!
[Sara, for those of you not keeping track, is my fiancee.]
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #162
[Guest blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men Run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]
“Beyond the Farthest Star”
1982 was an important year for the X-franchise, with the release of the first spin-off series focusing on the solo adventures of a team member. (The ongoing Dazzler series had piggy-backed its launch off of Uncanny back in 1980, so was only a spin-off by technicality). Written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Frank Miller, the four-issue “Wolverine” miniseries drew heavily upon the novel “Shogun,” and re-imagined Wolverine as a failed samurai.
Claremont and Cockrum execute a sort of tonal segue into the Wolverine mini with Uncanny X-Men #162, a solo Wolverine story that utilizes the same first-person narrative captions, and also apes the miniseries’ use of Mariko Yashida as a touchstone for the deepening of Wolverine’s character. (It will be another six months before Claremont actually integrates the Frank Miller series’ plot into the parent series.) Uncanny #162 is also the first appearance in an Uncanny X-Men comic of Wolverine’s now cliché catch-phrase, “I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.”
This is par excellence a Claremont Wolverine story, in all its paradoxical glory, the character relating his own descent into berserker-level madness and brutality via pristine, eloquent narration. Somehow, the combination obviously clicked with readers – Claremont’s work here is the template for hundreds of Wolverine comics by dozens of authors. For all its contradictions, “Beyond the Farthest Star” – in tandem with the contemporaneous Claremont/Miller miniseries – represents the invention of the solo-Wolverine story, and as such is hugely important to the canon from a historical perspective.
From an artistic one, the issue is not nearly so satisfying. While the plotting has a kind of clockwork perfection to it, and the flashback sequences do succeed in conveying a tone of eerie paranoia, Claremont has a hard time maintaining Wolverine’s tough-poet voice convincingly over 22 pages of narrative captions. It seems likely that Claremont invented the vernacular to blend with Frank Miller’s aesthetic, itself possessing both a toughness and poetry. Indeed, in the miniseries, the narration works marvelously for four issues straight. Here, it doesn’t chime nearly as well with Cockrum’s art, which after five issues is back in the territory of space opera (a genre not at all congruous with the already self-contradictory “tough poet” narration).
Still, looking past the tonal dissonance of the narration and the plot, Cockrum turns in excellent work here, his double-page spread of the Brood ship’s massive corpse being particularly lovely. Although Claremont’s story is again shamelessly ripping off the “Alien” film, Cockrum is clearly in his element. An appropriate level of Giger homage is evident in his designs for the Brood, but they are still a creative visual design in their own right. Indeed, the best thing about “Beyond the Farthest Star” is its tour de force showcase of one of superhero comics’ all-time greatest designers, of architecture, of aliens, of characters. (Recall that Cockrum designed the mask-less Wolverine as well.)
Overall, this is more Cockrum’s issue than Claremont’s. The former seems very much on point, while Claremont – overly intoxicated by his freshly conceived new voice for Wolverine – has lost the focus he demonstrated so ably during the previous four months.
“Beyond the Farthest Star”
1982 was an important year for the X-franchise, with the release of the first spin-off series focusing on the solo adventures of a team member. (The ongoing Dazzler series had piggy-backed its launch off of Uncanny back in 1980, so was only a spin-off by technicality). Written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Frank Miller, the four-issue “Wolverine” miniseries drew heavily upon the novel “Shogun,” and re-imagined Wolverine as a failed samurai.
Claremont and Cockrum execute a sort of tonal segue into the Wolverine mini with Uncanny X-Men #162, a solo Wolverine story that utilizes the same first-person narrative captions, and also apes the miniseries’ use of Mariko Yashida as a touchstone for the deepening of Wolverine’s character. (It will be another six months before Claremont actually integrates the Frank Miller series’ plot into the parent series.) Uncanny #162 is also the first appearance in an Uncanny X-Men comic of Wolverine’s now cliché catch-phrase, “I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.”
This is par excellence a Claremont Wolverine story, in all its paradoxical glory, the character relating his own descent into berserker-level madness and brutality via pristine, eloquent narration. Somehow, the combination obviously clicked with readers – Claremont’s work here is the template for hundreds of Wolverine comics by dozens of authors. For all its contradictions, “Beyond the Farthest Star” – in tandem with the contemporaneous Claremont/Miller miniseries – represents the invention of the solo-Wolverine story, and as such is hugely important to the canon from a historical perspective.
From an artistic one, the issue is not nearly so satisfying. While the plotting has a kind of clockwork perfection to it, and the flashback sequences do succeed in conveying a tone of eerie paranoia, Claremont has a hard time maintaining Wolverine’s tough-poet voice convincingly over 22 pages of narrative captions. It seems likely that Claremont invented the vernacular to blend with Frank Miller’s aesthetic, itself possessing both a toughness and poetry. Indeed, in the miniseries, the narration works marvelously for four issues straight. Here, it doesn’t chime nearly as well with Cockrum’s art, which after five issues is back in the territory of space opera (a genre not at all congruous with the already self-contradictory “tough poet” narration).
Still, looking past the tonal dissonance of the narration and the plot, Cockrum turns in excellent work here, his double-page spread of the Brood ship’s massive corpse being particularly lovely. Although Claremont’s story is again shamelessly ripping off the “Alien” film, Cockrum is clearly in his element. An appropriate level of Giger homage is evident in his designs for the Brood, but they are still a creative visual design in their own right. Indeed, the best thing about “Beyond the Farthest Star” is its tour de force showcase of one of superhero comics’ all-time greatest designers, of architecture, of aliens, of characters. (Recall that Cockrum designed the mask-less Wolverine as well.)
Overall, this is more Cockrum’s issue than Claremont’s. The former seems very much on point, while Claremont – overly intoxicated by his freshly conceived new voice for Wolverine – has lost the focus he demonstrated so ably during the previous four months.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
"They told us we would be superheroes"
The power of Fight Club was rooted in its claim that "They told us we would be superheroes and rock stars. They lied." The move argued that men had been emasculated by a culture of Ikea tables and women, a culture that encouraged passive consumerism over ACTION and CONFLICT -- the kind of action and conflict embodied best in genre fiction, and codified in Robert McKee's Story.
Frank Miller, in his introduction to an anniversary edition of Dark Knight Returns, talks about how the inspiration for that book came from an imaginative need for a Batman older than he was, older than 29 (as Batman is traditionally assumed to be -- though now Morrison has him at 35). Miller's Batman has much in common with Bruce Willis in Live Free Die Hard, and Sylvester Stalone in both the new Rambo and the new Rocky and even John Locke on Lost -- older, we have a psychological need to know there is some kind of action hero role model always out ahead of where we are now, so that it is not too late for us, if we have gotten to 29 and are not yet Batman.
Shows like the Sopranos, the Wire and even the Venture Bros. -- in spite of the major differences between them -- respond to this same imaginative need in a different way. The power of genre stuff such as the mob movie derive from the power fantasy -- but in the Sopranos this is less about the power to kill at will or accumulate vast sums of money. The quintessential Sopranos scene for me is the one in which Uncle Junior's cancer doctor starts ducking his calls because of a possible bureaucratic hassle with a medical board. Tony Soprano can simply show up on the golf course and intimidate him into being available and supportive of his uncle in a way the rest of us can only dream, as we sit waiting in emergency rooms or on hold with insurance companies.
And yet these little victories are short lived on the Sopranos and more often than not, the show, like the Wire and the Venture Bros. shows us a world of frustrated expectations, lives that do not turn out as the movies promise. Being a mob boss comes with serious stress disorders of the type that would dog any corporate leader, and the same kind of midlife crisis. A lot of fun has been made of the midlife crisis -- the flashy car or motorcycle, the toupee -- but it comes from a very real and very basic existential dread (even if they would not articulate it in these terms), the feeling of coming too late, of being too small compared to the giants of the past, real and imagined. You needn't wish you were a mob king, rather than climbing the corporate ladder, because at the end of the day, they have a lot in common.
The Wire's exploration of the corruption of related systems -- rather than people -- cannot be overpraised. Part of the power of the show is its vision of the world as corrupted far beyond anything we could do about it: we have the jobs we wanted, but we do not have the resources to actually do the job effectively. The quintessential Wire scene is the one in season three when Herc tells McNulty that he saw Barksdale (whose name he cannot remember even though he worked the case) driving around free -- we followed that case for a full year, and now 18 months later he is back on the street. Part of the sympathy the show generates is based in the same kinds of frustrations the viewers have in their own lives in their own jobs, no matter how small.
The Venture Bros similarly shows how the Dr Venture is both in the shadows of the titans of the past -- his own father, rather than Tony's metaphorical Godfathers of history and fiction (though Tony does have the shadow of his own biological father too). Like Tony, Dr Venture has to rely on pills to survive building on the sepulchers of the past. Dr Venture is also caught in the bond of absurd bureaucratic rules dictating, for example, the terms of his conflict with his nemesis. Hatred, something assumed to be natural and direct, is mediated and directed. The Monarch has to goad Dr. Venture's brother into trying to kill him and his men so he can then go after Dr. Venture -- he has to have revenge for lethal force as a motive, otherwise he has to leave him alone.
These shows create a really interesting middle ground between our genre-fantasy wish fulfillments (we want to be like them), and sympathetic identification (we are like them).
Frank Miller, in his introduction to an anniversary edition of Dark Knight Returns, talks about how the inspiration for that book came from an imaginative need for a Batman older than he was, older than 29 (as Batman is traditionally assumed to be -- though now Morrison has him at 35). Miller's Batman has much in common with Bruce Willis in Live Free Die Hard, and Sylvester Stalone in both the new Rambo and the new Rocky and even John Locke on Lost -- older, we have a psychological need to know there is some kind of action hero role model always out ahead of where we are now, so that it is not too late for us, if we have gotten to 29 and are not yet Batman.
Shows like the Sopranos, the Wire and even the Venture Bros. -- in spite of the major differences between them -- respond to this same imaginative need in a different way. The power of genre stuff such as the mob movie derive from the power fantasy -- but in the Sopranos this is less about the power to kill at will or accumulate vast sums of money. The quintessential Sopranos scene for me is the one in which Uncle Junior's cancer doctor starts ducking his calls because of a possible bureaucratic hassle with a medical board. Tony Soprano can simply show up on the golf course and intimidate him into being available and supportive of his uncle in a way the rest of us can only dream, as we sit waiting in emergency rooms or on hold with insurance companies.
And yet these little victories are short lived on the Sopranos and more often than not, the show, like the Wire and the Venture Bros. shows us a world of frustrated expectations, lives that do not turn out as the movies promise. Being a mob boss comes with serious stress disorders of the type that would dog any corporate leader, and the same kind of midlife crisis. A lot of fun has been made of the midlife crisis -- the flashy car or motorcycle, the toupee -- but it comes from a very real and very basic existential dread (even if they would not articulate it in these terms), the feeling of coming too late, of being too small compared to the giants of the past, real and imagined. You needn't wish you were a mob king, rather than climbing the corporate ladder, because at the end of the day, they have a lot in common.
The Wire's exploration of the corruption of related systems -- rather than people -- cannot be overpraised. Part of the power of the show is its vision of the world as corrupted far beyond anything we could do about it: we have the jobs we wanted, but we do not have the resources to actually do the job effectively. The quintessential Wire scene is the one in season three when Herc tells McNulty that he saw Barksdale (whose name he cannot remember even though he worked the case) driving around free -- we followed that case for a full year, and now 18 months later he is back on the street. Part of the sympathy the show generates is based in the same kinds of frustrations the viewers have in their own lives in their own jobs, no matter how small.
The Venture Bros similarly shows how the Dr Venture is both in the shadows of the titans of the past -- his own father, rather than Tony's metaphorical Godfathers of history and fiction (though Tony does have the shadow of his own biological father too). Like Tony, Dr Venture has to rely on pills to survive building on the sepulchers of the past. Dr Venture is also caught in the bond of absurd bureaucratic rules dictating, for example, the terms of his conflict with his nemesis. Hatred, something assumed to be natural and direct, is mediated and directed. The Monarch has to goad Dr. Venture's brother into trying to kill him and his men so he can then go after Dr. Venture -- he has to have revenge for lethal force as a motive, otherwise he has to leave him alone.
These shows create a really interesting middle ground between our genre-fantasy wish fulfillments (we want to be like them), and sympathetic identification (we are like them).
Hiatus
Sorry about disappearing without warning for three days. I kept thinking I would blog something, then kept realizing it was a holiday weekend, and I also had a hard time getting to my computer.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Comics Out August 27, 2008
Final Crisis: Superman Beyond: 3D. Jog and Tim Callahan have already noted that this is not a great comic book, and I certainly concur. The 3D glasses are annoying, and the project seems to have at its basis ideas -- the Gnostic mythology of the Monitors and the creation of the Platonic form of superheroes -- rather than character or plot, always bad news. And the ideas here -- especially the limbo for out of continuity comic book characters -- are practically commonplace territory, not only for Morrison, but also for Alan Moore. And you can keep telling me about the scale of the Monitors but since you cannot show it it all rings hollow. This constant need for everything to be HUGE all the time is exhausting.
On some level I guess this is just what superhero comics are -- I mean characters save the world all the time in their own books, and then they get together and save the multi-verse in the crossovers. And I suppose Morrision knows this and it is part of why he is going to do smaller non-superhero projects after Final Crisis.
On some level I guess this is just what superhero comics are -- I mean characters save the world all the time in their own books, and then they get together and save the multi-verse in the crossovers. And I suppose Morrision knows this and it is part of why he is going to do smaller non-superhero projects after Final Crisis.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
