DC Comics Classics Library: Justice League of America by George Perez Volume 1 (1980-84/ Collected 2009): written by Gerry Conway; penciled by George Perez; inked by Frank McLaughlin and John Beatty: The big flaw with DC's quickly cancelled DC Comics Classics Library was their ridiculously high price for what was often less than 200 pages of reprints. This volume is a pretty good case in point.
George Perez drew fewer than 12 issues of the Justice League of America back in the early 1980's. That should be one reprint volume. Nope. The DC Comics Classics Library broke that up into two volumes, padding this first one with Perez JLA postcards from the mid-1980's. The quality of the reprints is fine, though. And I bought this one for about 70%-off Canadian. So I can't complain about my deal.
Gerry Conway's scripts are cosmic and very much Marvelesque in the amount of bickering among JLA members. Perez's artwork is already detailed as Hell and extremely strong in the characterization and action departments. He also assays a very nice two-page spread of Metron of the New Gods and some other nice visuals in locations that include the planet Apokolips, the JLA satellite, and Siberia.
Perez's introduction notes that he didn't think either of the inkers assigned to him were a good fit. He's right, though neither John Beatty nor Frank McLaughlin is terribly misapplied. At least DC didn't assign Vince Colletta to ink him. It's an enjoyable, too-short voyage into superhero adventure. We even get a continuity-heavy explanation of super-android Red Tornado's secret origin. Bonus. Recommended.
Adventures of Superman: Jose Luis Garcia- Lopez (1975-1981/ Collected 2013): written by Martin Pasko, Gerry Conway, Elliot S. Maggin, David Michelinie, Len Wein, and Denny O'Neil; illustrated by : Jose Luis Garcia- Lopez with inking on some stories by Vince Colletta, Bob Oksner, Frank Springer, Dan Adkins, Steve Mitchell, Joe Giella, and Dick Giordano:
Jose Luis Garcia- Lopez became the marketing face of Superman for a long time beginning in the early 1980's -- if it's a paper plate or place mat or bag of French fries with Superman artwork on it released between about 1980 and 1995, the artwork is probably by Jose Luis Garcia- Lopez. He also did a nice job on the early 1980's Batman/Hulk team-up.
Jose Luis Garcia- Lopez is also one of a handful of the finest Superman artists of the 1970's and 1980's. There's a fluidity, grace, and lightness to his superhero work that's a rare treat. He didn't always get the best inkers (he was really best inked by himself), but his work still comes through. Collecting stories from his early days as a recurring Superman artist, this volume also collects the enjoyable, rare Superman vs. Wonder Woman tabloid-sized comic from the late 1970's.
There are a lot of other stand-outs here, including a three-parter in which writer Gerry Conway really tried to Marvelize Superman (for awhile, the Man of Steel even believes he's really a mutant) and a nifty two-part team-up with the Flash. Through it all, Jose Luis Garcia- Lopez draws everything with grace and precision and a balletic approach to action. Highly recommended.
Batman, Inc. Volume 1: Demon Star (2012-2013/ Collected 2013): written by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham; illustrated by Chris Burnham and Frazer Irving: Confusingly, this is really the second volume of Grant Morrison's Batman, Inc., but the first after the Flashpoint line-wide reboot of DC Comics back in 2011-2012. As the whole magilla is one storyline, this is not a beginning but rather a middle. And Batman, Inc. actually involved an overarching story that went all the way back to Morrison talking over the writing reins on Batman in 2006. This lovely fellow explains the seven years of the Bat here . In short, Batman, Inc. is really the end of a seven-year Batman story. Hoo ha!
If you're going to read the whole Morrison Batman run, then you're going to have to read this volume. By this time, the zany pomo Scotsman seemed to be running out of serious steam: this whole volume feels like about two issues stretched out to interminable length. It's still enjoyable enough, I guess, and Chris Burnham's art is mostly swell in its occasionally odd melding of Frank Quitely and Geof Darrow.
That the overall arc straddles Flashpoint requires one not to dwell on the absurd continuity ramifications of this: Flashpoint said that what appeared to be about 15 years of the Batman when the previous continuity ended was now five years. But Morrison kept everything -- every previous Robin, every Batman imitator in a foreign country -- for that new five years. So don't think about it. It's too absurdly crowded to imagine. And DC's new, ultra-successful Rebirth reboot scrambles all that up anyway. Lightly recommended, but don't read it until you've read the previous volumes of Morrison's Batman.
Dispatches from the Sporting Life (1960-2000/ Collected 2002) by Mordecai Richler: Enjoyable, uneven collection of sports essays nearly spanning the late, great, irate Canadian's entire writing career. The bulk of the essays date from the early 1960's to the mid-1980's. There's a sloppiness to the volume that's a bit annoying -- the book omits the original publication information for many of the pieces in favour of their first book publication info, leaving the reader to figure out when they were first published from internal evidence.
The best pieces (surprise!) concern hockey, and include a lengthy piece on the early 1980's Montreal Canadiens, a profile of Gordie Howe (Amway salesman!), and a profile of Wayne Gretzky c. 1985 (to Richler, Gretzky is stunningly boring as a person). Some pieces, even long ones, seem to have been dashed off without much editing. For the record, Richler loves hockey, baseball, and snooker. He doesn't have much time for football, American or otherwise.
Reminiscences of Jewish life in 1940's and 1950's Montreal abound. And Richler's contentious piece that floats his theory that a fear of anti-Semitic backlash caused Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg to stop at 58 home runs is as odd and unsourced today as it was when published in the 1960's; letters rebuking Richler's thesis appear as well with the essay. Recommended.
Deadline (2002): written by Bill Roseman; illustrated by Guy Davis: Slight, interesting take on Marvel's New York as seen by an up-and-coming reporter. Major heroes like the Human Torch and Spider-man cameo, though the journalist's interactions are primarily with low-level heroes and villains. Roseman does a nice job of keeping things human-scale here, and Guy Davis is always a pleasure as an artist. Lightly recommended.
Terra Obscura (2003-2005/ Collected 2006): written by Peter Hogan and Alan Moore; illustrated by Yanick Paquette and Karl Story: Spinning off from Alan Moore's Tom Strong series, Terra Obscura revisits the alternate Earth inhabited by Tom Strange and a group of super-heroes. Moore co-plotted the series with writer Peter Hogan. It's a fun, slightly revisionist take on super-heroes who tend to resemble their DC Comics brethren moreso than those from Marvel. Strange, like Strong, is a sort of amalgam of Doc Savage and Superman. Yanick Paquette and Karl Story supply some lovely visuals throughout. This isn't revisionism in the mode of Watchmen, but more Alan Moore's version of Astro City. Recommended.
Wonder Woman: Earth-One Volume 1 (2016): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Yanick Paquette: If nothing else, Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette give us the gayest, bustiest Wonder Woman of all time. Allowed to give the Wonder Woman of DC's Earth-One universe her own distinctive origin, Morrison turns to the mythology and weird 1930's super-science that made the original Wonder Woman so strange, along with all that bondage and submission invested in Wonder Woman's world by original creator William Moulton Marston (and possibly his wife and their live-in, female lover). It's fun and weird and curiously thin. Recommended.
Speak of the Devil (2008): written and illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez: Blistering noir about a star gym student turned serial Peeping Tom. And she's a girl. And I really didn't expect any of the plot twists that come with this graphic (very graphic) novel. Gilbert Hernandez (Palomar) is in fine form as both writer and artist. He's got one of a handful of the cleanest, most expressive cartooning lines of his generation. Highly recommended.
Stormwatch: Force of Nature (1996/ Collected 1999): written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Tom Raney, Randy Elliot, Pete Woods, and Michael Ryan: This volume reprints the first six issues of Warren Ellis' writing stint on Wildstorm's Stormwatch. Prior to Ellis, Stormwatch was an undistinguished superhero comic with an interesting premise -- its superheroes worked for a United Nations strike force. Ellis made the series more political and much weirder pretty much from the get-go, setting up a later transition from Stormwatch to The Authority. The art from main penciller Tom Raney is solid, but it's Ellis' cynical yet hopeful take on superheroes that is the main attraction here. Recommended.
Stormwatch: Lightning Strikes (1996-97/ Collected 2000): written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Tom Raney, Jim Lee, Randy Elliot, and Richard Bennett: The second volume of Warren Ellis' Stormwatch focuses on the new heroes Ellis has brought to the team, most notably Jenny Sparks and Jack Hawksmoor. Jenny Sparks is the "Spirit of the Century," one of a number of Ellis' Wildstorm characters born at the beginning of the 20th century to act as super-powered anti-viral agents for the Earth. Jack Hawksmoor has been remade by mysterious aliens to be the protector of cities.
Ellis gives Sparks a clever career retrospective that homages a variety of different comics styles from the appropriate eras -- Jenny's 1930's adventures mimic the art style of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, her 1980's adventures the look of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Tom Raney does especially fine work here on the Sparks issue. Fan fave artist and Wildstorm publisher Jim Lee shows up to draw an issue linked to Wildstorm's WildC.A.T.S. superhero team. Recommended.
Stormwatch: Final Orbit (1998/ Collected 2001): written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Bryan Hitch, Chris Sprouse, Michael Ryan, Paul Neary, Kevin Nowlan, and Luke Rizzo: The end for Stormwatch (and the birth of The Authority) comes partially in the last issues of their book, partially in the pages of the WildC.A.T.S./Aliens crossover. As those are the aliens from Alien and Aliens, you can probably guess at least some of the reasons Stormwatch ceases to exist. More of a tidying up than anything else, though the Aliens issue is compelling from writer Warren Ellis and artists Chris Sprouse and Kevin Nowlan. Recommended.
Supergod (2011): written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Garrie Gastonny: Warren Ellis takes superheroes to one logical endpoint in this 2011 miniseries, using them as both metaphorical stand-ins for nuclear weapons and as quasi-realistically imagined horrors in and of themselves. It's bold, bleakly funny, and depressing as Hell. In a world where nations that include Great Britain, the U.S.A., India, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Iraq (hilariously in the latter case with funds diverted from post-Gulf-War-2 U.S. aid) race to develop superhumans, who will win? Well, not humanity. Recommended.
100 Issues of Astro City! (1995-2017): written by Kurt Busiek; illustrated by Brent Anderson, Alex Ross, and others: 100 issues of Astro City over 22 years and at least three publishers. That's quite a milestone in today's rapid cancellation comics marketplace.
Writer Kurt Busiek helped implement a sort of 'soft' revisionism in superhero comic books with Astro City. The series has always paid fond homage to the super-heroes and pulp heroes of a hundred years (and more!) of publishing. But it's done so with character-driven stories and a meticulously worked-out history.
The basic set-up for Astro City was that the eponymous city, near the slopes of Mount Kirby, held within it super-heroes who paid homage to the super-heroes of American comic-book history without simply being slavish pastiches of those super-heroes. Samaritan, for example, is Astro City's nod to Superman -- but as established early in Astro City's run, he's his own man, with his own origins and his own dreams, day-time and otherwise. Nonetheless, he fights evil just like Superman: there's nothing cynical or calculated about Samaritan.
Other characters who hew close to their sources include the Silver Agent (Captain America) and Winged Victory (Wonder Woman). But both get to have finely observed, multi-issue stories about them over the course of Astro City's run. Indeed, the Silver Agent's fate is the thread that unites the entire year-long The Dark Age storyline.
Astro City give us heroes with problems, but it also shines a sometimes amusing, sometimes poignant light on a world in which not everyone with super-powers or super-technology wants to be a super-hero (or super-villain). It travels to small towns to check out the hero life there. It tracks super-hero families over the course of generations. It examines how life in the different boroughs of Astro City works -- things differ, especially in the borough that's home to supernatural beings and watched over by the mysterious hero dubbed The Hanged Man. One of its most poignant characters is Steeljack, a small-time super-villain who basically fell into super-villainry and then spends a couple of storylines (and 20 years or so) trying to claw his way out of it.
It's been a great ride, one I hope continues. Busiek and primary Astro City artists Brent Anderson (interiors) and Alex Ross (covers) have created something that now looms, like Mount Kirby, as a testament to what good writing and artwork can do with super-heroes. One never feels cheated by Astro City on the writing or artistic fronts. Anderson, who started his career very much in the vein of Neal Adams, has become an artist now more in the role of long-time Superman artist Curt Swan, an artist who can comfortably depict both the mundane and the cosmic, sometimes within the same panel.
And Busiek gives full textual value: unlike the vast majority of modern super-hero comics, an issue of Astro City takes more than three minutes to read. That isn't to say that Astro City is text-heavy -- instead, its text/art balance is more in keeping in line with mainstream superhero comics prior to the oughts, when 'decompression' became first the superhero buzz-word and then the stranglehold.
The richness of Astro City also lies in the way it comments on super-hero stories while presenting super-hero stories that work on a prima facie level. The Samaritan's arrival in 1986 corresponds to the year DC Comics hired writer-artist John Byrne to reboot Superman. The lengthy Dark Age storyline comments on the periodic veers of mainstream super-hero comics into grim and gritty territory. Various place names, including that looming Mount Kirby, celebrate comics creators. Nonetheless, Busiek's characters are their own people even as they also evoke famous super-heroes and super-villains.
Perhaps the greatest subversiveness of Astro City is that it presents hope (or perhaps Hope) and goodness as being valid concepts, no matter how bad things may seem. It's the finest long-form super-hero comic ever presented. Long may it run! Highly recommended.
X-Men: Apocalypse (2016): based on characters and stories by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Len Wein, Dave Cockrum, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Louise Simonson, and many others; written by Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, and Dan Harris; directed by Bryan Singer; starring James McAvoy (Professor Charles Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Raven/ Mystique), and Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse): Once you've got more than five X-Men in a movie, maybe you should make a miniseries instead. The bloat of X-Men: Apocalypse didn't affect me because I watched it over three nights on TV, thus making it into a CW superhero four-parter with a really high production budget. But it is bloated. And while Oscar Isaac's decision to underplay Apocalypse makes for an interesting arch-villain, it doesn't make for a very exciting arch-villain.
The acting from everyone who didn't date Aaron Rodgers is fine, and some of the visual effects are really lovely and sublime, though there are so many of them by the end that all effect is lost. Certainly not the 'bomb' that some critics suggested it was, however. Lightly recommended.
Light's Out (2016): adapted by Eric Heisserer from a short film by David F. Sanberg; directed by David F. Sandberg; starring Teresa Palmer (Rebecca), Gabriel Bateman (Martin), Alexander DiPersia (Bret), Billy Burke (Paul), and Maria Bello (Sophie): Short, taut, and to-the-point supernatural thriller pits a family against a ghost-thing that only comes out at night. Or at at least when the lights are out. I'd have liked a scene in which the main characters hit a hardware store to buy every portable light source imaginable from flashlights to glow sticks. They do have enough sense to pick up a crank-flashlight, given that the ghost-thing can affect utilities and batteries, so Kudos! Recommended.
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| Patrick Dennehy |
Disgraced (2017): directed by Pat Kondelis: Marvelously assembled Showtime documentary on the 2003 Baylor University basketball scandal that started with the murder of Patrick Dennehy, the team's best player, and then became a horrifying story of American university athletics spun entirely out of control, aided and abetted by a local legal system stacked with Baylor grads. Then-Baylor coach Dave Bliss, secure in some false sense of untouchability, is actually stupid enough to be interviewed by the film-makers in the present day. It's gratifying to learn that once the documentary aired, he was fired from his then-current job as coach at another 'Christian' university. Highly recommended.
