X-Men Annuals (Blue & Gold)

I've never been a fan of annuals. They're a neat tradition in comic books, but for the most part I find them to be missed opportunities.

I recently caught up with the annuals for X-Men: Blue and X-Men: Gold. My thoughts on Blue and Gold can be found here. TLDR version: Blue is my favorite ongoing X-Book (apart from Astonishing) and Gold has been mostly a generic dud.

Strangely, UNBELIEVABLY even, the opposite is true for the annuals. X-Men: Blue Annual #1 is not really an annual in the traditional sense, but instead it's part one of a crossover titled Poison-X featuring Venom, cashing in on that Venom movie trailer brand recognition. It's written by Cullen Bunn, who writes the regular series, but it lacks the electricity that defines it. It feels more like a treatment for a story, moving through the stages of the narrative: something happens with symbiotes, get Venom to help, go to space world, encounter bad guys. This isn't bad in-and-of itself, it just lacks the grace that Bunn achieves with the snappy break-neck momentum of Blue.

If the goal was get eyes on Venom as a property, it works. I've never read Venom. I really only know him from the 90's cartoon and Raimi's masterpiece, Spiderman 3 (I'm serious it's the best one, fight me). I dig the way Venom is presented as a constant conversation with himself as a singular whole: the symbiote + Eddie Brock. Otherwise, the annual is pretty forgettable. I'm mostly dreading that I now have to read two issues of Venom in order to make sense of the upcoming X-Men: Blue #21-22. Maybe I'll just skip the Venom parts. It's not that hard to figure out what happens in these things, anyway.

X-Men: Gold Annual #1 is the best Gold has been, hands down. It's an Excalibur reunion (obviously, from the cover) that quickly gets Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Prestige over to the U.K. to see Meggan and Captain Britain's new baby. It's the kind of character work executed with a light touch that Gold has lacked. Writer Guggenheim includes a throwback villain that is so forgettable no one remembers who he is, which feels like a good joke at the expense of editorial's demand for constant nostalgia trips to the 1990's. The issue made me long for what Gold could be, so maybe Guggenheim has wanted to tell these stories all along, but is required to face-off his team against a string of forgettable references to the past. But here I'm speculating. Maybe Gold will get better from here on out? Only time will tell.

references:

1. X-Men: Blue Annual #1 w.Cullen Bunn p.Edgar Salazar Pub. Jan. 24, 2018 Read 2/9/18
2.  X-Men: Gold Annual #1 w.Marc Guggenheim, Leah Williams p.Alitha Martinez Pub. Jan. 10, 2018 Read 2/9/18
3. X-Men: Blue Annual #1 cover art by Nick Bradshaw.
4. X-Men: Gold Annual #1 cover art by Alan Davis

Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey

It's a blizzard here in Chicago, which means it's a snow day, which means catching up on my stack of comics. Almost a month has passed since my last post, so I'm just gonna dive right in!

Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey is a five issue mini series published from Oct. 4, 2017 to Jan. 31, 2018. Its title signals what it's all about: bringing the long dead Jean Grey back into X-Men continuity (as opposed to the time-displaced young Jean Grey that leads X-Men: Blue and stars in her own solo book. Resurrection builds on plot movements from the various X-books, with several references to events in Jean Grey (the solo title), but it's almost a stand alone mini-series (full confession: I have yet to read a single issue of Jean Grey).

As far as these X-Men miniseries events go, Phoenix Resurrection is pretty good. I have a poor opinion of these books, which function to produce a "get" that jump starts a major plot point into the continuity of the X-Men universe. Death of X and Inhumans vs. X-Men killed off, brought back, and re-organized major characters that were then taken up by the regular titles. The problem is that these miniseries' are often rush jobs, crammed full of exposition and clunky plot points. The art typically suffers too (Death of X is hideously amateur to look at). It always feels like Marvel is more invested in producing plot than in telling a story.

I digress. The writing on Phoenix Resurrection is profoundly OK. It trucks along largely through the actions of Kitty Pryde and Beast, always moving rapidly to the inevitable moment that we know is coming. I wish Yu, who was the artist on #1, had done the whole series, but the other pencilers do solid work. I just love the way Yu draws Kitty and Beast.

I'll spare a recap of the plot, but I want to point to one device that I found cleverly executed. From #1 it's clear that Jean is trapped in some kind of false reality populated by other dead X-Men, such as Banshee. It has the feel of any generic sci-fi simulation plot: it's a dreamlike suburb existing out of time. Jean works at a diner as a waitress. The best parts of the whole series take place at the counter. The whole thing is a visual reference to Twin Peaks, with Jean's friend/boss Annie always sitting at the counter doing paper work, just like Norma in The Return.

The last thing I'll add is that #5 (the finale) really took me by surprise in the way it handled the confrontation between Jean Grey and the Phoenix force. The previous four issues built up a classic fight, which often means an incomprehensible number of X-Men are drawn into a two-page spread fighting a giant monster or something. They almost lose, but then they win. Superhero comic books. Instead, Rosenberg has Jean in conversation with the Phoenix Force, which is drawn as a goofy looking bird that gets smaller in each panel. It turns into a conversation about Jean's desire to live or die and to save those she loves from dying. It wasn't profound by any means, but a well crafted character moment.

And now to read the new team book X-Men: Red #1 starring the newly resurrected Jean Grey...

references:

1. Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #1 w. Matt Rosenberg p. Leinil Francis Yu Pub. Oct. 4, 2017 Read 1/1/18
2. Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #2 w. Matt Rosenberg p. Carlos Pacheco Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/3/18
3. Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #3 w. Matt Rosenberg p. Joe Bennett Pub. Jan. 10, 2018 Read 2/9/18
4. Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #4 w. Matt Rosenberg p. Ramon Rosanas Pub. Jan. 24, 2018 Read 2/9/18
5. Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #5 w. Matt Rosenberg p. Joe Bennett, Leinil Francis Yu Pub. Jan. 31, 2018 Read 2/9/18
6. image: Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #5 cover by Leinil Francis Yu & Nolan Woodard

Blue & Gold: Musings on Marvel's Flagship Sister X-Titles

“Nothing ever stays the same. It’s the very nature of mutation.” (X-Men: Blue #18)

This post is about catching up with Marvel’s dual flagship X-books: X-Men: Blue and X-Men: Gold. Both books embody the classic narrative techniques of X-Men, jumping from crisis to crisis while relationships (and bodies) continually transform. Yet in terms of quality these books couldn’t further apart. Blue has been my favorite mainline X-book since it’s debut and Gold has been little more than a by-the-numbers rehash of a general X-Men formula. I'm interested in how both books' creative teams deal with the constant call-backs and nostalgia-dominated narratives of the current X-Men milieu.

In 2015 Marvel relaunched all its X-Books only to do so again less than a year and half later in spring of 2017. This second reboot had an official name: ResurrXion. I wrote a bit about ResurrXion in my post about Iceman. Any Marvel reader knows that these constant company-wide reboots are an insufferable reality of modern-day Marvel Comics: the constant stuttering of titles driven by the desire for sales (#1's sell better). On the upside I’ve heard this likened to contemporary television where a season may run for 8 or 10 episodes and go on hiatus for an undetermined amount of time. This new reality allows a creative team to produce a great run of 16 or 24 issues neatly sealed off as a single entity. The Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino run on Old Man Logan is a good example. But just as often it makes continual reading a chore, producing a multitude of titles that never really get off the ground, never hit their stride, or get cancelled due to under performance, like Iceman and Gen X. It’s even harder to stay plugged in when these books suck or are simply mediocre. This problem is exacerbated as one is forced to follow a staggering number of overlapping titles that are constantly ending and beginning over again. Several plot lines in X-Men: Blue require you to read several issues of X-Men: Gold (which is nothing new in superhero comics). If X-Men wasn’t the series that I’ve been invested in since childhood, then I'd probably walk away from Marvel altogether until they sorted their shit out.

I’ll begin with the best. X-Men: Blue was a welcome surprise as the best-written and drawn book of the mainline X-Titles (which includes X-Men: Gold, Gen-X, Weapon X, Cable, Iceman, and Jean Grey as well as the continuation of the 2015 titles All New Wolverine and Old Man Logan). Blue is written by Cullen Bunn, who previously penned the mediocre-at-best Uncanny X-Men, which ran from the 2015 reboot until ResurrXion. Uncanny followed a team of bruisers (what the current Weapon X is now) and was primarily a continuation of the themes Rick Remender established in his amazing run on Uncanny X-Force (2010-2012), both share a similar tag-line of something about super-threats requiring equally dangerous solutions or some such War on Terror nonsense (but seriously the Remender book is among the greatest X-Men runs of all time). Bunn’s Uncanny was a dud for a number of reasons: it was clunky out of the gate, rushed through character introductions (a common problem in Marvel team-books), suffered heavily from Marvel-mandated cross-over events Apocalypse Wars and Inhumans vs. X-Men, and squandered a number of fascinating characters by having too many story arcs revolve around similar issues of former villains being untrustworthy (Archangel, Magneto, Sabretooth, eventually Monet, et al). It didn’t help that the book featured the garish digital coloring and inking that renders all pencil work as a generic sludge lacking in depth, clarity, or style. I was ready to write Bunn off after reading the entire run.

His work on X-Men: Blue has been phenomenal, especially considering the break-neck tonal shift from Uncanny. Bunn achieves a fluid transformation of narrative and character that recalls the format established by Claremont during his storied run. Relationships and character development happen on the fly as the team is constantly bouncing from dimensions and time-periods. Where one caper ends another takes off without warning. Little seeds of characters and events are sprinkled throughout and slowly germinate into compelling adventure stories, villains, and team crises. The artwork pops the books has a real sense of urgency.

The a great example of this structure can be seen in how the team is frequently picking up new members. Continuing the adventures of the time-displaced original X-Men from the 1960s (taking off where the 2015 title All New X-Men concluded), Bunn crafts a careening adventure serial that finds depth in the cast-away duplicates of the X-Men franchise. The book revels in its misfit nature: five out-of-time superheroes struggling to get home or to find a place in the modern day while dealing with being duplicates of their contemporary selves. Along the way they pick up two more doubles: Jimmy Hudson, who for all intents and purposes is another Wolverine (the son of Wolverine from the Ultimate X-Men comic book series from the early 2000s) and Bloodstorm, the vampire Storm that first appeared in Chris Claremont’s run in the late 1970s and early 1980s and again in the Mutant X title from the late 1990s and early 2000s).

The most recent arc, Cross-Time Capers, follows the team as they leap through different time-periods on a mysterious time-machine created by Magneto. The coordinates have been preset and the X-Men find themselves in the 2099 period, the 1990s era of Generation X, and in the last issue they end up in the Silver Age period of the 1960s. Each of these issues is an opportunity to loud up on references to now classic X-Men plot lines. What is worth noting here is how well Bunn accommodates these endless references to X-Men’s past incarnations, which often last only a single issue.

To zoom out for a moment, X-Men is currently yoked to an overwhelming emphasis on nostalgia. This has partly been the M.O. of the ResurrXion reboot, which promised a return to “what made X-Men great”. So far this meant endless references to past eras and a villain of the month format that continually returns old, forgotten, and obscure villains from previous runs. There is also a favoring of plot lines that enable constant visualization of previous X-Men incarnations. Charles Soule’s (phenomenal) Astonishing X-Men used the freedom of the astral plane to recreate famous X-Men moments and the Lemire/Sorrentino run on Old Man Logan concluded with a multi-issue tumble through time that featured iconic moments and costumes in Wolverine’s publication history. Both Blue and Gold recently featured a Mojo Worldwide cross-over where Mojo thrusts the X-Men into illusory combat scenarios where the X-Men’s costumes keep changing into older variations to suit the simulation of past X-Men events. These references are now part of the genetic make-up of the X-Books and more often feel like fleeting references rather than good storytelling.

I’m indifferent to the principle of these callbacks, despite wishing for new stories and characters. Overall, it seems as though Marvel has trapped the X-Books in this endless rehash of their greatest hits. The question then becomes which books are good at working with this new terrain. Cullen Bunn has produced the best work regarding these nostalgia trips with both his issues of the Mojo Worldwide cross-over and now the Cross-Time Capers arc. He folds everything into an over-arching theme of mutation and duplication. The dense history of X-Men comics becomes the DNA of the constantly mutating world around the characters. The characters and events are never in stasis, but constantly transforming and the struggle of the X-Men is to orient themselves to this new reality. The constant call-backs are integrated into Bunn’s themes of narrative misfits and castaway duplicate characters, thus making the adventure serial about transformation, orientation, and ceaseless change. Even the duplicates are constantly moving into new directions away from being carbon copies of their older contemporary selves.

This post is already much longer (and later) than I anticipated! So I’ll offer a few brief comments on the sister title X-Men: Gold. The book has really struggled to find a unifying theme or idea. I’m not as familiar with scribe Marc Guggenheim’s work, but Gold suffers from feeling like paint-by-numbers X-Men. It features a classic team engaging in classic X-Men scenarios, but nothing seems to pop. The iconic characters lack any of the depth that typically defines them. Gold picks up right where Extraordinary X-Men left off. Extraordinary—the flagship title of the 2015 reboot—has a special place in my heart as one of the great missed opportunities for X-Men. Written by my favorite writer Jeff Lemire—and filled with all of his key themes of dysfunctional families and childhood trauma—with artwork by Edgar Delgado and Jay Ramos, the book began as a knock-out. But as typically happens, the talent was squandered on two inane (and I mean absolutely stupid) company-wide cross-over events. The first being Apocalypse Wars, which felt like an under-cooked tie-in to the film X-Men: Apocalypse and the other being Inhumans vs. X-Men, which much like Marvel’s Civil War books, was another forced and sloppy marketing stunt that pit good guys against other guys. Despite these set-backs, Lemire crafted a nuanced book that slowly unfurled deeply felt emotional and spiritual crises for all of the character’s involved. Nightcrawler, Colossus, Magik, and Storm functioned as a complex family unit, complete with long-standing baggage and messy relationship histories.

When that book ended a one-off title called X-Men Prime (written by Guggenheim) transitioned that team into the setting of X-Men: Gold. But all of the character dynamics are lost. My criticism isn’t that it’s not a continuation of Extraordinary, but rather that Guggenheim doesn’t seem to know what to do with any of these characters, in a similar way that Bunn didn't know what to do with Uncanny X-Men (2015-2017). Issue after issue the team fights a string of forgettable villains: a new Brotherhood, a momentary encounter with Mesmero, and currently a generic space goblin named Kologoth who first appeared in the first arc and is now a major antagonist in The Negative Zone War arc. The endless fight scenes suffer from crap artwork that often leaves out crucial elements of sequential storytelling and the characters speak in constant one-liners (Old Man Logan) or platitudes that suggest deeper relationship issues (Kitty Pryde and Colossus). It lacks vision and style.

I’ll end on a bit of conjecture. It seems that part of the problem with current X-Books is that each aspect of classic X-Men comics has been extracted and isolated into their own titles. Instead of having a single book (or just a couple) that includes romance, adventure, whimsy, conspiracy, brutality, and slapstick, each of these elements is isolated to its own book. Blue, which is much more of a whimsical romantic adventure excels under its creative team, but Gold, which is limited to brutality and conspiracy, is almost always generic and lifeless. This is just one girl’s opinion. Anyway, thanks for reading.

references:

1. X-Men: Blue #16 w.Cullen Bunn p.Thony Silas Pub. Nov. 29, 2017 Read 1/4/18
2. X-Men: Blue #17 w.Cullen Bunn p.R.B. Silva Pub. Dec. 13, 2017 Read 1/4/18
3. X-Men: Blue #18 w.Cullen Bunn p.R.B. Silva Pub. Dec. 27, 2017 Read 1/4/18
4. X-Men: Gold #16 w.Marc Guggenheim a.Lan Medina Pub. Nov. 22, 2017 Read 1/9/18
5. X-Men: Gold #17 w.Marc Guggenheim a.Ken Lashley Pub. Dec. 6, 2017 Read 1/9/18
6. X-Men: Gold #18 w.Marc Guggenheim a.Ken Lashley Pub. Dec. 20, 2017 Read 1/10/18
7. X-Men: Gold #19 w.Marc Guggenheim a.Lan Medina Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/10/18
8. image 1: X-Men: Blue #16 cover art by Arthur Adams
9. image 2: X-Men: Blue #1 cover art by Arthur Adams
10. image 3: X-Men: Gold #16 cover art by Ken Lashley

Gay and Cancelled: catching up with Iceman (#1-9)

When Marvel relaunched all its X-books in spring of 2017 it did so with a lot of fanfare regarding its return to basics, which ended up being mostly misplaced 90s nostalgia. The relaunch was also an opportunity for a reorganization of which characters where thrust into the spotlight or given leadership positions. This was mostly women like Young Jean Grey (X-Men: Blue) and Kitty Pryde (X-Men: Gold). Infinite variations of Wolverine still oversaturated the X-Market, but two of the ten (yes, TEN) X-Books were brand-new solo series: Jean Grey and Iceman, neither of whom had seen an ongoing solo book before. These choices can be understood as part of a multi-year attempt to return X-Men to before consecutive runs drastically transformed major characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey, bringing them back into the fold. It can also be viewed in context of Marvel’s ongoing diversity initiatives to highlight and change its overwhelmingly straight white cis male roster of heroes to reflect its diverse readership. If you didn’t already know, Iceman is now the gay X-Man. Marvel often does diversity poorly, much like an HR rep that would continually use the term diversity. Despite what 4chan white supremacists would have you believe, Jews in the media aren't pushing leftist agendas but rather a global corporation sees dollar signs in new forms of marketing. The problem of these book's quality is often from a lack of diversity in the creative teams hired to script and draw these books. There are some notable exceptions, Iceman being one, but also Black Panther and Ms. Marvel. A side note: a lot of Marvel books suck right now for a variety of reasons, none of them being the inclusion of women, queer, and POC characters, but that’s a different blog post.

I’ve pulled Iceman since its debut, but haven’t read it until now—months before its slated cancellation in March with #11. So here are my thoughts as I play catch-up with the various X-books that I’ve neglected.

Iceman plays like old school Peter Parker; a classic Marvel formula of a superhero juggling family life, romantic life, team-obligations, and a menagerie of super-villains. Writer Sina Grace has this balance down perfectly, with Iceman’s love-life being a stitch that weaves through all of the other elements of his life. In an smart turn from the post-Bryan Singer approach to the X-films (I cannot wait for the X-films to divest themselves of this abuser), Grace gives Iceman’s sexuality its own open dialogue and cleaves it distinctly from the mutant-as-metaphor stank that continues to haunt the X-books. That is, X-Men using mutant powers as a catch-all metaphor for complex intersectional identity is fraught with problems of erasure and reductionism, largely because X-Men at its worst is a bunch of straight, white, cis, able-bodied men and women that are said to represent marginalized peoples in America. In Iceman, the titular hero is both a mutant and gay and each part of his identity engenders distinct reactions from his family and friends.

The book also has a fascinating on-going dynamic with young Iceman aka time-displaced Iceman. In short, a couple years ago the original five X-Men from the 1960s were brought to the present day and have since starred in their own ongoing titles (All New X-Men and currently X-Men: Blue). Grace uses this relationship of modern day Iceman with his younger self to explore the book's central ideas of fit and family—where does Iceman belong and what is his role, if any, in all this. Some of the best moments in the these nine issues are when the two Ice-men are in dialogue. One of the best scenes in the series is when Iceman's modern-day parents discover the existence of a past version of their son and invite him to dinner.

The book has its weaknesses of course. It suffers from a current plague on the X-books of a constant revolving door of X-villain of the month, who often function only to bring Iceman into contact with another character and are then completely forgotten (see: Pyro, Juggernaut, et al). Grace does establish a slow-burn narrative arc with a prime nemesis of Daken, a headmaster of a rival school that steals an impressionable and idiotic student from Iceman with deeply tragic results (as seen in #9). The resolution of this arc will see the book through to its closure in #10 and #11, due out in February and March respectively. There’s also a really creative exploration of Iceman’s powers over the course of the narrative that recalls the rapid transformations of Iceman in the original 60s comic under Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, who goes from lumpy snowman to chiseled Iceman in the span of a few issues and who’s constantly learning new tricks, like the signature ice-bridge.

Perhaps the most glaring issue—partly because it contrasts the stellar writing—is the book's art. The pencil work is solid, especially in the first few issues drawn by Alessandro Vitti. The look and expression of Iceman’s bourgie middle-aged parents is warmly realized and practically everything with Iceman’s evolving mutant powers is intricately drafted. The problem is in the inking and coloring, which always looks like a rush job. Marvel is incredibly inconsistent, so some issues look way better than others. My knowledge of these processes is limited, so I can’t go into further detail, but most of this book is hideous to look at. I know I’m picky about art, but when DC is churning out books with gorgeous artwork at half the price of these Marvel books it becomes a bit unforgivable. To quote my friend and fan of the book: it’s a shame the cover artists didn’t do the whole series. Iceman features the best cover art, hands down, of any X-book on the stands right now.

reference:

1. Iceman #1 w.Sina Grace a.Alessandro Vitti Pub. June 7, 2017 Read 1/6/18
2. Iceman #2 w.Sina Grace a.Alessandro Vitti Pub. June 21, 2017 Read 1/6/18
3. Iceman #3 w.Sina Grace a.Alessandro Vitti Pub. July 26, 2017 Read 1/7/18
4. Iceman #4 w.Sina Grace a.Edgar Saul Salazar Arteaga Pub. Aug. 23, 2017 Read 1/7/18
5. Iceman #5 w.Sina Grace a.Alessandro Vitti Pub. Sep. 6, 2017 Read 1/7/18
6. Iceman #6 w.Sina Grace a.Robert Gill Pub. Oct. 4, 2017 Read 1/7/18
7. Iceman #7 w.Sina Grace a.Robert Gill Pub. Nov. 1, 2017 Read 1/7/18
8. Iceman #8 w.Sina Grace a.Robert Gill Pub. Dec. 6, 2017 Read 1/7/18
9. Iceman #9 w.Sina Grace a.Robert Gill Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/7/18
10. top image: title page banner image of the book (I couldn't find credits)
11. middle image: #1 cover art by Kevin P. Wada
12. bottom image: panel from #5 art by Alessandro Vitti.

Batman #36-37 (and #38 too)

Batman and Superman switch costumes to enter a superhero costume theme night at the fair!

Tom King is the it-boy scribe of DC and with good reason. His Mister Miracle is hands down the best superhero comic of 2017 not titled Black Hammer and his upcoming Swamp Thing Winter Special is my most anticipated book of the month (especially after how well he wrote Swamp Thing in Batman #23 “The Brave and the Mold”). His work on Batman (which just recently dropped the Rebirth logo) has been solid. Yet at times it is profoundly ok. King has written some incredible arcs (the Bane story for one), but there is also a lot of stuff that illicit a shrug of the shoulders (the over-long and over-hyped “War of Jokes and Riddles” for one was a beautiful dud overstuffed with well-drawn and well-written villains). But the book is recently hitting its stride. The Batman-Catwoman courtship arc “The Rules of Engagement” that just wrapped in #35 is some of the best work on the title to date, and really pops under lead artist Joёlle Jones’ work (I wish she did the entire book, but alas).

This is all to say that if you’re looking to jump on board Batman without catching up on nearly 40 back-issues than this is the place to start. #36 and 37 form a brilliant two-parter called “Superfriends”, which is entirely a double-date story arc with Superman and Lois Lane. It becomes the clearest expression of King’s interest in Batman as a traumatic figure surrounded by people who love him. It’s also genuinely funny and artist Clay Mann is a perfect fit with King’s penchant for nine-panel storytelling. Mann also provides clear and concise visualization of King’s use of asynchronous dialogue—a style device he uses more on Mister Miracle—that provides a number of smart visual gags with Batman and Superman and Catwoman and Lois.

The follow up (#38) is an incredible stand-alone whodunnit that promises to reverberate for issues to come. It is one of King’s supreme talents that even when the arcs are not the best (“Night of the Monster Men” for one) he’s delicately establishing characters and setting up profound transformations, as with Gotham Girl, a character that went from a forgettable plot device to a deeply tragic and interesting parallel story of recovery. "The Origin of Bruce Wayne" continues the theme of copycats throughout King's run as well as the emotional and psychological consequences of Batman's inspiration.

references:

1. Batman #36 w.Tom King a.Clay Mann Pub. Dec. 6, 2017 Read 1/5/18
2. Batman #37 w.Tom King a.Clay Mann Pub. Dec. 20, 2017 Read 1/5/18
3. Batman #38 w.Tom King a.Travis Moore Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/5/18
4. image no.1 credit Batman #37
5. image no.2 credit Batman #38 variant cover by Tim Sale.

No Better Words by Carolyn Nowak

What a serendipitous encounter this was! I picked this up at Vault of Midnight Comics in Grand Rapids, MI while visiting home. Despite living in a major metropolitan area of the Chicagoland suburbs, none of the comic shops that I have easy access to carry small press comics. Low and behold Vault of Midnight had an entire wall! The cover art of No Better Words immediately caught my eye and the "18+" sharpie inscription on the bag and board sealed the deal. I study internet pornography and thus have an academic interest in these things...

This comic is horny. Reading it made me horny. It evokes such a clarity of sexual desire as it depicts the experience of lust within specific moments of the day. It’s evening and Mallory is lying in bed, burning up. Writer and artist Carolyn Nowak depicts desire as multifaceted: affective physical responses, postures, and a personal relationship to images. Images first as daydreams—in the theater of Mallory’s mind—then pictures on the phone (fap material indeed).

Nowak’s line work is incredible. No Better Words is visually about gesture, posture, and glance. It is these elements, so precisely articulated, that convey the longing, desire, and lust of the comic. Her pronounced style often feels like a lumpier, more porous Daniel Clowes with expressionistic aspects of manga to convey emotional states, but I worry that comparison makes her style sound derivative, which it most certainly is not.

I greatly admire how well Nowak incorporates genital responses into the panels. Several close-up penetration shots are fluidly marked by the desire expressed in eye movement and mouth shape. It isn’t a hard break from clothed bodies as lesser artists would portray—the shock of cocks and pussies—nor is it cold and distant. No Better Words is thus a holistic approach to desire: daydreaming, wetdreaming, awkward flirting, computer mediated communication, waiting, and cuming. I absolutely love the way she draws naked bodies. A softer Schiele that merges the language of facial expression with the bounded frankness of flesh. 

reference:

1. No Better Words Carolyn Nowak Pub. 2017 Read 1/2/18
2. image source and Silver Sprocket press purchase link (here)

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1

My first 2018 title, and I read it on the day it came out! A real treat for me since I'm normally months behind as you will no doubt discover.

DC’s acquired properties of Hanna-Barbera and Wild Storm seem to be the place for full expressions of strangeness and much more open to savage critiques of American culture and U.S. government. The Flintstones—of which I’ve only read the first trade paperback—is notable for its idiosyncratic visual style and Paul Verhoeven-esq satire. The poppy visuals and funny gags barely contain the anger at the heart of a comic book about genocide and the commodification of human existence under capitalism. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 promises to be a continuation of this DC/Hanna-Barbera brand of re-imagining old school cartoons as sophisticated adult stories—and here I mean adult in these sense of complex ideas and storytelling rather than saying fuck and showing titties (I’m looking at you Fables).

Snagglepuss isn’t as immediately arresting as The Flintstones. Mike Feehan’s art has much more generic digital feel that sacrifices character for a sort of realness (in many ways this feels like a Furry comic par excellence—and that’s not a jab!). Mark Russell, who also pens The Flintstones, is also more clearly going for a long-form story arc instead of the episodic situational comedy of his previous title. This isn’t to suggest that Snagglepuss is bad, far from it! The introduction of the time period is layered and nuanced in ways that comic-book period pieces rarely are. It goes for a feeling and mood rather than a string of contextualizing references (although those are present, but always in service of feeling). The nihilistic anti-intellectualism of American politics of the time permeates the narrative through deflated figures and a creeping violent crassness. These elements structure its most compelling sight-gag: the revelation that the dating strangers of the opening aren’t rushing to see Snagglepuss’s latest play (a spot-on parody of overwrought Tennessee Williams works that suggests an intimate familiarity with the style), but rather the execution of Ethel Rosenberg.

Lastly, I’m most intrigued by the introduction of an antagonist working with the House Un-American Activities Committee; a prudish crusader akin to Anita Bryant named Gigi Allen (although no piss drinking a la G.G. Allin) who looks like Ayn Rand.

references:

1. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 w.Mark Russell p.Mike Feehan Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/3/18
2. top image: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 variant cover art by Evan "Doc" Shaner