Quarter Bin #32 "Kaboom, Slott's Spider-Man, LXG, and Bane"

KABOOM #s 1-3 (Awesome)
From July, August, & December 1999:
I eagerly read the original KABOOM mini-series from creators Jeph Loeb and Jeff Matsuda, but the follow-up came after I quit reading comics in 1999, so I never even knew it existed until strolling through the back issues at Heroes & Dragons and coming across some covers I didn’t recognize. The good news is that Awesome did manage to produce some more KABOOM before it imploded, the not-so-good news is that some if not all the charm from the original comics were lost in translation, the loss of Matsuda and addition of Keron Grant on art. Grant apparently had no idea that the art was what helped make KABOOM shine in its previous incarnation, with Matsuda driving the narrative Loeb crafted into something that resembled the comics DC was doing at the time with the same youth leads, but with an expansive concept that introduced something new to the genre, something I hoped would have staying power. With more generic art, it’s not as easy for the story (shaped by Rob Liefeld but still scripted by Loeb, who doesn’t get near enough respect from fans) to distinguish itself from the sea of indy comics competing for attention, which is probably what happened to the comics scene at the time in general, not just Awesome (which boasted its biggest gun with Alan Moore, who quickly bolted to create America’s Best Comics when this gig ended). Needless to say, whether or not this version of KABOOM impacted me the same way as the first one, I remain a fan, hoping that more will come of it.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #655 (Marvel)
From April 2011:
This will not be the only pretty-recent back issue in the coming weeks (there’s one more), but it’s an example of what started to happen last year, when I really was trying to quit spending money I don’t really have on things I enjoy, namely new comics, and not always completely succeeding, mostly because I find comics to be a continually rewarding medium. Dan Slott’s Big Time was shaping up to be a worthy successor to Brand New Day, perhaps even better, but I couldn’t justify trying to read a mostly weekly series when I shouldn’t have been reading any series at all. Early in the run I heard about this issue, marked by a stark white cover by Marcos Martin, in which Peter Parker mourns the death of J. Jonah Jameson’s wife, a personal defeat at a time when it seemed like Slott would finally help develop Spider-Man into less of a caricature than he tends to be portrayed by most creators (as I’ve suggested, Brand New Day was a giant exception, which is why I enjoyed following it, the only time I’ve been a regular reader of one of my favorite superheroes) than a multi-dimensional character with a fully-developed world worthy of his famous origins and not just the typical Marvel machine built around hype and generic storytelling. Yet it appears that even Slott has succumbed to the pressure of delivering Spider-Man as he’s been traditionally presented by the House of Ideas, making this perhaps the standout issue to date of his run, and now perhaps atypical. So I suggest you read it, and prove me wrong if I’m wrong, because I don’t have the experience to be comprehensive of Slott’s run for the past year, falling back on the impression I’ve gotten from events like “Spider-Island,” which don’t feel like they’re worthy of the intimate approach I originally assumed Slott was going to stick with.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN #5 (America’s Best Comics)
From June 2000:
Hey! So let me now chime in here at Comics Reader on one of the biggest comic book stories of 2012, namely DC’s decision to go forward with BEFORE WATCHMEN, and Alan Moore’s bitter renunciation of the project. There’s are reasons to side with Moore, and there are reasons to believe that he’s a bitter old man intent to reject anyone trying to make him, or his legacy, do anything without his explicit approval. Moore is without a doubt one of the greatest writers to ever grace the medium, but at this point he’s better known for being crotchety about film adaptations and angrily swearing off any notion of the mainstream, instead retreating to, well, others people’s creations and his interpretations of them. Some people defend his decision to do this by saying it’s different from what he himself has been disputing all these years, because he’s alive and, say, Mark Twain is not. He can make decisions based on whether or not he personally created something and can make a public and legal claim to that effect, whereas Twain cannot (because, to borrow from Monty Python, he has ceased to be). I respect Moore, but he’s become a writer less influenced by the need to create new and compelling work than provoking a reaction. LXG is a prime example, blending a number of disparate literary creations to assemble a historic Justice League. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, and this issue (the penultimate one of the original mini-series) exhibits a sober result, but I can’t help lament the loss of the guy who used to do this stuff to more productive results. Is there an argument out there that LXG is comparable to WATCHMEN? Because I think that would make a far more compelling argument than anything Moore has said in the past few months.

CHECKMATE #12 (DC)
From May 2007:
Speaking of diminished returns, even Greg Rucka apparently didn’t have anything relevant to say about Bane a few years ago. (I suppose the case would be different if Bane had boobs, because Fire receives more nuanced treatment in this issue.) It’s incredible to me that a character who started out with such a specific and dramatic origin as Bane was so easily reduced to “that big dude who used drugs to pump up and break Batman’s back,” and set off on increasingly meaningless further adventures, eventually winding up a virtual punchline and not even a shadow of his former self in Gail Simone’s SECRET SIX, a book shared by Catman, whose revival in the same INFINITE CRISIS prelude material that helped bring us this incarnation of Checkmate rescued him from exactly that fate (or, to be more accurate, actually made a character out of him). Thank god for Christopher Nolan, is all. Thank god he was able to figure out that there was a reason Bane was created in the first place, and it wasn’t to slum by on a distortion or outright simplification of his reason for existence. I think there’s BANE OF THE DEMON waiting for me to read somewhere, perhaps the only other time besides “Knightfall” and the two VENGEANCE OF BANE one-shots where reading Bane is actually worthwhile. I may have to work on tracking that one down, and quit expecting to read just any random appearance to not be, more or less, a waste of my time…

(This week's column brought to you by Bitter Returns.)