Welcome My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends

Walt and Skeezix is an absolute joy of a book. A project of publishers Drawn and Quarterly and Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), the idea is to put the complete Gasoline Alley strip, from its very beginnings onwards, back into print and restore this forgotten masterpiece to the reading world. Creator Frank O. King started the strip in 1919 and originally intended for the daily newspaper strip to be about the inhabitants of the alley and their fixation on a certain newly created invention, the motorcar. But on February the 14th 1921 the whole idea took a new twist with the introduction of Skeezix, the baby boy left abandoned on avowed bachelor Walt's doorstep. From then on Walt and Skeezix become an inseparable team, with Walt growing more and more comfortable in the role of fatherhood.





King’s art and comedic writing is both rural and vast, in his depictions of small town America and the majesty of nature. He was one of the first writers to tell the American public about the pleasures of camping in the wild, and on both cars and humans with all their similar their foibles. But what makes Walt and Skeezix an even more pleasurable reading experience is that Gasoline Alley was one of the few strips to actually grow with its characters- it was a daily strip so the characters grew older day by day. Readers watched Skeezix grow up, serve in WWII and have a family of his own, for Walt to also find love and marriage, but also to grow old and die (something still carried on now. In the current strip Skeezix is in his 80’s). The start of the strip is very much of its time, flappers abound and the roaring Twenties are in their infancy. All of King’s characters are fully fleshed out and rounded with their own personalities, even Rachel, the black nurse. No Mammy caricature is she, though the language King gives her sails close.

Walt and Skeezix are on a par with Fantagraphics reprinting of the Complete Peanuts, and I will say that it does beat that pillar of American establishment for its warmth and humour (Schultz was a depressive). Beautifully presented, it needs to be on the shelf of anyone interested in the history of the comic strip.


DC and Marvel both went back to the multi-crossover in 2005. A staple of the 80’s and 90’s it had fallen into disrepute after way too many of them were announced as- “WILL CHANGE THE FACE OF THE DC/MARVEL UNIVERSE FOREVER!!!!!”
They invariably did no such thing and everything was back to the status quo within a few months, reader dissatisfaction with this and the fact that you had to buy a lot of other in-house titles to complete the story led to falling sales and the idea was dropped. Marvel’s saga started with Avengers Disassembled story (12/01/2005), and continued into The House of M. It continued the saga of Wanda Maximoff as both her father and Charles Xavier tried to cure of her madness. When this fails, her brother Pietro discovers that both the X-Men and the Avengers are on the way to kill her. Pietro persuades Wanda to use her reality-changing powers to alter their whole universe and make what he considers to be a better one.
Of course it all goes wrong with various heroes regaining their former memories and trying to put a stop to Wanda. In the midst of the usual super-hero battle Wanda decides that her whole life has been a misery because she is a mutant. She then uses her powers again to put back everything as it was but with the exception that a planet that had a mutant population in the millions now has one in the thousands. The whole point of the tale was to help streamline the Marvel mutant universe and setup the next big event for 2006, Civil War. On the whole House of M was a good tale, with good writing (if so-so art) that did what it was promised (some big hitters lost their powers), and crossed over into other titles with the minimum of wear on your wallet.


Crisis on Infinite Earths was DC’s attempt to streamline it own universe. With a history like DC’s that first began publishing in the 1930’s many characters were different to ones that readers recognized in the 1980’s. Hundreds of stories over the years had complicated continuity (which Superman was correct? Was the Golden Age one the same as the one being read in the 80’s? Ditto for the Bat-Man and Wonder Woman, etc.). The DC Universe was also split into different dimensions and planets: - Earth 1 for what readers were then reading. Earth 2 where the Silver age heroes resided, Earth S for the Shazam family, Earth 4 for the Charlton heroes, hundreds of Earths where events and stories happened differently. You get the picture that trying to keep some sense of it all was nightmare. So, in 1985 Marv Wolfman and George Perez set about changing all that until there was one earth, with one history and all the heroes in their proper time and places, and that was Crisis on Infinite Earths, now reprinted in an absolute edition. Wolfman and Perez partly succeeded in their aims. Their villain managed to destroy thousands of dimensions and earths, along with all their superheroes until it was all merged into the DC Universe we know today. Big stars like the Golden Age Superman, the Silver Age Superboy and Supergirl were killed off, as was the Silver Age Flash, in one of the best deaths ever in comics.

But Wolfman’s suggestion to DC that they also restarted again in renumbering their titles from #1 was turned down. A lot of characters also remembered what had happened during the Crisis and paradoxes still abounded (Hawkman). Added to which this was the period of Miller and Moore when comics took a decidedly darker and downbeat turn. Nothing wrong with that, a more mature feel was what the industry needed, but it led to a phase in which a lot of artists and writers felt that mature meant doubt and insecurity, along with a good dose of self-flagellation and lashings of sex. The loss of innocence and fun that comics can also mean, even those two esteemed writers now regret.

The Absolute Edition of Crisis explains it beginnings from start to finish. It includes a comprehensive list of all Earths and their super-heroes plus the reasons why Superboy, Supergirl and the Flash were written out of continuity. Concept art and sketches and the full listing of crossover comics needed to round out the story. Wolfman and Perez’s main tale still manages to take on a cast of hundreds and come out clear and concise. It’s not for everyone though; a good knowledge of DC’s history helps greatly, but the same can be said if you set out read the whole Potter saga, you don’t expect to start with Goblet or Phoenix and the same goes for Crisis.

Now, skip forward to 2005. Writers like Brad Meltzer, Geoff Johns and Judd Wineck feel that the DC Universe has gotten too dark, with very little difference between the heroes and the villains. So started something that only comics can do, to relate a saga that has been two years in preparation, with little hints across the whole of the DC Universe and which has culminated into something that fans didn’t expect- a direct sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. Only the revival of Dr.Who has matched the excitement felt in fandom at what DC are doing and it’s well deserved.


Starting with Identity Crisis (12/01/05), the saga details the fall of the superheroes into doubt and paranoia and the revenge of the villains has they discover what has been done to their minds. The most startling revelation came in Countdown with the death of the Blue Beetle at the hands of Max Lord (now Black King of Checkmate) as he plots to destroy the whole superhero community and return power (as he sees it, back to the common man). To aid him in this he has taken control of the Bat-Man’s personal watchman on the superheroes, the computer satellite Brother Eye. When Lord is killed at Wonder Woman’s own hands Brother Eye sets into motion its contingency plans by releasing thousands of its own soldiers, OMAC’s (nothing so far to do with Jack Kirby’s version of OMAC and Brother Eye), to hunt and destroy both the amazons and make the general populace of the world fear and distrust metahumans. The OMAC Project is storytelling with sharp twists and turns, full of surprises and the hopelessness felt when something you created turns upon you.




Day of Vengeance deals with the magical side of the events occurring in Infinite Crisis. With the Spectre now detached from a human host, the Spirit of Vengeance falls prey to the insane whisperings of Eclipso (inhabiting the body of Jean Loring, the murderer from Identity Crisis) who makes him believe that all of the Earth’s problems are down to magic. Thus corrupted, the Spectre sets out to destroy all those who use magic and demolish the various mystical artefacts that litter the DC Universe. This pits him against some very powerful opponents like the wizard Shazam and Dr.Fate, but his initial defeat comes from a ragtag band of magical heroes called the Shadowpact and Shazam’s protégé Captain Marvel. It is a quest they ultimately fail at, though they do succeed in stopping Eclipso.


By the end of the series, the Spectre attacks and kills the wizard Shazam and with his death the Rock of Eternity is destroyed, scattering and freeing many magical forces and threats, including the Seven Deadly Sins and the Blue Beetle Scarab. Day of Vengeance goes a long way in explaining how important, and returning, magic to the DC Universe is (a lot of the situations and characters had been siphoned off into the Vertigo line).


The Rann/Thanagar War at first glance seems to be the odd one out in the pre-Crisis books. A story featuring a lot of DC’s space-faring heroes and villains plus interplanetary war between Rann (second home to the Earthman Adam Strange) and Thanagar (home of the Hawkmen), it’s not until the very end of the tale that the Crisis intrudes upon it. A blood and thunder tale of war and how others get drawn into it, Rann/Thanagar looks like it has very little to do with Infinite Crisis, but with the events now occurring in the main series it has become very important indeed.


Villains United details what is happening amongst the criminal fraternity since they discovered that all their minds had been altered by members of the JLA, making them less dangerous. The story focuses on the new Secret Society of Supervillains, led by Lex Luthor, and his attempts to bring all the villains around to his way of thinking. Not all the villains agree with this though and a group of renegade villains are brought together by a mysterious benefactor called Mockingbird and called the Secret Six. The Six fail to bring down the Society and it’s revealed that Mockingbird is in fact the real Lex Luthor whilst the Society’s is an alternate version with his own plans for the heroes.

In all DC has gotten off to a flying start with its Event storyline. I’ve not mentioned much about what is occurring in the main Infinite Crisis book as I’ll leave that till it’s been finished and reprinted in book form, but both DC and Marvel have returned to the Event style saga with a flourish and again proven that the only place to get this sort of vast, epic storyline is in the comic book world.


Meanwhile the Ultimate Universe goes from strength to strength. Main writers Mark Millar and Brian Bendis have kept the writing and scenarios both familiar and different in equal measure. Whilst Bendis has slowly been taking over the whole of the regular Marvel Universe his work on Ultimate Spider-Man hasn’t suffered. With the sudden death of fan favourite Gwen Stacy at the hands of Carnage, Bendis has upped the emotional content of the book. Peter has split from long-time love Mary-Jane feeling that he can no longer protect her and started dating Kitty Pride of the X-Men. He feels that his superhero life just isn’t worth the hassle but cannot quite let go of it. Nick Fury is working behind the scenes to remove Peter’s powers without his knowledge and the debacle with the Sinister Six has left Peter feeling isolated and cut off from the superhero community more than usual. Bendis shows his usual aplomb with dialogue that reads well and feels real, characters have depth and motivation and you get a sense of empathy with them.



Mark Millar has always been the Jerry Bruckheimer of the Ultimate Universe. High concept married to fascinating ideas. The bombast of The Ultimates and its current story of a superpower arms race prove this most eloquently, but as said, Millar can throw ideas around like confetti. One issue of The Ultimates or his current run on Ultimate FF can contain many ideas that are worth following up. It’s to Millar’s credit that he doesn’t let himself get sidetracked by this and maintain a tight grip on his story and plotlines. The pleasure of seeing familiar characters in a new light is done best by Millar, with a new take on the Inhumans and Namor in Ultimate FF and Loki in The Ultimates. Best bit of 2005 from Millar? Call me chauvinist if you like but it was the sight of Sue Storm’s rather hot mother, depicted by artist Greg Land, thirty foot tall in her underwear.



The saga started in Ultimate Nightmare with the introduction of the Vision as an early warning system heralding the approach of Gah-Lak-Tus. His warning comes a hundred years too late and the Anti-Life is now upon the UU’s doorstep. Ultimate Secret brings Avengers favourite Captain Marvel and the Kree race to the UU. Here the Kree look and feel like aliens instead of the blue-skinned humanoids in the regular Marvel Universe, Mahr Vehl has had radical surgery performed upon him to make him pass as a human and the Kree’s reasoning for just sitting back and watching Gah-Lak-Tus destroy Earth is truly alien. Ellis gives weight and a point to his plots, his dialogue is punchy and funny that follows Bendis’ line of making it feel like it would be said the same in the real world. The science also has depth, feels right and plausible with the right sense of gravitas. In just a few panels, Ellis manages to put across just how serious and final the threat of Gah-Lak-Tus is, Stan and Jack’s depiction of Galactus is fun and full youthful innocence, but you never get a sense of threat. With Ellis it is total; Reed Richard’s 3d schematic to the Gah-Lak-Tus S.H.I.E.L.D. team of what will happen once it arrives is chilling.

With all these sagas, comics have proved again that they are the only form that can tell huge epic stories with consistency, excitement, humour and drama. Some commentators have moaned about how the length of the tales could have been shorter or explained in a single issue, ignore these ignoramuses. They are of the console, txt generation who want everything told fast and with the least bit of exposition. They believe that they can tell stories better and if only some ignorant editor would look at their scribbles on lined paper they would be proved the greatest writers ever. Tales like the Gah-Lak-Tus Saga need space to breathe, with interesting ideas and premise that can take characters to the centre of the universe and back to Earth whilst making the reader feel like SOMETHING has happened.

Walt and Skeezix is by Frank O. King and published by Drawn and Quarterly, priced £19.99

House of M is due to be published by Marvel in March 2006

Crisis on Infinite Earths Absolute Edition is by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, published by DC Comics and priced £75.00

The Omac Project is by Greg Rucka and various, published by DC Comics and priced £8.50

Villains United is by Gail Simone and Dale Eaglesham, published by DC Comics and priced £8.50

Rann-Thanagar War is by Dave Gibbons and Ivan Reis, published by DC Comics and priced £8.50

Day of Vengeance is by Bill Willingham and various, published by DC Comcs and priced £8.50

Ultimate Annuals is by Various, published by Marvel Comics and priced £8.99

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol 6 is by Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley, published by Marvel Comics and priced £19.99

Ultimate Nightmare is by Warren Ellis and Trevor Hairsine, published by Marvel Comics and priced £7.99

Ultimate Secret is by Warren Ellis and Steve McNiven, published Marvel Comics and priced £7.99

Ultimate Extinction is by now published by Marvel Comics

Available from all good comic book shops now.

Round and Round and Round.

With all that has happened in London in the last couple of weeks Will Eisner’s last work has gained a kind of relevance that he did not intend- it does after all deal with a specific theme- but sharpens into focus how humanity, for all its advances, still has an intense suspicion and dislike for what it does not understand, and has a deep-rooted fear of what could be disturbingly called “the other”.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a particularly insidious, inflammatory tract that supposedly details how a secret cabal of Jewish leaders plotted to take over the world and how they would accomplish this. The Protocols have been used across the globe to prove how sinister, cruel and downright devious the Jewish race is. The Nazi Party seized upon it as one of the foundations of Nazism when Hitler made a pointed reference to it in Mein Kampf. The BNP in this country make wide-spread use of it, as do the Klu Klux Klan and extreme right-wing groups in America. It has found a vast audience in the East, especially in Arabic countries and Palestine and yet, for all that it contains purporting to be the facts and its use as an excuse for anti-Semitism, not one word or sentence is true. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the biggest frauds, and defamation upon a race of people ever wrought upon the face of the planet.


The Plot is Eisner’s attempt to lay this vampire of a tract to rest. I will point out from the very beginning that sadly, of course, he will not succeed. As he details in the book, the “Protocols” have been denounced as fake for a very long time, indeed practically from the moment it first appeared in 1905. Esteemed papers such as The Times of London, L’Express and the Washington Post to the United States Senate and even in a lawsuit against the Nazi Party where they could not find one person who could prove that the “Protocols” were genuine have nailed stakes into it time and time again. So why does it keeps on appearing, never changing and always being published somewhere? To Eisner, this is the real crux of the story.

Eisner’s parents were American-Jewish immigrants. They were neither Orthodox nor Reformed, but they did “believe” and as Eisner grew up during the Great Depression- experiencing painful incidents and indignities- he remembered being angry at his parent’s shtetl attitude, who advised him to “be quiet and not offend the goyim”. He was a student with radical inclinations during the 1930s and became interested in the devices that anti-Semites used to promote their message, but it was only till later in his life that he actually came across an English translation of the “Protocols”. He had been thinking about a graphic novel detailing some of the best fakes of the twentieth century, but after reading it he knew that the “Protocols” was the story and that the premise that runs through it and the whole history of the human race was simple: - whenever a group of people are taught to hate, a lie must be formed to inflame that hatred. And the target is always easy to find because the enemy is always the “other”.


The real author of the “Protocols” intended for it never to be used in the way it has or against the Jewish race, in fact his target was Louis Napoleon- Napoleon III. Napoleon III’s reign was not a particularly happy or safe period. He tried to regain France’s prestige through military adventurism which came to an inglorious end when he declared war on Germany whereupon the French were swiftly defeated.
Maurice Joly was a French radical who wrote many caustic essays on French politics of the time and he joined other severe critics of Napoleon III, who regarded him as a ruthless despot. In 1864, Joly wrote a book called “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu”. It was intended to liken Napoleon to the infamous Machiavelli and reveal the French dictator’s dark and evil plans. The book saw publication, but it caused nothing but trouble for Joly after. It was originally published in Belgium and then started to appear in France. Joly was arrested for distributing a forbidden book and sentenced to jail. In 1878, he committed suicide and the book was left to be forgotten.

In 1894 Nicholas II was crowned Tsar of Russia. He had very little experience in affairs of state and was on the whole a dull, reactionary and ineffective ruler. Although revolution was already stirring in Russia, Nicholas authorized a series of pogroms against the Jews in order to maintain a resemblance of order. Such things had happened before, but Nicholas was an easily persuaded man and at the time his most trusted advisor was Sergei Witte. Witte advocated closer links with the West, which was against the feelings of the more Conservative court dominated representatives. The Tsar was all for the links to be established, but feared that the West would not look too kindly upon his pogroms. Witte proffered the view that the Tsars view of the Jews was the same in the West (an altogether not untrue statement), but his views on modernization brought Witte enemies. Gorymikine and Rachovsky in particular, and they were associated with secret police. Taking both Witte’s and the Tsars views upon the Jews they devised a scheme in which if it could be shown that modernization was a Jewish plot the Tsar would quickly back-pedal, but how to do it? Enter the plagiarist and faker Mathieu Golovinski.


Golovinski was from an impoverished, aristocratic family and was politically corrupt from the start. He played both sides, working as a clerk for the state police and organizing street protests at the same time (though making sure he was never found out). Under the protection of Count Dashkov, he faked many false documents that sent men to the gulags and it was Dashkov that referred Golovinski to Soloviev, a member of the Holy Synod. Under Soloviev, Golovinski faked and fabricated press articles denouncing the Jews and their plots to undermine Russia. In Russia religion and politics were the same, but Golovinski cared nothing as long as he was being paid well. In time Soloviev died, Golovinski and his conservative writings fell out of favour with the court and he was accused of provocation and being an informer. Given the choice of Siberia or exile he took the road to France and started work for the Franco-Russian League, an off-shoot of the Okhrana. At the same time Rachkovsky appeared in Paris looking to find his inflammatory document. Reporting to the Okhrana, Rachkovsky set about making up the document that could persuade the Tsar that there was a Jewish plot against his throne. Introduced to Golovinski as one of their best forgers he gave the job to him to be done within 30 days, a seemingly impossible task. The Dreyfus affair was making all the news at the time in Paris and Golovinski was also informed that in 1897 a meeting of leading Jews in Basel had advocated a Jewish state, but there was nothing to support anything that could be seen as a conspiracy. Time was running out for Golovinski when someone, maybe Rachkovsky, introduced him to Maurice Joly’s “Dialogue”. It was perfect. Joly’s attacks on Napoleon could be read as a plan for tyranny, and with changes that made sure that it looked as if it had emanated from Jewish leaders it had all the hallmarks as a conspiracy and a weapon. The stage was set.

The “Protocols” were first published in Russia by one Sergius Nilus, a would-be mystic and competitor to Rasputin. The book was entitled “The Great in the Small” and parts of it were given over to the “Protocols”. Nilus would not say where he had received the document from, only that he had been given it from the Okhrana and he was sure of its truthfulness. Members of the court were less convinced but it did not matter, the Tsar believed it. Witte was out and anti-Jewish pogroms were rampant. It was widely circulated and monarchists frequently read it aloud to illiterate peasants (a chilling parallel to today, with radical Imans reciting anti-Western literature in many poor villages in Pakistan). With the onset of the First World War, and many Russian military defeats, loyalists openly spoke of a “Jewish plot”. The Revolution brought about the downfall of the Tsar and his execution. Many aristocrats fled Russia, settling throughout Europe, the Far East and the Middle East. With very little work experience the frequently sold valuables. Some of these provided information on the Russian use of anti-Semitic literature.

All this happens in much more detail in only the first half of Eisner’s book. Over a long period Eisner stopped using the atmospheric use of shadows and black ink that characterised his work on The Spirit and started more of a wash. This is used to superb effect in The Plot. The black and white wash along with character mannerisms both subtle and exaggerated conveys a sense of discomfort and historical fascination at how easy it is to create and use such a hateful document, but Eisner has only just started. To prove that the “Protocols” are fakes was the easy part (if involving long trawls through a lot of data); to explain why they continue and are still in use is much harder.

The Times of London, 1920, was the first paper in the West to draw attention to the “Protocols”, denouncing them as anti-Semitic. But the story grew in the telling; drawing such luminaries as a young Winston Churchill and Henry Ford into believing them (Ford had bought a small newspaper which was distributed amongst his workers, and later published world-wide. “Borrowings” from the “Protocols” were included. Ford later recanted in 1926 when he was about to be sued for libel). In 1921, a Times writer named Philip Graves was approached in Constantinople by a Russian émigré who had documents and a copy of Joly’s book that could prove that the “Protocols” were fakes. This whole chapter of the book is then given over to comparing both them and Joly’s work, with interpretations from both and Graves (Eisner) showing the similarities. By the end the conclusion is obvious, the document was a fake and The Times said so loudly (pity the Times couldn’t be a little more rigid decades later when they started to publish the Hitler Diaries. They’ve never been able to live that down). Unfortunately, at the same time in Germany Hitler had started his rise to power and was extensively using the “Protocols” for his own ends. The Nazi Party knew that the document was faked, but it didn’t matter. As with pre-Revolutionary Russia, the country was a mess and someone had to be blamed. In Bern 1935, the “Protocols” first came under fire in court. The Jewish community was suing the Nazi Party for the distribution of it and the verdict was clear, it was a fake. You may think that with the Allied discovery of Goebbels’diary, stating that it was useful propaganda, again with the U.S. Senates report in 1964 that condemned it, or with the “Protocols” finally returning home and a high-ranking Russian court saying that they were fakes, the “Protocols” were dead and buried, a relic from an ignorant past. Unfortunately they are not.

In Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, the “Protocols” were just a little bit less popular than the Bible. There is not one anti-Semitic group that has not used them in some way, and it is because a lot of its adherents knew of its origin that they have tried to muddy and obfuscate its beginning. The document is still wide spread across the world, even more so with advent of the internet, but the authenticity of the work doesn’t matter to those who believe it. The anti-Semite, according to Jean-Paul Sartre, “turns himself to stone”. Bigotry becomes their way of explaining the world without recourse to logic or facts. Anti-Semitism (or anti-Western, or anti-Islam) is a convenient worldview for those who feel threaten by the modern age, or the future, and those who seek comfort in rigid religious and anti-democratic forms of authority. Eisner explains this in a fictional meeting with his younger, more radical self; the “Protocols” are nothing more than a weapon of mass deception (?) In all cultures there are those who wish for political power, and what easier way to gain it by then identifying a felt threat to the people and leading a defence. Fear of the “other” and impact that “they” could have on a way of life has led to the world that we all now inhabit. In the end, the “Protocols” are irrelevant, a bogey to be used as and when it suits, far more disturbing are the motives behind such documents.

Eisner’s book is an important one, and should have received a lot more media coverage than it did (the literary section of the Sunday Times and Newsnight Late Review totally ignored it, preferring to bitch or rave about something as insubstantial as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). It was Eisner’s last work before he died and is a fitting end to a career that turned the whole of the comic book genre upon its head. Like Schulz, Eisner believed that the idiom should be used to entertain and inform not preach and with The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion he succeeds admirably. Will his tale last longer than the “Protocols” themselves? Sadly the answer has to be no. By the end of his tale, Eisner has realised that human nature will not change, that even if something has been proved to be false time and time again the lie will always suit someone’s view and rise, vampire-like, no matter how many times it gets staked. I thoroughly recommend the book as both a piece of documentary and historical writing, it may be slender compared to something like Jung Changs "Mao" or Simon Schamas "History of Britain" but its importance is comparable.


The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is by Will Eisner (with an introduction by Umberto Eco), published in hardback by Norton and priced £12.99.

Buttons, Bangles and Bows

Whilst looking through the site with a colleague from my place of work, I went onto BOTW and started going through some of the reviews. Now I didn't tell my co-worker that I was the one who wrote the reviews but his remark was succinct: "What are they doing, reviewing or writing the books?” My reply was said with just a little tongue in cheek, "Yeah, he does go on a bit. Very long-winded, doesn't get to the point quickly". So, just for a change I'm going to do some very quick and to the point reviews (and if you think that this is just an excuse for me wanting to get some game play in and being too lazy to do a proper review. You would be partially right).

So, let’s start off with:-

Ghost in the Shell: Man-Machine Interface

First of all Shirow is a God. His art is gorgeous, his attention to detail meticulous and his women are drop-dead sexy. Man-Machine Interface wasn't meant to be a sequel to his earlier Ghost in the Shell story, but in this new and extended edition from Dark Horse it has become so. Its science and philosophy are definitely hardcore and needs a few readings to appreciate fully but who cares, his women are drop-dead gorgeous! In fact the only drawback is that in its original serial format it was printed in a standard comic book size, but the graphic has been reduced as per its printing in Japan thereby depriving the reader of a lot of beautiful art (and women).
Recommended, so buy it now (did I mention that Shirow draws gorgeous women)

Ghost in the Shell: Man-Machine Interface is by Shirow Masamune and published by Dark Horse priced £18.95



Dirty Pair: Run from the Future



Taking of gorgeous and nubile girls (well, I was anyway) and continuing in this vein let’s have a little blast from the past with Adam Warrens Dirty Pair: Run from the Future. The Dirty Pair were the creations of Haruka Takachio and reflected Japan's obsession during the '60's and '70's with female wrestling. The Dirty Pair (or the Lovely Angels, as they like to call themselves) are trouble consultants for the WWWA in the far future. Very good at their jobs (and scantily dressed) they also have an unfortunate knack for leaving mass destruction and billions dead in their wake, but are absolved of this because it's not directly their fault. The Pair never appeared in the manga format in Japan but this didn’t stop Warren from writing and drawing one of the funniest and satirical series of Amerimanga ever. Warren takes pokes at a lot of scared cows (the best being artists with their self-inflated worth and views about art), the art is wonderful with beautiful digital colouring, gratuitous nudity abounds with the all important accompanying violence and it’s funny as hell.
Buy, buy, buy.



Dirty Pair: Run from the Future is by Adam Warren and published by Dark Horse priced £10.95

Powers: Legends

Deena swears. Deena swears some more. Deena swears a lot more. Deena swears more than anyone in the history of comics. Yep, Powers is exactly the same as always (oh, and Walker solves a homicide case and has to train a new Retro Girl). Get it now.

Powers: Legends is by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, published by Icon (an imprint of Marvel Comics), priced £13.50





Starman: Sons of the Father



Elegiac. Ooo, that’s a good word. Can mean either poetic or funereal and that perfectly sums up the last volume in the Starman series by James Robinson and Peter Snejbjerg. It’s also about fatherhood and how that changes a man (or should) and therefore is something every father should read. From Jack’s own son to his father and brother to Superman and Jor-El, it’s all there and is much better with the male bonding than going into a wood and dancing around a campfire naked whilst covered in excrement. But it also acknowledges the power of the feminist icon in that Jack knows it is time to hang up the Starman mantle and pass it on to next generation. As he has been to the future and has some knowledge he knows “That she’ll be magnificent”. A perfect book for those who love family and their past and future generations.

Starman: Sons of the Father is by James Robinson and Peter Snejbjerg, published by DC Comics and priced £10.95






Hey, this is dead easy. Before you know it I’ll be able to write for AICN. So let’s carry on shall we.







Swallow
Seeing Things
Underbelly

I love art books, especially ones that challenge perception. Underbelly by Dave Cooper and Seeing Things by Jim Woodring do this perfectly. Woodring is the creator of Frank and his art book features many of the same hallucinogenic qualities that the regular Frank title has. Disturbing in an organic way its only drawback is that three-quarters of it is in black and white. Underbelly is disturbing in another way. Cooper has a fascination with the, shall we say, somewhat larger woman and this gallery of grotesques, with their large eyes, bearing of teeth and bullying of thinner women brings forth feelings of repulsion and compulsion to know them better.









Swallow is a new compendium from IDW featuring the best of old and newer artists. It’s put together by Ashley Wood, definitely one of my favourites and like all compendiums it’s a bit of hit-and-miss affair. There’s nothing wrong with the art contained within, it’s all brilliantly realised and technically proficient but somebody like Phil Hale or Jeremy Geddes feel too slick whilst Celia Calle and Kelsey Shannon have a good pop art style with the right amount of rawness.





Swallow is by Ashley Wood/Various, published by IDW and priced £10.99
Seeing Things is by Jim Woodring, published by Fantagraphics and priced £16.99
Underbelly is by Dave Cooper, published by Fantagraphics and priced £16.99



Genshiken


The world of the Japanese Otaku can be quite confusing to most Westerners. The best, or nearest equivalent here would be a nerd or geek, but that seems just a bit too insulting for someone who just very interested in something……….
Anyway, where’s the difference in someone who knows every episode of Dr.Who/ Star Trek/ Macross or someone who knows where, how and at what time Harry Potter lost his virginity (what? What do you mean he hasn’t lost it yet? The kid goes to a public school for Gods sake. They’re a hot-bed of lust and perversion, just look at Tomkinson’s Schooldays).




Genshiken tells about the strange world of the Otaku and how it looks to the outsider, especially a female outsider. Saki Kasukabe just wants to have a normal relationship with her boyfriend Makoto, but the world of anime, manga, cosplay, gaming etc. all get in the way. It doesn’t help that all of the members of Genshiken try and rope her into their activities and it gets worse when a female member joins and she starts to realise that excessiveness is not gender specific. Funny and telling about both sides of the spectrum, so you’ve no excuse to run out and get a copy now.

Genshiken is by Kio Shimoku, published by Del Rey and priced £7.99


Battle Vixens Volume 7


Back to the hot babes of Battle Vixens. Cute Japanese schoolgirls? Check. Large breasts? Check. Kick-ass fighting? Check. Gratuitous pantie shots? Check. Lesbian leanings? Check. Hot hunks? Check. Ripped and revealing clothing? Check.
Ok, that’s all in order. Moving along

Battle Vixens is by Yuji Shiozaki, published by TokyoPop, and priced £6.50





Wanted

Ever wanted to know what would happened if all the super-villains took over the world? All is answered in every sordid detail in Wanted by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. This is just a brilliant tale with the right amount of “just sailing close enough to established characters to get nearly sued” needed to put one over on DC and Marvel. Unfortunately that what really did nearly happen when Eminem’s people found out who Millar had based his anti-hero upon. How Tommy Lee Jones’ lawyers didn’t do the same God only knows. Violent and sexy at the same time, the most fun you can get out of the book is guessing which hero or villain the characters are based on. If you don’t buy this then you’ve no balls (hey, now I’m starting to sound like Warren Ellis. Cool).





Wanted is by Mark Millar and J.G.Jones, published by Top Cow and priced £19.99

And finally……

Boneyard Volume 4

This is another variation on The Munster’s or The Addams Family in that an ordinary person becomes involved with a myriad assortment of night creatures when he inherits a cemetery. But creator Richard Moore has a more subversive take in that whilst the afore-mentioned families were sympathetic and an example of Republican family values the inhabitants of Boneyard remain somewhat true to themselves. Therefore the hell spawn out to kill the entire human race really is out to do so but can’t completely get it right, mostly due to his obsession with Deanna Troy. Or the walking skeleton is really a surly curmudgeon; the werewolf is a leather-clad rocker and the vampiress Abby falls headlong in love with Michael the human owner but has to maintain her exterior Undead cool. How Moore manages to make a swamp creature sexy should probably not be answered.
Boneyard is fun and funny, a perfect antidote to the insipid teenage horror movie fodder that’s become a mainstay of cinema now (I want to see some REAL blood and guts in my horror for Christ’s sake. Not some Paris Hilton wannabee being terrorised by a blue-screen tentacle and I don’t want to go to screening with a bunch of spotty oiks who giggle at the first sight of a nipple).






Boneyard Volume 4 is by Richard Moore, published by NBM and priced £6.50

Wow, that was easy. Probably would get a job as a literary critic now, I’ve managed to review eleven books with over 1,500 words without really saying anything. Come to think of it that makes me a perfect television critic, move over A.A. Gill I’m a-coming....

And Now a Word From Our Sponsors

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Do The Batusi

It’s been nearly twenty years since Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli gave the Bat-Man a new, grim and gritty origin. Everyone knew the original. Parents shot down in front of him at an early age, vows revenge, trains body and mind, ponders how to go about it, criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, bat flies through window, ba-doom, light bulb above head, puts on cape. And believe it or not, all it took Bob Kane- the creator of Bat-Man- to tell all that was just two pages (same for Siegel and Schuster, when they told Superman’s origin. Think about that the next time some super-hero movie makes you feel like you’ve wasted two and a half hours on what is nothing but an origin story. Yes, Mr. Ang Lee, I’m looking at you. Pay attention at the back).



But readers need a little more than what was -admittedly- a simple excuse to meet out some form of punishment. So, over the years, with different writers and artists, the origin grew larger. The murderer of Bruce Wayne’s parents gained a name (Joe Chill) and the Bat-Man finally tracked him down (but did not achieve his revenge. Chill managed to connect his murder of the Wayne’s to Bruce and figure that Wayne and Bat-Man were one and the same. When the criminal underworld discovered this -though not Bat-Man’s true identity- they executed Chill for all the troubles the Bat-Man had inflicted upon them), Alfred was introduced, as was the discovery of the underground cavern beneath Wayne manor. Bruce’s parents were given names (Thomas and Martha) and became part of Gothams elite with enormous wealth. Dick Grayson was brought in to appeal to younger readers and with that the Bat-Man family grew to include Batwoman, Batgirl, Bat-Mite, Ace (the Bat-Dog), a myriad of more colourful and comical villains, the lessening of the vigilante aspects, shark anti-repellent Bat-Spray (I don’t even have to see your faces to know what they look like after reading all this). All the silliness that had accumulated over the decades were somewhat washed away in the deconstruction/ Neal Adams period of the early ‘70’s with a return to a leaner, menacing look and socially aware feeling. But one thing always remained constant in the tale and was one the keys to Miller’s new origin. No murder, no Bat-Man.



Flushed from his success in telling the end of the Bat-Man’s life in The Dark Knight Returns, Miller also wrote his beginning, giving it a more realistic aspect by returning to the noir styling of his Daredevil days and adding more than a dash of the Scorsese Mean Streets/ Taxi Driver period. The story was told in four parts in the regular Batman title and together with Mazzucchelli; Miller defined the new origin for a new age. Although the cornerstone of no murder, no Bat-Man remained inviolate, the reasoning of Bruce Wayne changed. Miller considered vengeance to be less than a heroic ideal, and so he made Wayne someone who is not out for on his quest for personal reasons, Wayne is much bigger than that. Miller made the Bat-Man into someone who wanted to change the world into a place where there would be no repeat of what happened to him, that there would be no reason for the Bat-Man to exist. The Bat-Man simply wants the world to be a better place and for him and his like to disappear. It’s just his methods and the way he goes about it that gives people pause for thought.

But it’s method that Wayne doesn’t have at the beginning of the story. He knows he’s ready. He’s prepared and trained for the day he returns to Gotham City but his first recce into Gotham is a complete disaster. Miller shows here that you just can’t get powers, put on a cape and then expect it all to come together instantly, it takes time. Wayne decides to go into one of the worst parts of Gotham just to get a feel for the place. It couldn’t be worse. Gotham is a hell-hole, and although Miller and Mazzucchelli did not give a specific time period for their tale, it reflects everything bad of late ‘60’s/ early ‘70’s New York to the extreme. Mazzucchelli illustrates a spot-on recreation of Times Square during that period. Corruption, vice and decay abound. Disguised as an ex-vet Wayne is propositioned by a (very young) prostitute, when he gently rebuffs her advances she is laid upon by her pimp. Wayne then gets into a knife fight with him, some of his other girls and, in also her first new origin, Selina Kyle. The latest version of The Catwoman is a low-rent prostitute with a speciality in S & M and her first sentence is pure Miller:-

“You know what I hate most about men? Never met one.”

Over the years, DC has toned down Miller’s take on her but this was still radical at the time and proof that Miller was out to pull no punches. Its remains part of the Bat-Man canon, but has been pushed more into the background and these days Selina is more the lady thief that readers have known for longer.



Wayne is badly injured in the knife-fight and it’s made worse when he is shot by the cops. His journey back to the mansion, beautifully described and depicted by M & M makes him realised that his attackers and the police did not fear him. He was just another man looking for a fight and as he sits alone, bleeding to death, Wayne knows that it has come to the end. He needs a sign, he needs to make criminals fear him and he doesn’t know how to do it. But whereas Kane had a small bat flutter into Wayne’s view, here Miller makes it a primordial force- one that smashes through the windows, a demon from Hell. In conjunction with The Dark Knight Returns, when a similar incident makes Wayne put the suit back on again after a long retirement, Miller maybe putting across the suggestion that Wayne is at this point not entirely sane. It certainly feels that way and in the real world someone doing the same thing would be classified as such, but as I pointed out in my Avengers review, we are not in the real world and in his after word Mazzucchelli also ponders this. Both he and Miller had decided on grounding the origin tale in the real, a world that was recognizable to the readers. But both also realised that taking it too far would expose the absurdities of the genre, the more “realistic” heroes become the less believable they are. It is a delicate balance, but as Mazzucchelli succinctly points out: Superheroes are real when they’re drawn in ink.

When Mazzucchelli first collaborated with Miller on Daredevil: Born Again, he stuck closely to a Miller style that wouldn’t alienate too much Daredevil’s readers. With Year One he comes more into his own with a heavy line style more reminiscent of Alex Toth. Toth, considered to be the definitive Zorro artist, used black and white negative space to give shape and form. Mazzucchelli also uses this style to good effect and although Year One is in colour, which diminishes this slightly- though that is no slur on colourist Richmond Lewis whose palette is both subtle and garish when needed- you can see how effective it is in such scenes as the Wayne’s murder, or the Bat-Man announcing his intentions to the corrupt officials and mobsters of Gotham. Miller reigns back some of his operatic writing style to give the tenor of a more personal one. This is helped greatly in what was, at the time, something of a revelation in comics. With the aid of caption boxes in the style of journal or diary, Miller could eschew the use of thought balloons and at the same time give the characters more reasoning and motive for their actions. Though this effect was first seen in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and then bettered in Watchmen, it’s here in Year One that it matures.

Miller’s writing sparkles. Year One is full of excitement and witty dialogue. On first reading, being only a four part serial, it can seem brief with too much going on, but with re-reading you learn to appreciate the nuances and come to realise that this is not only the Bat-Man’s origin but James Gordon’s as well.

The Bat-Man’s first night out is not a total success. Lucky amateur is what Wayne calls himself and he soon comes to realise that he needs the help of others. Bringing the Assistant D.A. Harvey Dent on side is easy but Gordon is a more complex person. From the very start we know that Gordon is a good cop, an honest one, someone who stepped on too many toes in his old patch of Chicago:-

“Gotham City. Maybe it’s all I deserve now. Maybe it’s just my time in Hell……….This is no place to raise a family”.




Gordon knows that he should not support a vigilante like the Bat-Man, but after seeing him in action and knowing that he works in a city where the mayor and commissioner use cops as hired killers, his badge and gun feel a lot heavier in his hands. But Miller draws no comparisons between Wayne and Gordon. Neither man wants to be the other. Gordon may slightly envy the Bat-Mans ability to work outside the law in order to get results, but he loves being a cop and Wayne would certainly feel enclosed and restricted in his quest. Gordon has a family he feels he should be more responsible to whilst Wayne has none; he is justice rampant, obsessive to the point of insanity. In Year One, Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Returns Again, Miller questions just how far someone should go in a quest for justice before it becomes all consuming. Unfortunately, Miller cannot quite give the answer as he is too close to his subject and his methods. Therefore Gordon becomes the reasoning voice; the one who realises that justice also has it laws to stop it from becoming an oppressive force. The Bat-Man wants criminals to fear him, but how long would it be before he realises that people are the cause of crime and wants everyone to fear him. This view was put across well in Kingdom Come, wherein the Bat-Man has achieved a kind of crime-free Gotham, but at the cost of turning it into a police state.

This edition of Batman: Year One has no real good reason for it to be release except as a cynical ploy by DC to cash in on Batman Begins, the movie that it will closely resemble. But that shouldn’t stop you from buying a book that bristles with lines like:-

“I should have taken the train. I should be closer. I should see the enemy”

“And the man with the frightened, hollow eyes and a voice like glass being crushed…..since all sense left my life”.

“Lucky. Lucky amateur”.

“You’ve eaten Gothams wealth. It’s spirit. Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on…. None of you are safe”.

“He saved that old woman. He saved that cat. He even paid for that suit. The hunk of metal in my hands is heavier than ever…..”

“You can never escape me. Bullets don’t harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I know pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you”.

“I suppose you’ll take up flying next-- Like that fellow in Metropolis”.

“I listen--the radiator hisses, spits water on the street--I don’t hear a human sound--I don’t hear my baby cry”.

And the last two, joyous final panels where James Gordon has finally given up the cigarettes and the light of his pipe glows upon his face in the falling snow:-
“As for me—well, there’s a real panic on. Somebody threaten to poison the Gotham reservoir. Calls himself the Joker. I’ve got a friend coming who might be able to help. Should be here any minute”.

Now that’s a good ending.



Year One is a good, taut, noir thriller. A precursor to Millers Sin City, with stylish artwork and a place in the comicdom Hall of Fame as the template for the Tim Burton movies and the latest Batman Begins. It brought a newer grim and gritty feel to the world of the Bat-Man that, although not utilised by other writers as much as it could have been, managed to renew the character whilst staying true to its roots.

Batman: Year One is by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. Published by DC Comics in hardback and priced £12.99. Available from all good book and comic book stores.

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Returning to the last review and Avengers Disassembled, I've now read the full graphic, instead of it being a monthly piecemeal, and come to the conclusion that this is one of the finest pieces of story-telling in comics today. It's an exciting, full of blood and thunder, well-paced tale with fine art and mood setting colouring. With its examination of the heroic ideal, it’s a fine addition, not only to the Avengers canon, but to the epic sagas of the past.

Write Brian Bendis and artist David Finch also manage to depict the serious side of super-heroics without falling into the trap of making it "relevant", "meaningful" or scoring cheap points over the very idea of a superhero or villain. Something that was brought home very forcibly by- of all people- Alan Moore in a recent edition of Chain Reaction on Radio 5. Moore got a cheap laugh from the audience by pointing out the psychological inadequacies of someone who dresses up as a bat. But he didn't make the distinction that the moment a writer introduces a character such as Superman, or The Bat-Man or Spider-Man or Captain America or even his own Dr. Manhattan or Miracleman, then the whole structure of a story becomes different (though to be fair to Moore, he did investigate how super-heroes would change the world in Watchmen and Miracleman, especially how heroes can turn themselves into real, living gods. But it was still a cheap shot). That the world such a person would inhabit is most definitely not our "real" world and the "real world" rules no longer apply. It may look the same, and by doing so give the reader a grounding he or she can relate to, but it IS different and has to be so in order to create, what is after all, a fantasy tale. If real "reality" was introduced too much into stories than we'd see and realise that someone like King Arthur was nothing but a sad cuckold, James Bond is a misogynistic woman-beater, or Gandalf was a manipulator of the highest order.



In fact, the only complaint I have in worlds such as the DC or Marvel Universes is that these are obviously high tech ones with many wonders and that none of the general public seem to share in such innovations. Transporters, life saving suits of armour, quinjets, Blackbirds, easy inter-galactic space-travel-none of these are readily available to the man on the street. Not even the Pym Particle (which helps Ant-Man to change size) is used in surgery to aid without the means of intrusive measures (except during the Kree-Skrull War Saga. One of the best Avenger tales,” Journey To The Centre of the Android" whereby Antman has to explore the Visions body in order to help repair it in a way reminiscent of Fantastic Voyage. This is all beautifully and weirdly depicted by Neal Adams and made quite an impression on me when I first read it many years ago), Pym even laments in Avengers Disassembled that the only thing he'll probably be remembered for (as well as being a wife-beater and schizophrenic) is creating Ultron, a constantly updating homicidal robot with genocidal plans for the whole human race. The most the general public will get is an ATM that'll them in a nice, friendly, Douglas Adams way that they are overdrawn and won't get any money.

But I digress. One of the major themes in Avengers Disassembled is how reactive groups like the Avengers or the JLA are. Most of the time super-heroes will just sit around waiting for the next big crime or alien invasion to occur. Very rarely are characters worried about cause and effect. We, as readers, know full well that The Bat-Mans world would be much better off, and fewer people would die, if he just simply killed The Joker. And that if all the heroes are made to disband, the villains would run rampant (something not addressed at all in The Incredibles, but to good effect in Powers (Bendis/ Oeming) and Wanted (Miller/ Jones)).But of course this leads to the moral dilemma that heroes do not kill and they are then left with the somewhat vague hope that it will all turn out alright in the end. This is namby-pamby, woolly thinking and it is such a case of misjudgement that brings down the Avengers. As said in the last review Wanda Maximoff (the Scarlet Witch) is the source of the Avengers one bad day. A brutalised woman since childhood, she believed that she deserved some happiness in her chaotic life. Only then to see it crudely taken away from her -the Avengers colluded in the removal of all the memories of her imaginary children. Upon finding this out, one of the most powerful mutants in the Marvel Universe, with the ability to change probability, has a breakdown and seeks revenge on those she feels did her harm. Cause and effect. Something not seen too often in the world of comic books.



Amidst all the Bruckheimer explosions is some of Bendis' better dialogue. Realistic in its tenor, with the right amount of confusion and hesitancy that something beyond your control would bring, but also with the lighter moments that conflict can bring:-

S.H.I.E.L.D. Grunt #1: "I'm not trained for robotic defence systems"
S.H.I.E.L.D. Grunt #2: "Sucks to be you."

Characters hit just the right notes. Captain America is firm and authorative, Hawkeye bullish and gung-oh. The Wasp confused and hurt by what is going on around her, fruitlessly pleading with the She-Hulk to calm down after tearing apart the Vision:-

"Jennifer, PLEASE, please don't do this. You're NOT your cousin. You’re in control. This isn't you!! You can control it!! Don't. Please- not today--"

The calming effect that Dr.Strange has on all the Avengers as he relates what has been occurring under their very noses. The regret that Hank Pym feels in what he has done with his career and married life. The betrayal that Tony Stark (Iron Man) feels when he believes that everyone thinks he's started drinking again. All of it is pitch perfect, leading to a more fuller and enjoyable reading experience. Even the deaths of Hawkeye, Scott Lang (current Ant-Man) and the Vision, which led to outrage on the fanboys forums gives a feeling of un-expectancy. That we are not just reading the same old, same old, and that this is an exciting and unpredictable story, taking no prisoners. Reading it as a serial I couldn't wait to read the next instalment and this is the kind of thing that has been missing a lot in the comic book world of late (and something that the producers of the latest incarnation of Dr.Who have taken to heart. No leaks on set, no fan visits, no idea of what or who the stories will contain. Too much information can be a bad thing).

Sure, it all sounds a little bombastic but this is offset by some fine detailed art from David Finch, There is no doubt that a lot of his characters can look the same, but his expressions are faultless and situations wonderfully depicted. The destruction of The Avengers Mansion, the meltdown of The Vision, She-Hulks rampage, the Kree attack and Hawkeye's subsequent death, all the while surrounded by the ensuing inferno given a dark and brimstone feel by Frank D'Amarta's excellent use of colour. One splash page in particular can be used as a good example of this as Giant-Man looks down upon the devastation before him, we, the readers look up to him and see behind him a clear blue sky and New York skyscrapers. Coming from the fire and ashes of the previous pages we fully realise how small and tight the area of conflict was in.


Avengers Disassembled is a rip-roaring tale with good, solid performances from everyone involved. A mature look at how not resolving your battles can store up problems for later and the regret that one can feel at this (even Magneto, with his small cameo, feels it: - "I failed you" he says to his now comatose daughter). By the end the Avengers have disbanded and the Mansion left standing as a monument to their failings, but even now there is hope as the final gathering remember their past achievements and their fallen comrades (Thor is also dead. Ragnarok finally coming to Asgard, whether this was due to the manipulations of the Scarlet Witch remains to be seen), and the final panel as the Avengers stand silent before thousands of New Yorkers in a candle-lit vigil brought a lump to the throat of this old fanboy. Great moments abound throughout the history of The Avengers and this is one of them.


Speaking of great moments in comics there has been a couple of them lately and I just want to quickly go over them. Both have come from the pen of Warren Ellis and whilst he has been cruising of late (a lot of bottom of the drawer work given a dusting) and the always superb Planetary is worth waiting for, his work on Ultimate Fantastic Four and the new Iron Man has been exemplary. The Ultimate FF is a fine addition to the Ultimate Universe, with logical explanations for the four and their powers (especially Johnny Storm's) and it's the final panel from issue 15 that really sent a creeping feeling up my spine. The FF are exploring the Negative Zone for the first time. Long time readers of the regular FF will know that the Zone is an anti-universe adjacent to theirs, with all its attendant inhabitants and problems. In the Ultimate FF, the Negative Zone is pretty well the same, but a vast empty universe that is slowly dying. For a long time the four come across nothing (leading up to a joyous moment when the Thing goes for a space walk and laughs himself silly with the happiness he feels) until they come arrive at a huge space station that is seemingly lifeless. They make contact with its inhabitants and prepare for docking and then to go and meet their first alien contact. Ellis and Kubert depict all of this as standard until the last panel when you see Annihilus looking out of the porthole and regular readers of the FF all go "Ooohhh Shittttt". Honestly, a very horrible feeling went up my spine when I saw him/her/it? A great moment.



The other came from the reboot of Iron Man after The Avengers Disassembled storyline. The moment comes when Tony Stark is interviewed by, of all people, John Pilger the investigative journalist. Pilger starts off the interview giving Stark an opportunity to explain that although he is a weapons designer, he is not a weapons manufacturer and that the Iron Man suit is used to help promote peace and aid. It soon comes clear though that Pilger has an alternative motive and reveals how some of Starks military designs have maimed and injured people. Pilger ignores Starks protest that although his designs have been used like this it has also led to advances in medicine and public life (a truism in this real world as well. Many wars have led to better surgical procedures) in which the public have a better life style and expectancy. Pilger, in his usual sanctimonious way, ignores all of this until an irritated Stark asks him if Pilger believes that anything he (Pilger) has done has changed the world. Pilger replies that he doesn't know wherein Stark says the same but he does know that most of his inventions have led to a better world for most of its inhabitants. Stark rubs it in even more by letting Pilger know that he is a cultural ghost. Most people don't know who he is or the work he has done (a fact borne out that when I related this part of the story to Kat, she also asked who John Pilger is) and is therefore unimportant, someone always sniping away in the sidelines. There is no doubt that people like Pilger have brought to the worlds attention miscarriages of justice or genocide, but their strident ways of doing it, and hatred of anything that doesn't conform to their world view has begun to turn people off. Therefore becoming the cultural ghosts Stark says they are. I don't know if Ellis intended it to be an insult, but it certainly works and again another classic moment.


Avengers Disassembled is by Brian Bendis and David Finch, published by Marvel Comics, priced £10.50 and available from all good comic book stores.

Ultimate Fantastic Four is by Ellis and Kubert, published monthly by Marvel Comics

Iron Man is by Ellis and Granov, published monthly by Marvel Comics

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted

Now and then, I get asked why I don't review any actual comics on the site, just graphics. The main reason for this is that I believe it to be unfair on the book, the creators and publishing house to either praise or berate one issue of what could possibly be a successful long-running saga or change of direction that could improve or destroy. It would be like basing any critique of the whole of the Star Wars saga on The Phantom Menace or Barnaby Rudge as an example of the works of Dickens. Comics have a problem here in that they are a serialized medium and reviewers have to have something to write about, so they take the gamble of writing about something and then falling flat on their faces later.


Identity Crisis from DC and Avengers Disassembled from Marvel have been the bane of the comic reviewers life over the last few months, as the forum boards have been alight over the storylines but the reviewers have been torn about whether individual issues where any good and would they look stupid or prophetic if either story turned out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread or the comic equivalent of Howard the Duck. In the end they took a middle of the road approach and decide to talk about nothing but the art- which they all decided in both tales was superb- and wait until it was all over, when they unleashed the hounds of hell. Identity Crisis got off the most lightly, being constantly riveting all the way through until it fell down at the last hurdle (the Atom's wife has gone insane and is the murder?!), but the most bile was directed at Avengers Disassembled and to writer Brian Bendis for seemingly betraying what the Avengers meant and killing off beloved characters of long standing.

It looks like Identity Crisis is going to walk off with all the awards (even with its weak ending) and Avengers is going to remain debated for some time to come, but both had the same themes, love, want and mind wiping.



Ever wondered why some of the villains in the DC stories were so goofy and useless? Seems certain members of the JLA made them that way by magically lobotomizing them (courtesy of Zatanna) to make them less dangerous and to protect their families and close relatives. This all came about from one of the more harrowing events in DC history when the then JLA orbiting satellite was infiltrated by a more vicious Dr.Light, who, finding Sue Dibny (wife of the Elongated Man) alone, proceeded to rape her. Caught in the act by returning members of the JLA, Dr.Light taunted them by telling them that no matter how long he would be incarcerated for, he’d escape (as he pointed out. The villains always did) and now that he knew who Sue Dibny was, he’d come back to do the same again. Torn by their principles, that heroes do not kill, the group elected to have Zatanna wipe Light’s mind making him less sadistic and murderous. Unfortunately for them they also had to wipe a returning Bat-Man’s memory of the events when he tried to stop them (setting up storylines to come) and it got worse when the then Flash (Barry Allen) asked for it to be done to the whole of his group of rogues. You can see the moral ethics involved and this was separate from the murder of Sue Dibny and its subsequent investigation.

Here was the moment when regular DC continuity entered Watchmen territory and it must be said that on the whole it does work. Characters that would seemingly not do the acts carried out in Identity do so with just the right amount of soul-searching. Lines are crossed and waters muddied. The instigator of the wipes is the human rights activist Green Arrow, whilst the man trying to stop them is the supposed law-breaker Bat-Man. Of course Alan Moore did the same thing in Watchmen- a cruel, logical but more hideous solution hidden behind a crime of seemingly bigger proportions- and did it better (though as I have written, a shallow piece of work), it must be said that Identity Crisis can hold it’s head high with mature writing and themes from Brad Meltzer and finely detailed art from Rags Morales. The events in Identity Crisis are to continually felt throughout the DC Universe for some time to come and if nothing else it’ll be interesting to see how other writers handle the same themes.


The Avengers Disassembled though. Ah, now that got a lot of reader’s het up. According to some life long readers of The Avengers, Brian Bendis was destroying everything they stood for. Characters were acting at odds with themselves; very popular ones were killed off. The naysayers missed the point though; Bendis had started making the book edgy, dangerous and unpredictable. Events occurred that were shocking (She-Hulk ripping apart the Vision, the total destruction of the Avengers Mansion) and horrifying (the discovery of Agatha Harkness. Possibly murdered by her adopted daughter), all depicted in a hellish inferno courtesy of David Finch. This was not the standard super-heroics and it was all the better for it. Instead of doing the same old thing again and again, the status quo was changed and this was what probably pissed off the old guard. Bendis made it worse for them by making it obvious that long time readers- like The Avengers- should have seen it coming.



Wanda Maximoff was the unstable product of a violent upbringing. A powerful mutant able to alter reality, she had an absent father fixation that she transferred onto her brother and then discovered that they were the son and daughter of Magneto, a man who had mentally bullied them whilst they all in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. After joining the Avengers, she fell in love with the Vision, an android designed to destroy the Avengers, married him and then wanting children so badly (even though it was an impossibility), created twins with her powers to complete what she thought would be one happy family. Reality came crashing in though and Wanda was forced to admit that her children were merely figments of her imagination whilst her husband was stripped of his humanity (on the orders of the UN) and returned to his original non-feeling android state. All this proved too much for Wanda and she joined her father on his quest for world domination. Her fellow Avengers though, brought her back to her senses and colluded in helping Agatha Harkness to wipe Wanda’s mind of her children. So the seeds of their destruction were sown. A chance remark by the Wasp about her children sent Wanda trying to find answers which led her to another breakdown and revenge upon those who had cause her so much pain.

Bendis relates a tale of blood and tears rarely seen in comicdom. The Avengers, like the JLA, have brought themselves down. As in all great tragedies, their downfall came from within, their arrogance and short-sightedness leading to the destruction of their kingdom. Heroes are not supposed to have this kind of thing happen to them, or supposedly behave the way they have in both tales. But whilst fans lapped up the ambiguities in Identity Crisis, Avenger fans felt that Bendis had strayed too far from the epic qualities that their team warranted and gave it a grim and gritty feel it was unsuited for. The fact that Bendis also tends to use a lot of what could be termed “natural speak”, and accurately reflect how people talk in a crisis (without the swearing. He leaves that to his Powers comic) led to the accusation that the tale was too wordy, leaving the uncomfortable feeling that some comic book fans are still in the world of comic rule #1: Conflict creates character.

Both tales are recommended but The Avengers Disassembled is the better of the two, having more excitement and passion. It’s a pity that a lot of people who should have liked it were so against it simply because it did something unexpected.



Identity Crisis is by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales, published by DC Comics. Avengers Disassembled is by Brian Bendis and David Finch, published by Marvel Comics. Available from all good comic book stores.

Liquorice Allsorts

When Love and Rockets was a (somewhat) on-going comic I didn't pay too much attention to the Locas section of it. Then, the magazine was usually split into two sections- Jamie Hernandez was the writer/ artist on Locas, detailing life among the Mexican community of Hoppers, South LA, whilst his brother Gilbert was writer/artist on Heartbreak Soup about life in Palomar (reviewed 03/12/03). Not that I didn't like Locas of course, I did, but the intimacy and closeness of its characters plus the fact that it could take some time for an individual issue to appear meant I’d usually forgotten how and why part-time lovers, Maggie and Hopey, had gotten into the situations they found themselves in. Its tight familial storyline with an assortment of weird and very strange plotlines just didn't hold my attention as well as the fractured structure and different facets that a whole town of people (think Heimat of the comic world) could conjure in Heartbreak Soup.

Now though, as with Palomar, Locas has received the collected hardback edition and with a more accessible format, the story gels together better and with more cohesion. Its close look at life in Hoppers and all the ups and downs of the main characters is now more rounded and brought to life better. Jamie Hernandez’s' art and writing grows in maturity and style, fulfilling the early promise first seen in the Mechanics storyline- for Locas looked very different than to how it ended.

The title Love and Rockets gave hints to its contents; it was both a pastiche of the romance comic and sci-fi. At the beginning of Locas, the young heroine, Maggie, was a girl mechanic who would work on rocket ships and robots whilst worrying about the crush she had on her co-worker Rand Race and how it would have effect her relationship with Hopey. Life in Hoppers was mostly in the background and the sci-fi aspect of the tales did not break through. This was also the case in Heartbreak Soup, wherein when any of the inhabitants of Palomar went to the big city, it would have a Metropolis look, dwarfing the characters with its huge skyscrapers and slightly weird inhabitants. At its inception Locas had a Latin American feel, especially with its stories of revolution, female wrestling and punk music. Jamie’s close panelling and block use of black and white to create outline gave his strip a more guerrilla look and feel, much different to his style by the end when he was using clean line.



Both Locas and Soup use tight story structures to make you care about their characters, creating whole and rounded people that you can relate to. Obstentially about Maggie (or Perla or Shrimp or Margaret. And this perfectly illustrates the fact that by the end of the story, Hernandez had to remind the reader that all these names related to one person what I said about the reader being lost) and Hopey, Locas, with its smaller cast, I now realise matures just as well as Palomar. Both have nuances to make you see the bigger picture out of the corner of your eye but where Jamie beats his brother is in his use of comic timing. Jamie uses comic book and cartoon shorthand to relay broad emotion much better than Gilbert- who has a more deft touch- and it only gets better as his art matures and his characters grow.

Locas (along with Palomar) is one of the missing pieces in American fiction. Sad and joyful in equal measure and with a tale on a community that rarely gets written about (the Hispanic vote is becoming more important in the American South and West); it’s relevant and topical without aging or losing its teeth and an important addition to anyone’s literary collection.



Bone by Jeff Smith is a delight, a sheer and utter delight. It checks all the right fantasy boxes. Dragons? Princesses? Heroes? Decaying kingdoms? Evil-doers? Yep, they are all present and correct- in fact, maybe a little too much. Fantasy is one of the most cliché-ridden of all the genres and wonderful though it is, Bone doesn’t stray too far from it. Mark Oakley’s Thieves and Kings is, perhaps for the moment, the exception to this in that, even though it is fantasy and has the same elements, you just do not know where it is going. Fantasy has always been well done in the comic book world, it is a mainstay of the genre after all, but it’s the multi-coloured cousins in the Kevlar and spandex that usually get the critical acclaim and fanboys, whilst the worlds of magic just get with doing what they do best- big swordfights between good and evil.

Bone scores big in the humour department, and we’re not talking about the forced laughs and play upon silly words ala Terry Pratchett. The titular hero of the title, Fone Bone, is a big-nosed, big-hearted, bald little creature exiled from his homeland Boneville along with his cousins, Phoney Bone (source of all their problems) and Smiley Bone. Stumbling upon the Valley and the Kingdom of Atheia, the three soon find themselves up to their necks in an all out war between the Lord of the Locusts and the people of the valley. It has an exciting, articulate, fast-paced story-line that holds your attention to the very end, but the real stars of the book are two of the rat creatures that are part of the Locusts’ army. Rat creatures (or the hairy men) are huge, rat-like beasts with very sharp claws and incisors and these two simply come across as the Laurel and Hardy, Bud and Lou, of their species. Constantly bickering amongst themselves-mostly about how Fone Bone would taste much better in a quiche-they have a habit of making the situations they find themselves in worse by their own stupidity and ineptitude. Comedic creations at their best.



Smith has beautiful clean-line in the Carl Barks style. His expressions and faces are emotive, full of meaning and his environs are lush, strange, especially the ghost circles. Strangely, Smith seems almost schizophrenic with his atmospherics. On one hand it’s menacing and dangerous- look at the 3 panel scene where the rat creatures are searching for Bone, Thorn and Grandma Ben, or the cavern of Tannen Gard and the Crown of Horns- but he seems to have problems with weather, not getting something like rain quite right, or depicting Queen in hiding, Thorn, as a sexbomb (but this was in the early days of the tale and perhaps can be excused).

In the end, these are tiny niggles in what is, in the end, a masterpiece of the genre. Perfect for both children and adults it deserves a wider audience, and as with Locas and Palomar, works well in its complete volume format (though it’s a bit hefty). Even better, it looks damn good on a bookshelf.



Back to things that go bump in the night for Courtney Crumrin in Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom by Ted Naifeh. Naifeh’s young heroine is a perfect antidote to the whiny, needs a good slap, Potter. Courtney’s world of magic and witchcraft is deliciously dark and dangerous, populated with creatures that would have no problem with eating any succulent human child that they came across. No public school romps or visits down to the tuck-shop here, Courtney’s adventures hearken back to a pre-Grimm and Christian Anderson era when woods were full of nasty things and you should be very careful of takings gifts from strangers, especially the fairy type. With Potter now becoming and feeling as familiar as a Dickens type Christmas tale (leaving you with just as much a bloated feeling as the padding in the books) and publishers starting to destroy the children’s book market by snapping up anything that smacks of something similar, it’s good to read something that strips away all the sentimentality and sugary niceness that make up today’s children’s literature.


Naifeh brings home neatly the alienation and loneliness that a lot of young people feel. Try as she might, Courtney does not feel at home or empathsize with her fellow warlocks and witches. She thinks all of them have something slightly mentally wrong with themselves, but because of her somewhat aloof manner and natural sarcasm she can hardly relate to normal folk either. The fact that she has the potential to become a powerful mage brings no comfort whatsoever. Events in the previous volume have even led her to become estranged from her Uncle, someone she felt she could trust. The first story in the book also makes Courtney realise that you cannot go home again. Her life in the world of magic is now set, for good or bad.

The Twilight Kingdom was once the mighty kingdom of elves, fairies, goblins that once ruled over the Earth. Now hiding underground because of the relentless rise of mankind, it is not a place where any human would be welcome-except as a slave or dinner. But this is the path Courtney and her companions have to travel if they are to save and recover the missing brother of one of them who has been accidentally cursed and changed into a night-being.

Naifeh’s art is dark and brooding, full of shadows and atmosphere. The Twilight Kingdom is both oppressive and menacing, with winding staircases and twisted thoroughfares. Its inhabitants are downright weird, both cruel and majestic. The humour in the story is black- Courtney’s glee at the discomfort of her companions being described as morsels by her thrall, or the reader’s inside knowledge as one of them being led unwittingly to the ovens by some goblins. But Courtney is mirrored by the Twilight Kingdom; if she does not overcome her self-imposed isolation she knows that she will become as unfeeling as its inhabitants and that this could lead to being as mad and ruined as the rest of her fellow mages. What Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom is about most though is loss-the loss of a mother or a child, of humanity or friendship. A lot of children’s literature handles the same subjects, but Naifeh is different in that there are little or no answers.




Locas is written and illustrated by Jamie Hernandez, published by Fantagraphics in hardback and priced £32.99.

The Complete Bone is written and illustrated by Jeff Smith, published by Cartoon Books in both hard and soft back, priced £80.00 for signed edition.

Courtney Crumrin and the Twilight Kingdom is written and illustrated by Ted Naifeh, published by Oni Press in soft back and priced £7.99.

All are highly recommended and available from all good comic-book shops.

Starlight, Starbright..

Whilst preparing to write this review, the death of Christopher Reeve appeared in the news. It was sad moment in my life for me and yet, strangely fortunate in that it made this review more relevant to the premise and idea of the hero.

Here was a man who epitomised the very meaning of this over-used and somewhat devalued word. Someone who did not wish for the role he was to be given so late in life, and did not fully understand what it meant before. But as a true hero should, Reeves rose to his challenge and fully met it head on. He constantly made the statement that he would some day walk unaided again. The dragon to be slain was not only his disability, but how it is seen and perceived. Even acceptance of his condition would be a defeat and although it would probably never come during his lifetime (or even mine), the Holy Grail of a world where no-one need suffer needlessly was always in sight. I, for one, believed the man when he said that he would walk again, and I believed him for two reasons:-

1. Because he was SUPERMAN
2. Because he WAS Superman

Heroes are not born; they are made, both in real-life and legend. Although there are thousands of people around the world now doing something worthwhile and good, they are not heroes, just human beings defining what the word human means. Being a hero needs a bigger stage, a more public setting and therefore a possible fall from grace scenario. The dragons may have changed their shape, but they still exist. And in this bleak and cynical age of impoverished ideas, self-seeking justification and a need to latch onto something, anything, no matter how shallow or sentimental, that will give some small meaning to our lives, it's still good to know that real heroes walk the Earth- even if they, or we, cannot see it.



Jack Knight is one such man. He is the Starman and the latest to hold that title. Forced into the role with the murder of his brother (who was Starman briefly), he has matured and grown into the role to the point that he now epitomises the very meaning of the word “hero”, and his path has not been easy. Estranged from his father (the first Starman, inventor of the Starman staff and discover of the power that drives it), and a somewhat atypical rebel in that although he dresses and appears to part of the modern era (tattoos, piercings, leather jackets), he loves anything old. Anything with a past or history- but not too old, it still has to be cool. But it is this very love of things with a history that gives him a greater understanding of the Starman lineage and makes him realise of its importance, especially when he is flung into the far future and he sees what a difference he, his father and other bearers of the name Starman have made.

Starman: Grand Guignol by James Robinson and Peter Snejbjerg is the last of the Starman tales. Jack has been into deep space and returned a much wiser and stronger person. Good thing really, as the final dragon has to be slain. Clues and sub-plots that have been on-going throughout the whole saga come to fruition and Jack needs all his inner strength and good companions to save his beloved city of Opal. Starman is a book about heroes and this final one is full of them. From meta-human to ordinary people, Robinson and Snejbjerg show the greatness that people are capable of. Whether fighting on the front lines (Jack, Mikaal, the Black Condor, Bobo Bennetti, the O’Dares), or working out the mysteries that could help their cause (The Dibny’s, Adam Strange, The Shade). All are committed to seeing justice done and evil vanquished. And with heroes you must have villains, preferably with dark blackness in their hearts. But the bad guys are not your stereo-typical black hats. Robinson drinks deep from DC’s vast gallery of evil and gives each and everyone of them meaning and history. From the Silver Age (The Shade), to the modern (Rag Doll), each has been fully fleshed out and given equal time.

The tale is one of blood and thunder, but told with elegance that gives it the grandeur and greatness of heroic sagas. Past deeds and wrong-doings are blended into the main story without breaking it up or losing the reader. On one level it is full of daring-do, but on another it’s a detective story. Turn the page again and you are reading a thriller, a love story, a tale of regret and redemption. Grand Guignol has everything that the wrapping up of an epic should have. Fact of the matter is, I shouldn’t really be reviewing this book singly as you need to read the rest of the story to fully appreciate its structure, twists and turns. The writing is on a par with some of the best of modern literature and artist Snejbjerg brings each and every character to live with just a few brush lines. The faces alone are expressive and tell a story in each stroke whilst the framing makes the eye move around the whole page, giving a delicate sense of movement.


Examples of heroism and love abound throughout the saga. Ted Knight, Jack’s father, is afraid to turn off the original Star Rod he carries as it is draining away the fatal radiation burns that he received whilst fighting the Bat-Man villain, Dr. Phosphorus. Realising that it is only delaying the inevitable he does so, condemning himself to death, but not before finally saving the day. Ralph Dibny, The Elongated Man, races back to the hotel where he and his wife have been staying- it having been destroyed in the multiple explosions that have decimated Opal City- berating himself all the time for not allowing her to join him on his mission like he usually does. His joy upon finding her alive and well, plus the love that they obviously share for each other, is beautifully put across and adds poignancy for what happens to Sue in DC’s latest series Identity Crisis.
Adam Strange is forced to kill one of the villains or else the plan to save Opal goes awry. He immediately regrets it, but understands that there was no other way. The wife of the Chief of Police is willing to put her life on the line, if it means saving her husband. Jack and The Shade fight constantly to reach the main villain of the piece, where upon good doesn’t always bring about the desired result.

Robinson gives every character little vignettes, relating to how they got to where they are and how it affects them. That he manages to juggle and then weave all these seemingly unrelated strands into a bigger whole without losing sight of each one goes to prove what can be done in the world of story-telling if you stick to the basic fundamentals of writing. That even if a story is massive in scale it can be the little things that matter.

Robinson also nails what it means to be a hero with two fine examples. Jack tells villainess, The Mist (mother of his son), that not one of them calls themselves a hero. It's a name awarded by people they help, and that only villains call themselves “a Master Criminal”. Ted Knight makes the final sacrifice when he launches the building containing the nuclear device that will destroy Opal into space (you may think that this is a bit of a silly James Bondian style of destruction, and you would be right. But Robinson uses it to show how old-fashioned and out of date some of the villains can be). With it comes the revelation from Ted that he, others and the villains they have fought have finally become old and that it is time to make way for the younger generation. He goes to his death knowing that the future is in safe hands. Being a hero comes from within, not from a name.



Heroes (and dragons) abound in the world of comics. In fact, comics- along with good children’s literature- are probably the last bastion of traditional story-telling. The kind that started with oral story-telling around the fire, just one person enthralling and frightening his captive audience with the power of his voice. Robinson, along with the other artists in the story, has added his voice to this rich tapestry and the world of story is enriched by it.


Starman: Grand Guignol is by James Robinson and Peter Snejbjerg. Published by DC Comics priced £12.99, and available at all good comic book shops. By the way, I really do mean this about good comic book shops. In my opinion ordinary bookshops have no idea what do to do with graphic novels, although amongst some of their staff must be somebody who reads them. This lack of understanding was brought home to me whilst I was browsing through my local Waterstones and found a copy of Art Spigelman’s (Maus) latest work In the Shadow of No Towers, an over-sized hardback about 9/11, his feelings towards it (his daughter went to the school inside one of the towers on the day) and the subsequent war on terror in the humour section. I can just see the thinking of one of the staff now: - “It’s got pictures in it, so it’s either for kids or humorous”.

Support your nearest comic book shop, or spread the word in what comics are really about (but be picky in your choice. As I’ve said many times, there just as many bad comic book shops as there are good ones. The one down here in MK is useless and I rarely go in).

When Worlds Collide

Comics can be a lot of things. As part of the entertainment and mass media industry, comic’s can- and are- be used for both enjoyment and education. But in their quest to be seen as a viable and important literary genre, a lot of writers, artists and critics forget what it was that brought them to comics in the first place- fun.



“We need to be respected “, they cry. “We are an effective art form damn it, and we’ll write and draw in as many abstract forms as we please. Simple entertainment be damned. All these heroes obviously have psychological problems and neuroses. One of them dresses up as a bat for God’s sake!! And if we go the indie route, there’ll be no pleasure here either. Oh no, all our characters will have shitty lives and be social outcasts like we were. You will share the pain and the lack of female companionship we felt during our spotty youths, you bastards!”

Some of the places you will find a lot of these views are the trade magazines such as Wizard, The Comics Journal and Britain’s own Comics International.

The Comics Journal would have you believe that all comics are art and should strive for that position. That both Marvel and DC are sweatshops, trading on the honest labour of their writers and artists (who are all hacks anyway according to CJ) and sell out their properties to the highest bidder with no financial remuneration to their creators. According to CJ, the only good comics come from Fantagraphics (which also publishes The Comics Journal).

Comics International has at its heart the very peculiar practice of British cynicism. Whereas Wizard would have you believe that everything in the world of comics is just rosy, with a bright future, C.I. takes the opposite view- that the industry is on the verge of collapse and it would all be made better if comics just went back to being sold for 3d each and printed on bad newsprint. Of course neither view is correct. The industry is in rude health, with sales back to their late 1980's figures but not the hyper- inflated figures of the early 1990's (which were mostly down to the speculator boom). It's quite likely that we'll never see the million plus per issue again, but think about it. Most writers and publishers in the book world would be ecstatic with monthly sales of 300,000 on any of their titles and with new markets, such as manga and DC’s recently acquired European outlet Humanoids both being well-received and profitable it’s probably about time for the doom-mongers and ra-ra-ers to move off to other pastures (TV perhaps? Mmmm, maybe, but I think we already have enough media study students taking all the jobs at McDonalds in this country already).



Anyway, back to comics being fun. Most of this will come from the world of super-heroics. Power fantasies, big punch-ups, definitive lines of black and white (with a few greys thrown in), big explosions. What more could anyone ask for? Sure, a lot of them are quite simple in real-life terms, but as said, in the end comics are part of mass entertainment and I don't see anyone bitching about the fact that something like LOTR in cinematic terms is a blockbuster film with a simple premise (midget has to throw ring into a big fire). Besides, who'd want to read something akin to Proust all the time? I like a little introspection and musings on the human condition now and then, but not all the time. Sometimes I just want colourful super-heroes beating the tar out of colourful villains but a magazine like CJ can't seem to get its head around this fact and understand that like everything else there is plenty of room for all.

One of the best type of Reads© is the super-hero team-up. Simple really- two heroes pound upon each other through misunderstanding and then join up to defeat the bad guy. Conflict creates character, comics 101. It gets even better when its inter-publisher and we have some of the biggest teams in the publishers lexicon to do the honours. This is where JLA/Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez enters and kicks your ass (yep, I’m in full fan boy mode this time true believers).





DC and Marvel have a long history of publisher collaboration (The Wizard of Oz weirdly being their first), but of late relations have soured between the two and JLA/Avengers may be their last for a while. Ironic really, has it's had the greatest gestation period. The idea was first mooted in the '80's and the then Avengers artist Perez set to work on it. But according to the Marvel E.I.C. Jim Shooter, the story wasn't coming together and this remained the stumbling block. The project soured with recriminations on both sides and all that remained was twenty-one pages of Perez's pencils (the tale of the battle between DC and Marvel over the script, the concept and the unfinished art are re-printed in the compendium that accompanies the main book).

Skip forward a few decades and both DC and Marvel were ready to try again. Perez was more than willing to return and do the artist honours- even to the extent of having it written into his exclusive contract with another publisher that if the Avengers/JLA project went ahead he’d be able to do it. But who could write what was expected to be a Triple A project? Step forward one of the best writers in comics today, Kurt Busiek. Busiek re-invigorated the Avengers after the Hero’s Return debacle and gave readers two of the best series on the inner workings of heroes with Marvels and Astro City. His problem though with the project was two-fold. How to give each team enough time to satisfy both publishers and create a story big enough to do justice to both the concept and the readers? In the end the solution was quite simple: - every single member of each team over their respective history would appear, plus their enemies, plus their supporting cast, plus all their various incarnations and costume changes. Literally a cast of hundreds. George Perez must have been pulling his hair out at the very thought of it. That he succeeded so well in portraying all this without any drop in quality in the art is a testament to his skill as an artist and draughtsman.

From the moment the story kicks off, you can tell that it’s going to be massive in scale. Crossing both universes and going to the very beginning and end of everything. It is big and cosmic enough to satisfy even the most jaded comics fan, but at its heart has a simple question- “What is truth?”

By setting the stage as the first time any of the Avengers/JLA have met, Busiek makes each team question how heroes are seen by the public and how they see themselves. The Avengers see the JLA as nothing but benevolent dictators, demanding the adulation of the world (which is a nice parallel with the Crime Syndicate (seen at the beginning of the book), who are alternate versions of the main members of the JLA that have taken over their world and run it as gangsters).Whereas the JLA see the Avengers as failures, doing nothing to better the world and its population: - The Flash is horrified upon his arrival in the Marvel Universe to see a mutant being hounded. In a bit of quiet downtime before the final confrontation with the villain, Captain America and Superman discuss these points. Superman feels that he does too much for his planet, thereby denying free will. The Captain feels that anything he does is not enough, and that nothing will ever change. The villain, Krona, seeks the truth about the universe. What was there before its current inception? Only one being knows this (Galactus) and he’s not one for answers. It’s these little asides that give heart to the project and put paid to the lie that most superhero stories are superficial.

Ah, but I hear you say. Where’s the fun that this project offers? If the book so rocks, where’s the blockbuster feel? Where else- but in the interactions of the characters, the vastness of the locations and, oh yeah, the punch-ups that pepper the book.



Although the beginning of the tale is nothing more than a treasure hunt of powerful artefacts from both universes, the usual misunderstandings arise and it really is fun to see Superman square off against Thor, or Iron Man vs. Green Lantern. Batman vs. Captain America is both frustrating and right as both antagonists tip-toe around each other, testing their fighting skills, until The Bat-Man takes the first step and tells the Captain that he could beat him (The Bat-Man), but it’ll take him a long time to do so. Instead, why don’t we go and find out who’s really behind it all whilst the others take their licks. The fact that the Captain readily agrees shows the fact that both men are also tactical thinkers as well as warriors.

As said, the art is a joy to behold. Perez is a highly detailed artist who leaves no panel empty or background unutilized. The cameos that he somehow manages to cram in are a delight, and give a pleasant Where’s Waldo feel. Anybody who thinks that they know their comics history will be pleasantly surprised by some of the obscure characters that pop up, but all this is helped by the labour of love, panel by panel guide to people, places and sources written by Busiek and Perez included in the compendium. In fact this could be the only criticism I found with The JLA/Avengers, that it may be a bit too into the history of both teams to be readily accessible to new readers.

Be that as it may, the whole package is lovingly put together and illustrates my main point, that comics are fun. Don’t be too snobby about the superhero genre in general, it still provides some teenage kicks. Some folks may believe themselves to be too mature and responsible for this kind of stuff, but hey, do you want to remain old forever?

Enjoy.



JLA/Avengers is written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by George Perez. Colour by Tom Smith and lettering by Richard Starkings. Published in oversized hardback with compendium by DC/Marvel priced £49.99. Available now from all good comic book stores.