Abhay: Inquisition- Detective Comics #35 & #36

Intro text!  I love it! This is the 5th in a series of question-and-answer sessions about recent comics.  The same 10 questions get asked in each installment of this series; the answers are sometimes different, except when I get sleepy, then I just copy-paste and hope no one notices.

Past installments have been about The Valiant #1, Bitch Planet #1, Rumble #1, and The Names #1.  This week breaks from the all #1 issue motif that had been going before, so that I could try out a complete two-part story.  How exciting!  INTRO TEXT!

10 Questions about DETECTIVE COMICS #35 & #36 by Benjamin Percy, John Paul Leon, Dave Stewart, Jared K. Fletcher, Dave Wielgosz, Rachel Gluckstern, and associates.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

Writer Benjamin Percy describes his fiction as typically concerning "bigfoot and bearded ladies, horse ranches, marijuana colonies and elk-hunting resorts." This two-part story features none of these things -- instead, Batman tries to survive a disease outbreak that erupts at an airport after a mysterious plane crash.

The Batman fights a cold. With his bat-fists.

I couldn't find an interview about these comics, so here's Percy taking to Guernica about his work as a journalist:

"One of my assignments was to check out 'what was really happening' in the nightlife of this city. So I went to an S&M club where people were dancing in cages and there was this giant medieval-looking wheel you could get strapped on for a whipping. I hit a lot of locations like this, one of which was an underground thrash metal club. It was full of dudes with shaved heads that revealed the tats on their scalps. When I walked in, the band was raging and the mosh pit extended across the entire dance floor. The ceiling was low with exposed pipes and timbers—one guy with a massive mohawk was hanging upside down and punching people while they punched and kicked him."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

The first part is a spectacle-driven set of reveals, all plot hooks. But in the second issue, there's some small divergences from that plot:  a little essay about airports as metaphors for life; a (extremely ill-timed) 24-style War on Terror torture bit; a little sentimental essay about death, near the end; arguably, an extended detour to a S&M club (which has a plot function, but is so wedged-in and amusingly out-of-nowhere that it seems almost churlish not to mention here).

It doesn't quite cohere into being a whole piece.  It doesn't quite manage to have a point. The writing definitely face-plants when it tries to pretend that the story was about something, a badly misfired attempt to tack on a gooey Hallmark ending onto a story about bioterrorism.

 Tangent: Speaking of Batman, the ones I grew up on and remember most fondly that weren't by Frank Miller, they were all by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle, so I should probably mention here the fundraising efforts that are underway for Mr. Breyfogle who's suffered health issues recently, in case news of that got by you and you have similarly warm feelings towards that run.  I especially like the issue where Batman pointlessly fights a white tiger for no reason, and it very nearly ties into my next point, sort of.

It succeeds more when it's an empty exercise in style. That's probably true of all of the Batman comics I bother remembering. Style is that character's greatest virtue -- that character has invited a range of styles that just isn't true of other characters in industrial comics; that isn't true of all that many characters outside of such comics, either.  It doesn't make me want to read comics regularly about that character any more because holy shit am I ever bored of hearing about the Batman.  But when it's a creator whose work I enjoy enough to not even care what they're working on, just to see them work (here, John Paul Leon), when they want to get paid, and put out a Batman comic?  I can least ask myself "what will they bring to that character" in a way that I don't think is true of any of the other paycheck characters in comics (e.g., Wolverine, Spider-man; who else?  Hellboy?).

Anyways, Simonson-Goodwin Manhunter is a style exercise, but it's a stone-cold killer, as good as it gets. Who even remembers the plot to Manhunter? There'd be no point to -- I remember that fight at the cathedral, instead.  There's worse things to be in the world than stylish.  This comic, when it tries in its last page to convince the reader it told them some sappy story about a grizzled war-vet Airport Cop, it's not so hot.  But that out-of-nowhere bit set at a S&M club? It wasn't enough, but I thought that was a nice try, at least.  I wish they'd gone further in that direction.  (For example: spanking and blindfolds...? #notmyChristian)

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

(The bit where I gush about John Paul Leon: Let me just get this bit out of the way, but man, That Fucking Guy. He understand light; he gets a lot of ink on a page without pages being drowned in the blacks, without it becoming murky, without the action ever becoming unclear. He can draw with a thin line and detail the hell out of a moment, then in the next panel go full-blown noir and tell the story in only slices of light. But his lighting choices, there's usually a storytelling reason-- he's not just showboating. His stuff is detailed without feeling like any linework is there for no reason. There's always a feeling of a human hand with his work, some other person in the world who put ink on paper just for you. In these comics in particular, he goes from massive early-00's-comics spectacle to more classical the-Batman-lurks-in-the-shadows moments, and it's still all somehow a consistent experience. I mean, shit. Shit, I just think that dude's good at his job.)

A design-heavy page from the second of the two issues.

Here, while many of the pages are dominated by standard Batman adventures, the comic still gives the authors plenty of opportunity to show off visually: a page where the panels are set within the negative space of a biohazard symbol (with the head of the character who has imposed that quarantine superimposed above the symbol's center, with the panels showing the results of his action orbiting him, conveying the hierarchy of the situation both through narrative panels and through a recognized symbol); an early page with a "procedural" quality, depicting airport security locking the doors for a quarantine; a page of Nightwing stalking through a fenced-splash page of the S&M club (particularly, the momentum that they create by placing a tiny figure of Nightwing at the bottom of each of the three panels of the fenced-splash).

A one-panel flashback to Airport Cop's war experience. For only this panel, Leon breaks from the visual style of the rest of the comic, and gets closer to something like a Daniel Zezelj panel. I like how you can feel that texture of Leon drawing a razor blade across the ink for those small white lines (wild guess).  What's most notable are those black abstract shapes that suggest chaos, violence, ruined buildings, but are just abstract black shapes on which narration can be stated without the clunkiness of word baloons. It's a shame they only pull that move out for the one panel.

Environments are somewhat color-coded to help the reader locate themselves: the airport is bathed in a dull yellow-grey-brown mix; Gotham outside of the airport, just after sunset, in oranges and purples; that S&M club in red and purple; air-traffic control and a diseased airplane, in green. Basically, out-of-the-airport? Vivid colors. In the airport? Institutional colors. I imagine the colors help readers want to get out of that airport, just like the Batman.

Use of color as detail, in this bit -- air traffic control displays lighting a face. Note the arm tattoos: this isn't even a major character in the comic, but he is nevertheless visually interesting.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

One story over two issues. If you wanted to break it up into a three-act structure, I'd figure issue one is Act One (a diseased plane infects an airport), while the second issue is Acts Two (things get worse as an uncaring bureacracy takes over), and Act Three (the Batman beats the shit out of somebody, Batman-style).

I don't know that's how I think of the story, though, as there's no noticeable character arc or theme at play here, no catharsis either aimed for or really expected.  I just think of a comic like this more as being structured like a joke, setup-&-punchline.  Setup: Batman gets sick because of a bad guy (issue one).  Punchline: Batman hurts the bad guy until Batman feels better about himself (issue two).

Not much of a cliffhanger inbetween issues: the story break upon the reveal that there is a villain responsible for the virus attack, some white guy with a beard.  This information is conveyed by a television broadcast.  Usually people will ground their last page cliffhangers on a character the reader cares about reacting to information, either verbally or through a reaction shot or both; Naoki Urasawa is particularly fond of throwing in reaction shots on his cliffhanger pages, say; Brian Vaughan likes a "Shit just got worse" final splash page; there's the often-ripped-off Mark Millar splash on a line promising a future issue filled with Big Action.  Here, the issue break dialogue is just a television broadcast of Mumford & Sons speaking in an undisclosed location saying "I don't represent the Middle East. I represent the Earth.  America has become the enemy of the Earth, has declared war with the Earth, and so I have declared war with America."

A little underwhelming.

It's a question how much Batman actually motivates the story or its conclusion.  Batman doesn't really do anything in issue one other than just provide exposition.  In issue two, the Batman just calls up Nightwing, and Nightwing runs around beating / kissing information out of people.  The bad guys aren't uncovered by Batman -- after hearing the Batman's around, they just decide to reveal themselves, at which point, the Batman magically appears and damages them.

If you picked up the Batman comic in order to see the Batman be cool or effective, I don't know that you actually got that from this story.

Another choice the authors make is that the story doesn't stick to the point of view of those in the airport. Rather than attempt to be a claustrophobic story about Batman trapped in a quarantined airport, a sizable chunk of part two instead takes place in Belarus...? Batman calls up a torture-happy post-911 post-24 version of Nightwing (really??), and several pages are from his perspective.  For a survival horror comic (which is the kind of comic a story about a bioterror-attack calls to mind), it seems unusual to break point of view so drastically.

Since it's two issues, counting pages doesn't make much sense and isn't worth the time, probably. That said, issue one has noticeably longer scenes: most prominently, a plane crash sequence that lasts about 6 pages (and really seems to have been this comic's true raison d'etre, more than anything else). Issue two is much more to the point, broken up mostly into 1 page units, with a couple bits lasting 2 pages. I think the longest chunk of issue 2 is the three-page chunk of Nightwing infiltrating the S&M club...

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

We'd noted above how the narration for the war flashback was put on top of abstract shapes that served a storytelling function. With Leon, the letterers often lay down narration in negative space. When they do use caption boxes, the caption boxes seem more planned than is often the case -- they keep the caption boxes taught against the panel border. I really wish people would do that more, if they could: there's less the sense of the caption box being the writer intruding upon the comic, more of a sense of the writer being invited into the comic by the artist.

Also noteworthy: the cover to the second issue spoils the ending of the comic...? Say whaaaaaaaat?

From the lengthy plane crash sequence in the first of the two issues.

There's few sound effects in this comic, but I especially liked this panel where Leon diverges from the cinematic mode of the rest of the airplane crash sequence and just draws a more abstract image of glass shattering, presented in black and white.  I like how that panel acts as a sort of sound effect for the sequence -- it's almost like a cymbal crash.  It's a drawing purely of the sensation of the moment, rather than the moment itself. Very effective.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

The torture-as-entertainment bit, but I can't pretend to be too angry about it.  That kind of shit was just past its expiration date before that CIA torture-report came out.  It wasn't upsetting -- it's just dull now.  Which is probably the more upsetting thing, having something so awful become so normalized.

I was more struck by that scene of Nightwing having to seduce information out of a dominatrix.  

Nightwing having ladies force themselves on him -- wasn't that a thing...?  Also: uhhhh, why was that a thing?

It's a pretty cornball scene -- I grew up with Chris Claremont X-Men comics so S&M in a superhero comic was old news to me when I was 12. Deviant sexuality in a DC Comic -- that's all DC Comics do anymore; I'd be more shocked if Superman talked about liking the plain-old missionary position, at this point. If you told me that the New 52 version of Superman asks whoever he dates to wear a strap on and force him to fellate it, I'd still be more upset that he's dating Wonder Woman instead of Lois Lane.  (Because that's just gross. #notmyChristian.)

But anyways, Nightwing has to get information out of a dominatrix; she makes him kiss it out of her; he reluctantly agrees, but as soon as he gets the information, he's like "fuck you, lady" and leaves.  So, she throws a knife at him because she's so worked up by her lady hormones, and he laughs at her because she's a silly girl and he's a heroic man.

Romance Comic.

Nightwing then runs away from a girl who likes kissing so he can go back to inflicting pain onto the testicles and nipples of other men, which is completely not sexual, nope, not sexual at all, get your mind out of the gutter.

BEEP = Sound effect of Nightwing getting a CBT-boner.

What's striking about this scene isn't that it's unusual for a Batman comic. What's striking is that this is pure, classic Batman. That scene I just described? That's every Batman-Catwoman scene ever.  That's their entire relationship, as depicted in roughly 12 billion comics.

"Silly woman, trying to give me an erection. The ejaculation of violence is the only release I need." -- All Batman Comics Ever Made.

Why the hell is that such a Batman thing?  Do you know why people like that stuff?  I have no earthly idea, but you know:  I'm kind of weird in that I kind of like kissing...?  I like the part where you're all kissing a lady, and she says, "You don't know what you're doing, do you?" and I say, "Actually, I do:  I'm pleasuring you."  I find those moments in life very erotic, like Max After Dark erotic, and I don't know why the Nightwing character can't get on my level.

I think that I understand that people like Batman for the same reasons I like James Bond movies: getting to jerk off to a cartoon of male hyper-competence. But James Bond, that hyper-competence manifests in the fact he regularly sexes up ladies...? James Bond will kiss a girl and not act all shitty about it.  If you're a spy lady named Candy MadeOfDogshit, there's a 100% chance that James Bond will walk right up to your face and be like, "You've got a weird last name-- check out my boner.  Take a photo of my boner with your spy camera." James Bond creates a hostile work environment based on gender for his female colleagues in the spy industry, and we love him for it.

But not Batman. Why is the ultimate definition of male hyper-competence where comic books are concerned so ... not just incompatible with sexual desire, but so weirdly dismissive or hostile to it? And why is that such a big part of the appeal of these comics? It's a more enduring quality of a Batman comic than the fucking Utility Belt, at this point!

(Granted, there's Iron Man, but Iron Man is a guy who basically fights evil in a technologically advanced body-condom, if you think about it, so it's not like we're out of the woods there, either)(haha, "wood").

The comic is also sort of suffused with... you know, if you subscribe to the idea that masculinity is a basically ridiculous performance, just this kabuki we're all trying to pull off... Well, I think that I'd place a small wager that the people who made these issues don't really subscribe to that idea...? There's this fog of fake-ish machismo hanging over everything, though that may just be in my head. All that stuff with a war vet telling Batman How to Be a Real Man, though. But two issues isn't a lot to go on, maybe too few to judge that way.

QUESTION 6.

Where did I put my car keys?

Your "car keys" are Man.  In the morning, you can not find your keys, just as you can not find a baby that is hiding.  So then, great, you're late to work -- just like an insolent teenager is "late" to school.  When you find your keys, you think "I'm going to buy a bowl and keep these in a bowl".  But then you don't ever buy a bowl because you have other things on your mind -- that's adulthood.  And finally, you shove your keys into a metal slot.  That's just like being an elderly person, the part where you get buried in a metal coffin by your ungrateful children -- but used to start the "engine", the engine on the Next Generation.

Your "car keys" are a fucking Man, dude!  Riddle solved!  Pay me!

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

 The Batman: "What's happened?"

Alfred: "At least finish your coffee, first."

"Fuck you and fuck your coffee, Alfred!!!"  -- signed, The Batman.

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

The plane crash in the first issue includes a double-page splash of a plane crashing into an airport, with three inset panels.  But before we consider that double-page splash, we should briefly note the two panels that take place beforehand.

In the first panel, "Where the hell's he going?" is stated in the foreground, the plane is drawn in the mid-ground, and the airport is in the background. The panel's composition answers the question posed by the dialogue in the panel.

In the second panel, the viewpoint then changes as the situation has worsened.  At least, we know it's worsened because the creative team has exchanged the foreground and the background. Now, the reader's POV is the airport and the airplane is coming towards it.

Even though the plane is located in the dead center of both panels, that shift in POV makes the plane feels "closer".  The plane feels fast even though the plane hasn't actually moved on the page. (P.S. comics are magic).

But then, the double page splash.

Spoiler.

It's not just the spectacle of the plane crash but that the creative team does not rely on that spectacle. The authors create small mini-dramas within it, using the three inset panels.

A kid eating an ice cream cone?

That kid's got to run.

A nameless lady getting a latte?

That lady is in harm's way.

(We even continue her story on the next page even though once again, she is not a "character" in any other respect in this comic).

The little kid.  Plus, the lady behind him, over by the coffee kiosk.  Uhhhh, the black guy probably just dies first -- I don't see him again. Sucks to be you, Black Guy Featured in Any Story Ever.

The point is the action isn't just happening -- it's happening to people, and the creative team makes the minimal effort to care about those people. So when the Batman is trying to save the airport later, we know he's trying to save human beings -- not just objects or architecture.

As for the splash itself, the Rule of Thirds perhaps bears mentioning.  Wikipedia:

The rule of thirds is a "rule of thumb" or guideline which applies to the process of composing visual images such as designs, films, paintings, and photographs. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject.

Not an exact measurement, but.  Just go along.  For your poor father.

Here, the plane crash is roughly at the top-right intersection of Rule of Thirds guidelines.  Note that the woman ordering a latte is roughly both at the top-left and bottom-left intersections, i.e. the reader's eyes are in some small way guided to these two locations, and this progression not just a pure game of playing Where's Waldo.

Usually, I want to complain about double-page splashes.  Usually, they're just empty spectacles, and I have a very "am I supposed to be impressed by this" jaded and bored reaction to them.  This splash, it's spectacle, but it doesn't achieve its spectacle by wholly sacrificing the power of comics.  The authors could've just relied on an illustration -- it could've just been the airplane crash and no reader would have ever asked for more --  but they did more than that, went further than that; these are still comic pages. Plus, it's the climax of action and momentum created in prior pages -- it's not just a splash as a cheap way to create excitement that wouldn't have been there otherwise; it's a splash to payoff on excitement that's been built, like the fulfillment of a promise.

(There's a second double-page splash later in the issue that's not half as interesting, a more gratuitous splash that comes without much build-up.  So you can see what distinguishes this splash in my mind within the issue itself, if you're, like, some kind of weirdo).

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

Not so much.  Percy's new to the medium (I'm guessing?) and there are kinks to work out, but he supposedly has a reputation as a promising writer.  And John Paul Leon is certainly no slouch -- I'm always happy to look at his work, especially in collaboration with a strong colorist like Dave Stewart.

It just didn't seem like either really had their heart in it on The Batman Part.

Leon's best pages involve men in containment suits, airplane's crashing, quarantines being imposed, biohazard symbols; most of the detective work is done by Nightwing; most of the philosophizing is done by Airport Cop; as mentioned before, the bad guy doesn't even get caught by some move made by the Batman -- Mumford & Sons just decides to fight Batman, and it quite predictably goes very badly for him.

But do I find myself wishing Percy/Leon had gotten a chance to do a longer and more considered version of a comic about a grizzled old Airport Cop fighting a terrorist attack, without the Batman...?  Well, no. Because I've seen that -- it's called Die Hard 2.  (And it sucks.)

They needed to publish issues 35 and 36 of Detective Comics in whichever months these issues were released.  So, here are issues 35 and 36.  Because that's how it works; that's the business. That's it.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn from this comic?

So, what am I saying this week?  "If you throw enough pyrotechnics and craft and visual doo-dads at the reader, you don't have to care as much about story or character or theme or having a point!"

[Single balloon falls from ceiling]

Craft has its pleasure.  Style has its pleasure.  Maybe smart doesn't come along every month, and you still have to eat.  "If you don't have a good personality, you might as well at least dress well." -- Your Shallow Grandma (Who Then Also Says Something Racist Probably).

Anyways, a Batman comic is a Batman comic is a Batman comic; if folks wanted story or character or theme or whatever, they probably wouldn't be reading Batman comics.  There's no harm to comics like these.  Folks get paid while being creative; folks who wants to read more Batman get more Batman; everybody wins, at least from a practical perspective.

But what do we want for younger cartoonists?  If you're still young, while you still have some fire in your belly, while you've still got some Awesome Years left in you, maybe try for a little more substance.  Probably you'll fail and dishonor your ancestors.  But a whole world of Cold Practical Shit's not going anywhere; they're going to need to publish an issue of Detective Comics, that month you give up; there's no hurry. So you might as well give doing something a little more meaningful to you a shot, while/if you can.

NEXT:  

Taking a few weeks off, to plan the next round of these and work on some other things.  I think the next batch should only be 4 installments -- five in a round feels like too many.  I had an idea for the next four, that they'll all be in the exact same genre (I've read at least 4 comics recently that all happened to be in the same genre).  If that same genre thing works out, then the round after the next one will hopefully be more of a mix of things -- there's been one suggestion for a Lady Thor comic, so if this goes to a third round, that's coming up.  But plans are fluid and we'll see.

Thanks for the kind words on these last five.  And Happy Valentine's Day.  Be Mine.

Abhay: Inquisition - The Names #1

This is a series of reviews, answering (too many!) questions about recent comics. Previous installments have been about The Valiant #1, Bitch Planet #1, and Rumble #1.  This week is about The Names #1, from DC Vertigo.

Spoiler Opportunity: Have I ever spoiled a comic for you?  Now's your chance to get me back because I have only read the first issue of this comic so far, but a bunch have come out since.  If you've read this comic (and statistically-speaking, you haven't), now is your time for revenge.  "Now is our time for revenge" -- I think that was a line from the Phantom Menace.  Oh wait, did I just spoil the Phantom Menace for you??  If so, revenge can be yours for, like... well, a lot of money; comics aren't cheap; nobody said life would be easy.  "Nobody said life's going to be all easy, bro" -- the Theme Song to that show Friends.  Ha, spoiled you again!!!  <lights sparklers; drives off into sunset>

10 Questions about THE NAMES #1 by Peter Milligan, Leandro Fernandez, Cris Peter, Carlos M. Mangual, Celia Calle, Greg Lockard, and Will Dennis.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

The powerful global 1% types who "control the world"? They murder a rich guy, and his trophy wife swears revenge. Whoops.  A standard-format Vertigo miniseries ensues.  Double whoops.

Co-author Peter Milligan, talking to Comics Alliance:

"But the more I read and talked to people about the reality of the high-finance world, the more it became apparent that it’s a pretty dull place to witness: long gone are the days of Alpha Males with erections reading ticker tape. Now it’s all cyber space and flash buys. Fascinating, scary, possibly insane, possibly destined to be our downfall, but less dramatic.  So I’ve used some of the settings, and some of the reality of how I see the financial world to be, to create a system that’s powerful, creating uncontrollable Frankenstein’s monsters, full of internecine trouble, and dominated by psychopaths.  In other worlds, probably not unlike the financial system that rules our world."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

The first issue primarily sets up the book as an exploitation revenge piece, just one where the heroine battles financial villains rather than gangsters or drug dealers or horny vice-principals. It feels like it's in a genre of television show I don't watch:  I don't watch Revenge or Scandal, but this is what I imagine those shows feel like.

In the book's brief glimpse of the baddies, the super-rich cabal "really in charge", there's some timely bits: a splash page of riot police charging towards protestors; references to currency implosions and high-frequency trading software (which the book seems to present in a science-fictional mode, i.e. what if finance software became self-aware instead of Skynet?).

It doesn't take a lot to make a book feels of the times, I guess: just draw cops in riot gear.

But nothing in the first issue rises to the level of "thoughtful" or "critique." Nothing in the first issue is any deeper than the enormously silly splash pages of superheros frowning at banks or religious people from the terrible mainstream crossovers published earlier in this decade. But it's a comic from a corporate publisher aimed at an audience of television executives -- so, how much can one reasonably expect?  The Names has at least some recognizable observation of the world intersecting with the story, and even that can be sometimes a rare thing.  But in the first issue, the world's seemingly-increasing quantity of chaos is only background music, comic book muzak.

(An Aside: There is the question whether stories about "the evil 1%" are a helpful fiction in understanding how money or power works.  I'm not sure whether that's true, especially as this comic's descriptions of the 1%'s decadence all feel so tired.  Example dialogue: "I must rush.  I'm supposed to be screwing the Mayor of London tonight."  Oooooooh saucy.

Tales of the oh so sexually decadent rich were sold by the dime by Vanity Fair magazine to middle-aged house-fraus since before I was born, and the income inequality gap has only gone in one direction that entire time.  The Great Gatsby was published in '25, but get-rich-quick huckster websites on the internet still overflow with admiration for Bill Gates or Whoever Invented Some Dumb App.  It just seems like a go-nowhere fiction, especially if the mythology that's being sold constantly is that income inequality is bad because the rich are "undeserving" on account of their sexual decadence.  That just becomes less believable now with the internet, now that we can see, you know, everybody everywhere is pretty darn sexually decadent, if they can be, given half a chance. (Shout-out to my bonobo monkeys, out there!  What up, bonobos?)  I'm not saying "let rich people off the hook cause Hannity says they're job-creators AMERICA!" or anything.  Just: if rich people were really worried about these kinds of stories, they probably wouldn't let us tell them...)

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

It's been a while since I've seen Leo Fernandez's art, as he's spent a while drawing comics not really aimed at me as a reader. But he seems to be pushing his figure drawings to a more stylized place on this book than at least his recent work...? (See, for comparison). The characters seem more elemental, more shape-driven and angular.

Also: Fernandez often lets extremes in the lighting render out details, rather than risk unnecessary linework.  While that may just be a hallmark of his style / school generally, it seems like he's pushing further in that direction here than in his mainstream work.

One notable weak-point: the two villains are extremely similar in dress and shape. It's difficult to tell them apart.  But they're only in the comic for two pages, so it's not a big deal.

An abundance of the color brown in the second half, but it's a Vertigo comic-- what did you expect? Expect brown!

A quick note to Vertigo colorists: If you are working for Vertigo, there is a belief that both Vertigo and you get a gross, throbbing weiner-boner everytime you get to make a page all brown. People believe that because it's 100% true, and the only possible explanation for why all Vertigo comics ever published have been so drenched in the color brown. Nothing else makes sense; no other solution to that equation. Please consider defying your brown-obsessed masters. Look into your hearts. You know what you see? If you see the color brown, something has gone horribly wrong. I'm not a doctor, but that probably means someone has shit into your heart and you have feces pumping through your arteries. At the very least, it just sounds unhealthy from a cardiac-perspective.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

Comic begins in media res.  First scene is a two page inciting event, namely the murder that the main character will want revenge for.

Three pages then introduce the main character.

Three pages then introduce the villains.

Three pages then introduce the duteragonist -- the dead man's son. Some hint at Oedipal themes here which may be of interest considering that Milligan's recent Vertigo work was about processing an obsession with Greek dramas.

Three pages then setup the book's central mystery.

Three pages then set-up a mini-mission that the main character has to go on.

Three page action sequence.

Then two one-pagers conclude the comic-- (1) one page of the heroine after the action sequence declaring the mission that will presumably motivate her for the remainder of the series (sort of a classic bit of comic book business-- I think that's how the first X-Men or Doom Patrol ended, too, no?); and (2) a one-page tag for the issue overall that just reiterates the mystery of the book overall for the reader.

Does Milligan do the Three-page thing in all of his books? Never really noticed before if that's the case.

There's math why you might want to write a comic that way, though, at least if you're looking for a roadmap for structure: Three-page sequences give you at least 7 scenes and a one-page splash on a 22 page comic, say. Plus, it gives you a little helpful hint for how those sequences should be organized if you want to maximize the value of your page-turn moments. (Milligan's not entirely consistent with the Three-page units, but on the other hand, he's got the Vertigo house-ads to work around, so maybe that's on purpose).

So here, it's nine scenes: 2-3-3-3-3-3-3-1-1. (Some people, argumentative people, they might argue that it actually ends 4-1, but that second-to-last page sure seems like a different beat to me).

• The only other Peter Milligan comic I have handy is 1993's The Enigma. The first issue of that goes 13 scenes: 2-2-1-1-1-2-2-1-1-6-1-3-1. So maybe this Three-page thing was just all a fun little coincidence -- it's hard to say without a bigger sample size, which includes more recent work from Milligan.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

It's taken me four weeks to figure out to show the cover for this question.  FOUR WEEKS!

The cover features the African-American heroine taking off her dress, and stock information flooding out from her ass-crack. Presumably, earlier that day, she had farted into a skin-tight dress, after eating some stock ticker tape, and this is that fart's chance to finally be free.

The dead husband Walker, who plunges to his death from a skyscraper, is referenced on the cover both by his name being featured in red letters next to a securities industry down-arrow and a little Mad Men doodle. Here, Don Draper's falling to death next to a Big Ass. Jealous, Matthew Weiner?  The last season hasn't started yet -- not too late to make some changes.

The logo -- I think the idea is that the bottom half of the logo is being interfered with by a mechanical process. Which is a decent idea.  But putting the names of the creative team (and the publishing imprint) in a redacted stock-exchange symbolic code...?  I don't know if that really works. Just seems busy. The cover overall-- just seems very busy.

Which may be intentional, to be fair: if the idea was to convey signal being drowned in noise, well, they pulled that off, at least. But... seeing as "signal drowned in noise" is how a comic shop rack operates on a good day, I just don't know if that's really the most advisable design goal for a comic cover.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

The lead character being a black lady may be of some interest to readers, I guess. Another "tough no-nonsense" type character, which is a cliche, but there's at least some hint at her having an inner life in the comic, which is the essential thing. She's not presented as Just One Thing.

Except the comic has her topless by the end of the issue.

They saved the labia majora for issue two.

Whuh...?

Does my gut tell me that's what the target audience of an ABC Drama is really looking for...? It does not.

And I don't want to be a prude because there might be all sorts of ladies who might want her to be topless by the end of the issue: girls who like girls; heterosexual girls who are just into titty; Girl Scouts trying to collect some secret merit badge they don't tell square society about; I don't even know who; I don't know all the different kinds of girls out there.

But my gut would say it's undermining the power of that character to reduce her in that way at the moment of her victory over the man attacking her:  the heroine might be able to defeat the power of an Evil Man, but can never defeat the Male Gaze!  Put it another way: maybe it's a "have your cake and eat it too" problem to make the heroine a sexual object for the reader even while standing over the dying body of the bad guy who tried to treat her like a sexual object.

Also: because the scene follows her trying to seduce information out of the man attacking her, the nudity underlines that the heroine's power comes exclusively from her sexuality, and not from, like, competence or, uh, knowing things...?

And race being some tricky shit, my gut says that complicates it, too, in all kinds of messy ways that I don't even think I'm the right dude to try to articulate.

Your gut might say otherwise. But my gut says there's something pretty skeezy about that choice. That'd be my gut feeling. It's certainly a choice, anyways.

QUESTION 6.

Riddle me this: What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?

The solution could be "an adorable puppy that is being physically abused" -- riddles aren't so fun anymore, now, are they?  Read the papers, though: a psychopath who tortures puppies would be pretty much unbeatable at solving riddles in creative and unexpected ways. "Riddles were all a breeze after I tortured a puppy and ignored its howls of pain.  It's called thinking outside the box, specifically the box I shove a puppy into after I'm tired of it trying to lick my face.  AMERICA."  -- Dick Cheney, actual quotation.

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

Cop A (Guzman): "Your husband fell fifty-one floors. The bones around the impact area will be shattered. His organs will have hemorrhaged and leaked from every cavity. If he fell on his head, he'll likely be unrecognizable."

Cop B: "Why don't you just tell it like it is, Guzman?"

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

The Names, Issue 1, Page 14.

This page takes place immediately after the Mystery has been presented to the main character, who is as the scene opens, now struggling to understand the clues she has been given.

I think it's a notable page just because of how the comic shifts to a subjective mode, more than the execution of the drawings themselves.

Top Half.

Panel 1 presents the main character in a down-shot, small and isolated in a panel filled with murky shadows, as she is overwhelmed by the mystery she's been presented.

But being the heroine of the piece, by Panel 2, she is beginning to focus on the mystery -- focus so much that the background has now dropped away completely.  Blank space of the "no panel borders" variety, that can mean a lot of different things in comics -- I think Will Eisner in one of his books talks explicitly about how he liked to use that kind of blank space to convey that scenes are taking place outside, for example. Here, a far more common application of that bit of language: nothing else in the world matters to her as much as her reaction to the clues, as much as what she's thinking about.

Indeed, her head is breaking apart even from panel borders themselves as some understanding is beginning to dawn upon her.

Bottom half.  You into the bottom half, bro?  Yeah, you are.

However, the backgrounds return as her spell is broken in Panels 3 and 4:  she is sucked back to reality by some (crappy) sound-effects, someone at the door named Marco.  Note: she received a cryptic warning about Marco earlier in the comic.

In Panel 5, upon hearing Marco's name, emotions flood the main character, such that her face now fills the panel, such that she can now only barely be contained within the boundaries of the panel.  Put another way, the panel borders struggle to contain her, just as she struggles to control her emotions.

In Panel 6, we see a flashback to the warning the heroine had been given earlier.  This flashback panel slightly overlaps panel 5 -- it's on top of her face, on top of her concerns, this flashback, suggesting that it is being seen not only by the reader but in the mind's eye of the heroine herself.

Just basic storytelling, this page, of the "you can remove the dialogue and still understand what's going on" variety.

Sure, not a particularly interesting page on a technical level, and certainly one with room for improvement (the body language in panels 3 and 4 isn't so hot; panel 1 doesn't really lay out the geography as much as it could; panel 3's not fun to look at; a brown blanket on a couch sitting next to brown walls???).

But it's one of the few pages that really achieve a unity between the character's emotions and the visual storytelling.

Some people get off on rigid panel grids (the 9 panel grid of Watchmen, the 8 panel grid of Stray Bullets, the 6 panel grid of Louis Riel).  Grids tend to be catnip to younger comic writers, especially, flailing around for rules.  But I tend to like a page where the size and shapes of panels derive in some way from the emotions of their contents, authors who see that as another way of relaying information to the reader and a really direct way of connecting with them, at that.  Grids aren't uninteresting -- if you're fascinated with the subject matter of time, Watchmen and Stray Bullets both suggest a grid might be handy in exploring that theme, in particular. But the way that the size and shape of a panel can reflect the emotional heft of the panel is just a more interesting thing to see in action to me...

There's an old Paul Pope quote that I always go back to, about manga (where I think what we're talking about is most often true).  From Pulp magazine:

"When I was working for Kodansha, the joke was always, "A bad comic is where you have a panel where Superman jumps through a window, and the caption says "Superman jumps through a window," and he's saying, "I'm jumping through the window," and there's a sound effect that says, "JUMP." Or you can imagine three panels: 1.) he's jumping through the window, 2.) he's landing on the ground, 3.) he says, "I've done it"--or something like that. I really have a sense from what I learned from manga, is that, rather than try to tell and directly tell the story where Superman is jumping through the window, that the best manga will try to give you the experience of jumping through the window--the tactile sensations, the speed of it, the rush of it--catch all the different moments in-between the three panels that an American comic might use to tell the story."

Of possible interest is that the only other page in the comic with a subjective quality, page 11, is the page featuring the deuteragonist. One could perhaps argue that this is grammatically significant, I suppose, a way of linking the two characters, but for me, that would be pretty, pretty high-falooting talk for this comic.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

Once the main character and the dead character's son emerge more as characters, there's a certain pulpiness to the first issue that's enjoyable. It's mediocre, but at least not unpleasant.

But I started the comic thinking more about the how's and why's that Vertigo keeps backing Peter Milligan, after a pretty good number of duds-- Greek Street? The Minx? (Not Vertigo, but:) The Programme? I wouldn't fuck with any of those comics with your mom's dick.  This is a miniseries though so the more apt comparison is, what, Girl?  Pop: London?  Who could forget Pop: London?  Answer: nobody because probably nobody besides me read that one, to begin with.

Milligan's a pretty erratic creator-- some great work obvously for many years, but also lots of misses.  I made a decent effort to try nearly all of those books at some point, I think he's usually an interesting writer, so I'm glad they keep putting them out.  And I had an okay time with some of this first issue.  Still, it just seemed interesting to me that there's still space for him at Vertigo, given their announced focus on "big hits."  Dan Didio (who really should be fired and we should all mention that more) talking to the New York Times about Vertigo:

"Mr. DiDio said it would be “myopic” to believe 'that servicing a very small slice of our audience is the way to go ahead. [..] That’s not what we’re in the business for . 'We have to shoot for the stars with whatever we’re doing. Because what we’re trying to do is reach the biggest audience and be as successful as possible.'."

So, a Peter Milligan comic about a topless black woman stabbing finance executives in the throat, while they talk about HFT software...?  Keep reaching for those stars!

It's like the color brown though -- some things about Vertigo are just part of the culture now, no matter how much business-speak bullshit cliches you toss at it, I guess.

There's also the fact this comic is plainly designed to pitch a television show.  I think I've written about the "comic as movie or television show pitch" and the many negative feelings that those engender before many, many times, as that has been the case with so many, many comics. It's nothing I want to type out again, and bore everybody with, especially if some people are somehow able to ignore that kind of thing.  This comic? It wouldn't be a TV show I'd watch, or that I'd even guess would last a full season.  But Fernandez's work is at least stylized enough and occasionally subjective enough where there's some cause to not be entirely dismissive.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

Jesus, I don't know.  There's probably all kinds of lessons to learn from Milligan about career longevity but I'm not really sure what those lessons are, let alone how to receive them.  Guy's danced around a pretty bureaucratic company for many years now -- kept a presence with the audience for a long time, in a way many of his contemporaries haven't.  This comic?  No way this comic was ever going to be a hit, but he sure fucking talked them into it anyways, somehow

How did that happen?  Beats me.  That's probably the thing to learn here, but I'm no help to anyone there.  Your sexy guess is as good as mine, beautiful.

Sometimes you see comic creators, when they get asked questions by young folks, they play a "We're all Princes of fucking New England" card, and spin some shit that's like... "I don't even experience your frail human feelings of competition or envy anymore.  I'm only encouraged by the success of others, no matter how undeserving that success is because encouragement is the only emotion I allow myself.  I've grown beyond all negative emotions -- get on my level!!"

And it's ... this is probably a good-enough kind of thing to say to young folks, in that it's mostly harmless, plus a nice way of avoiding the whole "you probably don't have shit to say that's worth hearing anyways -- to a grown adult, you're pretty much an adorable talking fetus" conversation.  (That conversation probably won't get as many Likes on social media.)

But a comic like this ... I know when I read this comic, there was a moment I stepped outside myself, and imagined a young snot-nosed kid in their 20's assessing the situation, saying to themselves... "It's a comic that they could afford someone as good as Leo Fernandez to draw it; it got a big publisher behind it for sales and reviews, who paid for a decent print run in full color; all the creators involved will have a presence on comic shelves and in front of comic audiences for the next eight months; the publisher has historically not cared especially about losing money on comics publishing; everyone got a page rate;  and all of those opportunities are being used on a writer / concept / whatever that, best case scenario, is just commercially going to be More Mixed Results, and you're telling me I'm not supposed to feel any kind of fucking envy about any of that??"  I don't know.  I think some things in comics actually are a competition, and, uh, Peter Milligan just kinda won that shit.  So.  Keep your head up...?

I think the good news, though, and maybe the bigger take away is ... If you're a younger person, however inexplicable you might find Vertigo putting these books out, year after year, forgotten comic after forgotten comic (did you even notice I forgot to mention that comic Egypt?), it's something you should actually be encouraged by.  You want comics to be a place you can age with, and have a whole career with.  And if you stick around a even a little while, not even long, you see plenty of evidence the opposite way -- a lot of names that are on a dozen books one year, and on pretty much no book of any significance a year later.  Comics has a rough turnover, so you want there to be guys who are just sticking in there.  Otherwise what the hell are you even signing up for?  The Carrousel ritual from Logan's Run???

The characters in Logan's Run all seemed psyched about Carrousel, sure, but I think the message of that movie was don't be psyched about the Carrousel.  And that's really the note I want to end this one on:  just say no to Carrousel, kids, even if that means you'll be labeled a Runner.  (This is a metaphor.)(A metaphor for me not knowing what to put here this week, and just vamping). (Vamps was also the name of a Vertigo comic that lots of people remember probably!  A lot of American Virgins, though, am I right?  Sandman).

NEXT WEEK: DETECTIVE COMICS #35-36 from DC Comics.

Abhay: Inquisition - Rumble #1

Here is the 3rd attempt at answering a series of questions about a comic, this attempt concerning the recent Image debut of Rumble. Part 1 was about The Valiant #1, and Part 2 was about Bitch Planet #1.

10 Questions about RUMBLE #1 by John Arcudi, James Harren, Dave Stewart, Chris and Eliopoulos.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

Rumble is a comic by a creative team that had gotten some notice years back, at least in action comics circles, for their work together on Mike Mignola's BPRD series.  Their BPRD issues had noticably visceral fight scenes, which had garnered a very enthusiastic reaction upon their publication (at least online). This is the Image debut of their new series.

It is about ... some guy ... with a sword, I guess... or something...?

That's as good a description as I can do.

Co-author John Arcudi, talking to Multiversity:

"Rumble is a concept I’ve been working with for years. It’s gone through a few different iterations, but it wasn’t until James and I talked about it that it felt like it would really work as this larger, more complex storyline that had “legs.” Part of that, of course, was having lots of time to think about it, getting older, getting better, but having the right artist — well, you can’t do it without that."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

Noooooooooooooooo.

It's barely even about it's plot.

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

Even though the authors had built a reputation for fight scenes, there's only about two-to-three pages of fighting featured in this comic. The visual focus of this issue lies instead more in the world-building, in setting up the book's City setting.

"Three-legged Dog" is my favorite cut on the new Tim Allen album.  He's really got us Men pegged.

The streets are littered.  Characters stand at pay phones next to rats and trash. Everything is run-down.  Three-legged dogs run wild, urinating on a parking meter. Televisions buzz late-show monster movies in the distant background. One of the best panels in the book features a hulking, shirtless figure with a "Does this tattoo make me look tough" tattoo across his chest, sleeping with a bag of "Bunyans" potato chips at his side; behind him, a stuffed moose head; nuncucks, hanging on his wall. The more impressionistic backgrounds are often hazy, abstract, not just conveying a city but a specific city, a polluted one, a dirty one, neon-drenched and filthy.

The authors at least seems intent on constantly finding ways to invest his world with a sort of humorous detail or life, though unfortunately an instinct that they abandoned when it came time to the create the actual story. The book's sense of visual humor is exceeding common for comics, a "look at how grody all this is!" type humor, but without it, this comic would have been completely grueling.

I like that bucket over on the left, but that booth does not look so comfortable.

Another smaller technique perhaps worth noting is how the artists sometimes use negative space. An early panel uses negative space to establish the industrial texture of a bar ceiling. Another early panel uses negative space to suggest sparks coming off a sword being drug along a road.

Really glad there are word balloons of unintelligible gibberish needlessly covering up that pesky comic art.  Capital choice.  A+.  (I'm referring here to every word balloon in this comic).

The authors are also fond of adding a sort of minuscule amount of textural detail digitally, though to what effect is unclear. As an example, the smoke rising from the streets in third panel of page 3 has a texture on it that you really have to press your face against the page to grok the detail of. There’s something similar going on with the detailing of brick walls throughout the comic, a sort of ink splatter effect, but rendered ultra-finely.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

The first issue has no discernible structure whatsoever.

The first page is a page of someone walking towards a mountain. The word balloon "humph" is spoken by an indiscernible figure who is never identified in this comic. All of the panels are "widescreen" because of course they are.  No other scene in this comic takes place on a mountain.

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

This is followed by a page of a Paul Bunyan statue lying broken on the ground in a decrepit amusement park (symbolism!). This page has narration in caption boxes, spoken from an unidentified source.  This is unlike every single other page of this comic, none of which feature narration.  No other scene in this comic takes place at this amusement park.

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

This is followed by a three page sequence set at a bar, that establishes that the main character of this comic is a weakboy that girls don't like.

The two characters from that bar sequence are then embroigled in a four-page action sequence, upon being attacked out-of-nowhere by a "mysterious" figure.

Why the four-page action sequence is happening is never explained in this comic.

There are then two pages about an old woman and a cat. Something sure seems funky about that cat. (Confusing storytelling here involving a window).

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

There are then three pages of the weakboy character and two police characters reflecting on the action scene we'd seen previously.

The plot does not advance significantly and almost no new information is presented to the reader.

There are then two pages about something or another happening to two random hicks in a swamp, one of those generic "oh no, bad things are happening to men while they fish" scenes that you see in movies, provided you primarily watch terrible, badly-written movies.

Where this is happening or what this means is never identified in this comic.

A six page scene of the weakboy main character being threatened by two monsters then follows. (It begins with a generic scene of the main character calling someone from a payphone, but leaving an answering machine message since the person they're calling is sleeping through the message. This technology was outdated sometime around when Seinfeld stopped being broadcast, so I guess the comic is a period piece...?)

Want to guess what the last page is?

If you guessed that the last page is a splash page cliffhanger of a superhero character muttering some bland sentence, and that this is somehow meant to entice readers to come back for more next month... Well, don't get that impressed with yourself.  That's how all bad comics end their first issues now. It's really not that impressive you'd be able to guess that.  You learned how to rip off lukewarm Mark Millar comics the same as everybody else.

8 "scenes": 1-1-3-4-2-3-2-6.

First issues are monsters.  There are so many challenges. How do you sell readers on what your comic's about?  Have you given readers a way of selling their friends on the comic, some easy hook that won't just hook readers for one issue but that they can tell their friends and hook them, too?  Have you set up both an immediate story but also enough material for a long-running series?  With Rumble #1, we see a creative team deciding to ignore addressing any of the challenges of a first issue, and instead do nothing more than try to establish a "mood".

Perhaps this team's audience is used to consuming their work on a trade-paperback basis, and that negates the importance of any single issue.  But as a single issue experience... Well, it's only ever going to be a single issue experience for me, as this comic wasted my time, completely, and I won't allow that to happen again.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

The copy I purchased has a James Harren cover, but according to the inside cover, there is a variant cover available from Jamie McKelvie.  Which... really? Jamie McKelvie draws fine, some of his comics look entirely decent to me, no offense to the guy, but this seems like a very, very odd comic for a reader to crave having a Jamie McKelvie cover.

"It's a fight comic about a giant monster-man with a massive sword, and some swamp hicks."

"I know just the man for that job...  Jamie McKelvie."

...?  That's an interesting choice.

There's a bit where Chris Eliopoulos takes a character yelling for help, and rather than put the word in a word balloon, he sets out HELP in block letters, and has a word balloons coil out from the H block.  If I've seen that move done before, it's nothing I've ever stopped and made specific note of.

Eight pages of house ads for Image comics.  Comic ads, I don't really get how anyone expects those to work.  It's always a splash image and some dopey tagline, like a bad movie poster.  But who goes to see movies based on a poster?  Reyn: "Myth, Sorcery and an Unlikely Pair on a Quest to Discover their Destinies."  Oh good I love unlikely pairs e.g. my balls.  Graveyard Shift: "Crime-solving sucks."  I'm sure this is unfair to say, I'm sure it's a fun comic, but I don't know if I'd recommend putting the word "sucks" on the ad for your comic...? That's something I should be putting on the ads for your comic, using MS Paint, not you.  The Dying and the Dead: "This January, Image Comics proudly presents the last story of the Greatest Generation."  Oh good they're proud about this one, they just didn't pull this one out of a toilet like those other comics.  I don't know.  Why don't these ads ever say what the comic is about...?  I can't really guess how much bang anybody really got out of these eight pages.  But I just don't understand advertising or selling things, either.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

Well, it's another comic about a weakboy who learns that his world blah blah blah.

I really hate weakboys in comics.

What percentage of comics do you figure are about weakboys? 105? 108?  I'd put the percentage at somewhere between 105 and 119% of comics are about weakboys.

Movies?  Last year, there were movies about a single dad under a mountain of debt whose struggles to raise his rambunctious daughter are complicated by finding Optimus Prime, a monkey king who wants peace but has to fend off his more hawkish monkey-advisors, a single dad forced to give up raising his kids in order to fly to other planets and listen to Anne Hathaway babble about love incoherently, a widowed Keanu Reeves shooting people in the fucking face, two guys disappointed by adulthood who pretend to be cops, etc., etc., etc.  Even without thinking of serious dramas, there was a range of character types, character motivations.

Comics, though? I know I'm exaggerating, but some days it just really feels like a nonstop parade of weakboys.  "I don't understand why girls don't like me even though my only personality trait is complaining that girls don't like me.  Oh look now I have superpowers / a big sword / a friend who's an alien robot / blah blah blah.  Now I'm totally on the road to Getting Crazy Laid.  AMERICA!"  I just wrote ALL OF THE COMICS-- weeee!

I'm just so fucking exhausted of that character-type.  Shonen manga, adolescent American comics, it's all just weakboy after weakboy.  It just seems unhealthy, for people to consume that kind of mythology over and over.

There's less male self-pity on fucking Reddit.

QUESTION 6.

Riddle Me This: A man goes into a restaurant and orders the albatross. He takes a single bite, pulls out a gun, and shoots himself. Why does he do this?

He's Pagliacci, the famous clown.  This is part of his act.  After he shoots himself, the other people in the restaurant laugh for days.  Except the waiter, who has to clean up Pagliacci's brains.  Days later, Pagliacci's doctor would fire his nurse-- it was her job to find out the names of new patients, take down their health information, look at a copy of their driver's license, get a blood pressure reading.  She had really fallen down on the job.  The doctor didn't know that she had once eaten her husband on a deserted island, though, having mistaken him for a delicious albatross.  Of course, after she returned home, she ordered another albatross at the restaurant, and realized her mistake.  She became severely depressed.  Everyone told her to go see Pagliacci.  She did, but that night, Pagliacci phoned it in.  So, who's laughing now, clown?  Answer: The restaurant owner.  He's laughing all the way to the bank.  You can't buy advertising like this riddle.

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

Weakboy: "See, now if my life was a movie, THAT's what would happen?"

Some guy?: "If your life were a movie it would be over in an hour and a half."

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

Rumble, Issue One, Page 8.

I bought this comic for fight scenes, so might as well talk about one of those, even though as referenced above, there are only about two-maybe-three pages of fights in this comic. So if you're just into it for the fights, this is spoiling 33% of the comic for you. Whoops.

Fur is murder.

Panel 1, Harren goes with a full-bleed panel, at least to the top of the page. He doesn't do full-bleed that often. Except for that last page cliffhanger, he usually uses it for establishing shots where he's trying to imply height. Harren mostly sticks to pages with proper white gutters otherwise. This is the only place in the comic where he really uses a bleed as punctuation. I think it helps to imply the height of the Action Scarecrow character (we never learn his name) as compared to the other characters on the page, as a way of conveying how much he towers over the others.

The most noteworthy thing here is the character design. While Harren's fond of speed-lines, he doesn't rely on those. The main character's design is a figure nestled in a set of furs, such that in action scenes, the furs flouncing around create a sort of secondary set of linework conveying motion. Well, not just motion. It conveys the enormous bulk of Action Scarecrow, while still drawing that character as a mass of speed. Action Scarecrow has both heft and velocity. It makes for an intimidating presence in a fight scene.

Wearing flip-flops to a bar, tho?  Kind of asking for it, that guy.

Note also how Action Scarecrow's legs and arms create a helpful frame for the more abstract shape of Weakboy in the distance. I like the lack of detail on Weakboy: he's surprised by this action scene erupting, so he's not all there mentally; he's an abstract detail in his own life. Been there!

The gesture of the sword superimposing over the WHOOSH sound effect is also a nice touch, I suppose. The sound effect suggests the sound of the sword, while the sword cleaving the sound effect implies the sharpness of the sword, sharp enough to cut sound.

One detail easy to miss: look how Harren draws the character being attacked, Trucker Hat, his sandal. Trucker Hat's sandal is twisting a way no sandal should. The distortion of the figures in motion extends down to the smallest of details.

I once got stuck on a ride at Epcot for a while.  It felt a lot like looking at this fucking panel over and over.  I still remember hearing the animatronic robots repeat themselves to us:  "Mommy!  Mommy!  Look-- Timmy's flying!"  I must've heard that 20 times. I never thought I would hate a robot dog, but Epcot had so much to teach me that day.

It is a drastic understatement to say that I'm not great with understanding perspective, but Trucker Hat seems to be falling away from what I think is kind of the vanishing point, which maybe contributes to the overall feeling of speed to this panel...? (There's some curving going on, making it trickier, but).  In action scenes, my impression is that a good action page is usually using vanishing points to boost the action, to imply speed. But that kind of talk is a little beyond me since perspective-talk always makes my nose bleed.

• Perspective for Dummies by a Perspective Dummy:  perspective's a way of fooling the eye so that the viewer thinks they're seeing a 3-d scene, a drawing with depth rather than just a flat 2-d drawing like in some kind of Egyptian heiroglyphic.  Or some kind of nonsense like that.  It involves lines converging at vanishing points, which are on horizon lines or ... stuff like that, basically.  There can be more than one vanishing point (though I remember reading that some comic artists are really into trying to stick to one vanishing point; fetishize that).  I couldn't even begin to tell you the Why of any of it-- it's just some stupid shit that some Renaissance guys figured out, inbetween feces-baths and dying of the plague.  If you look at the old How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way book, most of the examples they use to convey the importance perspective are drawings of cities. Or this one weird downshot of a bunch of couches...? John Buscema really strongly felt like drawing comics the Marvel way involved couches.  Or if you look at old Andy Loomis books, there are all these messy diagrams about how to draw two characters on a set of different level stairs, so that the heights of the characters are consistent.     Understanding some perspective apparently can help with comic storytelling, too, but I don't really know what you'd read if you're interesting in hearing more about that; most comic art books just focus on the city and/or couch drawings.  Perspective is just this gross headache, but it's stuff people who draw know about, so if you want to draw yourself, what else can you do but, you know, get out a ruler and draw some couches?   Couch it up!  My favorite John Buscema couches were the couches in Madripoor.  Those couches had eyepatches.

Trucker Hat is being framed for the eye by the blacks on the page, the black ink-mass of Action Scarecrow to his right and the inks of the table above him to his upper-left. (Plus, he's got the excited word balloon from the midst of the sword swing pointing at him, which probably doesn't hurt to draw the reader's attention to him).

I like this panel because action is transpiring in the foreground (Trucker Hat yelling), midground (Action Scarecrow swingin' away), and background (Weakboy, gawping). I always think that's a pretty neat thing for a comic to shoot for.

And of course, for eyeflow purposes, the bar area and sword puts in sharp diagonal lines drawing us to where the Action Scarecrow rests in the next panel.

I really think if I pushed myself, my next caption for that first panel would've been the best one.  I wish I were looking at that first panel again.  I miss it.

Well, "rests" is not the best word. Again, note how Harren's character design pluses the speed lines. And again, talking out of my ass, it would appear we have Trucker Hat falling away from where I would guesstimate the vanishining point sits, and framed by the black of the table to his right, and his crotch to his left.

For eyeflow purposes, the table and chair both point to the third panel.

The main character robbed Rick Ross's closet on the way to this scene.  EVERY DAY HE'S HUSTLING EVERY EVERY DAY HE'S HUSTLING HE WANTED TO GO ON VACATION WITH HIS KIDS TO LEGOLAND BUT HE COULDN'T CANCEL HIS PRE-EXISTING COMMITMENTS TO HUSTLING.

Weakboy is now framed by the bar, while the hilt of a baseball bat in the foreground points the way to panel four. Though with panel configurations like this, I always feel like panels four and five are kind of happening simultaneously (though panel four does lead the eye down using the background drawings of the bar, while panel five pushes to the next page using that smudged lightning bolt Z that Stewart paints into the background).

Panels four through six emphasize something Dave Stewart did in panels one and two, namely the more excited the action panels, the brighter the background colors. The action heated up the world around the action; the intensity of the action didn't just take place within an environment, but are reflected by that environment. When things calm down, they go back to red. (Or maybe I have that backwards from a color temperature perspective...? Put "color temperature" down as another thing I don't really have any kind of grasp on. It works, however you want to phrase it; plus, more functionally, let's the red of the bleeding Trucker Hat's severed arm stand out more).

Small thing, but worth noting: I like that Harren hand-draws his panel borders (if that's what's happening here). The way the nubs of lines protrude out. I find leaving that kind of discordant detail very comforting, even if I know these pages have been worked over digitally thereafter, even if it's just an affectation.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

I started texting halfway through the comic.  That is not a joke.

I experienced no emotion other than an utter disregard for the hard work this creative team had done preparing this comic.

Nothing about this comic engaged in me in any respect.

It is a shambles.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

To do / Not To Do:

Well.  This would be a very easy one to dance on top of, in that it's a comic that I thought was pretty terrible, a nice drawing here or there aside.  It's the kind of terrible it'd be fun to rip up because this comic is bad in a way that suggests a kind of laziness in thinking.  Comic creators soft enough to waste pages on the Mystery of Why a Fucking Cat has Glowing Eyes at an Undetermined Location for Unknown Reasons, in their very first issue, rather than create a single character worth listening to, or a story of any substance?  Creators who'd make that kind of choice, a guy like me, with my kind of dysfunctions, would have plenty of cause to think them soft and flabby, and to think the kind of self-satisfied and smug culture that allowed that kind of flabbiness needs to be decapitated. Ripping apart that kind of work is a matter of no small satisfaction.  It would be fun and it'd feel good, at least if you're my kind of sinister.

But I find myself a little philosophical tonight, here at the end of this (too long!) set of questions, that... I find myself thinking about something instead of mean-guy talk, which is...

If you're the kind of person who needs to put stuff out into the world, it's very likely that the reaction you get from that experience, that it's never going to be good enough.  People might like what you put out, but unless you have a very particular kind of talent and your talent luckily gets expressed in particularly lucrative and sex-generating endeavors (guitarist for a band that actually makes money, A-list actor, etc.), it's not likely that the reaction to what you put out will be "enough", however it is you may define "enough".

People liking what you do is not going to heal you. All that broken stuff that makes your work interesting, that shit's not getting fixed cause someone clicked the like icon on your creative output.  Heck, if you're a certain kind of person, you're not even going to believe the nice bits people say; you're going to go looking for the bad bits, the really nasty bits.  You'll trust those more because they sound closer to what you hear inside your own head everyday.

This is a comic made by seasoned professionals with a track record of praise behind them.  And for me at least, it's a mess, a fucking pointless mess of a first issue.  They just did not create anything even remotely interesting to experience, just white noise.  A complete waste of my time.  But when they were making it, when they were making it, there must have been a moment where none of that matters:  "Oh we've really got something here.  A scarecrow!  That's big!  With a sword!  We are fucking geniuses with rock hard boners!"

So, I think the "thing to learn"  from this kind of failure is this:  learn to appreciate the moments where you feel excited about what you're doing, that early rush where the potential of what you're about to do is buzzing all around, where you can't wait to get started.  There's no telling what happens after that.  You try your best and sometimes you just miss.  Or you try your best and you get stuck with a co-creator who's not bringing the fire, or a collaboration that's not firing on all cylinders, or a million other things.  Or even if you hit, even if you hit, even then, it still probably will not be enough.  So, at least, try to stop and appreciate that one moment.

How does that Kurt Vonnegut quote go?

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

NEXT WEEK: THE NAMES #1 from DC-Vertigo.

Abhay: Inquisition - Bitch Planet #1

This is part of a series of write-em-ups answering a series of questions about recent comics.  As an initial matter, please be advised that this will likely discuss details of the plot in the comic being discussed, and so here is a spoiler warning. Also, sponge warning: be careful of sponges that you use to wash your dishes.  According to no less scientific a news source than the Daily Mail, a "kitchen sponge is 200,000 times dirtier than a toilet seat - and could even lead to PARALYSIS."

10 Questions about BITCH PLANET #1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro, Cris Peter, Clayton Cowles, Rian Hughes, Laurenn McCubbin, and Lauren Sankovitch.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

The first issue of a new series  about women trapped in a science-fiction prison run by an oppressive male-dominated society.

The first issue focuses on the arrival of a small group of women to a prison located on what we're told is another planet, and the immediate violence that ensues upon their arrival, some of which is caused by a bit of intrigue involving an older woman sent to this prison and her ex-husband back on Earth.

Co-author Kelly Sue DeConnick, talking to the LA Times:

"This is born of a deep and abiding love for exploitation and women in prison movies of the ’60s and ’70s.  I like this stuff so much, and it’s so terrible, it’s so deeply awful and delicious, like those candies that are bad for you. So I wanted to see if there was a way that I could play with the things about it that I love and also the things about it that make me wildly uncomfortable."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

This is a first issue but the book's themes seem baked-in from the get-go. Women are put in prison for the crime of being "non-compliant" with a male society that, in brief background glimpses, we can see is fascistically obsessed with controlling women's bodies.  The prison and society are run by a violent patriarchy termed the "Council of Fathers".

This is all kind of a big, chunky metaphor that feels really ideal for a comic book: easy to grasp, angsty in a sort of adolescent way that serial comics seem to benefit by (I mean that in a complimentary way), a little goofy, lots of possible visual hooks.

But beyond establishing the premise, the first issue also works in a small plot about a husband discarding his first wife into this Prison of Misogyny because he found a "more compliant" younger woman. What makes this such an effective first issue, I think, isn't that it just presents this big chunky metaphor, but that it then immediately has a little example that fits entirely within the first issue, a little exemplar of hetero-lady anxiety / anger that's more bite-sized. It's not just relying on the big metaphor to win the day.

First issues are monsters.  So many choices to make, so many obligations to service, so many ways things can go wrong for a creative team trying to sell readers on whatever the appeal of their comic is supposed to be.  In the first issue of Bitch Planet, you can see comic authors trying to address those challenges by minimally setting up the series premise, but instead focusing moreso on providing a complete, discreet unit of thematic and emotional content for readers.

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

The way the color green is used jumps out.

The authors color-code the first issue. Red/pink is established quickly as the color of women in the early pages: the introduction to the women is bathed in pink light, the prison jumpers are red, etc. Green is the color of men: green-lit wardens, the patriarchy's representatives  back on planet Earth working in a green office, etc.

48-1230 is the combination I have on my luggage.

Once they're in prison, the women have to put on clothes in front of green stalls.  As soon as one of these women insects with the color green, however, there are disastrous consequences, and a riot ensues.

Krakk is whack.

In that riot, two panels feature women being struck from behind.  In both panels where we see women being harmed, the background colors of those panels go green. Violence in this comic is depicted as the women characters being engulfed by the green color of men.

It's a small bit of narrative-through-color, but one that at least reflects a creative team engaged with the visual primacy of comics.

• (Wild Guess Dept.: The color-coding may also be a spoiler to the mystery set-up by the cliffhanger, if you check the color-coding on the characters in play (?), but we'll see on that point in future issues).

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

A high-tempo opening page (discussed further below in detail) sets-up a dueling dialogue scene in the next two pages, where (a) information presented visually comments on dialogue taking place at a different time/location, while (b) other characters are presented simultaneously, themselves commenting upon the visual information, i.e. three layers of information are conveyed to the reader and those layers all meaningfully comment upon at least one of the other layers. (This is easier to understand when seen, than it is to describe in prose, which I again mean as a compliment).

The first issue does this a couple times-- intercutting between moments in different places (and times?), leaving it to a reader to follow color-cues and page layouts to fully process the space-time "geography" of various moments.

Anyways: first scene's about five pages, including a two-page title credit splash.

The double-page splash is a bit of a weak point here. The comic presumably takes place on another planet (?) but nothing about the planet depicted in the splash seems particularly alien (presuming the "it's all another planet" bit isn't just a fake-out).  If anything, the double-page splash seems to depict a space station in the foreground, which at least for a moment, lead me to believe the prison was on a space station. (I guess the tip-off for me should've been the comic being called Bitch PLANET but I'm not so smart sometimes...?). The creative team seemed interested in the wallop of a big double-page splash with their logo, but I don't know if that splash really carries its water narratively.

Next scene is four pages set in the prison. This is followed by two pages set back on Earth, setting up the issue's mini-story, and then again, a four page scene at the prison.

In the next two pages, the comic intercuts between the prison and Earth.  The intercutting is on almost a panel-by-panel basis for the first page, but on a more interesting "space to the left, Earth to the right" configuration on the second page which relies on color and page-geography for clarity.

There then ensues two more pages on the prison, one page wrapping up the Earth storyline, and then four pages in space-- three of which rap up the issue's mini-storyline in space, one of which is a cliffhanger page. (Thankfully, not a splash page cliffhanger! I do not dig those much at all-- way too played out, especially with first issues).

Eight scenes total: 5, 4, 2, 4, 2, 2, 1, 4.

Put another way, the comic goes Earth, Prison, Earth, prison, Earth and prison simultaneously, Prison, Earth, Prison.   If you squint at that, I think you vaguely see a symmetry to the issue.  But maybe that's just me squinting.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

Rian Hughes logo. He makes the letter C in the word BITCH into the planet Saturn, using a little bit of shading.  The logo looks better in the comic than on the cover-- on the cover, he uses a undefined blocky drop-shadow-y thing, like on the old X-Men logo. (I don't know what the terminology is-- I don't know logo lingo). It just looks a little more cornball on the cover.

On the cover, it seems in service of an overall aesthetic that I don't quite know that I understand.

The cover and the book itself seem intent on asserting to the reader that it's a pop culture artifact, via "this sure is a comic!"-type moves that I'm not sure I dig. Besides the blocky drop-shadow-y thing, the book's colors often have a Photoshop texture, a faux Benday-dot effect, i.e. "lots of little dots". The cover aims more for an exploitation movie poster, with exploitation-trailer style text blurbs on the cover, an insincere "Rated M Mature" logo in the corner that's almost smaller than Rian Hughes's signature.

I don't know. I think those moves are supposed to be fun, but I think there's a little insecurity to them which doesn't really make much sense to me, given the strengths of the content otherwise. It seems a little weirdly defensive, for a book that doesn't need to be defensive -- trying to preempt arguments that aren't worth entertaining to begin with (e.g., "you can't dismiss this in any way as not being a comic!  Look how much of a comic I'm being with these benday-dots"...?).

Or even setting that aside, aesthetically, it's just not very fully-formed. The faux Benday dots in particular don't really add a lot. I'm just not really into those dots, generally, so maybe that's just me. Photoshop-created dot-textures just never look right to me. (See, for comparison, Hip Hop Famly Tree pages from Ed Piskor, who actually took the time to scan in old comic pages, to a noticeably different and, I think, superior effect). I have "Annoying Music Fan Talking about Vinyl" type opinions that there's a warmth to actual old coloring and the mechanical processes and mishaps that created old coloring that you just can't recreate by slapping a computerized dot texture on top of some colors. Photoshop-dots, it just looks like a schtick to me: it's not recreating a thing, it's signifying a thing, which is just less interesting; it makes the colors intrude into the experience; for me at least, it's just too schtick-y.

I thought that word had three U's.

The single worst part about the comic overall is the sound-effect lettering. The THWUUCKK font should be erased from human existence. But not many people will care about that, and that's a little kink they can smooth out as the book proceeds.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

Ha-- well, this one is an easy yes.

Let's be more honest than is probably advisable, and let me cop to something I noticed about myself reading this issue:

For starters, let's establish that I'm a big old piece-of-shit guy, with a lot of dumb-ass-guy opinions.  (I think it's a little unavoidable. You know, you live in a weird crappy society, some weird crappy stuff can't help but rub off on you. The question becomes whether you admit it or or you lie and pretend like you're some special-y special exception. Me, I got nothing telling me I'm any kind of exception in life, and a whole lot going on telling me the opposite, so.)

And so... And so, the issues raised by the issue's mini-story, in particular, is really designed around pushing emotional buttons that while I imagine I might have if I were a woman, and while I can understand them intellectually (I think), I just don't have those buttons. I can appreciate on an intellectual level, at least, that the mini-story about the discarded first wife would be appealing, for example, to a woman angry about her value being defined exclusively by a short window of male sexual attention, and being discarded after that window closes.

But I'm a Shitty Guy so my immediate gut-level reaction was more, you know, "I sure wouldn't want to be trapped in a loveless (and definitely sexless) marriage, and don't blame anybody who gets out of one of those #notallmen.  P.S. some science stuff about bonobo monkeys I heard once third-hand."

Then I caught myself and realized the more Horrible and Pressing Truth:  I live in my head with the piece of crap who starts creating excuses for fictional men...! Haha, oh nooooooo.

So, I think I had an interesting experience with this issue just in that... I imagine if I was a lady, I'd have to constantly identify with male protagonists because they'd be given to me so ridiculously often.  And so it turned out to be a little bummer (though an interesting one) knowing that as a Shitty Guy, the comparative muscles for me are so atrophied from non-use.  Little bit of a bummer!

In my limited defense, they haven't assigned me a reddit account yet (they assign you a reddit account and it's just all over for you; all over).  I don't know.  In my limited defense, I can at least spot the issue with my Default Settings.  I don't know how much control we have over our Default Settings, but probably no control at all if we're not even aware of them...?

(Also: bonobo monkeys really are actually pretty interesting creatures, if you look into them!!  Blame me; don't blame the bonobos!)

Besides gender, there's also race. Race is just some tricky shit. It's more fun than not to see black female lead characters, and the book seems to promise those will be more prominent in future issues. On the other hand, the tricky bit is that those characters not all be tough fight-y fighters (which is all the first issue seems to promise), as that would kinda make them into the Other or be in a way capitalizing on cultural baggage that's uncool...? It'd make race into, like, a signifier, which is ... kinda not so great.  I've known pretty tough black ladies, sure. But I've also known black ladies who are made pretty much out of expensive cupcakes. You know?

The cast hasn't really been fleshed out yet so too early to say whether that should be a concern. Still, the first issue has black ladies beating folks up, but the characters with emotion-driven back stories, whose inner lives are of interest, those are all white-- the black characters are just engines of cool violence in issue one.

(But look, it's pretty unlikely to think that's going to be what this comic is like by the end of issue 4...? It just doesn't seem very likely that the creative team's going to have a blind spot that glaring past the jump-off.)

QUESTION 6.

Take away my first letter; take away my second letter; take away all my letters, and I would remain the same. What am I?

You're a fucking weakling.  Why don't you learn how to fight, you spineless bag of cotton candy?  A couple weeks of Krav Maga and no one's taking anything from you.  Someone takes your first letter, you just yell "Krav Maga!" at the top of your lungs and then kick them in their fun-parts as hard as you can.  Nobody's going to take a second letter after that.  Unless they have a gun.  Okay, actually, be careful, in case they have a gun. Nowadays, the way this country's going, they're probably packing some heat, the letter bandits.  Damn.  Well, I mean, if you don't need all those letters, and you're the same without them, then you should just give that shit away before some jabroni with a gun shows up and it even becomes an issue! What are you keeping the letters for anyways?  What, you want to end up on that Hoarders show?

Gun, no gun, just get your life together!

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

One of the Bitch-Planeteers (yelling): "Where'm I s'posed to put my tits?!"

The first prison fight featured in the comic is caused by men's failure to manufacture adequate bras or to appreciate the variety in the shapes of women's bodies...?  Sponge warning: it's not a very subtle comic.  Not so subtle with its themes.  No one's going to criticize the comic called BITCH PLANET for being TOO subtle, as it turns out-- surprise!

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

Bitch Planet, page one.

The first page was the one that struck me as most noteworthy.

As you can see, Page one is a 12-panel grid, 4x3, with three interstitial panels cutting into the right-most two panels of each tier.

Tier 1 of Bitch Planet #1, Page 1. "Eat less poop more."

The top tier is a Woman advancing geographically across three panels. The panel borders establish an urgent staccato "musical beat" from the get-go, with the three interstitial panels acting as grace notes.

The Woman is racing towards panel 4-- a drawing of a Man sitting in a chair, complaining about her.

Tier 2 of Bitch Planet #1, Page 1.  Really wish that sign said "No more posers."  So that the posers would finally know how we felt about them.

Tier two, the Woman is again depicted as racing to her right, but now only in two panels. Where the Man once took up a single panel, he now takes up two panels.

While the first tier featured a generic science-fiction city-scape in the background, with John Carpenter They Live headlines like "OBEY" blaring in the distant background on various neon signs, the second tier becomes more whimsical.  The Woman has to squeeze through a crowd of three men surrounding an ape holding an "Evolve" sign.  We can see that her progression through her world is becoming more surreal and the propaganda only more oppressive, closer, unavoidable to notice.  The space she has to move in more cramped.  Meanwhile, the Man's world is expanding and stable-- he has plenty of space to work.

In his two panels, the Man begins a countdown, like the kind that would be sung out before a song starts properly.  This further adds to the high-tempo musical quality of this first page.

Tier 3 of Bitch Planet #1, Page 1.  Into that "Whoop!" but couldn't tell you why.  People who talk about comics being like music usually sound like self-satisfied windbags but I guess they wouldn't be wrong saying there's a musicality to this page, to that "Whoop!"

Tier three, final tier, the Woman is now stumbling to the right, with only one panel dedicated to her-- any confidence in her body language is now gone. The cityscape now seems violent and threatening, with some kind of police robots hovering above her, and her journey now pushing her past what we would presume are violent men breaking the law.

The remaining three panels are now dominated by the Man, who is prominent in the foreground while the Woman enters, small and diminished into his background.

What's interesting about this page is that as early as page 1 of issue one, there is a narrative visually presented to the reader: a competent woman has to struggle through a ever-more-hostile world, but her story, that progression?  It is increasingly diminished and subjugated to the story of a comparatively more dull male character.  It is his background, separated from him by a plane of safety glass.  And that male character is dismissive of her struggles despite having none of his own.

I think you're too lazy to scroll up and look at the page again.  I think that about you, and I'm not sorry.

Without resorting to dialogue, within a page, the comic is making a thematic statement, establishing everything we need to know about the world without exposition, with minimal clunkiness, and within a grid structure that immediately starts the comic at a brisk and exciting tempo.

Further bit of possible interest: in the first panel of page 2, we have a close-up of the Woman finally, as she begins her job for the Man character. The creative team presents her purely in silhouette. She had been drawn with some minimal detail before working for the Man. But now, working for the Man, her very identity has been visually obliterated.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

I'm not a big fan of women in prison movies particularly.  As exploitation genres go, that one never really did anything for me; those movies are pretty sleazy, and not really the kinds of reprehensible gross sleaze I'm super-super-into, boner-style.  So, my reactions to the comic were more analytic than emotional or gut-level.  As mentioned above, I was just more struck by what I think I was supposed to have an emotional reaction to, but didn't. For me, that was the most noteworthy experience with the comic, beyond an appreciation of craft.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

Not to do:

Maaaan, be careful of that Ben-Day schtick. Not a lot of comics I can think of where a Photoshop filter has really plus-ed a comic. It's the kind of choice that once you make, it's a tough one to back away from.

The iconography of comics is fun but may not fit every project.

To do:

Layout is storytelling. Color is storytelling.  Everything within a comic's four corners can be storytelling, if you want it to be.  A comic doesn't just have to be a vehicle for telling a story.  A comic can be the manifestation of the story.

Comics.  Try to think comics.

NEXT WEEK: RUMBLE #1 from Image Comics.

Abhay: Inquisition-- The Valiant #1

For the last couple of years, I've been trying to write a certain kind of essay-- one that always kind of remained a little out of my reach but was fun to chase after. But lately, maybe for longer than I actually knew myself, it's been time to pivot, and try something a little different. I want to pivot to something a little closer to what one of the bad guys in that movie Dead Poets Society would write. Start running more of a J. Evans Pritchard fan-club.

So, this is what I'm going to be doing for a little while (at least for the next five whole weeks since I've written five of these, but I quit real easy so who knows). My apologies if it's of no interest-- hopefully, we reconnect later down the road.

The Romans had Janus...

10 Questions about THE VALIANT #1 by Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera, Dave Lanphear, Kyle Andrukiewicz, and Warren Simons.

A basic description of this comic, so that everyone's on the same page.

This was heavily promoted as being a self-contained "event miniseries" by Valiant Comics (which has come back to life yet again for the umpeenth time, like the Hammer Films version of Dracula).

The series looks like it's about a bunch of heroes uniting to face down a personality-less threat. The villain is a smaller-scale version of the bad guys as from the Mass Effect video-games, if you know those, the Reapers; a recurring civilization-killer that attacks throughout time, but has no real character or points of interest beyond that barebones "it kills people" function in order to keep the viewer's attention focused exclusively on the heroic characters.

Co-author Jeff Lemire, talking to Comic Book Resources:

"The Valiant really is a story that puts a stake into the ground and really changes the flow of the Valiant Universe moving forward and really shakes up the status quo of a number of character, and sets the stage for the next couple years' worth of stories. It's something I'm really honored to be a part of, coming on fresh and working with guys like Matt who have been working in the universe for a while."

QUESTION 1.

Is this comic about anything besides its plot?

No.

QUESTION 2.

Did the creative team make any interesting choices in the visual presentation of the story?

There are two panels where Bloodshot uses his superpowers to mind-control a machine.

Do you think this is what Bloodshot sees when he masturbates? I'm going to say yes. Also, I'm going to say that he says "That's it" before he does it, out loud.

Rivera presents those by drawing the machine's console with an orange line on top of an otherwise all-black panel, detailing the console with a grid-pattern that resembles the "wireframe" effect one sees in CGI modelling. I would assume that look has science-fiction "cyber" connotations for readers, but I'm not sure why, where it originated. (From Tron? From early computer games?)

Rivera notes in the back matter that it's a similar technique to the "Radar" vision seen in his Daredevil work "but both scripts were asking for basically the same thing. Either that, or I'm a one-trick pony."  Thin color lines on top of all-black panels-- I like those; I like how they jump out, have a sort of sinister, neon-y city--at-night energy. And panels from a subjective viewpoint-- those can be pretty fun. Oh, it'd be nice to see it being put to some other use than just illustrating superpowers, constantly, but.

Nothing else really jumps out as to the presentation.

QUESTION 3.

How is the comic structured?

The comic opens with a page of widescreen panels, a camera untethered to any point of view, wandering an environment while nothing much happens. At some point in recent history, that kind of page took over as how all of these kinds of comics seem to start, the numbingly-slow crawl into a comic rather than a classic old-fashioned splash pages getting you excited about what was to come. Why? Splash pages are better.

The widescreen thankfully gets dropped for the remainder of the comic. Rivera mostly sticks to either two or three tier pages.

The comic is structured in four scenes:

1) The comic spends 9 pages setting up the Threat to the Eternal Warrior character (including a double-page splash). This first scene is repetitive-- three nearly-identical sub-scenes making the same exact narrative point, over and over. The authors couldn't find a graphic solution to convey to the readers that the Threat is as eternal as the Eternal Warrior, other than to just repeat the same exact scene three times in three different time-periods.

The problem is the authors burn nine pages of this comic in the process for repetitive scenework. And burn a lot of goodwill-- the comic builds no momentum. Reading this stretch is drudgery.

2) A three page scene follows-- thin characterization of a lady who is apparently the latest "Geomancer" on Earth. She's in conversation with the Eternal Warrior's brother Armstrong, from the Archer & Armstrong comics.

Despite them talking for three pages about what life is like as a Geomancer, the term Geomancer is never really explained to the reader.

"Listen. I couldn't keep a houseplant alive. For real. And now I'm supposed to be the guardian of the earth somehow?" Luckily, they bold-face the words houseplant and guardian-- otherwise, this might've been boring to read!

3) That's followed by six pages of Bloodshot beating up a robot in some nondescript jungle region, for some unclear reason. (Two of those pages are a double-page splash of a robot shooting at Bloodshot, with an inset panel).

4) The comic then concludes with a five-page scene that set-ups the cliffhanger: the Threat from the beginning of the comic is going to attack the Geomancer lady.

(This scene is mildly disrupted by a random one-panel conversation between Eternal Warrior and X-O Manowar -- who apparently is also in this comic, out of nowhere. The one-panel conversation features Eternal Warrior stating some information, specifically the exact same information we had already been told three times in the first scene. Holy shit! How stupid does the creative team think that people who read these comics are, that they need to be told a simple concept FOUR fucking times in one issue? X-O Manowar's response is literally "Why are you telling me this now?" So. Once again, as is true in life, as is true in love, I agree 100% with X-O Manowar.)

Four scenes total: 9-3-6-5.

None of the scenes motivate one another, particularly. The comic is mostly just stuff happening, without any compelling through-line to hold the reader's attention, more a series of events, than a story, all set-up for future issues.

Nothing presented is pleasurable in and of itself.

QUESTION 4.

Is there anything noteworthy about the cover, logo, lettering, or design?

The comic opens with an all-black inside cover, and then an all black first page with "Book One" written on it (despite there being a #1 on the cover), then another all-black page before commencing the comic on page three. The last two pages of the comics? Also, all black pages.

I didn't really understand all the black paper in this comic. Am I supposed to be impressed? "Oooooh, the paper's all black-- that's the same color as the shirts Steve Jobs used to wear. Maybe these people are visionaries, too. RIP Steve Jobs." Design seems pompous.

Rivera hand-draws the sound-effects, I think. Rivera's inconsistent with the sound effects though-- gunfire makes "Bam Bam" sound effects, but Bloodshot punching his hand through a Robot's windshield? No sound. Robots taking off into the air on rockets? No sound. What do you think about that? I let stuff like that slide, and I imagine 99% of readers do too, but is it weird we all are like ... so uncommitted to the sound effect conceit...? Maybe that's weird.

QUESTION 5.

Is anything about this comic interesting politically, socially, or from some other frame of reference?

The comic begins with a black character (an Incan) being violently murdered in order to inspire the white male protagonist.

I'd totally try to get that guy's face if it were offered to me. Just to keep the bad guy from crapping or ejaculating into my buddy's severed face. I'm a good friend that way.

So, black-rifice: check.

The next two pages feature a woman being violently murdered in order to inspire the white male protagonist.  Note that she is wearing a blouse but her breasts are hanging out of that blouse, all exposed to nature-- and yet her breasts are still hidden from the reader by a conveniently placed hand.  The bizarrely-common sexless titillation of comics-- drawings of murdered women presented as senseless sex objects, but for an audience of men disinterested in any of the actual specifics of sex.

Anita Sarkeesian did a video about how cheap imagery like this trivializes violence against women-- she calls it the Damsel in Distress trope. Leigh Alexander wrote about a variation on the topic last year, with respect to video games-- here's the key bit: "It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you want to make a man into a hero, you hurt... also a woman first."

So, woman in a refrigerator: check.

The third scene features a little kid being murdered to inspire the white male protagonist. If only the little kid had been a gay character, it'd have been a kill-the-minorities-to-inspire-a-white-guy hat-trick.

The first four pages of this comic evidence a creative team oblivious to the kinds of imagery they are slopping around, and one making boring / stupid assumptions about who the audience for their work is.

Also: it's a little strange, people who will only believe in "heros" that need a bodycount to want to do the right thing. "All this bloodshed makes me want to make the world a decent place, as opposed to, you know, ethics." That's just odd.

QUESTION 6.

You are in a dark room with a candle, a wood stove and a gas lamp.  You only have one match. What do you light first?

Oh damn, I'm bad at riddles.  I would first light that ass on fire...?  Heeeey-o.

The internet says the right answer is "The match" but man-- if that's my only match, that's too valuable to light on fire, just from a supply and demand perspective. I would just leave that room-- it sounds like that room sucks; get the fuck out of colonial Williamsburg!  I'd rent a room at the Four Seasons Hotel.  The rooms at the Four Seasons come with electric lamps-- you don't need a stupid match.

Put that match on eBay-- sell it some riddle-solver-- use the eBay money to pay for the hotel room.

QUESTION 7.

What was the best bit of dialogue in the comic?

Geomancer: "Apparently, I'm the great-granddaughter of Buck McHenry."

I don't really like this line for sincere reasons. Something about it just made me giggle when I read it, just in that I don't feel like any human being has ever said that combination of words before this was typed out, and no human being ever will or would. Does that make it "good dialogue"? I don't know, but it at least makes it at least amusing the way I don't mind comics being amusing.

Anyways, that's as good as the dialogue ever got-- the rest is just lifeless.

QUESTION 8.

What is the most interesting page in the comic and how does it work?

Page 19. Bloodshot versus the robots.

Very classical eye-flow, this page.

First panel uses the outstretched arm to push the eyes to the right. Second panel pushes the eye in a sweeping move down to the console.

Drawing arrows with a mouse in MS Paint was hard.

The console uses the grid-line to redirect the reader's eyes to the climactic robot battle. And the climactic robot-battle point the way to the next page.

I don't know why Bloodshot needed "nanites" to figure out how to use a trigger-- but at that point, I didn't care.

Nothing too sophisticated but simple, classical flow.

Note also how the Bloodshot chest-tattoo shows up in the last panel as a dot. Nice touch.

QUESTION 9.

Did you experience any noteworthy emotion reading the comic?

Disdain for the bit with the topless woman.

I didn't notice the blackrifice until I was typing this out (which probably means some stuff about me, but). I didn't experience that disdain in real-time, though, so I don't know if that counts.

Besides all that, no. Absolutely nothing happens in this comic to provoke any kind of emotional or intellectual reaction. It's a completely inert product. Mentally and emotionally dead. Nothing a person could hate because it's so unmistakably a comic that will be forgotten in a week's time, if even that long. It will be like it never happened, before you even knew it. Just a comic with no point in even existing. It's just nothing.

QUESTION 10.

What do we hope that younger cartoonists learn to do and not to do from this comic?

To do:

Good artists care how a reader's eyes flow during action scenes, and I'd like to think that readers will appreciate a page with good flow even if they can't articulate that it's happening.

Not to do:

Don't repeat the same exact information three times in a span of pages that take up a significant chunk of real estate in your book. Maybe try to find a graphic solution to storytelling challenges, rather than waste pages conveying simple pulp ideas. Try anything because the beginning of a comic isn't really the ideal place to be boring and super-redundant.

Also: maybe have "write at least one line of dialogue that's interesting or lively" on a to-do list, so you remember to do that. Tie a string around your finger so you don't forget.

The essence of comics is that they are built out of images.  Images mean things.  Understand what different kinds of images mean to different kinds of people.  You would have to be pretty goddamn oblivious not to realize that comics are constantly featuring images of violence against women, in particular, and if you are a decent human being, I would imagine you would not want to add another example to that very long list without a better reason than you can see on display here.  Chances are you can make whatever point you're trying to make without adding to the world's storehouse of dumb, offensive, tiresome images. There's no rewards for being a good person, not in this world and certainly not in comics-- nobody fucking cares.  But maybe try to be one anyways just because it's the right thing to do.

NEXT WEEK: BITCH PLANET #1 from Image Comics.