Breaking a 26-year weekly comics buying habit

It’s now been six weeks — or maybe eight; I don’t remember — since I last walked into a comics shop and bought a stack of new comics. And it may be a long time, if not ever, before I do so again. If it sticks, it would mark the end of a 26-year habit that has brought me tremendous joy but whose time may have finally passed on.

I could trot out a bunch of reasons for this change that have nothing to do with the comics themselves — namely, that there’s precious little time for me to read comics and the money spent on them is better used elsewhere with a 10-month-old in the house.

But the real reason is that comics — by which I mean mostly mainstream, superhero comics — have over time gotten so, well, small, that I have finally lost interest.

But let’s back up for a second.

I began buying and reading comics because I loved the cool stories they told. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, there was nowhere near enough sci-fi, fantasy and superhero material around to satisfy my appetite for it. I had loved animated superhero cartoons as a kid, graduating to stuff like Star Trek, Space: 1999 and, of course, Star Wars, which arrived when I was the perfect age — 7 going on 8 — to love it completely. And I wanted more. By the time I was a teenager, the sci-fi and superhero content boom inspired largely by the success of Star Wars had begun to fade out. There was almost no sci-fi on TV, and the few attempts that were made in the genre like V or the imported Max Headroom were short-lived or terrible or both. Star Wars was, apparently, done after about 1986, with the Marvel comic canceled and no other new content to come for about the next five years. Star Trek was still around with a new movie every other year, but that just wasn’t enough; The Next Generation was still a couple years way. I liked science-fiction novels like the Dune series and Childhood’s End, but comics’ visual nature and the shared universes they offered were much more interesting. 

And I ate it up, which was easy to do because comics were cheap. Taking $20 into the comics shop meant you could walk out with 10 new issues and maybe eight recent back issues. The collecting aspect was part of the fun — every new store might have the issues you’re looking for at the price you can afford — as was the simple pleasure of looking at art. Classic comic book art is a wonderful thing to look at and admire, and the old-style work that was done with traditional pencils and ink had a lot of personality. An easy way to start an argument at the comics shop was to ask people who was the better artist: John Byrne or George Perez. It was the same with writers — you could after a while tell who wrote what without looking at the credits. And there was plenty of new material to explore, beyond just Marvel or DC. When you got bored with The Amazing Spider-Man or Justice League, there was American Flagg! or Watchmen or Jon Sable: Freelance or The Adventures of Luther Arkwright or Concrete or Love and Rockets to move on to.

All of which made comics seem like an evolving and innovative art form that was vastly underappreciated by larger culture. In a word, comics were big — they were immersive, delivered old fashioned action thrills and were often much smarter than anything on TV or playing at the local cineplex. Comics felt like they were ahead of the curve — that everyone would find this stuff as great and fascinating as we readers did if only they gave it a chance. I think fans’ desire to see their favorite comics on the big screen came from a real need to prove that comics were worthy of attention, that they were ahead of the curve.

Comics kind of got that wish with the speculator boom. The 1990s really were the best of times and the worst of times. There were a lot of astonishingly bad comics that sold zillions of copies, but also some of the very best comics ever came along during that decade. Even the increasingly cynicism of Marvel and DC was masked by the fact that there still was some spark in their characters and in their books — something that excited readers whether they were kids who got turned on to the medium by the X-Men cartoon series or longtime collectors.

The industry of comics has, like every other aspect of showbiz and publishing, had to struggle with the changing landscape of making it work in the 21st century. If you had told me 20 years ago how easy it was to publish, promote and distribute comics in the digital age, I would have expected the doors of creativity to swing wide open and deliver a new Golden Age of super cool stuff. But instead, we have come to an industry that’s dominated by monopolies or near-monopolies. Its increasingly corporate nature has slowly but surely wrung the innovation and fun out of mainstream comics almost entirely. Even more sad is the creative decay, the decline in quality of comics and their near-universal slavish devotion to imitating other media or less-interesting elements of comics’ own past. I swear, I hope to never again read another superhero comic that uses first-person narration in captions. It was different when Claremont did it back in that 1982 Wolverine series, but it’s been run into the ground so much since then that by now it’s gone all the way through the planet and is halfway to Mars.

Marvel and DC were always conservative, always very corporate on the business end of things. But the last successful new character (i.e., one proven capable of headlining a solo series and not being derived from another character) created at either company that I can recall in the last 20 or so years is Deadpool. The only breakout characters — ones known to some degree in the greater population — from the entire industry are indie creations like Hellboy, Bone and Spawn.

The Big Two are not alone. The overall trend in entertainment has increasingly been over the past 20 years in general and the past 10 in particular toward exploiting established properties over any kind of investment in the new. It’s telling to look at such companies as Warner Bros. Animation and Hasbro Studios and seeing them admit they have no interest in creating new properties because it’s much easier and more reliable from a business standpoint to continually exploit and re-exploit the library.

The same must be true at DC and Marvel, though they avoid saying it. Given both companies’ history with creators from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to Jack Kirby, no experienced comics creator with a great idea is going to give it to either company under traditional work for hire terms. And even if there is some kind of co-ownership agreement worked out where the creator gets a share or say in the use of their creation, it’s never going to be worth a corporation’s time or money to deal with the restrictions such a relationship would impose on them when they have so many other properties they own outright and can do with whatever they choose whenever they choose to do so.

The same issue has plagued pretty much all of entertainment, except maybe for TV, where the demand for content is high enough that new ideas can still get a shot. But look at the big studios’ biggest releases, the ones they pour tons of money into in the hopes that the payoff will be flush enough to keep everything going. They’re all mined from other sources — adapted or recycled from elsewhere. Even book publishing has gotten in on the act with silly ideas like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I find it fascinating that so many properties are tied up now that public domain titles have become popular fodder, like the upcoming John Carter movie and competing feature projects based on Snow White and Frank L. Baum’s Oz books.

The problem with this approach is that universes that do not grow are by definition stagnating. Adding new characters, new stories, new series is essential to maintaining healthy long-term interest, and that simply does not happen anymore at either publisher. When you think back to the most interesting eras for either publisher, it was when they were doing new things. When Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and others were creating the Marvel Universe, each new series was a major event. Each new storyline promised the potential of a new character as cool as Silver Surfer or Darkseid. It’s true for other publishers, like Valiant Comics, which for me evoked similar excitement during its earliest days when Jim Shooter was writing everything and sometimes even drawing the books. It was a cohesive universe that was growing organically and it was exciting to watch — until Shooter was forced out and a more conventional, short-term vision rather quickly began to unravel what had been done to that point.

On the indie side of comics, there are some bright spots. I still think some of the most exciting books of the 1980s and 1990s to discover were unique indie books, like Bone, Strangers in Paradise, Cerebus, From Hell and Stray Bullets. Dark Horse remains what it was back then — a unique mix of decent licensed comics and some really cool, high-quality creator owned comics like Concrete, Hellboy, Sin City and John Byrne’s Next Men. Dark Horse has always taken chances, and I continue to appreciate that, even though a lot of the newer original content they’ve come up with leaves me a bit cold. Image still publishes some of the coolest comics these days and are welcome as one of the few places left that is open to creator-owned comics.

The biggest problem with most indie comics — and with creators new to the comics field — is they seem to consider comics like a first draft of a movie proposal more than a medium of its own. When I was on staff at Variety, I got tons of horrible comics published by wannabe filmmakers who thought that, since comics were hot, all it took to get their script bought and made was to turn it into a comic first. There also were established filmmakers who sought to forestall studio intervention on the creative front by establishing their stories as comics that studios could not change without risking a Comic-Con backlash. In short, with a few exceptions, I haven’t found too many indie books that deliver the kinds of thrills and alternative takes on adventure stories, superheroes, whatever that rivals the best indie work of the past. Add to that the inability of most of today’s creators to get a book out on a regular schedule, with consistent writing and artwork, and even the most promising series can arrive stillborn (I’m looking at you, Nate Simpson’s Nonplayer).

So it is that the comics business has dwindled to a de facto single distributor in Diamond, a near duopoly on the publisher’s end with Marvel and DC splitting more than three-quarters of direct market sales between them, and a stagnant creative field that seems happier treading water and imitating sub-par movies or TV shows than coming up with anything really new. And the constant reboots and alternate universes, from Ultimates to All-Star to the New 52 just became wearying. Why can’t we move past origin stories anymore?

And it finally got to me.

After more than a quarter century, I found reading the last big stack of Marvel and DC books I brought home at tremendous expense to be the last thing I wanted to do. Trying to read the last few of them was incredibly difficult — the art was detailed but unclear, the scripting was clever but not informative, and the stories inched along at so slow a pace, with so little happening on any given page or in any given issue, that nothing registered as being remotely interesting. Six weeks later, or however long it’s been, I not only do not miss my weekly comics shop visit but I feel somewhat relieved. I no longer have to keep track of what I have and don’t have, what the big crossover of the moment is, or how much it’s going to cost and whether I can still afford it.

None of which means I stopped reading comics or have no more interest in comics. I’ve been focusing on artwork of late, and have found myself interested in the recent bounty of classic comic strip reprints. I’m well into the first volume of IDW’s The Complete Terry and the Pirates, by Milton Caniff, and digging the hell out of it. I also have a bunch of vintage graphic novels I plan to catch up on, including digging into the rest of Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing and an Al Williamson Flash Gordon volume I picked up a while back but never got around to reading. I also want to dig into the Williamson and Archie Goodwin strip Secret Agent X-9, and I  still have a few holes in my run of 1960s X-Men comics to fill.

There’s a lot today’s comics could learn from guys like Caniff and how well he used the weekly and daily formats. In many ways, the classic comic strip could foretell the way forward for comics, as all media have been moving toward shorter, more intense bursts of content. As we’ve gone from newspapers to magazines to web home pages to blogs to Facebook and now to the 140-character limit of Twitter, short and sweet chunks of story seems like the natural way for comics to go. A comic book series used to deliver 12 stories a year; and even when there was a multipart story, each part was still complete enough in itself to be interesting. Now, with four-, five- and six-part stories the norm, you get only maybe three complete stories a year. I think is part of the reason the established comics franchises are split into so many books — you need four or five series at that storytelling pace to keep up. I would love for decompression to be declared officially over and for comics to go back to being, well, comics.

If they do that, I might at some point come back. That could happen next week, next month, next year or never. But until then, I’ll be taking my comics interest into a past that’s largely new to me and promises to be a lot more fun.

'Before Watchmen' is like gambling and smoking: Legal, but probably not a good idea

It’s time to revisit the saga of Alan Moore and Watchmen.

In case you missed it, DC Comics made public its long-rumored plans to publish this summer a series of Watchmen prequel miniseries using a variety of the industry’s top talents. The plans call for more than 30 issues in the project, with one arriving each week. Covers for a lot of the first issues have been released and the press release included a supportive quote from original Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons.

As soon as the news hit, the debate and bitching began over whether this was appropriate to do given the long-standing dispute between DC Comics and Alan Moore, with many fans and more than a few professionals showing the same kind of moral cowardice seen in the Superman copyright dispute and cheering on DC and calling Alan Moore a dick for not going along with the idea.

Among the rationales used to justify the “Moore is a jerk” arguments are:

• Moore had discussed at the time Watchmen came out the possibility of doing some prequel stories himself. 
• Moore has used other authors’ characters in his own work, most notably in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even encountering a small bit of copyright controversy for Peter Pan in the U.K. 
• Moore, like everyone else in comics, has used and built upon characters others created to advance their career with the understanding that others will do the same with their characters. For example, Moore got his big break in American comics writing Swamp Thing, which was created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson. 
• Allowing creators to make their stories and characters off limits would be the equivalent of saying Superman should have ended after Siegel and Shuster stopped doing it, and that would be terrible! 
• There’s also the argument that he signed the contract he signed and can’t complain about it now. If he really wanted to retain all the rights, he and Gibbons could have self-published Watchmen. 

All of which are poor arguments, in my opinion.

It always helps to go back to the facts and look at how we got to the place we’re at. Before that, an aside: Most of my books and magazines about comics were put in storage in the garage to make room for my daughter, meaning the many Moore interviews from years past I planned to cite in this post are not available to cite in the kind of detail I would like. I will try to approximate with online sources where possible. If I get the specifics wrong, let me know; I’m pretty confident having read up on this for many years that I’ve got it straight.

Most folks know Moore, who had become a writer of note in British comics, came to DC Comics in the early 1980s to write Saga of the Swamp Thing. The book had been slumping in sales and a new approach in Moore was needed to keep it going. Moore understood the job quite well: This was a mainstream American comic book that was distributed on newsstands with the Comics Code Authority seal, so there were limitations already in place on the types of stories that were going to be acceptable in a horror-tinged but still all-ages title. Moore succeeded rather well in reviving interest in Swamp Thing, and sales began to rise. The book was acclaimed in the fan market and began to draw the attention of the mainstream press, which was where the problems started. The shadow of the anti-comics crusade still lingered in the early 1980s and some of the powers that be at DC or over DC became concerned that a sophisticated title like Swamp Thing, even operating within the restrictions of the Comics Code, could attract unwanted attention to DC and the entire industry. 

For those who don’t remember, one of the less-savory aspects of the Reagan revolution was a censorious impulse that lead to Attorney General Edwin Meese conducting a major investigation into the evils of pornography with an eye on restricting access to that kind of material even for adults. This also was the time when parents’ reaction to PG-rated movies like like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which features a beating heart being pulled from a man’s chest, put enough pressure on the movie industry to create the PG-13 rating. It also was the era when Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator Al Gore, lead a charge to restrict sexually suggestive lyrics in rock and pop music. So DC was not too far off base to worry about some of that energy could be turned comics’ way, because it already had with a number of conservative law enforcement officials prosecuting comics shop owners for selling objectionable material to minors.

The result was that DC made Swamp Thing one of its first titles to carry the label “Suggested for Mature Readers.” Many fans expected this would have been perfect for Moore, who obviously could take it darker. But the real result of such a label was to reduce quite significantly the distribution of the comic. Without the Comics Code seal, there was no newsstand distribution, and even local comics shops would cut back their orders of the title and be wary about who they sold it to for fear of being prosecuting. That fear was strong enough for many to simply not bother to carry such a title.

For Moore, this effectively means that DC was rewarding him for successfully reviving Swamp Thing under the restrictions placed on it by reducing his potential audience to a fraction of its previous size. I don’t know if Swamp Thing sold well enough for Moore and his collaborators to earn sales incentives, but it doesn’t take a math wizard to see what the distribution change would mean for that income. To Moore, his success was punished and not rewarded — a recurring theme for many top creators in the history of comic book publishing.

Still, Moore continued to work for DC, eventually signing contracts to allow DC to publish what would become Watchmen and for V for Vendetta. These contracts are the meat of his disputes with DC. At the time, DC was not allowed by its ownership to publish material to which others held the copyright. On V for Vendetta, Moore and artist David Lloyd had begun the strip in Warrior magazine in the U.K., but the publisher folded before the story was completed. Moore and Lloyd held all rights to the material, and DC wanted to re-publish the completed parts of the story in color and have Moore and Lloyd complete the tale.

I’m sure at first the idea of the temporary copyright transfer seemed like a great solution. At the time, the American comics market was almost exclusively periodicals, with only a handful of graphic novels and trade paperbacks having even been tried. Those, too, rarely stayed in print long. DC at the time likely had no trade paperback collections or plans in place to create the kind of book backstock they are now well known for. With no precedent, there was no reason to assume that the series would be printed as a series of comics and then essentially go out of print with the rights reverting to Moore and Lloyd after a short time.

Taking a bit of speculation on my part here: this arrangement must have seemed quite radical and forward thinking at the time. Getting DC to put in a contract a copyright reversion clause for a comic’s creators must have seemed like an incredible and hopeful breakthrough for those interested in creator rights. Moore must have felt like he had helped make progress that all creators could benefit from and that he had avoided with his own creation the traps that befell the likes of Siegel and Shuster and Jack Kirby.

The same deal was struck for Watchmen. A lot has been made in the past week that the original idea for Watchmen was to use the Charlton Comics characters. The argument is being made that Moore should not complain about the copyright dispute over Watchmen, since it was originally going to use characters owned by DC Comics and the versions that ended up in the final story are inspired, based on or ripped off, depending on your perspective, from those same characters.

And that’s an interesting argument but ultimately is one that fails to hold water. There are similarities, but there also are enough differences to make the characters distinctly different, especially in a legal sense. Fans who make this argument seem to overlook its implications for all kinds of comics characters. Following it could open up arguments that the Fantastic Four is ripped off from Challengers of the Unknown, X-Men from Doom Patrol, Man-Thing and Swamp Thing from The Heap, Hawkeye from Green Arrow, and on and on. That DC Comics needed a contract with Moore and Gibbons that transferred the copyright to the publisher is all the proof you need to show that even DC at the time thought they were distinct enough to need to clear the rights.

Most fans know what happened from here on out: Watchmen and V for Vendetta were published as a series of comic books and then collected into book editions that have remained in print and strong sellers ever since, preventing the copyright reversion from kicking in.

For the most part, I think DC was simply lucky in this deal. They realized they had a cash cow and have milked it for all its worth for the past 25 years. Yes, they stuck to the letter of a deal that benefits them tremendously, and from that perspective Moore et. al are just plain out of luck. But DC is violating the spirit of the deal, as the terms of the contract were drafted to make the copyright transfer temporary, and that’s where Moore is correct and DC is in the wrong.

Yes, the contract has always entitled Moore and his collaborators to royalties from sales of Watchmen. It’s clear, however, that the money is less important to Moore than ownership and control of his work, and he has given away his share of such proceeds to his collaborators. I think this is the one point that really puzzles some people. In the Superman copyright case, it’s all about money at this point. The Siegels have no interest in making new Superman comics, they want the money they are due from having recovered their share of the copyright to the character as of 1999. Same with the Kirby family claims — it’s about getting a piece of the very large pie Kirby helped create. And in America, where getting rich or dreaming about getting rich is the real national pastime, a lot of folks don’t understand how Moore can complain about all this when he is still getting paid. Obviously, the principle of the matter is what’s important to Moore, and he has the courage to call out the industry for its abuses and to walk away from it.

DC Comics’ decision to now create Watchmen derivative works after 25 years, against the wishes of Moore in particular, violates the spirit of the deal even more. That a lot of professionals are chiming in with the sentiment that Moore should just get over it and let others play with his work kind of amazes me. Watchmen is not in the same work-for-hire category as Fantastic Four or Green Lantern, which were created to be ongoing series. It was created to be a stand-alone, independent, creator-owned work and its creator feels — rightly, I think — that DC Comics is exploiting a loophole in the deal that allows them to hang on to a property they had originally only borrowed and intended to return to its creators.

I’ll briefly discuss some of the criticisms of Moore’s position that I listed earlier but have not yet addressed:

• Yes, Moore had discussed doing prequels himself. But to say Moore’s plans to write prequels to a project he expected to own means that others can do it without his permission for the publisher that failed to return it is ridiculous. 
• Yes, Moore has used other authors’ characters in his work. Those works are, however, now in the public domain and can be used by anyone. The copyright, which was originally held by the authors themselves, has expired on them and the authors themselves are long gone. 
• Had Siegel and Shuster had control over Superman, then it’s possible they might have retired the character. He surely would be very different from the Superman we know today. That would have been a more human outcome for Jerry and Joe and their families — as for the rest, I don’t think it really matters. The world at large and comics would have gotten along just fine without Superman. 

If you have read through all of this, you surely have realized I will not be buying or reading any of the Before Watchmen comics. In many ways, it’s yet another sign of mainstream comics’ slow creative and commercial decline. DC and Marvel have such a stranglehold on the market and have become in the past two years in particular even more corporate minded and creatively bankrupt that it’s hard to find any fresh air left in this medium. Independent comics have so slim a share of an already slim market that it seems there’s no place for talent to develop and, as soon as it does, it’s sucked up by the DC and Marvel machines, which are, unfortunately, about the only ones left who can offer creators enough work and compensation for them to make a living at comics.

It would seem I have more to say about the current state of comics, so I’ll save that for my next and possibly last post.

Notes: Coover, Brokeback Pose, Fatale, Movies and the Cover of the Year

Some links of note:

• Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter does a very enjoyable interview with Colleen Coover, whose work I particularly liked on the short stories in X-Men: First Class (the comic, not the movie) as well as in Banana Sunday. 
• Here's a hilarious Tumblr account from The Beat called The Brokeback Pose, devoted to all those cover shots of scantily clad heroines twisting in just the right way to show off all their assets in two dimensions.
• As long as we're talking about women comics characters, you could do a lot worse than to track down the few issues that made it out of Broadway Comics' Fatale. I recall it was a good series that was getting better, but in the free-fall sales era of the mid-1990s, quality was rarely a factor in determining which companies and titles stuck. Jim Shooter talks about the creation of that series on his must-read blog here.
• Roger Ebert explains the decline in moviegoing is due to high ticket and concession prices, an increasingly annoying moviegoing experience, and the poor quality of most movies. I can't dispute any of those, and think the price and quality issues also affect comics much the same way. 
• Artist Dave Johnson does a great job on his blog of running down the good and the bad in each week's batch of comic book covers. Now he's picked his cover of the year, the super-cool Joker image Jock created for Detective Comics #880. 

The Joy of Anthologies: Why 'Dark Horse Presents' Rocks

One of my favorite reads each month is Dark Horse Presents, which was relaunched this past summer after a more than 10 years of being out of print and a few years running as an early digital comics title on MySpace.com. It's an excellent reminder of the value of anthologies and of the rewards (and perils) of sampling material you most likely never would have tried.

I rarely read the original DHP, which had a long run as the publisher's flagship title from 1986-2000. The original series was, as I recall, a normal size black-and-white comic book that helped launch everything from Paul Chadwick's Concrete to Frank Miller's Sin City and John Byrne's Next Men. I did, however, enjoy other anthologies, including the occasional issue of Negative Burn and, being a big 1980s Marvel fan, Marvel Comics Presents, of which i own a complete set of all 175 issues. (And before anyone asks, I somehow completely missed Action Comics Weekly and have yet to read an issue. I've never heard anyone talk about it or recommend anything in it.)

The new DHP deviates from the comics anthology norm by being in color — the market for black and white these days appears limited to folks well-established in that format such as Jeff Smith and Terry Moore — and being extra thick, with most issues clocking in at 80 pages. That makes each book nice and thick — you could line up a nice run of these on your bookshelf and they would look pretty cool — and continues the prestige format of the 1980s that I still like quite a bit.

Drinking to a Happy, Comics-Filled 2012

I'm celebrating the new year today, so a happy 2012 to everyone! These beers are served in some of the excellent Toon Tumblers my wife gave me for Christmas. I especially love the Dave Cockrum X-Men design. See you soon!

Heavy Lifting: DC Comics — The New 52 Omnibus

Getting back to DC's New 52, there's an interesting event element to the relaunch that is exemplified by the omnibus edition of DC Comics: The New 52.

This is a massive book — thicker than any comics collection I can think of. Even Dave Sim's Cerebus collections of Church and State, which was told in 60 or so issues, took two super-thick paperback volumes to tell. According to Amazon.com, which is selling the book for $89.99, it weighs 7.7 pounds! Dimensions are 11.3 x 7.4 x 2.8 inches, and 1,216 pages. Compare that to Cerebus: Church & State Vol. 2 at 630 pages and 1.8 pounds, and Marvel's The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus Vol. 1 at 1,088 page and a whopping 8.8 pounds! 

This obviously indicates some advances in publishing technology, as it was only about 12 or so years ago that DC released a slipcased, hardcover edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths and said publicly that it was unlikely to be reprinted in that format because it was so difficult to manufacture so thick a volume. Of course, since then, there have been several reprintings of the series in different formats, including an Absolute edition.

I think this is a title that will not stay in print for a long time, because it's such a strange collection. There's no complete story here. It is simply a snapshot of this crucial month in which DC relaunched all its titles. That may make this in time a particularly pricey collector's item, though at $150 new it's already pretty pricey. 

The presentation on this book is nice, though it is so thick that copy and panels near the spine can be hard to read. I recall no double-page spreads in these issues, but this format would make such pages difficult to read at best. The design of the dust jacket is terrific, with a great spine design and a Jim Lee-drawn Justice League spread printed onto the actual hardcover underneath. 

And I can't help but wonder if it would be at all feasible to do a volume two, and possibly make the entire DC Universe line available to die-hard fans in a single monthly book like this. That would be pretty cool if highly unlikely.

Next: More comments on The New 52, the anthology series Dark Horse Presents and a look at X-Men: Regenesis.

New 52 Notes: Green Lantern books, OMAC, Supergirl, Wonder Woman

Reading Green Lantern #3 and Green Lantern Corps #3, I’m impressed by the quality of the latter, technically second-tier title for delivering the kind of action and outer-spacey adventure I like to see from the title. Though it got quite cluttered in the second issue, the “Ring Slayers” story shines again in a very good third issue. The former also is very good, but I don’t recall Hal Jordan ever being this much of a hot-headed jerk. Reading these together, it almost feels like Hal and Guy Gardner swapped roles.

OMAC #3 delivers pretty much the same story as the first two issues did — Kevin Kho lands himself in an odd place where he has to fight a powerful and turns into OMAC to win the day. It’s still good, but overly serialized in a bad way and the overall plot is being pushed too far into the background. I still love the art, which has obvious Kirby roots but also a nice modern sheen to give it a contemporary look.

In retrospect, I think the first two issues of Supergirl should have been one issue — either a condensed version of the two-part story or a double-size issue. It just reads that way to me. Supergirl #3 takes things in a different direction, as Supergirl tries to find out the truth about where she is and how she got here and acquires a new (at least I think he’s new) nemesis in Simon Tycho. So far, I like the writing on this book and the take writers Michael Green and Mike Johnson have on the character. The art takes a slight detour here, with Bill Reinhold’s inking and Paul Mounts’ coloring darkening the overall bright look of the first two issues. It’s not an improvement, but it’s definitely not the kind of bright and inviting look that seem to best suit this character.

Wonder Woman #3 was the best issue to date of the series, which itself is one of the best of The New 52. It’s hard to say too much about this without giving away rather significant origin-related spoilers. But just about everything in this comic book works, from Brian Azzarello’s plot and script to the art by Cliff Chiang and outstanding colors by  Matthew Wilson. Excellent stuff. 

Checking Out 'Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts'

Last week, I had a chance to see the new documentary film Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts in its Los Angeles premiere screening at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. This is the second movie — I have to resist my tendency to call any movie a "film," because very few of them are made with it anymore — from the Sequart Research and Literacy Organization, publishers of such fine tomes as my own Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy from Comics to Screen (buy it now!). Their previous film, Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods, was a bona-fide hit with comics fans and got a lot of attention in the mainstream press and was screened at conventions and film festivals. The Ellis version is made by the same filmmakers, headed up by director and film editor Patrick Meaney and d.p. Jordan Rennert — both of whom attended this L.A. premiere screening.

Here's the trailer for the film:

Links, Layout and Other Housekeeping Notes

Readers may have noticed some tweaks to the design of this blog. I decided last week to update the links and did something screwy to the previous design, which I created in Artisteer, and could not restore it the way it was. So I took the opportunity to create something similar but different. It was nice to find that Blogger has really updated its template and layout functionality, so I no longer need Artisteer to get a look that I like.

Secondly, I updated a lot of the links so they should all work. If you find one that doesn't, please let me know. Also, if you have a comics-related site that you think should be included, let me know and I'll add it asap.

I've had a few folks approach me with some sponsored links — easy enough to figure out which they are. If anyone else is interested in sponsored links or buying an ad, let me know and I'm sure we can work something out.

And lastly, if anyone's interested in just giving a donation of any kind to support the blog, I've added a Paypal donation button at right. No donation is required, but any amount you feel like sharing is much appreciated.

Reviews: Hulk #1, DD #5, Cold War #1, Last of the Greats #1, Aquaman #2, Justice League #3

The Incredible Hulk #1 was better than I expected. Not having read the book in years, I missed out on and don’t understand most of the Red Hulk stuff or what mental state Bruce Banner and the Hulk are in these days. I therefore expected to be confused, but wasn’t, though I’m sure it helped that I recognized the Mole Man’s underground minions. Writer Jason Aaron did a good of job of putting it all together and making sure there was some actual action in a first issue. The art by Marc Silvestri et. al was quite good — definitely Silvestri’s distinctive style but amped up with some nice detail that came through quite well in the inks and was well-complemented by Sunny Gho’s colors. That said, I”m not interested enough in the Hulk to make this a regular read at $3.99 a pop.

Ranking DC's New 52

We're now about halfway into the second month of DC Comics' The New 52, and I'm now at the point where I have to pick and choose which books I really want to follow and plunk down my own money for. So I made a list and found it quite interesting.

The good news is that I am buying more DC Comics than I was before the relaunch, when I was pretty much just getting the core Batman books. 

Starting with the books I liked enough to stick with, these are the titles I have bought the second issue for already:

• Action Comics
• Animal Man
• Batgirl
• Detective Comics
• O.M.A.C.
• Batman and Robin
• Batwoman
• Batman

These books I definitely plan to buy the second issue of:

• Justice League
• Wonder Woman
• Superman 
• I, Vampire

That's 12 so far, just one title less than a quarter of the New 52 offerings. 

These books I am very likely to pick up, availability and funds allowing: 

• Supergirl
• Aquaman
• Batman: The Dark Knight
• Superboy
• Green Lantern Corps
• The Flash

So if I pick up those books, that means DC got me back for 18 of the 52 books. Again, that's not too bad — it's a lot more than I was getting. 

These books just missed the mark for me, and I could reconsider:

• Green Arrow
• Swamp Thing
• Deathstroke
• Green Lantern
• Blackhawks
• Teen Titans

I admit that I had picked up Green Lantern #2 at the store last week, but changed my mind and put it back once I saw Love and Rockets: New Stories, Vol. 4 was out. 

These titles were the mediocre group of the bunch — not bad, but also neither interesting enough or good enough to make me want to come back. And I'll admit, some of these surprised me.

• Batwing
• Hawk and Dove
• Justice League International
• Men of War
• Static Shock
• Stormwatch
• Demon Knights
• Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
• Grifter
• Legion Lost
• Mister Terrific
• Resurrection Man
• Birds of Prey
• Blue Beetle
• Captain Atom
• DC Universe Presents
• Legion of Super-Heroes
• Nightwing
• All-Star Western
• The Fury of Firestorm
• Green Lantern: New Guardians
• The Savage Hawkman
• Voodoo

That's a full 23 our of 52 books that fall into that category, nearly half of the line.

And then, there's the titles I actively disliked or thought were flat-out terrible.

• Red Lanterns
• Suicide Squad
• Catwoman
• Red Hood and the Outlaws
• Justice League Dark

Again, not bad, but the relaunch hasn't really improved the quality of DC Comics, despite all the hype. I wish that the publisher had taken the time to dig deeper in terms of talent and offered up more surprises. They only get one shot at this — at least for the time being — so I would have liked there to be more comics that I could wholeheartedly recommend to both lapsed fans and new readers.

FF Re-read: The Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963)

“A Visit with the Fantastic Four” and "The Impossible Man"

Script by Stan Lee

Pencils by Jack Kirby

Inks by Dick Ayers

Letters by Art Simek

Another, much more successful experiment than the previous issue, this is a rare issue with two FF stories that is refreshing, fun and entertaining. Interestingly enough, Stan Lee writes in the intro to the second Marvel Masterworks volume of Fantastic Four stories that this issue was extremely unpopular at the time. Fans in particular disliked the Impossible Man as being too "silly" for so "serious" a comic book as The Fantastic Four.

'Captain America,' 'Punisher' and 'Daredevil' relaunched with unexpected style, substance

Before I delve back into DC waters, it's been interesting to notice that Marvel has been relaunching a lot of titles lately as well, though without anything like the fanfare that DC has been getting.

In addition to next month's relaunch of Uncanny X-Men — the very last long-running title from Marvel or DC to get a new first issue — Marvel recently relaunched Captain America, Daredevil and The Punisher. I had started thinking about this piece a while back when only one or two issues of each was out, but now there's four issues of DD out and three each of Cap and Punisher.

Let's start with Captain America, which seems to have gotten a new first issue to coincide with the release a few months back of the movie. That's not a bad move on Marvel's part, and it's one I'm surprised they haven't used to greater effect in the past.

This isn't much of an introductory first issue, but it really doesn't need to be. Comics fans know who the characters are and the basic setup, while readers new to the character who saw the movie will be in pretty much the same place. There's a nice connection to the movie with the first issue opening on the funeral of 91-year-old Peggy Carter that also introduces Sharon Carter, a.k.a. Agent 13.

Unlike most of last month's DC debuts, Captain America has a very distinct tone and feel to it that is tailored quite well to the character. My original thoughts were that it was a bit decompressed, but on a second read I think it's far from being the worst offender in that category. The second issue does drag a bit, however, with much of the first half of it devoted to back story before stuff starts happening. The third is another good issue, and writer Ed Brubaker has surprised me by writing comics arcs that are structured like they used to be, with enough going on in each issue to keep me interested.

DC New 52, 4th Wave, Pt. 2: I, Vampire and, yes, Teen Titans nail it

OK, I just finished reading the final six debut issues of the New 52. Reading them all has been fun, but it's a lot of comics. I don't know when I last read this many comics in one month, but it's been a long while.

Onward:

The Savage Hawkman #1 is confusing for me because I don't understand the idea of the Nth Metal. I thought Hawkman was from Hawkworld, but I guess it's all been changed. This issue begins with Carter Hall trying to rid himself of the Nth Metal and any connection to Hawkman. He fails, of course, and goes missing while some of his colleagues dredge up a mystery object from the ocean floor. It eventually unleashes all kinds of nasty and Carter finds himself morphing back into Hawkman to fight it. As you can tell, the story, by Tony Daniel, is pretty average. What I really liked was the art by Philip Tan and the coloring by Sunny Gho. This is a nice looking book — it has a painted look, though close inspection reveals that to not be the case. I don't have an emotional connection to Hawkman, so I doubt I'll be back, but this is a decent comic.

After getting a lot of criticism last week for the portrayal of women in the New 52, we next come to Voodoo #1. Another Wildstorm refugee, this one sees the former member of Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.S. working as a stripper while being investigated for some reason by a couple of agents. Turns out, she's an alien with telepathy who finds it easy to learn about men as a stripper because they're guards are down while they watch her. It's not much of an explanation, but it is one. The end also indicates that the stripper locale is a one-issue affair, and the plot will move on into some more interesting areas. The art by Sami Basri is, as you'd expect for a story set in a strip club, replete with women wearing skimpy clothes and in various levels of undress. The biggest problem with this issue is it doesn't deliver enough of anything — mystery, character, suspense, plot — to make me want to stick around. It's just thin, and hangs on a reveal that anyone familiar with the character had already figured out.

Justice League Dark #1 is a silly book that tries to jam together characters unsuited to a superhero into a superhero team. This should be called Justice League Vertigo, as it features Madame Xanadu, John Constantine and Shade: The Changing Man, as well as Deadman and Zatanna. Like Justice League International, there's not much of a connection here to the main Justice League title save a short appearance by Batman. The story is pretty standard "assemble the team" stuff, but it hurts just a little bit to see characters like Constantine be forced into a costume story when they're just not made for it.

Batman: The Dark Knight #1 has some really pretty artwork from David Finch, but otherwise feels completely superfluous. Batman and Detective Comics still feel like the "real" books, and this and Batman and Robin are spinoffs that will come and go while the others remain the center of the Bat-verse. This is still a decent Batman comic, but it's the kind that's aimed at the die-hard fan and completist. On a side note, there's one really odd, prominent panel of a female Arkham inmate wearing a skimpy outfit that includes a thong with a bunny tail on it. I'll wait to see what the reaction is to that.

I, Vampire #1 managed to overcome my longstanding dislike of vampires and I really enjoyed it. This may be the breakout original title of the New 52 — I really hope it is. It's deftly written by Joshua Hale Fialkov and sports some really incredible artwork from Andrea Sorrentino. I don't think any description of the plot will do it justice, just go read it — even if you can't stand vampires.

And the final first issue of the New 52 is Teen Titans #1, from Red Hood and the Outlaws scribe Scott Lobdell and veteran artists Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund. Thankfully, this was a lot more like Lobdell's script for Superboy than for Red Hood. It starts with the mistake-ridden, overconfident debut of Kid Flash, followed by Tim Drake — who has kept the Red Robin moniker — assembling a new team. It's got the same sort of snappy pace and dialoge that Lobdell is known for, and he makes it work quite well with these characters. I expect the ret-con of Wonder Girl will prompt some outcries. It appears her previous connection to Wonder Woman is gone and her powers are quite different. But she has a personality — perhaps still at this point a stock personality, but she still has one — as does Red Robin and the cocky new Kid Flash. I have long found Booth's figures to be a bit stiff, but this is a big improvement from his 1990s efforts with Wildstorm and the X-Men books at Marvel, so good for him. While I am not the biggest fan anymore of teen books, I still might give this shot based on the energy that this first issue delivers.

And with that, the pile of New 52 comics sitting on top of a longbox in my office is complete. I'd love to know what anyone else thinks of these books. Do you agree with my take, disagree, partially agree? Send me links, comments or emails if you're so inclined. I'll be taking a look at others' reviews and expect to post some kind of wrapup before the second issues hit starting next week.

DC New 52, 4th Wave, Pt. 1: Aquaman, Flash, Superman outshine the rest

The finish line is in sight for DC's New 52. Look for a post that kind of sums up a take on the overall project in the next day or so. Obviously, it's been a big hit for DC, which announced yesterday that all 52 books have sold out of their first printings and going back to press. Three titles have shipped 200,000 or more and eight more have shipped more than 100,000. That's a huge boost for the direct market, where the 100k mark has been a tough one for any book to crack.

I still have a few books in the final batch to read, but in the meantime, here's my thoughts on the books I've read so far.

There should be more books like Aquaman #1, which I found to be a very entertaining and action-packed comic book. This is another very slick entry, with some terrific artwork from Ivan Reis and Joe Prado. Writer Geoff Johns tries very hard to make Aquaman a convincing action hero and mostly succeeds. I expected that having everyone think of him as a joke would not work at all, but it turned out to be fairly amusing in the end. I also think it's funny that the logo imitates the one invented for the fake Aquaman movie from the Entourage TV show. At the very least, this is the best Aquaman comic in a long time, if not ever. It's up to you to decide if that's a significant achievement or not.

Next is yet another The Flash #1, this one from co-writer and artist Francis Manapul and co-writer Brian Buccellato. This was much improved from the rather ponderous take Johns had on the character in the previous reboot, or even the previous short-lived version before that I have trouble remembering anything about at this point. I found this to be a solid, nice-looking Flash comic. It doesn't invent the wheel, but it's pretty much spot on for what an average issue of this title should read like. If Manapul can keep it up, will be a consistently entertaining title.

The Fury of Firestorm, The Nuclear Men #1 appears to be a full reboot of the character, and is a straight-forward origin story that shows how the Firestorms got their powers and introduces a big, scary villain for them to fight in the next issue. We meet Ronnie Raymond, star high school quarterback, and Jason Rusch, student journalist. They clash and very quickly develop a dislike of each other — so of course they are bound together as the new Firestorms. The art by Yildiray Cinar has a slightly funky, retro feel to it that, combined with the very traditional origin story, makes this a bit of a throwback. It's not bad, but nothing about this is interesting enough to make me stick around for another issue.

DC's New 52, Wave 3, plays it safe except when it comes to sex

The final batch of first issues in DC's New 52 arrived Monday this week instead of Wednesday. I've already read a few that I quite like, but I have to wait until tomorrow because of the embargo. That leaves me with today to catch up and go through all of last week's books, which contained more than its fair share of bombshells.

FYI, due to some of the topics that came up in this week's books, the language used below may not be suitable for all ages. Proceed at your own risk.

Top book on the pile is Wonder Woman #1, by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. As you might expect from Chiang, the book looks great and is well colored with an appropriately moody palette by Matthew Wilson. The story is a pretty significant deviation from the typical Wonder Woman story, getting into an area I think you could call occult, except it deals with Greek mythology so maybe that's a better way to describe it. But it is darker in tone and look that the shiny, bright take on Wonder Woman that has prevailed over the years at DC. I'm not sure how effective this is as a first issue, however, because not much is explained. Diana doesn't even appear until halfway through the issue, where she's found sleeping naked (though covered) in a London flat. It's not clear what the set up is, who she's supposed to be or how she's intended to fit into the world. I think Azzarello and Chiang have a bit more leeway based on their reputation to get things going in the next couple of issues, and this was much better than the Odyssey revamp of last year. So, this is promising.

Dick Grayson gets his old costume and book back with Nightwing #1, which was a competent if completely average superhero comic. The art by Eddy Barrows and J.P. Mayer is nice, and I enjoyed the scenes where Dick returns to the circus he grew up in to say hi to his friends. I don't know if anyone has ever done that idea before, but I thought it was a nice touch here. The superhero-ing part of the book was less thrilling, and I really wish the industry would institute a ban on the hero narrating the story in captions. That was interesting and effective in 1982 when Chris Claremont popularized it on the first Wolverine miniseries, but it's been overused to death. How about having characters talk to each other once in a while? It might be a good trend to start.

The New 52, Wave 2, Pt. 2: Green Trumps Red, Superboy and Deathstroke Surprise

Sorry about the long delay in New 52 reviews and other series. I had a lot of assignments come in that I had to get off my plate, which is great news for any freelancer but it means the blog gets delayed.

One story I wrote is of note to folks here, which is my article on Sam Register's running of Warner Bros. Animation and the studio's surge in production and success in brand building. One of the big examples is the upcoming DC Nation show, which is still hard to peg down in terms of content, but it will include some sweet-sounding animated shorts that I think fans will get a real kick out of. DC Nation is due to start airing on Cartoon Network next summer. The story ran in Variety and, if you're a subscriber and can get past the paywall, you can read it here.

A couple other stories I've done for the current issue of Animation Magazine that may be of interest include my story on the making of Batman: Year One, which I think is really good; and this story on MTV Animation, including the return of Beavis and Butt-head, as well as a new toon called Good Vibes that turned out to be a nice surprise.

I continue to be lucky enough for DC publicity to still be sending me all the New 52 issues, as I have had no time to even hit the comic shop for the past few weeks. I've had to refresh my memory on the rest of the releases from the second week of the New 52, and changed my initial opinion in a few cases.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1 was a bit of a disappointment even though there's nothing wrong with it. I love the title, but expected a little more crazy and a lot more fun. Instead, we have a fairly standard setup as Frankenstein is now working for the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive and is sent on a mission to save a town where monsters are stripping the skin off people. Also, Frankenstein's wife went in on the mission first and has gone missing. He's joined by a quartet of new, monster-like agents and there's a some nice fighting scenes. The art by Alberto Ponticelli is solid, though somewhat generic for a monster-themed title, and Jeff Lemire's script lacks the wit, characterization, or the kind of just plain weirdness that would have set this apart. I think the Wachowski Bros.' Doc Frankenstein series of a few years back was a much more fun take on a very similar idea.

A number of reviews of Green Lantern #1 say it's very much a continuation of the previous Green Lantern run. I don't know because I wasn't reading it before now. This impressed me, however, as one of the most new-reader friendly books so far. Written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy, this issue finds Hal Jordan no longer a Green Lantern and living jobless and in need of cash on Earth. Meanwhile, Sinestro somehow is once again a member of the Corps and would like to change that, leading to him approaching Jordan about some kind of deal. I think you could give this comic to anyone who saw the Green Lantern movie and they'd be able to follow it no problem. It features Hal, Carol Ferris and Sinestro, all pretty much as they were in the movie and easy to identify. The art is clear and I think the story has enough interest for such folks to enjoy it and want to read more. For die-hard fans, it's probably little different from reading Green Lantern #68.

The New 52, Wave 2, Part 1: Batwoman's worth the wait

After a few work-intensive days, I finally finished reading all this week's releases in The New 52. This week was very different from last week, with the best entries coming from unexpected sources and some of the books I thought would at least be strange and interesting falling short.

Again, I'll do these in the order I read them, and likely break them up into multiple posts to make it easier to read.

Batman & Robin #1 comes only two years after the previous Batman & Robin #1, which was a blockbuster by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. This version is by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray, and features the same Robin (the Damian Wayne version) and a different Batman (back to Broce Wayne from Dick Grayson). The crux of the issue is the relationship between the two, with Bruce addressing various family issues and explaining himself to Damian. There is some action in here, but the overall tone focuses on the the relationship with the result being a fairly slow and not especially exciting first issue. The art is often dark and murky to the point where it's a bit tough to follow and pages look like a sea of ink. Neither element makes this a particularly compelling debut and I can't see this appealing much beyond the Batman completists.

Mister Terrific #1 is another reasonably solid comic book that I think could have been better. I think it's admirable that DC has put out so many books with non-white lead characters (Static Shock and Batwing being the other two to date), even as they've gotten so much flak from fans about the dearth of female creators and characters. I'm not exactly familiar with this character, who I think previously appeared in the JSA. The script by Eric Wallace and the arty by Gianluca Gugliotta and Wayne Faucher is all solid but not spectacular. It's all pretty standard first-issue superhero stuff, that I wish was in some way more memorable than it is.

Suicide Squad #1 has a terrific cover, though I had to read the interior of the book to figure out that it's Harley Quinn front and center there. This issue sees the SS team assembled, sent on their first mission and enduring some torture. This is a book that really could have benefited from a more straight-forward approach to the storytelling. A title like Suicide Squad suggests a high-concept series with a heavy dose of crazy, and instead it's a slow-moving, somewhat unpleasant story with lots of scenes of torture in it. It just doesn't stand out.

Ah, Batwoman #1. At last. Much delayed, this one was definitely worth the wait. Yes, Greg Rucka has moved on, but J.H. Williams III is still drawing, and working on the stories with W. Haden Blackman. This looks absolutely amazing, with appealing and distinctive characters engaged in a clear, interesting story. Plus, it's super sexy and realistic in a way that shames that the typical bubble-boobed heroines that normally pass for "sexy" in comics. There's no reason to not pick this up. Excellent.

Legion Lost #1 was aptly named — I was lost. I have never had much luck at penetrating the continuity  of Legion of Super-Heroes, though I do recognize a couple of the characters in this book. Apparently the premise is a group of Legionnaires are lost on present-day Earth. Not much else was easy to absorb from this issue. Introductions are important and, on the second- and third-tier books, there may not be a chance to draw an audience down the line the way you can with a high-profile first-issue.

I liked Grifter #1 a lot more than I expected to. It's less of a superhero story and more of a straight action story. Writer Nathan Edmonson and artists Cafu and Jason Gorder capture some of that old-time Wildstorm energy for this globe-trotting tale. The art was really attractive, but the story wasn't quite crazy and strange enough for me to be sure I'll come back for a second issue.   

Demon Knights #1 is overall a pretty good comic. For one, even though it's got Jack Kirby's Demon in it, it's more of a fantasy comic with lots of action. Uniqueness of genre, some appealing depictions of the characters and pretty good art from Diogenes Neves and Oclair Albert take this pretty far for me. Like a lot of these books, there are issues with characters not being terribly well introduced or there being enough interesting story, but in this case there's enough charm to overcome the shortcomings.

Next: Red! Green! Superboy! 

'Pariah' slickly covers familiar ground

Pariah is indicative of the current state of indie comics: It's a high-concept story that's slickly produced and has some kind of movie ambition and/or Hollywood connection or talent behind it.

First, the book itself. Pariah #1 starts with Brent Marks, who we're told is a "Vitro," which makes him superhumanly smart. Completely isolated from other Vitros, he lives a miserable teenage life in Ohio, where he can't meet girls at high school and hates his brain-dead parents. But he's also got this idea for a working interplanetary spaceship and has started building components for it in his room. Then, an explosion at a weapons research laboratory that employs a large number of Vitros releases a deadly toxin in the air, making Vitros persona non grata. Brent runs afoul first of some bullies, then of the law and is captured for what is certain to be a nefarious purpose.

The high concept here is the idea of Vitros, which is based on real world research that indicates genes can be modified before birth — i.e., in vitro — to achieve certain genetic outcomes. I wish this had been explained in the book itself, though. I learned this fact from the press kit that came with it.

(As a total aside, this was one of the best press kits I've ever seen for a comic book release. It included several professional-quality press releases, bios of the creators, a bookmark, printouts of reviews, a hand-written note from the publicist, a copy of the book and even synopses of upcoming issues.)

Small Press: Diamondback is Unpolished but Enthusiastic

Every so often, folks send me an email asking if I'll take a look at and review their comics. For a long time, I had no time to do so, but a couple of recent requests piqued my interest and so I'm going to do a couple of these indie reviews before I dig into this week's tantalizing pile of The New 52, sitting since yesterday afternoon on my desk.

I have here the first two issues of Diamondback, published by Colorado-based Anasazi Comics, each $3.99 for 24 pages in color. Written by Jeremy Lee, who created the series with Michael Andereck, Diamondback is set in an "anarcho-capitalist" future in which all government has collapsed and the only justice you can get is what you pay for. In the massive Denver City, a man named Jack Cody's wife is killed in a gangland gunfight. Lacking legal insurance, his child is taken from him and Jack is sent to prison, where he makes socks and his soul dies. He's pulled out after a year by a an agent named Cowboy, who believes Jack also can be an agent for the Carroll-Dodgson company and begins training him. Jack takes on the name and identity of Diamondback, and he and Cowboy immediately clash with the big boys of the agency game at Dyja International, which forms the spine of the first two issues.

There are some interesting tidbits in here and I think this could be developed into something that works as a story and would be quite interesting as an action tale with some social commentary in it. The execution leaves something to be desired, even though it makes up for its many technical flaws with sheer enthusiasm. I wish the script had an editor who could make sure that the concepts in the book were clearly explained.

New 52, Week One, Pt. 3: JLI, Swamp Thing, Batwing and Static Shock

Delayed slightly by a short-lived, mildly annoying illness and tons of work and baby duties, here, now, are some thoughts on the last batch of releases in the first full week of DC's The New 52.

Swamp Thing #1 is a very tough comic to do, because no matter how good the book is it always has to live in the shadow of great runs by Alan Moore and the original run by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson. Also, after nearly 20 years as a Vertigo property, I find it somehow incongruous to see Swamp Thing appear alongside Superman and other mainstream superheroes. None of which has anything to do with this particular story by Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette. I"ll start with the art, which I found to very good and atmospheric and, appropriately, lush. I had to double check the credits because I was sure those distinctively-inked faces meant Kevin Nowlan was working on this issue, but it is all Paquette. Snyder's story does a decent job of resetting the character and his Alec Holland alter ego in the DC Universe, but still failed to really sell the idea as a good one. The horror elements were good. But I don't think this version of Swamp Thing is distinctive enough to work as a Swamp Thing comic for established fans, while this is easily, I think, the most confusing first issue for neophytes. 

I was surprised in a good way to see Justice League International among The New 52. I am, as regular readers of this blog will know, a fan of the Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis run on the title from the late 1980s. Those writers haven't returned for this version, which is written by Dan Jurgens with Aaron Lopresti and Matt Ryan on art — all solid superhero creators. The key to this seems to be Booster Gold, who Jurgens created a long time ago and whose series he was writing and drawing before it ended with Flashpoint. The supporting cast includes JLI stalwarts Guy Gardner, Batman, Rocket Red, Ice, Fire and Batman, along with Vixen, a Chinese hero named August General in Iron and a cheeky brit chick named Godiva. The premise is a little odd, as the United Nations agrees to form its own Justice League that it can control, under the leadership of U.N. Intelligence Chief Andre Briggs. So the JLI has no relation to the other Justice League, even though Batman's in both. The story itself is decent but not spectacular. It has a  plot that it clearly tells, with a couple of character moments that old fogeys like me will be familiar with but may appeal to the newbies. There's foreshadowing of conflicts, a cliff-hanger ending, some mid-level superhero action and it all looks very clean if average. All of this makes it hard to recommend one way or the other — it's far from bad, but it's nothing special enough to go out of your way for unless you already like these characters and this concept.

Static Shock #1 is perhaps the most standard first issue of the bunch, running through the standard story points of introducing the hero, his supporting cast, the premise and giving him a first villain to fight. I admit to not having read really anything about this character after about the first year of the original Static series from Milestone in 1993-94. I know there was a cartoon, and I know this was a signature character for the late Dwayne McDuffie. But this doesn't match up with anything I remember liking about those original comics, which to me evoked Steve Ditko's early Spider-Man work. This is a just a lot more generic. The story is by Scott McDaniel (who also does the art) and John Rozum, with Jonathan Glapion and LeBeau Underwood on inks. I really wish this book was better, but I fear this will be one of the first on the block for cancelation.

The last book on the list is Batwing #1, by Judd Winick and Ben Oliver. This is another book I was hoping would be a surprise simply because it's new. And it's a bit of a mixed bag, mostly because it didn't grab me the way I expected it to. This is a new character, sort of spun out of the idea of Grant Morrison's Batman, Incorporated idea, about David Zavimbe, who is, essentially, the Batman of Africa. His secret identity is as a police officer in the city of Tinasha in the Congo. The city is corrupt, there is plenty of rather ghastly crime and no one to fight it except Batwing. The first issue sees Batwing fight his new nemesis, Massacre, and establishes the setting, etc. It reads OK and looks very nice, but I think the reason this didn't grab me is it just feels like old DC. Most of the new books seem to have attempted to put in more plot and tell the stories clearly — this feels sparse and slow. It also doesn't show much of Africa itself, which I would have thought to be a major source of cool imagery and therefore a selling point for the book. I'm not sure it's future looks much better than that of Static Shock, but the concept is one that I think could work well with a more energetic take on the material.

And that's it for week one! Plenty more to come next week ...