By Scott Tipton
December 28, 2005
WHO ASKED YOU, ANYWAY? – THE 2005 EDITION
The time, it does go by.
It’s time once again for a look back at the highpoints (and maybe a low point or two) of the year previous in the four-color world of comic books. While I have to admit, it didn’t feel like a banner year, with much of the output of both major companies mired in what seemed like endless crossovers and tie-ins to the two major “events,” HOUSE OF M and INFINITE CRISIS. Still, there were some few bright spots here and there, and one or two truly outstanding pieces of work. Let’s get to it.
MOST PROMISING DEBUT: THE THING #1
Dan Slott is on fire at Marvel these days. In addition to his just-returned SHE-HULK series and his dark-humored GLA miniseries, Slott has just premiered the first issue of his brand-new THING series, with outstanding art by Andrea DiVito.
Slott keenly picks up an excellent plot thread from J. Michael Stracyznski’s current FANTASTIC FOUR run, in which Ben Grimm discovers that, thanks to Reed Richards’ prudent and secret financial planning on his behalf, he’s now rich. Stinking rich. Like, monocle and top-hat rich. Slott picks up the story with Ben adjusting to life in the jet-set circle with the idle rich, and it’s fun, appealing and compelling stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
ALMOST AS-PROMISING DEBUT: JONAH HEX #1
DC’s most famous Western character, the grizzled and scarred bounty hunter Jonah Hex, made his return to monthly comics this year with a new series by writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and artist Luke Ross, which already stakes its claim as one of the books I’m looking forward to most each month. Gray and Palmiotti show an eloquence and wit here I haven’t seen in their HAWKMAN work, while Ross ably retains the essence of the Jonah Hex character through his likeness and acting while still bringing a freshness to the series. While it could probably be said that this new JONAH HEX series shows more than a little DEADWOOD influence, one could probably make the argument that DEADWOOD bears at least a little JONAH HEX influence itself. Either way, smart, powerful Western comics don’t come along very often, so everybody support this one so it stays around a good long while.
THE “WHAT-THE-F**K-WAS-THAT?!” AWARD: SPIDER-MAN BITES A GUY’S HEAD OFF
Look, I really do try to stay positive in the column. I think a lot more good is done by pointing people toward what I think are good comics than by spewing venom about bad ones. And now that I’ve been actually writing comics myself (more on that in future weeks if you haven’t already heard), I’m all the more sensitive to the notion. I realize now more than ever that no one intentionally writes a bad comic book.
But Spider-Man bit a guy’s head off.
I’m going to say it again for emphasis.
Spider-Man bit a guy’s head off.
Has there ever been a creative team that seems to have so little of an idea what makes the character work? In the seemingly endless “THE OTHER: EVOLVE OR DIE” storyline, we’ve seen issue after issue of Spidey suffering from an unknown, practically undescribed disease, which is itself the worst, cheapest kind of unfulfilled tension, since we all know Peter Parker isn’t really going to die. Then writer Reggie Hudlin gives us what was supposed to be a heartwarming story of Peter sharing a family moment with Mary Jane and Aunt May – only he has May and MJ wearing old outdated suits of IRON MAN armor, so they can sneak into Latveria and use Dr. Doom’s time machine. I’m going to say that again for emphasis, too. Aunt May was flying around in Iron Man’s armor. Ay caramba.
So the climax of the story came in a couple of recent issues by J. Michael Straczynski, in which Morlun, the mystical spider-eating bad guy from earlier in JMS’ AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run, shows up and attacks the now-weak and ailing Spidey, beating him mercilessly and – I kid you not – plucking out Spidey’s eyeball and eating it. Not to be satisfied with just that bit of pointless gore, the next issue finds Morlun attacking a hospitalized Spidey, only to find Spidey transformed into some sort of spider/human hybrid, who leaps on Morlun, pins him down with some sort of stingers that have extruded from his arms, and proceeds to eat Morlun’s head. And in case you’re thinking I’m misinterpreting the art, there’s a helpful caption:
“…when the spider bites, when the spider feeds…it always starts at the head.”
Yeah. Thank heaven for back issues.
MOST WELCOME RETURN: LITTLE LULU
The creation of SATURDAY EVENING POST cartoonist Marjorie Buell, the LITTLE LULU character found its greatest success both creatively and commercially when it made the transition to comic books, in the capable hands of writer/layout artist John Stanley and finisher Irving Tripp for over three decades. This year, Dark Horse Comics began reprinting LITTLE LULU in a series of trade paperback collections, the perfect venue for people who’ve never been exposed to the character to jump in and enjoy one of the sharpest, funniest strips ever created.
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It’s easy for people who’ve never read the series to mistake LITTLE LULU for nothing more than a kids’ book, but that’s not the case at all. Lulu’s misadventures with her rude, gluttonous friend Tubby provide some of the out-and-out funniest moments I’ve ever read in comics, as something as simple as walking home from school or going out to pick up a pair of pants at the tailor’s will degenerate into a comedy of errors executed with hilarious pacing. Adding to the laughs is Stanley and Tripp’s minimalist art style, which wrings the most yuks out of the least linework. Go check one out: doesn’t matter which one – they’re all good.
LONGEST UNRESOLVED PLOT POINT FINALLY REVEALED: ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE
One of the joys of Kurt Busiek’s ASTRO CITY series has been the depth of the backstory he’s created for the world in which his characters live. You really get the sense that the Astro City universe has been around for as long as the Marvel or DC universes. And he doesn’t hit you over the head with flashbacks and exposition, either. A lot of it is subtle background stuff that leaves you wanting to hear all the details. The best example of this has been a fixture since, I think, the first ASTRO CITY story arc. Seen in the park, unremarked upon, was a statue of a very Captain America-looking superhero, his hands clasped and his head slightly bowed, with an inscription reading “IN MEMORY OF THE SILVER AGENT – TO OUR ETERNAL SHAME.” What, the readers asked, was that about?
Busiek finally clued us in this year in ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE, BOOK ONE, which centers itself around two brothers, one a policeman, the other a petty crook. Their troubled relationship is set against a backdrop of 1970s Astro City, a time when the city, and the world, was starting to turn against its superheroes, a sentiment spearheaded by the arrest and trial of the Silver Agent, accused of murder in a high-profile case with diplomatic complications.
It’s a dark story, darker than most of Busiek’s AC work, and makes good use of Busiek’s usual strength in counterpointing the big, cosmic plotline with the small, personal story. Excellent stuff.
BEST WAY TO HOLD YOU OVER UNTIL NEW JLU EPISODES AIR: JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED
With new episodes of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED held back seemingly forever by Cartoon Network until a sufficient number of episodes are completed, the next best thing to being there is DC’s monthly JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED comic book, which provides consistently satisfying single-issue stories that are suitable for a younger audience while at the same time intelligent and appealing enough for readers of all ages.
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Writer Adam Beechen turns in gem after gem here on a monthly basis, reminding the reader that working on an all-ages book doesn’t mean the writing is any less sharp, just as folks like Ty Templeton (THE BATMAN ADVENTURES), Kelley Puckett (GOTHAM ADVENTURES) and Mark Millar (SUPERMAN ADVENTURES) did before him. Carlo Barberi does a first-rate job on the art duties to match, satisfactorily simulating the Bruce Timm style, while giving it just a hint of a manga-esque flair. And Beechen apparently doesn’t have the same character restraints as Timm and company when it comes to choosing teammates, allowing characters like Blue Beetle, Firestorm and Power Girl to make their JLU debut in these pages. And hopefully someday soon we’ll have some new episodes to go along with it.
BEST REVIVAL: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
No DC book has suffered more from the vagaries of continuity revamps than the Legion. Ever since Superboy was unceremoniously erased from the team’s backstory, writer after writer has tried to get a handle on making the Legion interesting and vital again, with varying degrees of success. Everything from making the team grim and gritty, with no costumes or codenames, to replacing them with even younger clones was tried, but all seemed to stray too far from the series’ simple central concept, of superpowered teens from across the galaxy hanging out in a clubhouse on Earth. Pretty basic when you think about it. What new writer Mark Waid and artist Barry Kitson have done is bring that idea front and center, yet make it work for a more modern audience by grounding it in that most primal and identifiable of teenage instincts: rebellion.
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Setting its characters against a far-future environment that has become antiseptic, staid and mind-numbingly ordered, Waid positions the Legionnaire as the ultimate youth movement, who don the bright and colorful costumes as a way of rebelling against their elders, and take on the wacky names like “Light Lass” and “Element Lad” in tribute to the 20th-century comic books they use as inspiration. And this is just the basic premise; when it comes to action and intrigue, Waid and Kitson deliver big-time, setting the Legion in the middle of an intergalactic war, while at the same time contending with strife within the team, as Cosmic Boy and Brainiac Five (portrayed here as something of an impatient, smug bastard, which, if you were smarter than everyone on the planet, would probably come naturally) struggle for leadership of the team.
I haven’t enjoyed the Legion this much in years. Highly recommended.
BEST VALUE FOR YOUR BUCK: DC’S SHOWCASE EDITIONS
Taking a page from Marvel’s very successful ESSENTIAL program, DC has introduced its own line of low-cost, black-and-white, phone-book-sized collections of reprints, the SHOWCASE editions, offering somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pages of comics for around 17 bucks. However, where Marvel has by now exhausted much of the primo material in their library, and is lately reduced to admittedly second-rate offerings like ESSENTIAL WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and ESSENTIAL SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP, DC has over seven decades’ worth of comics to choose from , and they’ve been opting for a smart mix of classic material that previously was only available in the expensive Archive Editions, and slightly quirkier material that’s never before been collected.
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In the first category are offerings like JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and GREEN LANTERN, which before this would have cost a pretty penny to read. On the other side of the coin are books like METAMORPHO and JONAH HEX, long considered cult classics, and only now available in a convenient collected edition. I can think of much worse ways to spend seventeen bucks…
BEST GOODBYE: “A Greyshirt Primer,” from TOMORROW STORIES SPECIAL #1
Alan Moore takes the opportunity to say goodbye to the departed grand master of comic books, Will Eisner, with his and Rick Veitch’s breathtaking “A Greyshirt Primer” in the recent TOMORROW STORIES special, by paying tribute to one of Eisner’s trademark stories, “A Crime Primer,” with this marvelous ABC book, which follows Greyshirt and a very familiar-looking comic-book artist on Greyshirt’s nightly patrol.
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As the alphabet couplets sing the virtues of Will Eisner’s life and career, they also highlight the goings on in the accompanying frame – all the while, the frames carry on a panel-to-panel continuity that follows the artist back to the Spirit’s traditional hideout in Wildwood Cemetery, a base of operations that’s now decidedly bittersweet. Along the way, the art is littered with references to Eisner’s work: everything from Gerhard Shnobble to P’Gell to THE BUILDING to Ebony White can be found. Moore’s ability to make each and every page serve multiple purposes is astounding, and he makes it look so easy.
Look at the way the letters “R,” “S” and “T” so subtly dovetail with the art. And Moore’s gift for verse has never been so warmly and emotionally displayed.
A big thanks to Alan Moore and Rick Veitch for putting into words what so many of us felt about Will Eisner, and giving us all one more moment to say goodbye.
We’re not done yet, folks. Come back next week for such categories as BEST RETURN FROM OBSCURITY, BEST MINISERIES and COMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR. And if you’ve got your own picks, send them along to stipton99x@moviepoopshoot.com.
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