Tagged: superhero

Review: ‘All Star Batman and Robin Vol. 1’

A couple years ago, back when Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All Star Batman and Robin started inconsistently shipping, I read the first few issues and then waved the series off. I hated it so much I added an extra “S” and started referring to it by the acronym ASSBAR.

At the time, it seemed like a good portion of comics critics felt similarly about the book. Then a curious thing happened. More and more reviewers started to come around to the new, harsh [[[Batman]]] that called Robin “retarded” and tried to kill cops.

Now with the first volume conveniently collected, I decided to revisit the series. Had it improved? Had I just given up to early? Or was it still ASSBAR?

As much as I love that nickname, I may have to retire it, because this series is not as bad as I first thought. Miller displays a near-mastery of pulp dialogue and narration, and Lee proves what everyone already knows, that he’s a master draftsman of superhero comics.

In case you’re one of the select few who haven’t read the book, it’s a wholly new take on Batman’s first years, and he’s portrayed as essentially a psycho. Which, in a lot of ways, makes sense. You have to be pretty nuts to put on tights and kick the crap out of muggers.

But Miller pushes it to ugly extremes, with Batman kidnapping Dick Grayson and forcing him into the war on crime, nearly killing fellow superheroes and possibly killing corrupt police officers. This Batman is completely unhinged, which becomes fully apparent in a later issue when the Joker appears and seems sedate by comparison.

Now, this is what Miller does well, crackling along at the harsh edge of humanity as he has in Sin City, 300 and elsewhere. But there are two inherent problems: First, this goes against every incarnation of Batman we’ve seen and degrades the character. Second, and most importantly, that degradation doesn’t work because it’s paired with Lee’s artwork.

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Review: ‘Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War Vol. 2’

This past weekend at Heroes Con, a panel of some of comics’ biggest stars weighed in on collaboration and, eventually, the art of the crossover.

Mostly, that meant griping about the impossible task of tying into a Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Matt Fraction went so far as to say he opted out of some crossovers because the stress of it would take years off his life. Jimmy Palmiotti essentially acknowledged the failure of DC’s Countdown.

Clearly, it’s not that hard for a big superhero event to careen right off the tracks. Which means we should all pay attention when one works particularly well, as in Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War (Volume 2 is out now in hardcover at $24.99).

The story is simple enough: Sinestro breaks loose and raises the most terrifying army ever seen, including all of DC’s strongest villains except for Darkseid. And the Green Lanterns fight back.

In this second half of the story, we see the classic turning of the tide back in the heroes’ favor, although Geoff Johns and crew add enough wrinkles to make the inevitable victory quite shadowy, if not outright pyrrhic.

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Barefoot In The Dark, by Dennis O’Neil

Barefoot In The Dark, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • June 17, 2008

I don’t know when I first saw an English edition of Barefoot Gen. It was probably sometime in the mid 70s, when I was editing for the modest enterprise that has become the mighty Marvel Entertainment. In those days, a lot of stuff crossed editorial desks and we read most of it, if not all. So: Japanese comics? Sure, I’ll give it a look. It was probably my first experience with manga and I remember feeling a mild taste of cognitive dissonance – a perceived disconnect between subject and form. (I am choosing to ignore, because it’s a bit off-subject, the hybrid of cartooning and illustration that’s most superhero art.)

The subject was grim. Barefoot Gen is the autobiographical tale of a child who witnessed and survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. But it was presented in a visual style I would have described as “cartoony.” Like most American pop-cultch consumers, I associated bright, simple, exaggerated drawings – cartoons – with material that was at least supposed to be humorous, and there was nothing remotely funny about Barefoot Gen. It was, and is, a powerful anti-war document and, because it is that, deeply humane.

It’s creator, who did both art and copy, is named Keiji Nakazawa, and Barefoot Gen is his story. He had this to say about it: “People should be told what happened. If you live through something like the A-bomb, you know that war is too horrible not to be avoided at all costs, regardless of the justifications offered for it.”

The work first appeared in 1972 as a serial in a mass market Japanese publication, Shukan Shonon Jampu (and perhaps some kind reader will translate that for us). Later, it migrated to smaller magazines, and later still, it was published in English as a paperback book series. The most recent English iteration appeared in 2004, with an introduction by Art Spiegelman.

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Review: ‘Starman Omnibus Vol. 1’ by James Robinson and Tony Harris

The true measure of James Robinson’s Starman is how, 14 years later, the series remains fresh and invigorating. The story of Jack Knight reluctantly taking his father’s mantle as Starman and protecting Opal City is endlessly inventive, an odd and challenging riff on the superhero.

Now is a perfect time to appreciate the series again, as DC is somewhat surprisingly collecting the entire [[[Starman]]] run into six omnibuses ($49.99 each). The first holds 17 issues, each filled with Robinson’s elaborately labyrinthine narration and plotting.

The first three issues are a perfect example of Robinson’s creative approach. In one night, Jack’s brother, who had assumed the Starman mantle, is killed amid a massive attack launched by an old Starman foe. While it’s a flurried and violent opening, Robinson stretches the story, mining each angle of the fight for richness.

Through that gradual unfolding of Jack taking up the cosmic rod, his character becomes immediately rich and deep. That, no doubt, helped the book to become such a lasting success.

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Review: ‘Harbinger: The Beginning’ by Jim Shooter and David Lapham

I had forgotten how much superhero comics had changed in the past 15 years when I picked up Valiant’s new Harbinger: The Beginning collection ($24.95), which revives the book’s first issues from 1992.

It’s impossible to evaluate the stories without looking at the context of their era. True, [[[Harbinger]]] never reached the excessive silliness of Liefeld’s [[[X-Force]]], but it’s populated by edgy characters with dated nicknames like “Torque,” who spout even more dated phrases like “buttlick.”

Since the crash of the ’90s, comics have largely moved toward a more serious and realistic tone, and Harbinger (created by Jim Shooter and David Lapham) stands in stark contrast. All the same, in many ways the book holds up, probably no surprise since it once garnered a great number of fans.

What’s especially appreciable about Harbinger is how it strays from the superhero stereotype, something even today’s books struggle to do. The protagonist, Pete, is not a clear-cut hero; instead he’s an immature and often egotistical teen who doesn’t understand the dangers of his powers. The villain, Harada, is no great man, but his central goal is to protect the world from Pete.

As much as anything, Harbinger is about the folly of youth and the lessons to be learned from those mistakes. It falls into cliché and hollow edginess, but more often jumps in surprising directions and offers a new (again, in context) take on heroes.

Happy Birthday: The Creeper

Happy Birthday: The Creeper

Jack Ryder’s parentage certainly predicted his future—his father was the publisher of a successful union dispatch, while his mother suffered paranoid schizophrenia and died in an institution while Jack was still a child.

Growing up, Ryder followed in his father’s footsteps and became a television news reporter. Unfortunately, Ryder had a big mouth. Normally that would be an asset, but Ryder didn’t know when to shut up, and it cost him his job.

The network didn’t fire him, but they did demote him to working network security, a job Ryder found beneath him. He got his chance to prove himself again when mobsters kidnapped a scientist named Dr. Emil Yatz. Ryder guessed that Yatz would be held at the mob boss’ mansion. The boss was holding a masquerade party that night, so Ryder cobbled together a bizarre costume and snuck in.

He found Yatz, but was seriously injured in the process, and to save him Yatz injected Ryder with the serum he’d created. The scientist also hid the device the mobsters were after by concealing half of it inside Ryder’s wound, which then healed thanks to the serum’s effects.

The device can make matter appear and disappear instantly, allowing a soldier to walk into a place in civilian clothes and then have a uniform and full weapons with the touch of a button. In Ryder’s case it let him make his strange new costume appear and disappear. Ryder used his bizarre appearance, the strength and agility the serum granted him, his unhinged disregard for personal safety, and a disquieting laugh to bring the mobsters to justice.

They dubbed him "The Creeper," and so a new—and truly bizarre—superhero was born.

Marvel Millie and Me

Marvel Millie and Me

  • News
  • April 29, 2008

So the third New York Comic Con is one for the annals and I have stopped twitching.

It was, at its Saturday afternoon height, a cauldron of mad, chaotic energy. (And wasn’t it dangerous? Couldn’t all that energy, confined and concentrated by four walls, affect the hearts of atoms and cause the forces that bind them together to disintegrate us all into quarks that would join the neutrinos in spewing through the universe?) That’s okay, for me, in small doses, and maybe in large doses for you, especially if you’re young and new to the megacon scene.

I won’t bother describing the event for you. If you frequent this site, you probably already have all pertinent information. Instead, a tiny, personal note:

Every one of the panels on which I sat was interesting and, I was happy to see, well-attended, which hasn’t always been the case in huge cons, where it sometimes seems that the exchange of currency is more important than honoring and discussing and learning about an art form. But the absolute, stone, hands-down high point came early, on Friday night, when I shared a stage with Peter Sanderson, who moderated, and Gary Freidrich, Joe Sinnott, and Stan Goldberg. Except for Peter, we were all veterans of Marvel’s early days, before the company became Marvel Entertainment and attached its logo to vastly expensive motion pictures, soon to play at a multiplex near you, back when it just published comic books – all kinds of comic books, not just the superhero kind – and there were no multiplexes in which to show ridiculously costly films, even if such films had existed.

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ComicMix Six: The Worst Superhero Names in Comics

ComicMix Six: The Worst Superhero Names in Comics

You know you’ve talked about it with your friends. "Mr. Fantastic? He’s got, like, 17 doctorates… Shouldn’t he be ‘Doctor Fantastic’ by now?" And let’s not forget "Captain Marvel, Junior." Captain Marvel’s not his father. What gives? And what’s the deal with that Golden Age aquatic hero who called himself "The Fin?"

No matter how much we love comics, there are some superhero aliases we just can’t get behind. So we did our best to compile some of the worst superhero names in existence.

By the way, members of the Legion of Super-Heroes have been omitted from the list, because… well, it’s just too easy to pick on Matter-Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy.

 

6. KID MIRACLEMAN: In the U.K., he was originally called "Kid Marvelman." That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a lame name. Why?

KID MiracleMAN.

You can use the word "kid" in your name or you can use the word "man," but you can’t use both! With the power of contradiction comes great responsibility!

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ComicMix Review: ‘Superhero Movie’

[Editor’s Note: While ComicMix columnist Michael H. Price devoted a recent column to reviewing the superhero parody film Superhero Movie, regular ComicMix film reviewer Matt Raub braved hordes of pre-teen Drake & Josh fans this weekend to provide some addiitonal insight on the film. With ticket prices as they are these days, we figured ComicMix readers would appreciate the extra review before they parted with their money. -RM]

To begin with, this movie isn’t terrible. But before we get into that, a brief history lesson:

Scary Movie is a horror-spoof franchise that began in 2000 and was helmed by six writers that included the Wayans brothers and their team from previous projects. Also included were writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. This team’s only previous credit was the 1996 spy spoof Spy Hard, starring Leslie Nielson. As a whole, this was the creative team responsible for the first two Scary Movie films, but they opted out of a third film, and the franchise continued with Airplane and Naked Gun creator David Zucker at the helm. Zucker brought along Pat Proft, who he had previously worked with, and a new guy named Craig Mazin, who worked on a quirky superhero comedy from 2000 called The Specials.

Still with me here? Good, because we’re almost to the point, I promise. Upon leaving the franchise after Scary Movie 2, two of the six writers decided they weren’t quite done with the “spoofing genres” game and went on to write and direct Date Movie. (The original trailer for Date Movie even tagged the film as “from two of the six writers of Scary Movie.”) They also went on to do Epic Movie and, finally, winter’s kick-in-the-face: Meet the Spartans. At this point, if you’re not bleeding from the ears, you may be asking yourself, “Why did I need to know any of this?” Well, because those hating on this film based purely on its existence need to know that [[[Superhero Movie]]] was not the brainchild of any of the people attached to the three terrible spin-off-genre-spoofing-machines, be they [[[Date]]], [[[Epic]]], or [[[Spartan]]]. Instead, it is that of Craig Mazin, who created 2000’s superhero comedy [[[The Specials]]], starring Thomas Hayden Church and Rob Lowe (pick it up on DVD, it’s pretty good).

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Review: Jughead’s Double Digest #138

Review: Jughead’s Double Digest #138

So there I was, at Midtown Comics, one of New York City’s better-racked shops, trying to find something my wife was looking for. That’s the only way you could get me into a comics shop on a Tuesday, the day before the new stuff is put on the shelves. Since I was there, I looked at everything else as well… and came across [[[Jughead’s Double Digest #138]]], a beneath-the-radar book that some will find of note.

This is the issue before the beginning of their latest “new-look” story, this time drawn by my pals Joe Staton and Al Milgrom, so I gave it a second glance. Above the logo, in type too small to be visible in the reproduction I cribbed from Archie’s website, is the phrase “Collectors (sic) Issue Featuring Jughead #1, 1949.” The cover art promised a story where the 2008 Jughead meets up with his 1949 counterpart. The one who only owned one shirt.

Unless you’ve been scouring the ComicMix comments sections lately, it is possible you are unaware that the Archie line is one of the best-selling newsstand comics ventures of our time. In fact, since their digests are available at most supermarket checkouts, they provide an unparalleled portal into the world of comics. Because their content appeals to readers of all sexes and age groups, they appeal to a group Marvel and DC barely acknowledge: the younger reader.

I should point out that Archie is also the last of the publishing houses still controlled by the family of its original owners. That comes across quite clearly in their editorial content, which is quite respectful of its roots.

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