Tagged: Jorge Jimenez

Joe Corallo is Late To The Party

As I’m writing this column on Monday the 27th, it’s my grandpa’s birthday. He’s turning 80 and a lot of the family is flying down to Florida later this week to see him. In the mean, I’ve been working closely with some of the ComicMix team to get Mine! out the door which is in Previews as well as on BackerKit for pre-order. I’ve also been reading some comics I’ve been way behind on!

I got to finish the first volume of Black over the weekend. The team of Kwanza Osajyefo, Tim Smith 3, Jamal Igle, Khary Randolph, and Sarah Litt over at Black Mask Studios put together a book that takes on racial tensions with a superhero backdrop and absolutely no chill. Over the course of six issues we follow a young black man, Kareem, as he discovers not only does he have super powers, but so do many other black people. And that only black people have super powers.

For me, it takes until about halfway through issue two before the story really picks up a steam. Once the story gets moving though, the pacing gets very consistent and from issue four to the end you’re not going to want to put it down. Jamal Igle’s art in grayscale is absolutely gorgeous and helps make a few otherwise slow paced scenes of people sitting in a cell or an office very engaging. While the story is more likely to preach to the choir than to get some bigot to reexamine their backwards way of thinking, it’s still a great read and since the comic has been optioned you’ll wanna read it before the movie hits so you can be one of the cool kids.

Another series I finally got to crack into was Super Sons over at DC. Now, I was a little late to the party when Peter Tomasi was tackling Damian Wayne with the New 52’s Batman and Robin with Patrick Gleason. Peter’s work on Damian is honestly the best portrayal of the character I’ve read, and I say this as a huge Grant Morrison fan. The first arch of that Batman and Robin run had me sold and I kept up with that title for quite a while after, so seeing Peter back on Damian in Super Sons put this book on my radar right away.

Joined by the incredible artist Jorge Jimenez, Peter Tomasi tells us of the adventures of young Jon Kent a.k.a. Superboy and Damian Wayne aka Robin as they try to prove themselves to be just as capable as their super parents. As excited as I was to finally read this comic, it honestly surpassed my expectations.

Jon Kent is the perfect foil to Damian Wayne. The way the two interact with each other in their playful rivalry creates a fun dynamic that I wish I saw in more comics. Jon’s youth, height, and natural abilities get under Damian’s skin, but handles it better than the less mature Jon who wears his heart on his sleeve. As the two try to a nefarious plot, we watch as the two rib on each other. Jon has taken it personally that he wasn’t asked to be in the Teen Titans despite being a ten years old. One of my favorite moments is when Jon points out a mistake that Damian has made and he responds by saying he learns from his mistakes better than anyone.

Between the fantastic story and the gorgeous, fluid artwork, I can’t possibly recommend Super Sons enough. If you’ve been loving DC’s Rebirth and haven’t picked this title up yet, get on it. If you don’t read DC Comics, you seriously should consider picking this up too. And while there is some violence, it’s definitely more appropriate for some younger readers than a lot of other Big 2 comics out there.

Look, I know I was late to the party here. Luckily with trade paperbacks and comiXology you can never be too late to the party when it comes to comics.

Martha Thomases: Married. Again. But Not Remarried. Again.

For the last several weeks I’ve been madly reading (and rereading) a huge pile of graphic novels and indie comics sent to me to consider in my capacity as an Eisner Awards judge. Some of these are brilliant and some are just weird (to my eyes), but all of them are at least three months old. Reviewing them here would be lame, because I would be so far behind the curve.

Also, and on another note entirely, there are an awful lot of stories that are skillfully and artfully told but completely uninteresting to me. I don’t know why anyone would want to tell these stories. There are critically acclaimed movies that affect me the same way, and they often win all kinds of awards, so I am clearly missing something.

So let’s talk about something else. Superman and Lois Lane are married again!

More than twenty years ago, I was the publicist at DC who promoted Superman’s wedding. It was really fun. Harry Winston http://www.harrywinston.com/en/engagement-wedding designed the engagement ring. There were the expected number of crude jokes, starting with science-fiction writer Larry Niven’s and working on from there.

The stories after the wedding were very much Superman stories, except now, instead of only talking to Lois at the office, he talked to her at home, too. We saw them waking up in the same bed (which we’d also seen after they got engaged, just like just about every other couple in modern times). We saw them drinking coffee. We saw them juggling work schedules.

I really liked it.

Apparently, a lot of other people didn’t like it. As soon as they could, the powers that be undid the wedding and made Superman single again. They did the same to other characters for fairly specious reasons.

It is a cliché of modern popular entertainment that, in romance, the chase is everything. All the suspense is around “Will they or won’t they?” I get that. It’s one of the fun things about real life, too. Unfortunately, the creative team frequently doesn’t know what happens after. So, inevitably, there is a reboot to make our hero (or heroine) single again.

My survey sample might be skewed, but after listening to men and boys talk over many decades, I have the impression that men are more interested in the chase than women are. A guy want to be a man who can bed a large number of women. A woman wants a man who is good enough in the sack to make her want to return.

In any case, the New 52 Superman wasn’t married and, in fact, carried on an affair with Wonder Woman that I, for one, found cringe-worthy. Apparently, I wasn’t alone, and now Superman and Lois Lane have been ret-conned back to the 1990s.

Except now they have a child.

Leaving aside the biological questions about inter-species hybrids (and I have no idea why I expect a scientific explanation, given that the one of the parents can fly and see through walls), I find this a very engaging storyline. It appeals to the part of me that remains seven years old, the one who reads comic books to imagine having powers for myself. Not only did I want to have super-powers, but I wanted my parents to have them, too.

This is a long and convoluted explanation of why I’m enjoying the new Super Sons comic book. Oh, sure, I have quibbles about Batman having a kid, especially one who fights crime before he reaches puberty. Still, the book is a lot of fun, and it feels like writer Peter Tomasi (whom I have always believed is somehow related to me) and artists Jorge Jimenez and Alejandro Sanchez are enjoying themselves.

If you have any seven year olds in your life (spiritually or in reality), you will want to pick up this series. It’s so good, you’ll want to tie a towel around your neck and jump off the sofa.