The Dark Knight III: The Master Race

SUPER BEST FRIENDS AGAIN !!!

The Dark Knight III: The Master Race (2016-2017/ Collected 2017): written by Brian Azzarello and Frank Miller; illustrated by Andy Kubert, Klaus Janson, Frank Miller, Eduardo Risso, John Romita Jr., Brad Anderson, and Alex Sinclair: Rumours are that Frank Miller had very little to do with the writing of this follow-up to The Dark Knight Returns (1986-87) and The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001-2002). His art duties involve the inking of a few covers and drawing inter-chapter 'mini-comics' that contextualize portions of the main story. 

The main story is credited as 'Story by Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello.' Penciller Andy Kubert and inker Klaus Janson (inker of The Dark Knight Returns) do a fair job of maintaining their own styles while also paying homage to Miller's art style circa 1986. Miller's art in the mini-comics is sort of awful at points, reaching a nadir when he hinges the Atom's legs backwards, having apparently forgotten how knees work.

Taking up three years after The Dark Knight Strikes Again and six years after The Dark Knight Returns, DKIII again features aging versions of DC's major superheroes in a near-dystopic future. Events conspire to team up Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and many others to oppose a new global threat. One of the signs that Miller may not be writing much of the book is that Superman comes across pretty well for once, even saving Batman's life at one point. It's a shocker. 

Azzarello, if he scripted most of this, supplies lots of tough-guy and tough-girl introspection alongside all the fist fights and explodey-ness. Kubert and Janson give us suitably over-sized heroes and villains, innocents and grotesques and all that jazz. The whole thing goes down smoothly and way, way faster than the original The Dark Knight Returns and its intermittently densely packed pages of dialogue and exposition set off by full-page spreads. There's still satire here, particularly of both Obama and Trump, but it's pretty boilerplate stuff. 

Azzarello, not really known for writing superhero punch-ups, has written a giant superhero punch-up. It's enjoyable, certainly far more enjoyable than the clumsy and misanthropic Dark Knight Strikes Again, though no touch on the original. Miller's far-right politics seems to manifest in the idea of Kryptonian cultists who look and act a lot like stereotypical Muslim fundamentalists, but the comparison is never pushed too far (and these fundamentalists appear to believe in gender equality). In all, lightly recommended.

Four Views of Mount Constantine

In the beginning... John Constantine by Moore, Veitch and Totleben c. 1984.

Oh, occult investigator/magician/former punk-rock musician John Constantine. Invented by Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben in the pages of Swamp Thing in the mid-1980's, he's become an eminence grise at DC Comics. His first series ran an impressive 300 issues at what became DC's adult-horror imprint Vertigo, though Constantine started before Vertigo existed. That 300-issue run had an impressive array of writers come and go over the years, along with an army of artists. 

That DC cancelled Constantine's Vertigo title to bring him back into the mainstream DC Universe continues to gall me: the two non-Vertigo Constantine series have been at best pale reflections of Constantine at his best. He looks like Sting. He probably sounds a lot like John Lennon, as they both hail from Liverpool. He fights Heaven, Hell, and assorted supernatural and human forces in between!

John Constantine Hellblazer: Son of Man (1998-99/Collected 2004): written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by John Higgins: Early 1990's Constantine scribe Garth Ennis returns for an arc with gritty artist/colourist John Higgins. Higgins' characters are stocky and brutal, befitting the story. As with many Constantine stories, it begins at the Ravenscar psychiatric facility in which Constantine spent a couple of years recuperating after the disastrous magical events in Newcastle in the early 1980's. A South London crime boss springs the young, unstable Constantine because he needs a magician to bring his five-year-old son back to life. 16 years later, an older Constantine gets pulled back into the crime boss' story again. There are repercussions to raising the dead.

Ennis, the most grotesque and splattery of all Constantine writers, brings the grue here. Higgins is an able collaborator, though he's not the world's best drawer of babies. The regrets of a misspent youth jostle for prominence with the regrets of a misspent present. The climax is comically anti-climactic, as Ennis always enjoyed taking the piss out of all of his protagonists and antagonists. But boy, the one demon we see here is surprisingly talky, given what sort of demon it turns out to be. Recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer: Good Intentions (2000-2001/ Collected 2002): written by Brian Azzarello; illustrated by Marcelo Frusin: One of a very few Americans to write Constantine's book, Brian Azzarello takes the Hellblazing magician on a tour of rural America. Marcelo Frusin's art is maybe a shade too cartoony at points for the events it depicts. It also gets cheese-cakey at an unfortunate point involving Constantine's rescue of a woman who was being kidnapped so as to be raped and killed: maybe not the time for the hot underwear shots. Overall, the story is both weird and occasionally revolting. Constantine screws up, of course, but under the circumstances, almost anyone would. Infamous at the time for strongly implying a sex act between a drugged and drunken Constantine and a dog. I kid you not. Lightly recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer: Stations of the Cross (2004/Collected 2006): written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Leonard Manco, Marcelo Frusin, Chris Brunner, and Steve Dillon: Mike Carey's lengthy run as Constantine writer concludes here with an amnesiac Constantine beset by foes human and demoniac. Even without his memory, Constantine is dangerous to foes and allies alike. The climactic story, from the double-sized 200th issue, gives us Constantine at his most vulnerable. It's a fine finish to Carey's tenure. The art works throughout, and is especially dark and evocative during Constantine's voyage into the labyrinth below the church of a malign cult. Recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer:  The Roots of Coincidence (2008/Collected 2009): written by Andy Diggle; illustrated by Leonard Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Stefano Landini: This volume ends Andy Diggle's run as Constantine writer with a recontextualization of just who Constantine's greatest enemy was and is. Diggle draws effectively on Constantine's long comic-book history for this revelation. It works, though the mechanics of John's battle with his arch-nemesis never become crystal clear. It's a solid end to a solid run of comics, though the horror elements are mostly muted this time out and one of the lesser opponents, Mako, just doesn't have a name that strikes fear into me. Lightly recommended.

Before Watchmen!

I've returned from the farflung future of 2014, in which remaindered copies of the trade paperbacks of the various Before Watchmen series are currently being used to build flood levees in Louisiana. Without Before Watchmen, New Orleans would have been destroyed again. Thanks, DC!

But what a tremendous prequel to writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons's 1986-87 12-issue Watchmen limited series humanity got, despite the non-involvement of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. While Before Watchmen will neither be listed as one of Time magazine's 100 books of the century (as Watchmen was) nor become the best-selling American graphic novel in history (as Watchmen was), it does offer many delightful surprises. Excelsior!

So here's a spoiler-heavy rundown of the awesome delights that await you at your local comic-book shop in the summer of 2012.

Minutemen (6 issues), written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke: The Minutemen engage in a number of exciting and life-affirming adventures that make absolutely no sense given what we saw of them in Watchmen. In one of them, a 50-year-old Comedian defeats Cassius Clay in a boxing match. Hoo ha, that's attention to historical detail! Their world is almost just like ours!

Rorschach (4 issues), written by Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Lee Bermejo: Rorschach shows how tough he is in various tough corners of New York over the years. Also, his 'The End is Nigh' sign finally gets a proper origin story. Guess what: it's the secret hero of Watchmen! As with most recent Azzarello-penned projects, all four issues combined will take less than 5 minutes to read.

The Comedian (6 issues), written by Brian Azzarello, illustrated by J.G. Jones: The Comedian demonstrates how tough he is in various tough locales over the years, as he turns out to be behind the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Phillie Phanatic. As with most recent Azzarello-penned projects, all six issues combined will take less than 5 minutes to read.

Dr. Manhattan (4 issues), written by J. Michael Straczynski, illustrated by Adam Hughes: In order to reconnect with humanity, Dr. Manhattan starts walking across the United States. However, he quits halfway through and gets someone else to finish the walk.

Nite Owl (4 issues), written by J. Michael Straczynski, illustrated by Andy and Adam Kubert: Nite Owl discovers that his non-existent superpowers derive from The Owl Totem. Much brooding ensues. He loses an eye, but it grows back. At some point, he yells, "Not on my watch!"

Ozymandias (6 issues), written by Len Wein, illustrated by Jae Lee: 6 issues of hardcore, photorealistically rendered gay sex. The big surprise of the Before Watchmen event.

Silk Spectre (4 issues), written by Darwyn Cooke, illustrated by Amanda Conner: Silk Spectre's giant boobs take part in a variety of exciting adventures with life-affirming conclusions.

Curse of the Crimson Corsair (backup), written by Len Wein, illustrated by John Higgins: This is the story that's the comic-book equivalent of having a Beatles reunion with only Ringo Starr and George Martin involved, as original Watchmen editor Len Wein and original Watchmen colourist John Higgins give Watchmen fanatics the pirate story they've been waiting 25 years for, though what they were hoping for involved some combination of Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and the late Joe Orlando.

Before Watchmen: Epilogue (1 issue), various writers and artists: Surprise! The Epilogue to Before Watchmen is a lavishly recoloured Watchmen that slathers the art you loved in layers and layers of quasirealistic full-process colour! Written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and coloured by the Computronic Colouring Robot 3000.

Apocalypse

Firstwave: Doc Savage: The Fourth Day, written by Ivan Brandon and Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Nic Klein, Phil Winslade and J.G. Jones (2010-2011): 1930's and 1940's pulp-magazine hero Doc Savage has never had a lengthy comic-book run. The Firstwave line from DC was meant to rectify this problem by taking Doc more fully into the realm of alternate history and away from the unsuccessful replication of the format and content of his pulp adventures. Doc's amazing gadgets and amazing heroism have altered history since the end of the First World War, leading to a 1930's landscape in which cellphones and atomic weapons are common.

Alas, the first story arc in the Firstwave Doc Savage stunk to high heaven thanks to a writer who'd never written comics before and an artist unsuited to the project. Ivan Brandon and Brian Azzarello came on board for this, the second Firstwave story arc, and while they quickly got the quality of the book up, it was apparently too late -- cancellation is, so far as I know, now a sure thing.

Oh, well. The alternate history Doc and his amazing cohorts move through in this 7-issue arc really is pretty interesting. A war has left the Middle East all but destroyed and cut off from the world outside. But when a threat to the outside world is broadcast from within the wasteland, Doc and his men are sent by the U.S. government to discern the seriousness of that threat and to snuff it out.

Brandon and Azzarello do pretty well balancing Doc's superlative competence in every area of human endeavour with the mistakes an idealist can make when stuck in shades-of-gray situations. Nic Klein's art is solid throughout, though like a lot of contemporary comic-book art it could really use less full-process, painterly colour -- murkiness is not always a virtue.

The major flaw in the series is that things are deadly serious -- there's none of the loopy, sophormoric jauntiness of the pulp novels. This is serious business, and the grimness wears on one after awhile. Pulp novels were actually fun. Comic books, more and more, really aren't. Klein, like every comic-book artist other than Dave Stevens and Tony DeZuniga, has absolutely no idea how to draw "Monk" Mayfair. Is it so hard to look at the descriptions in the novels? Argh. Nonetheless, recommended.

Botch Sauvage

First Wave, written by Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Rags Morales, Ed Bryant and Phil Winslade (2010-2011): My God, what a fantastic fucking botch DC Comics' resurrection of pulp hero Doc Savage in his own weird little comic-book universe turned out to be. Cancellation now seems to be set in stone, and all I really care about is whether or not DC will still publish the Showcase compilation of Marvel's great, short-lived Doc Savage B&W magazine-sized comic of the mid-1970's. Now that was a resurrection!

It looked so promising to begin with, as Doc, an alternate take on Batman, the Spirit, the Blackhawks, the Avenger, and a number of other reconfigured DC characters would fight evil in a reimagined 1930's where the inventions of Doc and other heroes and villains had essentially started the 21st century 70 years early.

Unfortunately, grimness and moral murkiness dominated -- it all felt like a reboot from the grim 'n gritty late 1980's. Furthermore, this introductory miniseries took forever to get anything going in the way of an interesting plot, and was perennially late to boot (as in, close to 18 months for 6 issues). And here and in the First Wave Doc Savage series, fun was pretty much nowhere to be found. Instead, we got a grim slog and a paucity of likeable characters.

I suppose a further problem arose from the concept itself (that is, a universe reconfigured by Doc's presence). Alan Moore's Doc Savage homage, Tom Strong, pretty much followed the same premise. The difference lay mainly in the fact that Alan Moore was writing that in his full jolly metafictional mode, making Tom Strong's adventures a delight whereas NuDoc just kept giving me more and more of a headache.

Future pulp reboots should probably leave Azzarello out of the mix -- I can think of few good contemporary comic-book writers less suited to updating a frothy pulp hero originally aimed at a readership of 14-year-olds. Tom Strong is awesome, though, as are the appearances of Doc-like heroes in Warren Ellis's Planetary and Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. Buy that stuff instead. It may be time for the original Doc to be reabsorbed by the eternal slurry of the pop underverse. Not recommended.

These Zombies Are Making Me Thirsty

Books:
World War Z by Max Brooks (2007): Oh, zombie, where is thy sting? Brooks' novel was a sensation a few years back, in part because it unfolds the story of the great Zombie war within a fictionalized oral history modelled on Studs Terkel's structured oral histories of World War II, the Great Depression and other major American events. It's a clever conceit, though moving from narrator to narrator (and country to country) works against the development of suspense at points, much less horror.

More than 40 years after George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead started our never-ending fascination with zombies, the rightness of some of Romero's choices related to the wrongness of some of the choices of other zombie chroniclers only stands out more. Brooks goes with what's now become the almost cliched viral/rabies model of zombieism -- zombieism is spread by bite or by zombie body matter getting into an exposed cut or otherwise somehow getting into one's bloodstream. This probably seems like a good idea, but the number of pandemics in human history spread through these means is, roughly, zero. It's just not that effective a means of viral or bacterial propagation, which is why we don't all have rabies right now.

Romero, of course, never explained what was actually causing zombies in his first two zombie movies. More importantly, there was no 'Patient Zero' style beginning point -- one day, everyone who ever died and had enough flesh left on his or her bones to allow for mobility rose from the grave. And everyone who died after that, regardless of cause of death, would also rise from the dead. Now that's a disease vector that could overwhelm civilization!

Brooks' viral model, on the other hand, doesn't bear too much hard thinking because one realizes that between the limits of propagation and the modest limits of his zombies' intelligence (they are, if anything, much stupider than Romero's slow-moving hordes), most of the book's apocalyptic scenarios would be impossible. How do these slow-moving hordes which have a tendency to fall off, into or over any obstacle in their way manage to form up into gigantic masses of tens of millions of zombies in the American Midwest and other locations? I have no idea. It seems to me that these zombies would probably end up at the bottom of every cliff, hill, overpass and canyon in the world. So it goes. Several weeks into the zombie war, one would imagine the Grand Canyon would be full of zombies.

There are a lot of pleasures in this book, and the verisimilitude Brooks achieves with his technical research into weapons and various survival issues is impressive, but the whole thing falls apart if one thinks too hard about those million-zombie armies. So don't. Recommended.



The New Lovecraft Circle, edited by Robert M. Price (1996): Gleaned from thirty years of the second wave of Lovecraft-inspired horror writing, Price's anthology is sort of Fundamentalist Lovecraft. Many of the stories follow the same first-person narrative model of many of Lovecraft's major Cthulhu stories, with one man recounting the zany events and evil tomes of forbidden knowledge that led him to some terrible revelation or other. I tend to prefer somewhat looser interpretations of the Cthulhu Mythos, but there are some genuine thrills and chills here, along with some early Ramsey Campbell Lovecraft pastiches that I'd otherwise have to pay a couple of hundred bucks to read in his out-of-print first collection.

One of the problems a lot of the writers have is their overwhelming desire to roll out one of the Big Guns of Lovecraft's evil pantheon of alien gods, especially sea-dwelling Cthulhu, who's supposed to be in the South Pacific but who pays visits to New England and California prior to being vanquished by the usual dodgy means. A lot of the stories fall more into the August Derleth Cthulhu mode, in which the Cthulhu Mythos becomes a source for modern high fantasy and not for horror. There's nothing technically wrong with this approach, but it does mean that wonder and terror are a bit thin on the ground at times. Recommended for completists.


Comics:


Daredevil: Born Again, written by Frank Miller, illustrated by David Mazzuchelli (1986; collected numerous times): Miller (300, Sin City) came to prominence as writer and artist on Daredevil in the early 1980's. After a few years away, he returned to team with Mazzuchelli on what remains one of the great 'reset button' narratives in superhero comics history. Basically, criminal mastermind Kingpin discovers Daredevil's secret identity and proceeds to destroy his life. And that's just the first issue.

There are small story-telling glitches here and there that the editor should have fixed at the time (why Miller makes super-soldier Nuke blind like Daredevil but without the radar senses makes sense metaphorically but not literally), but overall this is 'the' Daredevil story, or at least 'the' Frank Miller Daredevil story. The hero gets stripped down to his basics, losing a lot of accumulated psychological baggage along the way, and even gets his first girlfriend back (Karen Page), albeit in dire straits herself.

One can see Mazzuchelli's art develop from issue to issue, sloughing off standard super-hero tics and moving towards the more European style he'd use when he soon hereafter collaborated with Miller on Batman: Year One. It's really all about faces and mood with Mazzuchelli at this point in his career, suiting a book that has a lot of explosions but which relies on character development for most of its major kicks.

The Kingpin has never been more demonic, and Miller also manages the neat trick of making the Avengers god-like again when he briefly drops them into the narrative -- they don't really belong in Daredevil's urban vigilante world, and that's the point, though a world-weary Captain America does lend Daredevil a helping hand in the last two issues. This is grim and gritty stuff from a time before endless dark reimaginings of superheroes had made "grim and gritty" a pejorative. Highly recommended.



El Diablo, written by Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Daniejel Zezelj (2001): This four-issue miniseries sees Azzarello reimagine one of DC's obscure Western characters as a possibly supernatural avenger. We don't really know, in the end, because El Diablo (if it is him) is only onstage for about three panels and never speaks, though he does hiss. And kill a whole lot of people. Or does he? Yes he does.

The narrative provides us with two big shocks and a lot of little ones, playing out like an expanded version of an old EC or even Jonah Hex morality tale, complete with a blackly comic (and just) ending. Zezelj's artwork is suitably murky throughout, sometimes to the point of resembling woodcuts more than pencil-and-ink. Recommended.