I’ve been trying to cut back on my blind faith. It’s been failing, to some degree, with filmmakers lately (I’m thinking The Classic mostly), and comic books in particular. Comic books are expensive. For example, every one of Revolution’s twelve issues cost $3, which makes it a $36 read. It took me about an hour and a half to read it....
Brubaker’s output in the last year has been... suspect. While his last issue of Catwoman was great, the crossover issues he wrote were bad. Before that, he failed with a mystical story-line and that failure seems to be one of the factors in turning him off the comic (I’m guessing, he did work at it for a year and a half, so it had to be a disappointment), sending him to Marvel, where Captain America has been best when not dealing with Captain America. I’m not even going to talk about Sleeper: Season Two. When Revolution was announced, it was supposed to be a big deal and there was the strange idea of Brubaker on a “team” book. What’s so interesting about Revolution is that Brubaker does, immediately, start big. But then he reins it in. For the first six issues, until he gets the protagonist he wants, he’s doing big on one side, then doing small on the other. It’s a strange mix, reading it all at once, because there are small issues and big issues. There’s a contrast I’m not sure I’d get if I was reading it once every thirty days with poor memory of the previous issue.
A lot of the mystical aspects that didn’t work in Catwoman, because Brubaker didn’t have the structure in that book to explore them, work wonders here in Revolution. A lot of Revolution just works. I’m not familiar with the Authority and, even though Brubaker himself recommended specific stories to me, I don’t really care about it. I like getting thrust into something unawares because it lets you see what the writer does when he or she thinks the audience knows something. You get to see a less hampered writer at work. So, Brubaker does some great stuff and I didn’t get the references, but really, so what? I filled it in later and it didn’t really matter anyway, because Revolution is actually pretty small. Brubaker does small better than anyone. Brubaker does characters better than anyone.
It is interesting too, that Brubaker hates the hero moments. He has a moment, and it got me, where you can feel the music rise and you know these faulted people are going to push themselves to achieve, to succeed, more than they are capable. And then he goes and tries to invalidate the moment. He can’t, of course, because those moments, if done well, are great and I love them. It’s human conflict in a statement, it’s a moment effective because of building sediment in the work. But, Brubaker does not like it (if Sleeper isn’t a hint). So, how is this guy goes to do Captain America, a character who should be those moments....
Whatever, I’ve got Captain America over there and I’ve got Revolution over here. I’m happy.
