Reading Comics 164 "Comics from 6/10/15"

Featuring Batman #41, Descender #4, Earth 2: Society #1, Nameless #4, and Saga #29.

Batman #41 (DC)

This whole issue is Scott Snyder doing the hard sell for his new direction.  This can be seen as a good thing, even a smart thing.  But it might also be considered...an acknowledgment that maybe it's not such a good idea after all.  Veteran comics readers know how this game works.  Original character is replaced.  New character attempts to solidify their right to the role.  Original character returns.  Snyder has been playing a little fast and loose with the concept from the start, "killing off" Bruce Wayne while also making it clear (to anyone paying attention) that this didn't actually happen.  And this issue makes that clear, too.  He's sitting in a park on the first and last pages.  Some readers will wonder, is that really Bruce Wayne?  Of course it is.

And that's really Jim Gordon playing at being Batman, too.  Even he pokes fun at the new getup, by the way.  As I said, Snyder plays with fire in the issue.  And it's a little hard to swallow after a while.  I know what you'll say, you veteran of this blog.  I've acknowledged problems reading Snyder in the past.  The conclusion to "Endgame," I said, might have been the point where I put all that behind me.  But I guess it really doesn't work that way.

So this is Snyder trying to do his version of the replacement trope.  As you can see from the above panel, Snyder even gives lip service to all the reasons why this typically happens.  The oddest thing is that there's no one saying Batman needs this right now.  And so why is Snyder even doing it?  Because he's subverting even that part of the narrative?  Hey, since when was Scott Snyder even known as a guy who subverts expectations anyway?

So the issue is actually pretty uncomfortable, and once again I'm telling myself, I'm done with Snyder.  I won't be fooled again!  

We'll see...

Descender #4 (Image)

In strict contrast to Snyder and even to a comic I'll be talking about a little later is this one from the combined genius of Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen.  I happen to love comics, or stories in general, with a lot of moving parts, which is to say components that are being used not necessarily in direct conjunction with each other but that keep things interesting, and this has nothing to do with being simple or complicated, but a general awareness that the creator(s) have figured out what they're doing in an obvious, even if subtle, way.  This means, for instance, what's illustrated above.  What Snyder's done in Batman has sometimes seemed like it wanted to do something like this, but then it turns out most of that was geared toward Batman Eternal and not Batman itself, which is fine and all, but there's a clear difference, and the distinction is that Snyder himself didn't want to affect what he was doing in trying to create an iconic Dark Knight by introducing a lot of dynamic new elements (Court of Owls notwithstanding, or perhaps included).

The above illustrates the difference nicely.  The Driller is somewhat one-dimensional, but serves as a nice contrast to Tim, the little boy robot who's the heart of Descender.  Tim convinces Driller not to be a killer because that would be bad for its future.  But later in the issue, when more mayhem surrounds Tim, he releases Driller from this restriction.  Lemire writes this perfectly, and of course Nguyen is doing the same killer work he's done since Batman: Li'l Gotham.  While Tim's creator Dr. Quon remains about as one-dimensional as Driller, there's also Telsa to be considered.  This is the issue where we begin to find out what makes her interesting.  At first not only as one-dimensional as Driller but as function-centered, she's a reflection of what the series may ultimately be about, breaking away from what others perceive you to be (and hence a sign that Quon will likely receive similar treatment at some point).  Tim himself, especially to Telsa, is just a boy robot programmed to be a "real" boy's best friend.  

Anyway, while Lemire has been careful to keep the action and plot moving, he doesn't do that at the expense of character development, and not just development, but exploration, which is a concept that is usually ignored.  Snyder, for instance, constantly flirts with it, but only in the safest ways possible, which was he allowed himself, and was allowed by DC, to do such a radical Batman/Joker story as "Endgame" ended up being.  But he always backs away.  When other writers aren't backing away, they aren't even attempting it.  Lemire pushes boldly ahead.  Descender, this is to say, is looking like an all-around classic.

Earth 2: Society #1 (DC)

Speaking of character exploration, the thing I liked best about Convergence was how it took Earth 2 and made it better.  When James Robinson started that series, it was about as character-centric as anything DC was publishing at the time.  Convergence came around and took one of Earth 2's characters, Dick Grayson, and pushed him forward.  And interestingly, as with Convergence as a whole, the story clearly didn't end there.  This is to be understood as a hook.  If you care at all about the character, you will want to know how the story continues.  The debut issue of Society keeps that idea going.

The panel above once again is selected for illustrative purposes.  A lot of the successful comics these days are ones that feature a hook for the real world.  The paralyzed Dick Grayson will hopefully join those ranks.  Most of the issue he is in fact running around, but this is also an issue that jumps back and forth in time.  The hook, then, is for the reader to want to continue reading the series, see how exactly Dick reaches the point where he is running around again.  Likely for the same reasons he was in Convergence, because he has some sort of artificial support.  This should be no big problem for someone looking to him as a role model.  Amputees, for instance, are very familiar with this narrative.

So for me, my interest in Earth 2 was absolutely elevated by Convergence, which I believe was one of the main points of the event, and Society is an excellent way to keep that momentum going.

Nameless #4 (Image)

For those two panels (the rest of the page becomes much like the rest of this particular story), Nameless evokes Grant Morrison's own We3, which is one of the best things he's ever done.  The problem is, Nameless is otherwise hellbent on being the weirdest thing Morrison has ever done, The Filth taken to the next level.  Weirdest as in most disturbing.  It's very easy to interpret Nameless as the culmination of Morrison realizing his Batman Inc. collaborator Chris Burnham as being capable of this exact kind of story.

For some comics readers, the weirder is in fact the better.  Comics, in their view, are supposed to shock.  And they have been shocking readers for many decades, sometimes deliberately so.  And Nameless is also a culmination of Morrison's own basic instincts, by the way.

But it's still very hard to enjoy.  I didn't particularly like Burnham in the pages of Batman Inc. either, by the way.  He's a definite proponent of gross-out material. It's sad, because in those panels above, he is clearly capable of stuff that doesn't need to do that.  (Sometimes I assume people who specialize in gross-out do it because they think they need to.)  To link more of this edition of Reading Comics together, Burnham can perhaps take lessons from Fiona Staples.  (I've been leading toward Saga.  There.)  Staples can do a lot of things.  Saga in one sense is designed to let her do a lot of things.  Some of it is explicitly to let her shock the reader.  But it never quite seems as shocking as what Burnham has routinely demonstrated in Nameless.

And it gets in the way, too.  That's the thing.  It distinctly feels as if Morrison is letting Burnham sell most of the concept for him.  And Morrison is routinely guilty of letting the story sell itself rather than bothering to explain it himself.  And when this works, it absolutely works.  But sometimes it doesn't.  And I think that's ultimately why I backed away from The Filth, too, because the more I thought about it, the more I wished Morrison didn't rely so much on the actual filth.  Imagine how much more readers would have hated Final Crisis if it had done that!

So more and more, that's what I think about Nameless.  I wish it evoked Morrison's best instincts more often.  But I also think this whole project is Morrison working his worst instincts out of his system, or simply trying to prove that old image he created of himself was real after all.  Except more and more, I'm convinced it really wasn't.  But what do I know?

Saga #29 (Image)

This issue is something of a bloodbath for supporting characters in Saga.  If this were Star Trek, it would be the redshirt issue.

And there's an image that's not about that at all, and may be one of the defining gross-out images of the whole series, and that's all I'm going to say about that.  Visually, this is about the sum of everything anyone who doesn't like what they've seen could possibly fear to see throughout a whole issue.

Which is also to say, just another issue of Saga.  But really, this really is Saga to the extreme.  And this is definitely one of the odder things about the series.  It doesn't need any of that to be awesome.  Why Brian K. Vaughan has done it at all, and repeatedly, is probably just because he absolutely knows he can get away with it, or because he just really always wanted to see a sci-fi story do it.  There are plenty of people who like their stories like this.  I'm not necessarily one of them.  Usually it's kept to a minimum, one shock per issue, and usually with a bunch of issues that don't feature this sort of thing at all (mostly).

And the thing of it all is that Fiona Staples otherwise has some of the most lush art around, and could as easily sell itself without any of that as Vaughan could write Saga without any of these distractions.  And yes, at this point it has to be considered one of the primary elements of the series, so there's little use complaining about it, especially so many issues into the series, and from a reader who has read a majority of the series...

Anyway, some of this was absolutely inevitable.  And I suppose Vaughan's greater point is that sci-fi that isn't dirty is simply ignoring a great too many realities.  But the long-term potential of Saga is somewhat compromised if this sort of issue will be routine.  Walking Dead does this all the time.  And I've mentioned before that I absolutely think Walking Dead was ruined by making this sort of thing routine.  You can't do a long-term story where the same thing happens over and over again.  After a certain point, the idea becomes routine and therefore pointless, especially if the writer clearly has nothing to say.

The point of this particular issue is that the things that have been happening throughout the series really have been messy, and are doomed to messy conclusions until and perhaps even when the same mistakes stop being made.  We'll see if that's where Vaughan is actually going with this.  The important thing is, the important people are still alive.  For now.