The Fractal Hall Journal

I’ve said before that I’m not likely to be doing a delineation on Spider-Man. The character’s one of the most over-examined in comics, and writing a breakdown of the basics doesn’t strike me as worthwhile. Spider-Man seems to be forever getting back to basics, most recently during the notorious Brand New Day thing. Add in the discussions about the roots of the character that have been occuring over the past few years outside of the comics “community” due to the popularity of the films, then I’d guess another go around by me wouldn’t interesting to read, or all that interesting to write.

There is one thing I do fancy a crack at, though. Let’s posit, as I have been doing, that Spider-Man is Peter Parker’s arch-enemy, and vice versa. What does this tell us about what villains are for, and what does it tell us about their purpose in superhero stories in particular?

Let’s accept the truism that the mechanism of story is conflict. The primary conflict in superhero stories is between the heroes and the villains, obviously. And what is Spider-Man, as a character, always praised for, ad nauseum? Peter Parker’s real life (ho ho) problems. Can’t pay bills, can’t look after his aunt, can’t bring assault charges against Flash Thompson. The reason these problems are compelling in a superhero story, as opposed to being seen as an annoying tangent, is because they are Spider-Man’s difficulties. By a similar token, Spider-Man’s actions have repercussions for Parker. I’m not saying we’re dealing with separate personalities here; I think of all the superhero identity dichotomies, Spider-Man has probably the most integrated personality consistant across both identities. I’m saying that the two identities, while the same person, are in conflict with each other. And conflict in a superhero story means conflict between heroes and villains.

So, how do we define what a villain, or a hero, is? Not exactly an easy question. Maybe back in the day we could identify the two according to the colour of their hats, but it didn’t take long for ambiguity about even that to creep into popular culture. There’s plenty of things about modern culture that we can moan about, but one thing we have got right is that, regardless of our tendency to label anything we’re broadly unfamiliar with as strange, unnatural, even sinister, it doesn’t take that much time for a vocal opposition to that standpoint to spring up. I suspect that we’re good at pre-judgement, but we’re better at picking a fight. I suppose both things rise from the same instinct.

Why have superheroes, or supervillains, at all? At the most simple level, they were created to make money, obviously. They were successful- hugely successful, by any metric, and continue to be- because they’re a relatively simple way to show the extraordinary. Even today, the cinema fulfils the same purpose. We could argue that there’s nothing simple about the lengths a production goes to to film something that costs over a hundred million dollars, but I’d wager it’s a hell of a lot simpler than figuring out how to actually make someone fly.

People respond to the demonstration of the extraordinary. That’s the key. The drama of conflict is the simplest template to use, and the almost comical simplicity of good vs. evil the most efficient engine. Using incredible powers against plain criminals soon becomes too easy, offering no challenge, so soon we have villains that mirror the heroes, less altruistic characters with fantastic abilities.

There’s an elegance in symmetry, and as we’ve already fallen hook line and sinker for a black and white world, we begin looking for characters that mirror and invert our heroes. Was the Joker ever really meant to be the Batman’s arch-enemy? Did Bill Finger sit down and decide that a dark hero needed a bright villain, a twisted inversion? I have no idea, but organically that’s what the Joker came to be, perhaps not deliberately but as the most obvious vessel for the concept.

A shortcut to giving a hero an arch-enemy is to either mirror or invert the character. I doubt this is an original observation, by the way. It strikes me as the kind of thing that would have come up over at the Absorbascon, say. I don’t recall reading it elsewhere, though apologies if I’m repeating something someone else has already talked about.

An inversion of a character is the character’s opposite. The Joker is the antithesis of the Batman, and I’m sure we don’t need to go over the whole dark/bright, order/chaos thing to prove this. A character’s mirror, on the other hand, is essentially identical, but has opposite motivations. Batman’s most direct mirror would be the Wrath, though he’s rarely used. I suspect Catwoman would be the most obvious equivalent in his classic rogue’s gallery, or maybe Simone’s take on Catman.

There are plenty of others to be found. Luthor is Superman’s inversion, a man who thinks he’s a god to Superman’s a god who thinks he’s a man, while General Zod is his mirror. Iron Man has many mirrors, from the Crimson Dynamo through the Iron Monger to the Armour Wars’ Firepower (anyone remember him?). The Mandarin is his most obvious inversion, though time has weakened this. In the past, he was a communist sorceror to Stark’s capitalist science-adventurer. These days, communism isn’t an issue and his magic is just alien technology. Here’s an idea; Stark needs an inversion, a Mephisto-like being of magic. By the same token, actually, Dr Strange could do with a technology-based nemesis (his mirrors being numerous, Baron Mordo chief amongst them). Along with, you know, an ongoing title. Actually, I can’t believe he doesn’t have one, so it’s probably just me having not read enough of his comics. Suggestions in comments, please.

Thinking about it, I think this is the very thing that Mark Waid realised when he thought up leather-clad Magical Mister Doom. Change the Fantastic Four’s nemesis from mirror to inversion, open up new avenues of conflict. I know some criticise, but I liked the leather-Doom stuff and I think a lot of Waid’s FF work was spot on, although I lost interest during the somewhat hamfisted WMD-laden invasion of Iraq Latveria.

But back to the Spider’s “real life” problems. Spider-Man and Peter Parker’s conflict is between two halves of the same person, and as such the are both mirrors and inversions of one another. Which isn’t to say we don’t see external examples of this, of course, Venom being the mirror and the Green Goblin (perhaps) being the inversion. But Spider-Man and Parker are mirrors of each other (they have the same powers in and out of costume, and the same personalities) and inversions (Parker is seen as a kind, clever but dopey and largely useless man who’s secretly a criminal and who lies to everyone who’s close to him, Spider-Man is seen as a criminal but is in fact a selfless hero, and so on) at the same time.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

     Feed

And you can expect a lot more cowboy metaphors over the coming weeks, because I’ve just watched A Fistful Of Dollars and I’ve got a whole Eastwood DVD set to get through that’s been on the backburner since Christmas due to the Great X-Files Project. And yes, I have now seen Chris Carter’s big screen debut. The verdict? All in good time. Still got S9 to write up, after all.

Looks like Geoff Johns is coming back on The Flash. Perhaps if this doesn’t work, they’ll give Baron or Messner-Loebs another spin.

Joking aside, I’m cautiously optimistic about this. After all, I loved GL: Rebirth. On the other hand, that’s because Hal Jordan is my Favouritest Character Ever n’Ever n’Ever, and, as I’ve mentioned here before, I’m brimming with indifference toward Barry Allen. Also, I always felt that Johns had more to say about the Rogues than Wally West, although I’ll concede that’s more to do with Mark Waid closing off the character’s arc and leaving not much left for another writer to say, at least with that particular iteration of the character. Barry Allen is, for all intents and purposes, a brand new character, insofar as the standard techniques of superhero storytelling have fundamentally changed since they killed him off, and God knows they’ve done wonders for the Lanterns. Ultimately, all I really want is for Wally West to still be knocking round.

Of course, the absolute victory condition would be an ongoing Jay Garrick title. But I’ve probably used up my lifetime allocation of unexpected wish-fulfillment with this Summer’s cape flicks.

The latest Batman film has really brought it home how much I’ve enjoyed the recent film adaptations more than the actual comics. And this strikes me as a little odd. Firstly, The Incredible Hulk. Planet Hulk was awesome, and I enjoyed it way more than I was expecting to. But it’s not what you’d call the “classic” incarnation of the character, which is something I think the film managed to capture really well. As for Iron Man and the crazy rich guy, both comic titles have never had writing teams as good as they’ve had over the past couple of years. Ellis and the Knaufs have written some really great Iron Man stuff, ditto Morrison and Dini at the competition, but I’ve found my enjoyment seriously marred by the unending crossover bollocks I really couldn’t care less about. I guess that once again I have to conclude that I just prefer it when writers are allowed to get on with doing their jobs without interference.

That said, I’m really looking forward to seeing more of the shared universe the Marvel movies take place in. Sometimes I can’t even keep my own continuity straight.

I would be completely happy if they never made a sequel to The Dark Knight. There is just too much scope for a cock-up. But there’s going to be one, of course, because it’s now made more than eleventy-squillion Euros across the globe. The Riddler gets my vote for a grim reimagining, but absolutely not Johnny Depp. When he’s on form, he’s brilliant, but isn’t he just going to treat the role like Captain Jack II? Or, Heavens forefend, another crack at Willy Wonka?

Speaking of which, I fucking loathe Tim Burton’s Chocolate Factory, more and more with the passing years. What an irredeemable load of self indulgent wank. Comic geeks think they’ve had the shitty end of the stick over the years with disrespectful versions of beloved franchises. No one’s ever had the balls to follow through with a really nasty adaptation of Roald Dahl’s stuff.

In fact, I’ll leave you with this idea: Christopher Nolan’s BFG. Live action, with Henson’s Creature Shop doing the giants.

     Feed

Writing about the Flash and the developments in DC and Marvel’s comics that I haven’t been too keen on last week got me thinking about what work I actually liked. I mean, there’s a reason I’m still buying some titles, right?

At the moment, the number of monthly issues I buy is dropping as the titles hit obvious trade collection points. The Superman titles have already been dropped, and I’ve promised dear friend Paul C that I’ll pick up Geoff Johns’ Legion story in trade, and I suspect the Morrison Batman run will be another one. Blue Beetle’s gone after #26 until John Rogers comes back on, and I may do the same with Daredevil. Eventually, the only stuff I’ll be getting month after month will be the two GL titles.

I don’t really want to drop Daredevil for, and believe me it sounds odd just thinking about a product this way, sentimental reasons. It was the first American-sized comic my Dad got me when I was a kid, for a start, and I kind of regret the last time I dropped the title. I loved the Kevin Smith/Marvel Knights reboot and kept on getting it up until I’d overdosed on Bendisism around the “Golden Age” story arc and dropped it. Problem is that on re-reading the issues were so much better when put together (probably the worst written-for-trade offender I’ve ever come across) that I ended up picking up the gap issues as paperbacks when I started picking up Brubaker’s run. And speaking of Brubaker, even though I only have a casual interest in the X-Men, his recent writing has been so good I’m tempted to get his Deadly Genesis/Shi’ar collections, and the Captain America hardcover.

Superman’s a good example of why trades make more sense to me, actually. As much as I loved the One Year Later story, my enjoyment was seriously impaired by delays, crap Countdown tie-ins and rushed fill-ins dropped on poor old Kurt Busiek (same complaints with both Batman titles, actually). Trades would have at least given me a whole story in one.

The other big one to get the boot is Ultimate Spider-Man. With the exception of the Flash (now that they’ve gone back to the Waid-run numbering) it’s the title that’s got the most big number momentum, by which I mean I’ve been getting it from the first issue right up to #118, making it a hell of a habit to break. But like I’ve repeated many times, habit ain’t a good enough reason to carry on shelling out the dough. Besides, I think the title’s lost a lot of its mojo recently, and not only due to Mark Bagley’s exit. There just doesn’t seem to be much forward going on with it.

Of course, that’s the thing with Bendis. Occasionally, it’s not clear what he’s getting at until you read everything together, so I’d be surprised if I don’t start getting this in a shelf-friendly format. Which is yet another significant advantage to trade paperbacks. I’m damn near out of longbox room, but there’s always space for another bookshelf.

     Feed

So, I’ve still got the Flash on my mind. It’s just such an odd feeling dropping a title I’ve been getting for so long.

It was too much to expect the Waid stuff to be amazing, in particular considering his last year on the title being fairly underwhelming. The Flash-as-team-book idea is one way of dealing with the fact that Wally West is a grown-up now and we need to find a different character arc for him, and that Flash-Family-as-The-Incredibles doesn’t quite work.

So here’s the question: Why doesn’t it work? And how does it get fixed without (a) killing off the kids or (b) having Mephisto make them not happened?

First assertion: We have no reason to care about the junior Wests. Wally and Linda do (duh), but as their parents they kind of have too. Just because they’re kids doesn’t mean the old chestnut “show me why they’re cool/important/I should give a shit, don’t tell me” doesn’t apply. In short, we haven’t had time to get to know who the characters are.

Second assertion: The above disconnects us from Wally West. We’ve been following his life for twenty years. Like all good long-term narratives, we relate to the Flash in a way we don’t in almost any other medium. But suddenly we’re missing a huge chunk of his life, and not just in real-time; I mean, is there a time in anyone’s life that’s more life changing than their children’s early years? Wally West is not who we remember him to be, and that’s incredibly jarring after such a long stretch.

Two other examples, while I’m on this point. Firstly, Linda has become an important part of the Flash’s supporting cast. Yet her character’s motives remain inconsistent. What does she want? How does that play off the Flash’s character? First she’s a reporter, suddenly she always wanted to be a doctor, now she’s a super-scientist? How do we reconcile this?

Actually, sudden revelation. Use this as a story. Either subplot, or Geoff Johns-style single issue profile. Take her shaky character arc and tell a plausable, human story of a conflicted woman who always wanted to be one thing but was forced into being something else, yet eventually is able to choose her own destiny. Not only would you fix the character, you’d likely make her more engaging than she’s ever been, and also silence the legion of fans who never really liked her in the first place.

Secondly, and I know I keep bashing Fastest Man Alive but it’s not like the title doesn’t deserve it, Bart Allen was also taken away from the reader, changed and aged, and then returned (with a confusingly inconsistant explanation, to boot). He wasn’t the character we remembered, he made choices readers couldn’t understand or didn’t jibe with what went before. The disconnection was inevitable.

Third assertion: The Flash keeps getting new supporting players, every time a new team climbs on board. This needs to stop happening.

If we put these points together, what’s the fix? To start with, fill in all the gaps. Even if it takes twelve issues of flashback, we need to bridge the old stories and characters we remember to the new status quo. We need to see the Wests bring their children up, to understand why we as readers need to care about them. At the same time, if we bring Bart Allen back (and how isn’t that inevitable?) we need to do the same to him, to clarify how we got from Impulse to here.

Then we need to separate the Flash from the rest of the DCU for a while. He needs to be re-established in his own world, and not sharing enemies and crossover events that muddy the new direction or the theme of the work. And for God’s sake, bring Jay Garrick in. Of all the Golden Age characters he’s the most likeable and relatable. I doubt there’s a better everyman character to use as a reader stand-in, not least because he’s so visible in JSA, one of DC’s best selling titles.

And while we’re at at, let’s build a solid supporting cast from the large supply we already have, and use them to define and bring out the characteristics of Wally West and his family. Characters are the best theme- and world-building tools available. Just look at Starman, or the first hundred-odd issues of Amazing Spider-Man.

Also, and this may be the most counter-intuitive thing considering what I’ve just been saying about the supporting cast, keep the Rogues out for a while. They’ve been thoroughly analysed, explored and over-exposed between Johns’ run and Countdown, and like Wally West we’ve probably run out of decent stories to tell for the moment. Let’s get inventive and crazy science-fictional with our scenarios, real Grant Morrison level concepts, and leave the classic bad-guys for a couple of years down the road, when they can be reintroduced with a bang.

Finally, the most important thing, employ a writer with a cutting edge view of future tech. Doctorow/Ellis type shit. The Flash shouldn’t just be on-par with the rest of the DCU. He should be several steps ahead. He should be lapping every other title. Bleeding edge advanced stuff, taking the Silver Age legacy and making something absolutely nuts and ultra-modern.

The Flash shouldn’t be a pedestrian title. It should hit you like a bolt of lightning.

     Feed

I still quite can’t get my head round the monumental error DC made in the late Nineties not to give Grant Morrison, Tom Peyer, Mark Waid and Mark Millar the four core Superman titles. But more than that, even if they had I suspect that editorial interference would likely have squished the really good stuff.

I’ve got no idea what went on behind closed doors, but I remember what it was like being a reader at the time, and bits and pieces that have been reported in various places since then. But that said, is there really any doubt that companies like Marvel and DC prefer to keep a tight rein on their intellectual properties? Except, of course, for a brief period at Marvel when they let the writers do whatever they wanted…

After Waid’s Flash, Morrison’s JLA is probably what I’d say is the best example of the kind of superhero stuff I like. The first story arc is just about the best JLA story of all time, and there’s plenty to like in the rest of the run. But after the Rock of Ages, some things crept in that I wasn’t so keen on. Like why the fuck Huntress was on the team, or the New Gods. I remember me and dear friend Paul C assuming that editorial had told Morrison who he should be using, because we couldn’t believe anyone would pass over use of the Magnificent Seven for a pack of D-listers.

After a while, both Waid and Morrison left DC, and in an interview for Mark Salisbury’s Writers on Comics Scriptwriting the former said he almost quit writing comics because DC had refused to let him or Morrison write Superman, going as far to say that he’d never get the character because he was too “high profile”. It’s the kind of thing that I just cannot believe, and perhaps one of the clearest signs that some of these companies are not being run by business people. There’s no doubt that stories like this coupled with the odd behaviour of some professionals when they get on the internet suggest that the comics “industry” is deeply, deeply weird if not outright unpleasant.

I’m not one hundred percent sure of the timeline, but from what I recall this was happening around the same time as Marvel’s bankruptcy, or certainly in the lead-up to it. What I do remember is Joe Kelly moving from an amazing run on Deadpool to one of the main X-Men titles, with Steve Seagle on the other. I was really looking forward to this even though I’ve never followed the X-Men, but again it went to shit thanks to editorial interference despite showing occasional promise. It was the same kind of interference that led to Mark Waid leaving Captain America and demanding his name be taken off the later collections.

This is the background to what I honestly believe to be the decisions that have shaped the two companies’ superhero universes today. If Morrison and the others had been left to write Superman without editorial interference, All-Star Superman could have been the norm rather than the non-continuity exception. And bear in mind that Millar and Morrison were just about to hit the big time with their Marvel work. All that energy could have been directed into DC’s flagship titles.

Because it didn’t what we got were more lacklustre editorially-driven storylines (and once again poor old Joe Kelly went from the frying pan to, well, another frying pan). Jeph Loeb’s Superman set the foundations for President Lex, Superman/Batman, and through them the current Crises. In short, everything that the DCU is today. And regardless of my dislike of Marvel’s recent storylines, there’s no doubt they are far more popular than their rivals.

More tomorrow.

     Feed

I grew up reading The Flash. The comic is the only one I’ve bought consistantly for, what, fifteen years? It even edges Green Lantern out as being the title I’ve got the most issues of. There’s little in comics that would excite me more than for the Flash to undergo a spectacular return.

Of course, the Flash I’m writing about is Wally West.

West’s been the Flash for twenty-odd years. Long enough that he’s the Flash to a whole generation (and let’s face it, probably the last generation) of comic book readers. And I understand why people like J. Michael Straczynski want to see Barry Allen return, really I do. Hal Jordan’s return was brilliant, and I’d like Tony Stark back too. But again, like the Legion of Super-heroes, I’ve got no sentimental connection to poor old Barry.

From recent hints, I wouldn’t bet against JMS being the one to bring him back, presumably in yet another relaunch. Regardless of anyone’s opinion of his writing (and even though I dropped the title around Civil War his run on Amazing is the longest I’ve ever bought a Spider-Man title for because as much as I like Spider-Man, I’ve rarely found the comics to be any good), the man is high-profile enough to shift a heck of a lot of comics, which is something the Flash really needs at the minute from looking at the sales figures.

The question is where did DC go wrong with what used to be one of the most consistantly good titles of all time? I think part of the problem may actually be down to the very thing that made the comic so good for so long: Mark Waid.

If it wasn’t for Waid, I doubt I’d still be reading comics. His and Mike Wieringo’s run was so far above what anyone else at the Big Two were doing in the 90s it wasn’t funny. He foreshadowed Grant Morrison’s legendary JLA run, and it was a shitty, shitty decision on DC editorial’s part that the four Superman titles weren’t passed to him, Morrison, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. In fact, I’d go as far to say that the ramifications of that decision are without doubt the foundation of DC’s current troubles. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and Millar’s Ultimates fundamentally altered Marvel’s approach to their comics (for better or worse), inspiring the current Big Events that are making the company so much money.

Going back to Waid, what made his Flash so engaging was the long-form story that he told over a hundred issues or so, of how Wally West grew up. He took the work started by Mike Barron in the very first issue of the series and progressed it to it’s logical conclusion. And that was the problem: West’s story arc was essentially complete. There was nowhere really for the next writer to go.

Geoff Johns, after a seriously poor first arc, solved the problem by making his story arc all about the Flash’s Rogues Gallery. He extrapolated on events and themes Waid had explored, at first addressing the Rogues individually and then as a group in the Rogues War. It’s in these issues we see the blueprints of greater plans for DC’s current Crises (once again, for better or worse). Sure, the magical recreation of West’s secret ID and his wife’s pregnancy moved his story forward, but ultimately incrementally, and not on the scale of Waid’s work or indeed the focus Johns’ reserved for the villains.

It all went to crap after Infinite Crisis and the elevation of Bart Allen to main character. Despite the promise of Issue 1’s awesome cover, the Fastest Man Alive was just rubbish. The plot didn’t make a huge amount of sense, and Allen’s character was both boring and at odds with what had gone before. Twelve issues later and it all ground to a halt with his death, the only tragedy that the event was so inconsequential.

Impulse was always a bit of a wasted character. Oh, he was good enough in his own title and in Young Justice, and I’m sure Johns did a decent job with him in Teen Titans (though I’ve never read it). But he was never Wally West’s sidekick, and that really should have been his purpose. Instead of shuffling him off into a different book after his introduction, Waid really should have made him an integral part of the parent title. In fact, I suspect that some of the less effective later Waid issues would have been improved by using Bart as a dramatic device: Wally West’s next challenge should have been as a father.

Which is exactly what Waid tried to do on his return to the title after Fastest Man Alive got the boot. Unfortunately the damage has already been done momentum-wise, and besides, I get the feeling that Waid didn’t really want to come back. The first six issues have been lacklustre and have finally convinced me to drop the title. Like I’ve said before, buying things just because I always have isn’t a good enough reason anymore.

But not to end on a down note, you know what I think would work? The Flash as a team book. If we have to have Barry Allen back, let’s bring his grandson back too. Let’s do a Green Lantern: if there’s no reason to get rid of Kyle, there’s no reason to boot Wally. And depite my ambivalence about JSAers, Jay Garrick’s awesome, so get him in too (in fact, I still believe the best solution following Infinite Crisis wasn’t giving the teenager his own series, but rather the old guy). If the conclusion of one character arc ultimately crippled the old series, let’s start again with many.

     Feed

I don’t like writing negative reviews of things. You know, apart from the I Am Legend one. Oh, that was a fucking pleasure. I feel a little bad about going after comics based heavily on the 70s satellite-era yesterday: my point isn’t that they’re not necessarily good comics, it’s just that there’s a significant element to them that not only leaves me cold, but is almost deliberately ambivalent to me as a reader, in that it isn’t really for me.

So I don’t mean to be critical when I say that there are some writers that I don’t find as engaging as others. There are a lot who I think are objectively pretty poor, and that’s usually confirmed by the views of others. But what I find interesting are the writers championed by people I respect whom I don’t necessarily feel the same way about.

Forgive my less than incisive critical insight, by most of the time I couldn’t really tell you why I like some of the writers I do. The example I always use is Tom Clancy: a hackish doorstop-crafting right winger whose work I really dig for no good reason at all. It doesn’t even make sense to me.

In comic book terms, there are a number of writers who I really rate. Grant Morrison, of course. Mark Waid, John Rogers, Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern, Matt Fraction, the Phonogram guys. And there are just as many who I don’t really get: Sean McKeever, Tony Bedard, most of the Marvel Adventures writers. Here’s a couple of controvertial ones: Dan Slott and Gail Simone. Both are excellent writers that just don’t really click with me, even though I like some of their work well enough. And I have no idea why, other than the fact that somethings don’t click, and that’s just that. And I’m really not having a go. I mean, I didn’t get a hang of Shakespeare until last year, and that’s not bad company to be in, fiction-wise.

It’s not to say that there aren’t greyish areas. I think some of Mark Millar’s work is really good- Swamp Thing and Red Son in particular- and some of it I’m not keen on. As much as I love Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-man, I was a bit luke-warm on his Daredevil, and by virtue of familiarity some of his dialogue ticks have started to get a little annoying. I’d assumed Ed Brubaker was just another mediocre Bat-hack, but you don’t need me to tell you that Criminal is amazing, and his Daredevil may well be the best since Frank Miller’s.

I mention John Rogers above, and it’s his and Keith Giffen’s Blue Beetle that’s prompted the post in a way. I’ve said before that I’m never picking up a title just to keep the run consistent, and I’m certainly not getting any fillers ever again. And unfortunately, as much as I want to support the book, I don’t think I’ve ever read a filler comic I’ve ever liked, and I’m not liable to pick up Will Pfeifer’s issues.

That said, and in complete contradiction to the above, I’m absolutely picking up the Spanish-language one-off because it sounds like a fantastic and intriguing experiment. Maybe fill-ins would have a better rep if they all tried to do something a bit different.

     Feed

The first Authority paperback is still the only comic collection I’ve ever picked up on the strength of the artist alone. Although it eventually won me over to Warren Ellis’ writing, I’d bought it specifically due to an interview Bryan Hitch had done for Mark Salisbury’s book Artists on Comic Art.

Hitch’s style is incredible. He defined “widescreen” comic art, and to paraphrase from the above book: while the typical 90s style artwork would have a huge guy flying up away from the Earth filling a full page splash with the planet a small circle in the background, Hitch’s style would be to draw a the curve of the Earth filling up a double page spread, with a tiny figure flying out of it. A far more majestic way of suggesting something huge and epic.

While his Ultimates work is probably his best to date, I think I prefer the Authority stuff with Ellis, in particular the sense of scale he brought to the Shiftship invasion in the second story arc. I don’t think anyone’s ever pulled off the size of an alien armada quite so well. It’s this that makes me think his upcoming work on Fantastic Four has mind-blowing potential.

The only real weakness, I think, could be in the writing. Hitch’s time on JLA was unmemorable, but I’ve read that’s likely because he and writer Mark Waid didn’t quite mesh. I think he needs a huge idea or image to play off, something Mark Millar was able to provide in Ultimates. I don’t think a vague direction to draw something cosmic works with any artist who isn’t Jack Kirby. I hope Millar’s able to give his artist something to get his teeth into. Something we’ve never seen before. And maybe a little less of Reed Richards as an autistic supervillain.

     Feed

You’ll have to excuse the short posts this week. I’ve managed to cut my fingers on a surprisingly sharp kitten, and it’s making typing a little more difficult than usual.

Just a few quick things today:

Spider-Man: One More Day

I have no more scorn to add that the rest of the Internet hasn’t been able to supply in abundance over the Amazing Disappearing Marriage. The only thing I have to say about the whole thing is that it creeps me the fuck out. I cannot see it as anything other than middle-aged wish fulfilment. Honestly- a thirty year old man who lives with his aunt and can’t hold down a job isn’t a funky modern everyman, he’s a figure of pity, possibly with serious emotional problems, who requires help, compassion, and a sense of worth and progress in his life.

From an interview with Mark Waid at Newsarama:

I feel like I’m momentarily out of step with what fandom wants because I don’t get it.

Momentarily? I feel like that permanently.

Anyway, enough of the negative vibes. You know what’s awesome? David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in this year’s RSC production of Hamlet. That’s awesome.

     Feed

Are we all suitably blinded by the promise of the year to come? Maybe not, because it occurs to me that of all the films I flagged up, only one is completely original, which really doesn’t bode well for the cause of originality. Anyway, time to get mired in nostalgia once again.

British nerds of my generation have a somewhat different perspective of comics than those on the other side of the Pond. The previous generation, like Mark Millar, or my younger uncles, tend to recall the black and white Marvel reprints of the 70s, or whatever American format books that made it into the newsagents. For my lot, our childhood was largely shaped by the Beano and toy properties licenced to Marvel UK.

My memories of growing up in the 80s, super-hero wise, are probably more to do with the animated Spider-Man show and the reruns of Adam West’s Batman. Later on, I did get the Fleetway Batman reprints, as well as the Marvel UK Spider-Man reprints, but the one comic I got religiously was the Beano.

That’s the first difference between British and American comics. Ours were always magazine-sized, rather than the classic comic-book size, a format the Beano is still published in. I particularly remember the weekly Transformers comic, where the colour dots were incredibly obvious, enlarged along with the rest of the art.

In the early Nineties, Marvel UK started collecting a number of Spider-Man issues monthly, first in the Complete Spider-Man, then in Exploits of Spider-Man. I stopped getting this just as the clone saga really started to kick in, not just because it was shite, but because by then I’d discovered Forbidden Planet in Cardiff and started to buy American imports.

The successor to Exploits was the Astonishing Spider-Man, a title that set the standard for all subsequent British reprints. The format was about the size of American comics, but offered a sturdier cover and three times as many story pages for about the cost of an import. I don’t know for sure, but I assume it was pretty popular, because they started bringing out a similar X-Men title. These days, there’s dozens of reprint titles like these, both Marvel and DC ones (oddly, the only title to break format is the Ultimate Spider-Man reprints, expanded to magazine size).

The most recent release of this type has been “DC Comics Presents”. It’s the only one where all the reprints are new to me- Superman/Batman, The Brave and the Bold, and Supergirl. I picked it up on a whim, as it’s a cheap way to get a lot of comics. I really like Mark Waid’s title but I’d lost track of it, and I figured if I started getting the British reprint I’d get two other comics essentially for free, so their relative shite-level wouldn’t really matter.

I didn’t expect to feel as pleasantly nostalgic about it as I do. It was nice to pick up a title in the local newsagent. It was even better to pick up something I know will come out regularly (the parent titles being pretty far ahead in the US), and one that wouldn’t require getting any other title to make sense of. The Brave and the Bold and Superman/Batman, in particular, are perceived as being largely separate from the rest of the DCU’s goings on and seem to suffer from it in America, but that separation is actually an advantage in this kind of collected format.

Supergirl- now, Supergirl is another matter.

     Feed