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| Tuesday, December 4, 2007 12:46 PM |
| The Take, Volume One |
 by Fëanor |
When I got to Atomic City last Wednesday night and discovered that the release of new comics for the week had been pushed back to Thursday, I was crushed. Of course, I didn't leave the shop without buying some comics anyway. And I got the delayed releases the next day, regardless. (I took a special trip around noon to Fat Jack's, and it was interesting being in the shop on the lunch hour of release day; it was actually rather crowded with all the businessmen and students getting their comics fix.) And then there are the various comics I already had lying around, and the graphic novels I got out of the library. So yeah, this week's Take is a pretty big one. Which is why I've decided to split it into two parts. Settle in, boys and girls!
Star's books
Not long ago, I came into possession of a number of Star's old comic books, and I'm finally getting around to reading them now. Expect reviews of more of these in the coming weeks; this bunch just scratches the surface.
Secret Origins
I was almost afraid to take this out of its plastic sheath, as the cover art suggested it was quite an old comic, but the $4 price tag on the outside eventually convinced me that it would be okay, and inside I found what's actually a late '90s reprint of a 1961 "special giant issue" release from DC comics, which itself was just a collection of reprints from the mid-to-late '50s, and 1960. It features the origin stories of the Superman/Batman team (not either character's individual origin story, you understand, but just the origin of them working together); the Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan; Wonder Woman; the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen; Adam Strange; the Martian Manhunter; Green Arrow and Speedy; and the Challengers of the Unknown.
A couple of the stories (Superman/Batman, Green Lantern) actually take the form of a "current" adventure of the character which happens to include a flashback to the origin story. The Superman/Batman story is pretty much pure Silver Age wackiness, robot trickery and all, and is thus extremely ridiculous and odd. but also rather fun.
It was very interesting to read the original origin story of Adam Strange, the adventurer who finds himself constantly travelling between his home planet and the far-off world of Rann due to the chance development of teleportation properties in a zeta-beam. The science and plot in Strange is pretty questionable, but it's a fun and imaginative little adventure regardless. The Green Lantern story is also quite fun and imaginative. I was particularly interested to read the Challengers of the Unkown origin, as this is a group of vaguely X-Files-style adventurers that I'd never even heard of until I first read New Frontier. They cheap out on us with this story, though, by including only the first few pages of the issue - the bits that tell you how the Challengers got together and started out - and then cutting things short before you get to see the details of their first really serious adventure together. They cheap out even further on the Green Arrow origin, though, by not even including an illustrated version of it, but just giving us a page of text summarizing the story! Guess they were running out of space at this point?
But they do include the entire origin stories for Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, and the Flash. The Wonder Woman story tells about Diana's birth, how she got her powers, and her youth as Wonder Girl, but doesn't get any further than that. This particular story was written by Bob Kanigher, and not Charles Moulton, so it's not as replete with creepy subtext as classic Wonder Woman could be - although a lot of pretty goofy stuff does happen ("Diana! Time for lunch! Stop riding on that Roc!"), and I thought the fact that she's beautiful as Aphrodite and wise as Athena, but swifter than Mercury and stronger than Hercules was pretty interesting.
Another origin story that I was mostly ignorant of except for what I'd read in New Frontier, and which was therefore very interesting to read in that context, was the story of the Martian Manhunter. This is a character I'm only vaguely familiar with, and I was pleased to see how he originally came about - although I definitely prefer the greater power, pathos, and realism of Darwyn Cooke's version. Finally, the Flash origin is just great comics, even if the story of his fight with the ridiculous Turtle Man, the slowest man on Earth, is just utter nonsense.
So, all-in-all, a pretty entertaining book and, more importantly, a fascinating and informative document in comics history.
WitchCraft: La Terreur #1-3
This is a complete three-part miniseries from Vertigo about a young woman living during the time of The Terror in 18th century France. She falls in love with her cousin, a man who finds himself in the crosshairs of the Revolution. In order to free him from prison and live a secure life with him, she ends up stepping onto the fateful path towards becoming a witch.
I have to admit, I did not actually finish all three of these comics. I got about halfway through #2 and just gave up. They're not terrible, but there's a loooot of narration - so much so that the background images in some of the panels are almost completely obscured by narrative boxes - and there are a number of really, really corny bits, especially in the scenes where the woman meets her magic teacher and her magical education begins.
The Books of Magic/The Books of Faerie #58
I believe I read, long ago, the books, by Neil Gaiman, which introduced the main character of the Books of Magic series, Tim Hunter. Even though they're by Gaiman, and even though they're rather similar to Harry Potter in more ways than one (the main character is a young British boy who wears glasses who suddenly discovers there's magic in his blood and his magical education must begin directly), I didn't care for them very much; the story felt like an excuse for going through a long, boring description of how magic and the magical world works - sort of like Alan Moore's Promethea. Regardless, I thought I'd give this comic a try, and it's actually not bad. It's got plenty of charming British dialogue; an intriguing, imaginative, and creepy plot; and some interesting characters.
That's the "Books of Magic" part I'm talking about, of course. The "Books of Faerie" part takes the form of a cute, simple little back-up story set in the land of faerie, wherein a faerie child brings an ugly-looking, but still somehow cute, little monster home, and in typical fairy tale fashion, there turns out to be a good heart inside the beast that belies its hideous exterior, and we all learn an important lesson. This isn't a terribly fresh or imaginative story, but it's reasonably well done and an acceptable bit of airy entertainment.
Hunter: The Age of Magic #1
The first issue in yet another series following the saga of Tim Hunter, this one is... less good. In this book, Hunter has grown into a restless adolescent with great magical powers and great desires - for girls, and for adventure. He's got a pet owl and is being taught in a big, mysterious castle that's actually a gigantic school of magic. This guy gets more like Harry Potter all the time! Anyway, the castle is in Gemworld, which is essentially generic fantasy world #23. He helps a girl running from some nasty guys and quickly gets himself involved in some kind of dangerous mystery. But the art is rather poor and the writing is dull and unimaginative, so I really don't care how the mystery turns out.
Vampirella #1
Vampirella of Drakulon #3
Vampirella/Dracula Showcase #1
There are a lot of comics about vampires and magic in Star's collection. Go figure, right? :) Anyway, all of these Vampirella books are just terrible.
Vampirella, if you don't know, is an impossibly buxom vampire woman who may be from another planet called (sigh) Drakulon - then again, her memories of Drakulon may have been implanted in her head by the evil God of Chaos. Of course she's one of those vampires with a heart of gold who tries not to drink the blood of innocents, and instead drinks either a blood substitute serum, or the blood of villains. She spends her time scampering about in a ridiculous, skimpy red outfit (her incredibly large and upright nipples nearly tearing through it), going from one adventure to another, usually accompanied by a Van Helsing of one kind or another, and fighting and/or making out with one or another aspect of Dracula. Vamirella, in other words, is cheesecake - softcore porn. Softcore porn as sci-fi/horror/soap opera/thriller, but softcore porn nonetheless. And sadly, no part of that rather heady mixture is done very well.
It's true I've never really been a huge fan of softcore porn, but even so, this seems to be particularly poorly done softcore porn. And of course, as is usually the case with porn, the story and writing that comes along with it is half-assed at best.
Vampirella #1 (1992) is not the first Vampirella comic ever, but it does claim to be the first full-color issue of the Vampirella series printed for Harris Comics (the publisher for all three of these books, btw). As the story begins, America has only recently thrown off the shackles of a secret occult conspiracy, and Vampi (as she is affectionately known by those who love her), along with Senator Adam Van Helsing and a bumbling wizard known as the Great Pendragon, are keeping busy cleaning up the remaining cults and monsters when they stumble upon some possible clues to Vampirella's true identity and past, as well as hints of yet another occult conspiracy, this one somehow connected to Dracula. The thing is terribly written, loaded with cliches and stereotypes and bad dialogue. There's an especially bad section near the end wherein Van Helsing gets all patriotic and a ridiculous American flag backdrop shows up behind him. Good lord!
In Vampirella of Drakulon #3 (1996), Vampi has travelled back, with a little help from a modern Van Helsing, to the time of the Dr. Van Helsing of the Dracula novel (although it's slightly after the events of that book), who she believes (due to some documents found in the future) will be able to supply her with an antidote so she will no longer need to drink blood, or even consume the blood substitute. But everything goes awry - as it often does - when Count Dracula shows up. He pretends to be a decendent of the original Count Dracula, here to make up for his forebear's crimes by offering his help, but in fact he's just another version of Dracula from the future. It's all quite silly and ridiculous.
The last Vampirella book, Vampirella/Dracula Showcase #1, isn't really a comic at all, but just a preview of other comics to come. The first story, of which there are only a few pages, is - almost unbelievably - written by Warren Ellis. It's sort of a more metaphorical look at Vampirella, as if she were a character in an updated fairy tale. It's okay, but there's not even enough of it here to get excited about. Then there's an interview with Alan Moore about some kind of updated Dracula comic he'd written, then some art from another upcoming comic, and then a few pages from some really terrible comic where Dracula and Vampirella meet yet again and exchange something that's supposed to be witty repartee, but is just mindless prattle. Finally, the other side of the comic has the finished art (but none of the words) from an upcoming Pantha comic. Pantha appears to be pretty much the same thing as Vampirella, except instead of a vampire girl, she's a sort of cat girl.
Anyway, there's nothing here that makes me want to seek out more Vampirella. Although that is some costume she has there.
Morbius: The Living Vampire #5
Even worse than Vampirella as far as vampire comics go is this thing from Marvel about your classic self-hating vampire stereotype - the angst-ridden man who has been cursed and can't stand the idea of drinking the blood of others, so he's been working feverishly on an antidote that will make him human again. At the beginning of this comic, he succeeds, but the effects quickly wear off, and then he has to fight some stereotypical street punks, and a giant snake/lizard/Satanist guy. The thing is painfully corny, melodramatic, and overdone, and the lizard guy has such a classic stereotypical abused child backstory that they don't even bother to go into detail about it - they just give you a couple of quick panels showing him cringing as a child and do the comic book equivalent of saying, "yadda yadda yadda." Pretty pathetic.
Superman's Metropolis
Yes, it's pretty much what you think it is: the silent science fiction film classic Metropolis, adapted into a comic book, and its story fused with that of the Superman mythos. The woman leading the workers is Lois, the guy in charge of the city is Jonathan Kent, his right hand man is Jimmy Olsen, the villain secretly in control is Luthor, etc. If anything this book's flaw is remaining too faithful to the original. Metropolis is an innovative film, visually beautiful and stunning, but the dialogue and intertitles are quite bad, and it's so determined to get its message across, it doesn't use a sledgehammer, it uses a 16-wheeler. The comic book essentially copies the film's approach exactly - it overnarrates, overexplains, and beats us about the head thoroughly with the moral of the story.
But, it's also visually stunning, with unique, painterly art by Ted McKeever, and it does a really fantastic job of fusing the Superman story with that of Metropolis. It's also genuinely moving in certain sections. The ending falls flat, but there are a lot of strong moments in the book. Not bad.
Star Blazers: The Magazine of Space Battleship Yamato #1
This book is essentially one big flashback which summarizes the events of previous Star Blazers stories in order to catch you up, and then at the very end gets ready to launch a new story which I assume was told by succeeding issues. In the back of the book there's a helpful text piece explaining the previous history of Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato, and the many differences in details, story, and characters between the original movie and the television series (which was sort of an expansion/reenvisioning of the movie). And finally, in the very back of the book, there's a short interview with one of the actors who did the voice work on the show. All of this background info is handy, because the summary in the comic itself is a bit confusing for someone like myself, who only has very vague memories of Star Blazers from his childhood. Space Battleship Yamato is absolutely huge in Japan, which is understandable, as the story is practically designed to be culturally and historically resonant for the Japanese. It's a famous Japanese WWII battleship turned into a spaceship and crewed with a bunch of honorable people determined to complete their practically hopeless mission to save their world from invading outsiders. Actually, it's pretty resonant for me, too. But this comic, as it is just a summary, isn't particularly interesting in and of itself, and in fact bits of it are really quite melodramatic and overdone, to the point of being unbelievable. This is another title I definitely won't be seeking out more issues of.
Kingdom Come #1 & #2
I will, however, definitely be looking for the other issues of Kingdom Come. This is a pretty famous Elseworlds series that I'd been interested in trying out for a while. And as it turns out, it's famous for a reason. The writing, by Mark Waid, isn't always perfect - sometimes it's a bit melodramatic and overdone - and Alex Ross's art isn't exactly my favorite - his characters all tend to look pretty much the same: so perfect, and yet so... chunky, that they appear more like bulky mannequins than real people. But their styles actually end up fitting this particular material pretty well. The story is set in a DC Universe where the Golden Age versions of all the major superheroes never really went away - they just got older and were supplanted by a younger crop of wreckless superhumans with little regard for morality. The book is told from the point of view of an old man who inherits from his friend (the first Sandman) dreams and visions of an oncoming apocalypse, and is visited by the Spectre, who transports him through space and time to show him the events leading into a war between meta-humans that could destroy the Earth.
But it's a story told from the point of view of an old man in more ways than one. The whole thing has the flavor of a bitter grandpa yearning for the good old times and complaining about the kids these days and how they don't respect their elders and have no sense of common decency and no knowledge of the difference between right and wrong. It's a love letter to the Golden Age (it's even dedicated to Jerry Siegle and Joe Shuster), and a screed against modern, "edgy" heroes who would kill and destroy with impunity.
Which is actually a bit irritating. I've always hated and distrusted that old "things were better back then" kind of argument. But if you kind of ignore the larger implications of the theme and just focus on the story, it's actually quite effective. It's certainly a fascinating concept, and it's interesting seeing the possible futures of all the old heroes - Superman, hiding out in his fortress; Batman trapped in his cave, fighting crime by remote control; Aquaman, busy ruling his underwater empire. I particularly enjoy the look of the Green Lantern - he's reconceptualized as a knight armored in green and carrying a green lance. Probably the most moving moment is the end of the first book, when Superman returns to work. But I also like a clever little visual bit in the second book where Ross recreates the covers of the comics that featured the first appearances of Batman and Superman - Detective Comics #27 and Action Comics #1.
And of course, the central conflict of the story is an interesting one, as it questions one of the foundations upon which the DC Universe is based: is it sometimes okay to kill the villain?
The point is, I definitely want to read the rest of this story. As I understand it, it's only four parts, but it'll probably make more sense for me to pick up the TPB collection which I'm sure exists, rather than trying to track down the two other single issues.
Library books
The Yellow Jar: Two Tales from Japanese Tradition
This is a very neat little book containing, as its subtitle suggests, two Japanese folk tales, retold in a comic book format with art meant to simulate eighteenth century Japanese woodblock prints. This art is precise, clean, and simple, but also very evocative and effective. The stories are wonderful fairy tales - the first is the story of a fisherman who finds a yellow jar with a woman inside. He makes her his wife, loses her, and then, in his determination to get her back, even faces off against a demon. The second tale is a story about weeds that blossom into flowers, and how those flowers finally find their purpose. Both stories have the wonderful matter-of-fact surreality of fairy tales, and both have lessons to teach, but teach them in a quaint and fantastic fashion that isn't at all didactic or irritating. It's a great little book.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Volume 1
Yep, it's part one of the manga adaptation of the movie, itself an adaptation of a novel. The explanatory pages in the back give more background on the whole thing. It turns out Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is actually book four in a five book series, an epic spanning many years, with each volume centering on a different male/female couple. Anyway, in the comic they decided to pull some stuff from book one, so that the story of Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien would be more fleshed out and we'd have the backstory for the other stuff that happens. So actually despite my love for and familiarity with the film, almost nothing that happens in this first volume was recognizable to me, as most of it is stuff that happens before the events of the movie. There are some interesting moments and some cool action sequences, but not all that much happens, and what does is rather marred by the fact that the translation into English is really terrible. There's bad grammar, bad spelling, clumsy phrasing. It's like reading a badly dubbed kung fu movie. And from the preview samples of other kung fu comics by this publisher in the back of this book, it's clear that this is not a peculiarity of this particular comic; they're all horribly translated.
Which is not to say I think the manga would have been really good if it had been translated welll; it actually appears to be pretty melodramatic and overdone, like a lot of manga. But it certainly would have been better. Regardless, I won't be seeking out any more volumes of this.
Oldboy Volume 1
I've actually seen this in the library many times before and passed it by, because, after all, I don't even particularly like the famous film adaptation of it. But for whatever reason, I decided to pick it up this time and see how it was. And actually, as it turns out, it's surprisingly good. Of course, the beginning of this story, even in the film version, is undeniably intriguing: the main character is kidnapped and imprisoned for 10 years in a mysterious facility, by whom and for what reason he doesn't know. After those 10 years he's simply released without explanation. He almost immediately meets a beautiful young woman, hooks up with her, and with her help sets about trying to discover what has happened to him and why. This first volume ends with our hero taking his first tentative step onto the path toward discovering his persecutor, having tracked down the restaurant whose take-out food he was served at every meal for all 10 years of his imprisonment.
This book is, thankfully, translated far more carefully than the clumsy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon manga. The language flows far more easily and sounds far more realistic. The book also retains the right to left alignment of the original, and leaves in all the Japanese sound effects, with notes explaining them around the edge of the page. This was a good choice, as there are a lot of sound effects, and they are so integrated into the art of the panels that it would have been nearly impossible to take them out and replace them with their English equivalents, especially since in some cases there simply isn't an elegant English equivalent ("sound of a paranoid glance" is hard to fit inside a panel, for instance).
The art, by the way, is pretty standard manga stuff, but well done and a bit more realistic than some manga can be. It's hard to focus on it for too long, however, as the story is a real page-turner, even for someone like me who saw the movie and already knows how it all turns out. Obviously there are differences between this and the movie, but not as many as you might think. It's pretty much the same, but with more detail, and the villain character is more human, with more human flaws and foibles than the same character in the movie. I don't think I'm going to bother tracking down all the other volumes of this manga, since I already know I don't particularly like the ending. But I have to say I'm tempted. It's good stuff.
Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape
I actually read a Fables collection before, back when I first started seriously collecting comics, and I was rather underwhelmed by it. But I kept reading Chris Sims and other comics reviewers and bloggers gushing about how great Fables is, so I felt like I ought to give it another chance. To that end, I picked up this book when I saw it, even though it actually turned out to be the first collection of a Fables spin-off series called Jack of Fables, which focuses on the character Jack Horner, who is essentially every Jack from every fairy tale ever. (The premise of the Fables series is that all the characters out of all the old stories actually exist in the world as nigh invulnerable beings with astounding abilities.) In The (Nearly) Great Escape, Jack goes to Hollywood and becomes a movie mogul by cashing in on his own stories. But for his brash disregard of keeping the existence of Fables a secret from the "mundies" (regular old mundane humans), an agent from Fabletown is sent to kick him out on his ass. He's then almost immediately snatched up by another organization, this one determined to capture fables and put them in a "retirement home" where their power and edginess are slowly taken away from them as they are made as mundane as the rest of the world. It's a brilliant premise (rather similar to that of The Prisoner, as the book itself admits in a final bit of narration at the end), and it's executed quite well. The book is loaded with lovely art, great characters, amusing dialogue, and engaging story and action. I think what makes this better than the other Fables collection I read is that this one very rarely takes itself too seriously. Its main character, after all, is an arrogant ass and lovable anti-hero to whom everything is a game and a joke, and his attitude and narrative voice suffuse the entire book, to its betterment. Even the darkest scenes are tinged with a bitter humor. The old stories and characters have been modernized, reimagined, and given voice in a very clever and amusing way (although I have to admit I didn't recognize everybody). I particularly like the visual conception of Humpty Dumpty; the brutal scene with the group from Wizard of Oz; Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox; the Walrus and the Carpenter; and the tortoise and the hare. The story ends in a slightly anti-climactic way, in that not all the mysteries are solved, not all the prisoners get away, and the villains aren't really defeated, but hey, that's the way you've got to do things in a comic. Ultimately, it wraps up as much as it really can, and manages to be satisfying enough. I really rather enjoyed it. Now I have to decide whether I want to try collecting a Fables title or not... |
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