Marvel Universe VS The Punisher
Written by Jonathan Maberry
Art by GORAN PARLOV and Lee Loughridge
Surprisingly this is a zombie comic. It’s not quite along the lines of The Walking Dead but it does some rather interesting things with superhero tropes that Marvel Zombies never did. Short plot summary:
All
the superheroes have succumbed to a contagion that turns them all into
monstrous cannibals. The world as we know it ends, and The Punisher is
all that’s left to fight the good fight. He’s alone in this hostile
world battling former friends and enemies.
Maberry
really brings out a side of Frank Castle that I haven’t see before.
Sure I know him as the relentless hunter of criminals, but in this book
we see how his mission overwhelms him. He cannot be moved to mercy for
any reason. He has lost all hope and there isn’t any good left in him
to even feel despair for losing it. He has become a machine hunting
zombies and even the presence of human survivors does nothing to change
him. This is what happens to people when circumstances allow one’s
obsessions to overwhelm them.Incognito
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Published by Marvel Comics
I’m sure comic fans have heard of this title, but it’s worth rereading. I love it when they just plop a reader into a world and situation; it’s challenging to non-fans but to people who read comics regularly everything just makes sense from the beginning. Superheros...Check. Supervillains...Check. Supervillains in witness protection...now that’s what made me pick this title up. They’re rare but there are supervillain titles out there, so the fact that the protagonist of Incognito is a supervillain isn’t anything special.
What’s special is Brubaker characterization of Zack Overkill as a villain. He’s not at the top of the villain food chain, but even he knows that the losers who live their lives out as normal people are suckers. Even his acts of heroism are little more than an attempt to find that something special that sets him apart from the rest of us; the actual heroism itself isn’t even gravy. Simple gratitude from those he saves is just an annoyance that he tries to ignore. Brubaker has a real character in his head and I hope the library gets a copy of the next installment of Incognito so I can put a hold on that thing and read it.
Paying For It
Chester Brown
Now this title isn’t for just the casual fanboy. It’s a memoir a la Will Eisner and Harvey Pekar. Chester Brown has no shame and he’s decided to share his experiences with prostitution with the world. And for that I am grateful. Prostitution’s something we all know about and never talk about. A guy would not dare tell his friends of the lovely hour he spent with a whore. A girl would not tell her friends about her new job as a prostitute. Like I said Chester Brown has no shame and he tells a wonderful story anyway.
This title made me cringe. From page one where Brown’s girlfriend tells him that she would like to start dating someone else without actually breaking up with him the reader is put on the spot and made to wonder about the expectations we take as a given. In this situation that when one wants to start dating other people they break up with whoever they’re currently with. It put me in situations I never imagined I could find myself in and made me squirm. The closest I’ve ever been to prostitution is on a trip to Amsterdam and even then I just didn’t have it in me to let a strange woman touch me so intimately. I mean I won’t hug female friends I’ve known for years--I have issues with physical contact--and I’m expected to do something much more personal than a hug with a woman I’ve never even met before? That’s just me, but the point I’m trying to make is that Chester Brown takes you there. He makes contact over the phone...and you’re there with him. He “interacts” with his newfound “friend” and you’re there with him. It’s a wonderfully well written snapshot into a human life.
As for the morality of prostitution, Brown makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is very much for the normalization of prostitution. In the appendix he even imagines a future society where prostitution just falls along the spectrum of human mating habits somewhere to one side of casual anonymous sex. I’m going to have to disagree with him though. People have to choose their morals and draw a line in the sand because smart people like Brown can justify all manner of behavior given the occasion to. Brown is persuasive so very persuasive but I am not convinced. And despite my own personal feelings on the subject, I can recognize a good story and be objective enough to recommend Paying For It despite its subject matter. Hey I love Nabokov’s Lolita and I don’t think that makes me a hebephiliac.
Hopeless Savages
Written by Jan Van Meter
Art by Bryan Lee O'Malley,
Christine Norrie, Chynna
Clugston, Jen Van Meter,
Ross Campbell, and Various
I’ve never read a comic book like this before; it was more like watching a television show than reading a comic. I can imagine Jan Van Meter pitching this show to the producers of Glee or the executives at USA. “So it’s like a punk rock Partridge family of geniuses. They’re exceptional people competent and cool. The kind of people you want to know when you’re in a bind or if you just want to hang out at your local watering hole.” I would like to believe that they would hear that pitch and read this comic and greenlight the pilot immediately. Alas this world would never allow it. This isn’t a book of capes so it won’t be produced. If it does they’ll mix it up a little bit and call it something else and hope it’ll be good enough for non-fans to understand. Thank you to the producers of Once Upon A Time and American Horror Story, you do no justice to Fables and Locke and Key. They even ruined The Walking Dead turning it into x episodes of worrying about a lost little girl instead of a post-apocalyptic struggle for survival. Thanks AMC! Regardless I’m hoping someone out there can figure out a way to put this title on the screen without screwing it over too much.
It’s amazing to me how a simple premise “Punk Rock Partridge Family” lends itself to so many various plots. Meter has some good writing chops; Meter tells each story with brilliant effectiveness. The opening arc is a basic retelling of the prodigal son with an added kidnapping. And it works on that level; it’s a mystery these kids are trying to solve to save their parents. The second arc is a full blown first love story. It’s strangely sweet watching a precocious punk struggle to find her way into a relationship. The final arc is a more involved spy drama that one would think would be Brady Bunch absurd but Meter pulls it off. Even the one shots that retell the meeting and foundation of Zero’s band the Dusted Bunnies tell their story so efficiently and economically and in reverse.
I do not have the words to describe how well told this story is, suffice it to say that considering what a cheap bastard I am I would actually spend money collecting this series. I haven’t done that in years.
A very short addendum on Meter’s use of language:
So Zero Hopeless-Savage, the main protagonist, has an affliction that makes her make up her own words. Surprisingly she remains comprehensible to someone with an ear for language and head for context. Even I enjoy experimenting with words; of late I’m rather taken with the term feckful meaning the opposite of feckless. This is by no mean an admonishment of Meter’s aesthetic choices. I’d just like to note that I can be just as incomprehensible by the simple application of archaic terms and usages. I refer to the above hebephiliac reference as an example.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Architects of Forever
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Dustin Weaver
Shhh. Secrets abound. They can be found in the most unlikely places, but they can be found. Hickman writes a revisionist superhero book that rivals Marvels, Kingdom Come, and Golden Age. In truth though Architect of Forever is more like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Astro City. None of the former three tend to explain the world and its secrets the way the latter two do. As for this book in question the best I can describe it is as a basic primer to esoteric wisdom. You can’t get away with chakra and kabbalist diagrams and expect no one to remark on it. I am confounded by the fact that this book actually saw print. Those guys, the conspiracy theorists, they believe in a global conspiracy that would never allow this book to see the light of day. It reveals too many principles of Secret Societies and basic hermetic truths. Yet here it is. Maybe they’re wrong and Secret Societies aren’t real. I’ll just go with that on the off chance that Secret Societies are real and they might come across this post despite the fact that no one reads this blog.
Enough of such absurdities, I just want to talk about how cool it is to have Leonardo Da Vinci as a super scientist hero a la Reed Richards. It’s remarkable to me that it hasn’t been done this way before. I know. I know. It’s been done before but I’m not persuaded that Dan Brown actually exists at all and I’d like to continue with my fantasy. This is a universe where books like The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons never existed.
It’s also really cool that Newton and Tesla are villains. I love this secret history genre. I can’t get enough of the possibility that historical events may not have happened the way that we are taught in school. Tim Powers, if you can excuse Pirates 4--believe me he only wrote the source material(and what source material it is{voodoo + pirates = genius}if you haven’t read it you must)only the producers and writers of the film itself can be blamed for that drivel--for being what it was, revels in the secret history genre. Frankly it wouldn’t surprise me if Newton and/or Tesla were rat bastards bent on world domination.
This can’t be the same S.H.I.E.L.D. that Nick Fury of Howling Commandos fame commands. But that same secretive DNA is there. Hickman remarkably connects so many of the extant plots and conspiracies found in those Agent of Shield books that the mind boggles. After Hickman connects the Infinity Formula to Alchemy then plugs it into Nostradamus I just have to wonder what else I’ve been missing. It’s amazing how Hickman connects historical events. He connects the Gregorian calendar’s lost week to an attack by Galactus. It’s really cool and I can’t wait to read the next part of this series.
So that’s it. I’ve read a lot of other stuff this week too and though I liked quite a bit of it like Madame Xanadu and the Star Trek prequel they were not quite as good as these things. They didn’t make me want to talk about them.
No comments:
Post a Comment