Who constants the reader?

Book: Watchmen

Writer: Alan Moore

Illustrator: Dave Gibbons

Published: 2008 (collection; DC)

You guys, this is totally a gateway drug.

It’s a first taste of humans who decide to become superheroes because of their principles and not because they have powers. It’s a first look at how corruption erodes even the best of intentions, how disillusionment leads to fast decay, how maybe the world is just too far gone to be worth saving anymore. It’s a first insight into how humans struggle so mightily to do the right thing only to see it crumpled under the weight of suspicion and nuclear war.

I like Rorschach’s absolute commitment to justice. It’s his kind of psychopathic slavery to black and white right and wrong that highlights how fluid justice actually is. I like Dr. Manhattan’s gradual detachment from the world, I like that the new Nite Owl has a bit of a gut, I like the Comedian’s explosively disillusioned reaction to Vietnam as a shaper of his general world view, and I loved the parallel to the real world in the pirate story the kid at the newsstand was reading.

SPOILER ALERT: I love Veidt's reasoning. Let’s blow up something so everybody gets too scared to fight anymore and bonds together! It reminds me of when the Emperor in Star Wars outlines his plan to take over the Galactic senate in some violent way and then goes, “And then we shall have peace” making the creepiest face to ever go along with that sentiment. But Veidt really does believe he’ll bring peace with war, and it’s such a fatal flaw in a guy who’s convinced himself and everyone else that he’s perfect and therefore assumes the weight of making the ultimate decision for mankind, like a parent who doesn’t trust a child to understand the “lesser of two evils” concept. Brilliant dissection of how much sacrifice is worth saving the remainder of the world.

I didn’t like Lorie. She was whiny. But even she stood up for herself.    

This is my favorite example of how comics and graphic novels tie words and pictures so closely together. It’s absolutely uncanny how closely Gibbons reflects not only Moore’s words but the irony, cynicism, and double meanings of them. I’d love to sit in on one of their work sessions to see how they bring everything together so freakin’ well.

  

Moore gets progressively weirder from here, sometimes with Gibbons in tow again. As far as I remember, V for Vendetta has the same tone and saving-a-corrupt-humanity-from-itself-with-terroristic-measures plot and the same lack of interspecies sex scenes, so that’d be a Recommended Next if you’re looking to ease into Moore and get away from superheroes.

You'll never keep love in this dimension again

Book: Apollo’s Song

Author: Osamu Tezuka

Published: 2007 (Vertical, Inc.)

Pages: 541

Oh, Tezuka. You prolific epic slightly sexist genius of myth and life. Holy crap.

See, Shogo is this kid who’s only seen love acted out as transactions between his whore mom and her series of johns (“uncles” described succinctly and distinctly by one facial feature a piece). So he gets all bitter and goes off on all the happily paired animals he encounters, kills them, gets put in a prison where his therapy throws him in front of a goddess who declares that since he’s intent on destroying love he’s doomed to fall in love with the same lady over and over again throughout the whole reincarnations of his existence.

Did you read that? All of the reincarnations. ALL of them. Nazi Germany? Yep. Plane-wrecked on an island? Yeah. Training as a marathon running? Future overrun by synthetic replicate superhumans? One or two others that  I won’t mention to avoid spoiling things? Cardboard David Tennant says “OH YES.”

This thing read faster than the TARDIS, and also through time and space. I got the feeling that if I ruffled through the pages with my fingertip it would jump to life like an animation, complete with shifting camera angles and gradual close-ups.

It’s immersive and dramatic and devastating and doesn’t cop out at the end! Cardboard David Tennant is glaring at me to keep me from revealing anything (I know I seem sporadic about this, but general rule I follow because it’s my blog and I can is I’ll spoil the hell out of anything I don’t care about other people reading), but I won’t make him mad by saying that Shogo does learn his lesson.

Go find out how he does it. He’s kind of a dick, and he switches from gleefully nihilistic to dramatically and tragically romantic at a switch of the universe’s whim, but that means he goes through a character journey and a whole lot of bullets and sketched nudity like no other.  

Growing up

Book: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Author: Alison Bechdel

Published: 2006 (Houghton Mifflin)

Pages: 232

I’m calling this a memoir because the author uses her family story and all their real names, including her own. She doesn’t dress it up as fiction, so it’s not, and she focuses way more on a vaguely stream-of-consciousness fixation on her relationship to her dad and how they handled each other’s sexuality than on a chronological run-through of her childhood.

Bechdel and her father are presented as inverts, as in she always wants to be and acts like a stereotypical boy and her father has spent his entire marriage repressing his female urges. This makes him cold and resentful to his family, and her gradually more confused until she finds a section about lesbianism in her university library and starts reading about that instead of her class-assigned Ulysses.

They each deal with their own homosexuality in opposite ways: he buries his under a pile of shame that occasionally explodes and leads to a car accident that might have been suicide; she pulls hers out of its hiding place and makes it a big part of who she is. She comes out as the more adjusted, better-prepared, world-weary second generation worried about but also smug about not making the same mistakes she saw her father go through. Her experience isn’t any less traumatic, but it makes her stronger instead of destroying her. I think she won.

The fluid artwork’s bold lines kept me entirely in her worlds, in her parents’ knick-knack cluttered house that her dad was always improving, in libraries (more than one and they were all drawn differently, not just Building That Was Not My House No. 2!), in her dorm room and the funeral parlor.

OH YEAH. Her dad also inherited a funeral parlor from his parents. It wasn’t a full-time business in their small town, but the whole family worked when the need came along. I wish she would’ve integrated this into more of her general telling, but she left it in one smallish section. By then end of the book I wanted to know more about the funeral home and less about what her father’s death might mean.

That might make me a terrible human being. But your Constant Reader never lets life get in the way of good content.   

Crazypants tour of Arkham part 1!

Book: Batman: Joker’s Asylum

Writers: Arvid Nelson, Jason Aaron, JT Krul, Joe Harris, and David Hine

Artists: Alex Sanchez, Jason Pearson, Guillem March, Juan Doe, and Andy Clarke

Published: 2008 (DC)

Pages: 124

From my limited first-hand (first-eyes?) experience with comics, I know that I like the Batman universe. I also know that the Joker is my favorite villain and Arkham Asylum is my favorite setting because they’re both so damn gleefully creepy. Therefore, I thought this slim volume of Joker-narrated, one-off villain-led tales would be a good start as my own venture into the gi-fucking-normous continuity, the first superhero comic I have not read by trading off on my boyfriend’s assurance that it’s awesome. (Although I still love those recommendations because 1. he’s always right about them and 2. they mean I get to make him read lit fic novels that he will end up enjoying too.)

I was right! Although such choosing logic doesn’t allow for the unexpected emotional left hook I’m always looking for, I did get several expected taps to the chin from this. Each story is drawn and written by different people, so the weak morality tale of the first story (everybody fears the Joker but he’s not the monster this time! It’s YOU PEOPLE and all he’s doing is exposing your own bloodlust through reality TV!) and the Lady or the Tiger? ending of the last (the reader flips a coin to see how deeply Two-Face has affected a guy with his same burn condition!) are isolated incidents. The Penguin’s story is my favorite, drawn rounded with parallels that visually connect his past and present in an obvious psychological path without getting him monologing. Oh, except for these couple of panels where he’s talking about this girl he’s fallen in love with while his henchmen get thrown around in front of him, and then Batman drops down and says he’ll be watching him and the Penguin goes, all day-dreamy distracted, “Yes, yes, see you next week.”

But then he discovers that he can’t, in fact, overcome his past after all, and he returns to form by taking out his anger on the one thing that was starting to rebuild his humanity. It was pretty sweet.

Poison Ivy’s is basically an origin story with naked leafy ass, and the Scarecrow gets some neat deco art but a disappointingly thin connection between his talk about harnessing fear and the actual action. All enjoyable, and I believe there is a Volume II on the shelves. 

Not all of them have a moral.

Book: Preacher: Gone to Texas

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Steve Dillon

Published: 1996 (DC, fancy paperback edition)

Pages: 199

So now I know what a face without a jaw but otherwise unharmed looks like. Also, can a guy (different one) survive with the skin of his face peeled off? I want to say yes. All he’s missing is covering and some small nerve endings, right? And do all angels have Mohawk-shaped hair they leave flowing instead of spiked? Why do the scientist/peon angels have to wear sweatsuits? What exactly are the removable pointy metal bits used for on the priest’s shirt collar? And can the journalist please keep his fedora on? I mean, it’s ugly, but the one time he took it off it looked like something has been chewing on his hair.

 This pales, of course, next to the hard-drinking curse-spitting easy-going Irish vampire and his ingenious use of his regenerative abilities. I mention him first because he’s my favorite. There’s the preacher who’s lost his faith and then been possessed by the unholy union of archangel and she-demon; he’s looking for literal God, who has abandoned heaven. And Tulip, the preacher’s ex, who has abandoned her no-firearms rule but not her piss and vinegar about getting dumped and stranded five years ago.

Oh! And poor Arseface, the son of a Texas sheriff. He shot himself because Kirk Cobain did, but Arseface survived with a giant crater where his mouth/nose/eyebrows used to be and a fierce protective instinct for the father who scorned him. He doesn’t have much of a role…this time. We leave him yelling “From now on I will be Arseface!” to the sky in the best supervillain tradition, somewhere roughly ¾ of the way through the actual story.

I’m sorry this is scattered. It’s how my brain ran through this comic, and let me tell you, it was a hell of a good time. This is volume 1 in a decently long series, but it ended neatly and with an open wink: “There are a million stories in this naked city. Not all of them have a moral.”

Excuse me while I go paste that over my writing space now.  

A very Batman Christmas

Book: Batman Noël

Author and artist: Lee Bermejo

Published: 2011 (DC Comics)

Pages: I don’t know. This was really thin, a single edition one-off rather than a giant omnibus.

Batman as Scrooge? After spending twenty minutes to absorb this whole book, I’m still not convinced about that parallel. I understand Bruce Wayne is rich, and I totally understand that Batman gets crusty and cynical around Christmas (me too, big guy. Me, too.)—but at heart he’s a good guy. He wants to keep his employee working during Christmas because there are some badass clowns still on the fucking loose out here, no time for beer-can ornaments and moppets with giant wet eyes, they’ll understand when they’re still alive on December 26, come on let’s GO!

And how exactly was Bob working for Batman so Batman had enough authority over him to try to keep him working on ANY day? I thought Batman worked alone.

Anyway, get past the first few pages and you’ll shiver your way into a grim, snow-covered Gotham City that shows Batman how he has to change and start seeing all sides to people’s criminal behavior because sometimes it’s not actual criminal behavior and all that such. …But isn’t Batman also the original “morality is grey and that’s why I wear black” superhero? Doesn’t he know all this shit already? I think I’m writing myself out of any conviction I originally had in this storyline.

Well, it looks super cool, anyway. Grim realism was made for Batman and his scowl and trail of shadows and Catwoman’s absolutely liquid catsuit. And of all the eleventy billion and seven adaptations of A Christmas Carol, this is for sure my second favorite (first favorite obviously being A Muppet Christmas Carol).    

Katydids

Book: The Book of Human Insects

Author/artist: Osamu Tezuka

Published: 2011 (Vertical; this edition), 1970-1971 (Play Comic; original serial run)

Pages: 364

Trying to get a handle on what’s so good about a revolutionary is difficult when said revolutionary ushered in the movement that became the norm over the next forty years. Style taken for granted and even expected now blew people’s hair off when it first came out. But how does a style stay fresh through its process of mainstreaming?

Wait, I’m supposed to have an answer for that. Um. Sex and violence and blackmailing that all revolves around a pretty young girl who manipulates her way through most of the artistic talent spectrum while recharging at her childhood home next to a wax figure of her dead mother will always cause compulsive page-turning. Especially if there’s an insect metamorphosis structural metaphor that’s obvious but never explicated mentioned (I love you a little for that, Mr. Tezuka). Especially especially if the characters are all drawn so uniquely and the sound effects are either onomonopias or stage directions, depending on what makes the story clearer.

Yes! That is why Tezuka still reads completely unique. Uh huh.

I mean it could be that I’m still a noob in the comic world. But y’all, the point is I liked the story and I connected with the emotions and I kept turning the pages (taking a break when they discussed the Japanese steel industry and flinching twice when the young girl gets slapped by a man—once because she stole a life’s work’s honor from one and once because she wanted to get rid of another’s child, which—I understand the first instance a lot better even if my kneejerk reaction is “Gah let’s not hit women”) until I hit the lonely, lonely end.

And ultimately, that’s the best measure I have as your Constant Reader.  

DC's turn to save the universe

Book: The New Frontier (Absolute Edition)

Writer and illustrator: Darwyn Cooke

Colorist: Dave Stewart

Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher

Published: 2006 (DC Comics)

Pages: 405 (of story)

Bright colors, bold lines, sharply defined edges, Wonderwoman showing Superman the relativity of his strictly held values, origin stories that wind around each other and end up meeting at the Center to save the day from a giant sea monster, believable dialogue and introspection, investigative reporters who are more batshit insane about danger than the heroes they’re covering (hi, Lois Lane!)—yep, this comic collection has it all.

It better; it’s nothing less than the whole DC universe coming together. And that gets confusing sometimes, especially when you read giant chunks of it in one sitting like I did and always feel like you’re racing through the words without really studying the pictures so you force yourself to slow down like I do. The stories and voices do jump around but are easy enough to distinguish from each other, especially when the heroes start joining forces to save the world. (Don’t you love it when that happens?)

One irritating thing, though: a lot of the women have a close-up with the same expression. This one.

I’m not really complaining, because it’s adorable.  

Also—GIANT T-REX JAWS OF DEATH LEAP WITHIN THE FIRST 40 PAGES.

Aw, yeah. 

Superheroes through one good eye

Book: Marvels

Writer: Kurt Busiek

Artist: Alex Ross

Published 2008 (as collection, Marvel)

Pages: Guys, comics don’t number their pages. Let’s just get over that now.

This is more dreamy watercolors from Alex Ross, this time depicting the rise of the Marvel universe in New York City with a focus (heh) on how it affects the citizen as seen through the photojournalistic lens of Phil Sheldon.

I use the word “dreamy” because Ross’s art is blurred just enough around the edges to give me a sort of warm fuzzy feeling when I’m looking at it even when he’s showing me a massive two-page spread of carnage wrecked by the superheroes who are supposed to be protecting the damn city, not tearing it apart. *shakes cane*

That’s what most of the conflict is about—whether or not the superheroes who emerge are actually good or just another agent of chaos (albeit well-meaning). Public opinion sways with how the big battles go; Phil himself leans more toward the thankful side with an “oh hell no!” streak about mutants, which surprised me considering how obsessed he becomes about documenting all the others so they’ll be better understood.

The writing is good in this one. Phil’s internal monologues sound like things people actually think to themselves, and he’s not overly perfect by any means. This might be a result of him being a normal guy instead of, like, Spiderman or someone, but I don’t really care because it makes for good outside observation on just exactly how these heroes are received. Good call making him a photojournalist too, because that way he can be everywhere the plot needs him to be without any unnatural torturing of his own storyline.

I never did get a full answer out of him, though. He just keeps questioning his and everybody else’s views about the superheroes until he retires, and then he puts it down like he puts down his camera. Maybe the resolution lies deeper in the Marvel canon.

A few influences I noticed in the art:

• I’m definitely not imagining the Nighthawks panel, where Ross paints a couple of his main characters into that famous café for dinner.
• I’m almost positive I’m not imagining Bea Author being painted as one of the guests who talks about how ugly the Thing is during a sculpture opening.
• I might be imagining the faces of Paul McCartney, Jimmi Page, and Keith Moon being in a couple of the medium-angle crowd scenes. I do like my classic rock. 

Under darkest night

Book: Absolute Batman Hush

Writer: Jeph Loeb

Penciller: Jim Lee

Inker: Scott Williams

Letterer: Richard Starkings

Colorist: Alex Sinclair

Original Batman creator: Bob Kane

Published: 2005 (DC Comics)

Pages: not numbered. Lots, again.

I like to tell myself that I’ve started reading comics to study epic, crime-fighting story arcs. You know, for the superhero novel that’s my own current writing project. Research!

But it’s really because I like the big exciting pictures, I have A Source who hand-picks his best series for me to borrow (hi Thomas!), and sometimes I’m tired and my head hurts and I just want to watch Batman kick ass or chase Catwoman for a couple dozen pages before I go to sleep.

And Hush is a great vehicle for that. I think the darker, lined art style really helps reflect Batman’s hero persona; there are rough edges and complex details that go into both to bring to life a regular (well, sort of) guy who hones his own skills and his own motivations to get shit done. That’s why I like Batman.

Favorite enemy, based on their linear meet-greet-‘n’-mess-the-streets appearances in this series: the Joker. He’s a little bit too fond of bad puns, but he’s drawn as absolutely maniacal and it’s awesome. Least favorite: oh, Harley Quinn. I wanted to love you, but every time you said something, your written speech pattern made me hear it in the most obnoxious fake Brooklyn accent ever. And again with the not-so-funny one-liners.   

I am glad I was able to borrow an omnibus copy of all the issues because I could plow through the whole storyline and get to the reveal at the end which, for me, as a new reader to the specifics of Batman’s universe and rogue’s gallery, felt much too shallow to hold all the intrigue and misdirection that went into it. Minor spoiler: I was so hoping Thomas Eliot was gonna go evil in a much bigger way.

And I read the extra material, the notes on creating each panel and the IM conversation with DC and the notes on what they had to change. Normally I love peeking behind the curtain. But when the curtain is hiding non-gems such as, “We made this guy Hush because I like him so much as a character” and not, like, a detailed, foot-noted explanation of why said character fits perfectly into the story they wanted to tell, the ending I didn’t like got spoiled just a little bit more.

Also. DC Comics. I am calling you out for letting a series sell out a few times over with AN IMPROPER USE OF ITS/IT’S RIGHT SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. SHAME.

Ahem. But carry on the good storytelling.     

Painted to save the day

Book: The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes

Text: Paul Dini

Art: Alex Ross

Publication: 2005 (DC Comics) in collection form

Pages: not numbered

The main thing I took away from this collection is probably the least significant aspect of it: Wonder Woman is hot.

But stay with me; my appreciation stems from the gorgeous artwork that Alex Ross hand-drew and painted for these stories, which originally appeared as separate comic tabloids that tell stories of famous superheroes’ human sides. The oversized paper and the entire omnibus collected in a hefty hardback that put a dent in my stomach sucked me right into their worlds. Everything looked fantastic and dynamic and photorealistic at the same time, idealized yet in a way that seems entirely possible to achieve.

And then I read the words. Blunt, heavy-handed, overly quippy and exposition-tastic. I didn’t like them. Is going from reading a novel to reading a comic just something like going from driving a car to riding a bike—both fine modes of transportation that have to be handled with different aspects of awareness to get to the same place? It kinds of feels that way to me.

In this specific collection, Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel all seem to be playing out personal PSAs by using their powers in very noble efforts they find doomed from the beginning but still worth pursuing. I got conflicted between thinking why don’t they just use their powers to help in ways they know will have more permanent, practical effects and wanting to give them hugs when they didn’t make as much differences as they wanted to.

I also liked the virus storyline of the Justice League American section, plus the character management that it juggled. Although two maybe-trivial questions: 1. Why is Hawkman’s wife called Hawk Girl? They seem pretty equal in all other aspects. 2. I don’t understand the Green Arrow’s concept. I mean I do—Robin Hood, basically. But why arrows?  

But Wonder Woman was pure awesome. I loved her conflict between knowing she could fix these warring countries and her shock at realizing how she came across as arrogant when she just wanted the best for humanity. And I loved how she actually learned how to deal with that, too, in a way that let her use her powers in ways that showed people her true good intentions.

All she wanted to do was save the world. And be a little taller than Superman. She kind of beasted him both ways in this collection.    

When bear and chicken part ways

Book: Fuzz and Pluck: Splitsville

Author: Ted Stearn

Published: 2008 (Fantagraphic Books)

Pages: They weren’t numbered and I didn’t count them. A lot. Ish.

I was going to draw a review of this book, then spent the last three days realizing that no, I still can’t draw in any recognizable form. So!

This is a comic about Pluck, a chicken with no feathers, and Fuzz, a stuffed bear, as watched by their guardian angel doppelgangers, as they start off working at Mr. Lardy’s fast food restaurant. They get separated when Fuzz goes to run an errand for Mr. Lardass and gets chased away by a dog and then rescued by an old dude who’s obsessive about making his ferry run right between two (perfectly good but don’t tell him that) bridges, and Pluck gets fired when he beats up an insulting customer and ends up joining a gladiator team that battles for their own jobs on a floating stadium. Pluck is a runaway success and ends up getting chucked overboard by a jealous teammate (a boxing rabbit) and rival team manager (a sentient lemon half) into the very river in which Fuzz floats in the ferry after accidentally killing its owner.

…Actually, I think my drawings made just as much sense as this.

• Engaging story that didn’t make sense but didn’t act like it had to.
• Cool pen and ink drawings, especially of Sourpuss (the lemon).
• Not really funny; not sure if it was supposed to be or not. Not sure how or if this was broken down in another medium (ie, strips or pages posted on a website); seemed designed for a straight through read.

And ye gads and little fishies, another yellow book cover. This is seriously and for real the second-to-last library book I will ever read until I get done with my other books. I SWEAR. *puts hand on copy of White Teeth*   

Notes on my people

Book: Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

Authors: various (edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci)

Published: 2009 (Little, Brown and Company)

Pages: 403

This was another book that had me before I opened the front cover. As soon as I read the subtitle, I wanted to read the whole thing.

It’s a collection of stories, I think written especially for this, about being a nerd. All kinds of nerds are represented, neatly classified into their own subgenres and lovingly drawn as real people who just want a little bit more in life than their peers.

Since this is a YA collection—it is, isn’t it? It was on the YA shelf at my library and has a big YA sticker on its spine, which I realize doesn’t have to mean doodly-squat, but it’s the best classification system I have access to—all of the protagonists are high school age or younger. Almost all of them have those high school problems that seem so vitally important until you get away from them; yet I got caught up in everything and didn’t once feel the urge to scream 

“It won’t matter!”

Because these guys are wrestling with nothing less than their identity. And I know how they feel. It does matter.

Now for the less philosophisin’ stuff. I didn’t like the geek references that were thrown in for no better reason than “Hey! Look! TV show/movie/book we all like! Inside joke about that!” There was a couple. I didn’t especially like the cheerleader-learns-from-nerds setup of the second story, but not because it was written badly; it just used too much of popular versus non-popular high school cliché.

“The Truth About Dino Girl” appalled me. Its setup was good—geeky girl loves popular girl’s boyfriend, popular girl finds out and makes mild fun of geeky girl, tells her boyfriend. Geeky girl is mortified. Very, very understandable. But then she retaliates with just pure cruelty. I’m torn. Points for making the geeky girl worse than the popular girl unexpectedly, but points taken away for how unnecessarily vicious it was. One big reason that outcasts make good protagonists is their finely honed sense of justice, which is completely skewed here.

But I really liked how the authors in this collection showed how varied and interesting geeks and geek interests are. Yes, we’re weird kids, but we’re better people because of it.

Also, comics by the guy who does Scott Pilgrim.          

Return your books or you won't go to heaven.

Book: Library Mascot Cage Match: an Unshelved Collection

Authors: Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

Publication: 2005 (Overdue Media)

Pages: 120

When I walk my books into the library instead of using the book drop outside, I get distracted by stuff like this.

It’s a collection of the comic strip Unshelved (which is online and updates five days a week; your move, xkcd), so there’s no overarching plotline except that library life is crazy, so to sum up why I love this, just read the dialogue of this particular strip.

Patron: Those teenagers are talking on the pay phone!

Dewey (teen librarian): Sorry, that’s allowed.

Patron: And playing games on the computer!

Dewey: Also okay.

Patron: Now they’re tearing up library books!

Dewey: No they’re not.

Patron: How did you know?

Dewey: We can sense it. Part of our training on Dagobah.