes full of comics at my dad's house.  Then I completely fell out of it until the X-Men movie came out.  I picked up a couple of X-Men comics, tried to get back into it.  Failed.  Then I picked up that Barnes & Noble edition of Ultimate Spider-Man.  That got me back.  Fast and furious.  Since then, I haven't collected any weekly shit, but I've...actually, I bought all seven issues of Identity Crisis.  Which either makes me look awesome or retarded.  [Laughs]  Other than that, it's just been trade paperback stuff, off and on, for the last four years.

TFO:  Super-hero stuff?  Vertigo?

Brown:  Super-hero stuff, and non-super-hero stuff.  100 Bullets was huge.  Ultimate Spider-Man.  I dabbled in all of the Ultimate series, like Ultimate X-Men.  What else?  A lot of Bendis, which is really hit or miss.  Did the Grant Morrison run on the X-Men and hated it...did a lot of Alan Moore.  Did all the Powers, which I dug.  Tried to hit all the big stuff, but I also fell in and out of it.

TFO:  Any of the Acme Novelty, Daniel Clowes, anything like that?

Brown:  No.  I read Jimmy Corrigan when it first came out, I have the hardback edition--which is awesome.  I didn't love it, but it's sort of one of those things that's impossible to love?  You know, like...Douglas Wouk talks about Chris Ware--Chris Ware, right?

TFO:  Mmm-hmm.

Brown:  Ware's...awe-inspiring, but also frustratingly impenetrable.  Bleak.  But then he'll do these page spreads that are intricate, amazing.  I didn't love Jimmy Corrigan, but I like owning it.  [Laughs]  Zing!

TFO:  What, if anything, are you keeping up with right now?

Brown:  The shit that I buy regularly is 100 Bullets, whenever a new trade paperback comes out.  That, to me, is one of the best.  I read a lot of pulp noir...I like mystery, that's probably my favorite "genre."  To me, that's one of the best written noirs, ever.  Easy.  So I'm really excited to see how that wraps up.  Do we know for sure that it's ending on issue 100?  Is that just speculation?

TFO:  I don't know.  I didn't hear that until recently, or with more fervency I guess.  I don't know.  I think it's possible.  I hope that's not true. [Editors Note: Sadly, this is true.]

Brown:  I've sought out other Azzarello stuff.  I liked all of it, except his Superman: For Tomorrow. I just didn't understand it.  At all.  [Laughs]

TFO:  I liked how completely, in that one instance when it ends, I just said "What?"  I did like taking the priest and turning him into a cybernetic monster.  That was kind of the greatest thing ever.  Anywhere.

How Maintenance Ended Up Being The Focus

TFO:  What was it that got Maintenance into your hands?  It's nothing like what you've described so far.

Brown:  That's true.  Well, it was between Maintenance and DMZ.  DMZ was something I was vaguely familiar with, because I've seen posters for it and shit.  I was intrigued by that, I've read about it.  Maintenance I didn't know anything about.  The cover immediately got me--well, it's cartoony.  One of the characters is a shark.

TFO:  Holding a gun.

Brown:  Right, a shark with a gun.  I don't know--it definitely stood out against the other comics of the week.  Although, it keeps popping up in these Stunt Castings:  the characters on the cover are not in the story as much as the other characters.

TFO:  Covers are lies.

Brown:  Were they always lies?

TFO:  Yeah, I think they were always lies.  I Am Curious: Black, with Lois Lane?  Superman didn't actually kill Aquaman back when it was "Aquaman or Jimmy Olson!" 

They Go Way Off Track And Talk About Squadron Supreme

Brown:  You know what I always loved when I was a kid?  When there were covers that were a homage to old covers.  I fucking loved that shit.  My favorites where the ones when it was two teams, facing off against each other.  I forget what the original was...it was just two super-teams, facing off against a white background.  They always do it patterned off the original comic...it's all very obvious.  I think the last issue of Squadron Supreme was that kind of cover.  The Gruenwald, the original.  Fucking loved Squadron Supreme.

TFO:  The original is pretty great.

Brown:  That's probably one of my top five favorite comic books of all time.  I bought it for 25 cents in the used shit.  Then I collected all of it--with that last battle...I don't know if you...Have we talked about this before?

TFO:  I think we have.  I think you were the impetus behind me picking up that big trade of Squadron Supreme.  I got that based off you talking about it.  I believe there was other stuff they did, like they fought the Avengers?  I only know that trade and that remake thing.

Brown:  They were a classic--you know, like they came about as a joke.  They were a riff on Superman, Batman, shit like that and then Gruenwald turned it into this huge metaphor.  Which is one of the reasons I don't really like Kingdom Come, because it's such a blatant rip-off on Squadron Supreme.

TFO:  Some people argue that [Kingdom Come] is a rip-off of that unpublished Alan Moore Twilight of the Super-Heroes thing.  I don't know, I tried to read that Twilight of the Super-Heroes thing online--all the plot synopsis, and it sounds interesting but it also sounds like more of the same.

Brown:  That's such a rote thing now is using "Super-heroes as Metaphor."  People trying to actually save the world.  I don't know.  But that last battle in Squadron Supreme?  It's easily, I think, the best comic book battle I've ever read.  The carnage in that shit?  The body-count?  It's amazing!  The total willingness to kill off major characters?  It's incredible.  Then there was that time when Marvel was putting out a series of graphic novels, and they put out a Squadron Supreme graphic novel, and they killed even more people!  It was awesome. [Laughing]

TFO:  I can't remember actually "enjoying" a super-hero battle in a while.  Actually, it's funny--I didn't really like that Squadron Supreme remake, Supreme Power--but when...what's the main guys name?

Brown:  Hyperion.

TFO:  Hyperion.  Hyperion fights some guy in a mall, and the guy is just picking up people and throwing them?  It was just grotesque.  Normally, when they write that kind of grotesque ass shit, it's not really drawn by somebody who draws classic super-hero caricatures--it's not like a Liefeld/Jim Lee type artist, it's usually some hacky guy.  But that was this Gary Frank guy, and that's all he draws--bulging muscles, shit like that.  And here is, drawing all this awful shit in a mall.  It was gross--gross, over the top--but it was compelling.  Compelling in it's grossness.  At the same time, there isn't much to say about that remake.  It was just ideas from the Authority combined with Gruenwalds' basic theme.

Brown:  Andy.  My roommate.  He tried to get me into that, and he failed.  I couldn't make it halfway through the first issue.

TFO:  Well, if you've read the Authority, and you've read Squadron Supreme, then there's not a whole lot going on in Supreme Power.  Hell, even that Rising Stars, that was the same thing too.  Then again, that's how it is with super-hero comics, everything is a retread.

Brown: Right, that is its own archetype now.  Was Squadron Supreme one of the first?  To do that?

TFO:  Oh god, I don't know.  It might be-but it seems like every time you try to say that about comics, there's always something else.  What's his name--oh, it's like, "Steve Gerber did it first!"  You know he's dead?

Brown:  No.

TFO:  Yeah, he died a few weeks ago.  He was the Howard The Duck, the original Omega the Unknown guy.  Tons of great stuff.

Brown:  Right!  How did he die?

TFO:  Long term fatal illness.  He'd been suffering for awhile. [And he's missed.]

They Get On Point After A Dog Attack

Brown:  [Talking to the dog]  I'll stick my tongue in your ear and see how you like it.  Mronk!  I'm Going To Eat Your Head.

TFO:  So how was Maintenance?

Brown:  I really liked it!  I felt like, especially for a stand alone read, I got really get into it.  It started off with a monkey picking his ear and eating it.  And then getting turned invisible.  By an alien.  So.  Starting Strong!

TFO:  It wasn't Adrian Tomine's Summer Blonde, is what you're saying.  No fucking relationships here!

Brown:  Well, it's definitely blatant and goofy.  The whole issue is one of those great storytelling archetypes:  "Putting together the Super-Team!"  Which is awesome.  "Introducing...The Major Players!"  That's really fun, and when one of the major players is a talking shark, and one of the major players is a cat that's falling apart, and one of them is obsessed with monkeys and just bought a invisibility-making machine....

TFO:  Isn't that what they call it?

Brown:  It's the "Invisilitron."  Or the "Invisilotrox."

TFO:  I have a hard time thinking that this is a comic worth three dollars and fifty cents.

Brown:  That's true.  Well, it's nice paper.

TFO:  It is nice paper.

Brown:  Yeah, it's a black and white comic.

TFO:  With a talking shark.

Brown:  Well, it's obviously that type of thing where that high price is making it possible to actually be able to publish the next issue.

TFO:  Well, it's Oni.  I think they're usually that price.  Their biggest things are...Queen & Country?  Which is done.  I don't know much else that they've published.  Where they the original Powers people?

Brown:  That sounds right.  There's a preview of a book in the back of this about dudes who hunt bears and fish.

TFO:  With a sword.  Which is not really the best way to hunt a bear.

Brown:  No.

TFO:  Which must mean it's a "fantasy" comic.  What did you think of the art in this one?

Brown:  Uhhh?  I liked it.  It's...I don't know.  It's that whole--remember when, all of a sudden, they re-did X-Force?  And it failed?  They turned it into this government team, with the Multiple Man?  And Guido?  Who else.  It was...maybe Havok?

Now It's Off Again, This Time About Vague Memories Of X-Factor

TFO:  Wait, are you talking about X-Factor?

Brown:  Was it X-Factor?

TFO:  The one with Peter David?  And they had that guy do the art, his name was Stroman or something?

Brown:  Yes.  And it was awful.  It was the worst comic book art.  I feel like Maintenance is a pleasing version of that.

TFO:  A cartoonish version of Havok, Polaris, Guido, Rahne & Madrox?

Brown:  Right.

TFO:  [Peter David] is writing X-Factor again.  It's basically that, but Madrox runs a detective agency.  Madrox, Rahne, and Guido.  Who still has no personality.

Brown:  I sort of secretly loved him.

TFO:  [Laughs]  He was just big and weird looking!

Brown:  Well, wasn't he Dazzler's bodyguard?  Or he was Dazzler's friends bodyguard?  [Laughing] And then they turned him into a mutant, because he was strong.  And his mutant name was "Strong-Man."

TFO:  Strong-Guy.

Brown:  Strong-Guy! 

TFO:  And he had those glasses that was just glass shoved into his face.

Brown:  Genius!

TFO:  Yeah.  I'm not a big X-Factor guy, but I do remember that.

Brown:  I had a soft spot for that X-Factor, and I forced myself to read it, even though the art was so horrendous.  I remember getting...some "pleasure" out of it.

TFO:  Well, you should check it out now.  The art is pretty bad.  They do have Ryan Sook sometimes.

Brown:  They did some sort of story where one of the Multiple Men turned evil.

TFO:  They still do that.  The trick is now that he sends the Multiples all over the world to "learn stuff."  Like how to play piano, and other languages.  Then they can come and do stuff against his will.  I don't know how many stories you can do with that character.

Brown:  You can write "multiple" stories.  ZING!  Number two!  BROWN.

Back To Maintenance For Two Seconds And Then Poorly Remembered Cartoon History

TFO:  Okay, back on Maintenance.  Doesn't that shark look like that cartoon character?  The Hanna-Barbara shark?  What's that characters name?

Brown:  Oh, man, yeah!  I have no idea.

TFO:  The whole time I was reading the comic I was imagining the goofy voice of that shark.  He shows up with a blanket over himself, and it says "Big Bag Of Laundry?"

Brown:  Yes!

TFO:  Some of those jokes made me laugh and some of them made me embarrassed that I felt like laughing.

Brown:  Yeah, they are your standard issue, if-this-was-in-a-movie it would be unforgivable, but in comic book form it can be "great."

TFO:  Because the standard is so much lower.  "Look pal, you just have to be better than Darkwing Duck."  If you are, then you are GENIUS.  "We've expanded the language of graphic literature, because I've enjoyed this more than Johnny Quest."

Brown:  Do you remember that period where every year there would be a new Disney based cartoon?  It would come out and they would 'bump' the last one?

TFO:  Like Chip 'N' Dales?

Brown:  It was Gummi Bears, and Ducktales, and then Chip 'N' Dales, and then they started getting desperate.  Then it was Darkwing.

TFO:  And Gargoyles.

Brown:  Right.

TFO:  People still talk about Gargoyles like it was fucking modern art.

Brown:  Fuck that.

TFO:  I remember thinking that it was ridiculous, all of that shit.  It was just fucking cartoons.  Well, I do have a soft spot for Ducktales, but maybe just because I like Carl Barks.  Ducktales was pretty good.  But Chip 'N' Dales?  Who fucking cares about chipmunks flying planes?  Really?  If it was a REAL chipmunk, REALLY flying a plane, then.  Maybe.

Brown:  The thing with me and Chip 'N' Dales was that they used to sell those videos, with three of them on a video, and I got a couple of those, for Christmas or something.  One of them was a play on Sherlock Holmes, with The Hound of The Baskervilles.  And I was like "ohh, it's a mystery!"  [Laughing]  I kept watching it, hoping that they would all be mysteries, and I was disappointed every time.

TFO:  I think I actually only watched, all the way through...well, quite a few Ducktales, Darkwing Duck I watched when it first started.  And I fucking hated it.  Rescue Rangers, I don't think I did, and then Gargoyles?  I think I was too old.

Brown:  I think secretly, I wanted every cartoon I watched to be Scooby Doo.  Maybe it's because I never got a full fix of Scooby Doo.  I wanted all of the Scooby Doos.

TFO:  I watched all those hacky, cheap cartoons they showed on USA.  Like Karate Kat.  They had something called the Clue Club, which was basically Scooby Doo without a dog.  It was just nondescript teenagers in a van.  I don't know, that's what I saw.  It wasn't really that I wasn't into cartoons, but I grew up in Germany, so it would be whatever was sent to us.  Or you'd watch--Voltron I think.  Voltron was on over there.

Brown:  I didn't know that.  I didn't know that about you.

TFO:  That was it I think.  Karate Kat, Voltron.  Goddamn Clue Club.

Brown:  Did you have Sesame Street?

TFO:  I think so?

Brown:  Was Big Bird blue?

TFO:  I don't even remember.

Brown:  When I was six, my parents took all of...well, it was all.  Wait, it was fucking me, I was an only child.  All three of us!  We went to Europe, and we were in Holland at this bed and breakfast with this woman named Mrs. Gironda, who scarred me with my fear of eggs.  She was very excited to show us Sesame Street, because she knew we had it in America and Big Bird was blue, in Holland?  And it freaked  me the fuck out.

TFO:  That would freak anybody out.  Even if they didn't know that Big Bird was supposed to be yellow.

Brown:  Exactly.  Right!  A blue bird?

TFO:  Of happiness?  I saw Fraggle Rock.  We're really off-topic. 

Back To The Reason For The Interview, For About 1 Minute

TFO:  Okay, this was the only piece of information I could find about Maintenance,  because I stopped researching after a minute.  Did you know that these are maintenance people who work for a terrorist organization?  That these guys where Terror Max?  They are not terrorists in the sense of Al Queda, because it's all cartoony, but...

Brown:  Not at all.  You get a sense--well, obviously, the one guy keeps talking about what a villain he is.  But you don't get a sense of the context for that.  I think one of the reason it's a good stand-alone book is because it makes me want to know what's going to happen, but also want to know what already happened.  I started to think about that when I was collecting, those weekly issues:  the ones that really got me were the ones that made me want to go back.  Instead of just forward.  The ones that made me want to dig.

TFO:  Which was X-Men?

Brown:  Right, the X-Men. I remember towards the end of the time when I was collecting, with the Teen Titans, there was that big storyline with Jericho--the Wildebeest?

TFO:  Titans Hunt.

Brown:  Yes, that one.  That was the first DC book I was ever really interested in.  That one made me want to know the mythology.  Those are the ones that hooked me.  Everything from Marvel came from the X-Men, and everything that came from DC--which wasn't much, because that was near the end of my collecting--that all stemmed from the Teen Titans.  And Maintenance made me want to read the first seven issues.  Although I can't really imagine what could've happened in the first seven issues.  This is issue eight, but I feel like it could be issue two. 

TFO:  Maybe somebody got raped.

Brown:  Yeah.  That would definitely put a different twist on the humor.  Is it obligatory to mention baby-raping?  Do I just do that now?

TFO:  It's not obligatory. It is always nice.

Brown:  I mine as well just take the bullet on that.  With the baby-raping.  Baby-raping! 

TFO:  I like that you look at the tape recorder.  "Make sure this goes on there!"

Brown:  Because I'm talking to the people who are gonna fucking comment.

TFO:  How do you want to close this out?

Brown:  Can we talk about why you don't like the Van Halen album?

TFO:  No.  We just put that there, we set that down. 

Brown:  Alright.  How do I want to close this out.  Too much pressure, because I could do this forever.  I could be interviewed forever.  I think I made that clear.  So we should end it with a "to be continued."  ZING!

TFO:  Number three.  Brown!

Brown:  Brown Three!  Reader?

-Marty Brown writes about music here, sometimes, when he's not busy.  What? 

The Virgin Read: Love Beats Robin And Palookaville, Shel Silverstein Style

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous Virgin Reads (and a zillion previous conversations), I am getting married.  In one month.  ONE MONTH!!   And I only mention it again, because it informs the following two things:  1.  Why my review of Paloookaville is way past due, and my review of Robin is slightly overdue; and 2.  My reactions to the aforementioned comics.  You’ll see what I mean. 

Palookaville # 19
By Seth
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

It was an obvious choice to me when all the comics of the week were laid out on the TFO table.  The cover is striking and unlike any comic book I’ve ever seen.  Upon flipping through the art reminded me of Chris Ware.  So it was a shoe-in.

I don’t know anything about previous issues, where the comic has been or where it’s going.  The entire comic is done in blue, black and white.  And well, yes, it’s a sad, morose comic. There’s a lot of positives to be said about this work.  It captures that empty feeling of loss in a way that I haven’t experienced a book capturing before.  It’s well drawn.  Its really a trip through the acceptance of loss and the beginning of grief.

Which is why I had a hard time reading it.  I read it on a Wednesday night – two days before my last day of teaching, before my first-ever, professional, Spring-Break as a teacher WHICH lay before me full of bridal showers and wedding chores galore!  This could very well be the happiest period of my life so far.  I’m loving every minute.  Every second of life.  I’ve had my share of hard times, depression, loss of direction, lack of hope, struggles, loss and death.  So, I will never make light of loss and the process of grief.  Each and every difficult period of my life has been very important and those very experience make me who I am today.  All experiences have gotten me to this very blissful point in my life.  But, honestly, I wasn’t really interested in finishing the comic on my first read. I don’t want to feel sad right now!  Not if it's not real for me.   I put the comic down after reading only half of it.  And I didn’t finish reading it until an entire week later. 

I’m glad I finished it.  And like I said, it is excellent in achieving exactly what it seems to want to achieve.  The reader is inside this man’s head and this man’s grief.  Every room of the house; every object in it, is given space for reverence and grief.  And it makes one feel sad.  And I well, this reader just doesn’t feel like being made to feel sad right now.

Robin # 172
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Chris Batista & Cam Smith
Published by DC Comics

Hitherto, I don’t feel like wasting my time right now.  And that’s what Robin was – a time waster,  ugh.  I don’t know why my reaction to this is so strong.  I figured after my enjoyment of All-Star Batman & Robin that I’d enjoy Robin. 

I didn’t.  I read it once.  And upon the last page I said out loud, even though I was alone, “that was stupid.”

I can’t even go into why.  I just didn’t care.  And clearly, I needed to care about this chick in purple if I were to have any enjoyment of the comic.  I mean, again, that Bridal disclaimer – I’ve got a lot going on right now.  And reading this made me feel really annoyed.  You know, in several of my other reviews I’ve had these epiphanies of how, wow!, it can really be enjoyable to read a comic book!  A little fun escape to another world!  Or a way of getting me to think about bigger things.  But Robin was just lame to me. 

And we know that I don’t really like the Superhero comics that much anyhow….this didn’t help.

And puzzle me this:  Both Robin and Nightwing hang glide?  Are they out in the same sky, during the same time period, surreptitiously hang gliding around New York City or, excuse me, Gotham?

Ya know what….I bet someone out there is going to answer that question and correct me on my lack of comic knowledge.  Feel free.  I still think hang-gliding among skyscrapers is a stupid idea.

-Nina Miller, 2008