Two Jasons, An Ed and A Steve: On "Southern Bastards" and "Velvet"

Yesterday, Image held its own little convention, Image Expo, down San Francisco way, a chance for the publisher to take a victory lap after its recent successes and announce some new stuff without the pesky Big Two (or, as will be the case later this month in San Diego, the movie and television industries) getting all up in the spotlight. Of the many, many interesting announcements and interviews done over the course of the day, there are two announcements that seem worth mentioning and parsing out a little bit. 

The first is the news of Jason Aaron and Jason Latour's Southern Bastards, a crime comic with a dixie twist. The end of Scalped a year ago left a big, big hole in the crime comics landscape and, although 100 Bullets is back (speaking of which, HOORAY!), nothing has come along which matches that book's twisting intensity; that Aaron, who is also writing the excellent Thor: God of Thunder and the very fun Wolverine and the X-Men for Marvel, is returning to the genre is very welcome news. That his partner in this new endeavor is Jason Latour is another reason to be hopeful about Southern Bastards. I like Scalped's R.M. Guera a lot, but his compositions get muddied by his heavy line, often to the detriment of his storytelling, and they are often not particularly interesting as individual units in a sequential story. Latour has a much lighter touch, which keeps his art uncluttered and allows him to add expansive detail to his panels. He also has an interesting sense for the way slight adjustments in color make for dramatic results; look closely at that promo image, check out the light red line work, in the background, and the benday dots, in the foreground, and you'll see what I mean. On top of that, his design sense is impecable, and in particular the way that he seems to see words as images that contain important information but which also can have their own distinct visual qualities. All of this is to say that Latour's comics rejoice in the juxtaposition of words and pictures, like a slightly less Popped Chris Bachalo. If the two Jasons can come together in a way even approaching the way I think they could, Southern Bastards may be a step up from Scalped, an actual masterpiece as opposed to merely transcendently good comics. 

Also of note is Ed Brubaker's new spy comic Velvet, which focuses on the life of a character reminiscent Ms. Moneypenny. Brubaker's doing the book with Steve Epting, his partner from the best of his Captain America days, which is another recipe for success. I don't think that Epting gets his due as an artist; although his work approaches photo realism, and he occasionally has trouble drawing characters or objects that or difficult to conceive as actually existing, he's perfect for straight up espionage, like those Captain America comics or this project. Brubaker, of course, reconceived Captain America for those comics as a kind of international super spy, a kind of louder, Red, White and Bluer, James Bond. As his stories developed, first in the pages of the character's home comic, then through Civil War and the long Death of Captain America arc, he seemed to become less and less interested in playing with the possibilities of the conventions of a super hero story in a spy comic, finally turning in a second Captain America series that he didn't quite seem fully behind and, in Winter Soldier, a nice and neat spy story that might be among his best work, before leaving Marvel altogether. I have to confess that I've fallen way behind on Fatale, his most recent series with frequent partner Sean Phillips, so its nice to have a reason to get back to Brubaker's work, but the most interesting thing for me here is his very conscious development as a particular kind of genre writer, one who blurred the boundaries between two different genres (and has actually done it twice, both times very successfully), into one who feels comfortable playing with our expectations in the much smaller space of a single kind of story. 

  

A Note On Ed Brubaker's Move From Marvel

So long, Ed! (source)

I want to take a moment to talk about last week's news that Ed Brubaker is leaving Marvel in January, when he entrusts his Winter Soldier scripting duties to Jason Latour's very capable pen.

Since the announcement of Brubaker's imminent departure from Captain America, I've been been thinking about doing a rather extensive annotation of his run with the character. Such a project would be both massively enjoyable and massively time consuming, and I'm not sure if I have the wherewithal or, more importantly, the knowledge base, to do it properly. Now that I know that Brubaker's time with the House of Ideas is coming to an end, my impulse is to expand the scope of my annotations, which would, of course, mean both more time and more research. Even if I decide not to undertake such a sprawling project, watch this space for a couple of retrospective essays, which will deal with his Captain America work and his writing for and influence on the company in general.

Right now, though, I think its important to talk about what, exactly, is ending when the man who brought back Bucky Barnes walks away from Marvel to concentrate both on his creator owned comics and on ventures in other media. Much more than any other superhero comic book writer in the last fifteen years or so, I think that Brubaker understood that, when he was dealing with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, or even when he was dealing with Iron Fist or Daredevil, he was dealing with the stuff of legend, and so he always approached the material in its own terms, with gravity and without anything resembling irony. Given the generally accepted absurdity of comic book superheroes, it would be very easy to laugh off Brubaker's seriousness as a kind of misreading of the state of mainstream comics, but I think to see him in this way fundamentally misses the point.

Indeed, I've always gotten the sense that Brubaker believes in superhero comics, that he believes in what they're capable of, and that he believes that they can affect the culture at large even if they don't often reach beyond an, unfairly stereotyped, niche market. That he is ambitious in this way is evident, of course, in his politically resonant work on both Captain America and Winter Soldier, but I think it can also be seen in his incredibly well respected Daredevil issues and the Gotham Central series he wrote at DC with Greg Rucka, and in his flawed X-Men work, and in his abortive run on Secret Avengers. His attraction to the big idea, to the conspiracy that takes years to unravel, to the story that takes dozens of issues to unfold, is clear in all of his work, but his ability to use the combination of medium and the genre as a certain kind of more- or less- subtle allegory is what sets him apart from even from the talented writers, writers like Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman and Jason Aaron, that are guiding Marvel's bold new direction. What Ed Brubaker gifted to us, more than almost a decade of excellent stories, was a renewed sense that not only could mainstream superhero comics be culturally important, but that they could also be literary, particularly if their readership was willing treat them as such.

Not all of his allegories are played out, yet, and the real shame here is that, for the next few years, even if new writers pull at the threads that Brubaker left behind, the work will probably lack that double ambition, that driving desire to tell stories that matter to everyone and that are also great. Everyone who is going to have to pick up from where Brubaker left off is going to have to deal with this, and I think that, rather than try, most are simply going to give up the gun; Andy Diggle's Daredevil run is the cautionary tale here. There is an obvious exception to this in Winter Soldier, but I wonder if, even with a talented writer like Latour and a movie with that title on the way, the book has any long term prospects without its creator at the pen. On the other hand, Captain America has, in the last year and a half, certainly begun to feel less essential, even as the month-to-month quality of the book hasn't dropped in any significant way, and so I'm not sure that Brubaker is pulling as hard as he used to, not even at his own big ideas. Still, if Rick Remender's high action Steve Rogers as John Carter of Mars new direction for the character is any measure, we're not going to get a chance to see superhero comics done quite as well, or quite as seriously, as Brubaker did them, at least not for a long time.

While this turn is lamentable, it is certainly not disastrous. Its important for those of us in or on the edge of fan communities to remember that nothing lasts forever, and doubly so in this case, since to act like it should, to assume that it would, betrays the high quality and literary aspects of Brubaker's work. Rather than mourn the end of something I love, something I think is important in way that superhero comics tend not to be important, I would much rather celebrate it. There are, after all, volumes of Captain America on my shelf, just waiting to be annotated.

The Criminals Always Return To The...

In November, Image is reissuing Scene of the Crime, Ed Brubaker's first collaboration with Michael Lark, who would later draw much of the writer's supreme Daredevil run. Lark is a fantastic illustrator of crime comics, one of the best in the business, and the fact that he's inked here by Sean Phillips, another longtime Brubaker pal and maybe the best crime cartoonist right now, can only mean good things. If this book is half as good as those Daredevil comics or a quarter as good as Brubaker and Phillips' work on Fatale, Incognito, and Criminal, we're looking at one of the best reissues of the year.  

Review: Fatale #1

For years, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been making, on and off, what may be the best straight crime stories in post-Code comics. Criminal, at the very least, runs neck and neck with Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s work on 100 Bullets and, although the two series were good at very different things and had very different styles, publishing schedules, and kinds of serial narrative, they shared the same sort of mentality, a quality that I’m just going to go ahead and call “high pulp.” Now, pulp has come to mean a lot of things and, although I’m sure this will be maddening for some you, I’m not going to fight through an attempt to actually define it, only to come up with an overdetermined clunker or a meaning so broad as to be functionally useless. Instead, I’m going to hope that some of you have read Criminal and 100 Bullets or both and know what I mean, that is, that the two share a general luridness and violence which is definitively in the grand tradition of the lowbrow dime-store novel but done so well, with such care and of such obviously quality, that they force a reader, even a reader disinclined towards comics, to remember that sex and murder are two of the great themes of Western literature. Thus, high pulp. 

Of course, the fact that 100 Bullets and Criminal are pulpy doesn’t say very much about their genre, but you don’t have to think very hard to realize that both are, over and above their general pulp qualities, ultimately crime stories (that is, as opposed to detective stories or procedurals). Similarly, although clearly influenced by pulp super heroes like Doc Savage and the Shadow rather than their perhaps better known comic book counterparts, Incognito, the second creator-owned universe to spring from the imaginations of Brubaker and Phillips, is unquestionably a superhero story which strives towards (and achieves) a specific kind of aesthetic, a certain recognizable quality.

All of this is basically a long way of saying that pulp, although you sometimes see it used this way and despite the fact that it has some relationship to genre (or at least a certain number of genres which, at the beginning of the twentieth century through to today, tended to be published in anthology magazines or inexpensive paperbacks on low quality paper), is definitively not a genre in itself, not a word that can be used to describe the type or essence of a thing, but one that can be used to describe the way something looks and feels. Or, at least all of this is typically true: with the publication of their new series, Fatale, Brubaker and Phillips have brought their considerable collaborative talents to Image, and have turned those talents away from legitimizing pulp (something I would argue that they were successful at, although, if I’m being completely honest, its pretty obvious that filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino have a lot more to do with this cultural shift than any writer or artist of comic books, although I would also argue that Brubaker and Phillips and Azzarello and Risso and also people like Warren Ellis were at the vanguard of a movement to repulpify comics after the more overtly grim ‘n gritty realism of the eighties and the stylistic excesses of the nineties) towards attempting to transcend pulp’s almost century old status as a style, as a mere lowbrow window dressing, and to reframe it as a genre in itself. 

I know this is a pretty bold claim, and I am also going to admit upfront that what I’m going to talk about has pretty obvious precedents (Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy being examples that I can think of without having to strain myself). But, with that said, bear with me for a second. Fatale is a pretty clear coming together of many of the stock elements that make up pulp stories: there’s the accidental protagonist, there’s a mysterious and beautiful woman (presumably the Fatale of the book’s title), and that woman may or may not be the same as another woman who’s a damsel in distress, there’s a reporter who is nosing around in business that he shouldn’t be, there are crooked cops working a gorey and occult multiple homicide, and an oblique reference to World War II and Occult Nazism and very mysterious strangers and magic and so on. Even more than that, though, I think Sean Phillips has expanded his style a little bit, so that it has the not only the stilted action and comics classicism that is essential to the “high pulp” of Criminal and Incognito but also what looks to me like influences from romance comics, so that not only is the story (that is, the literal story, the plot) a chop shop coupe, but its not trying to hide it, either, and, in fact, it takes a certain pride in emphasizing what it is. Now, the kinds of stories that are labeled “pulp” tend to share elements; this is why I think sometimes the description ends up being totalizing (well, that and the fact that some people just dismiss stories that carry such a label out of hand), but what is going in Fatale is different because it doesn’t appear to have any recognizable genre, or, maybe, because it has bits and pieces of so many recognizable genres and because none of those dominate it, that calling it a horror-romance-procedural-noir seems absurd and that calling it pulp is so much more reasonable and satisfying. 

Here, another comparison with Azzarello and Risso seems enlightening: their new series, Spaceman, is also a nine issue mini (or does nine issues a maxi make?) that features the two creators operating inside the language of dystopian science fiction, that is, outside their typical location at the intersection of sprawling crime epic and allegorical (and, initially, startlingly real) ethical dilemma. Now, if you’ve read 100 Bullets or some of their other work, together and apart, you might be able to see why the two of them might be attracted to this new genre: the application of allegory (a technique, I might that add, that is complicated and almost by its very nature highbrow) was something of an innovation in crime stories, but is a basic part of what makes sci-fi tick. It makes sense, too, that the two creators have added some crime and procedural elements to Spaceman as well. Despite this, however, the story is definitively science fiction, although I suppose the argument could also be made that its a crime story merely set in the future, but it does beg to be labeled as one or the other. Fatale, on the contrary, seems perfectly happy to just be a pulp and, more importantly, pulp seems to be a perfectly satisfying way to describe it.

The two books have other things in common as well, namely a problem with pacing: the second issue of Spaceman followed through on a couple of elements which were introduced in the first, but some of the others were left by the wayside for the third issue. Azzarello and Risso handled it pretty well, though, and it wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been, and that gives me hope for the next few installments of Fatale; still, I would like to have seen some more definitive horror elements. Presumably, they are coming, but after seeing everything else fall into place so nicely, there is a sort of interesting, if expected, small reveal at the end, in the place of what I had hoped would be a much more shocking, much more clarifying, ending. One of the joys of serial storytelling, however, is that pacing is important in the long run as well as in the short and, since one of the other joys of serial storytelling is the consistently awesome team-up of Brubaker and Phillips, I have little doubt that they’ll recover with no problem and in good time.

Weekly Process Roundup 9/16/11

The Weekly Process Roundup, which hits every Friday, is dedicated to showcasing everything other than finished product from The Long And Shortbox Of It's favorite creators. Sometimes, we have weeks that are both slow and hungry.

• This isn't technically process, but its exciting anyway: enter Brubaker and Phillips new project, FATALE!
• Ba shares some sketches and strips!
• JH WILLIAMS III finishes his BATWOMAN countdown!
• JILL THOMPSON has some things in the oven (literally)! (above)

LATE UPDATE:

• FRANCIS MANAPUL penciled a graphic album a while ago, and now its being translated into English and he's sharing some of his work!

A Sock In The Jaw

There's a lot to love about this new Captain America #1, but there's an ambivalence here, too. The two issues, however, are entirely unrelated; as an individual comic book, it's brilliant. As an idea, it sort of sucks, but I'll get there in a second. First:

Captain America #1 is why people read comic books or, anyway, why people should. Ed Brubaker, one of the best writers in the business on his worse days, slips into writing this Captain America like Steve Rogers slips back into the flag, with the ease of someone who's worn this suit before, and who missed it just enough. He does here what he does best, reinventing Captain America (for what's really the third time since he took over the character in 2005) by taking Steve Rogers' past and using it to turn the character into something both new and familiar, something both recognizable and, perhaps, radically different.

Starting with a brief summary of who Cap was in WWII, and then two panels of who is he is now, Brubaker begins his story with an ending, with the death of Peggy Carter. Carter was a member of the French resistance, Steve's girlfriend back in the day, and the aunt of Sharon Carter, who is Steve's girlfriend these days (it seems perfectly normal in terms of the the whole "man out of time" conceit of the comics but, man, typing that last sentence out just now, the whole thing just strikes me as really bizarre). Cap, Carter, Nick Fury and Dum Dum Dugan gather for the funeral, and their reunion sets off a string of events that were really put in motion during the twilight hours of the war in Europe. Brubaker tells both that story and this one, letting each inform the other, and this style of storytelling gets at precisely the reason why I think Brubaker does Cap so well: he gets that part of the reason Steve Rogers is a compelling character is because there's a contrast between the Captain America #1 of 1940 and the Captain America #1 of two weeks ago, and part of that contrast has to do with ambiguity of purpose. In that first world there were good guys and there were bad guys; in this brave new world, I suspect the lines between them are a little less clear.

Or maybe not. The blast from the past Bravo may very well be a clear cut villain, himself a man out of time, egged on by a decades old jealousy. There are more questions than answers here, and this suggests that Brubaker has become a master of the serial story. Captain America #1 is a whole whole with a beginning and a middle and an end, a discrete and satisfying unit of entertainment in and of itself but one that will be extended and better understood next month, when a hopefully equally as satisfying issue comes out. This is comics at its best.

Of course, it helps that Steve McNiven is drawing the thing. Brubaker is a fantastic writer, but part of what makes him so great is that he always seems to be matched with artists who have their own share of talent and, aside from Sean Phillips, McNiven may very well be the best of them. His panel design is dynamic and he doesn't get stuck in the six by two grid; the panels move with the characters, they're explosive and, although they often reflect the kinetic confusion of a street fight, they read easy, there's never any question about which panels goes after which other panel. It's quite a feat, and it follows a similar mode of operation to the one that Mike Deodato was using with Brubaker on Secret Avengers. The difference here is that McNiven's art is much less stiff and woody than Deodato's: while the latter's panel design saved him from being guilty of the muscled stillness that dooms comics art by making it too heavy, the former's at its best has a levity to it, one that suggests a sort of trial and error process in the talking heads scenes but is consistently killer when there's even a little bit of movement. Although there are a few close ups that qualify as nearly perfect, McNiven is best when he's working at a little bit of a distance, when he loses some of the detail for a more cartoony look. Certainly some of the credit for this goes to inker Mark Morales and colorist Justin Posnor, just as they get some of the blame for putting the lines in the faces of Dum Dum, Fury and Cap, which occasionally gives the book an almost photorealistic look at odds with what I imagine is the art team's tendency towards a traditional, albeit updated, comics aesthetic. This Sharon Carter should be the model; there are a few panels which are right out of an old romance comic which, in a sort of oblique way, is what this comic is.

Second:

I am ambivalent about the idea in Captain America #1. I hate it because Marvel thinks it needs to renumber books every seventy-five issue or so to stay relevant, I hate it because there are someways in which it represents a retread, a place we've already been, I hate it because I disagree with Tom Brevoort when he says that, y'know, maybe, with a movie on the way, it's not the worst thing in the world that Steve Rogers is back as Captain America.

Actually, I don't really disagree with him; it's not the worst thing in the world.

Clearly, I haven't stopped reading Captain America because Bucky isn't wearing the flag anymore. I'm pissed that he's dead, of course, but with a book called Captain America and Bucky coming out and a pretty serious continuity problem between the mainline Cap book and Fear Itself*, I have a hard time believing he's going to stay dead, although I'm relatively confident he won't be Captain America anymore. That's really a different issue, though, as it takes place about as far away from this Captain America #1 as possible, presumably because Marvel didn't want the book the kids who saw the movie pick up at their LCS or in the drug store caught up in some crazy continuity bullshit. In terms of a giant corporation trying to make money off their comics, this makes complete sense; in terms of long-form, continuity based storytelling, it sort of sucks.

Except that I think that there are times when long-form storytelling needs to take a back seat to mythology, to legend, to archetype and, while I personally don't think this is one of those moments, because I think there were many, many more good Bucky-as-Captain-America stories to be had and because I liked the idea of Steve Rogers super spy, I sympathize with the impulse and if I trust this sort of thing to anyone I trust it to Ed Brubaker. The true genius of it, of course, is Grant Morrison, but Brubaker is almost as close, and much more consistently great.

If I trust anyone, I trust Ed Brubaker. Captain America, after being a good book but not a consistently awesome one in the time since the mess that was Reborn, is back and, as pissed as I am that the storyline that I loved as much as I love anything in pop culture was stopped well short of its logical conclusion, he's got me. Here's to #2.

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*Not that I really care that it doesn't make sense, shared universe superhero comics often don't, but I wonder if it's a clue that things aren't quite as they seem at the moment.

I Know This Is Sort of Cheating But...

I always try to review Criminal and I just never seem to have the words. With the new one coming out tomorrow, though, I wanted to share my enthusiasm for this new Brubaker/Phillips mini, and here it is:

Wait, hold on, let's check in with the other thumb:

HOLY COW! A PERFECT TWO!

Update!

Holy Tabernacle! I was right:

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND BUCKY #620
Written by ED BRUBAKER & MARC ANDREYKO
Penciled by CHRIS SAMNEE
Cover by ED MCGUINNESS
Variant Cover by TBA
Rated T+ …$2.99
ON SALE THIS JULY!

...and it's drawn by Chris Samnee?! And set in the early days of World War II? I'm not happy that Buck's taking off the flag, but if this is what we get in exchange, well-- count me in, for now.

(via CBR)

Bleh.

Given that we are about to have a big Cap film and Cap’s going to be in front of more people and in more folks’ awareness than in any other time in recent memory, well, since we killed him, it would probably not be the worst thing in the world for him to be in the suit and carrying the shield at that point.

- Tom Brevoort, on Steve Rogers putting the flag on again in July.

This is what I hate about mainstream superhero comics. Steve Rogers is going to become Captain America again. OK, I can dig it, people like Steve. I like Steve. But we're really going to abrogate the best stories in superhero comics in maybe a decade because there's a damn movie coming out? And where the hell is Bucky?!

There are two things here; first, I trust Ed Brubaker. If I think anyone can handle what I imagine has to be an editorial mandate like this well, it's Ed. There's a reason he's one of the best at what he does (and what he does is really, really, cool). Second, I haven't been reading Captain America. Oh, I've been buying Captain America, I just never end up reading it these days, which is odd considering it is ostensibly my favorite comic book and it is written by my favorite writer and he is my favorite superhero.

But I'm certainly going to read that new #1 in July. Maybe it isn't the worst thing in the world to have Cap wearing the flag right now?

One other thing to think about: the solicit to Captain America #619 doesn't say "final issue." Maybe we'll get some Bucky comics in whatever that becomes, if it, recent Thor-style, becomes anything.

(Olivier Copiel cover via Bleeding Cool)

There Are No More Innocent

You know what's great news? This:

CRIMINAL: The Last of the Innocent #1

By Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips with Val Staples on colors

The best-selling crime comic finally returns, and with their most ambitious story yet. Obsession, sex, money, murder, and nostalgia for days long past all collide in THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT.

Riley Richards got it all… The hottest girl in school and a ticket to the big time… so why isn’t he happy now? Why is he getting involved in gambling and drugs and shady characters in the city? Why can’t he forget the life he left behind in small town Brookview? And why is he suddenly plotting murder?

And as always, each issue of Criminal contains unique back-up features, articles and artwork, which are only available in the single issues.

32 PGS/Mature Content… $3.50

I love comics, and I love comics a lot, but recently I've been feeling a little burned out. I think it was the news that, come this summer, Marvel is going to give Captain America a new #1 that did it but, for all I know, its possible that I have to go so far out of my way to go to my store these days that's making me so tired of the whole thing. Comics like this, though, are what make me still buy monthlies. Comics like this are why I believe in the medium and, more importantly, in the power of the medium.

I've attempted to write about Criminal before, but each time I fail spectacularly: it is, quite simply put, the best series in comics. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are so damn good and they work so well together that they're practically one unit at this point, and there is nothing, nothing, about their work together that I do not adore.

With this on the horizon, my burnout is salved.

The Secret Is Out

Secret Avengers is a pretty damn good comic book.

I was pretty sure it was going to be, with Brubaker writing it and all, but still, months ago, I was worried: what if it isn't any good? What if Brubaker can't write a team book? And isn't Mike Deodato's work a little stiff?

And, at the beginning, some of those fears were justified. Brubaker's writing was a little slow, at the start, and it just felt like he was being weird for the sake of being weird. Awesome weird, but still- it didn't really seem to have much of a point.

By the end of that first arc, though, Brubaker really hit his stride. By the time he hit the second arc, after an interlude drawn by David Aja and Michael Lark, he was really hitting it out of the park: now that he's playing with Shang-Chi and the Prince of Orphans, things seem really fluid and each piece fits together perfectly. Fluidity, too, is not something I was expecting from Mike Deodato Jr. and, while I guess "fluid" is probably the wrong word, there's a certain energy in his art. I can't place my finger on its source, precisely, and it doesn't help that his figures still look like, well, action figures. Action figures articulate, though, and you can look at them from all sorts of angles, which is precisely what Deodato does. The art here is good. Really good. The stiff look isn't usually my thing, but it's impossible not to appreciate the work and not only because he's clearly good (maybe even the best at this sort of style). Mostly it's because he's just so damn good at presenting it, with panels and page layout that are fluid and dynamic in a way that his pencils aren't. The way we look at it moves, even if what we're looking at doesn't and that's just utterly brilliant.

This aspect of Deodato's work is front and center in Secret Avengers #8, the third part of a five part story centering around the return of Shang-Chi's father, a character who can't be named for copyright reasons, but who I'm more than happy to tell is Victorian villain Fu Manchu. Brubaker finds plenty of clever ways around that particular obstacle, just like he does some pretty cool stuff with what is essentially a book-long fight scene. It goes maybe a mite too fast for my liking, and I'm concerned that he's used Sharon Carter as a damsel in distress two storylines in a row, but everything else seems spot on. He knows his characters, and not a word seems out of place or out of character. If he keeps writing the book like this, and Deodato keeps drawing and designing the hell out of it, I'm all in.
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Also, here's to hoping Brubaker keeps Prince of Orphans around. He's a fantastic character, one of my favorite minor ones, and he's been in stasis too long. Would it be too much to ask for a mini-series or something?

Building a Better Universe: On Marvel's Architects Intitiative

Yesterday, Marvel released the following press release, detailing their new Architects initiative:

The very fabric of the Marvel Universe is changing and the Architects are the ones leading the charge! Marvel’s Architects initiative spotlights the writers and artists telling the most exciting and impactful stories that rock the Marvel Universe to its very core every month.

But just who are the writers in Marvel’s Architects?

·Brian Michael Bendis, writer of AVENGERS, NEW AVENGERS, Death of Spider-Man, the upcoming MOON KNIGHT and an upcoming top secret project

·Matt Fraction, writer of THOR, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, and a top secret upcoming event

·Ed Brubaker, writer of CAPTAIN AMERICA, SECRET AVENGERS and top secret upcoming new series

·Jonathan Hickman, writer of FANTASTIC FOUR, S.H.I.E.L.D. and a top secret upcoming new series

·Jason Aaron, writer of WOLVERINE, ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE and a top secret upcoming new series

“These are five of the top writers in comics and they’re writing some of the best Marvel comics ever” said C.B. Cebulski, SVP Creator & Content Development. “Each of their projects lays the groundwork for the future of the Marvel Universe and in 2011, their plans—which are being seeded in their current work as we speak—will come to fruition. There’s never been a better time to be a Marvel fan.”

Stay tuned to Marvel.com for more news on Marvel’s Architects, including interviews and the unveiling of the artists redefining the Marvel Universe!

Jason Wood, over at iFanboy, believes that press releases like this send the wrong message (he, by the way, makes a couple of very good points), I'm more interested in a couple of the other hints that they seem to be dropping:

The absence of Uncanny X-Men under the titles that Fraction writes is curious, since he's been the lead on that since the summer of 2008- almost as long as he's been writing Invincible Iron Man. Does this mean that recently announced co-writer Kieron Gillen (whom, you will remember, is one of the few writers I adore as much as I adore Fraction and who's series S.W.O.R.D was canceled far too soon earlier this year) will be the new director of the X-Verse? Fraction's run on the title has been hit and miss, but I suspect that has more to do with the artists he's paired with more than anything else. Is he jumping ship? Or at least stepping back to focus on whatever this top secret event is?

Speaking of top secret, each of these writers is writing a "top secret" something or other. So, that's news, I guess. My one big hope is that Brubaker's unannounced project is a Steve Rogers: Super Soldier ongoing- that was some of the best comics all year, and it let Ed do some straight up espionage comics, which was fun to see.

Most interestingly, though, is the inclusion of Jason Aaron on this list- every other writer is involved with a major aspect of the Marvel universe, but Aaron's big title right now is Wolverine, which I've heard is very good but usually seems to exist in its own space: finding out what his big upcoming project is going to be is extremely exciting, if for no other reason than it suggests that its going to be huge. The little work of Aaron's that I've read (Scalped and a few issues of PunisherMax before I just couldn't handle the violence of that comic any more) was fantastic, and I'm having trouble containing my curiosity.

This Time, Overkill is One of the Good Guys...

My history with Incognito is pretty important, at least in terms of my development as a sophisticated reader of comics. When I picked up the second printing of the first issue a year and a half ago, I hadn't just been reading superhero stories (I had, in fact, only recently begun reading superhero comics again- before that, I mostly subsisted on Fables and DMZ) but there was something about it that caught my eye. I would like to believe it was the beautiful Sean Phillips cover, but it was probably the big bold block name BRUBAKER staring out at me from the front cover.

Whatever got me to open the book, though, was irrelevant once I got inside: the first mini was beautifully plotted and visually stunning. If had known anything worth knowing, this would have been no surprise: Brubaker/Phillips is perhaps the most consistently brilliant creative team out there and they work so well together that they may as well be considered to be one unit rather than two people working in unison.

This context, (a terrifying one, if you're a creator) made me as excited for their follow up as it made me nervous- it would have been hard to top that first mini, except that this team is just so damn good they always manage (somehow) to up the ante. Incognito: Bad Influences #1 is no exception.

The comic looks great, for one- Val Staples' flat, garish colors add a light to the stark world of Phillips' pages, and the whole package makes for one seriously pulpy comic. It's a self-referential book, and at points absurdly silly, but these are virtues rather than vices: Brubaker knows what he's doing, from the goofy supervillain stories at the beginning (stories featuring villains named Zhing Fu, the Asian Underlord and G.I. Gorilla, stories that I want to read, dammit!) all the way through to the slightly cliched reveal near the end and the revelation the concludes the serial, and what he's doing here is world-building.

The things that are going on here are bigger than Zack Overkill, and they're going to swallow him up whole. This is, I think, an almost perfect piece of serial storytelling, even if it is a little exposition heavy: it gets the reader up to speed, it fully illuminates the world which is being experienced and it has some fun stuff (did I mention Dark Leopold and his Nuclear Nazis?) that functions as a side to the heavy mystery and conspiracy stories that Brubaker does so well.

Yea, this is good comics, and I can't wait to see where it goes next.

Meet Me In Cognito, Baby

There's a new Incognito mini coming out in the next couple of months, and that means that Sean Phillips is posting pages of the Brubaker written mini up on his blog, starting with this first one:
This is the pulpiest of the comics being released right now. Needless to say, I'm excited. More of Sean Phillips work (including more stuff from Incognito) can be found here, at Sean Phillips' blog.

Steve Rogers of Mars

Ed Brubaker had me worried, for a while.

The first two issues of Secret Avengers were alright, I guess, but more often than not they were convoluted, confusing and hard-to-follow. The second issue, by far the worse of the two, suffered even further from some poor storytelling by Mike Deodato, something particularly obvious in the painful transitions between scenes and perspectives.

Secret Avengers #3, though- this is the stuff. As Brubaker's threads begin to come together, as we're introduced to new characters, as he gets more comfortable with his team and as result his characterization improves, as we begin to sense what might be going on and what it means, the issue comes together in a way that some of the previous ones haven't. If that's because the book has a significantly greater focus on Steve this issue instead of because Brubaker is beginning to control his imagination rather than let his imagination control him (let's call this the Grant Morrison Problem, shall we?) well, that would be worrying. I think perhaps it does help that, this month, the book feels a little bit more like a Steve Rogers solo title, but only insofar as it lets Brubaker acclimate to a much different style of writing, a style in which an ensemble of characters share equal billing.

As much as he's been uneven with his ensemble cast, the ideas in the last two issues outpaced his writing. In many ways, they seemed wild and cavalier and it didn't help they just sort of piled one right on top of the others: let's go to Mars, Nova's gone rogue, there's a second Nick Fury, etc. Here though, all of these things really do begin to come together, and they begin to make a modicum of sense (although, luckily, not too much sense). The most interesting part of this is the hint as to the origin of the Shadow Council; the choice to make the series' villain HYDRA without making it, you know, HYDRA, is unbelievably brilliant, and that Brubaker seems to be borrowing elements from Jeff Parker's Atlas for his villainous secret organization makes everything even better. This way, the villain isn't some half-assed joke: The Shadow Council is what HYDRA would be if anyone but Jonathan Hickman took them seriously, and having a real villain with real mystique adds tons to Secret Avengers. I suspect Brubaker's planting seeds here that won't come to fruition for years and I sincerely hope this is a book that lasts long enough for him to see them all through.

Deodato, too, has made major strides: his transitions, so jerky last issue, are seamless. His action and characterization are a lot less stiff- he's no David Aja (we're going to have to wait until issue five for that*), but there's a little more kineticism than is usually in his work, and it's welcome. The characters have a little bit more depth too, but that may be a matter of a welcome improvement in coloring. I think Deodato is growing on the book in much the same way that Brubaker is, and that, in a couple of issues time, my initial worries about the art team for Secret Avengers are going to seem unfounded.

Hopefully, the book will continue to improve by leaps and bounds as it matures. What we've got here is a look at what Secret Avengers could become in just a few issues time and damn if it isn't good looking.

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*Not a joke. AWWWWW YEAH!

Friday Double Feature Comics Show: Superspy Edition

Welcome to the first of a new feature here at The Long And Shortbox Of It- The Friday Double Feature! As a tribute to one of the greatest methods of consuming the grittiest, grimiest, pulpiest fiction ever conceived, we're going to bring to you- every Friday!- two reviews of comics that we, for whatever reason, see as heirs to that legacy. As a result, you're more likely to see Criminal here than Avengers, but anything that smells of pulp has a shot of making it into the column. These reviews won't always be exclusive to stuff that came out the previous new comic book day (although I'm certainly going to try to write about as many new comics as possible), but this week we had a killer first issue two-fer: Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #1 and Casanova #1.

It's fitting that we're starting out with Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction, since the two of them are responsible for what I think is the greatest superhero pulp in recent memory- the much missed (around these parts, anyway) Immortal Iron Fist. These comics, though they share the same sort of narrative aesthetic, belong to a much different genre than that kung-fu masterpiece*. Indeed, Casanova and Super-Soldier both feature characters equally as concerned with focus and tradition, but in a much different sort of way. What we have here are two spy comics- and they're both brilliant.

Let's start with the superhero formerly known as Captain America: ever since his return in the pages of Reborn, what Steve Rogers' precise role was to be in the Marvel universe has been a little unclear. We knew he was the country's top cop. Or maybe Secretary of Superheroes- whatever his official title is, it's clear he's running the show these days. What hasn't been clear is what role he's going to play in the places where he does appear- what kind of figure is Steve going to cut out in the field? Although I'm sure that Brian Bendis would love to write a comic called Steve Rogers: Secretary of State, Ed Brubaker had a much more interesting idea: turn the original Super Soldier into 007. This new role has come through with varying degrees of success in his Secret Avengers title (and, for the record, I think Brubaker may have gone too big too fast on that one, but we'll see what happens), but is clear as day in Super Soldier.

In fact, it's the structure of the book that makes this work, because Brubaker isn't trying to be too fancy with anything inside. While it's true that the issue's narrative is a pretty traditional one, I think that's the key to understanding exactly how Steve sees himself these days- and how we're supposed to see him. Way back when, we never would have caught this man out of uniform (that's part of what makes Captain America so powerful) but here he looks right at home shmoozing around a cocktail party in a tuxedo, to the point where it's not so hard to see Daniel Craig playing this version of Steve in a movie, ordering a drink that's shaken, not stirred.

Dale Eaglesham's art here has exactly the right feel, too: while there are some moments when it feels a little too stiff, most of the action sequences are incredibly fluid and he makes the spy scenes feel just right. It's hard to explain, but Eaglesham's Steve Rogers is dashing, suave and, most importantly, subtle. It was a hard trick to pull off, I'm sure, but the penciller does a killer job here.

Speaking of killer jobs, let's talk about the coloring on Casanova #1. Some of us were more fond of the idea than others when the news broke that Matt Fraction's inter-temporal super spy Casanova Quinn (originally published by Image in a two color, sixteen page format) was going to reappear in full color and, for the record, I like the original slim two-colored versions too (to the point where I'm on something of a mad quest to track down issue #4 so I can complete my collection and read the damn thing all the way through). With that said, though, this new coloring job is killer. I wish I had a scanner so I could show you why, but when you hit the page of Cass falling through the space time continuum, believe me you'll know exactly what I mean.

I'm not sure what I can add about the comic itself that hasn't already been said (it is basically a reprint, after all), but I can tell you that the new material in the back (drawn by Fabio Moon) is brilliant as well as being enlightening and confusing- it sheds some light on stuff we already knew, while making everything just a little bit more confusing too. Whatever it is that's going on (and this is true for both comics- Super Soldier had some really killer twists too) I can't wait for more and that, more than anything else, is the mark of a good, pulpy piece of serial fiction.

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*Incidentally, this demonstrates precisely what I mean when I say "pulp"- sure it's true that all comics are descended from the pulps, but the Avengers or the X-Men are, on their own, too shiny to be considered true inheritors of the pulp tradition. At the same time, I'm not going to shut out comics simply because they feature superheroes, or because they don't belong to a more specific kind of genre. This week we're talking about spies. Next week, maybe crime comics. Or westerns. Or war comics. We'll just have to see what I find.

In Which I Discuss Captain America Comics Again.

I have a confession to make. I haven't read an issue of Captain America in months. I bought all the issues, and I'm sure that, some day, I'll go back and read them but, upon their purchase, I wasn't all that interested.

I'm not quite sure why. It was after that big Captain America tea-partier blow up back in February, so that may have had something to do with it. Maybe I was just a little tired- I've been living with these comics for a long time now. I've read them, re-read them, parsed them, wrote about them; I'm sort of surprised that I didn't burn out a long time ago. This week's issue #606, however, was the start of a brand new story line, featuring the return of Baron Zemo to the pages of Captain America, as well as the beginning of a new art era for the book (with Butch Guice taking over pencils from Luke Ross), and so I decided that it was, perhaps, time to return to the pages of my favorite comic book.

I was not disappointed.

Cap's had a little bit of a rough patch since the mess that was Reborn started, but I'm glad to see it's over- everything about this comic is pitch-perfect and spot on. Ed Brubaker is writing this book brilliantly again. That Brubaker has managed to seamlessly integrate Steve into the book as a supporting character is a feat on its own- he used to be the star of this book, remember. He plays Falcon off of Steve and both of them off of Bucky in a way that almost makes me wish that Ed had given us a whole issue of the three of them sitting around talking in a bar- this is how superheroes should interact with each other, out of costume. This is how superhero comic books should be written.

Brubaker's return to form was not very much of a surprise- he's done nothing but write brilliant comics for years, so a misstep or two was to be expected, sooner or later. What is something of a surprise is Butch Guice's art. My only previous experience with Guice was his inks on Reborn, and to say that they left something to be desired would be a significant understatement: Bryan Hitch's art was bad, and the inking didn't do it any favors.

Here, though, Guice proves that he knows his Captain America- at its best moments, the art references both Cap co-creator Jack Kirby and the artist responsible for perhaps the most famous Captain America page ever, Jim Steranko. This art is cartoony, kinetic, yet also impossibly realistic, which is the Kirby influence (I think there's even some Kirby Krackle in there!) and the design and surrealist elements are full-dose Steranko. Butch Guice does for Captain America's art what Ed Brubaker did for his writing- he is reexamining Cap's history, radically retelling it, in order that we may understand his present, his future. I'm in love with the technique in both art and writing- this is a hell of a book, if you like great comic art.

There's only one page that's kind of silly, and that's the oddly placed Steranko-style page near the beginning; it's not that the art's bad, it just doesn't make very much sense.

If you're looking to get into Captain America, now's a good time. If you're looking for something new? This is a good choice for that, too. This is a damn good comic book- I wish they were all this good.

Chicago's Favored Son Makes Triumphant Return

Our very own Josh Kopin will be presenting on an academic panel at C2E2 this weekend!

Check him out if you're going!

5:45 ROOM E266 COMICS STUDIES CONFERENCE SESSION #9: Superheroes—Josh Kopin (Bard College) examines how the death of Captain America in Ed Brubaker’s run on the character serves as a lens for examining the American nation and the meaning of Cap’s triumphs and tragedies.

I know it's good because he is giving an updated version of his talk from last year's Annual Bard Comics Symposium!

Jon Gorga had a dinner of sugar, sugar, and more sugar last night and he has a few things to tell you...

So the second part of my exploration of comics in digital form isn't ready and has been delayed for a few days... In lieu, I give you this potpourri...

1. Clare and Josh are bound by the rules of humbleness and grace not to toot their own horn on the Bard College Comic Symposium coming tomorrow.

But I'm not.

I know for a fact that both Josh and Clare have worked like crazy to assure that the almost day-long event will go off without a hitch. Here's a breakdown of the presenters:

Nicki France is among the most intelligent, sweet, creative, softspoken but highly opinionated people I know. She was doing research a few months ago on examples of Chinese calligraphy in American comics. (I sent her some stuff that hopefully helped out a bit.) That research combined with her voracious interest in all kinds of comics and her interest in Asian studies (most specifically the Chinese language) is going to pay off for all of us in her presentation on the calligraphic arts as filtered through the comics medium.

Senia Hardwick is a close personal friend of mine and I stress that she is a close personal friend for one specific reason: she is a mad scientist and someday may make a bid for world domination and if she wins, I'd like to be on the lower end of the scale of torment. Her status as a supervillain-in-training who has studied psychology and pharmacology makes her particularly perfect to present on the different manifestations and possible real-world application of the Batman villain Scarecrow's fear gas.

Molly Ostertag is a Bard College freshman who will talk about her own comics work and about the medium of comics itself. She is the only presenter I have never met so there is little I can say about her but I do know that the presentations by actual comicsmiths have always been among the highlights of these Symposiums. I've heard her work is wonderful.

The Long and Shortbox Of It!'s
Josh Kopin has been invited to give his presentation from last year's Symposium on the political and symbolic implications of Ed Brubaker's (still continuing) run on "Captain America" at C2E2 in Chicago NEXT WEEK! The mix of his love for "the Immortal Iron Fist" with his recent growing interest in the various forms comics takes and his new concept of differing styles as a narrative tool promise to come together for a presentation as unique and exciting as last year's.

and The Long and Shortbox Of It!'s
Clare Nolan began research many months ago on the Freudian implications of the darkness of the Dark Knight as a diametrical opposite to the brightness of his Rogue's Gallery and both in light of Frued's concept of 'the uncanny,' i.e. the familiar made unfamiliar, most often through mirroring and doubles. As a Batman fan, we know Clare's going to give us something respectful, and as a brilliant* writer, we know we're getting something rigorous and fascinating.

Prof. Ben Stevens has probably held for quite some time the position of The Smartest Guy I Know. Recently published in the online academic journal ImageText, with a paper on the topic of the self-aware nature of Craig Thompson's "Blankets" which was largely built from work he presented on at last year's Symposium. His new presentation on 'semiotics and ethics' in Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" will no doubt be as crazy and brilliant as his past work.

Chris Claremont is... well a very famous writer who made the X-Men what they are just after he graduated from Bard College in 1972. And then continued to write them for seventeen years. He's also a friendly guy and a genuinely interesting writer. Securing him to talk for this event was quite a coup and it's going to be very, very cool!

If you can, you should be at the Bito Auditorium, in the Reem-Kayden Center for Science and Computation, on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY on Saturday at 3PM.

By the way, it's free!

But if you really can't be at the Bard College campus on Saturday at 3PM...

2. ...and you live in the vaguely reachable area around New York City, you better damn well be at the 69th Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue for the annual MoCCA Festival. It's my favorite comics-event of the year. The number of cool things to see and cool people to meet never ceases to amaze, while remaining at an amount that you're actually capable of experiencing in the time the event lasts! The mega-huge giganta-cons like NY COMIC-CON haven't seemed to figure that out or don't seem to care.

Look up the details here on the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's page devoted to the festival.

One of my favorite people to see at MoCCA every year is...

3. Monica Gallagher. Monica created a comic a few years ago called "boobage" that is so many kinds of excellent I can't begin to tell you. It's a wonderful short comic about growing-up that shows how comics can be a fantastic presentation of a singular concept and a singular vision clearly dramatized on the page. I had the opportunity to meet her for the second time recently at a small signing of women comicsmiths at Jim Hanley's Universe and as I awkwardly stammered about how awesome her work is (and struggled to hear what she was saying because my damned right ear has been nearly deaf for four days from my seasonal allergies) we talked about "Boobage", how excellent MoCCA is, the awesome/discouraging possible future world of digital comics, and her latest offering: "When I Was a Mall Model". Seeing Monica made me feel a bit better about missing MoCCA this year! So thanks for that!

Hey Bard students who liked "Boobage"! I'm coming to Bard and I'm only bringing one comic: "When I Was a Mall Model".
(Which is essentially a kina-sorta-defacto sequel to "Boobage".) Ask me to see it!

Monica's website is EatYourLipstick.com


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*I don't believe Clare Nolan is brilliant because she's my girlfriend. Clare Nolan is my girlfriend because I believe she's brilliant. I think if you hear her speak, you will agree with me.

I've Held My Tongue Long Enough!

I've tried to be patient with you, Marvel. And really, I love you, I do- you take about ten dollars from me on any given week, so I must love you, right?

But I can't be patient anymore- I'm pissed off and I'm not going to take it.

Why am I pissed off? Coming out in June are:

Six comics with Deadpool in the title
A Spider-Ham 25th Anniversary Special
Two minis with titles beginning "Spider-Man Presents..."
A "Darkstar and Winter Guard" mini
A Hercules in Space mini?
The start of a new "Hawkeye and Mockingbird" series

and where, in the name of the ever-lovin-blue-eyed-Thing, is Daniel Rand?

It's been months since the Immortal Weapons one-shots ended and we were promised that the Immortal Iron Fist was not canceled.

Well it looks like it is, and I call foul. I know, I know, Marvel knows its business better than I do... but look. Luke Cage is in the middle of a renaissance and his best buddy is nowhere to be found. In its heyday, Brubaker, Fraction and Aja's Immortal Iron Fist was one of the best books out there, about a character almost no one cared about. It was so effective that some people, (read: me) are now actually fans of the character that no one cares about. And what do you do, Marvel? Why, you leave me high and dry!

So, thus begins my quest to return the Immortal Iron Fist to exactly where he belongs- comics pages anywhere. I'm going to review the new Iron Fist stories. I'm going to review old Iron Fist stories. I'm going to write and draw my own Iron Fist stories and I'm not going to stop until I get what I want (and believe me when I say my comics are going to be torturous).

So, that's where I stand- I'll see you in the funny pages, Marvel Comics. The newsprint ain't big enough for the both of us.

In the meantime, I'm going to go learn Kung Fu.

(actually, I was going to do most of this stuff anyway- but I figured couching it in revolutionary language might get people who aren't me to care.)