Wait, What? Ep. 112: A New Dope

PhotobucketWasn't able to find Ditko inking Kirby, but here's Dan Clowes inking Ditko! Ganked from Robot 6 and elsewhere...

Okay, and so but here is our latest episode about which I will provide you with more detail after the jump!

Sorry for the rush, crew:  running a little late (when aren't I?) and haven't quite figured out a way to do the show notes for the Q&A that didn't involve a ton of formatting inside the WordPress entry which is a bit of a headache so pardon me if I just start in, yes?

0:00-3:56: Greetings are exchanged!  Apologies are made!

3:56-13:56: Superior Spider-Man #1!…is a thing we are talking about.  Comic talk so early?  It can happen! Dreams can come true, it can happen to you, if you're young at heart.  Something I didn't think we would complain about?  Superhero fight scenes.  And there may or may not be subliminal messages via distant dog barking, I'm not really allowed to see.

13:56-20:21: Also, through the largesse of a Whatnaut, Jeff was able to read New Avengers #1 by Jonathan Hickman & Steve Epting.

20:21-23:31: All-New X-Men #5!  One of us liked it; one of us didn't.  To say more would give away….The Prestige! (I don't really know what that means, but it was remarkably enjoyable to type.)

23:31-46:39: Answering questions? Will we ever? Maaaaaaaybe, but we decide to talk about other books we read this week: Graeme has read Action Comics #16, as well as the entire run of Batman, Inc.--which Graeme has some really interesting ideas about; Buffy The Vampire Slayer #17; Earth Two #8; Fantastic Four #3 ;and  Iron Man #5.

46:39-47:14: Our sole intermission?  In fact…yes!

47:14-55:32:  On our return, we discuss Star Wars #1 by Brian Wood and Carlos D'Anda.  And, since that series is set immediately after A New Hope, we talk about that movie and what we've liked about that film and where it went afterward.

55:32-1:05:34: As for Jeff, most of what he's read has been digital: Thor #4; six weeks of Shonen Jump Alpha, The Phoenix Comic, and 2000 AD (with enthusiastic run-downs of his favorites in each).

1:05:34-1:10:22:  Then Jeff has a story about being retweeted he thinks is funny. Yes, people: this is why Jeff is terrible. He actually thinks you can tell a funny story…about being retweeted. Far funnier is how quickly and completely Graeme trumps the story.

1:10:22-1:10:30:  And then…questions!  For real, y'all, for real.

1:10:30-1:11:15:  The Dave Clarke Five! (By which I mean, five questions from our pal Dave Clarke.)  Dave Clarke asks:  "Is it fair to say that half the appeal of superhero comics is getting to talk about (and/or bitch about) them with your friends?"

1:11:15-1:14:10: Also, from Dave Clarke:  "Can loyal Whatnauts look forward to more 2000AD discussion in 2013?"

1:14:10-1:15:45:  Dave Clarke! "Would you ever do a crossover episode with House to Astonish?"

1:15:45-1:15:55: DC:  "Which is better: Glamourpuss or Holy Terror?"

1:15:55-1:21:13:  DC Implosion! "Last time you guys did a question episode Jeff promised to describe more things as ‘chill’. Is there anything Jeff has read/seen/tasted lately that he would describe as ‘chill’?"  

1:21:13-1:23:09: Question 1 of 2 from Jer:  "Waffles. Can the concept fly in other parts of the country? Or is it Portland specific for some reason — and why?"

1:23:09-1:34:02:  Question 2 of 2 from Jer:  "I’d like to know what comics media you guys generally consume daily/weekly/monthly (of course, Graeme reads 16 sites by only reading his own stuff, right?). Obv. you read Bleeding Cool at times; what about TCJ online? Etc.?"  [This is one of our classic 'Goofus and Gallant" moments.]

1:34:02-1:38:38: Steve queried: "What surprised you (positively or negatively) in the comics industry in 2012? Any predictions for 2013?(Unless you were planning to cover that sort of thing in your last podcast this year or first one next year anyway.)"

1:38:38-1:40:41:  Colbert said: "Opinions on best inkers for Kirby and Steve Ditko inking Kirby. And… damn. I can’t think of a waffle joke."

1:40:41-1:44:39:  A.L. Baroza asked:  "In light of the Sean Howe book and the brief discussion here a few podcasts back over just what it is that a comics editor does these days, what do you two consider a good or effective example of comics editing for Big Two corporate superhero IP? Keeping in mind that there’s always gonna be a tension between creator ambition, the company need to police and maintain a character’s brand, and a primarily nostalgia-slash-event-driven market. Is it even possible these days to navigate through all the competing demands and end up with something like “art”, or should we just write off the idea of lofty ambition for the genre at this point?"

1:44:39-1:45:06: J_Smitty_ asked: "What do you think of the new Ke$ha record?"

1:45:06-1:51:18:  Jerry Smith asked: "(1) Spider-Man: Ditko or Romita?  (2) Do you buy $4.00 comics? What is the highest price you would pay for a 22-32 page floppy?  (3) Karen Berger as head of creative development at Image Comics. Please consider and comment."

1:51:18-1:55:38:  MBunge asked: "The internet – the future of comic books or comic strips? It seems to me that the web is not really a delivery or economic format that lends itself to producing a blob of words and art once a month/two months/whenever lazy ass pros or guys who have to work real jobs to support their comics hobby can squeeze some work out."

1:55:38-2:03:38:  Mike Walker has a couple of questions: "The “make your own waffle station” at the hotel complimentary breakfast: Good idea or bad idea?  What’s your opinion on Bagels? Are frozen bagels out of the question? Fruity cream cheese or regular cream cheese? Describe your ideal bagel (if there is one.)  What was your most successful “cleanse?” Can we organize a “Wait, What: Cleanse Week?” Because I would like to see the comments after that week. Are you looking forward to a podcast where you aren’t answering questions, possibly sometime in 2014? What was your favorite Dave Clarke question? Least favorite?"

2:03:38-end: CLOSING COMMENTS REMEMBER TO TIP YOUR WAITRESS

And, lest I forget, here's the link:

Wait, What? Ep. 112: A New Dope

Hope you enjoy; there is more where that came from, coming soon!  Until then, thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy!

 

Wait, What? Ep. 108: Frightful

beepI love, love, love that lonely little "beep."

Man, the holiday season, amirite? Emerging from the primordial swamp of Black Friday, Cyber-Monday, Fat Tuesday and Sexting Sunday, it's the show notes for Wait, What? Ep. 108...right behind the jump!

0:00-6:15:  Here we go!  Graeme is in a seasonal mood; Jeff is having tech problems again (the very expensive microphone he picked up?  Had to be sent back and repaired under warranty).  But we are both existential crisis free!  And if you're upset that there aren't any new episodes of "Let's Complain About Our Deadlines and Schedules" podcast, this is the five minutes for you. 6:15-19:16: Here's a dirty secret: I don't usually edit a lot of our on-line talk out but this season I thought I'd try to give all of you the gift of brevity.  There was actually a ten minute conversation about the Angus T. Jones and the Two and a Half Men controversy that I decided to cut just….uh, I dunno?  It had a natural flow to it but it also seemed a little digressive--even by our notoriously loose standards.  So I just cut (clumsily) in to the next "celebrities--what were they thinking?" story we talked about--the recent controversy with James Gunn.  (Our conversation took place just a  few hours before his issued apology.)  Do you guys have a preference about this kind of thing?  Would you rather hear our conversations unfold naturally, or would you just prefer we try to keep the podcast focused on the pertinent parts?  Let us know in the comments… 19:16-35:04:  Anyway, from there, we segue smoothly into talking about whether or not comics culture is inherently misogynistic or not.  Appropriately enough for such a broad topic (uh, pun is not intended there), we cover a lot of ground, talking about Journey Into Mystery and Red She-Hulk, the first issue of Bleeding Cool Magazine, and more. 35:04-35:26:INTERMISSION ONE 35:26-42:40:  All-New X-Men #2.  Graeme has read it; Jeff has not. So join us as Mr. Former fills in Mr. Latter on the story, the art, and  the overall not-as-terribleness of the first issue. 42:40-59:22: Jeff, oddly enough, has read Avengers #34 and New Avengers #34, Bendis' last issues and gets to turn the tables on Mr. Former. It leads into a discussion about whether the art is serving the storytelling in Marvel's current books with books like Indestructible Hulk #1 by Mark Waid and Leinil Yu. 59:22-1:14:40: Captain America #1 by Rick Remender and John Romita, Jr.: read by both, viewed skeptically by both (though more by one of us than the other).  For bonus points, we compare and contrast with Uncanny Avengers #2, and then sort of compare and contrast similar-seeming storylines running through the universe. Coincidence? Too much influence of one creator on another?  Not enough? 1:14:40-1:18:01: Also reviewed at the same time, FF #1 by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred by Mr. McMillan. 1:18:01-1:28:22: Amazing Spider-Man #698 by Dan Slott and Richard Elson is also discussed and *fully spoiled* by Graeme and Jeff.  Let the listener beware! 1:28:22-1:34:20: Iron Man #2 by Kieron Gillen and Greg Land, wherein Graeme coins the term "Greg Land face." Can we see a cure for Greg Land face in our lifetime? Also, bonus points to Graeme for the unexpected shout out to Jack Kirby's Silver Star.  God bless you, Graeme McMillan. 1:34:20-1:35:40: INTERMISSION TWO 1:35:40-1:48:45: Although Jeff wants to maneuver Graeme back into waters into which poor Graeme does not want to go--Grant Morrison's annotations about Alan Moore's opinions on Grant Morrison--we settle instead for discussing Batman Incorporated #5 by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham.  What can we say?  Sometimes we choose peace instead of war.  That said, Jeff thinks there may be some really interesting subtext in the issue but isn't quite sure where.  Come, puzzle it out with us, won't you? 1:48:45-1:52:39:  Also under discussion, because Jeff is wayyyyyy behind the times, a discussion of Action Comics #14 by G-Moz and Rags Morales. 1:52:39-1:59:27:  Flash #14!  And then some stuff about Judge Dredd because that's what we do these days: talk about Judge Dredd. 1:59:27-2:02:30:  Hey Angel & Faith #16 is a book Graeme was impressed with.  Jeff drags the full spoilers out of Graeme so forewarned--do not listen unless you've read the issue (or, like Jeff, kinda don't care). 2:02:30-2:07:33:  And continuing in the "Let Us Now Praise Non-Big Two Comics" section, Jeff really, really liked Witch Doctor: Mal Practice #1 and Multiple Warheads #2.  Alas, because Graeme had read also read Multiple Warheads, we spend the vast majority of the time talking about that very fine comic and Witch Doctor: Mal Practice #1 unfortunately gets short shrift by comparison. But they're both great! 2:07:33-2:23:02:  Also, a book we both read and decide to chew the fat about:  Masks #1 by Chris Roberson and Alex Ross.  For those of you who play that drinking game where you do a shot every time Jeff gets some little detail utterly wrong, prepared to get snockered. 2:23:02-2:24:20:  Though he doesn't go through them in anything like detail, Jeff read ten volumes of Hikaru No Go (vols. 7-17)  and totally loved it. That was some very enjoyable manga right there. 2:24:20-end: A super-super-super-short discussion about Shonen Jump Alpha going day and date with some stories in 2013. 2000AD online is also mentioned, as is Jeff's wont these days. And then we are out of there…for another week.

This is a thing that is already out there, people, already haunting the diaphanous underworld that is iTunes.  But, of course, you are more than likely to gather around the seance table, join hands, and perform the secret spell of conjuration below:

Wait, What? Ep. 108: Frightful

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Its my bar of chocolate, give it to me NOW!

OK, MarvelNOW! has pretty much gotten going, where did we leave off...?  

 

ALL-NEW X-MEN #1 & 2: If one single thing is going to harm this Marvel relaunch, it is going to be these bi-weekly shipping comics. And, heck, scratch "bi-weekly" as #3 is inexplicably shipping NEXT week (wait, what, why?), and that's a bit of a shame because I (unlike Mr. Lester or Mr. McMillan) kind of like ANX.

Now, part of that is that I am really glad we're back to the "old" X-paradigm -- they're operating out the school, mutants are no longer tied to "the 198" or Utopia island, or any of that. And part of that is that Brian Michael Bendis had long since run out his string on the Avengers titles, so seeing him get something fresher is nice. I also think he's very much toned done much of the "Bendisms" that marked too much of Avengers.

Another is that Stuart Immonen is an awesome artist, so it's a real treat to look at.

There's a buncha handwaving that one has to do with the time travel stuff, but I'm willing to give it to him because this is comics, and the story should be more important than the mechanics of it.

Ultimately, I'm willing to give Bendis a bit of rope here -- I think this is a very high OK so far, and as a general direction to make the x-books relevent again, I'm fine with it.

 

CAPTAIN AMERICA #1: I liked this OK as well -- Romita & Janson are always a good art team, and Rick Remender's script is zippy and actiony. I worry a little about the setup -- the text page would seem to indicate that this "Dimension Z" is the home of the book for a while, and I sort of worry about a Captain America comics not set in, y'know, America, but the bigger problem is the $4 cover price, I think.

 

FANTASTIC FOUR #1: Lots of setup, and a reasonable enough pitch for the next 12-18 issues of the comic. Fraction does dependable work here, and Bagley's art just screams "Marvel!" as it always does.  Because it only has a $3 cover price it also gets more goodwill from me, which means I thought it was GOOD, though execution over the months will count for more here than some of the other NOW! books.

 

FF #1: The flipside to Fan4 above, this one is Fraction and Allred, and, hot damn, did I like this first issue. I especially liked the narrative structure that suggests you read the book a second time now that you understand on the last page the reasoning/setup for some of the interstitial pages. My absolute favorite of the NOW! books so far, I thought this was pretty EXCELLENT.

 

INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK #1: Solid set-up for a series, which one should probably expect from Mark Waid. I'm not so sure that the art from Leinil Yu (at least on the Banner pages) really worked in harmony, but the Hulk bits were nice, so it works out. Solidly GOOD, that $4 cover keeps it from the next grade up.

 

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #646:  Kathryn Immonen and Valerio Schiti move the book from Young Loki, to Sif instead.  I kind of don't care about Sif, but Schiti's art is a joy to behold. Hard to see this lasting for long, really, but as a first issue, I thought it was also solidly GOOD.

 

THOR: GOD OF THUNDER #1 & 2: Yay, it's fun Jason Aaron, writing a loutish Thor. Art by Esad Ribic is super spiffy. I also quite like the parallel structures of past and future Thors and crazy godshit in space and whatever, and yeah, digging it... except for that damn $4 cover price, which caps my grade at GOOD.

 

X-MEN LEGACY #1 & 2: It's a damn shame that this came alphabetically last, because I have to go out on a down note, then. Cuz' this just wasn't compelling. It's nothing wrong with Si Spurrier's script, per se, or even Tan Eng Huat's art, though I get he's an acquired taste. I think the bigger problem really is the focus on Legion, who just isn't a very interesting character, and there's less than no reason to call this comic "X-Men" anything. #2 had a printing error, and they put it on paper more suited to a free giveaway comic -- this is likely to be the first NOW! book cancelled.  EH.

 

What did YOU think?

 

-B

Wait, What? Ep. 107: Hardly Working

AustraliansAustralian, as she is spoke--from All-New X-Men #1, by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen

So, I am loathe to admit it...but I totally did that thing where I was running under the gun and so the show notes have a certain je ne sais LEAVE FIFTY THOUSAND IN THE TRASH CAN AT EAST ENTRANCE OF CENTRAL PARK OR SHE IS DEAD quality to them.

Nonetheless, after the jump: show notes!

0:00-4:09:  Greetings!  Opening remarks with just a hint of foreshadowing.  Also, thanks to the generosity of listeners, Jeff has read some Marvel NOW! titles (his first current Marvel titles in several months), and that ends up having a pretty big influence on this week's podcast. (And sorry for the hiss and crackle there are the very intro--I assure you it doesn't return.) 4:09-14:09:  In fact, after running down the issues we've read ( and as Graeme points out, it really was quite a bumper week for new comics) and get right into discussing some of the overall tone to the Marvel NOW! books. 14:09-20:24: Moving from the tone of Marvel editorial in the Marvel NOW! books, we steer into a bit of the ol' meta, and talk about the recent news regarding scheduling and art chores on Uncanny Avengers. 20:24-42:09: And because Jeff has now read Uncanny Avengers #1, we talk about that issue a bit. Also? Captain America--when does he work?  Jeff doesn't really know, but he's going to talk about it, anyway. 42:09-43:53: Foreshadowing has come to pass!  Tech disaster!  It's stuff we should edit out but we're not going to because, uh, of the candor.  Yeah, that's it! We're candid! 43:53-51:29: We get back to talking about what we were talking about (Captain America and the Avengers movie), which Graeme uses as a segue to talk about Avengers Assemble #9 by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Stefano Caselli. 51:29-51:52: Intermission one! (of one?) 51:52-1:19:10:  And we are back to talk about All-New X-Men #1 by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen.  Who liked it less?  We're still not sure, but there is a ton of stuff we didn't like. 1:19:10-1:26:14:  Iron Man #1 by Kieron Gillen and Greg Land!  We are split on this one, but there are things liked by the person who didn't like it much and things disliked by the person who overall liked it fine.. 1:26:14-2:19:54:  Fantastic Four #1 by Matt Fraction and Mark Bagley!  Graeme has read it; Jeff has not. Come for the observations about the FF, stay for our talk about "working harder" as a cornerstone of creative criticism. And what do we really need to have a good superhero comic?  Plot? Motivation? Characterization? "Hard work"?  There is discussion about these very important ideas…and then there is even more shit-talking about Brian Bendis. Also, there is discussion about an AvX #6: Infinite, and quick takes on A+X #1 (Jeff), Saga #7 (Graeme), Batman #14 (Graeme), Suicide Squad #14 (Graeme), Batgirl #14 (Graeme), Saucer Country #9 (Graeme), Zaucer of Zilk #2 (Graeme), and Amazing Spider-Man #698 (Graeme, and with possible spoilers), 2000 AD Prog #1809 (both of us), the brilliant "Choose Your Own Xmas" by Al Ewing and John Higgins from Prog #2012 (Jeff), and Tune by Derek Kirk Kim. (Also, Jeff forgot to talk about Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic but he should have because it was easily the Marvel NOW! book he enjoyed the most. 2:19:54-end:  Closing comments! Since this is getting released the week of Thanksgiving, what are Graeme and Jeff grateful for? Some of the choices are a bit odd (Misfits, really?)  and a bit vague, but it's a good note on which to end the podcast…and gives me hope that we can totally get Graeme to take his holiday spirit to absolutely insane levels as the holiday season kicks into gear.

This fine episode should be available to those Whatnauts with access to iTunes or the show's RSS feed.  Otherwise, you are welcome to give it the ol' audio once-over below:

Wait, What? Ep. 107: Hardly Working.

We're not recording this week, what with Thanksgiving and all, which means no podcast next week, but...that just gives you more of a chance to catch up with the 100+ episodes we currently have available to you free of charge, yeah?  As always, we hope you enjoy and thank you for listening!

Wait, What? Ep. 87: Tiny Yellow Boxes

Untitled It's funny. I keep thinking we're going to hit our "proper" hundredth episode any minute now and we're still only eighty-something percent of the way there. (It's probably the high-weirdness of having 145 entries accessible on iTunes that's throwing me off...) But we will get there!

Yes, neither rain nor snow nor sleep, nor screwy Skype, nor half-maintained hardware, nor early morning airport visits, nor crazy screeds by prominent webcomic cartoonists where the phrase "we won!" really means, "stop harshing my mellow," can keep us from our appointed rounds...unless we decide to take a week off.

Whatevs: we have a two hour episode for you, full of complaints about some of the above, but also delightful discussions of Reverse Aquaman, Saga #3 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples, Avenging Spider-Man #7 by Kathryn and Sturart Immonen, the history of kitty cats, Saucer Country #3, Wolverine by Jason Aaron, Bakuman, Batwoman, Watchmen Toasters, the fabulous oral history of DC's Countdown to Final Crisis over at Funnybook Babylon, The Zed-Echs Spectrum, Thor, Thanos, fanfic, Fraction, Bendis, and the perennial favorite:  more, more, more.

It is on iTunes (let's assume for the sake of argument) but it is also here, for you to download and listen to, and to raise as if it was your very own child, albeit one that chatters on endlessly and never really seems to hear what you say (yes, very much like your very own child, indeed!):

Wait, What? Ep. 87: Tiny Yellow Boxes

And as always, we hope you enjoy and we thank you for listening!

Big and Bad: Hibbs 4/4's

I know you'd never know it from my Industry-driven posting (seriously? It's what I DO), but I've actually been sick as a dog the last week, and have barely read any comics at all. But I said "I'm back on the horse", and, barring the two weeks where I couldn't log on TO post here, I am , I am! So, here's 3 (or maybe 4) books, below the cut.

AVENGERS VS X-MEN #1: Rich Johnston was right, I think, when he said this book is review proof. No one is going to buy or not buy this comic based upon anything I (or anyone else) says about it, and, because it's purely an exercise in smashing the action figures together, I doubt anyone is really looking at this for an exceptional example of sequential storytelling, or anything.

Which is terrific, because it kind of sucked.

Sort of even to the point that I'm not even really sure where exactly to begin.

Well, let's start with the talent. I like JR JR, I really do... but I like him on things that are gritty and "street" and dark -- KICK ASS he's suited for, shiny-Avengers-heroes? Not so much. Scott Hanna's inks help a little, but overall, the effect here is of the absolutely wrong artist for the book.

Then you have the "Story" credit going to FIVE different people. Really? Reallly? I mean, I have to assume that something really change-up different is going to happen at some point here, because "The Avengers and the X-Men fight" hardly needs FIVE plotters. Damn, it don't need one -- even my eight year old can plot this. In fact, I asked him to tell me why they might fight, and he said, and I shall quote: "they're superheroes, they just do"

Smart kid.

And, oh, oh, oh, the scripting. I don't know if it's that Bendis is just getting too frayed from working on too many comics, or that I've just "learned" his ear too well from reading too many of them, but his dialogue has descended into self-parody at this point. "What's going on? Never Mind. Don't care. Are we having an Avengers meeting or--?" "Guys -- we got a thing here."  Damn, they all have the same frickin' voice. Even the single normal human being in the entire comic, who has a line after flying through the sky with the rubble of the Chrysler building, then is webbed safely by Spider-Man (wait, what? How?!?! 3/4 of those people should be corpses!) says "Wow. That's It. I'm moving. I'm done."

Gawd.

(Plus, like, destroying the Chrysler building? This is your signifier of "yeah, the stakes are real!"? Ugh)

(See, even *I* am doing the bendis voice! Man!)

I also really like that "scorecard" thing at the top of the issue that has like 20+ Avengers, including a bunch not even cameoing in the issue (War Machine?), while the X-Men side is all of 6 people.

I don't, AT ALL, get Cyclops' motivations here. I could maybe possibly understand him if it was "We don't have enough power, we need more, we can't let the humans have this", but all of that bullshit he was spouting about rebirth and shit? Are you nuts? Scott should hate the Phoenix force more than almost any other human in the universe, given that it destroyed his first love, his child, his school, and now it is going after his grand daughter, who is "the future of the mutant race". Given what happened to Jean, how could he POSSIBLY be ok with Hope getting anywhere near the force?

Also: Where the fuck is Rachel, anyway? Why would the thing WANT Hope in the first place? We've always always seen the Phoenix force go after TELEKINETIC TELEPATHS -- what does it want with a girl whose powerset is *copying* other powers, and who, afaik, is utterly powerless without other mutants around?

Hell, maybe that's what we need five plotters to explain?

So, nope, didn't like it, not a bit... but it's going to make a big pile of money regardless. I thought it was pretty AWFUL.

 

INFINITE COMICS #1: Free with the digital download of AvX #1 was the first of Marvel's "Infinite Comics", by Mark Waid and Stuart Immonen. I read this as well.

I have to say that I thought it was... adequate. Waid's script is filled with some fun things about moving faster than the speed of light, but there's not a single thing about the PERSON behind the suit (other than his liking hot dogs or whatever it was, but that was so generic, it literally could have been interchangeable between Spider-Man, the Human Torch, Speedball, or fifty other characters).

The art was fairly pretty (duh), but when it came to major, important things like, dunno, SMASHING THROUGH THE CHRYSLER BUILDING, it's staged in such a way you can barely tell what's going on.

As a "What happened between panels 5 & 6 on page 4" (or whatever), it was perfectly adequate... maybe even fairly decent.

But as a technical achievement? Wow wow what a dog!

Maybe, I don't know, but maybe possibly this is because I read it on an iPad 1 -- but this, rather than the "Luther" proof-of-concept where elements fairly seamlessly "floated" into place, here each new element was on a seperate page of it's own that I could LITERALLY *see* being served to me.

What this meant was that.

(tap)

What this meant was that as each page would come up on the screen.

(tap)

What this meant was that as each page would come up on the screen my eye automatically started to read.

(tap)

What this meant was that as each page would come up on the screen my eye automatically started to read from the left again.

(tap)

What this meant was that as each page would come up on the screen my eye automatically started to read from the left again until eventually the.

(LENS FLARE!)

What this meant was that as each page would come up on the screen my eye automatically started to read from the left again until eventually the whole page was finally rendered.

Oh. My. God! COMPLETELY unreadable.

I thought "Well, maybe it's just the first iPad?" so I went to try and read it in-browser on my computer, which Marvel SAYS you can do. I followed the link PROVIDED ON THE "redeem" page. No. That takes you to a page full of press releases about previous free digital downloads. Then I spent at least 20 minutes reading through help pages on Marvel.com, and finally found a different link that the help pages insisted was direct to "all of your free-with-print digital downloads", but THAT page redirected me instead to a four page preview of AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #1 that the only way it would let me escape was if I signed in to Marvel Digital Unlimited... which is not even close to the same thing, so I closed my browser in disgust and said "fuck it".

I probably wouldn't be so disgustipated if it wasn't for the THREE (!!) pages that IC #1 had to serve me to proclaim that this was the "FUTURE OF COMICSSSSSSSSS!!!!!"

Seriously?

If that's the "future" of comics, comics can go fuck themselves. As much as I didn't like the "hey we're showing off by taking control of your reading experience for you!" that "Luther" did, it was a BILLION times worse in the one-page-at-a-time slideshow on the iPad. It made me want to choke to death on someone else's vomit.

The CONTENT of INFINITE COMICS #1? EH. The EXECUTION?: Pure, stinking ASS.

 

THE BOYS #65:  While there are 3 (4? 5?) more issues left of the series, this is really the big moment everything has been pointing to since that first issue, and there's a clear Ennis-ian Nelson-style "Haw haw!" in here as everything everyone thinks is going on is flipped on it's side before the gory gory gory gory climax of it all. I liked the twist, I thought it was "fair", but this issue really REALLY suffered, I thought by being drawn by two artists, neither of whom is Darick Robertson. Russ Brown and John McCrea are just fine, but neither is the co-creator of the series, and I kept recasting every page if DR had drawn it. The version in my head is better. Still? Solidly GOOD.

 

SUPREME #63:  It's been like ten years since the last chapter, has it? I guess that explains why I sold less than a third of what I thought I might of this unseen Alan Moore Script? What's weird is that, as a silver age pastiche, it really kind of read as if I had just read the previous issue last month. I miss the hell out of this book. I can't believe this really was to be Moore's LAST script, though, because there's clearly 1 or 2 more issues to go along this whole thought.

I quite liked Erik Larsen's art here, though -- made me think he was channeling Kev O'Neill, especially on those Suprema pages. The blurbs seem to indicate that the next issue is abandoning the silver age stuff and going back to 90s-style Rob Liefeld Supreme, and while they're earned one more issue from me for that, my instincts say I'd rather be forced to read INFINITE COMICS again.

Anyway, does this mean we can hope for a proper reprint book of Moore's runs that isn't scanned at the wrong resolution or whatever the hell the problem was with those Checker editions?

 

 

Right, that's it for me this week, see you in a day or two with the next batch of reviews!!

 

As always: what did YOU think?

 

-B

Savage Symposium: FEAR ITSELF & FLASHPOINT (Part 1 of 3)

As part of the 10th anniversary of The Savage Critics on the internet, and in conjunction with the 4-part discussion of Chester Brown's PAYING FOR IT, a more mainstream-oriented "round-table" discussion of Marvel Comics's multi-title crossover headline series FEAR ITSELF and DC Comics's multi-title crossover headline series FLASHPOINT was conducted between April 11, 2011 and June 19, 2011, covering slightly less than the first halves of both series. As each issue of FEAR ITSELF #'s 1-3 & FLASHPOINT #'s 1-2 was released, a single question was posed.

Both FEAR ITSELF and FLASHPOINT represent the major status quo defining series for their respective companies in 2011.  FEAR ITSELF was created by Marvel "Architect" Matt Fraction and artist Stuart Immonen, FLASHPOINT by DC's Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns and artist Andy Kubert.  Questions were written by Abhay, who has insisted that he be hereafter referred to as "King Shit of Fuck Mountain."

This first part of the round-table covers the questions asked after the release of FEAR ITSELF issues #1 and 2.  The second part on Wednesday will cover FLASHPOINT #1 and FEAR ITSELF #3, while the final part on Friday will conclude with FLASHPOINT #2 and a "Big Picture" question.  And of course, both crossovers were discussed elsewhere on the site in reviews contributed by Graeme McMillan, as well as in recent installments of the probably-award-winning OH, BEHAVE! podcast from Graeme & Jeff Lester.

 

* * *

QUESTION #1-

ASKED ON APRIL 11, 2011

UPON THE RELEASE OF FEAR ITSELF ISSUE #1

* * *

ABHAY:  The promotional materials for Marvel crossovers tend to highlight their "relevance"-- at least, that's certainly been the case with FEAR ITSELF. Here are excerpts from CBR's announcement of the comic:

Quesada acknowledged that the state of the economy was rough, and that a number of television pundits “are telling you what to be afraid of.  … It's a great time to be fearful.  The world has gotten smaller, and fear, above all else, seems to be a great motivator. There are no shortage of frauds, charlatans, and despots looking to fan the fire. ... It's undeniable that there's a certain... something in the air.”

So: how do you feel about the politics of FEAR ITSELF?  Or these crossovers generally?  I feel like they start out well-meaning, but that the "political messages" tend to become completely fucking nuts as these things go along.

Consider the last "trilogy" of crossovers-- the “Bush Trilogy.”  In Episode 1, CIVIL WAR, right-wing heroes use the fear of terrorist acts to squelch civil liberties, but... those opposing that squelching ultimately quit fighting once they realize that the American people hate their civil liberties and prefer security over freedom.  In Episode 2, SECRET INVASION, it turns out that we aren’t any more safe because our society was already infiltrated by foreign religious fanatics.  The Marvel heroes then begin the eradication of the foreigners, but in the process of that heroic genocide, an even more extreme right-wing despot (also a religious fundamentalist) becomes a hero to the media, and thus assumes control of the Marvel universe.  So, finally, in Episode 3, THE SIEGE, the Marvel heroes defeat this right-wing media despot (literally, by turning him off using a remote control)... but then realize that it's not enough to merely defeat the religious right’s figurehead.  The Marvel heroes can only create a Heroic Age by murdering the Old Testament God, suggesting to the audience that the only way that a meaningful peace can ever be achieved is the destruction of all religious belief of any kind...?

So, then we arrive on FEAR ITSELF #1, which I thought was just going to be a retread of Jon Stewart’s dopey rally.  But instead, Obama Iron Man’s trying to launch a job program and fix the economy, but is being derailed by violent protests over the Marvel universe version of the Ground Zero mosque.  Which-- it's a crossover where a jobs program is at stake?  I'm really worried that in issue two, the taxation of trade routes will cause the Trade Federation to create a blockade around the planet Naboo, you guys.  But then ... But then as the comic proceeds-- the comic ends with the Gods leaving the United States and then an image of Congress on fire, which-- for me, at least, calls to mind Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, one of those fucking guys who claim that their God has removed its "protection” of the United States in response to our sins...?

On the one hand, the audience is encouraged to think about these comics through a political lens, but on the other hand... am I the only one who gets made to feel like a crazy person when he does?  None of what I just wrote sounded sane!  Is this the kind of stuff you folks think about?  Is this something that gives you any pause?  Or are you just able to enjoy watching Odin yell at the Watcher, and avoid shoving your head up into your own rectum?

JOG: Well first off, let me just say I was more than able to enjoy the stylin’ Marvel Architects photo spread at the issue #1 center.  Like, where they’re all dressed in black and posing in front of a goofy blueprint pattern?

I think it’s got real potential to be a superhero equivalent of the immortal Lit Comics Bad Boys Rooftop Luncheon 2004 shot from days of legend.  In fact, I’m half-convinced Brubaker is actually trying to ‘do’ Chester Brown’s pose, although I guess Marvel wouldn’t allow Fraction a cigarette to complete the mirror effect.

But anyway, it’s interesting that you emphasize the departure of Gods from humankind; to me, issue #1 only showed disparity between the superpowered or superhuman-affiliated characters and the rabble of humanity, i.e. those balding local pride types prone to stargazing with adorable moppets that use Ds instead of THs -- prudently, Fraction declines to double down with the hazardous R-to-W maneuver, which has never worked for anyone besides Osamu Tezuka, and only then with the psychological distance afforded by translation -- or, y’know, participating in riots.  What I found revealing was Cap’s little comments during the latter, insisting that Democracy is in full effect and declining to adopt any specific political position, even though the action makes it very clear that it’s his job (and that of superheroes in general) to take charge in terms of keeping the peace.

In this way, it seems the superhero characters are metaphorically standing in for police officers or the military or something -- in a profoundly idealized state, mind you -- yet their positioning in the story is above humankind.  You need only go a few more pages for tacit confirmation, as we find Cap brooding at the front of this big wide heroic introductory panel, with everyone on top of Avengers Tower, literally looming over the concerns of the common folk. And while further on there’s an attempt made to level the field visually by having both the superheroes and assorted undistinguished non-superpowered onlookers beheld and verily spat upon by Odin before his Fuck Thou exchange with the Watcher, that only follows another wide heroic panel depicting Marvel’s finest assembled at a press conference, tense and sweatless, addressing the nation before a baker’s dozen of mics.

They’re elites, albeit not portrayed through any discernible political/cultural point of view; it seems like this mass characterization was only a result of the genre being the genre, and certain characters pinging off one another to best facilitate logical genre expectations. Like, yeah - it’s totally in character for Cap to get frowny over the state of America, and Iron Man would indeed have the in-story resources to launch a jobs program, but all the superheroes here are ultimately presented fundamentally apart from the shared ‘fear’ of humankind, and, at least in terms of allegory, I think that’s what marks the politics here as sort of decorative. Ultimately, it’s superheroes doing superhero things.  In contrast, you take something like CIVIL WAR, the central issue there -- political divisions in the U.S. post-9/11 ripping the country apart -- was big and broad enough to subsume the superhero characters into the mass of humanity, so that Cap and Iron Man could double for, say, folks in your office going a little more to the left and right, pulling a little harder.  And I think it’s telling that CIVIL WAR was the only one of these things fronted by Mark Millar, who, for whatever his faults, has a real gift for cooking up these pliable concepts.

And that’s a virtue for a tentpole crossover event to have, because they’re the most mechanical fucking things in the genre, they need to accommodate X number of supplements of varying plot importance, they need to officiate the direction of X number of superhero brands for however long a period, they have to feel big and crucial and extinction-level in a manner ideally broader than any of the provincial plot movements building up to them (most of which will have been headed by entirely different writers, or even editors) - it’s really tough.  So when I look at FEAR ITSELF #1, I mostly see superheroes in charge, paternalistically tackling (or, this being a contemporary superhero comic, considering the imminent tackling of) some world-killing threat that just doesn’t sync well with the kitchen table worries of Main Street America, as I think they still say, because the mechanics of superhero crossovers aren’t particularly conductive to much else without some real inspiration firing itself off.

Which isn’t to say I don’t recognize details in the allegory; I’d differ a little from you in that I see the story’s Gods as less religious forces than a separate elite from the superheroes, the inward-looking movers & shakers and ultra-rich of the world vs. the civic-minded leaders and philanthropic entrepreneurs of the spandex set that are gonna get sick with the word’s Fear - but, y’know, the latter are gonna get sick for our good.  This is a Great Men story, and it sure looks like it’s gonna be the “greatest” getting things done less as avatars for our potential as humans and citizens but on our behalf, because we humans can’t do it. Which admittedly is a potential appeal of the superhero concept, but the feint of FEAR ITSELF points us toward a more humanistic objective, even as the structural necessities of the crossover book set superheroes apart from Us, and Our problems.

Because of this, the on-page political stuff seems like a sop to sophistication, or a backdrop, or even just a more roundabout means of squeezing our sympathies for great heroes that suffer so much, which makes them awesome and mythic and cool, and I don’t see that as too many dozens of feet away from narrative captions and/or expository chatter directly alerting us to the soul-searing virtue of Hal Jordan or Barry Allen or whomever is most in the foreground.

JEFF:  I think Jog’s got a really good take on this so I guess all I can really do is come clean: I ignored the politics of CIVIL WAR, then ignored all of Marvel’s big events after I bailed on that mini.  (I’m not sure it’s done me any harm, although my understanding is I missed out on some neat-o stuff in WORLD WAR HULK.)

So, reading the first issue of FEAR ITSELF--the first big event I’ve bothered with in something like five years--my reaction to the political stuff was largely one of bewilderment: like, how closely are we supposed to map these things?  Like that opening scene with people rioting seemed as close to contextless as could be imagined, so how do I interpret it? Are those people freaking out because the God of Fear is manipulating them even though he doesn’t get freed until later on (provided the sickly dude freed by Sin is indeed the God of Fear)?  Or are they just freaking out for the same reason people in our America were, because mainstream news outlets were whipping them into a frenzy?  Then we’re told that they’re freaking out over jobs?  So...why isn’t the riot taking place in front of an unemployment office, or a Wal-Mart?

Are the Asgardians shown abandoning us supposed to represent the Republican Party turning their backs on any kind of deal with the Democrats? Are they supposed to represent the Tea Party, a generation of entitled Baby Boomers who after wrecking their own fucking magical city with a host of bad decisions, refuse to play nice with the rest of us? Or do they represent me, who at this point regards both Democrats and Republicans as two sides of one ugly, rigged piece of political theater that is either robbing us of our rights very slowly or terrifyingly quickly?  Because if you wanted to make a case that I’m a scared and pissed-off Asgardian god with regards to our political situation now, someone who just wants to cut out for a chilly Norwegian clime with good national healthcare and decent housing, rather than hang around to see the whole stupid fucking thing fall apart?  You probably could.

I dunno.  Maybe issue #2 will make the whole situation more clear, but I say: who cares?  Maybe Marvel lost the right to be the political chronicler of our times when it apologized to The Tea Party for offending it?

I mean, sadly, the cleanest way the whole situation maps for me is that Marvel Comics, like a lot of mainstream news organizations, is in the fear-mongering business, and for the same reasons: it’s a reliable way to make a buck. Just as a supposedly moderate organization like CNN makes all kinds of crazy cash by focusing on disaster, Marvel holds its own status quo hostage and floods the comics press with announcements about the coming deaths of its own heroes. Maybe the Asgardians are supposed to represent comics readers, walking away from comics’ biggest titles in droves of one to three percent per month?

Ultimately, I don’t know what to tell you (other than I am clearly turning into a hideous mutant hybrid of Noam Chomsky and Abe Simpson as I age). It seemed kinda dull, FEAR ITSELF #1--lovely art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger, and Laura Martin, to be sure, but kind of a snoozer. Ultimately, the politics were just frosting--hideous, hideous frosting--on a big ol’ heap of snoozy dullcake. I just hope issue #2 has more punching.

BRIAN: I’ve never been a fan of trying to put modern political analogy into superhero comics. If it comes out unintentionally, from the views of the authors, that’s a different thing, but consciously putting it in tends to be fairly embarrassing for all concerned -- everywhere from “you work for the blue skins, but what about the black skins”, to the Englehart era Captain America (I think Jeff and Graeme will hang me for that one), where a decade later it’s all so clunky and self-absorbed reading.

Millar would be, I think, the only one who actually made it work in a crossover, and that’s probably because he isn’t an American.

JEFF: You’re saying Millar made modern political analogies work in superhero comics but Steve Englehart didn’t? Oh, Hibbs...

CHRIS: I agree with everyone that direct political mappings are a fool's errand, both on the part of the creators and the readers. A lot of it stems from taking that whole "realistic Marvel heroes" thing too far: it's great that Hank Pym has an inferiority complex and Spider-Man has girl trouble, but classic Marvel never extended that to have Reed and Sue fighting about Goldwater's campaign platform and Daredevil tussle with tort reform.

Inasmuch as "people worry about their futures" informs Fear Itself, I didn't mind that serving as background flavor. It's understandable that Common Folk would look at the troubles of the Avengers and Asgardians as trifling distractions as best and abuse of power at worst, the same way they might the NFL Lockout or Goldman Sachs bonuses. But that should only be thematic resonance: when the books drill it down to involve the "Ground Zero Mosque" or something equally Ripped from the Headlines it forces readers, consciously or otherwise, to consider Super Heroes in the Real World, which given the relatively ground "world outside your door" status quo both Marvel and DC aspire to, becomes ridiculous. I do think the second issue did a decent job of backing off on that, for what it's worth.

DAVID: Abhay, I was with you on your Bush Trilogy until you got to the Old Testament God, at which point you made my brain explode with frustration. Long story short, I think equating the Sentry with Old Testament angry God outside of anything other than “they were both judgmental dicks” is barking up the wrong World Tree - I doubt that Bendis, the son of a Rabbi, was trying to make any kind of religious statement about the ascension of mankind against false gods who were basically the dude who iced Sodom and Gomorrah. I can’t really think of a way to put this other than that I think it’s so cynical and wrongheaded it makes me cry. I recognize the comparison Bendis makes Dark Avengers #13 regarding Siege and the Plagues of Egypt, but not only was it like two pages long, it’s never been mentioned again.

I don’t think the political relevance scenes in this issue work at all, largely because I think sticking political relevancy into this story was a gigantic mistake. There’s a time that had to come where a Marvel comic had to rely on more than just thinly-veiled metaphors for what’s on CNN, and that was now, and Fear Itself can’t decide whether it’s the future or the past.

It feels like Final Crisis had a really awkward college one-night stand with Civil War and this was the result. There’s an interesting comic about the dissolution of American optimism in here, and there’s also a totally separate, interesting comic about a dark secret at the root of the Asgardian pantheon that threatens to use humans against them. But it’s hard to think of the Asgardian Gods as Gods when they don’t have any worshippers, and it’s hard to equate their presence with any kind of actual religion.

ABHAY: I think you might be giving more weight to intent and the biography of the authors than I do-- though in this case, maybe that’s my fault; maybe that’s something I invited because I was unclear on what I was saying. Namely: by having political themes in the backgrounds of these stories, in a glib way, so that crossovers can be marketed as being “important for our times,” that what tends to result is that those themes tend to not be serviced with the same level of care as the Violent Men with Hammers in the foreground. And as a result, the stories inadvertently tend to seem unintentionally crazy when read in a way that ISN’T the enormously dull, surface-level way they were “intended” to have been read-- but which readings have nevertheless been invited by the marketing (of which, the authors are participants and complicit). Anyways, sometimes, even well-crafted stories have unintended meanings-- I don't put any weight on authorial intent, in general.

Setting aside intent: The Sentry was depicted as being responsible for the Biblical plagues at about the same exact time SIEGE came out, no? One of the two pages you reference from DARK AVENGERS issue #13, you can still find online-- the only words on the page are “there is only one true God” on it, with the art depicting the Sentry/Void about to open a can of Bible-story on some primitive peoples. That scene mirrors the finale of SIEGE-- Sentry/Void laying waste to another city. I don’t know why that scene’s place in continuity-- i.e. that it merely wasn’t mentioned again-- should trump its place in the publication history. I mean, I understand you don’t read that sequence the way I do, but... then how do read it? For me: I liked SIEGE more once I noticed it having that theme to it. Then, at least there was something to it. Otherwise, it was just a series of haphazard, random events. With that theme, it’s at least kind of neat in a weird kind of way. (Well, I still don’t get what was going on with Loki’s character but … Apparently, that’s a thing they’re answering now in Kieron Gillen’s THOR book, which … is helpful... I hope Gillen explains whatever winds up being nonsensical with FEAR ITSELF a year from now, too.)

DAVID: Actually, I’m pretty much with you with regards to Siege having a thematic void at its center (pun intended). It’s just hard for me to attach much actual weight to that original Sentry sequence in Dark Avengers, at least within Siege’s thematic framework, largely because it came off to me less as anything theological and more as Bendis just trying to make something that would look badass. Which was a lot of my problem with Siege, when it was all done - it was almost less a story and more a cathartic process for Marvel readers.

TUCKER: I have to skip to one part of Abhay’s original question here, that being the “kind of stuff you think about” part, to which I say: no, not really. I think it’s interesting in a conversational/bloggy interchange to discuss the broader strokes of what Marvel has tried to do with their event comics (or Fraction’s Israel stuff in Uncanny X-Men, or Millar’s proto-fascism in the Ultimates), but generally speaking, I don’t think about this stuff when I’m reading these because I don’t ever find that sort of thinking to be layered in that well. Like--great art notwithstanding, how horribly put together is that pre-riot scene? Steve and Sharon aren’t anywhere near the two sides of people who will soon be battling back and forth, and half the riot cops are standing around jawing away like it’s a regular day. It’s a crap layout, and while it has some real world relevance in a really earnest n’ dumb high school presentation on legalizing weed kind of way, all I can think about is how silly it is for a super-hero to be in that situation in the first place. Did Steve drive up, walk into the middle of that gigantic construction site, tell Sharon to turn around, and then proceed to speak in a normal tone of voice to a bunch of people on the other side of a barricade that’s far away from him? That’s what I’m thinking about. Why that happened. How that happened. I can’t even start caring when I’ve already been shown the door.

That being said, I get that the politics of these things are what matters to a certain kind of reader, but I feel like that’s a post-Millar type of thing, because Civil War had stuff that was cool to look at in terms of super-hero type of cool, like Captain America fighting a plane and Punisher shooting people in their pumpkin face. Then they went all the way into action and violence with World War Hulk, only to pull back to meandering “politics” and character-killing in Secret Invasion and Siege, because Bendis doesn’t like action comics. Now that it’s Fraction--I don’t know what his shtick is on these things, and that “not knowing” makes Fear Itself compelling in the same way it would be if Brubaker or Aaron wrote one of these things (as opposed to Bendis or Johns or Millar, where you already have an idea of what you’re going to get), although I don’t think Brubaker & Aaron in the same “time to prove it, can’t write Thor guy” as Fraction is. This is it for him, you know? He’s got that architect cred going, he still interviews better than the rest of Marvel, Casanova is good again, but he can’t seem to pull off super-hero comics the way the rest of the crew can. And based off of this issue, which seems to spend a massive amount of time building a concept (the “go make some jobs” idea) only to undercut that and dump it completely as an idea before the issue is over, I’m not sure what to think. Why couldn’t this issue’s content have been handled in the prequel comic? That Watcher confrontation is classic build-up-to-something stuff, and wouldn’t it have been more engaging for an event comic to begin with the bad guy characters IN action instead of being named? Its a truism dating back to elementary school that desperation makes the ugly even uglier, and I sort of wonder if that isn’t the case here, if I’m not looking at a comic that’s trying way too hard to deliver something that the key players involved (both Immonen and Fraction) just don’t have that much interest in, because their current status demands that they do so from time to time.

* * *

QUESTION #2-

ASKED ON MAY 6, 2011

UPON THE RELEASE OF FEAR ITSELF ISSUE #2

* * *

ABHAY: With FEAR ITSELF #2, what I guess I found myself thinking about is how the big crossovers have so rarely had great villains. CRISIS OF INFINITE EARTHS had the Anti-Monitor-- I don't really remember him much but I guess he was o-kay-ish. CIVIL WAR had Iron Man-- I thought that was pretty neat. Past those two, though...? ZERO HOUR (Extant), SECRET INVASION (the Skrull Queen), SIEGE (The Green Goblin), INVASION (aliens), ARMAGGEDON 2001 (Monarch), INFINITE CRISIS (Superboy)... for me, for my money, that is a lame bunch, right there. Not impressive. (We may have to agree to disagree which bucket you'd put FINAL CRISIS (Darkseid) in...)

So then: are you into the villains in FEAR ITSELF, two issues in? They seemed to be the focus of the second issue: (1) Odin tells us that they're scary, using all of his words; (2) familiar faces are transformed into a villain team called The Worthy; (3) Evil Fear God Guy rants and raves, and uses the word "vermin", and (4) villains blow some monuments up. Oh, also, (5) some weird thing about autism rates rising (?)...

Personally, I don't really understand what's cool about The Worthy. I guess the big news from issue #2 is that Juggernaut and the Hulk are now going to take a break from rampaging through the Marvel Universe to... rampage through the Marvel universe in a brand new set of clothes...? Hulk has Tron-dreadlocks now-- be afraid. "Hulk goes on a rampage" has been the premise of every Hulk comic ever, except for, like, three Peter David issues in the mid-1990's where Gray Hulk was a fluffer on the Bangbus. Why is it special for people now just because he has Tron-dreadlocks? And then at the end of the issue, after this incredibly long and drawn-out introduction of the Worthy, the entire issue ends with "Oh, by the way, Nazis totally have robot-suits now. Fuck you, America!" Where did that come from??  What happened to the guys with hammers?

So, what, all in all, the premise of FEAR ITSELF, if I understand it correctly, is the Marvel Universe takes on some God dude, super-strong villains wearing exciting new fashionz, Nazi mechs, FOX News, autism rates, the Tea Party, the economy, unicorns with herpes, naked old men in gym locker rooms, rich kids from the summer camp across the lake, Andy Dick on PCP, a guy on cocaine who wants to talk about The Who for a couple hours, whoever killed Biggie and Tupac, and Omarosa from the first season of The Apprentice.

Of course, that might be what we should expect, for crossovers to be weak on villains. Assembling all those superheros together-- how hard must it be to think of a threat that Wolverine or Superman can't solve in 5 minutes, let alone one that would take EVERY SINGLE hero assembled to defeat. That must be extremely difficult. Do you care? When it comes to mainstream superhero comics-- would you describe yourself as a sympathetic member of the audience or an unsympathetic member of the audience? What do you make of the villains?

 

JOG: As a matter of fact, the Bangbus was the villain of FIRE FROM HEAVEN. Alan Moore called it something else, obviously, but all the Wildstorm kids knew what was really cruising through Ideaspace in ‘96, or so I’ve read in my studies of library microfiche. I think Deathblow shot its tires out?

But anyway, now that we’re two issues in, I’m personally thinking less of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS and more of its slightly older Marvel counterpart, MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS, which was so ahead of the crossover curve it needed to assess you as to the presence of Marvel Super Heroes as a collective unit in the very title. Especially if you were just popping in from the toy store, since the whole thing was predicated on the development of a line of action figures, and, fittingly, the Beyonder functioned mostly as a means to the end of banging toys together, i.e. getting a whole lot of superheroes to fight a whole lot of villains, with some cool complications continuing into a few ongoing series. It contrasts quite a bit with the fallout from CRISIS -- the ‘model,’ more or less, for huge-ass crossovers to follow -- which had a vast threat that affected the whole of the DC universe, and thus every DC reader, which I think encourages a bit more fixation as to the particulars of the villain/threat, even if not a lot is actually on the page. In contrast, I suspect in the end the personality of the Beyonder wasn’t so much a necessity as the fact that tons of characters were coming together. Novelty!

I get the feeling that’s what FEAR ITSELF might be going for: a more nebulous threat hovering over a lot of character-on-character battles. Granted, I only have a feeling, since this is, again, a contemporary superhero production and I’m not reading any tie-ins, and it’s looking like we’ll be drawing perilously close to the main series’ halfway point before any big fights start up. Issue #2 is mostly about raising the stakes, and I liked parts of it - especially the Bryan Talbot/Chaykinesque news blips that intermittently assess us as to global calamities, or how the similar-looking location titles and introductory labels to the Hammered characters culminate in the BLITZKRIEG U.S.A.: designation for the double-page spread, which could either formally identify the Nazi mech squad or just give a special ‘oh shit’ ID for the image. Or both. That’s pretty cool. I’m a sympathetic reader to stuff like that, less so the specific implications of SKIRN BREAKER OF MEN, since I don’t read a lot of superhero comics, and I suspect I’m meant to fill in some of the space here with my preexisting attitudes toward these characters.

As a result the whole gathering process left the issue feeling both narratively dense and very content-light for me; mostly I wondered if Fraction is planning a long riff on Geoff Johns under the guise of tying elements of the project into a certain motion picture in theaters now, which is totally the toy line of today. I haven’t read a whole lot of GREEN LANTERN, so I might wind up out at sea with that, but it might still be more fruitful subtext than pursuing the political stuff from issue #1, which might be congealing already into a miscellaneous OH FUCK SHIT SHIT SUPERHEROES SAVE US!! Those thankless peons.

Brian: More broadly, I’d say the best antagonist-in-a-crossover would probably be Thanos in INFINITY GAUNTLET. I understood what Thanos wanted, and how he would logically achieve his goal, and that gave the story much greater weight to me than created-for-the-series antagonists like the Anti-Monitor.

To a large extent, I’d say that these kinds of big stories CAN’T work unless the players “have skin in the game”. Oh, sure you can do “well it doesn’t matter, because the entire POINT is to smash the action figures together” kind of stories like MARVEL SUPERHEROES SECRET WARS or, even more prototypically, CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS where the specific antagonist is rather beside the point. On the DC side, INVASION would fall into that bucket, probably, or the not-a-crossover of SUPERMAN VERSUS MUHAMMED ALI (Seriously, can anyone remember anything about the alien race of the McGuffins, except maybe Hunya?) – but I tend to think that the crossovers that really “work” (INFINTY GAUNTLET, CIVIL WAR on the Marvel side; possibly FINAL CRISIS and BLACKEST NIGHT on the DC side) stem from long-standing character’s long standing motivation.

The PROBLEM with doing that, however, is that crossovers tend to remove the antagonist from the Board for a long period of time – sometimes from “after you’ve killed half the universe you can’t rob banks” or just from sheer overexposure (who wants to ever see the Beyonder again, and that was 30 something years ago!). It isn’t entirely impossible to reverse that – Fraction destroyed and rebuilt Tony Stark’s mind in order to make him reasonably palatable again – but Thanos had to “go away” for nigh on 20 years because by the end of the THIRD “Infinity” crossover-thingy, who wanted to see HIM again for awhile?

FEAR ITSELF seems to be trying to walk a thin line here, with making… well do we call her The Red Skull now, or just Sin? godpowered. Presumably, they can un-God her at the end, and still have a viable antagonist (though, dunno, Nazism is pretty played out these days, ain’t it?), but my problem here is more that it took a continuity implant to get her godpowered in the first place.

With regards to The Worthy themselves, there’s something about them that rub me the wrong way. Part of it is the somewhat illogical notion of these magic hammers that need a specific and exact character to wield them (Absorbing Man can’t touch the hammer, but Titania can?), which seems slightly off for a species of gods tens of thousands of years old, and there’s also some weird duplication there. I kind of get “breaker of earth” and “breaker of oceans”, but doesn’t “breaker of worlds” INCLUDE “earth” and “oceans”. We’ll see how the crossovers themselves shake out, but it almost feels like lazy do-what-thou-wilt storytelling, and it wouldn’t shock me if we eventually get a “breaker of [something for plot convenience]” in some book at some point.

I may be wrong, but I think I think that the best crossover stories are ones that have very very specific Big Beats, and every crossover is in specific relationship to those beats – the more specific instances there are, the more the crossover issues themselves can drift into other directions, the less successful the event, as a whole, becomes.

Again, like INFINITY GAUNTLET, maybe – there’s like only one tiny bit of it that takes place “on earth”, and the rest is off and cosmic and not able to be derailed/diluted by other stories.

Take the crossover issue FEAR ITSELF: YOUTH IN REVOLT #1, where, if I read it correctly Steve Rogers finds a leader for, and has him recruit a super team made up of characters from ALL FIFTY of the “state-based initiative” teams from the last cycle of crossovers. They appear to accomplish this between the first hammer’s landing, and the attack on DC, which appears to be, dunno, an hour or so max? This weakens the main story, in my mind.

Also: we never ever ever EVER need to see Washington DC being attacked in another comic ever again. Especially in the DC and Marvel universes where you HAVE to assume they have access to KirbyTech or better. The US government can build a helicarrier for Shield, and Life Model Decoys, and they can’t protect the Washington mall from nazi robot rockets? Really?

Anyway, “The Worthy” seem to me less examples of strong antagonists as an attempt to get a few more action figures released somewhere.

TUCKER: Aw shit, I gotta be that guy on this one? I think I gotta be that guy.

Invasion was the way to do it right, no shit. I can tell this is a Marvel room here, so why not become a sympathetic audience member and let me play this out right now: the thing that makes the bad guys in Invasion work is that they’re all a part of one really sudsy melodrama, and that melodrama is put together in a way that’s engaging even if you separate it from the super-hero stuff that surrounds it, which is something I don’t think that a lot of these comics we’re talking about can claim as well. The creative excitement I find in most of these comics isn’t usually tied into what the villains do, it’s in how the super-heroes react to those villains, and in Invasion, that’s all reversed. All the alien species are teamed up in the face of the common enemy, and they’re wiling to ignore some longstanding grudges with one another because they just hate the hell out of Earth, and wish to see it brought low.

There’s a decent bit of palace intrigue, none of which ever gets as boring or convoluted as that sort of thing usually gets, and it ends up dovetailing right into the conclusion of the series, when the agreements fall apart and people start switching sides. Since we’re dealing with a strength-in-numbers type of bad guy, there’s no reason why they can’t show up again and again, although I’m not sure how often they do outside of REBELS or Lobo comics. Dominators and Khunds can still be baddies in one-shots, they can still randomly team up, and while I hope it never happens, they could still conceivably unite and form a world-threat all over again if they wanted to.

CHRIS: At least the Nazis in Fear Itself mostly spent the past seven decades on ice -- I prefer Unfrozen Nazi Menace to People Who Would've Grown Up Watching The Cosby Show and Are Now Nazi Stormtroopers you often get.

Sometimes just having a Dangerous Force is enough. Secret Wars was a perfectly nice Everybody Fights Everybody event where the Beyonder was a disembodied voice commanding everyone to fight. When it came time to flesh his character out, you got Secret Wars II, where God gave himself parachute pants and a Jheri Curl and Spider-Man had to teach him how to poop.

The important thing for Big Crossover Villain is to establish their goals. The Serpent presumably wants to Wreck Shit and Enslave or Exterminate Humanity, which is something he has in common with Darkseid, the Skrulls, the Alien Alliance in Invasion, the demons in Inferno, etc. I'll also accept the motive of Kill Everything Ever, a la Thanos or Nekron in Blackest Night. Where the Big Crossover Villain often fails is when you really don't know what their endgame is. Can anyone explain what Sinestro and his posse was going for in Sinestro Corps War? Was there a scenario where Superboy Prime would just tire himself out killing nobodies and take a nap? What did Norman Osborn think was going to happen after he goes crazy and commits treason and kills a bunch of people on global television?

And two issues in, I'm still not really sure what The Serpent's plan is, beyond Do Bad Things. It's *probably* to take over the world, but why does he need a crew of seven Hammer Guys to do that? Why is he enlisting Nazi Robots, if he's as fantastically powered as he seems to be? Couldn't he just make more hammers? Is he mind-controlling the non-Hammered villains who are shown tearing up cities? It'd be great, even if it was Geoff Johns style Arbitrary Fart Machine Rules, to know what the Big Crossover Villain is working with.

DAVID: I thought this issue was kind of a mess. There just wasn’t any real gravitas to the Worthy - they had some cool designs, sure, but none of them were particularly surprising and the main plot didn’t really move itself in any meaningful way past what we already saw in the teasers at the end of last issue. We knew Thor would get locked up, the Worthy would get their hammers and Washington, D.C. would be attacked; this isn’t even a matter of reading solicitations, this was all shown in the teaser that ended #1. I was expecting the issue to go past those points and give us something more; something to make the Serpent a remotely compelling villain. But so far, not only is he not walking the walk, he barely talks the talk. Fraction seems like he’s going for one of those grand poetic Shakespearean avatars of evil, the Darkseid take, but the Serpent’s threats seem really hollow. Make them fear us, make them pay, bla, bla, bla. He’s got zero charisma, and his design is just an old suit with a fur cape and a cane. He looks like a lost fucking hobo-pimp, not the God of Evil.

I get that he wants to usurp Odin and take his place as the Allfather again (how the fuck does that work, anyway?) but I can’t really care about whether he succeeds or not. There’s nothing really personal here, except against Odin, who’s acting like a gigantic fucking douchebag anyway. And as for Sin, she’s barely gotten any lines in the book so far, and seems considerably less bloodthirsty and well-defined than she was (even though I hated her character) when she was the jailbait half of Nazi Bonnie and Clyde with Crossbones in Brubaker’s Captain America. I realize this is supposed to feel like a huge threat from the pasts of both Cap and Thor, but so far neither major antagonist has really interested me at all. A Loki/Johann Schmidt Red Skull team-up would be even more boring, so kudos to Fraction to trying to create some new characters and add to the mythology, but so far he’s been spending too much time on montages of dudes picking up hammers and taking up mystifying names (is Absorbing Man going to be “Breaker of Women” with a Kirby-circuit dick like Titania’s fallopian tube pattern?). Stop pulling back from the exposition and make me give a shit.

JEFF: I’m gonna punt on this one, in part because I spent wayyyyy too many words on the next question, and also because I think FEAR ITSELF #2 was too crappy for me to want to think about it very much. On the final page when some transmission is caterwauling “Where are the super heroes? Who’s coming to save us--?” and you realize that the super heroes haven’t gone anywhere, they’re just...in transit or something? That’s when you realize how badly shit has been bungled. I mean, really, the only “heroes” whose absences are accounted for in the issue itself are Hulk and Thor (and Red She-Hulk, whatever they’re calling her); I could almost see if all of The Worthy had been heroes whose compulsion to grab those hammers came at crucial moments of the heroes’ response to mecha-Nazis, but....nah, apparently not.

The villains are flat, the heroes have very little to say, the story beats are repetitive and without impact. It’s bad in a very different way from, I dunno, ZERO HOUR (where all the superheroes talk only to introduce one another, and the crisis only appears to be endangering a status quo, and the reader’s hand is held from one boring event to the next) but it’s equally bad, if not worse. FEAR ITSELF #2 seems to me to be such a profound failure of craft, it’s almost impossible to use it to analyze anything other than the importance of not putting a two page ad for Thor Slurpees immediately after the climax of a five page sequence about Thor and the Asgardians. Even Miller and Mazzuchelli’s BATMAN: YEAR ONE wouldn’t have survived that.

End of Part OnePart Two resumes on Wednesday.