Reading Comics 192 "DC Rebirth Week Five, Astro City"

Covered this edition: Astro City #35, Batman #2, Green Lanterns #2, Justice League: Rebirth #1, and Superman #2.

Astro City #35 (Vertigo)
Kurt Busiek's pocket superhero universe, which literally resides entirely within the boundaries of Astro City, has long been fascinating.  It's one of those self-contained concepts that could easily satiate a given reader's interest in superhero comics, whether they're jaded older readers, or younger ones who aren't particularly interested in tracking down multiple titles to try and catch up with something they've just discovered.  The series has been around, in one incarnation or another, for twenty years, and was clearly inspired by Busiek's interest in following up on his Marvels success, where he was able to look at the full portrait of a given superhero landscape and provide nuanced insight into it.  His Astro City work rotates from character to character.  This particular issues features Jack-in-the-Box, a costumed vigilante with an outlandish gimmick but who Busiek otherwise presents pretty straightforwardly, getting at the heart of the character's human struggles, which in this case mean the legacy the grandson of the original Jack feels increasingly as a burden he can never live up to, with his father and uncle having carried it on but a reckless decision in his youth cost him his chance to do the same.  Jack-in-the-Box joins the league of black superheroes who sport all-covering masks, so that you wouldn't know his race otherwise, but the comic spends probably more time with the mask off of any given Jack than necessarily caring about his costumed exploits, treating that as more a McGuffin than anything.  There's a letters column page featuring the letter of the month (a rarity in a DC title of any extraction these days), and also a preview of Paul Dini's Dark Night: A True Batman Story, which details his experiences recovering from a mugging, and that's part of the reason I bought this comic, because I've seen plenty of hype for the graphic novel, but none of the interior.  But it's always worth checking in with Astro City.

Batman #2 (DC)
Tom King's era continues as Batman introduces Jim Gordon to Gotham and Gotham Girl, the superpowered new heroes who are eager to lend a hand in the ongoing war on crime.  It's Batman's sense of mortality that permeates the issue, however, the lingering aftereffects of his near-sacrifice in trying to prevent a fatal plane crash last issue.  It's King's grasp of character that strikes this material as fresh.  At one point Alfred explains to Duke Thomas how a young Bruce Wayne became disenchanted when Alfred made a prudent judgment call.  For someone like Bruce, there's no such thing as prudence.  He doesn't have the patience for something like that.  The current Bruce abandons a lady mid-dance when he spots the Bat-signal in the sky, and the woman is positively baffled.  You can imagine how it plays out just by the way it's depicted: Bruce doesn't want to attend function; he reluctantly agrees, puts on his best game face; is positively overjoyed when he gets to go back to work.  For him, it doesn't even matter what other people are expecting.  That's Batman in a nutshell.  He lives by his own rules.  It's great when a writer like King comes along and knows the psychology that well.  For those looking for something a little easier to digest, there's the young hero Gotham discovering for himself Batman's classic disappearing act, or Gordon wondering how on earth a mask doesn't become uncomfortable in this line of work (casually sidestepping Scott Snyder's depiction of Commissioner Batman)...

Green Lanterns #2 (DC)
Sam Humphries keeps hitting all the right notes.  His depictions of Simon Baz and especially Jessica Cruz as novice Lanterns is the perfect way to explain all over again what the Green Lantern concept is all about, and how it can be a little hard to comprehend.  Jessica is so neurotic that Simon's confidence makes him seem like a veteran, even though it's just his different personality that's creating the effect, because he's just as lost as she is.  Returning the Red Lanterns to the role of the villain is also a good move.  Readers don't particularly need to know that in their late ongoing series, they became sympathetic heroes.  The idea of them existing to help people cope with powerlessness further underscores Jessica's feelings of inadequacy.  Just good stuff, and very, very good to see for a reader who hasn't had a lot of Green Lantern he found worth reading lately.

Justice League: Rebirth #1 (DC)
The Bryan Hitch era, as the headlining act of the franchise, begins as he brings the "new" Superman back into the fold, showcasing what a significant difference Superman makes both by his absence and presence.  That's something few writers have done, for whatever reason, but Hitch dives right at it, not so much at the cost of every other member, all DC icons in their own right, but in the role of leadership, which Superman embodies not so much because he takes charge but because he's capable of identifying what needs to be done, by example.  The whole issue makes the case for the team in general, as necessary guardians in the turbulent reality DC presents.  It does its job.

Superman #2 (DC)
I can't say too often how brilliant I think it was for DC to let Pete Tomasi and Patrick Gleason recontextualize their Batman & Robin work in the Rebirth era.  This was a dynamite team working in the shadow of Scott Snyder's work.  If readers sometimes wondered why Tomasi and Gleason were putting their previous charges into outsize adventures not typically associated with them in the modern era, it's completely justified with their new ones.  The young Jonathan has found an intriguing accomplice in Kathy, the figurative girl next door (insofar as adjacent farms can call have such things).  She's like his Lana Lang, knowing his secret and not being interested in anything else but the boy he otherwise is.  She and her grandfather lug Jon back home after he falls from a tree, which gives him a concussion.  His parents are necessarily alarmed, especially Clark.  It's a little odd seeing Lois as anything but a reporter (she writes fiction now; I don't know if it was a slip-up, but she gets a piece of mail under her given name, and it's not addressed, even though the family has been living under assumed names since emerging from Convergence into this reality).  Anyway, the big news occurs at the end of the issue, in which the Eradicator makes his New 52/Rebirth debut (coincidentally, I've just finished reading some of his original appearances).  But I love this series so much, already.  Seeing father and son, in the early pages, engaged in a rescue operation, and then disarming a monster, is everything Tomasi and Gleason couldn't do before, and everything I'd hoped they'd do in Superman.  For me, with just work like this, and King's Batman, and Humphries' Green Lanterns, the Rebirth era has already proven its worth, to a remarkable degree.

Quarter Bin 83 "Sandman, Shattered Image, Shockrockets, and Skrull Kill Krew..."

Yes, it would be safe to assume that these particular comics were, in fact, bought in a literal quarter bin.

Sandman #39 (Vertigo)
From July 1992.
This is the last issue in the Annotated Sandman Vol. 2 so at some point in the next year, hopefully, I'll be reading and talking about it again.  (And just as hopefully, I will eventually collect and read the third and forth volumes in this version of the series.)  It features Marco Polo in a dream sequence (naturally), the young boy version of the famous explorer, so we get a peak at his less-publicized origins traveling with his dad.  Also present, G.K. Chesterton, naturally.  This is a classic example of what made Sandman so great, how Neil Gaiman could do just about anything he wanted and it made perfect thematic sense.  This is the epitome of comic book storytelling.

Shattered Image #1 (Image)
From August 1996.
This Image version of the superhero crossover event is a hot mess, even though it's written by some fairly well-established and well-respected creators, Kurt Busiek and Barbara Kesel.  I can only imagine they felt pressured to present the Image version, which at that time, still only a handful of years after the company's infamous founding, was still infused with the arrogance of attempting to ignore everything that made superhero comics great, and just try and be cool and hope (as it was for a while) that was good enough.  Still, it's interesting to remember that Tony Daniel made his name in this period, and that he's probably the creator whose work evolved the most, and most positively, in the past twenty years.  Busiek has been doing Astro City all this time, and it's been increasingly less relevant ever since, which is not to say anything about the quality, but that it's a shame that of the major superheroes created at Image in those early years who're still operating, that one big attempt at true respectability has become so easy to ignore.  Then again, maybe it's because he is still working at it.  After Marvels, Busiek became known for his interest in defining the tradition of the superhero.  I wonder if anyone still believes he's interested in that. 

Shockrockets #6 (Gorilla)
From October 2000.
Speaking of Busiek, Shockrockets was kind of his take on the Rogue Squadron pilots from Star Wars, but set in near-future Earth.  For me, it was always more notable as one of Stuart Immonen's first big projects post-Superman.  Between this and his early Legion of Super-Heroes, his later Star Wars, and his current Empress, Immonen may have established himself as a go-to sci-fi artist, which I find pretty interesting, because yeah, I still think of him for his '90s Superman.  Which Immonen obliquely references in Gorilla promotional material from the issue: "My ideas, drawings, and designs are not only met with approval but I feel valued and appreciated as a person!"  I have to admit, the end of his Superman run had DC take him off art (by that time he'd become a writer/artist, which he's never again been) but also had Mark Millar punch up his scripts by providing dialogue.  And then he was somewhat obviously asked to move aside so that a new generation could take over, or otherwise made the decision himself.  Which is sad, because I still think he's never gotten the respect he deserves for his Superman work.  Also included is a preview of Busiek and Immonen's Superstar graphic novel, which was actually pretty great.

Skrull Kill Krew #2, 5 (Marvel)
From October 1995, January 1996.
This was a Grant Morrison project I'd long wanted to see, as it was one of his earliest Marvel projects.  Teamed up with then-frequent collaborator Mark Millar, I found the concept to be kind of a Marvel version of Morrison's Invisibles, his first widely-known creation.  The second issue features a heavy Pulp Fiction vibe, in which the character of Ryder closely matches up with Samuel L. Jackson's Jules in his speech patterns (no epic biblical quote, alas, at least not in this issue).  I wonder if that's how people really viewed Pulp Fiction, in the guise of the character Jules (which wouldn't be a terrible thing, but it isolates the experience far too much), or how they viewed United Kingdom creators, the punk Vertigo impression that took years to shake and was in part inspired, naturally, by Morrison's Invisibles.  (Clearly Gaiman's Sandman didn't have punk so much as Goth in mind, while spiritual predecessor Alan Moore had horror as his guiding Swamp Thing principle.)  Morrison eventually distanced himself, for the most part, from this style, somewhat dramatically in his major superhero debut with JLA nearly a year later, but I wonder if Millar kept it in mind longer.  Certainly, he became enamored with the concept of the mini-series, a style he works in almost exclusively these days.

Digitally Speaking...23 "Captains America and Marvel, Avengers Forever"

Captain America and the Falcon #1 (Marvel)
From 2004.

Given recent developments, it's always interesting to look back at the history of Falcon's association with Captain America (in case you don't know, aside from Falcon's screen debut in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he is Captain America now, in the pages of All-New Captain America).  This is certainly a curious entry in that history, a series that lasted a little over a dozen issues.  The writer is Christopher Priest, perennially underrated, working with Bart Sears.  The pair seem to have somehow evoked the later Jason Aaron series Scalped, both in general approach and even art (Sears is distinctive enough in style, but here looks a lot like R.M Guera's work).  It's pre-Ed Brubaker, but is generally comparable in approach.  It's an exercise in making Cap socially relevant by entangling him in Guantanamo Bay (although that's because he's trying to figure out what Falcon is up to).  The copyright information in the digital edition listed the release date as 2013, which is less than accurate.

Captain America: The First Avenger - First Vengeance #1 (Marvel)
From 2011.

This prequel to the movie opens with action scenes of Cap at war with his scrawny origins as his mother offers encouragement and he meets Bucky for the first time.  I'm not sure how much overlap there is, because it's been a while since I've seen the movie, which I otherwise have fond memories of, considering it from the start to be one of the better entries in the Avengers cycle to date.  Writer Fred Van Lente tends to bounce around a lot, being, I guess, generally adaptable, which here he takes pretty literally.

Captain Marvel #1 (Marvel)
From 2014.

This is a reboot of a previous Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel series.  For those of you (like me) who know very little about this particular version of Captain Marvel, other than the fact that Danvers used to be a previous Ms. Marvel (as distinguished from the current one, making a spectacular splash and a personal current favorite of mine in the G. Willow Wilson series that launched at the same time as this), you won't receive too much clarification here.  Marvel can be notoriously impenetrable in terms of continuity, when it isn't doing soft reboots (which is often) that nonetheless imply connections to what came before.  Thankfully it's not too hard to follow along.  If you liked Guardians of the Galaxy, you'll be pleasantly surprised that the thrust of the issue is getting her into a general Star-Lord direction.  I had no idea.  All I knew was, the series relaunched, and she's there on the cover readjusting her glove (and I still have no idea why they went in that artistic direction, though it looks distinctive enough, and maybe that was all they cared about).  Apparently she's had a relationship with Jim Rhodes, although at this point relationships have probably happened between all of Marvel's characters (it's a real soap opera landscape in that regard; the new Storm series has explored a relationship with Currently Dead Wolverine that I hadn't known about previously, because last I knew Ororo's only notable relationship had been with Black Panther, because, uh, they're both African).  But the question remains, why does this series even exist if there doesn't seem to be much of a Carol Danvers narrative to exploit, much less in a relaunch that purposefully thrusts her in a new direction?

Avengers Forever #1 (Marvel)
From 2001.

Speaking of Marvel's soft reboots...This may have been the last hurrah of the pre-Bendis/Ultimate Comics era, what might be considered the culmination of Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers itself, a series that had considerable acclaim at the time, a return to form for a company that had suffered a great deal thanks to bankruptcy, the Spider-Man Clone Saga, the Heroes Reborn era, and the Image exodus in general, not to mention a whole X-Men era that failed to leave any meaningful legacy to that franchise.  But all good things must come to an end.  Avengers Forever itself has, so far as I know, no comparably lofty reputation.  Maybe it does.  My knowledge of Marvel lore goes only so far.  It's a story that attempts to take an expansive look at the legacy of the team, pivoting around Rick Jones (kind of hard to explain him these days, of which DC fans can say the same concerning Snapper Carr), even having a look at what probably turns out to be a possible future in which humanity has borrowed the idea of the Avengers to become galactic tyrants.  All of which is to say, Avengers Forever is now a curiosity at best.

Quarter Bin #63 "Binge-worthy VIII: Superstars"

Superstar: As Seen On TV (Image)
From 2001.

via eBay

This is now the best thing I've read from Kurt Busiek.  Busiek made his name on Marvels, the project also known for launching Alex Ross's career, and later as the creator of the sprawling Astro City, relaunched last year by DC.  I've often found that Busiek is best read as a nostalgia writer, though, hesitant to do anything that would break away from his image.  Superstar is a departure.  It was an early millennium attempt from comic book creators in general to do something new.  The lead character is a superhero whose worst enemy is also technically his biggest supporter: his own father.  That's a dynamic that is itself a fresh concept, but the greater concept around that one is one that was actually years ahead of its time: Superstar was made for our social media age, as his power levels are literally fueled by public support.  It's shocking that this was a one-shot deal, and that apparently no one has thought to revisit it (aside from an expanded IDW re-release three years ago).  The main draw for me, though, was artist Stuart Immonen, who at the time was transitioning away from his then-career defining monthly commitment to Superman and embarking on the course that has led to the altered style he's employed at Marvel for years now.  This is pure Immonen goodness, what might be considered now a what-if scenario if he and Busiek had expanded on the concept.  That would've been nice...

Tales of the Unexpected #8 (DC)

From 2007.

via DCU Reviews

The lead in this mini-series was the Crispus Allen version of the Spectre, but I picked up this issue because of the back-up featuring Dr. 13, an obscure occult detective recently somewhat featured in Trinity of Sin, and the reason I was interested was because the creative team for the story was Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, who recently concluded a three-year arc on the New 52 Wonder Woman.  It's interesting to see how Chiang's art evolved from then to now (positively, which is something I'm still struggling to say about Immonen), from a more cartoony look to...at least a more streamlined version of that look.  The story itself is pretty good, too.  Grant Morrison fans will probably love how it ends.  Maybe it's because I was not necessarily aware of Dr. 13 until recently, but I was surprised to learn that the character of Traci 13, whom I first noticed in the pages of the original Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle series, is in fact Dr. 13's daughter.  Yeah, it seems kind of obvious now...

The New Teen Titans #12 (DC)

From 1981.

via comiXology

New Teen Titans was one of the hottest comics of the '80s, and its legacy still looms large.  My first exposure was a random back issue I found in an antique store, New Teen Titans #39, in which Dick Grayson officially quits his Robin persona; the debuts of Cyborg, Starfire, and the whole "Judas Contract" saga are elements that will always keep the Wolfman/Perez era relevant for fans.  Last year I read a volume collecting the first handful of issues.  This latest random selection was not nearly as lucky as the previous one, however.  I know there are plenty of good Donna Troy stories, but this isn't one of them.

Tom Strong #36 (ABC)

From 2006.

via iTunes

Turns out this is the final Tim Strong story from Alan Moore.  Tom was a kind of pulp hero that was also Moore's quasi-extension of his Supreme work, which was a quasi-extension of the Silver Age Superman (woo!); the headlining act of the America's Best Comics imprint that Moore walked away from once WildStorm was acquired by DC, a company Moore no longer had any interest in working for (despite having made virtually his whole reputation there, with Saga of Swamp Thing, Batman: the Killing Joke, Watchmen, and other projects).  Tom remains in print, however, thanks to original artist Chris Sprouse.  Moore's finale is strong even for those like me who have read very little Tom Strong.  It wraps up his story, explaining certain elements of the mythology, and is arguably a much stronger read than "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow."  If you're curious about the character, you could do worse than to start with Tom "At the End of the World."

Wanted #4 (Top Cow)

From 2004.

via comiXology

Wanted is the project that helped Mark Millar launch his MillarWorld, a unique distinction he's given his work since after having become Hollywood's third favorite comic book writer after Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.  Wanted was very loosely adapted into a major motion picture, and of course there have been two Kick-Ass movies, and now Kingsmen: The Secret Service.  The movie version of Wanted had James McAvoy run around Angelina Jolie as assassins.  The original comic involves a whole world of supervillains.  I'm convinced Millar originally conceived of this as a DC project, and after DC opted for Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis Millar revised his idea as a standalone concept.  Who knows?  He'd already helped make history with The Ultimates, and would do so again with Civil War, but my favorite Millar mainstream effort remains "Old Man Logan."  The Wanted artist is J.G. Jones, who would later illustrate boldly the covers of 52, plus the interiors for the majority of Final Crisis.

Capping The Cape

Maybe I don’t have a lot of right to do this, because I’ve been writing this blog throughout 2011, and THE CAPE had its brief run during this time, but I’d like to take this opportunity for another spirited defense of an overlooked superhero gem.

To understand how THE CAPE failed for NBC this past season, you probably have to understand how HEROES gradually became a failure, after starting with a bang back in 2006. HEROES was the next big genre TV hit after LOST became a sensation a few season earlier. You have to remember that by the 2006 season, LOST had started to grate on some viewers by refusing to give its answers quickly, and this was before the 2007 season, which was famously truncated by the writers’ strike. When HEROES came around, it seemed prepackaged with all the answers needed to retort the genre, big-concept questions LOST had raised, telling a complete arc over the course of its first season, which gained more buzz and acclaim as it went along. Exactly how that momentum was, ahem, lost over the course of the next three seasons is usually explained by a growing complacency and lack of genuine inspiration. Not being a partisan of usual public opinions, I’ve had other ideas. In fact, I grew to love the show more the longer it was on. But the fact remains, viewers became tired of this particular approach to superheroes on TV, and NBC’s thought process, by the time THE CAPE was announced, became a little obvious.

THE CAPE was basically the reverse of HEROES (just as HEROES had kind of been the reverse of LOST). Where the characters on HEROES never wore costumes and the villains were never permanently pegged as such (much to the chagrin of those who became tired of Sylar), THE CAPE had a costume almost from the start, and an archenemy sooner. In many ways, THE CAPE was less an answer to HEROES and more a continuation of the experiment begun by THE FLASH two decades earlier, an expertly conceived and produced superhero adventure, with most of the sensibilities most people think of from this particular genre. Like Dick Tracy and Batman, THE CAPE developed a rich rogues gallery, even within the abbreviated time it had, relying not just on the main heavy, but introducing many more, with varying roles.

How exactly this failed so utterly and swiftly is no real surprise. Like THE FLASH before it, THE CAPE asked a great deal of its audience, to accept tropes most of them had already avoided by not reading comics in the first place, asking for a commitment and to believe and accept certain leaps of faith that usually require something extraordinary, some spark either in casting or concept, that’s not necessarily related to the property itself. And even then, a cult following is needed almost instantaneously, or a convenient connection to the cultural zeitgeist. I could explain all that with examples, or simply say THE CAPE obviously had none of it. All NBC thought it needed was HEROES without the HEROES mindset, which is not exactly what Tim Kring was thinking when he saw the opportunity LOST created, just as SMALLVILLE didn’t come into existence simply because of “No Flights, No Tights.”

Anyway, I keep getting carried away. I like comparative analysis, obviously. The point is, THE CAPE is far better than its failure suggests, more nuanced, far cooler, entertaining almost to a fault. Sometimes it even takes itself a tad too flippantly. And the groundwork is laid in every episode for something greater, a rich tapestry that would have been something truly special, if the opportunity had been there.

I’m taking the liberty to talk about it because THE CAPE was released on DVD last week, and so those who overlooked it originally have a second chance, and this is a show that rewards dedicated viewing. You’ll see how the writers reveal that Orwell is Peter Fleming, a.k.a. Chess’s daughter well before they do (and well before the show ever had the chance to truly cash in on this connection). You’ll even see how Vince Faraday’s boy hangs out with Goggles’ son, without anyone ever calling attention to it. You’ll marvel at how awesome Vinnie Jones is as Scales. If this is the show’s legacy, then it is already a good one. Like THE FLASH before it, you won’t care that practically nobody cared about THE CAPE. Because you will. And it only means TV will have a chance to do it again, because now another fan will have something to work off of, a predecessor, a precedent.

To round out this week’s feature, I’ll discuss the comics I bought at Escape Velocity over the course of two visits. I get to talk about GREEN LANTERN, the movie, because DC has been supporting it a great deal, sometimes in ways that weren’t so obvious. Like THE CAPE, there’s success even in failure, so long as there are those willing to embrace material that rewards those who cared.

BATMAN INCORPORATED #s 6-7 (DC)
First, we visit with the one series I’ve tried to continue following in 2011, Grant Morrison’s continuing Bat-masterpiece. These particular issues continue to reward the long-time reader, with the first one being a kind of status marker for the whole journey, while the second is an exceptional example of the work Grant’s been doing with this series in particular; it’s like SCALPED on crack, or if you haven’t read that Vertigo series but have noted Native American writer Sherman Alexie, like a superhero version of THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST-FIGHT IN HEAVEN. (It’s even more awesome than it sounds.)

BATMAN AND ROBIN #25 (DC)
Judd Winick doesn’t get a lot of respect, except from DC, which has not only retained him as a writer despite that, but cherished the groundbreaking work he’s done for the company, notably with the character of Jason Todd, whom he revisits for the conclusion of a three-issue guest stint in this title.

FLASHPOINT #s 2-3 (DC)
Gotta say, I’m really loving FLASHPOINT, Geoff Johns’ continually masterful grasp of character. We all know by now that this event book is basically his goodbye to Barry Allen, but he’s making up for whatever hard feelings that might have to those who wish he could’ve repeated his Hal Jordan magic by giving Barry’s his biggest-ever story. For a character who was killed off almost three decades ago, , was best known for ushering the Silver Age, a rogues gallery, and not even for an innovative trial that was well ahead of its time, this is perhaps more remarkable than anything Johns has done with the Green Lantern franchise. He’s succeeded in making Barry a compelling character with a story that is distinctively his own, whatever the context. And to then spin variations of known characters around this, especially the big revelation of what happened to Superman in this reality, that’s far more than anyone could have expected, no matter the hype.

FLASHPOINT: CITIZEN COLD #1 (DC)
The Rogues were well-established before Geoff Johns broke into comics, but it might be argued that no one has done as much for them as he has for the past decade, and FLASHPOINT seems designed to do even more, especially this book, which finally gives one to an individual member. Scott Kolins further proves his elevation as a creator on this one.

FLASHPOINT: DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #1 (DC)
Given that Deadman, after starring in BRIGHTEST DAY, and Dick Grayson, after starring in half the Batman titles the past couple of years, are among the “losers” of the DC reboot, this one’s perhaps more important than it would have otherwise been, and maybe specifically intended to be a kind of consolation gifts for their fans.

FLASHPOINT: THE CANTERBURY CRICKET (DC)
I somehow knew from the moment I read about the Flashpoint titles, that I would find this one intriguing. I suspected, unless the character were somehow a variation of a character I hadn’t been thinking about at the time, that Cricket was a new creation for the event, and we know that I love to give new characters their due. “Canterbury Cricket” was beyond unusual. Well, Mike Carlin confirmed my faith, easily. Needless to say, I hope Cricket finds his way into the DC Universe proper.

FLASHPOINT: HAL JORDAN #1 (DC)
FLASHPOINT: ABIN SUR #2 (DC)
GREEN LANTERN MOVIE PREQUEL: HAL JORDAN (DC)
GREEN LANTERN MOVIE PREQUEL: ABIN SUR (DC)
Okay, so the titles are a little repetitive, but obviously these are the books I was talking about earlier. Two of them have a direct connection to the movie, while the others have an unexpected link, and serve as a testament both to the movie and Geoff Johns’ work with the franchise over the last five years. Before it, there’s no doubt Hal’s involvement would have been different, and it’s doubtful that Abin Sur would have been involved at all. You have things like Darwyn Cooke’s NEW FRONTIER that also embraced Hal’s character seriously, but otherwise Hal’s importance, and his backstory, have mostly been downplayed over the years. The movie prequel Hal book is as close to an adaptation as DC and Warner Brothers have apparently considered. That’s both the blessing and curse of the strong SECRET ORIGIN tie-in. I figure the movie’s success, as I’ve suggested, could’ve been greater if fans other than of comics could have seen the scope before walking into the movie theater. But there’s always next time.

SUPERMAN #712 (DC)
The more “Grounded” (and “Odyssey” over in WONDER WOMAN) dragged on, the less interesting it became. So it’s good that there’ve been interludes, even completely unscheduled ones like this issue, which resurrects a lost Kurt Busiek tale involving Krypto (who has a grizzly cameo in FLASHPOINT #3, by the way) and the aftermath of Superboy’s death during INFINITE CRISIS. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Busiek’s run on SUPERMAN from a few years back (though stories like “Third Kryptonian” were enough to convince me his take wasn’t completely alien to my Man of Steel sensibilities), but this is a nice reminder of the many things that’ve been missing from Superman comics recently.

That’s all for this time. I swear (I swear!) that this recovering comics addict hasn’t completely relapsed, that these trips to Escape Velocity really were basically anomalous (I really only want to read the final two issues of FLASHPOINT now, and hope that my finances are better in September so I don’t miss out on all the potential awesomeness).

In conclusion, let us also begin the hype for Frank Miller’s HOLY TERROR!

Quarter Bin #7 "Stuart Immonen"

The comics that prompted this week’s topic:

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #540 (DC)
From November 1996.

INFERNO #1-4 (DC)
From October, November (1997) and January, February (1998).

ACTION COMICS #750 (DC)
From January 1999.

SHOCKROCKETS #1 (Image)
From April 2000.

RISING STARS #14 (Top Cow)
From May 2001.

Now, let me close the loop from those comics, and say the topic is Stuart Immonen. He only provides the cover for ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN in this instance, but provides all honors (cover, writing and art duties) on INFERNO and ACTION COMICS, and then just art in SHOCKROCKETS and RISING STARS. These specific comics are back issues I ordered from Midtown some months back (there’ll be other editions of Quarter Bin culled from such orders, just as the previous Sparx spotlight was), during a recurrent spate of nostalgia for when Stuart came to dominate, at least for me, not just Superman comics, but DC as a whole, when he provided the art for Karl Kesel’s seminal FINAL NIGHT crossover event.

Now, I know for a lot of fans, Stuart is about as relevant as a FINAL NIGHT reference is as a DC event beginning with “Final” (though coming in second to FINAL CRISIS, is, again, a peculiarity and positive connotation that’s somewhat unique to your Comics Reader). I’m not suggesting that Mr. Immonen is totally unappreciated by the fan community, but as far as I’m concerned, he really is, and criminally so. For the last few years he’s been mired in a fairly unexceptional run with Marvel (which, against, is a fairly relative statement, since I very much appreciated the fact that he got to work on ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN while such a statement was still relevant, and thought his evolving style had gotten better than how I’d last seen it), a far cry from how I like to remember him, and hope that he might still one day return to, one of the definitive styles and takes on the Man of Steel, managing to stand out in a time when there were regularly four unique takes, even when all of them were working on pretty much the same stories.

Stuart has a larger career than will be covered in this column, but I’m still getting around to the rest of it, so what I write will seem to be a little limited by some estimations, but even a little is a lot more than most fans generally enjoy. I want to circle back to FINAL NIGHT for a moment. Even though it isn’t written by Stuart, it perfectly represents the kind of vision his work embodies, a deeply human and evocative interpretation of superhero comics that seems to be entirely ignorant of the vast tradition other creators draw from and add to on a monthly basis, even in this fairly expansive era we now enjoy. Karl Kesel is another deeply unappreciated talent, from the school of Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, and James Robinson, ideological successors of Alan Moore who took an abiding appreciation of the past and merged it with a dynamic present. But while it’s apparent with other creators, with Stuart, it’s a part of the background flavor, just another element that is combined to present an original vision.

You might say that it’s obvious that he came from the Legion of Super-Heroes factory, since partisans of that corner of DC lore often seem to bend in a certain direction, and every now and again, his DC work would reflect back on his time with the original teen team sensation, as with the cover of ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, which sees Superman reflected in the face of Ferro, a new version of an established Legion character who was one of the most prominent efforts of the company’s efforts to make the team relevant by sticking a few of its members in the present (a trick the company has tried again in recent years, and this time, it might actually have stuck). INFERNO, in fact, is another such effort, and while Stuart’s vision of modern youth culture might owe more to Dan Jurgens than Justin Bieber, I was more than happy to finally read it because it is, after all, one of the few projects where he was able to have total creative control.

He was a precursor to Tony Daniel in that regard, graduating to ACTION COMICS after apprenticing for several years with Kesel on ADVENTURES, and beginning a distinguished run on his own. His ultimate statement with DC’s flagship hero, SUPERMAN: END OF THE CENTURY, would be published in February 2000, and pretty mark his end with the company. (By the way, I highly recommend, if you want to sample Stuart’s work from this era, reading it. Or read it just to read a forgotten gem.)

SHOCKROCKETS, by the way, is like a more contemporary STAR WARS, and is from the mind of Kurt Busiek. I would probably recommend reading that, too. You’ll know RISING STARS from J. Michael Straczynski’s early comics days. Stuart was a guest artist.

On the one hand, I can understand why it would have been difficult for fans to get into his art, since it was pretty much the opposite of what Image had conditioned them to expect, and since it wasn’t painted, not impressive enough for those who were wowed by Alex Ross. It was simple, but deceptively so, not too enamored of the strict realism others would glom onto as a counterbalance to the cartoonish proportions most artists favored. Stuart, better than anyone, knew the “man” inside Superman, but still made him look inspiring. In many ways, if you were to compare any modern Superman comic with the originals by Siegel and Shuster, it would be Stuart Immonen’s that feel like a real successor, a real update without the sense that you’re being hoodwinked.

How exactly a talent like that becomes an afterthought is completely beyond me. He’s changed his style to fit in with the times, to blend in, to, in essence, become Clark Kent, rather than Superman, but Stuart Immonen, with all due apologies to Clark, is no Clark Kent. He’s Superman. And he deserves the sky to soar in.

Quarter Bin #5 "From an Actual Quarter Bin, Part 2"

This is the other great batch of actual quarter bin comics, the second haul from last summer, when I really buckled down with the targeted picks. Once again, the selections are from Escape Velocity in downtown Colorado Springs. Because there are so many, I will skip further introductions and dive right in:

THE 99 SPECIAL (Teshkeel Comics)
From 2007; I had originally selected this one in anticipation of the then-upcoming DC book that saw this team return in a mash-up with the JLA, so obviously the topicality has come and gone. In many ways, I still wish Fabian Nicieza were the dominant creative voice here, since there’s so much potential that just sort of gets left on the floor, a problem that continues to this day. This particular comic, though, was a good find, because it’s an origin issue, so I was at least able to dive rather directly into the 99’s story.

AMERICA’S BEST COMICS PREVIEW (Wizard)
From 1999 (originally presented with WIZARD #91); I suppose in hindsight Alan Moore’s ABC comics were even more important than they seemed at the time, since they represent the last time he was truly committed to the mainstream, before he became completely disillusioned with one too many movie adaptations he felt didn’t do his comics justice. Is it an irony that no one ever moved to make a film of this work?

AMERICAN CENTURY #9 (Vertigo)
From January 2002; Howard Chaykin is an icon who has completely transcended every traditional comic book expectation, and I’m still waiting for him to truly receive his due. This book, however, possibly because he doesn’t supply the art, doesn’t help do him justice.

ANIMAL MAN #22-24 (DC)
From April, May, and June 1990; these were among my happiest finds, some of Grant Morrison’s later issues in his acclaimed run. I was all of nine years old when these were originally released, so even if I had been reading comics at the time, there’s no way I would have been reading them, or at least appreciating them. The book that made Grant’s reputation is of such mind-boggling scope that it’s little wonder that he struggled for years to find a proper follow-up (he’d presented his masterpiece, ARKHAM ASYLUM, a year earlier, but I hope to write more about that at a later date), spending time with the surrealistic odyssey THE INVISIBLES before going mainstream with JLA in anticipation of his Batman work a decade later. I didn’t have any experience with ANIMAL MAN until reading the DEUS EX MACHINA trade only a few years ago, and these issues represent part of the arc collected in that climactic story that shattered storytelling boundaries. Having apparently peaked so early (what other writer has ever approached such transcendent material?), Grant then had to tackle the matter of how to make the traditional material better than it’s ever been. Well, that’s my argument, anyway…

ASH #1 (Event)
From November 1994; now that he’s stepped down as the head honcho at Marvel, maybe Joe Quesada will go back to making comics on a regular basis. Do you even remember this one? After the blockbuster creation of Azrael at DC, Joe set out to create his own company, outside of the Image revolution, but relying on the same art-driven mandate that drove much of that decade crazy. You can see for yourself with this issue how completely overblown Joe’s concept was. Event’s only real success was Painkiller Jane, which actually became a short-lived TV show. Joe’s own art took radical steps away from the style presented here. Would anyone be interested in revisiting Ash today?

ASTRO CITY ½ (Image)
ASTRO CITY #18 (WildStorm)
ASTRO CITY: LOCAL HEROES #1 (WildStorm)
ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE - BOOK ONE #4 (WildStorm)
From January 1998, August 1999, April 2003, and December 2005, respectively; Kurt Busiek shot to instant acclaim with MARVELS, a project that revisited the storied origins of, well, Marvel’s most famous superheroes, and their earliest and most iconic adventures. He eventually parlayed that success into an ongoing project that explored his own creations, though the tone didn’t really change (the controversial and extended DARK AGE is famously based on what would have been his actual sequel to MARVELS). Like Alan Moore, Busiek doesn’t write comics so much as stories that reveal his love for the medium (and while Moore eventually branched out into history and other established literary figures, Busiek maintains his first love). Arguably, while this is the big strength for both creators, it has often hindered their potential (I would argue that it eventually caused Moore’s bitter split with the mainstream; in that vein, his frustrations with Hollywood adaptations of his work is actually a manifestation of his bafflement that other people really don’t understand what he’s doing; in essence, Frank Miller making a movie out of Will Eisner’s Spirit is closer to his goal than anything else). Still, the ASTRO CITY comics I found in those bins were happy, happy finds, since I’ve only recently begun reading Busiek’s passion project, and my appreciation has grown.

FLASH & GREEN LANTERN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #1 (DC)
From October 1999; this one is such a throwback, here in 2011, for so many reasons. For starters, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan were both dead and buried in 1999, and now they’re both back and headlining DC. The title “The Brave and the Bold” was another thing that was extinct in 1999, but was brought back for an extended run last decade. Then there’s Mark Waid. In many ways, Waid fit’s the Moore/Busiek mold I was discussing above perfectly, achieving much of his early success drawing extensively from the past. With his famous “Return of Barry Allen” arc, that not only made his run in THE FLASH but also finally solidified Wally West’s right to succession, he made Barry relevant for a whole generation of reading, and paved the way for his return. But while Moore and Busiek constantly look backward, Waid kept looking forward, and anticipated the rise of Geoff Johns, a man often accused of building all his stories on the bones of the past. But what other creator has done more to forge the future of an entire company?

BREACH #11 (DC)
From January 2006; the fact that Bob Harras was synonymous with Marvel prior to his work on this short-lived book (this is actually the final issue) is perhaps the least interesting thing to talk about here. What greater concerns me is DC’s continual efforts to introduce new superheroes, which DC’s readers are constantly rejecting. I love reading on the Interweb how there’s been a lack of new characters in recent decades with staying power. Well, Interweb, it’s exactly your fault. The very demographic, or description of demographic, that’s supposed to support such initiatives fit’s the description of the Interweb: a small but vocal representation of an audience. The problem, almost the whole Interweb seems exclusively interested in bitching about things rather than expressing an actual interest in things. I would suggest many things would have been different for many characters created at DC and elsewhere over the last fifteen years if the Interweb had set a better example. One of the reasons Marvel and DC are bringing back letters columns is that they finally realized that the quality of conversation available on a letters page is infinitely greater than anything that has manifested on the Interweb since they attempted the transition, to “keep up with the times.” This is not to say that letters columns breed success for new ideas, but that message boards, tweets, profile updates, and the like certainly do not. “Progress” doesn’t always mean what it seems to. And for the record, Breach was another in a long line of interesting concepts that fans, if they were utilizing technology the way most people assume they do, or could, should have had a longer shelf life. The good news is that if he can be located in a quarter bin, that increases his chances of staying clear of that limbo Grant Morrison wrote about.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #5 (Marvel)
From March 1997; if you’ve done your math, you’ve no doubt realized that this comic comes from the Heroes Reborn era, and so yes, this is a Rob Liefeld book, female Bucky (since imported back into the mainstream), eagle-instead-of-A, and exaggerated figures all around. At some future date, I hope to represent here just how much I contradict the popular view of Liefeld, but suffice it to say…

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #2, 4, 5 (DC)
From April, June, and July 1991; if you revisit Quarter Bin #2 you might note for the record that CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #4 was also represented in the first Escape Velocity quarter bin haul, and that was my introduction to this first, seminal teaming between Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, what you might consider the start of a quest, which led to these purchases, and eventually, the whole trade collection, which I will write more about later. Such has my appreciation of this work grown that I now consider it to be one of the great undiscovered masterpieces of comics.

DEADMAN #1 (Vertigo)
From October 2006; in a different reality, this title eventually achieved the same reputation as Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN, another title that took the name of an established DC superhero and completely reimagined it. I first became acquainted with Bruce Jones during his run with THE HULK, when he did some of the most interesting work with that character since Lou Ferrigno. Somehow Jones was never quite viewed as a comics master, possibly because of his work on NIGHTWING in which he went all Lovecraftian on Jason Todd.

GENERATION X #27 (Marvel)
From May 1997; I thought this was a pretty clever find, since Bastion is the villain here, as he was last year in “Second Coming.” Hey, remember Generation X?

RAGMAN #4 (DC)
From January 1992; even though I hadn’t really read him until SHADOWPACT, Ragman was a favorite character of mine since I collected his trading card. The original and ultimately more interesting Spawn, Rory Reagan also has the distinction of being the most famous Jewish superhero in comics, a fact that only periodically seems to come up. This is one of those times.

SEAGUY #3 (Vertigo)
From September 2004; when I read the SLAVES OF MICKEY EYE mini-series, it was without having read its predecessor, so mostly I got a kick out of Grant Morrison more or less parodying his own work in FINAL CRISIS. I had no idea how long fans of Seaguy had actually waited for the adventure promised at the end of this very issue. It’s also funny to note that Cameron Stewart’s art style actually changed between books.

SPELLJAMMER #8 (DC)
From April 1991; there’s no other reason for this one other than, once again, Joe Quesada, whose art is unrecognizable, either from ASH or his most recent work. So, props for evolving, Joe.

YOUNG AVENGERS #4, 6, 7 (Marvel)
From July, September, and October 2005; this book and Ed Brubaker’s then-nascent CAPTAIN AMERICA is the work that finally got this life-long DC man to finally read Marvel on a regular basis. Allan Heinberg approached his material just as if he were writing a continuous and personal odyssey for a set of characters that were, through the duration of his original run, exclusively his, and he took every opportunity to create the very best stories he could, utterly devoid of the typical Marvel inability to make any lasting impact on old superheroes. Granted, this was possible because Brian Michael Bendis had set the stage (which he then removed, only to set a wider stage for the same old status quo) with “Avengers Disassembled.” I knew much of the earliest developments with the Young Avengers through Marvel’s efforts to recap previous stories at the start of each issue (still the smartest thing the company has ever done), so to actually read some of them was nice. I’m still baffled that AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE has met only apathy.