B.P.R.D.:
Hollow Earth and The Soul of Venice
by Mike Mignola and others
B.P.R.D. is one of the
few spin-offs that may be even better than the parent title. The
Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense comes out of the world of
Hellboy. The main stories take place after Hellboy has left the
Bureau, focusing on the friends and teammates that he left behind.
Secondary stories occasionally take place earlier in the chronology,
while still focusing on the solo adventures of the co-stars. It
works really well. Rather than reading like the Knights of the Round
Table without King Arthur, the other characters of this world are
given a chance to shine. The group truly becomes a team of equals
rather than a supporting cast. A lot of different artists contribute
to these volumes. Each reader will have favorites and others that
the reader doesn’t enjoy as much. For me, I wasn’t
impressed with Derek Thompson’s work and didn’t think
Scott Kolins’ style was the right fit. Yet I loved Ryan Sook’s
take on the characters and I thought that some of the very different
approaches, such as that of Adam Pollina, brought a fascinating new
look.
Batman:
Hush Vol. 1 and 2
by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee
and Scott Williams
Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee each have their share of detractors so I heard a lot of negative reactions to Hush when it first came out. As a result, I went in with fairly low expectations, more out of idle curiosity than general interest. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. I was very impressed. This was a great Batman story, every bit as good as Strange Apparitions that I reviewed last week. Jeph Loeb does a great job of using each issue to focus on one or two villains or supporting characters while still moving the overall story forward. We get a great succession of villains, from Killer Croc to Poison Ivy to the Joker. We get some great scenes with Batman’s sometime teammates like Huntress and Superman. And there’s even a little romance with both Catwoman and Talia making their advances on Batman. I think that Loeb even does a good job with some of the smaller scenes. I especially appreciated the inclusion of Lois Lane and the depiction of Clark Kent. The Jim Lee art is also great. It’s big and bold as it should be for a story like this. Lee also does a great job of using a second style of softer charcoal drawings for depicting flashbacks. That isn’t to say that Hush is perfect. I have a few minor complaints. I didn’t like Lee’s new costume for the Huntress when I first saw it and I still don’t; it’s completely ridiculous. And this story takes place while Lex Luthor is supposed to be President of the United States, but that’s more a fault of DC in general than of this individual story. Yet, despite a few quibbles here and there, I was very pleased with Hush.
New
X-Men Vol. 1-6
by Grant Morrison and others
I don’t think
anybody has the same reaction to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men
that I do. I think that I can best describe it by discussing German
playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht believed in the theatre of ideas-
that the role of a play was to educate more than it was to entertain.
Brecht would intentionally disrupt his audience’s willing
suspension of disbelief so that the audience would think about his
work critically and intellectually. It’s an interesting
approach but it often came at the expense of story and
characterization. There’s a reason why, out of Brecht’s
many plays, The Threepenny Opera is the only one that’s still
performed regularly. I feel like Grant Morrison’s X-Men is
like that. It’s about the ideas- they come at the reader fast
and furious on almost every page. But the effect, on me at least, is
that I become focused on evaluating the ideas instead of enjoying the
stories. I don’t know if this was intentional on Morrison’s
part, as it was for Brecht. I just know that I spend so much time
noticing the ideas that the story becomes secondary and my enjoyment
of that story is diminished and interrupted. Plus, the flaws in
Morrison’s work stand out to me more because I am primarily
engaged critically and intellectually. It’s an interesting
approach but it almost backfires in terms of entertaining the
audience.
Yet, I found I was being drawn into the story almost in spite of myself. Even while I evaluated the quality of the ideas, groaned in response to some faulty characterization or an unnecessary ret-con, I found that I couldn’t wait to read the next volume. I wanted to see how the X-Men would deal with the many changes they were experiencing. I wanted to see how the new students would be integrated into the school. I wanted to see what happened next. There were still moments that pulled me out of the story- Jean Grey letting Fantomex escape because she thought he looked sexy is one such moment- but as I read I found that it was easier for me to get back into it. I was able to focus on the things that I was enjoying and worry less about the things I wasn’t. Reading these trades gave me an appreciation, even an admiration, for these stories that I didn’t have when they first came out.
This was especially
true when the series switched to Chris Bachalo and Phil Jimenez as
the regular artists instead of Frank Quitely and Igor Kordey. I’ve
come to appreciate Frank Quitely from his later work on Sandman:
Endless Nights and All-Star Superman but his distorted anatomy is
often ugly and distracting. Yet, I eventually got used to it and I
thought it worked very well for his later stories such as Riot at
Xavier’s. Chris Bachalo does a great job on his arc. I even
liked Fantomex just a little bit. And Phil Jimenez is great. I
don’t usually associate Jimenez with the X-Men but he was a
great fit.
So what about the
ideas? There are some that I really like. The introduction of
secondary mutation is a strong step forward. Having Professor X out
himself as a mutant mutant publicly is a step that should have been
taken years ago. And Morrison has some great ideas for new powers,
such as the mutant with a sun for a brain and the hive mind
telepaths. There’s also a nice blend of ideas from other
sources. Morrison brings in the school atmosphere and leather
uniforms from the movies (though some of Quitely’s designs are
too bulky). He explores some of the same territory as the Wild Cards
novels, bringing in the ideas of mutants with deformities or minimal
powers (called Jokers and Deuces in the Wild Cards universe). He
also takes some ideas introduced by earlier writers but then explores
them more fully- such as having Cyclops flirt with a telepath who has
a dark streak in her. Altogether, Morrison does a great job of
establishing mutants as a minority, complete with their own
sub-culture and atmosphere. Of course, there are also ideas I don’t
like- Professor X killing his twin in utero, the unnecessary ret-con
of the Weapon X program as the Weapon Plus program and the almost
anti-human stance taken by Jean Grey and others. But now, with the
perspective of time, I find that there’s more about Morrison’s
X-Men that I like than dislike.
World
without a Superman
by Dan Jurgens, Karl Kesel, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson, Roger Stern and more
World Without a
Superman is the middle act of a larger story, following on the heels
of The Death of Superman and leading up to The Reign of the Supermen.
That makes it an occasionally quiet story. Yet those quiet moments
are actually the ones when this story is at its strongest. Lois
Lane’s quiet grief, the way in which Jonathan and Martha Kent
reach out to her, Supergirl’s confusion- these are the best
parts of the story. The story suffers, however, when it strays too
far from these central supporting characters. I don’t find the
denizens of Underworld or the Newsboy Legion and Cadmus clones nearly
as interesting as the writers seem to. I understand their presence-
they each bring action and tension to the story in terms of a flood
and a grave robbery- but they shouldn’t have been allowed to
take over the story as much as they did.
Jack of
Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape
by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturgges, Tony Akins and Andrew Pepoy
Jack of Fables isn’t
quite as good a spin-off as BPRD, but it’s still much better
than I expected it to be. Willingham and company do a great job of
introducing an eclectic supporting cast, bringing in the stars of
Nursery Rhymes and forgotten stories to complement the star of
Nursery Rhymes and Fables. The characters are distinctive, even in
the short time that they’re introduced. The plot is
interesting as well. Jack was kidnapped and confined to a prison
neighborhood. But Jack doesn’t like to be confined. He leads
the Fables in an escape attempt which, naturally, doesn’t go
nearly as well as planned. And yet, it doesn’t go as badly as
could have been expected either. Jack is crazy enough to be
brilliant in his own way, and random enough that his enemies don’t
know what to do with him. There are also some great little touches
that make the book an even more enjoyable experience. I especially
appreciated the next issue blurbs which contained Jack’s
bragging about what he expected to happen in the next installment.
It was intentionally inaccurate at times as things didn’t
always to the way Jack would have wanted them to, yet it did a great
job of informing us about Jack’s character which is more
important in the big picture.
Buffy
Omnibus Vol. 5 and 6
These two volumes of
Buffy coincide with seasons four and five of the television show, as
Buffy and her friends start new lives in college. There are some
wonderful short stories, particularly in volume six, focusing on
Buffy’s memories of Angel and her relationship with Riley as
well as supporting characters like Giles, Jonathan, Willow and Tara.
There are also some excellent longer arcs. Writers like Jane
Espenson (of the tv show) and Christopher Golden do a great job of
filling in the summers between the seasons. We get to see characters
react to big events and process them, without wallowing in looking
backwards. The stories become excellent bridges, showcasing the
changes that characters go through from one season to the next. Some
of the highlights are Faith’s forays into Buffy’s dreams
and Willow re-defining her relationship with Xander as more than a
sidekick in volume five, and Giles’ struggles to find a place
in life now that he’s no longer a librarian and the insertion
of Dawn into earlier stories in volume six. Unlike most licensed
properties, we learn a lot about these characters as we delve into
under-explored aspects of their lives. There are some also great
villains like Vraka, the big demon who becomes an ally of convenience
in “The Blood of Carthage,” the rogue agent of the
Council who wants to kill Angel in the Buffy/Angel crossover and the
Japanese vampire who has an interesting connection to a missing
slayer of the 19th century in “False Memories.”
There are a few missteps. I enjoyed the Oz story but the art on it
was a little choppy. Some events and characters are inserted
awkwardly as the comics try to keep pace with the show- Tara and Anya
in particular seem to appear out of nowhere. Yet these volumes work
really well as a collection, capturing the feel of seasons four and
five while telling stories that are all their own.
Whew! That’s a lot of reviews. I hope you can stand one more week of this…
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