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[Zaratustra]

Justice League International is not funny. I... can't figure out what the point of this book is.

[Thad]

Crossposting my comments on Rick Veitch's The Big Lie from the Comics Worth Reading comments section:

Well, it’s not very good.

Not just the conspiracy-theory stuff (which leads me to wonder if Veitch actually believes this stuff or is just engaging in some epic trolling and cashing a paycheck while he’s at it) — I can read and enjoy Mr. A even though I totally disagree with its message.

(Actually, there are quite a few bits that Veitch gets exactly right — the warnings that went ignored, the PNAC’s reference to “another Pearl Harbor”, and so forth. Which makes the leap of logic to “inside job” more frustrating; I’m strictly a Hanlon’s Razor guy and think the Bush Administration was asleep at the switch and missed the warnings, but once the attack hit it saw the justification it needed to go to war in Iraq. Equating that — rather reasonable, IMO — belief with the idea that there were explosives planted in the towers makes it much easier to confuse legitimate criticism of the Bush Administration with out-to-lunch conspiracy mongering.)

But anyhow, all that aside, it doesn’t make for a good comic. The dialogue is heavyhanded and riddled with typos. The plot is obvious, and something we’ve seen a thousand times before (time traveler tries to prevent a tragedy but nobody believes her). The setting, too, is suitable for a low-budget episode of Twilight Zone or Hitchcock; most of it takes place inside a meeting room. And as such, the issue suffers its biggest flaw: Veitch’s art, which should have been the highlight of this book, just isn’t very impressive. It’s talking heads, broken up by pictures that look like they’d be more at home as clip art in a Truther’s PowerPoint presentation. Some of the layouts are quite nice, but by and large it’s just blah.

For all its flaws, I quite liked Army @ Love. It had weird, offbeat characters, goofy tech, and even though it was about the wars in the Middle East it didn’t seem to have any overwhelming political message or propaganda purpose (or, if it did, it didn’t leave enough of an impression on me to remember it). This is missing all those things.

I would really like to see Veitch just go nuts with a Tales from the Crypt homage series, and that’s what I was hoping we’d get here beneath the Truther facade. But beneath the Truther facade there’s nothing. I’d say the book is exactly what it says it is, but even that’s not quite true — because it doesn’t even live up to the over-the-top promise of the agonized, flag-waving, giant Uncle Sam standing over the Twin Towers on the cover.

Basically, its cardinal sin isn’t its message — it’s that it’s just utterly mundane.

[Ted Belmont]

Oh hey, speaking of Morrison's Action Comics...

Crazy comic shop owner boycotts all Grant Morrison books because Superman says "GD" in Action #1.

[Thad]

Already over; Morrison pointed out that it was obviously a goddamn sound effect and the guy apologized.

[Ted Belmont]

[Friday]

Already over; Morrison pointed out that it was obviously a goddamn sound effect and the guy apologized.

I see what you did there.

[Romosome]

If you cannot immediately tell from the very premise of Action Comics exactly where it's going, you are literally retarded.

Young impetuous teen wants to change the world with his bare hands and has to find out that he can't, and shouldn't, try to fix everyone's problems himself. (why don't you put the whole world in a bottle?)

He eventually is confronted by huge and powerful threats that only he can stop and finds his actual role, and matures into a wiser, calmer, SuperMAN, leading by example and serving as inspiration in order to effect change while using his powers to stop that which humanity is literally helpless against.

but comics are for manchildren so we have to put up with OMG Y IS SUPERMAN SO MEEN NOW

[Thad]

I would like to think Morrison's going for something a little less boring and conventional, but sooner or later, yes, of course Superman and everybody else will be back to status quo.

Funny thing is that the way the chronology is set up Morrison doesn't even really have to handle the character arc himself; we'll be seeing an older Superman in Perez's book in, what, two weeks?  And JL not long after.

It would be fun for Morrison to play with Golden Age Superman awhile and then move on to Silver Age wackiness.  And let Perez and Johns handle the boring-ass Superman of the past 25 years.

[Thad]

More new DC:

Static Shock is a perfectly conventional teen superhero book, but there's nothing wrong with that.  It's fun, it's fast, and it's got a good supporting cast (Hardware!) even if the villains so far are lame.  Worth a glance, at least.

Animal Man is the best I've read so far, though; I dug Action but this beats it out.  Jeff Lemire is writing, so it's got a couple of things in common with Sweet Tooth (animals and trippy shit), but mostly it feels like Animal Man.  Buddy's family is front and center, and the balance between the mundane comfort of home and the surreal dreamscape of the Red really makes the book work.  There are some unobtrusive references to Morrison's run (most notably the introduction to the issue is an interview with Buddy Baker conducted by Lemire himself), but the issue is new reader friendly even though it definitely targets an older audience than the other relaunch titles I've read.  And while I was initially disappointed to hear Lemire wasn't doing the art himself, I'm really loving Travel Foreman's work (except for one goofy face on Ellen when we first see her) and think it fits this world a lot better than Lemire's would.

I really, really liked this one, and it is definitely going on the ol' pull list.  Highly recommended.

[A²]

Okay Thad maybe you can explain this to me. The lexicon of a "Pull" or "Comic Pull" eludes me.

[Norondor]

i think he just means he'll ask the comics shop guy to pull a copy off the shelves to reserve for him.

also lemire+animal man, good lord. goooood lord. i should head to the shop tomorrow...

[Lottel]

"Pull" refers to the comics you have your local comic shop set aside with your name on it, guaranteeing you a copy when you come in. It's a subscription you go to the shop and get.

[Thad]

It's when the store owner sticks it in a box for me instead of leaving it out on the shelf for anybody who wants it.  A subscription, essentially, except since we're talking about periodicals that term implies getting them by mail.

[Thad]

Swamp Thing: Well, it's interesting for a couple reasons.  One: unlike the other books, it doesn't feel like it takes place in a vacuum; it plays up the whole interconnected universe angle, with Batman, Superman, and Aquaman all having cameos.  Two: I like Paquette's art.  And three: it's clearly building toward a crossover with Animal Man, and while I hate big events I think small crossovers can be neat and I think having the big animal-themed supernatural book connect to the big plant-themed supernatural book makes a lot of good sense.

Men of War: This one piques my bias in favor of things that are different.  It's not an outstanding book, or a particularly original story, but the high concept and execution are neat.  I haven't gotten my hands on Stormwatch yet, but I'm willing to bet that Men of War feels more like a Wildstorm book than Stormwatch does.  Take a "realistic" genre -- modern war -- and stick a superhero in it.

I like Men of War and Animal Man partly because they're different from the other books, but a pattern of sameyness has emerged that's begun to irritate me: every single issue builds to a big splash-page twist ending.  Sometimes, like in Animal Man, it's effective.  Sometimes, like in Men of War, it's obvious.  And sometimes, like in Static Shock, it's just stupid and forced.

Guys, it's great that you're trying to demonstrate to a new audience that not all comics have to have the same tone or be part of the same genre.  You know what else would be great?  Demonstrating that they don't all have to have the exact same fucking structure.

[Lottel]

I'm sure some of you have seen this but here's a bunch of people new to comics reviewing the New 52

I really enjoyed the Hawk and Dove review.

[Thad]

Three issues in, Elric has finally hit its stride -- probably because the disparate plotlines are starting to converge, with the four different versions of the Eternal Champion each making it to their respective world's version of New Orleans in search of a MacGuffin.  And this is where Elric works best as a comic book -- the last 5 decades of comics have cribbed Moorcock's Multiverse concept pretty goddamn liberally, and it's a language comics readers, writers, and artists are all well-trained to understand, with no explanations necessary.

So really, it's not about the plot or even about the four manifestations of the Eternal Champion and his guide, it's about looking at three freaky parallel-universe versions of New Orleans.  Elric finds himself in a New Orleans where white people are slaves (not a good place to be an albino, as you might expect) and the city is controlled by giant insect mecha.  The insects in Dorian Hawkmoon's Narleen, meanwhile, are not mechanical; they're insect people.  And in Corum's world, it appears that Europeans have never landed on the shores of the Americas.

All in all, it's neat; Roberson and Biagini have nailed the shifting setting that's totally alien and yet clearly a version of not only Earth but a specific, familiar location.  Good stuff.

[Royal☭]

I'm sure some of you have seen this but here's a bunch of people new to comics reviewing the New 52

I really enjoyed the Hawk and Dove review.

Those are interesting reviews, actually, and the most common complaint seems to be aimed towards intentionally omitted story information, ie stuff you'll find out about in later infos. They're supposed to be hooks, but it seems like to new readers they just feel like they missed information. That stuff shows up in Lost, but if the show is new and is not supposed to have existed before, it's easier to realize that story beat.

It's worth noting that I've been reading the Marvel Masterworks Amazing Spider-man books, and in those comics Stan Lee used to use narration boxes and thought balloons to talk directly to the audience, letting them know that yes this was a mystery. I wonder if there's a correlation between the falling out of favor of those techniques (both major publishers forbid omniscient narration and thought balloons) and the decline in readers.

[Thad]

And DC forbids recap pages.

Animal Man sorta has one, but that didn't seem to do it for the readers.  Which is a pity because I thought the book was quite self-contained, but if new readers say it's not then you should be listening to them, not me.

The "forbidding thought balloons" thing is pretty much an in-name-only thing; we still have thought balloons, they're just shaped like narration boxes now.

Absence of omniscient narration...well, I'm of two minds on this.  I think too many old-timey comics use narration boxes to violate the fuck out of "show, don't tell"; look at an early Batman story sometime for an example of a comic where EVERY SINGLE PANEL has a narrative box describing the exact thing that Batman is shown doing right under it.

On the other hand, I've been reading some Savage Sword of Conan, and by Crom Roy Thomas is a master at the correct use of omniscient comic-book narration.  His captions clarify things that aren't immediately obvious, grant a perspective other than the hero's, crank the tension the hell up in stories that would otherwise mostly consist of Conan walking around temples and scowling, and, yes, tell us who the fuck all these people are and why they matter.  They hop the fuck around in the timeline (going, for example, from an adaptation of Howard's very first Conan story to a much later one where Conan's throne's been usurped -- skipping entirely over the part where he became a king in the first place) but even when you feel like you missed an issue somewhere you get all the information you need.

I think part of the problem is that they're still very much writing for the trade, deliberately leaving stuff dangling to explain later.  (Batgirl seems to be the most egregious example of this; I haven't read it but both new fans and old seem infuriated by the huge emphasis on The Killing Joke and lack of explanation on how Barbara's up and walking around.)  Obviously a little of that's okay.  But I think more to the point, Stan didn't just give you "Yes, this is a mystery" notes, he also made sure every issue could be read on its own even if he was building an arc with it.

He also used footnotes, which are another of those things that are out of vogue with most modern editors -- I saw a lot of them in Men of War, mostly to explain military jargon, which is a great and appropriate use for them.

I do think it's telling that the readers had the fewest questions about Action and Detective, because they already know who the fuck Superman and Batman are.  (NOTE TO DC AND WARNER: This means you can stop retelling their goddamn origin stories.)

[Mongrel]

God help us if the day has come that Stan Lee looks like a luminary crafter of dazzling plots.

[Thad]

When did Stan Lee ever craft a plot?