Too Bad "Born Again" Was Already Taken

Jock's cover for Daredevil: Reborn #1 (which debuted earlier today over at Robot 6) is just killer. I love pretty much everything about it.

What I don't love so much is this whole Reborn idea. It has long been my belief that Daredevil is, quietly, one of the best titles that Marvel puts out. It seems to me that a solid run like that, unbroken over a decade plus and through three writers, is a terrible thing to cancel. One wonders if the title wasn't selling as much as Marvel would have liked for an ostensibly A-List character, but even if that were the case why put Daredevil through this again? He's already been born again once, right?

My problem with Shadowland isn't that it's bad (in fact it's pretty good), nor is it with the concept on its own merits: a small-ish event featuring street level characters, particularly the often overlooked ones, is a pretty fantastic idea. Mostly, I don't like that Daredevil doesn't seem to play a part in his own story, that all these things happen to him and we don't really get to see how he reacts or understand what he's thinking- ol' hornhead is just a fascist, and that's all there is to it. The logical conclusion to this, of course, is the end of Daredevil, and then perhaps a phoenix-like rebirth.

And we've never seen that before, have we?

It would be nice to get some good swashbuckling kung fu crime comics again. That's all I really want. Is it really so much to ask?

A Cursed Waste

Jeff Parker and Kev Walker's Thunderbolts has been pretty damn good since they took over the book a couple of months ago. Walker's art, which I've never seen any of elsewhere, is killer- it's got this sort of cartoon-y energy that I really enjoy and that lends itself well to dynamic storytelling. His slight redesigns of the characters are pretty cool too: it hits a perfect sort of stylized realism that, combined with the rest of the aesthetic, reminds me of the Dodsons in concept, if not entirely in style.

Parker's dialogue and plotting, usually fantastic, is particularly so here. He nails an interesting Luke Cage, and his Thunderbolts (in particular Crossbones and Juggernaut) are much, much more dynamic and nuanced than they are usually portrayed. This is a fascinating team, and the scribe takes full advantage of what makes them so curious- a few of them appear to be actually trying to do good, actually trying to redeem themselves in one way or another. The others are just violent lunatics, but still pretty interesting ones.

And then there's Man Thing.

Clearly, Parker's having some fun here, and it comes through: this is a pretty entertaining comic book. Beyond that, though, it's also a pretty good comic book, and that comes into focus pretty clearly in #147. The exceedingly silly Avengers Academy tie-in is unnecessary and is the one down note of an otherwise excellent comic (and an incredibly uninteresting one at that- I bought the first of the AA issues associated with this ish of Thunderbolts and I have no idea how anyone finds those characters intriguing). Beyond that, though, there are some great character moments here, and some even better fight scenes- this is the first time we get a real clear idea of where exactly each of the players stand and what exactly they're after. Warden Walker (formerly US Agent) wants respect, as do Cage and Songbird, but the Warden has to work a little harder from down in his wheelchair to get it- but get it he does. Juggernaut, too, gets a fascinating little arc, and whether he's playing at something or if he's actually seeking a little bit of grace will be something to watch from Parker's Thunderbolts next.

Mysterious Dark Tonalities

"Second Sight" in "Daredevil: Black & White" #1 from Marvel Comics

It's been said that Daredevil is among the most interesting of superheroes because as opposed to something extra he can do, he is defined by the thing he can't do: See.

Matt Murdock may be able to do things no normal human can, but he has those abilities ostensibly because of his blindness. Therefore the first story in this mini-anthology of Daredevil stories, one in which Matt is presented with the choice of undergoing surgery to restore his vision becomes a sort of a reverse 'contact with kryptonite' story. The piece is written by Peter Milligan and drawn (and toned) by someone I've never heard of: Jason Latour (@jasonlatour).

After the initial establishment of the premise of the story; i.e. what will Matt Murdock do when confronted with the choice between regaining his sight and continuing his war against crime as Daredevil?, we get a fascinating story for several pages: The story of a man who suddenly regains his sight after being blind since childhood. The first few pages of the story involve no superheroics of any kind, and could just be a beautiful short piece about appreciating the world all around us.

Suddenly, the crime element introduced by the supervillain Bullseye pulls Matt (and us) out of this serenity and into the muck of the complicated people living their lives in that same world all around us. Unfortunately, and ironically, this second half of the story didn't ring as true for me as the first half. Worst of all, there is a huge ambiguity about the status of Matt's vision for this half of the story: what's happening to it and when? Damned if I could tell you.

The pleasant surprise is that unknown Jason Latour's art doesn't disappoint on any level! Each page is gorgeous and better visual representations of a superhero's double (inner-)life, I have never seen anywhere.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
Milligan's story is wonderful for several pages and then stays strong on character but becomes... confusing on plot for the remaining ones. The art everywhere is great.

Jason Latour is a new talent to watch on my radar! Check out his blog right here on Blogger! Quite honestly, if the whole story had sucked I think I still would have enjoyed it because of Latour's artistic choices.

The prose piece in the back written by Ann Nocenti is sad like crazy. And how about that gorgeously designed cover [below] by David Aja (@davaja), right Josh?

~ @JonGorga




Yea, Jon, that David Aja cover is killer- as are his illustrations for the Ann Nocenti prose story at the back. A consideration of that and whether or not prose stories belong at the back of comics (they don't) is for another day. We're here to talk about "Secrets and Lies", the second of the two comics stories in the anthology.

For the record, I love these black and white Marvel anthologies- they let us see an example of the form that we rarely get to see anymore, particularly with high profile characters. They let the pencilers and inkers stretch muscles they wouldn't get to use otherwise- and it generally makes for a pretty satisfying experience.

The quality of "Secrets and Lies" is a direct reflection of the fact that these anthologies are an artist's playground: Mick Bertilorenzi's fantastic art can't salvage a subpar story that manages to be both unclear and predictable, but it is in and of itself a joy. Unlike Jason Latour's work in the previous story, this art is untoned, all in black and white. The drawing is loose and stylized, and in particular it makes a great use of shadow, something that is often poorly rendered when there's color involved. I suspect this kind of drawing is much harder- there's no colorist to cover up mistakes, to add texture. This one's all on Bertilorenzi- and he nails it.

-JAK

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UPDATE (9/1/2o1o): On a THIRD reading of the first story I saw inklings that the entire middle part of the story is the dream Murdock has and mentions only once on the second to last page. This makes the story flow better BUT the markers of the beginning and ending of the dream are far from clear. Possibly, this is a result of miscommunication between writer and artist. (@JonGorga)

Josh Kopin vs. The World

SPOILER: This is gonna get mushy, so look away if you're squeamish.

I saw Scott Pilgrim. It's a very good movie, that much I know for sure- it'll take another viewing or two for me to decide if it's a great movie. Mostly, that's because I have a hard time separating the movie from the books; there were moments when I'm pretty sure I was enjoying it simply because I wanted so badly to enjoy it. That Edgar Wright was able to make a movie that wasn't beholden to either the original plot or the original imagery was essential to my ability to separate the two and enjoy the movie for what it was blah blah blah BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Look: by now, you know all that. You know that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a successful comic book movie precisely because it's influenced by the originals rather than being dominated by them, and that it successfully translates Bryan Lee O'Malley's work to film because it does what film does well, rather than trying (and failing) to do what comics do well on film.

Given that you've probably already read that review in a hundred different places, I want to talk about something else: I want to talk about why Scott Pilgrim works, even when it shouldn't. I want to talk about why I want to be able to hand the six volumes to my children (who, being my children, will surely have the same interests as me. That's how parenthood works, right?) and say "Here. Read this." In other words, I want to talk about why I love Scott Pilgrim.

While it would be easy for me to be all "Well, it's the best romantic comedy since Annie Hall, what's not to love" (which is pretty much true), I'm going to go a little bit deeper than that, and that story starts like this: once there was a girl who broke my heart. It happens to all sorts of people all the time, which means there wasn't anything particularly special or unique about the experience, but I did take it pretty hard. Eventually I got past it but, even when I did, a lot of the gunk (the guilt, the anger, even some of the sadness) stuck around. I'm still dealing with those feelings, with that gunk, in a lot of ways.

Then again, so is everybody else. Our new relationships are built on the ashes of our old ones. We learn from the experiences, we figure out what we did wrong, and we try it again. And that's what Scott Pilgrim is all about. Even better, the couple at the center of the whole damn thing is, in every way that matters, an everycouple: Scott's made mistakes, but Ramona's made them too- and whose are worse is irrelevant, because it all happened.

And that's why I love Scott Pilgrim. From the beginning, it's been about figuring out what the next move should be, based on the last one. It's about making mistakes, the dangers of stagnation, the problems with moving from place to place without ever actually moving very far at all. It's about learning to live with what's happened, about fighting your demons (sometimes more literally than others), and, eventually, it's about getting better. You want to know why, ultimately, both the film and the comics are so damn effective? The key is right there: they wore these themes on their sleeves (not unlike an X-Men patch) using characters that (provided you look past the slick, relatively hip, video games and music and manga dressing) everyone understands because everyone sees a little bit of themselves in, and they did it masterfully, without falling into a sappy, saccharine, puddly mess. More importantly, each iteration does it in its own way, in a way that works well within the medium being used: Scott Pilgrim and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World are two related but wholly separate entities that hit on precisely the same themes in a way that works with the advantages and limitations of the way in which it was presented.

This is not to say that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World didn't, sometimes, feel like a comic book (the way that the editor translated a comics gutter into something intelligible in film was particularly cool), simply that Edgar Wright took a six book epic, compressed it into one relatively short film, and still made it all work (although- there isn't exactly anything simple about that, is there?) Even more impressively, 'inna final analysis, the movie took those same issues that the books deal with so well and made me think about them in a different, although extremely complementary, way. This is, ultimately, how the movie must be viewed: as a complement to the books. Both of them, independently and taken together, helped me get better. Both of them, in their own ways, helped my clear some of that gunk. So, yeah, that girl still broke my heart. And, yeah, I felt pretty bad about it for awhile. But poor, oblivious Scott Pilgrim? He's had that problem too. And so has everybody else.
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Earlier this evening, I learned that a friend of mine, Abraham Mendoza, died today. This one's for you, Abe.

Bee in My Bonnet!

"bee in... The Ramble" from MySpace/Dark Horse

There was a unique and unusual pleasure to be had in hearing the comicsmith, Jason Little, read this comic out loud with accompanying music and a projection of the comic panel-by-panel to a small crowd at one of R. Sikoryak's (@RSikoryak) Carousel nights a few months back. Now the masses can be exposed to it as well since it has been published on "MySpace Dark Horse Presents". The experience of hearing this comic read that night (and then having it divorced from that experience on the web) was particularly surreal for reasons that will become clear over the course of this review.

Right from the start "The Ramble" is a hilarious tale of two friends meeting-up in the Big Apple's world-famous Metropolitan Museum of Art for a... uh... unique tour. Oh man. You've really got to click the link at the top of this post and read it yourself to fully appreciate this. THERE ARE NO WORDS.

Speaking of there 'being no words,' one of the most fun elements of the comic is explored after they leave the MET, occasional pictographs in place of words. An element that starts out playful like this:










and this:


And later, after a few sausage jokes, crescendos into something brilliant, painful, awkward, and hilarious:



And that's the tip of the iceberg.

There's a sequence of photographs inter-spliced with drawings during a tour of statues and another one during a film [above], four panels in silhouette during a discussion about burlesque, and there's a panel in '3-D' color-separation style while talking about 3-D. A character attempts to better read the text in another panel by grabbing the panel borders! The piece does take Bee and friends through the part of Central Park called the Ramble and all over New York City, but really it's a ramble through different art mediums and styles Little finds interesting. (On his blog, Little refers to this as the practice of "putting it all in there". Which says everything.)

Actually, as far as Jason Little's career in comics, the whole piece is just the tip of the iceberg.

I first became aware of Jason Little (@Beecomix) several years ago when I suddenly found myself in possession of a copy of "Jack's Luck Runs Out" from Top Shelf Productions, a marvelous/crazy comic that's like a Tarantino action-movie but with a playing-card visual style set in the world capital of entertainment: Las Vegas. I first became aware of his rotund reoccurring character Bee, a little over a year ago when I discovered "bee in... Motel Art Improvement Service" on Act-I-Vate.com [Unfortunately, that link now only goes to a 10-page excerpt. Fortunately, that means that a collected print edition from Dark Horse is in the works!] a webcomic about sexual discovery and... a whole lot of other crazy things.

I had the pleasure of meeting the man himself a few months ago at the Carousel event at which he read "bee in... The Ramble" and his personal style is as warmly whimsical as his comics. The surreality of the story for me is that after a sequence in which Bee and her friend get thrown out of a silent movie for the above antics, they arrive at a Carousel event where a sequential self-portrait of Little himself reads the first half of the comic we were hearing! Reading this later on the web broke the 'this comic could be now' feeling, but added an exotic feeling of cluing you into this weird gathering of comicsmiths. Add to this, the fact that it's the last comic in the last issue of "MySpace Dark Horse Presents" and that's mighty strange right?

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
The humor in the character interactions can be a bit 'precious' at times and the draftsmanship has a few uneven moments, but in the end the jokes are great, the art is smooth, plus it's colored fantastically, and the play with art medium and art-styles more than makes up for any faults anywhere else.

Really, all of Jason Little's work I've encountered so far is worth reading. Look him up at Beekeeper Cartoon Amusements' website.

~ @JonGorga