I don't know how much I can say about this, but I want to say something. Legendary comic book creator Bill Mantlo is in a hospital bed after a hit and run accident, and will almost definitely be there for the rest of his life. He requires constant care, has enormous medical bills and, like so many greats of the golden age of comics, no money. Mantlo is one of the largely unsung heroes of comics, someone who produced solid, quality work at a steady, reliable rate. His run on The Incredible Hulk is considered one of the definitive ones, and he was also behind the launch of underground favourite Rom: Spaceknight.
Mantlo has been injured for a long time now, and his condition has been common knowledge among fans as well. So why am I mentioning it now? Well, one of the characters that Mantlo created was Rocket Raccoon, star of the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie. In any other industry that would have him set for life, but this is comics, and he won't see a dime for it. Unfortunately, that's not an usual story in this industry. Joe Shuster, the co-creator of Superman, suffered terribly from poverty in his lifetime, despite being responsible for one of the most iconic character of all time.
If you want to know more, this heartbreaking article has the full story of Bill Mantlo's situation, and current Superman writer Greg Pak has a PayPal button for donations to his care here. Pak also wrote very powerfully about Mantlo's influence on his own writing here. If nothing else, when you go to see Guardians of the Galaxy with your friends, spare a thought for Mantlo, and maybe say something to somebody. These characters don't just appear, they're created by hardworking men and women, and we need to honour them as well.
Friday, 11 April 2014
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Short reviews - 11 March, 2014
Welcome once again to Some Stuff I Got Recently And Feel Like Talking About, or as I like to call it, SSIGRAFLTA. Just like last time, this is going to be a quick rundown of some comics I picked up recently, what they're like, and whether or not I think that you should get them. The last time I did this it was pretty much the Image party, which isn't entirely surprising what with Image putting out some of the most unique and appealing books on the market right now, but I'm still going to cast the net a little wider this time. I'm also going to talk about a few less books this time around and go into each of them at greater length, partly because I'm still finding my "blogger voice" and mostly because this is my site and you can't actually stop me.
BLACK WIDOW #5 - Nathan Edmonson and Phil Noto, Marvel
First up, if you're one of the many people who walked out of The Avengers or Captain America: Winter Soldier wishing for a Black Widow movie, you really should be picking up this series. Why? Well, two reasons. Firstly, if it's a success it'll demonstrate interest in the character and make a big screen solo outing more of a possibility. Secondly, THIS IS BASICALLY THE THING YOU'RE ASKING FOR, only on paper instead of celluloid and coming out every month instead of once every four to five years.
Seriously, of all the characters in those films, Black Widow is the one whose comic has taken the most direct influence from the movie. That's mostly down to the the fact that Natasha Romanov has been pretty inconsistently characterised over the years, from the comedy Russian accent of her Hawkeye appearance to the untrustworthy seductress bitch that Mark Millar made her / every woman he's ever written. This series ditches most of the character's backstory and baggage, leaving us with a enigmatic but ultimately honourable ninja/assassin type with a Dark Mysterious Past, one who can function in the intelligence and espionage community when she has to but is much happier getting her hands dirty in the blackest of black ops. She's smart, bold and tough, though far from infallible - this issue in particular ends with her finding herself in very big trouble as a result of her lack of caution. That's something that we can all relate to, though in my case it's usually more a case of overfilling my Slurpee cup rather than breaking into a top secret facility without adequate backup.
The other major influence here is Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye, and that makes a lot of sense, both because of the connection between the two characters as established in the movie and the ridiculous amount of success that that book has had in promoting a minor character to the top tier of popularity. Black Widow isn't quite as good as Hawkeye, though that's not saying much since Hawkeye is consistently among the best on the stands. It definitely has the same sort of tone, though, placing the character into a mostly-self-contained setting that looks a little more like the real world than your average Iron Man or X-Men outing.
That's a lot of waffle, I know. What you really want to know is - is it good? For the most part, yes. The art is very cool, a sort of slightly airbrushed pen and ink combination that looks beautiful in conversation scenes and dynamic in movement and combat. There's a lot of the latter in this issue, with Natasha getting into an all-out beatdown with a massive Russian assassin on an airport runway with a downed 747 spiraling towards them. It's good stuff, and even when the plotting falls into superspy tropes it's all handled with wit and aplomb. Nathan Edmonson gives the character a very clear voice, giving her a great mix of sardonicism and sadness, and Phil Noto draws her with just the right combination of European elegance and scrappy charm. I'm definitely going to keep picking this up into the forseeable future, and if you want more Black Widow in your life then you should too.
LUMBERJANES #1 of 8 - Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis and Brooke A. Allen, Boom Studios
You've probably already heard a lot of the buzz surrounding Lumberjanes by now - it's easily one of the most highly anticipated indie comics of recent years, coming as it does from the enormously popular and incredibly talented Noelle Stevenson. If you don't know the basics, they are as follows - five badass girls in a log cabin, fighting monsters with the power of punk rock friendship - TO THE MAX. There's more, but that's everything that you really need to know going in, and if it doesn't hook you then I can't imagine what would.
This issue leaps straight into the action, with the girls getting into a brawl with a pack of evil three eyed foxes in the very first scene, which leads into a creepy prophecy which I suspect will drive the rest of the story. The rest of the issue is spent detailing their world and individual personalities, and it's actually quite impressive how quickly the five leads are sketched in and differentiated from one another. A lot of number one issues spend too much time setting things up and not enough time getting to the meat of the story, and the honest truth is that most writers just don't have time for that in the space of twenty-odd pages. This is a book that messes around as little as its characters, which is to say, not at all.
In this post-Buffy world, there have been plenty of attempts to capture that sassy-girl-fights-monsters feel, most of which have ranged from the creepy to the naff, but I really do feel like Lumberjanes nails it. The monsters are excellently strange (three eyed foxes, man), the girls are witty, engaging and immediately likeable the script pops ("what the Joan Jett are you doing!?") and the art is cartoony, expressive and utterly joyous. Pretty much everything else that I read this month was drawn in a strictly realistic style, so it made a great change to get my hands and eyeballs on something where the art was so unabashadly cartoonish and fun. The bottom line is this: it doesn't matter who you are or what your particular tastes are, just ignore the hype and buy this comic. You'll thank me later.
MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER #1 - Fred Van Lente and Cory Smith, Dynamite
I made the joke on Twitter a while ago that the best thing about Magnus, Robot Fighter starting up again was that it meant that there was a comic called Magnus, Robot Fighter in the world again, and while that sounds like damning this series with faint praise, I stand by it. It's a heck of a title, and so far, this is shaping up to be a fun enough book to earn it.
Magnus has a bit of history on him, first appearing as a Gold Key character all the way back in 1963, and then again as part of the Valiant lineup in the nineties. He's been pretty unchanged throughout, since the premise "wears red tunic and karate chops robots" is pretty damn timeless. The latest version, this time from Dynamite, skips the macho skirt and keeps the robot beheading, which is disappointing to me but will almost definitely be good for sales. Dynamite have also managed to snag the rights for his old mate Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, so there's great potential for a Guys Whose Name Is What They Do crossover in the near future.
Anyway, the first issue gets things off to a pretty great start. The art is pretty solid, and Cory Smith has a great flair for drawing hyperdetailed robots and futuristic cityscapes, something the back half of the issue gives him plenty of chance to do. The story goes some way towards establishing a new status quo for the character that has a good combination of the modern and the classic, though it spends quite a bit longer than I would have liked on prologue before the story proper kicks off. I won't give too much away, but suffice to say if you gave this issue to someone in a decade they would definitely roll their eyes and say "gee, I guess those Matrix films were pretty popular back then, huh?"
Fred Van Lente has a lot of pedigree as a writer - I'm particularly enthusiastic about his Action Philosophers! - and he has a great knack for combining action with comedy, something that's very much on display here. There are several funny gags to go along with the robot punching action, including Magnus being subjected to a Captcha by a robot to test if he's human or robot, and restrictive Laws of Humanity that seem to correspond with the classic Laws of Robotics. At the end of the day, this is a well made comic about a man who does karate to robots, or at least the setup for one, and if that's up your alley then you should check it out.
DETECTIVE COMICS #30 - Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul, DC Comics
For a while, life was simple. The New 52 freed me from the awful burden of having to buy so many DC books every month by the simple measure of making most of them terrible, and I was left to do whatever I wanted with my free time and bank balance. With the number of readable Batman books stripped down to one (1), I could happily read along with Snyder's Bat-ventures and not have to worry about anything else. Now, DC have had the temerity to pull the hackish Tony Daniel away from the reigns of Detective, put a fresh, interesting team on the book and kick it off in a whole new direction, thus FORCING me to start picking it up again. What a pack of assholes.
This comic does a few things that I don't care for a lot that I do. The first three pages are basically nothing but people saying that they're getting fresh starts, or whole new beginnings, or that a new day is dawning, and yes, I get it, we're starting afresh here, jeez. Something I love, though? The cover is YELLOW AND PINK. This is a Batman book, and the background of the cover is bright, solid yellow. It's bold, it's attention getting and its fun. The story has Batman chasing down a motorcycle gang (awesome) and then doing a business deal (eh) at the Gotham X-Games (AWESOME), and while it all feels like setup for later events, the layout and delivery are all really interesting and fun to read. I also like the brief look at the good work that Batman does for Gotham out of the cowl as well as under it, though the first issue of a new run seems like a strange place to put such a focus on it.
Francis Manapul is an artist that I have a lot of respect for, and he does a really great job of combining his own slightly painterly style with the stodgy realism demanded by the DC House Style. He does great work with messy, complex images, and a sequence in which Batman tracks a pack of bikers over Gotham rooftops is perfectly suited to his talents, as are spunky teen girls doing dirtbike tricks. Batman's costume is the gross grey-with-piping thing that he's been kicking around in for a while, but that's probably contractually mandated, so while it makes me curl my lip I won't hold it against this book in particular. The rest of the story, though, is bright and appealing in a way that Batman stories rarely are. As someone who very much wants to be reading the original Batman series without rolling his eyes every five minutes, I have to say that this issue makes me optimistic. Dare we dream that DC might actually rid itself of the fixation with childishly serious antiheroes and make some more superhero books which are...fun!?
First up, if you're one of the many people who walked out of The Avengers or Captain America: Winter Soldier wishing for a Black Widow movie, you really should be picking up this series. Why? Well, two reasons. Firstly, if it's a success it'll demonstrate interest in the character and make a big screen solo outing more of a possibility. Secondly, THIS IS BASICALLY THE THING YOU'RE ASKING FOR, only on paper instead of celluloid and coming out every month instead of once every four to five years.
Seriously, of all the characters in those films, Black Widow is the one whose comic has taken the most direct influence from the movie. That's mostly down to the the fact that Natasha Romanov has been pretty inconsistently characterised over the years, from the comedy Russian accent of her Hawkeye appearance to the untrustworthy seductress bitch that Mark Millar made her / every woman he's ever written. This series ditches most of the character's backstory and baggage, leaving us with a enigmatic but ultimately honourable ninja/assassin type with a Dark Mysterious Past, one who can function in the intelligence and espionage community when she has to but is much happier getting her hands dirty in the blackest of black ops. She's smart, bold and tough, though far from infallible - this issue in particular ends with her finding herself in very big trouble as a result of her lack of caution. That's something that we can all relate to, though in my case it's usually more a case of overfilling my Slurpee cup rather than breaking into a top secret facility without adequate backup.
The other major influence here is Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye, and that makes a lot of sense, both because of the connection between the two characters as established in the movie and the ridiculous amount of success that that book has had in promoting a minor character to the top tier of popularity. Black Widow isn't quite as good as Hawkeye, though that's not saying much since Hawkeye is consistently among the best on the stands. It definitely has the same sort of tone, though, placing the character into a mostly-self-contained setting that looks a little more like the real world than your average Iron Man or X-Men outing.
That's a lot of waffle, I know. What you really want to know is - is it good? For the most part, yes. The art is very cool, a sort of slightly airbrushed pen and ink combination that looks beautiful in conversation scenes and dynamic in movement and combat. There's a lot of the latter in this issue, with Natasha getting into an all-out beatdown with a massive Russian assassin on an airport runway with a downed 747 spiraling towards them. It's good stuff, and even when the plotting falls into superspy tropes it's all handled with wit and aplomb. Nathan Edmonson gives the character a very clear voice, giving her a great mix of sardonicism and sadness, and Phil Noto draws her with just the right combination of European elegance and scrappy charm. I'm definitely going to keep picking this up into the forseeable future, and if you want more Black Widow in your life then you should too.
You've probably already heard a lot of the buzz surrounding Lumberjanes by now - it's easily one of the most highly anticipated indie comics of recent years, coming as it does from the enormously popular and incredibly talented Noelle Stevenson. If you don't know the basics, they are as follows - five badass girls in a log cabin, fighting monsters with the power of punk rock friendship - TO THE MAX. There's more, but that's everything that you really need to know going in, and if it doesn't hook you then I can't imagine what would.
This issue leaps straight into the action, with the girls getting into a brawl with a pack of evil three eyed foxes in the very first scene, which leads into a creepy prophecy which I suspect will drive the rest of the story. The rest of the issue is spent detailing their world and individual personalities, and it's actually quite impressive how quickly the five leads are sketched in and differentiated from one another. A lot of number one issues spend too much time setting things up and not enough time getting to the meat of the story, and the honest truth is that most writers just don't have time for that in the space of twenty-odd pages. This is a book that messes around as little as its characters, which is to say, not at all.
In this post-Buffy world, there have been plenty of attempts to capture that sassy-girl-fights-monsters feel, most of which have ranged from the creepy to the naff, but I really do feel like Lumberjanes nails it. The monsters are excellently strange (three eyed foxes, man), the girls are witty, engaging and immediately likeable the script pops ("what the Joan Jett are you doing!?") and the art is cartoony, expressive and utterly joyous. Pretty much everything else that I read this month was drawn in a strictly realistic style, so it made a great change to get my hands and eyeballs on something where the art was so unabashadly cartoonish and fun. The bottom line is this: it doesn't matter who you are or what your particular tastes are, just ignore the hype and buy this comic. You'll thank me later.
I made the joke on Twitter a while ago that the best thing about Magnus, Robot Fighter starting up again was that it meant that there was a comic called Magnus, Robot Fighter in the world again, and while that sounds like damning this series with faint praise, I stand by it. It's a heck of a title, and so far, this is shaping up to be a fun enough book to earn it.
Magnus has a bit of history on him, first appearing as a Gold Key character all the way back in 1963, and then again as part of the Valiant lineup in the nineties. He's been pretty unchanged throughout, since the premise "wears red tunic and karate chops robots" is pretty damn timeless. The latest version, this time from Dynamite, skips the macho skirt and keeps the robot beheading, which is disappointing to me but will almost definitely be good for sales. Dynamite have also managed to snag the rights for his old mate Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, so there's great potential for a Guys Whose Name Is What They Do crossover in the near future.
Anyway, the first issue gets things off to a pretty great start. The art is pretty solid, and Cory Smith has a great flair for drawing hyperdetailed robots and futuristic cityscapes, something the back half of the issue gives him plenty of chance to do. The story goes some way towards establishing a new status quo for the character that has a good combination of the modern and the classic, though it spends quite a bit longer than I would have liked on prologue before the story proper kicks off. I won't give too much away, but suffice to say if you gave this issue to someone in a decade they would definitely roll their eyes and say "gee, I guess those Matrix films were pretty popular back then, huh?"
Fred Van Lente has a lot of pedigree as a writer - I'm particularly enthusiastic about his Action Philosophers! - and he has a great knack for combining action with comedy, something that's very much on display here. There are several funny gags to go along with the robot punching action, including Magnus being subjected to a Captcha by a robot to test if he's human or robot, and restrictive Laws of Humanity that seem to correspond with the classic Laws of Robotics. At the end of the day, this is a well made comic about a man who does karate to robots, or at least the setup for one, and if that's up your alley then you should check it out.
For a while, life was simple. The New 52 freed me from the awful burden of having to buy so many DC books every month by the simple measure of making most of them terrible, and I was left to do whatever I wanted with my free time and bank balance. With the number of readable Batman books stripped down to one (1), I could happily read along with Snyder's Bat-ventures and not have to worry about anything else. Now, DC have had the temerity to pull the hackish Tony Daniel away from the reigns of Detective, put a fresh, interesting team on the book and kick it off in a whole new direction, thus FORCING me to start picking it up again. What a pack of assholes.
This comic does a few things that I don't care for a lot that I do. The first three pages are basically nothing but people saying that they're getting fresh starts, or whole new beginnings, or that a new day is dawning, and yes, I get it, we're starting afresh here, jeez. Something I love, though? The cover is YELLOW AND PINK. This is a Batman book, and the background of the cover is bright, solid yellow. It's bold, it's attention getting and its fun. The story has Batman chasing down a motorcycle gang (awesome) and then doing a business deal (eh) at the Gotham X-Games (AWESOME), and while it all feels like setup for later events, the layout and delivery are all really interesting and fun to read. I also like the brief look at the good work that Batman does for Gotham out of the cowl as well as under it, though the first issue of a new run seems like a strange place to put such a focus on it.
Francis Manapul is an artist that I have a lot of respect for, and he does a really great job of combining his own slightly painterly style with the stodgy realism demanded by the DC House Style. He does great work with messy, complex images, and a sequence in which Batman tracks a pack of bikers over Gotham rooftops is perfectly suited to his talents, as are spunky teen girls doing dirtbike tricks. Batman's costume is the gross grey-with-piping thing that he's been kicking around in for a while, but that's probably contractually mandated, so while it makes me curl my lip I won't hold it against this book in particular. The rest of the story, though, is bright and appealing in a way that Batman stories rarely are. As someone who very much wants to be reading the original Batman series without rolling his eyes every five minutes, I have to say that this issue makes me optimistic. Dare we dream that DC might actually rid itself of the fixation with childishly serious antiheroes and make some more superhero books which are...fun!?
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
Captain Marvel
Guys, can we talk about someone special for a moment? Someone bright and powerful and unique? Someone who has toiled in obscurity for a long time, and is finally getting their day in the sun?
No, I'm not talking about the Rock Lords, though god knows we're all praying for that glorious day. I'm talking about Captain Marvel. More specifically, I'm talking about this lady:
I want to talk about the new Captain Marvel but in order to appreciate just HOW awesome she is, there are two bits of backstory that we need to scoot through,. If you're not a big continuity nerd, I promise to keep it quick and light.
Firstly, we have the schlub to my left. The original Captain Marvel. He was created by Stan Lee in 1967 with the sole purpose of messing with DC, who had their own character by the same name. This led to a copyright dispute that Marvel was pretty much guaranteed to win, on account of Marvel being the entire name of their goddamn company, and books starring DC's Captain Marvel have been called SHAZAM! ever since. I kind of think that they should have just taken Stan Lee's other proposal, where the entire DC editorial staff were tarred and feathered and dumped in the middle of Times Square - it would surely have been less humiliating. Anyway, Marvel's Captain Marvel is a Kree warrior named Mar-Vell and literally nobody has ever cared about him ever.
The other person that we need to talk about is Carol Danvers. Poor old Carol has been kicking around the Marvel world since 1968, usually as Captain Marvel's sidekick, originally using the superhero name Ms. Marvel. Terribly progressive for the time, even if her costume was garbage and her main plotline involved Rogue stealing her powers and wiping her mind. Comics! Anyway, she hangs out on a bunch of teams, gets brainwashed and impregnated by a guy named Marcus, gives birth to a child that RAPIDLY AGES INTO A CLONE OF MARCUS WHO SHE FALLS IN LOVE WITH, and makes a wide range of fashion choices that ranged from the dubious to the banal:
Seriously, though, that Marcus thing was terrible. See this Cracked article a breakdown of just how gross it was, though I wouldn't recommend it if you're somewhere where you can't take a shower immediately afterwards.
Anyhow. We're washing our mouths of that nastiness and fast forwarding to 2012. Captain Marvel dies, or goes to space, or just straight up pops out of existence because nobody gives a damn about him. And then something wonderful happens:
That's right, Ms Marvel steps up and becomes Captain Marvel. That costume design is by the great Jamie McKelvie, the artist behind Phonogram and Young Avengers and a great deal of other books in which beautiful women wear stylish clothes, usually along with too much eyeliner and blue streaks in their hair and a love of bands that you and I aren't cool enough to ever have heard of. He's one of the finest artists working today, and when it comes to the Captain Marvel costume he knocked it so far out of the park that we may as well not even HAVE parks any more.One part of Carol's backstory that had been neglected up until now was her military background, and he brings it back beautifully, incorporating the sash and the button up gloves while making the whole thing sleek, dynamic and powerful as hell. "Re-imagined costume" usually means "hideous, overdesigned piece of garbage," but this is the rare exception that takes an established, mid-range character and makes them amazing.
So. Ms. Marvel becomes Captain Marvel. She gets her own book, written by the stellar Kelly Sue Deconnick. She has a major storyline in Avengers, called "Enemy Within." She flies around, punches bad guys, overcomes hurdles and becomes a hero. And the fanbase - especially among women - EXPLODES.
Seriously, I've been reading for two decades now, and never have I
seen a new character be taken up with such speed and fervor. Less than a
year after her appearance, comic book convention HeroesCon held a
dedicated panel for fans of the character, a privilege usually reserved
for established titans like Batman or Wolverine. Referred to as a
meeting of the Carol Corps, it was a smash hit among fans, and even more
so among cosplayers. The event had to be moved to an even bigger room,
and even that one was packed out. Cosplayers in particular have taken ahold of the character with both hands, to the point where it became incredibly difficult to pick the right pictures for this post. One great thing about her current costume is that it's composed of several iconic elements that can easily be pulled apart and remixed to suit the individual wearing it, while still leaving no doubt as to who they're dressed as.
These days, a major convention without a meeting of the Carol Corps is impossible to imagine. Heck, this year Emerald City Comic Con held one at the Museum of Flight, the location of which was chosen as a reference to the character's background as a pilot. All proceeds from that little gathering went to the Girls Leadership Institute, just another aspect of how great the Captain Marvel fandom is. Writer Kelly Sue Deconnick turns up to quite a few of them herself, to be mobbed and feted by her fans. That's the other key ingredient in the Captain Marvel explosion - creator engagement. Comics Alliance's Kate Leth has a breakdown of that event here. Deconnick is unabashedly a fan herself, as excited by fanart and cosplay as any of us. She's clearly just writing stories and characters that she would want to see as a reader, and it seems like the audience agrees.
Something else wonderful about the Captain Marvel fandom? It's inclusive. It's so inclusive. There's a lot of talk about fake geek girls these days, a lot of ink spilled over the concept of nerd gatekeepers and who is and is not a real nerd or geek or whatever term you want to use. Maybe it's because this version of the character is new, meaning that there's no learning curve to diving in, or maybe it's because Deconnick has been such a great brand ambassador. Perhaps it's because women in geekdom get used to being excluded, so when they become the driving force of a fandom they become more accepting of others in response. Maybe Carol fans are just inherently awesome people! I don't know. All I know is that, looking at these pictures, it really seems as though anyone and everyone can dress as Carol. There are light and dark skinned cosplayers, fat and thin. You even see the occasional guy playing her, which is extremely rare.
It's not just cosplay, though. Something that comes along with a female-led fandom is a wide range of nerdy, crafty goodness. Chief among them - and I'm going to admit to a touch of bias given that I live with the creator - are these gorgeous Captain Marvel pendants from The Reluctant Femme. For her perspective on what makes the character so wonderful, take a look at this great essay.
What's so different about Captain Marvel, though? New characters come along all the time, and existing ones get fancy new duds every month. What is is about this reboot that's sparked so much love? It's simple. It speaks to women. There's already a built-in fanbase for any well written female character, but if you want it to be a smash, you have to get the women in as well. Carol is a bold, powerful female character, the sort that female readers have been hankering for for decades now. She doesn't have her ass or her boobs hanging out, she doesn't wear ridiculous heels or twist around to face both boobs and butt at the viewer. Not that there is something inherently wrong with sexy characters - I like both Catwoman and Power Girl, and they both traditionally get given quite sexualised portrayals - but I think that there's a real exhaustion among female readers (and more importantly, potential readers) with the sexualised nature of female superheroes. They want someone whose boots they can place themselves in and feel powerful. Fearless. The way that make readers can with Batman, or Iron Man, or Wolverine, or...you get the idea. Someone who is feminine without being weak, someone who can be funny without seeming silly, or being a 'ditz.' Someone badass. And that someone is Captain Marvel.
No, I'm not talking about the Rock Lords, though god knows we're all praying for that glorious day. I'm talking about Captain Marvel. More specifically, I'm talking about this lady:
 |
| Captain Marvel, reporting for duty |
I want to talk about the new Captain Marvel but in order to appreciate just HOW awesome she is, there are two bits of backstory that we need to scoot through,. If you're not a big continuity nerd, I promise to keep it quick and light.
The other person that we need to talk about is Carol Danvers. Poor old Carol has been kicking around the Marvel world since 1968, usually as Captain Marvel's sidekick, originally using the superhero name Ms. Marvel. Terribly progressive for the time, even if her costume was garbage and her main plotline involved Rogue stealing her powers and wiping her mind. Comics! Anyway, she hangs out on a bunch of teams, gets brainwashed and impregnated by a guy named Marcus, gives birth to a child that RAPIDLY AGES INTO A CLONE OF MARCUS WHO SHE FALLS IN LOVE WITH, and makes a wide range of fashion choices that ranged from the dubious to the banal:
 |
 |
 |
 |
Seriously, though, that Marcus thing was terrible. See this Cracked article a breakdown of just how gross it was, though I wouldn't recommend it if you're somewhere where you can't take a shower immediately afterwards.
Anyhow. We're washing our mouths of that nastiness and fast forwarding to 2012. Captain Marvel dies, or goes to space, or just straight up pops out of existence because nobody gives a damn about him. And then something wonderful happens:
That's right, Ms Marvel steps up and becomes Captain Marvel. That costume design is by the great Jamie McKelvie, the artist behind Phonogram and Young Avengers and a great deal of other books in which beautiful women wear stylish clothes, usually along with too much eyeliner and blue streaks in their hair and a love of bands that you and I aren't cool enough to ever have heard of. He's one of the finest artists working today, and when it comes to the Captain Marvel costume he knocked it so far out of the park that we may as well not even HAVE parks any more.One part of Carol's backstory that had been neglected up until now was her military background, and he brings it back beautifully, incorporating the sash and the button up gloves while making the whole thing sleek, dynamic and powerful as hell. "Re-imagined costume" usually means "hideous, overdesigned piece of garbage," but this is the rare exception that takes an established, mid-range character and makes them amazing.
So. Ms. Marvel becomes Captain Marvel. She gets her own book, written by the stellar Kelly Sue Deconnick. She has a major storyline in Avengers, called "Enemy Within." She flies around, punches bad guys, overcomes hurdles and becomes a hero. And the fanbase - especially among women - EXPLODES.
 |
| Lindsey Cepa, photographed by Geek News MTV |
 |
| Multiversity Comics NYCC Party |
These days, a major convention without a meeting of the Carol Corps is impossible to imagine. Heck, this year Emerald City Comic Con held one at the Museum of Flight, the location of which was chosen as a reference to the character's background as a pilot. All proceeds from that little gathering went to the Girls Leadership Institute, just another aspect of how great the Captain Marvel fandom is. Writer Kelly Sue Deconnick turns up to quite a few of them herself, to be mobbed and feted by her fans. That's the other key ingredient in the Captain Marvel explosion - creator engagement. Comics Alliance's Kate Leth has a breakdown of that event here. Deconnick is unabashedly a fan herself, as excited by fanart and cosplay as any of us. She's clearly just writing stories and characters that she would want to see as a reader, and it seems like the audience agrees.
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| ECCC 2013, photographed by Review2AKill |
Something else wonderful about the Captain Marvel fandom? It's inclusive. It's so inclusive. There's a lot of talk about fake geek girls these days, a lot of ink spilled over the concept of nerd gatekeepers and who is and is not a real nerd or geek or whatever term you want to use. Maybe it's because this version of the character is new, meaning that there's no learning curve to diving in, or maybe it's because Deconnick has been such a great brand ambassador. Perhaps it's because women in geekdom get used to being excluded, so when they become the driving force of a fandom they become more accepting of others in response. Maybe Carol fans are just inherently awesome people! I don't know. All I know is that, looking at these pictures, it really seems as though anyone and everyone can dress as Carol. There are light and dark skinned cosplayers, fat and thin. You even see the occasional guy playing her, which is extremely rare.
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| ECCC 2014 Celebration |
It's not just cosplay, though. Something that comes along with a female-led fandom is a wide range of nerdy, crafty goodness. Chief among them - and I'm going to admit to a touch of bias given that I live with the creator - are these gorgeous Captain Marvel pendants from The Reluctant Femme. For her perspective on what makes the character so wonderful, take a look at this great essay.
What's so different about Captain Marvel, though? New characters come along all the time, and existing ones get fancy new duds every month. What is is about this reboot that's sparked so much love? It's simple. It speaks to women. There's already a built-in fanbase for any well written female character, but if you want it to be a smash, you have to get the women in as well. Carol is a bold, powerful female character, the sort that female readers have been hankering for for decades now. She doesn't have her ass or her boobs hanging out, she doesn't wear ridiculous heels or twist around to face both boobs and butt at the viewer. Not that there is something inherently wrong with sexy characters - I like both Catwoman and Power Girl, and they both traditionally get given quite sexualised portrayals - but I think that there's a real exhaustion among female readers (and more importantly, potential readers) with the sexualised nature of female superheroes. They want someone whose boots they can place themselves in and feel powerful. Fearless. The way that make readers can with Batman, or Iron Man, or Wolverine, or...you get the idea. Someone who is feminine without being weak, someone who can be funny without seeming silly, or being a 'ditz.' Someone badass. And that someone is Captain Marvel.
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| Kelly Sue Deconnick and friends at HeroesCon 2012, photographed by Comic Book Resources |
Monday, 7 April 2014
Batman: Blades
The story appears initially simple - tales of Batman becoming obsessed with this criminal or that are a dime a dozen, and there have been more than a few about new would-be protectors of his territory. What makes Blades unique is in how well these elements come together, and what they tell us about the man himself. It's never explicitly stated why Batman is so driven to catch Mr Lime - the hunt is already well underway when the first issue opens - but the time that the narrative takes to detail the grieving children left behind by his rampage says it all. This is deeply personal to the Dark Knight, so much so that when the Cavalier comes swinging in to take up some of the slack in Gotham, he is more than willing to give him free reign. As his name would imply, the Cavalier is rakish and charming rogue in the mould of Douglas Fairbanks or Erroll Flynn, always ready with a witty quip for the media and police. Batman himself wants to believe that this new, brighter brand of justice might have a place in his city, and as a result his guard is lowered substantially.
The moody inks and occasionally grandiose writing of Blades are very much in the vein of darker creators like Frank Miller, but with a core of moral humanity too often missing in modern Batman stories. Something especially striking about this story is how thoroughly human Batman is depicted as being. He plays at being the dark avenger, swirling his cape before him and posing in dramatic silhouette before a confrontation, but under the mask he is just as psychologically vulnerable as anybody else. He becomes enamoured with his swashbuckling new competition, or at least as enamoured as somebody like him can allow himself to be. After all, the film that he saw with his parents on the night of their murder was The Mask of Zorro, so this grinning swordsman with his pencil thin moustache strikes at something deep and primal within him. The fact that he spends much of the story ragged with sleep deprivation and trying to conceal an increasing number of injuries from those around him only underscores the duality of the face he presents and the man he truly is.
Sale is one of the most highly regarded artists ever to have worked on Batman, and his collaborations with Jeph Loeb on The Long Halloween and its sequel Dark Victory have come to rightly be regarded as genuine classics, commonly listed as essential reading up there with Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. His intense, finely detailed lines and sweeping Gothic set-pieces are absolutely gorgeous, saturated with shadow and light in perfect balance. Blades also sees him using contrasting colours to powerful effect - a crime scene is rendered in pure white save for the jarring smear of bright red blood, and the Cavalier's colourful ensemble pops beautifully next to the Dark Knight's dour ensemble. The story unfolds in a huge series of splash pages soaked in dramatic shadows and dynamic composition, and the climactic swordfight is especially well staged, spilling out over two pages in one fluid, dizzying image. Sale's style is just baroque enough to suit a world like Gotham without slipping into the outright farce of that artists like Kelly Jones or Simon Bisely utilise from time to time. He isn't quite at his peak with this work - some faces are hastily sketched in, and most of the men in the story look a little too similar to one another - but all the elements which would go towards his being considered one of the greatest in the business are definitely already present.
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| Don't read the text if you can't stand a minor spoiler for a comic old enough to drink |
The best Batman villains are those who draw out some aspect of the titular character - Ra's al Ghul reflects his hubris, Mr Freeze his motivating tragedy - and Blades demonstrates that this can be the case for characters who are not directly opposed to him as well. It's no spoiler to say that the Mr Lime storyline is little more than elaborate backdrop here - the real meat of the tale is in the relationship between Batman and the Cavalier. I won't give away the final reveal, but suffice to say that the complex motivation behind the Cavalier's actions play into those of the Caped Crusader, and call into doubt his own murky motivations in his war on crime.
Blades is available in the now out-of-print collection Batman: Collected Legends of the Dark Knight, the Tim Sale collection Tales of the Batman, currently in stock at Book Depository, or of course via Comixology. As always, you can follow @CrimeAlleyNotes on Twitter to find out about blog updates as they happen and read whatever other garbage crosses my mind.
Friday, 4 April 2014
"The Man Who Married Lois Lane"
It is a truth universally acknowledged that everybody in a Golden Age comic book is completely insane. Not a single decision is underpinned by reason as you or I might understand it, nor does anybody experience anything reconisable as human emotion. They lurch hysterically from one insane situation to the next, making increasingly baffling decisions and then suddenly shrugging and completely forgetting the whole thing when the allotted eight or ten pages are used up. By and large they resemble a lost work of Samuel Beckett, if he took a lot of really good mushrooms and had nothing but contempt for women.
Case in point: Superman #136 - "The Man Who Married Lois Lane"
Now, as I'm sure you're aware, comics of the period were pretty fond of wildly misleading covers. They would show Batman and Superman begging to be executed, Superman about to throw Batman off a building or grotesquely irresponsible medical practices,* which would turn out to be wild exaggerations of what actually took place within the pages.
This cover, though? The exact, unvarnished truth. Superman and Lois Lane are hanging out, talking about what a piece of dirt Clark Kent is and laughing to themselves when a UFO turns up and the green man with superpowers in it tells Lois that a) he's from the distant future and b) he has to marry her because he has tomorrow's newspaper and it shows them getting married.
He then turns from a green monster into a normal man, a phenomenon which nobody looks at too closely because it is completely insane. Superman just says "welp I can't see any problem with this" and just FLIES THE EFF OFF AND LEAVES HER THERE. Lois's new suitor is named X-Plam, which seems fine, and Lois agrees to head off and become Mrs X-Plam in the distant future.
Let's break down the terrible decisions that have been made so far, shall we? Neither Superman nor Lois know the first thing about this guy, and literally EVERY alien race they've encountered has tried to destroy them in one way or the other. This guy waves a newspaper around, though, and they both just shrug and say things like "that's destiny" before surrendering Lois wholesale into his arms. On the other side of things, this X-Plam guy is acting on the same ridiculous information. His people have mastered time travel, but he sees one mouldy document from his distant past and that convinces him to just scoop up the woman whose name is on it and MARRY HER FOREVER.
Finally, Lois just shrugs off the question of his transformation, as well as what might happen to her when she's exposed to HIS atmosphere. YOU ARE A JOURNALIST LOIS. Think about these things for five seconds.
Anyway, they get to the future, and lo and behold, Lois becomes a gross green monster as well. Who could have predicted that? Also, I feel like I should point out - this comic is just SUPER space-racist. For all Lois knows, she's the hottest green girl in town, but all she does is freak out with her new superpowers and smash down his house. Nice going, Lois.
Please note that the fact that these green fuckers have superpowers NEVER ONCE plays a role in the story.
Turns out that X-Plam has a TV that shows the past in what's left of his house, and he plunks his hysterical new wife down in front of it to look in on the past. You know, like he could have done at ANY stage before launching into this ridiculous plan. Lois finds Superman in his Lois Mannequin Room, and instead of being horrified by the fact that literally every man in her life is dangerously deranged, she begins to pine for him.
They work at it, though. They go to couples counselling, they open up to one another, and bit by bit they learn to build a life together, based on mutual honesty and co-operation in the face of adversity. JUST KIDDING X-PLAM FLIES TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN AND KILLS HIMSELF TO RETURN LOIS TO THE PAST. This is a woman, I would remind you, that he met literally a few hours ago. Half a day, if we're being generous. He lives with his parents, by the way, so they get to see him die. That's nice. At least the racist bitch who tore down half their house gets to go home.
Anyhow, Lois gets back to the sixties, doesn't let Superman look at her until her face becomes normal again, and life goes on as usual. Not before Superman tells her that he was too busy to be worried about her, though. Real charmer, this guy.
*Robots, mind control and actually-a-dummy-that-Superman-had-on-hand-for-some-reason respectively
Case in point: Superman #136 - "The Man Who Married Lois Lane"
Now, as I'm sure you're aware, comics of the period were pretty fond of wildly misleading covers. They would show Batman and Superman begging to be executed, Superman about to throw Batman off a building or grotesquely irresponsible medical practices,* which would turn out to be wild exaggerations of what actually took place within the pages.
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| On the front page, no less! |
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| SEEMS LEGIT |
Let's break down the terrible decisions that have been made so far, shall we? Neither Superman nor Lois know the first thing about this guy, and literally EVERY alien race they've encountered has tried to destroy them in one way or the other. This guy waves a newspaper around, though, and they both just shrug and say things like "that's destiny" before surrendering Lois wholesale into his arms. On the other side of things, this X-Plam guy is acting on the same ridiculous information. His people have mastered time travel, but he sees one mouldy document from his distant past and that convinces him to just scoop up the woman whose name is on it and MARRY HER FOREVER.
Finally, Lois just shrugs off the question of his transformation, as well as what might happen to her when she's exposed to HIS atmosphere. YOU ARE A JOURNALIST LOIS. Think about these things for five seconds.
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| He still dresses like a lunatic, though |
Please note that the fact that these green fuckers have superpowers NEVER ONCE plays a role in the story.
They work at it, though. They go to couples counselling, they open up to one another, and bit by bit they learn to build a life together, based on mutual honesty and co-operation in the face of adversity. JUST KIDDING X-PLAM FLIES TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN AND KILLS HIMSELF TO RETURN LOIS TO THE PAST. This is a woman, I would remind you, that he met literally a few hours ago. Half a day, if we're being generous. He lives with his parents, by the way, so they get to see him die. That's nice. At least the racist bitch who tore down half their house gets to go home.
Anyhow, Lois gets back to the sixties, doesn't let Superman look at her until her face becomes normal again, and life goes on as usual. Not before Superman tells her that he was too busy to be worried about her, though. Real charmer, this guy.
*Robots, mind control and actually-a-dummy-that-Superman-had-on-hand-for-some-reason respectively
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Adventures in Kickstarter
A few days ago I posted about some comics that you might like to go and read, but today I'd like to talk about a few that you can't read just yet. Soon, though! Maybe. But only if you get involved. That's right, friends, I'm talking about Kickstarter.
There are a lot of opinions about Kickstarter floating around out there. This is the internet, after all, and passionately arguing about things that you don't properly understand is what it's for. For my part, while it's true that there have been a few notable disasters, unfulfilled promises and straight up nightmares, I still believe that it is on the whole a noble, democratising endeavour. There is a vast wealth of untapped talent in the world, people with things worth reading, playing, or listening to that don't have the means to get it out of their heads and into your hands. As a consumer, I am very much in favour of using crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter (or IndieGoGo or what have you) to make sure that the things that I want to see in the world come to fruition. You should too - provided that you do a little research before handing over the cash, don't donate more money than you can afford to lose, and accept that every now and then campaigns just aren't going to turn out the way that you want.
Anyway, onto the recommendations! These are all current comics projects that I'm excited about, all of which I've either already donated money to or plan to in the near future. I haven't been approached by any of them, I'm not involved in any of them, they're just cool projects that I think you'll be interested in, one fan to another. I also haven't done any special research, so if one of them does steal your money and flee to the Bahamas, you can at least rest assured that they have some of my cash as well.
Anyway, onto the recommendations! These are all current comics projects that I'm excited about, all of which I've either already donated money to or plan to in the near future. I haven't been approached by any of them, I'm not involved in any of them, they're just cool projects that I think you'll be interested in, one fan to another. I also haven't done any special research, so if one of them does steal your money and flee to the Bahamas, you can at least rest assured that they have some of my cash as well.
MUTE
The writer, Frank Cvetkovic, has been around in comics for a while, having lettered Artful Daggers, Department O and Kung Fu Skratch! The artist Michael Lee Harris is experienced as well, having illustrated a wide range of indie books including The Black Wraith and Spectre Spectrum. They're both definitely pros, so if it does get funded, concerns about the product not being completed should be pretty much zero.
A final note about Mute - it has just a few days to go and is struggling to hit the mark, so if you like what you see, don't wait, get moving!
GAME BOSS - THE FINAL FORM ANTHOLOGY
A final note about Mute - it has just a few days to go and is struggling to hit the mark, so if you like what you see, don't wait, get moving!
GAME BOSS - THE FINAL FORM ANTHOLOGY
I haven't previously heard of any of the people involved in the project, but isn't that the whole point of Kickstarter? There's quite a bit of near-finished work on display on the project page, in just as many styles as promised, and all looking very professional indeed.
This one is a little different, in that it's not new material but rather a repackaging of a classic, the relaunching of The Winsor McCay Project. McCay was one of the greats of the early 20th century Sunday newspaper strips, best known as the creator of Little Nemo, a deeply surreal and perpetually imaginative strip that was crucial to the development of the entire form. Comics of this period are a particular fascination of mine, mostly because the medium was so unformed that creators were basically learning what worked as they went along, and produced some entirely unique work along the way, none so much as Little Nemo.
This Kickstarter project is taking on the worthy task of collecting and republishing the entire run of Little Nemo across two softcover volumes. There have been a few collections put together in the past, one of which I gave to my girlfriend as a Christmas present a few years back, but to my knowledge none have been as complete as this. Devil's Due have already produced a few smaller Winsor Smith collections, so the quality and completion of this one should be a slam dunk.
21st CENTURY TANK GIRL
21st Century Tank Girl is the project that I'm most excited about, and the one that I probably need to talk about the least. It's Tank Girl - 'nuff said. If you haven't actually read the comic before, you probably know the film. If you somehow missed the key dystopian riot grrrl flick of the 90s, you've almost certainly seen Jamie Hewlett's amazing artwork for rock/hip hop outfit Gorillaz. If you've never been exposed to any of those things, please let me know what it was like being homeschooled on Mars at the bottom of a well; I'm a writer and I always need stories to steal.
Anyway. These are ALL NEW Tank Girl stories, from the original creative team, to be presented in a glorious hardback edition with a wonderfully phallic cover. It's almost guaranteed to get funded, but come on - you know you want a piece of that action. Get on it, folks.
This Kickstarter project is taking on the worthy task of collecting and republishing the entire run of Little Nemo across two softcover volumes. There have been a few collections put together in the past, one of which I gave to my girlfriend as a Christmas present a few years back, but to my knowledge none have been as complete as this. Devil's Due have already produced a few smaller Winsor Smith collections, so the quality and completion of this one should be a slam dunk.
21st CENTURY TANK GIRL
Anyway. These are ALL NEW Tank Girl stories, from the original creative team, to be presented in a glorious hardback edition with a wonderfully phallic cover. It's almost guaranteed to get funded, but come on - you know you want a piece of that action. Get on it, folks.
SEXCASTLE
SEXCASTLE! How can you not love a comic called Sexcastle!? This is an action packed homage to the wondrous excesses of 80s action films, featuring the adventures of former Worlds Greatest Hitman Shane Sexcastle. I have a great deal of affection for the hypermasculine fever dreams of the dying empire that is America, and this looks to plug straight into zetgeist with just the right amount of affectionate homage and parody. The only named inspiration is Road House, but it's pretty clear that there's a lot of Big Trouble in Little China in its veins as well, not to mention Escape from New York and the rest of the John Carpenter / Kurt Russell collaborations. If that doesn't get you on board, then I don't even know who you are.
In terms of project risks - it's done. It's so done that a few bloggers, most notably Chris Sims, have already read it. The creator has a proven record as well, having already produced wrestling comic The Legend of Ricky Thunder. If you like the look of it, and you want a book called Sexcastle in your house, there's no reason not to back this sucker.
DIRTY DIAMONDS
Whew. That's a lot of Kickstarter. You know, when I started writing this article, I decided that four projects would be enough. I figured that I could cover a decent cross section of Kickstarter Comics, advocate for a few good projects, and call it a day. Clearly, that did not come to pass. There's just too much good stuff out there. Don't get me wrong, most of what you'll find on Kickstarter is garbage, as is the case with anything that any Jane or Joe off the street can contribute too, but once I started looking I realised that there was far more quality out there than I expected. I also discovered more than a few projects which I just had to back myself, so if this article makes you poorer, don't worry - I'm right there with you.
Have I missed any great projects that you want to talk about? Do you have any comments, complaints or non sequitors about any of these projects? Do you have any hilarious or terrifying Kickstarter tales to tell? Let me know in the comments!
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