Reading Comics #114 "Rounding Toward Third"

Batman Incorporated #9 & 10 (DC)
The issues that follow the death of Damian Wayne are pretty interesting and speak to the significant impact of the event as well as how it fits into the rest of what Grant Morrison has been doing in his final Batman arc.  #9 cuts between the immediate aftermath of Damian's death as Batman and Nightwing attempt to handle the other Damian (a clone matured to adulthood by proud mama Talia, who was nonetheless displeased that one killed the other) and the funeral, where Bruce lets Alfred know that he too is displeased in the butler's tacit approval of his late son's last caper.  That's probably the best moment of the issue.  The former Squire also decides to replace the late Knight (the two were the most prominent members of Batman Inc., featured in an excellent and very British mini-series by Paul Cornell).  The city of Gotham, meanwhile, gives in to Leviathan a.k.a. Talia's demands and officially outlaws Batman, the agent provocateur.  #10 sees Morrison circle back to his earliest issues in this run, where Manbats were flying about.  It's also a direct evocation of Batman's origins, as Bruce decides that the only way to defeat Talia is to literally become a bat, thanks to the Manbat serum.  It's a powerful, meaning-filled development.  There are three issues left, plus a jam issue a month later featuring the international heroes technically represented in the title of this series.

Batman: Li'l Gotham #1 (DC)
I've been following the blog of Derek Fridolfs for a while now, and by extension his Facebook posts, and it's always been a little weird because Fridolfs is mostly a digital-first creator, his stories originally appearing on the DC website and then being printed later.  He's best known for his comics based on the Arkham City games (and as such that was the basis of the excellent Endgame Joker story I read last year) and Batman Beyond landscape, though recently he's been collaborating with the great Dustin Nguyen on Li'l Gotham.  This issue is a collection of the holiday specials that served as the introduction of these incredibly fun tales.  Fridolfs is clearly a fan of continuity, and he's always finding new ways to explore it, mindful that for some readers, especially in these fringe adventures, it could very well be their first exposures.  Since he doesn't write New 52 material, Fridolfs can do whatever he wants.  Li'l Gotham is technically considered a young readers title, but it can easily be enjoyed by anyone strictly as a humor series.

Before Watchmen: Comedian #6 (DC)
The conclusion of this mini-series and the whole Before Watchmen event, I've been waiting months for this.  Comedian became the only part of the event I tracked for every issue of original publication thanks to Brian Azzarello's masterful character study of Edward Blake and his relation both to the Vietnam War and the John/Robert Kennedy saga.  Azzarello made a few changes to Blake's classic arc; for instance the infamous face scarring that forced him to wear a mask doesn't occur in this comic.  The lead character in this series remains more of a hero than antihero, though certainly stained by the events of his times.  Edward and Bobby end the issue trying to make the best of a bad situation and not really succeeding.  Bobby, of course, is assassinated.  Edward's demons are more psychological, but they're impactful.  I read someone's assessment of the Before Watchmen project, and they labeled Comedian as one of the disappointments.  I still contend it was the best of the whole thing, and I think history will side with me, just as anyone who read Watchmen itself ended up thinking a lot differently about Edward at the end of it than they did at the beginning (or...every other point).  That's the magic of the character.

Django Unchained #3 (Vertigo)
Now that I've actually seen the movie, it's a different experience reading the comic book adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's complete script.  With the first two issues, I was discovering the story outside of the movie's direct influence.  Now it's harder to separate the two, although the adaptation is still making the story its own, retaining all the distinct advantages of the comic book format, and new artist Denys Cowan continues to keep the art equally distinctive, evocative and yet unique.  The series is halfway through, and on the final page introduces Calvin Candie, the character portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film.

Justice League #18 (DC)
This will probably be my final issue of the series.  While Geoff Johns continues work on Justice League (and its spin-off I'll be talking about next) and is gearing up for "Trinity War," the event that he's been working toward since the start of the New 52 and introduction of the mysterious Pandora (very soon to be featured in her own series), I'm not really in the financial means to continuing reading new comics on a regular basis.  I've been in the position to have a much smoother conclusion than in 1999 (known as cold turkey) or my abortive efforts in 2011 (when Flashpoint and the start of the New 52 sabotaged a similar design).  Grant Morrison concludes his Superman and Batman stories this year, and Johns is stepping down from Green Lantern.  I couldn't ask for a better exit.  Justice League has been consistently excellent, and this of all issues is a fine place to stop (and just as well to begin for readers in a different situation than me).  It's the customary recruitment issue.  Morrison did something similar in his JLA run, and it's been a staple for subsequent writers like Brad Meltzer.  Lots of new faces are here.  The issue also features the tenth installment of the Shazam! backup feature from Johns and Gary Frank, where the erstwhile Captain Marvel and always-kid Billy Batson finds it increasingly difficult to avoid the inevitable confrontation with Black Adam.

Justice League of America #2 (DC)
Another comics blog I follow, Crisis on Earth Prime, found this Hawkman/Vibe moment pretty memorable: Vibe says "Are you okay?," to which Hawkman responds "Why?"  Vibe next says "You're covered in blood," and Hawkman says "It's not my blood."  Vibe spends the next two panels putting some distance between them, and there are no words.  They're not necessary.  Johns wrote Hawkman both in the pages of JSA and his own title for years, but this may be the best scene he's ever done with the character.  There's also a pretty interesting Catwoman moment where she realizes how similar she is to Steve Trevor in the department of being spurned by giants.  This is the strength of the series, that Johns is able to write characters who aren't necessarily icons.  He actually writes both his League books in much the same way, but this one just feels more intimate.  These characters all have something to prove and they know it.  There's a backup feature in this series, too, featuring Martian Manhunter, who gets my vote as the best character too many people don't really care about.  He would make for an excellent movie.

The Mice Templar, Volume IV: Legend #1 (Image)
The series featuring fuzzy rodents that everyone who cares knows about is Mouse Guard, but Mice Templar has always had my vote for the better of them.  It's an iconic new take on the traditional hero's journey, always taking original twists and turns.  After a considerable absence, I'm glad to see it return.  I started reading these adventures in 2007.

Nova #2 (Marvel)
I loved the first issue of this new Jeph Loeb series, an integral element of Marvel's renewed Guardians of the Galaxy push (seeing that there's going to be a movie and all).  I didn't just love it, I adored it, one of the best single issues I've ever read.  You may have guessed at this point that I wasn't so wild about the second issue.  That's okay.

Saucer Country #13 (Vertigo)
The penultimate issue of this series (although Paul Cornell contends that he will attempt to revive it elsewhere) busts one of the key bits of mythology.  The previous issue had a distraught Professor Kidd apparently about to commit suicide, which turned out to be a ruse in order to get the "Pioneer space probe couple" stand revealed as a hoax.  The whole series has been about perception and reality in the world of alien abduction, following the presidential campaign of Arcadia Alvarado, who has been trying to come to grips with her own apparent abduction, which has only been complicated by the fact that she shared it with her estranged husband Michael.  It's been a fascinating ride.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Hive #4 (IDW)
The conclusion of this Borg epic that represents Brannon Braga's ultimate vision for the Collective and the roles Jean-Luc Picard and Seven of Nine (featured in Voyager) play in it.  In a lot of ways, it's a rephrasing of Voyager's final episode "Endgame."  There's also a little of a Star Trek Nemesis hangover involved as Future Data reveals how he returned (and not because as fans thought simply reborn as B4), which serves as an excellent ending after an emotional farewell to another character.  Pretty good stuff, although it would certainly be interesting to watch as filmed material.

Star Trek #19 (IDW)
This series is based in the rebooted continuity of the 2009 J.J. Abrams film and was originally set up to adapt classic episodes from the original series with the new interpretations of the familiar characters.  I don't know how many issues have deviated from this mission, but this one in particular certainly does and it's well worth enjoying for it.  Simply put, this is the secret origin of Scotty, from his family heritage to the incident with Admiral Archer's beagle (evoking similar characters from Enterprise but not the exact ones, because that was a hundred years in the past).  Good stuff.

(Justice League of America's) Vibe #1 (DC)
I had to go back and catch this one after initially skipping it.  Both spin-offs of the new series look like they're well worth checking out, this one and Katana.  What's intriguing about Vibe is that it follows a character who in his previous incarnation was all but a punchline, more famous as a casualty of a forgettable League lineup than anything he did or represented personally.  As with Earth 2, this is another series that builds on the initial Darkseid arc of Justice League, and brilliantly at that.  Departing Earth 2 writer James Robinson is still most famous for Starman, a series he cleverly hinged around legacy, but in a twist that no one would have seen coming when Jack Knight quickly replaced his more traditional brother David as successor to their father Ted.  Geoff Johns does something very similar here with the new Vibe, who is also notable for having the ability to see beyond the regular limits of this particular reality.  It's Geoff revising his own Booster Gold revision, the also-ran who became a multiverse champion following the breakthrough 52 experiment.  I don't know how long this series will last, but to my mind Vibe has everything to gain from all of this.  He's just become one of the most fascinating characters in DC.

Quick Hits: Saucer Country #10, 11, 12 (Vertigo)

Saucer Country was announced as canceled, and so these are some of the final issues.  Writer Paul Cornell has vowed to bring it back somehow somewhere, though in my experience this doesn't usually happen, although it happens most often in comics, and the only reason why I would still doubt this vow is that Cornell is known best of all for having a fairly short attention span.  He doesn't stick around any series for long.

Still Saucer Country was a favorite of mine, and Cornell is a favorite of mine, so I will savor it and both as much as I can.

The tenth issue is a lot more of the same, very serialized material that advances the basic quagmire of running an election and trying to figure out whether aliens are real or not, all the characters talking about and being frightened out of their minds that what they think isn't just a delusion.

The eleventh issue is another of those amusing digressions into conspiracy lore that Cornell spent the middle run of the series exploring.  This time, for some reason, it's about fairies, which is another layer of how the series has explored its central themes and works far better than you might think.

The twelfth issue is dominated by Professor Kidd, who has been doing most of the practical investigating for Governor Alvarado, and has been struggling the most, mostly because he's been experiencing what he's determined to be an ongoing set of delusions, like Grant Morrison's Happy! with a less happy outcome.  Or so it currently seems.

Saucer Country #6, 7, 8 and 9 (Vertigo)

writer: Paul Cornell
artist: Jimmy Broxton (#6), Ryan Kelly (regular)

(via vertigocomics.com)

The news recently came down the pike that Saucer Country has been cancelled.  There are probably a number of really good reasons why this happened, the most of them being low sales, and perhaps another that some of the target audience assumed things like The X-Files already covered this same material effectively enough.  There's also the problem that the book itself never seemed to click for readers, as any successful Vertigo series should, develop a cult audience either of fans or critics.

I came to Saucer Country because of my great respect for Paul Cornell, developed over the course of Captain Britain and MI:13, Action Comics, and Knight & Squire.  I've seen him become one of my favorite comic book writers.  When the New 52 came around for DC, he launched both Demon Knights and Stormwatch.  Notably, neither was a leading property, and both very much versions of the team book he did with Captain Britain.  Only Demon Knights seemed to tap into the rich mythological vein running through Cornell's best work, however.  He was off Stormwatch quickly enough, and his uncelebrated Knights was given to someone else, too.  Part of this is that Cornell doesn't stick around any one series for very long, and he'll soon be writing Wolverine, and this is not a time where a writer can write for both DC and Marvel at the same time.  I thought Saucer Country would stick around.

Yet I'm pretty sure its end has mostly nothing to do with the Marvel business.  I never found other readers as eager about this series as I was, and even though who sampled it seemed more confused than anything, which is a reaction I can sympathize with.  Other than lead character Arcadia Alvarez, I still can't remember anyone else's name.  The series does have a distinctive cast of characters, but they're important so far as how they relate to Arcadia and the general plot, not so much in themselves.  Arcadia's ex-husband, or the staff researcher who does her investigating...I quickly determined that Saucer Country would reward loyalty, and as of the issues in this review, it does so much more than that.  But first it had to prove that loyalty was worth it, and I think many readers decided early that it wasn't.

The basic plot of the series is that Arcadia Alvarez is a presidential candidate who was possibly abducted by aliens.  The fact that the reader doesn't know with any more conclusiveness than she does was always meant to be the hook to draw their interest into the ongoing story as it explored the mythology of aliens as we know it.  In The X-Files Fox Mulder's kid sister's abduction was used as a prop to explore all manner of strange phenomena.  What some people liked to refer as its ideological offspring, Fringe, figured out that getting to the heart of the matter was more fascinating and ultimately rewarding.  No, Fringe wasn't about aliens but rather the aliens among us.

Arcadia's dilemma was always two-fold.  As governor of New Mexico, "aliens" meant illegal immigrants as much as extra-terrestrials.  Saucer Country never really got around to exploring that metaphorical irony.  Arcadia herself is not just a strong woman, but part of the story of illegal aliens, being of Latino descent.  In a lot of ways, even though she's closest to the abduction arc, Arcadia was also the least affected, most dispassionate about the whole business.  It's everyone else falling apart around her.  She just wanted to know what happened.

Well, as I said, Cornell to me is known as someone who knows his way around mythology.  Yet Saucer Country took its time getting around to that.  I almost abandoned the series myself waiting for it to happen.  Then I heard that it finally did, and so I had another look, and not only did it happen, but Cornell threw himself at it, much in the way he threw himself at Lex Luthor's quest for power in Action Comics (an arc that happened just before the New 52, right before the Doomsday arc, culminating in #900).

Well, let's have a look.

#6 is all about an outline of the history of flying saucers and close encounters.  It's just the tipping point.  #7 peals back an additional layer, exploring the equally familiar claims that the government knows far more than it lets on, with the military being the source of experiences that become the first obsession with UFO phenomena.  #8 is about the Men in Black, not the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones variety, but another familiar layer.  #9 continues that one, actually, explains who they actually are.

All while Saucer Country also functions as a look at the political process, by the way.

Maybe the problem is that Cornell tried to do too many things at the same time.  I know that G. Willow Wilson's Air, an equally ambitious Vertigo series I twice named to the top of my annual QB50 review of my favorite comics, had a different take on the traditional Vertigo look at mythologies.  Books like Sandman or Preacher or Fables find audiences because at their core they're easy to explain.  Sandman was about Neil Gaiman's love of storytelling.  Preacher was about Garth Ennis and the best representation of his typically cynical nature.  Fables is Bill Willingham exploiting fairy tales.  Air, meanwhile, was Wilson attempting to explore current international relations.  Saucer Country was Cornell's attempt to explain a topic that still exists in the ether, and may just as well always stay there.  And also about aliens.

The more complicated it became, the more Cornell made it difficult for a wide audience to appreciate Saucer Country.  The smaller audiences weren't biting, either.  Yet it was a fascinating experiment.  These are some flashy issues that caught my attention and reminded me of everything I appreciated from Cornell and my own expectations for the series, but the truth is it was always what it set out to be, and unfortunately most people either crave more explanation from the start or want something flashier to help distract from the lack of immediate resolution.

There are five issues remaining.  Cornell has said he won't rush the ending, that he hopes to finish the story somewhere else.  If nothing else, hopefully these issues will find an audience who will appreciate what he's already done.

Unbeatable Comics From Last Week

Here's a quick roundup of the comics I read last week:

Atomic Robo Presents Real Science Adventures #4 (Red 5) is another fine entry in this anthology series, with a highlight of the continuing Bruce Lee serial, in which the late martial arts master admits recruiting Robo as a pupil because it's hard for a guy like Bruce to find a decent sparring partner.

Batman and Robin #11 (DC) sees Damian continue to work his way through past Robins by confronting Jason Todd (a rare appearance by the Red Hood outside of his own book) while the Terminus gang brands people with the bat symbol.

Before Watchmen: Minutemen #2 of 6 (DC) features the team coming together for the first time and probably sees Darwyn Cooke give more characterization to Silhouette than any previous appearance.  (Perhaps more notable given that Before Watchmen collaborator J. Michael Straczynski did a version of the character in his own epic The Twelve.)

Charmed #22 (Zenescope) makes a little more sense than the last issue for readers who haven't exactly been following the series regularly, especially as concerns the return of Prue and her relationship to the Charmed Ones.

Demon Knights #11 (DC) moves the story along more than some issues, with a huge push from King Arthur and assist from the first appearance of Morgaine La Fey.

Peter Panzerfaust #5 (Image) moves the boys along to Paris, where they discover their Nazi troubles are far from over.

Saucer Country #5 (Vertigo) may be the best issue of the series so far, showcasing the cleverness of Arcadia as she kills two birds with one stone, learning more about what happened to her during a hypnotherapy session without letting on what she actually remembers to a duplicitous psychiatrist.

The Shade #10 of 12 (DC) demonstrates our antihero doing pretty much the same thing against the enemies who set Deathstroke against him in the first issue.

Unbeatable Comics: Paul Cornell

Demon Knights #10
writer: Paul Cornell
artist: Diogenes Neves

Saucer Country #4
writer: Paul Cornell
artist: Ryan Kelly

Paul Cornell has been one of the best writers in comics for several years now.  One of these two books may finally help comic book fans realize that.

"Look!  It's a pirate sea serpent!"  Lines like that, combined with a guest character who briefly breaks into the heavy British dialogue used so well in Cornell's Knight & Squire, are just token examples what helps set his work apart.  The whole book demonstrates his ability to juggle both character and story, whether he's dancing around the nature of Shining Knight or once again using the juxtaposition between Jason Blood and Etrigan to convey the depth of relationships any good story should have.  By the time the climax of the issue reaches Zombie King Arthur, you realize anything can and will happen in a Paul Cornell story.

In Saucer Country, meanwhile, everyone's still trying to figure out if the alien abduction that serves as the crux of this book actually happened, but that's proving trickier than expected (which is exactly what Cornell's going for).  Arcadia Alvarado is currently governor of New Mexico, but she's going to be running for president, so there's good motivation for her wanting to know exactly what happened to her.  She's not the only one.

Her ex-husband Michael  is the one with the least amount of credibility, and exploring his side of events has been equally fascinating, especially since it's far less likely anyone will believe him.  Last issue we saw how he started to rationalize his experience by turning the aliens into rabbits, trying to cover up his own memories.  To retrieve them, he visits a hypnotherapist known for his radical views on alien abduction.  Naturally, when Alvarado's men hear his version, they're skeptical, or to be more accurate, dismissive.  Then Arcadia makes the radical decision to visit the hypnotherapist herself.

The whole point and approach of Saucer Country is that the truth is not a simple thing.  In The X-Files, it was famously declared to be "out there," and perhaps it is, but some people have to live with that ambiguity a little closer to home, with incredibly high personal stakes.  There's a lot of ways this can be explored.  Cornell has decided to let it speak for itself, and nothing about it is easy.  That's a testament to his ambition, and vision.

The thrill is always waiting to see what he does next.

Many Happy Returns

ATOMIC ROBO PRESENTS REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES #2 (Red 5)

I haven’t read a new Atomic Robo adventure science Free Comic Book Day.  Excuse me, let me clarify, FCBD 2011.  I didn’t read this year’s installment, because for the first time in five years, I missed FCBD.  Heroes & Dragons doesn’t participate.  I may ask them if they can at least get me copies of the free comics I wanted (the annual Atomic Robo offering, plus my regular dose of free DC).  Anyway, back to the matter at hand, I’ve just read Atomic Robo, which I’ve enjoyed doing for four years, give or take, now.  His adventures have been among the most clever material I’ve ever read in a comic book, as if BONE had never gone into deep fantasy, and remained lighthearted.  It’s primarily been the work of writer Brian Clevinger and artist Scott Wegener, but the distinctive appearance of the character has long inspired fan art, and so it was only a matter of time before Wegener actually gave way to other artists.  REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES is essentially an anthology title that accomplishes exactly that, Clevinger delivering exactly the same kind of witty, sparse storytelling, and our first chance to see variations on the basic style already well-established (there are six paperback collections if you’d like to see for yourself).  There are clear parallels between Robo and Hellboy, but whereas Hellboy is involved in fairly steep mythology and franchise at this point, Robo is still his trademark blissfully carefree self, like the most pure form of what a comic book should be.  In fact, if that’s how you want to consider Atomic Robo, then I would encourage and endorse that view!

AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #7 (Marvel)

At the start of the year, I rather pithily dismissed the launch of this series, but now I get to benefit, so I’m going to quickly and quietly reverse my position, if only for one issue.  I’m a big fan of Stuart Immonen (and his frequent collaborator and wife, Kathryn), but until this issue I haven’t seen the Marvel version of Stuart Immonen compare favorably to the transcendent version I enjoyed at DC at the end of the last millennium.  I would go so far as to say that version of Stuart Immonen as one of the best creators of his generation, both as writer and artist.  The Marvel version of Stuart Immonen has tried a variety of ways to be the exact opposite of that Stuart Immonen, and suffice it to say, I really don’t see the point.  So it was with great pleasure that I saw this issue, which features Spidey teaming up with She-Hulk in a throwback adventure in so many ways.  It’s at once an argument that Stuart should do Peter Parker (he did Pete once before, in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, but that was Bendis Spider-Man, not Immonen Spider-Man), and that maybe he wouldn’t be such a bad fit for She-Hulk, either (and yes, I acknowledge that Kathryn was the writer of this tale and not Stuart, but for me, when Stuart’s art is the art I best associate with Stuart, the whole story becomes associated with him).  So, Marvel, take note, or if you don’t, then at least let Stuart notice that at least some of his fans are.  This might have been a random issue of a series that doesn’t really seem to have a coherent point to it, but its significance is greater than you can imagine.

HISTORY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE (Marvel)

One of Marvel’s periodic attempts to chronicle its own fictional history in a journalistic fashion, this comic is also evidence that Marvel has produced many, many stories with a bare minimum of coherence, which may be fun to read at the time, but don’t actually make up a history that inspires a lot of confidence.  This is what people think of when they think of comic books, and maybe that helped THE AVENGERS wildly succeed as a movie, but it’s not a lot to take seriously, unless you don’t look very closely.  A DC version of this would read differently, is all I’m saying.  I know that MARVELS managed to make this kind of history lesson look remarkably impressive, and maybe the same thing could be done today with the same effect, but to see how many times Marvel has changed characters and attempted to kill them off, only to backpedal and still pretend that every single story its ever told actually exists in continuity, well…to a perpetual skeptic who can still appreciate the odd story, it just beggars the mind.  Fans really prefer, on general majority, Marvel to DC?  Maybe it’s because Marvel does the cliché comic better than anyone, I don’t know.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but every now and again, it’s probably worth living up to the hype instead of coasting on reputation.  Just saying…

JUSTICE LEAGUE #9 (DC)

Speaking of which, this is a book that many fans seem to assume is doing exactly that, when it’s doing anything but.  Geoff Johns has been building a coherent story since the launch, and this is an issue that really rewards faith in that, even if you haven’t always been, pardon me, a true believer.  His angle has from the start been about the world’s perception of the League which is why Steve Trevor is relevant as a character for the first time in decades, and why a new villain named Graves (for the moment?) may be the most significant new adversary for the team since Prometheus, emerging first as an anonymous cheerleader who literally wrote the book about the team, and then became embittered and disillusioned, an arc Mark Waid tried to do in THE KINGDOM, but which here may actually work.  The best comic book stories in this millennium will always tell stories on at least two levels: 1) from the ordinary perspective of the characters involved, and 2) from the greater perspective of how that story relates to the world the characters live in, which more or less means they work on objective and subjective levels.  There are many ways to do this, and Geoff Johns has perfected his, first with Green Lantern, and now with the Justice League.  Sit back and enjoy the ride.

NIGHTWING #9 (DC)

Random attacks by the Talons in “Night of the Owls” continue, and for Nightwing, they’re surprisingly personal.  Kyle Higgins continues to exploit his opportunity to give the Grayson family line the same amount of depth writers have been giving the Waynes for years, so that Dick Grayson is no longer just the orphaned son of circus performers who served as a useful surrogate for Bruce Wayne’s war on crime, but rather someone with a rich history of his own.  In fact, Scott Snyder seems to have unwittingly ceded the most relevant part of his epic to his partner in crime.  This issue reveals both the strengths and the weaknesses in the concept of the Court of Owls, how random an opponent they really are, and how convoluted it is to make them relevant in the way they’re supposed to be.  Higgins, though, makes it work in surprising fashion, and it would do well for future Nightwing writers to remember this issue.  This is a greater concern than you’d think, because most new Nightwing writers tend to ignore what’s come before them (there are exceptions, but then if there weren’t, there wouldn’t be a rule).  What Higgins is really doing here is establishing once and for all that Dick Grayson is a viable character in his own right.  I for one hope that Higgins remains onboard for many years to come.

PETER PANZERFAUST #3 (Image)

I’ve been intrigued by this title ever since I learned of its existence.  This is the first issue I’ve actually been able to read, but I’m still infinitely glad and gratified.  Peter Pan as a cultural icon is fascinating, the first time in pop entertainment where a child is held up as an ideal, even if he’s a deeply flawed one, suggesting that youth and experience are not always mutually exclusive in surprisingly profound ways.  Of course, one of the distinctions in the traditional story is Peter’s relationship with Wendy, and by sheer coincidence, this issue of PETER PANZERFAUST, a vision of the character by Kurtis Wiebe that recasts him into WWII, is the introduction of Wendy into the narrative.  Sometimes luck really does work that way.  I don’t know how long this series can last, but I’ll be a faithful reader for as long as possible.

SAUCER COUNTRY #3 (Vertigo)

Not surprisingly, this is going to be a series that deepens its own mythology with every new issue, exploring and meditating on the same themes as they unfold, one narrative and vision, which just so happens to be pretty profound.  What is the proper relationship one should have with fringe experiences?  Like the TV show FRINGE, SAUCER COUNTRY does not have easy answers, but Paul Cornell wastes no time getting beyond that and plunging deeply into his story.  Maybe things won’t happen very quickly, but they’ll be interesting.

THE SHADE #8 (DC)

I’m still shocked that most fans have skipped out on this one, but pleased that DC saw fit to give James Robinson a full year to explore one of the more fascinating elements of his late, critically acclaimed STARMAN series, a reformed villain with a rich history and a thorny future, all of which is intertwined in this story.  I’ve missed three issues since the last time I was able to get my hands on THE SHADE, and you’ve got to know that ensuring I didn’t miss the rest of it was one of my primary concerns in opening a box at Heroes & Dragons. So then, here we go again.

Teenage Wasteland

Here I go again.  I really shouldn’t have, but I opened a box at Heroes & Dragons, meaning I will be reading comics on a regular basis again, in a more limited capacity than I have in the past, when I didn’t have a ton of impulse control.  This time I’ll be reading on the stuff I really want to read.  Some of my selections have been shaped by the extended trial I’ve been on for the past year, some by decisions I made before it.  It’s really an effort to read books that may be unavailable typically, things I don’t want to miss, things I won’t have had the ability to catch if I hadn’t made this decision.  For instance, as visitors to Comics Reader will know by now, I’m a fan of Oni Press’s WASTELAND, a comic that spent a great deal of time recently not actually being published, but the circumstances that forced that particular break were recently resolved, and throughout 2012 it’s been back on a regular basis.  I haven’t seen it in any comic book store I’ve visited since Newbury Comics, so in order to read it without a lot of hassle, opening up a box was a decision that was more or less necessary.

There are two kinds of people who read comics: those with arrested development and those who are simply developing.  I don’t mean to disparage either group, but the fact is, it takes a special kind of person to be interested in stories told in illustrated form, especially when the most popular stories in the medium feature outsized personalities in colorful costumes.  Part of what drove me to reading comics in the first place was vindicated frustration from a childhood deprived of them when I was most keen to do so; I’ve been playing catch-up for twenty years.  I was a teenager by the time I was able to fulfill this ambition, and it so happened that at the time, there were a lot of comics being published that rewarded continued interest, and that helped develop a habit.  Yes, reading comics is a habit; otherwise they wouldn’t be released in monthly increments.

Again, none of this is a bad thing.  In fact, I think it’s a very good thing, because comics have an ability to remove the filter many storytellers force on themselves, making their tales more mundane, more ordinary, more constrained by things that have actually happened.  That in itself isn’t a bad thing, and in some instances can be a very good thing, but the universal is at its best in the sublime, when it activates the imagination.  There are more benefits to looking beyond the simple and embracing the abstract.  Comics do this better than any other expressive form except perhaps music.  For some reason, but you combine a static image with words, the words become more important, if you let them.

That being said, let’s look at some examples:

AQUAMAN #8 (DC)

Geoff Johns continues to expand his vision of Aquaman beyond the simple parody that pop culture has embraced in the past ten years, abetted by lackluster comic book portrayals in endless relaunches throughout many decades (Tad Williams, I contend, remains the sole exception) since the character’s creation.  Some creators have understood the potential of his unique setting, the mythology that Aquaman alone can truly tap into, but Johns is looking beyond that simple vision and tapping into how Aquaman’s life and career can be shaped outside his connections to the Justice League and embrace, like his Green Lantern stories, a far greater world than ever before.  To wit, Johns opens this issue with the young Arthur Curry attempting to distance himself from humans who could never understand him, following the death of his father, thrusting him into a dawning awareness of his Atlantean heritage.  He eventually meets others who understand him, but they aren’t the Justice League, but rather a whole myriad of outcasts.  As I’ve been saying, anyone who hasn’t read AQUAMAN yet should probably start doing so soon, because if history is any indication, Johns has a lot more planned, and this is just the foundation.

THE AVENGERS #1 (Marvel)

A reprint of the 2010 relaunch, Brian Michael Bendis (guru of all things Earth’s Mightiest Heroes) picks up the pieces of many conflicts he himself has helped engineer, reassembling the team once more and then bringing back time-traveling Kang for a more specific purpose.  There are moments where the gravity of what everyone’s been through is clear, but there’s also the trademark flippant style of Bendis that has likely built him his following (it’s no wonder he moonlights as the Ultimate chronicler of Spider-Man, since that’s his natural character vein).  This one’s a freebie, which is really smart, given the movie that pretty much everyone is going to see this summer, many in multiple visits.

AVENGERS VS X-MEN #0 (Marvel)

I got this reprint, too (had to pay for it, though), the one that looks like the most obvious gimmick in a long series of Marvel events since Bendis came aboard, but it spears someone really did figure out that there’s a story to be had, too.  Bendis started the ball rolling with HOUSE OF M (not to mention “Disassembled”), but the House of Ideas finally figured out what to do with mutant messiah Hope, too, tying her in with the Phoenix saga that was the highlight of the Claremont era that made the X-Men rise to the prominence it still enjoys today.  If this event figures out how to handle all of what it promises competently, it may be the most important story from Marvel in the past decade.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #5 (DC)

Seeing this even earlier issue from the story I snapped up in one of my previous visits, I couldn’t pass it up.  I am now thoroughly convinced that the series has already earned a prominent spot in the eventual 2012 QB50.  Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason are creating the most important in-continuity Batman stories, period.

DEMON KNIGHTS #7 (DC)

Another issue that fills in one of my gaps, Paul Cornell’s period heroics are just as astonishing as everything else he does, featuring historic heroes in ways only Grant Morrison previously approached with SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY.  If you want, consider this an ongoing series inspired by some of the mini-series in that project.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #8 (DC)

Geoff Johns again, once again putting the focus on a relative outsider, approaching the League from the outside in.  This time it’s Green Arrow, more famously depicted as an older, more cynical hero obsessed with social causes and his own legacy.  As a younger version, he does seem a little more superfluous, so it’s no wonder the League wants nothing to do with him (even if they have other reasons besides), even when he finally, petulantly, gives voice to the reasons he wants to join, which more accurately reflect the Oliver Queen we know and love.  The backup Shazam feature continues, and is already a definitive version of the character.  But what else did you expect from Geoff Johns?

RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #8 (DC)

I can’t decide whether I actually want to read this series on a regular basis, but I keep getting drawn to it because Jason Todd is such a compelling character, a damaged individual with a tragic past, sometimes awful tendencies, and a road to redemption.  Scott Lobdell has captured this perfectly, and Kenneth Rocafort is an extremely unusual artist for DC (the only negative this issue is the cartoonish fat woman who’s the villain of the story), and another strong draw.  Forget the backlash concerning the costume of Starfire.  You need to at least sample this series.

SAUCER COUNTRY #2 (Vertigo)

Sometimes it’s better to miss the first issue of a comic book, and in this case, it’s almost mandatory.  Arcadia Alvarado will be running for President, but she believes she was abducted by aliens.  Do you believe her?  That’s the whole thrust of this series from Paul Cornell, finally getting the chance to stretch himself a little, with a concept entirely created by himself, in a book that has the potential to be the next great Vertigo project. 

THE TWELVE #12 (Marvel)

WATCHMEN as retold by J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston finally concludes.  Okay, it’s not really WATCHMEN, more like Captain America retold in the manner of WATCHMEN.  Regardless, this was an ambitious project of motivations and fate that proved fascinating and then frustrating when Straczynski took an extended break, leading many fans for several years to fear that it would never be concluded.  So important to Weston, actually, that he produced a one-shot on his own to continue the saga of the WWII heroes suspended and then revive in modern times, only to succumb to their own failings, THE TWELVE comes to a worthy if quiet conclusion, befitting its focus on character ahead of sensation.  Hopefully it will take its place among the seminal superhero stories.

WASTELAND #36 (Oni)

It’s a little strange for this reader to dive back into the series now that RESURRECTION artist Justin Greenwood has settling in as replacement for Christopher Mitten, whose distinctive style helped shape the early issues of Antony Johnston’s epic vision of the future, especially after having read (and written synopses for here at Comics Reader) the first six collected editions.  I have missed four issues between the last one featured in the paperbacks and what I was surprised to find waiting for me last week.  Michael and Abi, on their way to A-Ree-Yass-I, have stumbled into another town overrun with overblown egos.  If you were at all hesitant about WASTELAND before, it may be easier to catch exactly what this series is all about with these new issues, with new art but the same complex storytelling Johnston has been employing from the start.