Favorite Comics

Myspace, Facebook, and Hulu, among others, are always asking for lists of your favorite books, tv shows, music and so on. I actually really like being defined by my taste in those things, but I always blank out a bit every time I fill one out, like when you go to blockbuster and then, as soon as you get there, you cannot remember a single movie you wanted to see, even though you know there are many. Also, my students are always asking for recommendations of things to see and read. Every term at least one student comes and asks if I could hand them a list -- right on the spot -- of the most important works of world literature across all time. I was asked this today. Usually I just cop out a bit and tell them to read a Bloom edited poetry anthology and the works of Shakespeare.

So. I have decided to do a series of posts on my favorite stuff. This will maybe not be so interesting for regular readers -- because nothing I say is likely to surprise anyone -- but I think it will be a good thing to have on the toolbar, and I can update it, and link to it, whenever I want. You could take this time to do the same -- you can make your lists in the comments if you like, just to have them, and then you will remember where they are. Lists are always fun. I expect to forget a few things. Remind me.

This is, as Borges says, a personal cannon (I have to find that essay again, but I don't have it near me now). It is not a "Best of" list. This is my desert island list.

Favorite Comics

A big part of my criteria here is Comics I Never Have to Apologize For.

Casanova (Fraction, Ba, Moon)
Steampunk (Bachalo)
Hellboy (Mignola)
Morrison's New X-Men: E for Extinction, Assault on Weapon Plus, Here Comes Tomorrow (Morrison, Quitely, Bachalo, Silvestri)
Frank Miller's Batman (ALL OF IT)
Sin City: The Big Fat Kill, The Hard Goodbye, A Dame to Kill For (Frank Miller)

We3 (Morrison, Quitely, Grant)

Ultimates 1 (Millar, Hitch)
Morrison's JLA: JLA: Earth 2 (Quitely), Rock of Ages, Prometheus, Crisis Times Five (Porter and Dell), One Million (Semeiks), Classified (McGuiness)
The Maxx (Kieth)
Toy Story (the Morrison and Quitely Story in War Stories)
Flex Mentallo (Morrison, Quitely)
Fantastic Four: 1234 (Morrison, Jae Lee)(I have to re-read this to be sure)

Iron Fist: The Last Iron Fist (Fraction, Brubaker, Aja)
All Star Superman (Morrison, Quitely, Grant)
The Authority: The Nativity (Millar Quitely)
Sugar Rush (Joss Whedon, Fabio Moon

Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons (Ashley Wood)
Punisher: The End

Planetary 1-14 (Ellis, Cassaday)
Jack Kirby's New Gods

Spiderman Loves Mary Jane (McKeever, Miyazawa)

Scott Pilgrim

I do not know if these count as comics, but:

Edward Gorey's The Pornographic Sofa, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, and The Doubtful Guest

Comment Pull Quote?

I was going to get a comment pull quote, but instead, let me direct you to all the comment threads this week, in which we had a record, close to 150 comments -- concentrated especially in Scott's discussion of live Hip-Hop and Jason's post on X-Men 132; in those posts we had almost 80 comments in two days. Check them out.

Me and Superman got in a fight...

In my eternal search for good running music, I picked up an album called Running Cadences of the US Armed Forces, which sounds exactly like you think it would: the sound people running in step, a guy calling out a line, and 30 guys calling it back (e.g. "fired up," "FIRED UP!" "27," "27!" "Here we go," "HERE WE GO," on the road, "ON THE ROAD." ) Listening to it yesterday I was caught by this chant:

Me and Superman got in a fight
I hit him in the head with some Kryptonite
I hit him so hard I busted his brain
And now I'm dating Lois Lane.

Looking this up on the internet revealed second verse:

Well, me and Batman, we had one too
I hit him in the head with my left shoe
Right in the temple with my left heel
And now I driving the Batmobile

Of course, in the one about Superman, there is the standard violence-sex switchover you expect from the military: one of the chants I have goes "I used to date a beauty queen, now I love my M16." The Superman one goes the other direction: the military will channel your sex drive into violence, but it will also teach you how to use violence to get sex. The image also draws on the famous Charles Atlas comic book advertisment -- used to such great effect in Flex Mentallo -- in which a skinny kid gets physically humiliated at the beach by a thug who takes his girlfriend. The military will make Superman seem like that weakling, is the sense here -- just as in the Charles Atlas thing, your goal should be to be to become your enemy. The equation of Lois Lane and the Batmobile is interesting as well, the way one seems as valuable as the other, and essentially the same kind of thing.

But what really strikes me about the Superman chant -- divorced from the Batman chant, as was when I heard it on the track -- is how the military equates its troops, to a limited extent, with both Batman and Lex Luthor, who both want to be strong enough to kill Superman. (Luthor only occasionally goes after Lane as a secondary thing, and even then, just to piss of his rival). Batman, and the Luthor of All Star Superman, reach for human perfection, and the ultimate test of this human perfection for both is the Superman takedown -- Miller's Batman literally hits Superman in the head with some Kryptonite at the end of the first issue of Dark Knight Strikes Again (though admittedly the Kryptonite is in the form of huge fuck-off gloves). Knowing the famous Superman as Immigrant metaphor (his home-world destroyed, he comes here and must adapt to our way of life in spite of the fact that he is an alien), we can see that the chant is also about killing the foreigners.

Say what you want about the military, their powers of seduction are many and varied. I paid 9.99 to have an audio recording of guys scream propaganda at me, and I have to admit, it is one of the best albums to run to that I have.

[Slightly off topic, when I bought this, I also got the Cloverfield Soundtrack -- 99 cents for the 12 minute song that runs over the closing credits (there is no other soundtrack to the film). It is written by the guy who does the soundtrack for Alias and LOST, and it is the best example of what he does -- a kind of pulpy John Williams with a sense of humor. The theme for the smoke monster on the LOST album -- which I do not actually have -- is called "Monsters are People Too" (which is actually a LOST theory -- the ghosts are the smoke monster)].

Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #134

[Guest-blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont's X-Men run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]

“Too Late the Heroes”

The sheer, thrilling power of Claremont and Byrne’s two-part Magneto story in issues 112/113 were so effective that Claremont would reprise their basic format – heroes are beaten by the villain one at a time in part one, only to rally and combine their powers to achieve success in part two, before some greater disaster snatches a defeat from the jaws of their victory – again and again over the next 13 years.

A fine variation upon the structure exists here. After being trounced by the Hellfire Club in issue 132, the X-Men spent the following issue with all but Cyclops and Wolverine treading narrative water as prisoners, only to rally here in one of the most exciting superhero action sequences ever executed in a comic book. Meanwhile, like the volcano in Uncanny #113, Jean Grey is in the background preparing to erupt and turn the X-Men’s victory into ashes.

The Hellfire Club are Claremont and Byrne’s first original team of villains created for the X-Men (Alpha Flight were created by them as well, but deliberately conceived as superheroes). The expertly execution of issues 132-134 makes them seem cooler than they are; out of context, they are an admittedly unimpressive lineup. Sebastian Shaw is a fantastic creation – a raw and rough-edged bastard dolled up in Edwardian finery – and his creative super-power generates in the reader that classically childlike reaction: “How can the heroes possibly beat him?” But his two sidekicks are hardly as awe-inspiring: Harry Leland is an overweight man who can make other people overweight as well; and Donald Pierce has no discernible personality whatsoever, other than a briefly intriguing notion that he has anti-mutant prejudices – despite all his comrades-in-arms being mutants themselves. (Pierce calls Colossus a freak during their fight.) Unsurprisingly, when Claremont uses the Hellfire Club in future stories, Shaw and the White Queen will always be portrayed as the core, the other members playing incidental roles.

Still, the Hellfire Club’s use here is masterful, and the battle between them and the X-Men is furiously exciting. There is a clever answer to the question of how to defeat Shaw – a man who absorbs kinetic energy and thus cannot be hit without becoming stronger – as well. Cannily enough, Storm simply begins sucking the heat (another form of energy) from the surrounding air, “freez[ing] the fight out of him.”

After the routing of the Hellfire Club, Claremont brings the long-running Wyngarde/Jean storyline to a breathtaking conclusion, employing text in a way we haven’t seen him explore before. Up to now, Claremont’s verbose narration either transitions readers from scene to scene, or is layered onto the scene in order to bring a more baroque, pseudo-literary overtone to the action depicted by the artist. Here, however, after Phoenix dispatches Mastermind, the text deliberately launches on a path that seems far removed from Byrne’s images. While the artist simply depicts the X-Men’s frantic escape from the Hellfire Club, Claremont creates imagery all his own in the prose. In a panel depicting just Jean walking down a corridor as Cyclops runs to catch up with her, Claremont writes:

“The obsidian flames burn brighter within her, and, in the distance, she hears music – a symphony of power long-sought and well-remembered. Transfixed by an unhuman joy, her burning soul spreads its wing, and soars towards a destiny that will no longer be denied.”

On the penultimate page, the X-Men are shown boarding their plane, and in a panel that is nothing more than the aircraft taking off, the narration goes: “She reels under the impact of more sensations than she has names for ... as her song of power builds to its inevitable crescendo.”

The overall effect of this surprising juxtaposition – imagistic prose set against prosaic images -- is chillingly powerful, and could only be achieved with such precision in comics.

On the final page, Claremont and Byrne suddenly snap back into their appropriate roles: The art contains the inevitable surprise cliffhanger of the final page: Phoenix in her evil, red-costumed incarnation for the first time, causing an explosion. And the text – delightfully, deliciously – takes us full circle, as Jean reprises the dialogue from Phoenix’s first appearance in X-Men #101, which ends with the iconic “Now and forever – I am PHOENIX!” Thus is the Dark Phoenix Saga propelled into its final three-issue act, and the momentum of the turning point could not be fiercer.

Comics Out June 4, 2008

Buffy 15. I think I am switching to trades on this title from now on. Maybe. It is always hard to do that with a book you have been getting.

Invincible Iron Man 2. Some solid Fraction stuff here. A narrative caption box reading “You can’t beat the classics” ostensibly about Iron Man’s rocket boots, but placed over a picture of a revised MODOK. A nice contrast between the “comic book” violence at the open and the “real world” violence at the end. A line up of weirdly named heroes from the Philippines – here and in Iron Fist Fraction takes on Morrison (in 52 and Final Crisis) in quickly creating foreign superhero teams. Stane, with his dirty operating table, and flip practical, but still visionary attitude, is a terrifying villain.

Newsarama has a whole new look.