Reading Comics 171 "A Frustrating Week"

Last week I ended up skipping on Justice League: Gods and Monsters - Batman #1 (DC), but I decided to get it this week, along with JL:GaM - Superman #1.  These are comics that help flesh out Bruce Timm's return to the animated DC fold after helping shape its legacy (along with Paul Dini) in the '90s and early 2000s with Batman, Superman, and Justice League cartoons.  I initially skipped out because the art inside Batman was nothing like the Timm I know, but I guess if these spin-offs go in a different direction artistically, it only goes to emphasize the stories more.  Batman features Kirk Langstrom, the erstwhile Man-Bat, in the role of the Dark Knight, having transformed himself, instead of a giant bat, into a vampire.  But the neat thing about the story is that it focuses on the matter of whether or not Batman does what he does because he enjoys it or out of a sense of justice.  Superman features a Man of Steel, meanwhile, who ends up being raised by Mexican immigrants, ending up more resentful as a superhero as a result.  I guess these are the variations that make them monsters...

Anyway, when I entitled this week's edition "A Frustrating Week," I wasn't really thinking about Gods and Monsters, but rather a couple of comics I tried for the first time because of my familiarity with the writers.  (J.M. DeMatteis, by the way, wrote both GaM tie-ins.)  The first sampling was Low #8 (Image) from Rick Remender, and the second was Sex Criminals #11 (Image) from Matt Fraction.  Remender is one of those writers I seem to constantly go back and forth on.  Recently I had gotten around to liking him again thanks to his Captain America work.  Fraction, meanwhile, just concluded what ought to be considered a seminal run on Hawkeye.  Both are well-known for their creator-owned work, as well.  The problem is, these particular efforts seem to have been greenlit by Image with the express interest of trying to duplicate or at least build off the momentum of Saga (which in effect makes them like all the superhero comics that all these nonsuperhero comics are constantly trying to say they're more interesting than for the simple fact of being more original in a vast sea of superhero comics...).

Low, for instance, is the latest in an increasingly long list of comics that hinge a great deal on their art and distinctive coloring, not to mention general sci-fi adventure flavoring.  In a lot of ways, Saga provoked Image into returning to the art-heavy days of its origins, but in a more thoughtful, nuanced way.  The problem is, if Image starts to produce a lot of comics with the same general artistic interests (what is otherwise termed a house style), they all begin to be lost in the shuffle.

Like Deadly Class, Remender apparently takes Low personally, and has attracted, or so the letters column suggests, an audience that seems to have instinctively gotten exactly whatever it is he's trying to accomplish.  Because the results, as with Deadly Class, are somewhat impenetrable.  And again, part of that is because the art so thoroughly dominates the storytelling, the story itself becomes lost in the shuffle.

Sex Criminals, meanwhile, is one of those comics intended to appeal to that hip audience that gravitates to taboo material, or otherwise "mature audiences" that premium cable seems to think must include, well, sex.  Graphic sex.  And again, Saga opened those doors.  The gimmick behind Fraction's comic is that the central characters stop time every time they have sex.  This would be an excellent gimmick indeed, if this were any other medium besides a comic book, which by nature exists in static images.  Which sort of limits the ability for time being stopped looking like anything other than your typical comic book panel...

But the thing is, Fraction seems to have gotten how slim a gimmick that really is, because Sex Criminals is at its best as metafiction, as he addresses the reader directly, explaining certain matters of the art that he talks over rather than allows to be depicted (but not the sex, naturally).

But are either worth reading, at least for someone like me?  I wish.  I really wish, because these are writers I want to like, and every time Remender talks about how personal something is or how much he's risking to do this particular project...I want to believe in the material, too.  But I don't.  I see creators doing stuff because no one told them to try harder.  They go for something easy, or attempt to cash in on some other hot project...

So I was happy indeed to have broken my usual alphabetical reading order and started out with Superman #42 (DC), the continuation of Gene Luen Yang's origin behind the "Truth" crossover event.  This issue we find out who the villain is, a cult figure who calls himself Hordr_Root.  This is another instance of John Romita, Jr. remaining as continuity past the Geoff Johns run paying dividends, because along with the solar flare thing, this is truly a new era for Superman, with new villains popping up, sharing a similar technological bent that speaks to modern times (needless to say, but this guy is similar to but distinctive from Machinist).  If you have no interest in "Truth," then Yang's storytelling at least has something to say about today's controversies over privacy.

Romita, meanwhile, continues to evolve.  If his Superman remains the same, it's striking how his Lois Lane looks a lot like Ron Frenz's.  Frenz was a Superman artist in the '90s.  I actually hated his work a great deal.  But to see it, in a roundabout way, again is to recognize that if just a few things had been different about it, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad.  This is ironic, because Romita's Superman work has received a great deal of criticism, too.  But I'd still take Romita's over Frenz's any day.

Needless to say, but Superman was my favorite read of the week, followed by the expectation-challenging Gods and Monsters and then whichever of the two remaining I can form a more favorable opinion at the given moment...

I won't be checking in for a couple of weeks, as I'll be visiting family in Virginia and hopefully finding a bunch of comics duly pulled for me.  But I won't know for sure until I visit the shop next.  We'll see!