Comics Of The Weak: They Have Conventions For These Things Why Again?

Batman & The Outsiders # 6
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Carlos Rodriguez, Bit & Martha Martinez
Published by DC Comics

DC usually avoids putting themselves in situations involving the real world, by coming up with countries like Biayla or Qurac instead of admitting they're referring to poor imitations of the Middle East, so one could, if they're really desperate to give praise, admire Chuck Dixon for involving the very real China.  Of course, since most comics readers are probably going to remember the last time they thought about China from the most recent season of 24, it is going to be somewhat problematic to combine the mild version of torture that Green Arrow receives at the hands of his Chinese captors with their memories of what the Chinese did to Jack Bauer.  Then again, maybe a low-powered hose dousing is just the warm-up.  Probably not.  In other news, nothing else happens in the Batman & The Outsiders.

Dreamwar # 1
Written by Keith Giffen
Art by Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott & Randy Mayor
Published by DC Comics/Wildstorm

In a perfect world, where we all eat cheesecake and drink life-strengthening ambrosia, the biggest selling event comic of the summer of 2008 would be Dreamwar, not because it's any better than every other super-hero company crossover book, but for a never to be understood or repeated twist of fate.  If, under those same kind of random circumstances that caused a casting director to take Eddie Furlong from a mall and put him on the path to drug addiction, all the people who were going to buy Secret Invasion and Final Crisis (and then have long drawn out discussions that sound a lot like "Can Storm use her weather powers to create star systems?") unilaterally decided that, instead of keeping up with Bendis and Morrison, they turned to the Holy Shit Will The Wildstorm Company Ever Go Out Of Business Versus Batman book.  That's the type of stuff that we pray, to a god we don't believe in due to the publication of Jeph Loeb's Wolverine book; this is the type of stuff that makes a cry to the heavens worth making.  A world where something this absurd could outsell them all.  Just like that movie Highlander.

Gotham Underground # 7
Written by Frank Tieri
Art by J. Calafiore, Jack Purcell, Mark McKenna & Brian Reber
Published by DC Comics

This series would have been more successful if it had been published as one of those Who's Who/Marvel Handbook type issues, with full text pages.  Instead, it has been trying to shoehorn a plot around the concept of "Here's Tobias Whale, he is big and he is fat, and he has a harpoon, and these are his forty spandex-clad friends.  Like a black Mr. Freeze!"  Reading this on a continuous basis is akin to watching that part in the Clooney Batman movie where there's a fight on a ice skating rink--stupid outfits, lots of people, and nothing of any substance whatsoever.  Normally, we'd say something like "If that's your thing.." but you know what?  If that's your thing, seriously, if this comic is your thing, then you're too goddamn stupid to use a computer and you're spending your hours trying to hook up with your sister.  (Buy her flowers.)

Robin # 173
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Chris Batista, Cam Smith, Rick Ketcham & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

It's sort of incredible that, of all the characters to be saddled with cancer, Chuck Dixon has decided that it should be one of Robin's friends.  It's Follicular Lymphoma, which isn't as bad as pancreatic, but, you know, it's still fucking cancer.  After all, the last few years of Robin have been all about trying to see how many aspects of death and awful can be piled onto the character while not disturbing his basic personality in any possible fashion.  (He's cried twice?  Maybe?)  Like, there was his dad, totally killed, quite a few of his ex-girlfriends, his best friend, all killed, his future self being a psychopath, his little dabbling with the occult, Batman betraying him, etc, so on, so forth, shitty goddamn life on the exponential scale.  So why not throw in some cancer too?  It's not like he's going to react to it in any semblance of the way a human being does.  Oh, and bring back his dead ex-girlfriend.  More and more, that whole tennis subplot, and how mad it made Batman that Robin was on the tennis team, that's turning into what might have been the most clever and fascinating thing that's ever been done with this series.

Captain America # 37
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Steve Epting & Frank D'Armata
Published by Marvel Comics

Whereas Brubaker's Criminal reads like a work of artists operating at their happiest, creating work that they truly love and Brubaker's Daredevil has begun to read like a book that the writer is trying to dismantle from the inside out by publishing the bleakest spandex adventures possible, Captain America is starting to behave as if it's lost it's mooring.  The first twenty-five issues, available in a ridiculously oversized hardcover, told an all around satisfying story that climaxed with the death of the main character.   Since then, the book has seemed to lose the feeling of long-range planning, and turned into a comic where the most interesting characters are the destined-to-lose villains.  All of the subtlety to the Winter Soldier/Bucky/New Captain America is beginning to drown in the angst and self doubt that, due to his near-muteness, had only been hinted at before.  It's not so much that these are terrible stories--it's just that they've lost the sense of newness and innovation that Brubaker brought when he initially tried to humanize Captain America.  It's still a great looking book, it's still decently scripted, but for a while now--it's turned into a comic book.  A pretty routine one. 

Captain Marvel # 5
Written by Brian Reed
Art by Lee Weeks, Jesse Delperdang, Matt Milla, (deep breath), Charles Le Brun, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Leonardo Da Vinci and For Christ's Sake Claude Monet
Published by Marvel Comics Oh My God I Just Threw Up All Over The Computer

Would Monet have been happy for his work to show up in a comic book?  Or, to be more specific, would Monet have been happy to include his work in a comic book involved in a huge Marvel cross-over event, and to be even more and more specific than required, a cross-over comic book that reads like a terribly imagined rip-off of an episode of the Battlestar Galactica remake?  We imagine that Monet would have been fine with it.  But Da Vinci was a litigious sunuva bitch.  It is nice to see Lee Weeks working.  Not on this, though.

Ghost Rider # 22
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Roland Boschi & Dan Brown
Published by Marvel Comics

Although Ghost Rider may have been brought to the screen by Nick Cage and that horrible director who made Daredevil, make no mistake:  he's a low-grade character.  As was pointed out by his creator, and constantly repeated every time this office stops by the comic, there was little impetus behind his creation besides the whole flaming skeleton/motorcycle combination.  Nobody was staying up late, Nabokov style, writing the adventures of Johnny Blaze from the toilet seat of artistic inspiration.  It was simple stuff: Skeleton.  Fire.  Motorcycle.  That's what makes these sorts of super-hero series worth trying out though--like the Brubaker/Fraction Iron Fist partython, the only non-Morrison super-hero comics with even a faint glimmer of potential for being somethin' special are the ones that involve the marginalized cats--because those are the ones that don't need to sell that well to exist, and they are (most of the time) the ones that attract creators who really want to work on the book, either because they're in love with them and have stories to tell, or they're hoping to create a run that will be looked at like Frank Miller's Daredevil.  A run that is referenced as legendary--even though most of the time they were just solid genre work on a character with a prior history of being completely derivative and hilariously boring to read.  Jason Aaron may be shooting for that with Ghost Rider, or he may just be filling time hoping that he can someday write mundane fan fiction adventures for the fucking Avengers when Bendis finally keels over from spandex overload.  As it is, this is pretty good for a half-ass version of Preacher, and may eventually become something special.  So, if you like frustrated potential, or you're just really fucking bored, check it out.

Wolverine Origins # 24
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Steve Dillon & Matt Milla
Published by Marvel Comics

The opening pages, in full embrace of no-longer-hinted at Warner Brothers smash-em-up connection, may just be the finest pages of Wolverine comics ever written.  Whether the best line is "we racin'" or "gimme clue?" is the only thing that should be up for debate.  Although a decent portion of the love affair we've had with this storyline will probably get thrown out of the window if the conclusion of the story includes more of the aw shit that guy character who is either Wolverine's son or an escapee from Project Runway, these Deadpool and Wolverine hurting each other comics have been a joy to read.  Steve Dillon, capitalizing on the Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry and Itchy & Scratcy referencing, has succeeded in making all of the time he'd spent earning a paycheck on the first 20 issues of this completely unnecessary and dully violent comic worthwhile.  While this story certainly doesn't redeem what this miserable series has offered in the way of plotting for the last two years, it does redeems anyone's concern that Daniel Way was taking the job of spandex adventure scribe too seriously. 

War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle # 2
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Howard Chaykin & Brian Reber
Published by MAX/Marvel Comics

Garth Ennis has always had jolly idiots that are along for the ride in just about all of his comic runs--excepting his adults only Punisher work, where there's about as much jolly to be found in the offal buckets at your local slaughterhouse.  It's been a while though that the jolly idiot could be found front and center as the lead character, but here he is, in all his idiotic glory.  Unable to tell that a woman who takes your money after going down on you is a prostitute, and then following that up by clicking his heels and saying, joyously, "I'm in love!", this here is, one assumes, the Phantom Eagle of War Is Hell.  If one were expecting for Ennis to follow his traditional war comic path, the one where it's all gloomy gloomy gloomy death gloomy gross black comedy death, then you were mistaken.  This one is the satirical Ennis--he's just wearing the oi, blimey mcgulliver clothes.  Whatever.

100 Bullets # 90
Written by Brain Azzarello
Art by Eduardo Risso
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Although Azzarello continues to set up all the pieces for an all out war between those who reside with Lono against those who ride with Graves, an unsettling and unnerving back story regarding a young corner boy and his attempts to ingratiate himself into a drug dealers organization is where all the blood and circus is to be found.  Unlike just about every other white writer in comics today, Azzarello is able to pull off a street dialog that is neither forced nor offensive--if he took his lessons from the men who handled The Wire, it wouldn't be surprising.  (Of course, that's an assumption that ignores that the paucity of black characters may be why so few writers can handle them without resorting to stereotyping--maybe it's just that Jeph Loeb was never given an opportunity.)  A sequence where a pre-teen corner boy has made the jump to murder is one that's only recently been done to perfection, so Azzarello seems to recognize that he can't follow the boilerplate here--and when the young hitter accidentally shoots an innocent girl first, that's where the difference is found.  Here, instead of the status quo reaction, where the kid is (according to every other depiction of that sort of scene) supposed to be struck by the "horror of what he has done,"  the young boy just calmly turns, shoots the person he's supposed to in the leg, and when he's caught up with him, he puts a round in his skull.  Yes, it's gross.  But this isn't the fucking Gummi Bears.

DMZ # 30
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli & Jeromy Cox
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

The second issue of the "Blood In The Game" story arrives, and Wood continues to show why certain reviewers shouldn't have pegged his off-message politico as a cheap Obama riff--if Parco Delgado is anything, it's not a tired imitation of a real world presidential candidate.  As with any DMZ six parter, the real nasty business that a "Blood" title implies won't start dropping in the second chapter, but for a quiet little set piece this issue doesn't lack for drama.  While the cheap cliffhanger of DMZ's protagonist Matty Roth's last page reveal of his mother is an obnoxious cliche, it's juxtaposed with a telling, well-written betrayal in the pages just prior, where Roth rejects his fathera smart-sounding advice against throwing his cards in with a man who dresses like a criminal, talks like a MTV-style revolutionary, and seems to be willingly painting a target on anyone around him.  It's a well-sold decision, no matter how laced it seems to be with some classic white liberal guilt--after all, Wood's never tried to paint Roth as someone who was the most rational or mature of individuals.  That, as always, is why DMZ works as a story--these are complicated plots, and they need complicated people.  It may not be the happiest read, but it's a well-constructed one.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Comments

[Greg G]

"how mad it made Batman that Robin was on the tennis team"

I mentally inserted the word "same" before "tennis" and made a better comic.

[Tucker Stone]

Why can't there be at least one DC super-hero book that's all about Batman & Robin's bloodthirsty desire to win a tennis championship? That would be brilliant.

[Sharif]

Tucker,

the PRESSING question is whether or not Storm can create Time Portals with her powers since she controls one of the "fundamental forces of physics."

Daniel Way's Deadpool/Wolverine story was a surprising detour in that it was actually good. All his previous Wolverine stories have been these boringly pompous and intricate conspiracy tales that require too much of an effort on my part to overstand. Maybe I should have given his Ghost Rider issues a chance since you kept mentioning how mindlessly entertaining they were.

Finally, I, too, demand closure on the Robin/tennis storyline.