Detective Comics #28 (DC)
I've been obsessed with trying to track down "Gothtopia" issues since Detective Comics #27 was released last year with (among a lot of excellent content) John Layman's kickoff for the arc. It turned out to be a Scarecrow story, but its look at a hopeful Batman and surrounding family, including Catwoman, who was dubbed Catbird, complete with a costume update mixing in elements of Robin's traditional look (that cover is from the Dodsons). Either I've been overlooking that one copy of Detective 28 or I don't know, it spontaneously appeared in bins I've been rifling for months now. Previously, elsewhere, I found the conclusion of the arc, so it's a nice bonus to fill in some of the gaps.
This is the first New 52 Catwoman I've read, and the first Catwoman, really, since the '90s (in the height of the Jim Balent era featuring a costume and anatomy that in hindsight really makes very little sense for the character). I'm glad I read the Detective issue, too, as it connects all the cerebral dots and may actually be the finest Batman I've read from Layman.
Based on a short-lived TV series the late creator of the Muppets launched in 1988, this is fairy tale storytelling in the manner of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. As represented by S.M. Vidaurri, who writes, draws, and letters in an exquisitely imaginative manner, this is an excellent bid to once again expand Henson's legacy.
Vidaurri also happens to present a tale that fits right in the current trend of strong female protagonists in fantasy, featuring a young princess who cleverly solves the riddle of her brother's disappearance and the only way to avoid the curse that had been meant to be leveled against their father.
The page I've reproduced on the left is one of the easier to follow. Most of the pages require a little more scrutiny than readers are probably used to employing. Some of the best creative work I've seen in comics.
The final five issues of the series that I greedily (finally!) snatched up. When the series was still being published, for whatever reason I skipped over it month after month. What a dastardly shame! But seriously, Larfleeze was likely always a short-term proposition, especially given how its main character by definition plays extremely hard to play with. Unless you're G'Nort. Which, by the way, is pronounced "Nort," not "G Nort," which is what idiots like me have been doing for years, even with occasional correction. G'Nort is infamously the most pathetic Green Lantern ever, and so of course is the other one famously featured in Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis's Bwa-ha-ha League comics (one clue as to the other: "One punch!").
Finally pairing Larfleeze with G'Nort is just one of the brilliant repositioning moves Giffen and DeMatteis make in these final issues. They also find Larfleeze a bride, Sena the Wanderer, part of a pantheon about as pathetic as everyone else in the series. Anyone brave enough to tell Larfleeze stories in the future would be wise to keep all three (plus hapless butler Stargrave!). The key to telling a good Larfleeze story is to keep him in adequate context (*cough* Deadpool writers), which this series nailed.
The art from Scott Kolins rendered the misadventures with all the dignity absolutely no one deserved, by the way.
You know how you can hear how awesome something is a hundred times, not really pay attention, and then all of a sudden you give it a real chance and you totally get it?
That's what happened here.
Okay, so technically someone pulled a dirty trick, too, perhaps some mind management (that's the title of the series without abbreviation, by the way; honestly not knowing exactly what that was had been one of my main stumbling blocks), when I looked at the letters column in #19 and saw how Matt Kindt have been advocating Roberto Bolano's 2666. I love that book. Subsequently, when I see that someone else has discovered its brilliance, and has been actively recommending it, that's an excellent way to get in my good graces.
The three issues I sampled were more than enough to see that MIND MGMT is special indeed. It's a little like if J.J. Abrams had combined Alias and Lost (Fringe comes close, actually), about a team of government operatives formed in the wake of Franz Ferdinand's assassination, a story ripe for an era where spying has once again gripped the public's imagination (for dubious reasons, alas). And it's a story that unfolds more quickly than you might think. The first issue introduces Meru, a desperate writer looking for her last lifeline and finding it in the anniversary of a flight that became known for every passenger suddenly coming down with amnesia. All except one (the Henry Lyme seen and referenced on the cover of #24 seen above). At this point you might expect an Orson Welles story, but Kindt quickly produces Lyme, and the story only becomes deeper from there.
And I've only read three issues. And you want to know the most insane part of this whole thing? There are only a half dozen issues remaining! So I've caught the bug just in time, haven't I? This happened to me with Y: The Last Man, too, only I was able to follow about the last year of that series.
Next time I'm at the shop, I'll be picking up more issues. And hopefully catching the rest of the series.
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