The Latest | Comics at the Stop Button

She-Hulk. Dan Slott.

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 09:17:28 -0500

Dan Slott usually does single issue stories or two issue stories and there are some two parters in these many issues of She-Hulk. Laws of Attraction runs eight issues (nine if you count the not traded #14, which I read, and ten if you include the Two-Gun Kid special) and there's actually not a lot going on in them, for a Slott She-Hulk story anyway. There's the “Civil War” tie-in, which is a bit of a throwaway, though it does move plot A, “She-Hulk gets married,” forward. Attraction's only got three or four plots going on and it does feel like a complete narrative gesture in resolving some raised issues, but there's also a certain amount of baiting going on. Slott's either daring Marvel to cancel the comic or he's trying to insure he doesn't lose long-time readers. Something... There are cliffhangers, little emotional cliffhangers, which just don't feel feel right.

It's too bad, because so much of Slott's She-Hulk does feel right. I hadn't read the comic in... seven months, six months, one of those, and coming back to it was relieving. Slott does a great job with the character, but so little happens to her--while so much is going on around her. She-Hulk's always been a quirky examination of comic books (as opposed to a serious one, like Kyle Baker's Plastic Man), but this story is obese, as opposed to voluptuous. Slott's dealing with his story-lines, which he has too many to handle, a “Civil War” tie-in, a “Planet Hulk” tie-in, and something gets lost. Slott writes scenes of a decent length and each issue has them and they're nice and they give the impression of something nicer going on, in terms of a reading experience, than one's left with at the end of Laws of Attraction. He's really going for a TV feel--each issue seems to take place a week after the previous one, which helps give these issues some deceptive weight. But I don't like using my brain so much when it comes to Slott's She-Hulk. I want to submerge myself in the experience, not analyze it and these issues are riper for analysis than they are for mud-bathing.

Four Horsemen. Robert Rodi.

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:34:43 -0500

Halfway through Four Horsemen, I remembered how it ended. It'd be easy to just say poorly and dismiss it, but Four Horsemen is actually a pretty good example of what's wrong with “sophisticated suspense,” or was wrong with it back in 1999. Horsemen was part of Vertigo's “V2K” line, a series of titles tied (somehow) to December 31, 1999. Writer Robert Rodi took a four issue limited series and did some incredibly standard things with it. There are Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and there are four issues. In each of the four issues, there is a person who has a story one of the Horsemen listen to and... well, learn something about how worthless modern civilization has become. The four issues happen concurrently, so after a certain point--I think starting with the third issue--Rodi's phoning in large parts of the script, just having artist Essad Ribic draw from different angles. The interconnected limited series is a comic book standard. It certainly was back when Rodi wrote Horsemen, because it's a standard DC popularized.

As DC's “sophisticated” line, Vertigo is incredibly hit or miss. On one hand, they seem to be trying to appeal to a wholly different audience, but on the other, they appear to be calling the readers of superhero comics dumb. So, that whole relationship is a little weird. But Horsemen is hardly sophisticated... Rodi's characters are stereotypes, his long dialogue passages unreadable (somewhere during the third issue, I just stopped trying to read it; why bother, there was no actual content)--he goes so far as to include an angry teenager with a gun, he's so original.

The “sophisticated” approach seems to be one where the writer talks about stuff from a soapbox, but doesn't really get it, so he just piles it all in. Making space for something, then filling it with crumpled up newspaper (or comic books). It's gibberish and it's hard to believe anyone actually sat and read through it.

Ribic's art is nice, but so what? Horsemen's ideas aren't insulting, they're just really stupid and already dated in 1999 hipster nonsense (the corporations are taking over the world, blah blah blah--at one point, though, it does come off sounding like it's the Elders of Zion, which was kind of cute and unintended, I'm sure). Vertigo's problem then--and probably today, but it seems to be dwindling as a line--is it tried to appeal to people who weren't necessarily smart (if they were, they would have dropped Horsemen after the first issue), but just thought regular DC comics were for rubes.

Comics are good or bad based on their quality, not the issues they discuss, the violence they visualize or the obscenities the characters can spout. Four Horsemen is the perfect example.

Batman: Turning Points. Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and Chuck Dixon.

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:51:41 -0500

Batman: Turning Points has its problems. Greg Rucka trying to write in Frank Miller's Year One style is atrocious and both Ed Brubaker and Chuck Dixon get saddled with generally useless issues. Brubaker writes two issues and his first one is a fun tribute to 1960s Batman, but his second one is so forgettable--well, I had to think really hard about it. Dixon's is also blah and the problem is with the content--Brubaker's second issue deals with the dead Robin and the shot Batgirl and Dixon's deals with the Batman replacement guy who was running around in the mid-1990s, after DC realized what a cash cow (from killing Superman) messing up their characters could be. The last issue, also written by Rucka has no lame pseudo-Year One narration and it's actually pretty damn good. It's cheerful and lamely completes a narrative loop back to the first issue, which this type of series often does, but there was something pleasant about it. So pleasant, shockingly, I'm actually hunting down Greg Rucka comics, something I never thought I'd do again....

The nicest part about the comic--and probably why DC is finally collecting it in a trade--is the art. The first issue is Steve Lieber, who mimics David Mazzucchelli but somehow doesn't capture the iconic aspect from Year One, which is fine. The art is certainly not the problem with that first issue (the problem is Rucka's constant underlining for emphasis). The second issue and the third issue, though they have different styles, just kind of gel together. Not really--Joe Giella's art in the second issue is fun, but Dick Giordano's in the third is lazy and somewhat ugly, even if it is competent. The Chuck Dixon issue has Brent Anderson art and Anderson does a beautiful job, absolutely beautiful. But the last issue is the best, because it's Paul Pope, and Pope has a great time with it. He's got Batman swinging hands with a little kid, smiling and cheerful. Rucka's writing of the scene is, obviously, over-melodramatic, but there's just something about it... it engages with Batman as a character who's the reader's possession (the experience of reading Batman comic books making him so), not a corporate icon. Not a figure on notebooks or really dumb kids' Valentine's cards.

Because the story's set over ten years, haphazardly, the whole thing is certainly not essential reading. The first Brubaker and the last Rucka are both quite good, but then again, passing up Steve Lieber Batman art just seems wrong and the Anderson stuff is beautiful. I also like the concept behind the series--it's a Batman comic and it's supposed to make you happy at the end. Usually these things are supposed to make you... I don't know, I don't read Batman comics today, but they certainly aren't supposed to make you enjoy yourself.

Hitman. Garth Ennis.

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:59:35 -0500

I know I shouldn't have been expecting Hitman to wow me right out of the gate (my recommending friend told me it took a little while to get really good), but I was sort of stunned by how nonplussed it left me. Garth Ennis's writing is fine, but like most Ennis, it's something familiar. A handful of the details show up later in Preacher and probably in something else. My problem--the aforementioned nonplussing--relations to not being able to find anything particular about Hitman. The villain was boring... I guess I liked Killer Croc watching “Seinfeld,” but it was only for a panel or so and then it was over. Ennis establishes the character as a pseudo-contradiction, which I'm not used to Ennis doing, sparkling up the Christmas tree to hide the thin center.

My other big problem with Hitman might be John McCrea's art. Hitman looks like a cartoon version of Sam Kieth (with a lot less lines). It's also really bright--almost cheerful--and it works against the issues, as far as setting the tone. I really wasn't expecting Hitman to feature a sitcom couch and it does... and, even discounting my surprise, Ennis is not ready to have a sitcom couch in a comic book about a “moral” hitman. Maybe I'm just mad about that simplistic “morality.” Ennis usually boils his complexities down at the end of a series, not at the start. There's also not much actual content in terms of character in these issues, besides over-explanatory narration (something else I don't tend to expect from Ennis or at least not coming from him without some recognition of it being too much).

I'll keep going with Hitman, but it's going to be a bit of an uphill climb from this inauspicious beginning....

Batman and the Mad Monk. Matt Wagner.

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:33:54 -0500

Batman and the Mad Monk suffers from the same big problem Matt Wagner's previous “Dark Moon Rising” series, Batman and the Monster Men, does--Wagner's incredibly lazy sense of proportion and perspective. Mad Monk tends to open with a really bad close-up of a character--the first issue's Catwoman opening is so bad, if Monster Men hadn't already seasoned me to the “style,” I would have closed it immediately. Actually, some aspects of Wagner's art improve in this series--Bruce Wayne's girlfriend, for example, is obviously supposed to be attractive (in the other one, you couldn't tell).

As for the story itself, it's still okay--Wagner mixes old Batman with new Batman to a decent effect, story-wise (though some of his dialogue is pretty lame). Mad Monk is a remake of the old stuff and it works to a large degree. When it doesn't work, it's usually when Wagner's mixing elements. It's also a sequel to Frank Miller's Year One and while following it as a general backstory works, whenever Wagner tries to introduce the “war on crime” element, Mad Monk induces some seriously skimming, page-turning, and eye-rolling. Oddly though, it's probably the best sequel anyone's done to Year One, just because Wagner's interest in his story is still apparent. His approach to Batman, character-wise (not art, obviously), shows a real endearment to the character, one he's not afraid to exercise.

The greatest defect, actually, of Batman and the Mad Monk is its ending. “Dark Moon Rising” consists of the two series and nothing more (apparently) and Mad Monk has a big, “epilogues for all” ending to it, instead of the “to be continued” ending of Monster Men. Wagner leaves some things open to come back to, but it'd have been nicer if it had just been open, instead of another stupid reference to Robin coming soon... everyone has that stupid ending.

Aquaman. Kurt Busiek.

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:35:35 -0500

Kurt Busiek's Aquaman was advertised, mostly by Busiek himself I think, as an underwater Conan, as Busiek left Dark Horse's excellent Conan series behind for a DC Comics exclusive contract. Aquaman is no Conan--while Busiek does get to explore an imaginary world, there's none of the fetishistic enthusiasm he had in Conan and the characters are too different. Yes, there's a lot of fighting, but Busiek sets up Aquaman as a travelogue, buddy story. King Shark--a giant shark with legs and arms--leads his buddy Aquaman around and they have adventures--short ones, to allow for the overall story to develop. As that travelogue, Aquaman is most successful. When Busiek's doing the overall thing, it doesn't fall apart, but his fingerprints are all the more visible. This story is part of DC Comics's “One Year Later” line, which--advertising malarky aside (or maybe the opposite)--means its supposed to sell to the widest audience of people. People who haven't read Aquaman before, like me. (Busiek goes so far as to mock the character, which is funny enough, but just adds to some of the confusion).

Busiek's greatest writing fault, and the biggest problem with Aquaman, is the lack of a solid central character. The titular Aquaman is a new Aquaman, one who's free of the years of Aquaman continuity, but also one Busiek has literally had alone in a tank of water for twenty years. The character knows way too much for someone so isolated--TV explains it all, apparently--and he's not particularly engaging. The supporting cast is--mostly--excellent and Busiek spends a lot of time with them, not just developing their relationship with the protagonist but developing little tangents, because those tangents are better than the protagonist. Central, prophetic comic book heroes tend to make boring characters (Star Wars, The Matrix) and Busiek isn't doing anything different here.

Butch Guice's art is dark and murky. His undersea world lacks any beauty--his fish, for example, all look like something from a nightmare--and, as such, Aquaman lacks any wonderment and it could use a dose. Busiek's time on the series is limited, unfortunately, since all problems aside, it's still a competent piece of work. It just lacks any oomph.

Criminal. Ed Brubaker.

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:04:07 -0500

Sometimes writers start hanging out with people, start reading new (to them) writers, or something else (like starting or stopping drinking, marrying or divorcing), and their work changes. Not the obvious content-level stuff, but the lower stuff, the stuff it isn't easy to identify and classify. With Criminal, Ed Brubaker turns in a totally serviceable crime comic. It's got good dialogue, good narration, good art from Sean Phillips, but it isn't breaking down any new doors. It isn't even opening any new doors. It might not even be looking for the light under doors. When I read the first issue, I had just this response--serviceable, unexciting Brubaker-written crime comic--but this time through, reading all the issues of Coward (the first story-line), the second issue kicked my ass. I couldn't believe Brubaker was fitting so much into a single issue. It was beautiful.

But by the time I'd finished the third issue, I almost went straight for the fifth, just because I knew the fourth wasn't going to do anything exciting. Brubaker breaks a lot of “rules” in Criminal, but they're the same dumb rules David Fincher broke in Seven. So, not only are they narratively useless, they've also been broken before. The most exciting thing about Criminal, overall, didn't even pay-off. Brubaker had a comic strip, a la Watchmen, running concurrent to the story, but then he forgot about it. The comic strip in the comic book, even if it was a direct lift from Watchmen, was at least formally exciting. It was something new, because nothing else in Criminal is new. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino, instead of making Pulp Fiction, having only written True Romance and Reservoir Dogs, wrote a comic book. Criminal is about half that comic book, because it concerns itself with looking good in the canon of crime fiction, while Tarantino's only interested in looking good in his own context.

Criminal is not bad, but it's fluff. Very competently written, beautifully drawn, fluff. It's not excited with its own form beyond fitting an existing form and it's not excited with its story--it's full of genre standards and Brubaker's good at disguising them for a while, until an inevitable reveal. The comics are full of quotes from other writers, Brubaker's genre-minded friends (I won't even get into the Rat Pack mentality), and it becomes clear Criminal is meant to fit into a very specific mold. Unfortunately, either forcing it into that mold or writing it in that mold has near suffocated the writing.

Starting Criminal, I fully expected to recommend the trade to a non-comic book reading friend of mine... Nope.

Review index

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 14:36:33 -0600

Comic Books, by title

Capsules

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:34:32 -0600

All-Star Superman #6 by Grant Morrison
Bye-Bye, Harvey by Daniel Way
Hero Squared #4 by Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis
Interiorae #2 by Gabriella Giandelli
New Tales of Old Palomar #1 by Gilbert Hernandez
The Spirit #1 by Darwyn Cooke

Interviews

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 16:26:26 -0600

Mike Leib on Tag: Cursed
Ross Richie on Dominion
Steven Grant on Two Guns
Steven Grant on Whisper

Film

Sun, 28 Jan 1900 16:22:44 -0600