Even Gods Must Die and The Hunger Dogs

[Andy Bentley finishes up his look at every issue of Jack Kirby's New Gods.]

“Even Gods Must Die!” - New Gods (reprint series) #6. November, 1984
“The Hunger Dogs!” DC Graphic Novel #4. March 1985

Mister Miracle #18 marked the end to the New Gods series at DC and as the 1970’s rolled on, there were two failed attempts to continue the story with different creators. It would take seventh iteration of the Super Friends animated series, Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, to spark Kirby’s return. Super Friends needed some impressive villains for the Justice League to battle and Darkseid and his crew were a perfect fit. Kirby was hired to recreate several of his characters and was compensated well for his efforts. The Super Powers toy line was a huge success which led to DC to reprinting the series and then asking Kirby to conclude it.

This brings us to “Even Gods Must Die!”, which appears in the last reprinted issue towards the end of 1984. It opens on Orion entering Apokolips on what would appear to be the day of the fabled “final battle”. Immediately, I noticed a decline in the quality of the art. There are glaring perspective and anatomy issues and the art consistently felt flat. Mark Evanier mentions in the afterword that Kirby’s drawing hand had begun to fail him, so it would be cruel for me to dwell on it. Suffice to say, the art is a visual cue that the times have changed.

Punisher MAX Issue 2

[Graham Tedesco-Blair continues his issue by issue look at Ennis's Punisher MAX run.I read the first four issues. They were reasonably good.]

There's a very frustrating trope in Batman comics where some talking head on a news show starts babbling about how horrible Batman is because now that he's here, he attracts all the crazy fringe elements to himself, gives the villains permission to dress up, makes the Joker want to kill people, etc etc. It's overused simply because it's a cliché excuse to pin the blame on Batman, and because it's not very well thought out. And yet, when Ennis manages to tell that exact same story with good reasons and without some smarmy newscaster losing her head, it's quite effective.

In this issue, we meet the arc's bad guys, Nicky Cavella, Pittsy, and Ink. Cavella looks like a combination of Patrick Bateman and Jerry Seinfeld, and has been brought in because all the other mob bosses are dead. Pittsy is an ancient looking, short buff dude in a yellow tracksuit, one of Tony Soprano's thugs, and Ink is straight out of a Sin City comic. We don't see them in action this issue, but even their conversation over dinner is tense. Ennis even lets a joke through, when Ink asks how they could tell if Don Massimo was dead or alive, but it's cruel, with a flat delivery you can read from Ink's expression, designed to hurt Larry, the mobster who called them back to NYC.

Lost Season 6, Episode 1: LA X

Major Spoilers

Smartpop asked me to cover all the season 6 Lost episodes for their site, and I agreed. Every week I will link from here to my post over there. But because my review for them has to be written in the like 90 minutes after the show airs, I expect to find myself with more to say when I wake up in the morning, as I did today. So when I do link there, I will also give some slightly more cooked thoughts here.

In my review of Lost Season 6, Episode 1 "LA X" I wrote the following for Smartpop (click the quote for the rest)

"As Lost continued, the normal story began to wear away, revealing the sci-fi fantasy comic book underneath more and more. People’s tolerance for the show depended on what their tolerance for this kind of material was. The show often felt like it was designed to slowly indoctrinate people naturally resistant to sci-fi fantasy comic book insanity to creatures made of black smoke, nonsense electromagnetism, four footed statues, moving islands, and alternate universes. A sister of a friend who stopped watching around the opening of season two was appalled to learn years later they were traveling through time."

Random extra thoughts not on Smartpop

Brad said to me that the real John Locke has to return in the island universe to save everyone. I thought -- maybe he will be the only one to escape the Parallel Universe into the island universe. That would be a cool way to kind of redeem that character, who died a pointless death after so much struggle.

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If I forget, remind me. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If I see a big free form comment that deserves more attention, I will pull it and make it its own post, with a label on the post and on the sidebar that will always link to all the posts you write for this blog. I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music, books and iPhone apps.

Uncanny X-Men #254

[Jason Powell continues to look at every issue of Claremont's initial X-Men run. He requires no riches for this gift to the world. Such things are beneath him. He does it for the glory that is Greece and the grandeur that is Marvel Comics.]

“All New, All Different – Here We Go Again”

As of the previous issue, Claremont has dissolved the idea of the X-Men as a team. Yet this issue’s cover and title play games with reader expectations, teasing at the idea of a new iteration of X-Men. Obviously the main point of reference here is Giant Sized X-Men #1, but the use of the original Kirby uniforms hearkens as well to the formation of the New Mutants, the first team spin-off X-book (and the only one for years). Claremont has jokingly riffed on the idea before, in X-Men Annual #10, whose Giant-Sized-X-Men homage cover (drawn by Art Adams) suggested that the New Mutants would become the new “new X-Men.” (Or perhaps the “new” “new X-Men” …?)

Issue 254’s cover is modeled on Cockrum’s cover to Giant-Sized #1 as well – albeit fairly loosely. Jim Lee – an avowed fan of the original Kirby uniforms – makes the most of his obscure subjects (some of whom are genuinely unrecognizable until one reads the actual comic). That dynamic opening image alone almost sells us on this new team. Why not? The Australian team was a departure that worked; this one could too. The blurb completes the effect: “A New Legend Is Born!”

The End of Dollhouse

Major Spoilers

When Dollhouse first aired I was with most people in not liking it. (you can actually read my reactions at the time by clicking the Dollhouse link below). As lots of people noticed, Dushku was not much of an actress -- they guy playing Victor put her to shame later with these amazing impressions of Topher and Reed Diamond. Dushku was just Dushku in a variety of sexy outfits, rather than personalities, which is what was called for. This could have worked in a cheesecake factor, as in Alias for example, but of course Whedon did not want us to mindlessly salivate as Abrams does, because he has important points to make about IDENTITY, and WOMEN, and FREE WILL, and OPPRESSION. Also Echo was hard to latch onto a POV protagonist, since she was almost totally wiped from episode to episode. The show tried to do lots of one-off stories -- also like a lot of Alias -- which did not help, and led to some silly ways to advance the theme: do you see how the dolls are like performers in cages, or women (as generally treated by men), or cult members and so forth? It maybe needed a bigger canvas like LOST. When more meaty continuity and character and personality showed up in the form of Alan Tudyk's Alpha at the end of season 1 (alas, too late) the show got better -- ideas about identity suddenly mattered more. It was not just about slavery and freedom -- there was a kind of post-human element here too, and an apocalyptic one, as we saw in the season one epilogue Epitaph One, brilliantly set in a post apocalyptic future where the seemingly simple Dollhouse tech was taken to its natural endpoint. That really gave the show the context it needed.

I had high hopes when the second season started, but it had too much in common with the start of the first -- goofy one off episodes (a bride! then an unrelated mom!) with vague thematic connections to a main line. Echo was learning but not really fast enough to get attached to her. People kept punching her and she would change personalities and it was all pretty dumb. Like she was a Jukebox. It was off for all of November. When it came back something interesting happened. I started to like it.

Punisher MAX Issue 1: In the Beginning...

[Graham Tedesco-Blair starts his issue by issue look at Ennis's Punisher MAX run. I wanted to comment but have not yet read the issue, though it is in my house. Soon. I make a brief comment below.]

We open with a single page splash panel depicting the gravestone of Frank Castle's family. There are very few other places one could start the series, as Castle is as tied to his origin story as heroes like Batman or Spider-Man are. And it is just that origin story we are treated to in the opening pages, depicted ably by penciler Lewis Larosa. Some panels look like they were inked by running them through a photocopier that was low on toner, but this adds a grittiness and atmosphere that help set the mood. “Gritty” and “Moody” are overused adjectives, but they describe these pages perfectly.

“They hated that old man so much that they shot him through my family,” Castle's narration begins. Like the aforementioned heroes, the Punisher had his origin in the death of his family by criminals, but unlike them, he was already a well trained soldier, a veteran the Vietnam war, rather than an impressionable young boy or teenager. While Bruce Wayne's parents being shot down in front of his young eyes gave him a life long aversion to guns and killing, and fueled his transformation into a child's idea of the perfect man, and teenage Peter Parker's uncle dying thanks to his inaction led him to have crippling guilt about ever not interfering if he thinks he could help, Frank Castle was already a trained killer with a wife and two children he loved dearly. Without them, he reverts to being a soldier, the only thing he knows how to do, the only thing which makes sense. His description of the incident is peppered with phrases like “Thompsons, like the kind our fathers carried” (presumably in World War II) and “the old man's soldiers” because this is the kind of mindset he now lives in. Rather than a traditional, reactionary vigilante book, we are being set up for a war comic that happens to take place in New York City between one well trained man against any and all criminals who cross his path. As his narration continues, Castle mentions almost as an aside that he's already killed the old man, all the shooters responsible, the ones who had ordered the hit, and “probably thousands more.” It hasn't given him any sense of closure, nor has it stopped his mission.

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If I forget, remind me. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If I see a big free form comment that deserves more attention, I will pull it and make it its own post, with a label on the post and on the sidebar that will always link to all the posts you write for this blog. I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music, books and iPhone apps.

Uncanny X-Men #253

[For you all this may be just another blog post. But you guys were getting ones in the que for a while -- this one was written in the final moments of 2009, and represents the beginning of Jason's final push toward the end, as he looks at every issue of Claremont's initial X-Men run. I make a brief comment below, but it is not that smart.]

“Storm Warnings”

The story cycle from issues 246 to 252 saw Claremont steadily narrowing down his cast of characters, to the point where Wolverine was the only one left. Logan is even referred to as “the last of the Uncanny X-Men” in the opening splash pages of issues 251 and 252, just to drive the sense of finality home. What could possibly come next?

The answer, in issue 253, is surprising yet obvious: He suddenly swings the doors open wide on the massive X-mythology that he spent the last 15 years building. Banshee, Moira MacTaggert, Amanda Sefton, Polaris, Magneto and Forge all return, reminding us with a jolt that the eight X-Men who went to Australia were far from the only characters Claremont has available to him. Muir Island – a staple of the series since the 70s but not seen in Uncanny for almost two years – is suddenly a setting again. Claremont even imports characters and concepts from his concurrent Excalibur series (which were already imports from the Alan Moore/Alan Davis/Jamie Delano Captain Britain comics published in the UK). The scope of the series sweeps outward from one corner of the globe to all of them, an explosion of color and atmosphere that contrasts brightly against the bleak, existential desolation that had settled on the series over the previous three months.

The artwork, too, seems to soften to accommodate Claremont’s departure from the gritty Outback sands. Steve Leialoha returns as a guest inker, seeming much more comfortable than he had in issue 250. His work is still a departure from Green’s, but it feels lighter and more carefully applied.

Mister Miracle 17 & 18

[Andy Bentley's pen-ultimate, or pen-pen-ultimate, look at every issue of Jack Kirby's New Gods.]

Mister Miracle #17 “Murder Lodge!”
Mister Miracle #18 “Wild Wedding Guests”

This is my 50th post on Kirby’s Fourth World, which also happens to be the end of the Fourth World Saga in sequential form. I cannot sum up the finale any better than the jacket liner to the Omnibus which proclaims “Kirby’s Epic Saga Concludes!”. It certainly does, but not in the fashion with which it began.

Let’s get the penultimate issue out of the way. Miracle, Barda and Shilo (now decked out in a red and yellow sidekick uniform) have their vehicle break down in an unknown part of town and seek refuge in a creepy old hotel. If you’ve ever seen any episodes of Scooby Doo, you know the rest of the story. The bad guy doesn’t dress as a ghoul or ghost, but he utilizes plenty of trap doors and knockout gas on our heroes. In the end, it turns out the trio resembled another trio of fugitives spotted in the area. Hence, the hostile treatment. The cops take the bad guys away and that’s really all that needs to be said.

Now, onto “Wild Wedding Guests”. The issue opens on the standard preparation of an escape act when suddenly there’s an attack of shock-grenades from above. The culprit is Virman Vunderbar, a formidable opponent from Apokolips. Miracle and Barda avoid the explosion with the help of Miracle’s boot-lasers. Then, out of nowhere, the two profess their deep and undying love for one another! Sure, there were hints several issues back, but I was hoping for at least a bit of a slow natural progression on this front. The blame probably lies on the abrupt cancellation of the title and not necessarily on Kirby’s plotting.

Late Avatar Review

I finally got around to seeing Avatar last night. I think just about everyone has had their say, and I do not have that much to add to the discussion, except to locate myself in it and maybe make a few rambling observations. Major Spoilers.

The visuals and the 3D tech were more impressive than I though they were going to be: I figured it would basically be like Coraline, and Beowulf and Up, but this was certainly a notch up. Everything was bright and crisp and clear; the depth of field really brought a lot, and Cameron, whatever his other faults, brought a lot to look at. The screenplay was basically solid, with introductions and call-backs -- introduce the hammerhead-rinos, bring them back; introduce how the mask works, bring it back; introduce the super-dragon, bring it back, introduce the dog monster, bring it back; introduce the magic tree, bring it back. The dialogue was less cringe-worthy than it could have been. It also had a lot of sweeping action that was also very good, pretty well choreographed and epic. The bad guy was evil in a fun way, and Sam Worthington -- who I did not realize until I got in the theatre was the guy who plays MacBeth in the 2006 Australian Machine Gun Version I show in class every term -- is basically good. Without the 3D those elements get you a C, with the 3D they will bring up to a B. As a $500,000,000 blockbuster movie, this is doing its job. It is not a work of genius, but like a well made table, it stands up. If that does not sound like much of a compliment, maybe it shouldn't, but so many blockbusters are just downright badly made -- Transformers, for example, or Phantom Menace, or the Matrix sequels -- you have to respond with some respect. In a perfect world Mission Impossible 3 and the Bourne Films maybe would not be on my list of favorite movies of all time, but I love those kinds of movies and mostly they are just done so goddamn badly you get really excited when one shows up that actually works as advertised.

“Avatar: my little cream soda, oh-well, oh-well!”

[Guest Blogger C Lue Disharoon gives us his take on Avatar.]

(with a minimum of spoilers, at that)

I’ve briefly encountered the criticisms related to Avatar, which were typically founded on reasonable observations. It’s true, there’s a science fiction story called The Martian Princess, and it’s true there’s a movie called Fern Gully, another one called Dances With Wolves; it is so, that many elements of said stories echo loudly within the 3-D enhanced cinema plexes of those familiar with them, who yearned for the mind-staggering visuals to be presented in context of a more original story. I follow you: you wanted the narrative to surprise you the way soaring down a cliff on those reptilian banshees might take one’s breath away.

You didn’t want to predict the love interest, the climax, or the treachery within the first half hour. Maybe you wanted something with more intricate characters, or for that Mega Gulp soda not to make you feel as though the Elf With a Gun stopped to jump up and down on your bladder for the last half hour (get this rebellion OVER with, dangit!). You probably skewed the grading curb occasionally, daydreaming through the molasses pace of regular classes (like the physics major, Cameron, who directed this movie). Maybe you would’ve liked something directed a little more at the rational neo-cortex and less in a limbo in the limbic brain. Once upon a time, all you wanted was for a cutting-edge special effects milestone to contain a story you found thought provoking, “oh-well, oh-well... (with apologies to the White Stripes).”

The Punisher MAX: Preamble [New Guest Blogger]

[Oh! What? Did someone say an issue by issue analysis of Garth Ennis's Punisher MAX run? Graham Tedesco-Blair is going to be covering that for us here on Thursdays. BAM. This is a good one for me. Jason's has taught me the virtues of Claremont, who I never disliked exactly (though I did foolishly and ignorantly consider bog standard at one point). But I kind of almost HATE Ennis, even on Punisher and Preacher, which I read at least more than 10 issues of. EXCEPT: Punisher: The End, which is on my list of favorite comics of all time because a friend put the comic in my hand and MADE me read it. I don't think I have ever seen a writer do a better job of taking a character, and thinking him all the way through to the end. So I am intrigued by this. Let's all welcome GTB.]

“[The Punisher] kills criminals because he hates them. It's not exactly brain surgery. It's his methods were interested in here.”
--Detective Soap, Marvel Knight's Punisher #3

When I was younger, I rented the film The Big Lebowski from the local video store. While watching it with my father that evening, my mother happened to walk in, and commented that she disliked how much swearing was in the film. I recall saying something about how the swearing isn't important, because it's a really great story and a very well made movie, but she just couldn't get over the word “fuck” being uttered about once a minute. And it seems that this is precisely the problem most people have with Garth Ennis.

Ennis is an often misunderstood author. Ever since his career in comics really took off with Hitman and Preacher in the mid-90s, his works have been regarded by most as a combination of Adam Sandler and Eli Roth, a coupling of scatological humor and extreme violence. While this is not at all an unfair or unfounded assessment, there's also a lot more going on in his comics than people saying the word “fuck” back and forth for 90 minutes.

With all the crazy things going on in his work, it's easy to miss that he's pretty clearly laying out a system of what's right and what's wrong. Ennis is a very moral writer, but one in the vein of writers like Bret Easton Ellis. Often, the judgment is implied by the consequences of the character's actions and our own reactions to the horrible things that they do to one another. If you need someone standing over your shoulder, reminding you that American Psycho's Patrick Bateman is an unequivocally horrible human being, then you miss the point entirely. As a result of this stylistic choice, Ennis is one of the few writers out there with the capacities to write completely reprehensible and unlikable villains who are none the less gripping and enthralling. You're not going to get any scenes of the villain playing the piano in an empty room, crying.

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If I forget, remind me. Remember these comments can be directed at all the readers, not just me. ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy. AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option. WRITING FOR THIS BLOG. If I see a big free form comment that deserves more attention, I will pull it and make it its own post, with a label on the post and on the sidebar that will always link to all the posts you write for this blog. I am always looking for reviews of games, tv, movies, music, books and iPhone apps.

Uncanny X-Men #252

[Jason Powell. Chris Claremont. The epic issue by issue X-Men conversation continues. At the end, only two men will be left standing. Claremont will be one. Jason Powell will be the other. And I guess we will all be standing around and occasionally saying stuff as well. There is a lot to talk about.]

“Where’s Wolverine?”

Neil Shyminsky has commented about the cleverness of Claremont’s swerve with Wolverine at this point in the series – essentially taking a character who had evolved into a kind of uber-idealistic notion of extreme masculinity and undercutting him severely, through both plot and dialogue. The process was begun with the previous issue, but “Fever Dream” served more as a final, climactic gasp of the masculine Wolverine. (It’s hard to assign any sort of weakness to Logan’s insane display of machismo as he frees himself from crucifixion through sheer grit, especially as depicted with such idealistic fervor by Marc Silvestri.) It’s not until this issue that we see the character’s hyper-masculinity being undermined. The title is the first clue, and it serves as a bookend with the story’s final bit of dialogue, spoken by Jubilee: “… You gotta do something about this macho attitude. I mean, it is like SO lame…!” Helping to reinforce the point visually is guest penciller Rick Leonardi – a delightfully expressive artist whose cartoonish style is the antithesis of Silvestr’s ultra-sexy-cool – and guest inker Kent Williams, who drew Logan as a pot-bellied slob with un-erect hair in the “Havok/Wolverine” miniseries. (A visual that Claremont seems to have enjoyed enough to jokingly reference not once but twice – see Uncanny X-Men #246 and Excalibur #14.) Even artistically, Logan is being sabotaged. The cover, conversely, features an ultra-slick image by Jim Lee – of the villains.

Mister Miracle 15 & 16

[Andy Bentley, going through Jack Kirby's New Gods, has reached that point where Mr Miracle is in that long, dark, editorially-screwed tea-time of the soul. Bear with him. Jack's bizarre return and outlandish non-ending are right around the corner.]

“The Secret Gun!” and “Shilo Norman, Super Trouble!”

Mister Miracle 15 introduces Shilo Norman, a troubled youth who Mister Miracle takes on as an apprentice by issues end. Norman would eventually succeed his mentor in Grant Morrison’s metaseries, Seven Soldiers. When I first saw Norman as Mr. Miracle, I scoffed at the idea. Scott Free was MY Mister Miracle. Now that I see there is precedent for Norman, my views have changed. This is a phenomenon that has occurred several times for me in the Fourth World series. The idea of a DNA Lab in metropolis that cloned Superman into a boy was ridiculous for me at age 14, but once I learned of the DNA lab’s origin in the pages of Jimmy Olsen, the fact became acceptable. If the Death of Superman is to be treated as a stand alone novel, then the writer revealing a cloning lab beneath the city halfway through the novel is suspect. However if the DC comic narrative is thought of as one large story, then the reveal seems congruent to the fantasy world.