Detective Comics is a title that has seen some incredible highs in the last few years. Between Greg Rucka and Scott Snyder it was a book that deserved to be the headliner for the company. As one of the New 52, is it still as good? The answer to that is more complicated than I expected. The things I like about it are pretty good but the things that I don't like are really, really bad.
OK, so a couple of unkind reviews from me of late. Does that mean I hate the whole New 52? No, not at all. Does it mean that I only enjoy the new characters? Definitely not. Case in point: Wonder Woman is one of my favorite books of the relaunch. I think it's very good, with strong writing, an excellent ambience and fantastic art.
Read on for why this reboot is the first time I've ever subscribed to Wonder Woman!
Grant Morrison's introduction of Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne as the new Dynamic Duo was one of the best things DC has published in the last ten years or so, right up there with Batwoman's reboot and some of the titles that made up Seven Soldiers. The book took a nosedive, however, once Bruce Wayne was back in the suit and it stopped being based on the entertaining interplay of Dick Grayson's good-natured inquisitiveness and Damian's humorous impassivity.
I had high hopes for this book as part of the New 52, hoping that sorta-mostly shedding the narrative dead weight of the setting's accumulated continuity would free the character of Batman to be a little more human and that this book could return to some of that high-flying fun. No such luck. Instead we get yet another title about the trials and tribulations of parenting an exceptional child.
Oh Catwoman, vanguard of controversy in DC's New 52, what did you actually have for us: a fun, dark adventure book or a terrible and exploitative abrogation of character?
Let the record show that not everyone agrees with me on this but I think Catwoman is a pretty fun title and I look forward to reading more. Most of all, in regards to the much-lambasted cat-on-bat sex scene in #1, I think the hype was overdone and the public response a little prudish. Not everything about this book is perfect by any stretch but it is admirably noir - in its story, not just in its presentation - and I see it as a solid result of DC's efforts as long as the overall narrative gets a couple of tires out of the mud. I don't just say that because Winick is such a long-time ally to the queer communities, either. I genuinely think this book has got some fantastic stuff going on.
I'm taking a quick break from burning through the first few issues of a ton of New 52 books to let y'all know that "One Million Moms" - the same organization that crafted perfect failcakes in their attempt to get Ellen fired as JC Penney's new spokesperson (warning: there's video that launches automatically above the text) - is today urging a boycott of Toys R Us and Archie Comics for featuring everyone's favorite imaginary boyfriend, Kevin Keller.
I haven't gotten around to reviewing Kevin Keller #1 or any of the Keller mini-series from last year and that's an oversight on my part but I've read them all and enjoyed them a great deal. There was one honest-to-gods laugh-out-loud moment in the issue about Kevin having to compete against a computer in a quiz bowl and the idea of turning Veronica into a larval-stage starry eyed fag hag is just freaking genius. I have all things Keller on my pull list at my local shop and I am always genuinely excited to see them show up. Kevin is portrayed like any other kid in Riverdale: bright, upstanding, wise beyond his years and gifted with moxie but very human and just as good at enduring foibles and self-doubt as any other member of the cast. I could have seriously benefited from access to this comic when I was a kid; heck, I'm benefiting from access to it in my thirties. Stop in at a local shop or hit their digital store or the Archie Comics app for iOS and throw a couple bucks at Kevin Keller (and the very kind Dan Parent, who is just a hell of a nice guy) to show a little appreciation if you can.
I just love this quote from the Bleeding Cool article, attributed to Archie Comics co-CEO Jon Goldwater:
We stand by Life with Archie #16. As I've said before, Riverdale is a safe, welcoming place that does not judge anyone. It's an idealized version of America that will hopefully become reality someday. We're sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people.
I really want to like Stormwatch. I mean, who doesn't want to like it? It's Stormwatch! The Midnighter! Apollo! The Engineer! Jenny Quantum, who is at least a reminder of the awesomeness that was Jenny Sparks! Jack Hawksmoor! I am a huge, huge fan of Warren Ellis' original reshaping of the original Stormwatch book into The Authority but something about this book doesn't work for me. The characters don't click like I wish they did and the art? Ugh. Seriously?
I loved Paul Cornell's work on Knight & Squire and I was very, very excited to see that he was writing Demon Knights and that it featured two of my absolute favorite characters: Etrigan and the Shining Knight. I am thrilled to say that it has lived up to my high hopes. Cornell is a master of writing snappy, acrobatic dialogue that jumps between characters and scenes effortlessly. What I didn't expect was that he could wring six really solid issues out of the comics equivalent of a bottle episode.
I spent last Tuesday writing a love letter to Jeff Lemire for his work on Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. but I'm afraid I can't do the same for his reboot of Animal Man. It isn't some fanboy loyalty to Grant Morrison, either, because I've never read his run on the character despite having read about it. For whatever reason, devoid of other context, when I read Animal Man I just don't find myself very engaged. I was really excited to try this title when it first appeared and I liked the first issue but since then it's been more and more of a chore to keep reading. Last week I gave it the axe from my personal pull list because I just didn't care to try anymore.
OK, this book is also super-good. I get a little breathless when I think about it. I don't have a lot of ways to preface my take on it: I get gooseflesh when I read it. No other book in my bag does that to me. When I said earlier this week that Frankenstein has almost everything I want from a comic, that deep, gut-punch of sincere sentiment and chilly thrill is what's missing and Batwoman is the only book under DC's banner that can deliver it so consistently, effectively and beautifully. If this book came out every week I'd buy two copies. Ten years from now there are going to be people who say that Batwoman got them to start reading comics. It has the power to make new readers out of non- which was a part of the whole point of the New 52.
Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli have given us a gift and there is no way for us to repay them with sufficient thanks. It really is that simple.
No, it's even simpler than that: DC could reboot the whole damned universe every year like clockwork and it would be worth it if it gave us something as good as Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. every time. This book is almost everything I want comics to be and there is no other medium in which this story would work as well.
What, you thought I was dead or something?
No, quite the opposite: I've been reading more comics than ever, grad school or no, and biting my tongue about DC's New 52 until such time as I had enough material to be worth reviewing.
What constitutes enough? Nothing less than at least the first five issues. You see, the Internet's self-induced and -enforcing model of insta-reviews so that readers can be told what to buy or leave on the shelf before the shelves are even stocked just doesn't suit me and it sure as hell doesn't suit an event like The New 52. I'm not trying to oversell DC's event, mind you. Rather, I seek to acknowledge two things about the big reboot last year: first, that it was gutsy no matter the output because anything that hyped and weighted with that much potential for customer backlash is gutsy, period, and second that it needed time to develop its own merits before it could be properly judged on them.
A million blog posts were launched on little more than a first issue of one title or another and a shallow impression of what the future might hold for many of them but what the hell is that kind of review worth? I didn't want to know whether some fellow fanboy out there believed Catwoman was doomed from the get-go because they were freaked out by the last page of issue #1 and, similarly, I didn't want to shoot my mouth off about any of the books I've been reading before they had a chance to prove themselves or die trying.
So, as this goes up I am also scheduling automated postings of reviews of the first five or six issues (however many were available when I wrote them) of the following titles:
- All-Star Comics
- Animal Man
- Batman
- Batman & Robin
- Batwoman
- Catwoman
- Demon Knights
- Detective Comics
- Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
- Stormwatch
- Swamp Thing
- Wonder Woman
I'm also going to be posting a round-up of the #1's I read that didn't make the cut, long-term, and the #1's I read and said, "I love this, but I have to wait for the trade," and why. I haven't given up on my non-DC comics, either, but I admit that those have been piling up waiting to be read. Once these are done I have, like, months of X-Factor and Secret Avengers and Young Avengers: The Children's Crusade and Hack/Slash (which is just crazy good and if you are't reading it then there is something wrong with the world - something you can fix by reading it).
It's ambitious, I know, which is why this isn't going up until I've got the reviews ready to go, too. Then, through the magic of post scheduling, they'll go up over the next few weeks for your perusal.
Fun!
Some years ago it was possible to purchase and read three novella-ish chapbooks of tongue-in-cheek steampunky Victorian adventure prose parody from the store of Wondermark. Those chapbooks are long gone but this year David Malki brought them back in one very large paperback called Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy. This massive tome, so very true to the "feel" of Wondermark, is over 500 pages in length and beautifully illustrated in his signature parody-Victorian style.
If you don't read Wondermark, at least give it a glance so you can see how it's put together. Malki painstakingly rescues half-destroyed print material from that era and, through physical and digital tools, rescues specific images, old fonts and anything else that looks like it could be salvaged and recycled rather than left to continue recycling itself in the back of a library book sale. There are those who have criticized him for destroying the materials he used for one specific project and his posted response reveals a thoughtful, cherishing, even nurturing view of the materials he uses in his work and makes for interesting reading by anyone who enjoys visual storytelling, a medium almost universally inherently rife with derivation and reuse.
That same gentle touch is reflected time and again in Malki's work, even when it's about needless violence. His sense of humor is as often subtly kind and quietly wry as it is absurd and unexpected. One of his most popular gags is a man bent over a rock, a piece of paper and a pair of scissors, screaming, "Stop fiiiightiiiing," a joke which is nothing less than a shouted appeal for peace. The catalogue text for Dispatches From Wondermark Manor: The Compleat Trilogy mentions that this book includes "casual mass murder" and I have no doubt that is true; half the joke of it is how surprised so many characters are by their own participation and their ironic glee.
This is highly recommended for anyone in your life who's way into the steampunk fad, especially if you're kind of sick of hearing about it from them.
