This is a new webcomic that made me use Instagram for one of the first times ever. The hook, for me, is Stuart Immonen, working once again alongside wife Kathryn Immonen (realized when I was composing this and adding labels that she didn't have one yet). Stuart's one of my all-time favorite comics creators, so it's always fun to see what he's up to.
Grass appears to be an attempt at a kind of slice-of-life-in-the-future. Readers seem a little baffled as to what exactly is going on, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. The Immonens have an excellent track record (I haven't read all of their work, but Russian Olive to Red King and Moving Pictures are fantastic). Here's a compilation of Stuart's best-regarded work. As much as I love Stuart's art, and his collaborations with Kathryn as writer, I really wish he got back into writing; his Superman comics, as artist and writer, have yet to be rediscovered, but they should be.
I'd be remiss if I didn't chime in on this one. Apparently these Walmart 100-page giants finally made the news for something other than merely existing. This was last month's edition (I just scooped up this month's full slate, which included the first revamp and expansion of the line, but haven't had a chance to read it yet). When I read it I thought it was just another typically intricate narrative from Tom King (my favorite among all active writers in the medium, easily), but...
So the story is this: Superman, on a desperate quest to rescue a young girl kidnapped by aliens, places an extreme-long-distance call, deep in space, to Lois back on Earth. The whole process is tedious and slow, and on top of that Lois seems to take forever to answer. Superman spends the time imagining all kinds of worst case scenarios, Lois dying horrible deaths from any of the many emergencies Superman's usually there to prevent.
Sounds fairly normal, doesn't it? I mean, Superman's been saving Lois Lane from certain death since the very beginning. It's one of the most recognizable tropes in all of superhero storytelling. Lois actively puts herself in danger all the time as an intrepid reporter. You'd think no one could possibly object to a story that just sort of points all that out.
But...
Well, people are always kind of outraged about one thing or another. It only seems that outrage dominates public discourse more than ever before. Right? Anyway. The outrage this time is that this was a comic that featured Lois dying. Repeatedly.
This was a reported case of a mother being shocked at what her kid was being exposed to. Big surprise, right? Story of comic books right there. Mom buys these Walmart comics every month, never imagining that there was anything to object to, until she takes a gander and...
So you can't really help that sort of thing. King is no stranger to provoking readers, of course. He's been doing that since seemingly killing off Kyle Rayner in the Omega Men preview, and he's made an ongoing spectacle of Batman with regular intervals of similar acts, shocking readers who should have possibly seen it all before. He did it again with Heroes in Crisis (if I get around to it, I'd love to talk more about that one, especially how #5 lets the cat out of the bag, assuming readers were aware that there was a cat, and a bag, and that you could've anticipated that from the very beginning, without really harming the story, because it's all about how masterfully King commands the page, as always).
What I love about all this is that it does put the focus on the content rather than the existence of these giants, and hopefully will get more readers checking them out.
