What I’ve Been Reading: January 8, 2008

Ellis and Ennis this week, Ennis and Ellis. Only three books, and I’m not going to divide them out as nicely as I did last week. Chin up, pal, it’s a brave new world where you have to read an interconnected series of overly complicated sentences and notice that I will use italics to indicate the title so you can check and make sure my opinion matches your own.

Hands up if that’s not the primary reason why you read other people’s reviews in blogs.

That’s what I thought. That’s fine; I do it, too, particularly when it’s Spurgeon, because we are so similar and so different and it’s a fun little autopsy process, looking at our foibles and fetishes. There’s also the slow drive by and gawk things that I’d not read in a hundred years but still enjoy watching others kick around, like Caleb’s 30,000 word Weekly Haul posts. If someone could tell me how he puts together so many words yet remains so readable for my addled brain, I’d really appreciate it. Maybe it’s the small words.

Anyway. It’s the third issue of Ellis’s No Hero and while there’s eight pages devoted to double-paged spreads and Carrick actually points out that he’s using a cellphone at one point, bits like the Very Bad Thing that happens and the point of the double-page spreads is a pretty good one. I wanted to type a a bit about Ellis’s pacing on this, but honestly, it’s the end of the first act, and it feels just about right for a 9-issue series, but I’m still fretting a bit. Ellis, as much as I love a lot of the man’s writing, seems to have a consistent problems with his third acts – there’s a reversal missing and the protagonists just go and do what they wanted to do without any complications. For every Black Summer, where things happen on a fairly linear path but you had the benefit of a decimated cast list so that you were playing mental Survivor, there’s an Orbiter where they solve the mystery and go into space. (For the record, it was a very neat mystery, but I wanted more.)

Mind you, I’m beginning to think that Doktor Sleepless may turn out to be his magnum opus as it’s evolving into something a lot more than the Transmetropolitan Redux that it looked like at first blush, so my opinions when it comes to Ellis and his writing may be suspect, especially as I was about to type out a comparison to the first season of The Wire, a show I’m just now getting into. Mind you, a bit of editing and tightening up things on Doktor Sleepless so the individual dose feels stronger would not hurt at all, he said presumptuously about a writer who could have him gutted by Japanese suicide waitresses at any given time.

Oh, and if you were wondering when I’d get to Ennis: The Boys continues to make me fiercely happy, despite the mitigating factor of a replacement artist on the book this month; a sequence in which a Professor X analog went on and on about the importance of brunch as a respite against a world that hates and fears them has a good deal to do with my overall enjoyment. John Higgins tries (and fails) to draw The Boys, succeeding in some things and then going way off-model with others, particularly when it comes to drawing one character’s breasts. I feel like a lech for even noticing, but when a woman of modest proportions suddenly looks like she’s been cast from the Rock Of Love: Gonorrhea Fuckbus rejects, it’s more distracting than it should be.

Next week, I’ll be more coherent, I promise.

What I’ve Been Reading: January 2, 2009

Incognito #1
As with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s  Sleeper, a familiar noir trope is getting a superpowered rerub:  the former supercriminal Zack Overkill, now drugged into normalcy and on parole, is struggling with his government-enforced rehabilitation and longs for the power he once possessed.  As with Criminal, the plot and story are onlyhalf of the pleasure I get from reading Brubaker’s script; the construction is frequently elegant in its simplicity and the way he manages to surprise even when tinkering with the hoariest of clichés is envious.  Phillips and Staples, again, serve as the perfect counterpart to Brubaker’s script, deceptively minimal, reinforcing the point that less is more: murky swaths of digital watercolor underpins Phillips’s strong composition to help tell the story better than any amount of Photoshop gradient ever could.

The Winter Men Winter Special
It’s been two damn years, people.   I’m going to have to find my back issues before I even think about reading this thing I brought home.  I’m frankly a bit surprised that Wildstorm even bothered to put this out; I can’t imagine it’s sold enough to pay for its print run at this late date, but I’m sure they’d rather placate the few thousand buyers who’d whine about a collection containing a conclusion they weren’t able to buy off the stands.  (In other words, expect to see an unread copy show up at Goodwill or the like during my next big purge.)

Final Crisis: Secret Files
If I’d looked beyond the very nice cover by Frank Quitely and realized that the majority of this special revolved around Len Wein giving a proper origin to Libra (who I think was used by Morrison because he was a blank slate, serving his story needs as required while giving the instigator of Final Crisis the sort of tie to the universe at large that a lot of DC fans expect,) I wouldn’t have purchased it.  It’s a great deal of “What went on before” for a character that really didn’t need it.  There’s also two text pieces (Grant Morrison “explains” the Anti-Life equation in a very ugly page that’s facing a page from the Crime Bible) and some sketches by J.G. Jones and Morrison.

Punisher War Zone #4
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon could burn my home down and as long as it formed the shape of the Punisher’s skull emblem, I’d be OK with it.

Kevin Reviews His Weekly Singles #18

The Boys #21

This is the first time anyone’s used 9/11 in a superhero comic in a way that didn’t make me feel like I needed to wash my hands afterwards. While Vaughan and Harris tried admirably in Ex Machina, Ennis actually manages to make the actions (and inactions) of the series antagonists the point of the story using the events of seven years ago as a plot point, not a crutch to lend a comic book more gravitas than it deserves. Robertson deserves a lot of credit here for his part: he uses some fantastic action shots and facial expressions (particularly the horror, frustration, and fear seen in the eyes of a F-16 pilot in the opening pages) that sell the story on its own merits.

Criminal Volume 2, #4

One of the reasons I like this book so much is that it feels like Brubaker and Phillips are running a bit of a scam on Marvel by making a series that’s so counter to the publisher’s usual hype and methodologies; it’s a dark-as-hell crime comic with backing essays and interviews. The opening salvo in the four-part “Bad Night” gives us the story of the man behind those “Frank Kafka, PI” strips that have cropped up in issues past: he was a bad man once, and he’s going to have to be one again if he wants to live. I don’t want to say it’s a perfect jumping-on point, because that’s the hoariest cliché in comics, but…

Final Crisis #3

I’ll refer you to Birdie’s review of the book while saying “I told people that it was like a ‘real’ book, not some Chuck Dixon paint-by-numbers plot.”

I got the Supergirl cover, which I quite like, despite the apparent pedo tone that I missed out on.

Patsy Walker: Hellcat #2

It’s easy to be lured in by the fun visuals David Lafuente (with colorist John Rauch) is cranking out – seriously, there’s a two-page spread that rivals Williams on Promethea – but Kathryn Immonen’s script for this second issue is a nice piece of workmanship on its own, trusting the reader to connect a few dots without ever making them feel lost and coming up with at least two laugh-out-loud moments. It’s hard to not like her take on Patsy Walker: a spunky, angst-free superheroine who seems to enjoy her job is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Special Forces #3

For some reason, I left the new Army@Love in my box for Sunday, but this will certainly tide me over in the subtle-as-a-bulldozer-filled-with-dynamite war satire comics department. Baker’s a cartooning wonder, he really is. Some preview images are up on his blog.