Each week, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 32 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, talk about it, and, on (or about) Wednesday, post whatever emerges; you can subscribe via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast delivery system. This week: internal affairs(!) / cleveland(!) / peter weller(!)
Each week, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 32 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, talk about it, and, on (or about) Wednesday, post whatever emerges; you can subscribe via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast delivery system. This week: my shitty memory / creeper Hawkman / shoeboxes:
(*****+ / *****) Thought I'd spend the next couple of days with SPACE AGE and ended up binging the thing this afternoon: easily in my top three Superman stories of all time (WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW and ALL STAR being in first and (now) third place, respectively), this is one of the most beautiful and profound superhero series to come out in (at least) the last 20 years. Love the retelling and reimagining of the first Crisis; the formation of the Justice League (bored Flash is brilliant); the first (and last) confrontation between a version of Batman and The Joker that I wanted to see so much more of (almost a mixture of Pattinson's THE BATMAN and Robert Downey Jr.'s IRON MAN); a spot-on portrayal of Superman that deftly mixes the outsider with the beacon of light (that I hope James Gunn has paid attention to); and a pitch-perfect version of the greatest love story in comics. Everything comics could be and then some; a triumph.
All 11 of the Denny O’Neil / Neal Adams Batman collaborations have joined The Collection. Happy / merry / etc etc:
Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.
(Box06): "It's stress banter... let it happen": has there ever been a more self-aware line in Bendis's career?
On paper and in theory this pairing should work: Bendis and Maleev doing spy stuff in the DC Universe (so far my only exposure to Bendis's tenure in this particular sandbox) with a fantastic cast of characters, including three of my favorites (The Question, Damien Wayne, and Kate Spencer).
And the series as a whole does, indeed. work.
But.
CHECKMATE works only once Bendis gets out of his own way and moves the thing along; so much of this issue was spent tripping over himself to extend something out to six issues that should've been done in four that I can't see the footprints.
Not like that that's nothing new for Bendis: it's been a common complaint over the entirety of his career. Decompression, etc etc etc...
But I've two more that irk me more than I'd like: One, everyone sounds the same, as though I'm reading Bendis having fun with action figures (that, thanks to Alex Maleev, look really fucking good) and doing the voices in a really cool setting. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Banter has its place – ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, anyone? – but not as the defining rhythm of indistinguishably clever people.
Which brings me to my second problem: it's been the same thing for the last 20-some years. No surprises, nothing new, nothing interesting – replace one set of characters with another and do the Bendis banter-clever people / Mamet thing (I hold a similar ire for much of Joss Whedon's work), ad infinitum. What once was exciting and fresh is now, as per the usual cycle, dreadfully common.
The times that I've truly loved Bendis – ALIAS, DAREDEVIL, and TORSO, in particular – are the times that he was in a more grounded format with real(ish) people up against seemingly insurmountable odds, most of them brought upon themselves. I'd love for him to go back there, try something new by mining the past; hell, use a silent protagonist.
I've little faith that that will actually happen but hey, if Maleev is along, it will, at least, look really REALLY good.
Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish whatever emerges. Earlier installments live here.
(Box06): Pleasant surprise, this one: a chance to revisit a single issue of something I'd read only in trade and rather recently at that. And, while my hope that I could read CRISIS as more than "a gorgeously illustrated historical document with too many one-note action figures" remains elusive, I did, nonetheless, sense a humanity missing in most of the rest of the series (a portent of a shift in storytelling priorities in the post-CRISIS world?): the iconic cover, of Superman holding Supergirl's lifeless body still packs a punch; I can only imagine the impact seeing that had on the reader as it stared back at them from the racks.
While he rightly receives plaudits for his rendering of spectacle and universe-shattering narrative turns, Pérez has a unique and unmatched ability to both illustrate said universe-shattering for our eyes and through the eyes and expressions of the characters experiencing it: he brings the anguish, the fear, and the rage to life, pouring it off of every page, especially in the issue's final, unforgettable pages. Similarly - and perhaps it's because I (re)read it out of context with the other eleven issues – I sensed a desperation on the part of the heroes that I didn't feel in other issues: maybe it was always there and my initial, overwhelmed and trade-paperbacked reading missed it or maybe this was the issue that it all, indeed, turned. Interesting that hundreds of worlds had died in issues previous but that it took one iconic death to hammer the stakes home.
Brings up a note: in my eventual re-read of CRISIS, I'm going to do it via single issues and not in trade. Want to see if this approach lends a different experience and makes me see what I was missing – the weight, the history-shattering stakes, the humanity – in my first go-round. If this issue is any indication, I have a feeling that it will.
Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.
(Box17): Another of the done-in-one titles that DC was publishing at the time (the superb Palmiotti / Grey JONAH HEX being the other), the only fault in this issue being that not only did the team of Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith have the unenviable task of following Darwyn Cooke's run on the title but that all were working under the shadow of Will Eisner's long and incalculably innovative pen.
As much as I love The Spirit and his world, I find it to be, in the hands of anyone other than Eisner, lacking: Cooke did an admirable job, as did Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith – though the less said about Frank Miller's monstrosity of a film version (that being said, I'd argue that, had Miller tried him in comics (though maybe not the Miller of the mid-late naughties), it would've been a different story: film is clearly not Miller's medium, something I think (and hope) he's come to recognize) the better.
The missing piece in those non-Eisnerian hands? Eisner himself and that spirit (yeah yeah) of innovation: it's as much a part of The Spirit's character as the cape and cowl are to Batman, the radioactive spider to Spidey, and the S-symbol to Superman: to simply tell stories, no matter how enjoyable and fun, isn't enough to make the character resonate. Nonetheless, this issue – and the whole of the DC series – was, if not resonant, then at least both enjoyable AND fun.
The similarity between myself and “bad-tempered hermit” is striking.
Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.
(Box16): One of the crown jewels of the 90s (words rarely uttered though the era does hold a special place in my heart), DC doesn't get much better than this SPECTRE series, a perfect collision (similar to the 00’s JONAH HEX series) of writer and artist and characters – Corrigan / Spectre (Mandrake's Spectre, like Kaluta's Shadow and Adams's Batman) is THE Spectre, as far as I'm concerned), Amy, Nate – pushed to their limits in a deft balance of the topical (HIV ignorance) with the timeless (demons and the afterlife and human nature and all): in a just world, this volume of THE SPECTRE would be spoken in the same breath as Gaiman's SANDMAN.
I've always imagined (supported by evidence of previous lackluster efforts) The Spectre – a mostly-naked, pasty, all powerful vehicle of wrath and vengeance in pixie boots, a hooded cloak, and a speedo – to be a difficult character to get right: while he has limitless power and can do anything (not always a good thing), from punishing a mugger to stepping in to bring one Crisis after another to an end, he's not the most elastic of DC's stable (a la Superman or Batman): punishment, wrath, green cape, a dead cop powerless to stop his perpetual companion.
Ostrander and Mandrake succeed where others failed (and continue to do so (while all have been solid – I'm a big fan of Hal Jordan’s time as The Spectre, as vehicle of redemption, one of those rare transformations that, to me, worked; and I wish Crispus Allen had had a longer tenure – there hasn't been a capital-G Great take like Ostrander/Mandrake on The Spectre in awhile) by leaning in and pushing the character and his staples to their nth degree: their Spectre is both heroic and terrifying, a potent mixture of hardboiled private eye and embodiment of vengeance; I would both love and hate to see Tom Mandrake draw my greatest fears.
While it's been in the "pick them up whenever you see them" file, I'm adding this series to my list of "runs to complete”; an absolute pleasure to revisit.
Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.
(Box17): Now entering the weird, post-INFINITE CRISIS / pre-FLASHPOINT back half of the DC naughties when nothing quite clicked though, in theory, it should have: Busiek and Pacheco (RIP; if there was anyone born to draw Superman) are a phenomenal team but even they couldn't bring magic to the character and his world as it was then. Not that this is a bad issue – it isn't, not by a long shot – but I won't remember any of it after writing this; starting to lose some of it even a few moments after reading it: it was wholly there in its thereness.
(IIRC, Morrison and Quitely's ALL-STAR SUPERMAN was unfolding in stuttering release parallel, an unenviable position for any team on the main books to find themselves in.)
If anything, this makes evident why the New52 (and the ensuing decade+ of rebirthing and rebuilding) came into being: there was clearly a need to revitalize the line (though the Bat-line came through unscathed, as it was quite good then, IIRC: Morrison again); it was only in the shoddy, haphazard execution via "editorial bloodsucking" of said revitalization that the New52 failed to leave little more than a bad taste.
Though I'll admit, the pie was a nice – if unsubtle – touch.