Reading Comics 231 "Midtown Comics"

I had a bad habit of spending money I didn’t have, a decade ago, ordering comics from Midtown.  When I placed my most recent order, it was money I did have, so it was a fine thing to revisit the old habit.  Here’s what I got:

Doomsday Clock #11 (DC)

The penultimate issue, leading to the much-anticipated encounter between Superman and Doctor Manhattan, lays out what exactly Geoff Johns was doing all along, including finally explaining what Saturn Girl has been doing in the Rebirth era (somewhat ironically, for her).  This is probably some of the best stuff Johns has ever written.

The Green Lantern #11 (DC)

Back when I was at my blogging height, I collected a number of blogs I thought would be worth reading on a regular basis, but more often than not I was wrong.  One of them is a comics blog that has continued to review new comics every week, and…I just don’t give a wit about the guy’s opinions.  He seems positively allergic to any real ambition in comics.  So: he doesn’t like Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern.  I think you have to be an idiot not to like a Morrison comic, especially when he’s obviously applying himself and having a great old time.  And he’s clearly doing exactly that in this comic.  And in this issue alone, he does what no one since Geoff Johns has really been able to nail and that’s introduce another forgotten element of Green Lantern lore, and it doesn’t hurt that he deliberately draws on Don Quixote to do it (this has sort of been my Year of Don Quixote).  Anyway, while I don’t love everything Grant Morrison has ever done, this whole run is going to sit very proudly alongside my collection of his works.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1 (DC)

Wow.  So, Brian Michael Bendis, folks.  The dude has been a tireless creative dynamo since coming to work for DC, not just with the creator-owned material he either brought with him or began, but the stuff he’s been imagining with familiar characters, and everything fans expected him to do, he just keeps coming up with curveballs.  This comic, for instance, actually centers on Rose & Thorn, a concept I came across in ‘90s Superman comics, but which Bendis makes his own, brilliantly.  Now I want to read a comic based on her, forget about the returning Legion!  But I’ll take the Legion, too, because I’m pretty convinced that if anyone can pull off a relevant new Legion, it’s Bendis.  I’ve never enjoyed him as much as I am now.  I haven’t always been a fan, per say, but I’ve enjoyed him in the past.  But he’s operating on an entirely new level now.  It’s, dare I say, amazing…

Section Zero #6 (Image)

Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett are basically reprising their old Superboy comics, which to my mind is a very good thing, with this one.  I bought the Stuart Immonen variant cover, naturally.

Spawn #300 (Image)

I’m pretty sure the creator-owned landmark Spawn is matching this issue and passing with the next one is Cerebus, which was much-celebrated in times past but much-criticized today.  Now, given that there’re 300 issues of Spawn to be accounted for and maybe the first few years that most fans are actually going to remember, someone had the bright idea to reboot back to the continuity, basically, of those early years for this occasion.  It’s only just occurred to me that Spawn as a concept seems to have copy-and-posted almost directly from Venom, as far as being a symbiotic costume thing.  Todd McFarlane explains how he came up with the character in the ‘70s, obviously before Venom or the black Spider-Man costume ever existed, but I wonder how much of what ended up being Spawn was envisioned back in the day and how much when McFarlane went off to help found Image on the back of all the money he and his fellow pirate artists were making at the time.  In fact, reading (or sort of reading) those Demon Etrigan comics from Forbidden Geek sort of put Spawn further in perspective: He’s sort of exactly Venom, but envisioned by DC. 

Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath #1 (IDW)

I’m a fan of the series itself, so I didn’t mind revisiting it in comics form, and this comic is a good way to do so, and even harkens back to the best of IDW’s Star Trek comics.

Superman: Up in the Sky #3 (DC)

This is the comic book store reprint series of the Walmart Superman Giant material from Tom King and Andy Kubert, which I thought I’d get at least one issue of, calculating (correctly, as it happily turned out), that this one would feature the “controversial” installment featuring the many deaths of Lois Lane.  And rereading this material was as equally pleasurable as the first time, as I hoped, so that was also good to see.

Unbeatable Comics: Spawn #220

writer: Todd McFarlane
artist: Szymon Kudranski

It's hard not to see Spawn as the defining creation of Image Comics.  He was the most famous one in the early days, and he's one of the few still standing, and in regular publication since the beginning.  He was Todd McFarlane's response to the question, "What happens after DC and Marvel?"

As indicated in an extensive commentary included in this twentieth anniversary issue, McFarlane still has passionate belief in Spawn.  When the movie version was released in 1997, he called Spawn the complete opposite of Batman.  That may be more relevant today than ever before.  Spawn is no longer Al Simmons, the hapless military vet tricked into becoming the occupant of a costume created in Hell.  Instead, he's Jim Downing, whose past has been shrouded in mystery, even though he's become a celebrity to the rest of the world as a possible messiah.  (It was hard for me to read this issue and not think of Warrior, in which Tom Hardy seemingly comes out of nowhere to be a prime participant in a massive MMA tournament.)

Downing is not only Spawn, but the victim and outcast of a cabal of scientists who would probably be at home in Fringe.  There's a lot of reading to be done in this comic.  It's definitely, now more than originally, nothing like the superhero comics you'll find at DC and Marvel.  In a way, that's hugely encouraging.  Truth be told, Spawn used to be the worst offender of the overblown creations Image used to be known for, even after its vaunted sojourn into creator rights.  The joke ought to have been, "They wanted the right to create garbage?"  But over time, the company got its act together.  Of course, sales are marginal even by the low standards of comics today, especially compared to the nearly two million copies the first issue of Spawn sold.  (There's a handy timeline of Spawn history included as well, that helps outline its legacy to date, even though it conspicuously overlooks the whole Neil Gaiman flap.)

In losing most of its audience Spawn has finally shaped itself into something that would have been worthy of those readers.  That's an irony if I ever saw one.