Quarter Bin 85 "Millar's Trouble, 9/11, Waid's Valor, Vibe, Wasteland"

This finale in the series of impressions from an actual quarter bin still does not indicate that the title of this feature should be taken literally every time.  It's a back issues feature.

Trouble #1 (Marvel Epic)
From September 2003.
From the period where Marvel was trying really hard to be sexy (which included the one time I intensely disliked Geoff Johns) comes this last stab at romance comics, although technically it was a soft revamp of Spider-Man's origins, featuring the young Ben and May as well as Peter Parker's mostly-dead parents, Richard and Mary (that's one of the big differences, right there, between Marvel & DC; DC would never in a million years let the parents of their icons be so easily neglected, regardless of the circumstances).  The writer is Mark Millar, who at this point was still establishing what would become a distinctive brand, partly because he would literally name his group of comics Millarworld.  The photo covers employed for this mini-series were part of the concept, but Marvel likely had no idea they were a few years too early for the intended teenage market to care, because those readers were still weaning themselves off Harry Potter and looking for the next big franchises for their age group (Twilight, Hunger Games, etc.).  Although ironically, that market wouldn't particularly settle for straight romance, either, so Trouble was kind of always doomed.  Apparently Millar angered Spider-Man fans by fudging the relationships between Peter's different sets of parental figures, although I seriously have no idea how it could possibly matter...

Tuesday #1 (KRP)
From October 2002.
Perhaps no other creative medium fixated on 9/11 as much as comics, which is strange, because they're usually identified with superheroes, whose obvious absence from the real world on that morning led to how the disaster played out.  From the coincidental aftermath of the Our Worlds at War arc and Superman's subsequent adoption of a black shield of mourning a day after the events (Adventures of Superman #596) to the graphic novel Can't Get No by Rick Veitch, plus the tribute books put together to help raise funds for the families of the victims, there was no shortage of comic book response.  Tuesday is a first-person account by Henrik Rehr, in which he details the agonies of evacuation and forced separation from his family.  I vividly remember my mother's panic in trying to track down the members of my family, even though none of us were near New York, or scheduled to be flying that day, so I can only imagine what it was like to actually be there as it was unfolding.  That's why comics like this are important.  Rehr adopts a style similar to the late Harvey Pekar to give his account (there's a second issue to conclude it).  I can only say it's an incredibly humbling thing to read something like this.  We've been so caught up in fanciful conspiracy theories and debates about what Bush decided to do in response that sometimes it can seem we somehow completely forgot that 9/11 actually happened, that real people were involved.  We tend to fixate on so many things we lose sight of what's really important.  Comics can help bring the focus back, in unexpected ways, like finding this issue in a quarter bin...

Valor #14, 18 (DC)
From December 1993, April 1994.
This was one of the titles I sampled back in the '90s, knowing only vaguely its significance to the Legion of Super-Heroes.  In later years I became more familiar with the legacy of Mon-El, who was created to replace Superboy in Legion lore.  Always a kind of hapless figure, this guy was a Daxamite, who were kind of like Kryptonians, but not.  By the time Mark Waid signed on to write a few issues, in the wake of his early success writing The Flash, this version of the character was having trouble connecting with readers, and so Waid very deliberately set about streamlining the mythos, which was later completed by Kurt Busiek as the series wound down in the run-up to Zero Hour (I think the last issue was the first one I read, but that was twenty years ago, now, so I don't remember how it concluded).  Waid brought with him artist Colleen Doran, who had previously worked on Sandman and A Distant Soil, among other projects.  Her style was a tad unwieldy for something like Valor, which needed something, well, like Stuart Immonen's clean work.  Immonen, who was just beginning his mainstream career on Legion, started doing covers for Valor, starting this issue.  The difference in approach between Immonen and Doran is striking.  Whereas readers in the letters column complained about a meandering and overall pointlessness to the proceedings under the prior regime, Waid's approach, as with Wally West, was character-centric, a style that was to become increasingly popular, to the point where stories extended into regular arcs that defined the character as much as their future, as featured in Starman or Saga.  Immonen gives the covers the iconic status they need.  Doran gives the character a throwaway look, although similar to Chris Sprouse, whose early career was spent in the pages of Legion, or Jeffrey Moy, but without the charm.  Sprouse and Moy employed a style similar to the late Mike Wieringo.  With apologies to Doran, I think even she'll agree that this was never the direction she intended her art to go.

Vibe #7 (DC)
From October 2013.
Launched in conjunction with Justice League of America that year (and like Katana, saddled with that whole name added to the title), the revamp of former Justice League Detroit joke Vibe was one of the New 52's creative triumphs.  Sterling Gates had taken over from series co- and initial co-writer Geoff Johns starting with the third issue, and as such is responsible for shepherding the further reveal of Cisco Ramon's new mythology, including the revelation that his brother, whom he thought was dead, not only survived but became his archenemy Rupture...Anyway, you don't have to take my word for it, because Cisco later became a breakout star in The Flash TV series as one of Barry's closest allies, by the end of the first season discovering the powers his comic book counterpart had been playing with for his ten-issue run.  Well, now the comics have another chance to help him stand out in his home medium.  Hopefully it won't take too long to happen.

Wasteland #42 (Oni)
From December 2012.
My love for this series is well-documented.  At this point I've read the complete run, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to read one of the later issues in its original format, in which Abi stumbles across a town where the reader will know, as the story subtly points out, the narrator of the prose pieces that ran throughout most of the series had already been.  It's a nice confluence, and once again, I'm motivated to read the whole thing again.  Fans of Game of Thrones would probably find much to like about Wasteland.  I realized that the more I looked into Game itself.  Considering the unmistakable impression that at least HBO was motivated to greenlight the series so viewers could see the human element of Lord of the Rings play out with fewer distractions, I don't think it's much of a leap to suggest Wasteland could appeal to those looking for that evasive element from Game, the wider implications of all the drama.  Because Wasteland absolutely nails that, and has all the power struggle intrigue, too.