Although this is a back issues feature that doesn't necessarily always feature comics literally found in a quarter bin, this time you can once again safely assume that.
The Infinity Entity #1 (Marvel)
From May 2016.
I love that my local shop puts damaged new releases in the discount bins. It makes it incredibly simple to sample stuff I might have otherwise overlooked, such as Jim Starlin once again revisiting his Infinity saga. Starlin's the guy who has been guiding this stuff from the beginning. You have him to thank for Thanos, that guy who's kind of the big bad in the Avengers movies, and basically, the Infinity saga is Starlin's ongoing narrative of the further exploits of Thanos, and other interested parties, such as Adam Warlock. This mini-series actually takes place between two Starlin graphic novels, Thanos: The Infinity Relativity and Thanos: The Infinity Finale, which was released this past April. Infinity Entity focuses on Adam Warlock as he reintroduces himself following one of those untidy comic book deaths. It's amusing, seeing him interact with the original Avengers. These are Marvel comics I eagerly anticipate reading at some later date, the older and newer stuff. This is, you understand, not something I usually say about Marvel comics...
Iron Man #9 (Marvel)
From July 1997.
I think so much of what Marvel was doing in the '90s came off as desperately trying to look cool (possibly because, oh, the fate of the entire company was in the air thanks to potential bankruptcy) that it ended up alienating older fans and leaving newer fans with the impression that none of this mattered, once the company shifted focus back to more familiar ground. I rarely read Iron Man comics (I've just never been interested), but I figured I had to read this one, as it was written by Jeph Loeb, during that whole period where he was writing Marvel comics without anyone realizing it was Jeph Loeb, because being Jeph Loeb didn't matter until fans got excited about him thanks to DC work like Batman: The Long Halloween and Superman/Batman (which is ironic, because he never gets the same respect at Marvel, and yet that's where he's been for about a decade now). This story features an old Tony Stark colleague who was actually partly responsible for the original set of Iron Man armor, and has since kind of gone off the deep end. Naturally, the guy is totally unknown in today's lore (didn't see him in 2008's Iron Man, right?), and so he's been lost to the same comic book vagaries and/or '90s amnesia that are so easy to rely on with fans. I didn't find it to be such a bad read.
JLA: Act of God #3 (DC)
From 2001.
Doug Moench was one of the lead Batman writers in the '90s (among other things, helping spearhead "Knightfall" and the vampire saga with Kelley Jones; he also created Bane and Black Mask, as well as Deathlok and Moon Knight over at Marvel, where he did most of his formative work). One of his last projects with DC was a prestige format JLA mini-series, Act of God, where he imagined what it would look like if all superpowered heroes suddenly lost their superpowers. By this finale, several of them had banded under the direction of Batman, while Superman and Wonder Woman struggle with finding new meaning in their lives. It's not terribly hard, in retrospect, to read it as Moench's swan song statement, and so I'm glad to have read it.
Justice League of America #8 (DC)
From May 2016.
Bryan Hitch's Rao saga continues in this issue, and I suspect the next one finally explains why all those dead Superman bodies kept showing up, as depicted in the first issue of the series. Hitch's art was once known for its hyper realism, but in this series it's been simplified so that it kind of looks like the work of Stuart Immonen. As a fan of Immonen, I find this acceptable. Hitch is the writer of the Rebirth Justice League (along with art from Tony Daniel), and I think this was a good choice.
The Kingdom: Offspring (DC)
From February 1999.
The Kingdom was Mark Waid's follow-up to Kingdom Come insofar as it depicted many of the next generation heroes from the original story, and featured the menace of Gog, who was responsible for next generation hero Magog. The Kingdom was split up between bookend issues where the overall story was told, and several one-shots. This may be the first time I've read Offspring, which features the son of Plastic Man. Both of them are struggling with the idea of being taken seriously, and as such Offspring makes for a good standalone story in and of itself. It doesn't hurt that Frank Quitely provides the art, because Quitely isn't really capable of doing ho-hum work.
It's interesting, though, The Kingdom, because it's an example of what DC always wanted to do, and eventually did, with Watchmen. I've talked far too much recently about Alan Moore (elsewhere), but suffice to say I find it disappointing that he left mainstream work the way he did, and wanted no part in revisiting Watchmen. For a lot of fans, that's become axiomatic, which strikes me as interesting, because this is the comics medium, the place where storytellers are most free to reinterpret, the basic job of storytellers everywhere, ever. And yet, there's Waid, doing it with Kingdom Come, not very long after. I mean, it makes sense from a business standpoint. DC, and its parent company Warners, would understandably be interested in maximizing the profitability of a proven hit. That's just basic business sense. I never thought The Kingdom was or was intended to be the same kind of creative statement as its predecessor, but it still provided room for material like Offspring, which represents excellent material in and of itself. To assume that this is impossible is, to my mind, to completely misunderstand the art of storytelling.
It's interesting, too, just to reconsider Kingdom Come, thanks to something like Offspring. This was something that was a major deal twenty years ago. It's not inconceivable to think that fans really did think this was something akin to Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns. Yet, twenty years on, you really don't find anyone talking about it like that anymore. I find that odd. The more I think about it, the more I wonder, have we just lost the ability to conceive new touchstones as actually existing? Without Kingdom Come, you wouldn't have Civil War. I mean, Mark Millar's Civil War, when you strip it down to its essentials, is essentially Kingdom Come, done in regular continuity. Tragedy strikes, and the superhero community is forced to decide what to do next. Isn't that argument enough that Kingdom Come is still important? It's just, we stopped trying to see it as important, when it proved about as important as a superhero comic could get. DC had Identity Crisis, later, and Marvel finally jumped on the bandwagon. Civil War was clearly a creative watershed for the company. And you wouldn't have it without Kingdom Come. I'll leave it at that for now.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #6 (ABC)
From September 2000.
Alan Moore's last significant creation was LXG, in which he envisioned a unified Victorian literary canon, which infamously was adapted into a 2003 movie that not only proved to be Sean Connery's last, but the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of Moore's ability to interact positively with the mainstream. (The movie also made it important among fans that movies not treat, to their mind, adapted material with disrespect, which actually had the result of superhero movies after that time being more important in terms of mainstream crossover appeal than appealing directly to fans, which in 2016 seems to have taken on new wrinkles thanks to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which fans have once again sunk their teeth into the debate). Anyway, reading LXG itself is something of an odd experience. Creatively it's not much of a statement. More seems to have been put into the novelty of packaging the comic in vintage ads and, in the letters column, being wonderfully droll than in distinguishing the story experience itself. At this point Moore had started to retreat into the familiar comforts of home, and yet the comic doesn't read as particularly British (that's why Paul Cornell's Knight & Squire was such a delight to read), and even if that wasn't the intent, just tossing familiar characters together reads like a cheat. I mean, the old Allan Quatermain makes a fascinating subject, surely, in the same sense that comics with old superheroes (say, The Dark Knight Returns) tend to be, but it's odd to juxtapose him with, say, Moore's somewhat racist impression of Captain Nemo. Quatermain (best known as the protagonist of King's Solomon's Mines, and as a cultural predecessor of Indiana Jones) and Nemo (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) are surrounded by Mina Murray (Dracula), although for what reason, if not a vampire (as in the movie), I have no idea, at least as depicted in this story (more sense would have been Van Helsing, who was the subject of Van Helsing, which like LXG served as a template for Marvel's Avengers), the Invisible Man, and Jekyll/Hyde, plus Professor Moriarty as the antagonist (by the end, as much of a genius as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan's Khan), a predecessor to James Bond, and some Chinese characters who perhaps deserve about as much speculation as Moore's Nemo...
I feel I have to reiterate that I don't come by my impression of Alan Moore lightly. I haven't read everything he's done, and wouldn't particularly care to, even if the best of it is better than the worst that I have read. I'm just irritated, irrationally, by the notion that to some fans Alan Moore is a god, and that his views and his work can't stand criticism, when to my mind not only is it possible, but necessary for any true reader. I mean, it's not like I'm not used to people picking on the stuff I like. I know how it goes. Maybe some of this logic is best left to fanatics. We all form strong opinions, and to give voice to them, whether in the privacy of friends or in the wide reaches of the Internet, is to invite contrary opinions. To dismiss the opposite as an idiot is maybe the easiest response. But just maybe, it ought to have you reconsider why it is you formed those strong opinions in the first place.
Well, we all reconsider our thoughts, eventually. Hopefully. I guess I really shouldn't worry about it.
That Act of God one sounds interesting. I read at least some of LXG, which was really the sort of comic that couldn't be converted into a PG-13 vehicle starring Sean Connery.
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