So many trade paperbacks, so little time!
I have bought a bunch of trade paperbacks recently, including those that you, the good readers, picked for me, and I'm going to tell you what I think of them. You got a problem with that???? Yeah, I didn't think so.
I should mention, even though it might be too late, that there are SPOILERS in the comments section. So if you haven't read Runaways yet, you might want to skip that part. Sorry if I was too late for some of you.
So, in alphabetical order:
Batman: Under The Hood
The Talent: Judd Winnick, Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen, Paul Lee, Cam Smith.
Published By: It's Batman, fools! It has to be DC.
Collects: Issues #635-641 of the ongoing Batman series.
Will Set You Back: 999 pennies. For seven issues, that's not bad.
Should You Buy It: Well, maybe.
This isn't bad. I was expecting a little more, however. It's seven issues of set-up, basically, for the big Jason Todd reveal (sorry for the spoiler, but it's not like any comic reader doesn't know this). That's a bit disappointing. I don't mind if Winnick wants to do a grand big epic with lots of sub-plots - hell, it's what made X-Men so great for so long - but by the end, all that has happened is that the Red Hood has set himself up in business and he's had an inconsequential fight with Batman. That being said, Winnick does a nice job setting everything up, and the art is gorgeous. Mahnke is one of those artists who seems to make everything he works on better. That's nice. I don't mind that Winnick brought Jason Todd back, but he's the kind of character who seems to work better dead. Like Bucky. Let's hope they never bring him back. I mean, that would be silly, right????
The Coffin
The Talent: Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston.
Published By: Oni Press.
Collects: Issues #1-4 of the mini-series.
Will Set You Back: $11.95.
Should You Buy It: Yes.
Since Deep Sleeper was so freakin' excellent, I thought I should pick up Hester and Huddleston's previous collaboration. It's not as good as that, but it's still a fine read. Ashar Ahmad is working on an experiment for rich industrialist Mr. Heller (I forget his first name) that will trap a soul in a metal case (a "coffin") just as the body dies. This will, presumably, allow someone to be immortal. Mr. Heller wants the research because he wants to live forever. He sends people to kill Dr. Ahmad and his lovely assistant (and mother of his daughter), Liv Goldenthal. Liv dies (she's a woman, after all), but Ahmad manages to get inside his coffin and his soul survives. He goes after Heller to save his daughter. It's all about revenge, people!
There are a lot of things to like about The Coffin. First, Huddleston's art is spectacular, especially his scenes of the afterlife (or wherever Ahmad goes when he "dies"). The story looks like a simple revenge fantasy, except Hester doesn't allow it to be. First, Dr. Ahmad is a jerk. He doesn't acknowledge his daughter at all until after he dies, when he has a bit of an epiphany. It's all very Scrooge-like. His journey from scumbag to hero is the crux of the story, and it's interesting that he had to die to figure out what makes a good man. Heller and his assistants are interesting characters, as well. Heller is a monster, but he has a goal that many people, I think, would become a monster to attain: immortality. The nice thing about both of Hester's projects with Huddleston is that they don't offer easy answers and they challenge the reader to look at their subjects in different ways. Isn't that a good reason to read anything?
Oh, and by the way: it says it takes place in Phoenix, but trust me - that ain't Phoenix. Research, people!
Cravan: Mystery Man of the Twentieth Century
The Talent: Mike Richardson and Rick Geary.
Published By: Dark Horse.
Collects: It's an OGN.
Will Set You Back: $14.95.
Should You Buy It: Sadly, probably not.
This is another book I really wanted to like. Really. It's not that it's bad, it's just uninspired. Like when I reviewed Persepolis 2, this is a book that, if it succeeds, it succeeds largely on the strength of its subject matter, the mysterious Arthur Cravan, who disappeared in 1918 and may or may not have written The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Cravan's life is so fascinating that you can go through the book easily, marveling at his relationships with Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion, Leon Trotsky, and various artists of the Dada school, but it's a strangely dispassionate telling of his life, like Richardson was penning a press release. It's unfortunate, because this is obviously a man who begs for full-scale literary treatment. Geary's art is very nice, but it doesn't rescue this. It's a shame.
Fantastic Four Vol. 1 HC
The Talent: Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel, with Mark Buckingham, Casey Jones, and Danny Miki.
Published By: You know who publishes this!
Collects: Fantastic Four #60-70, 500-502.
Will Set You Back: $29.99. For 14 issues, that's pretty good.
Should You Buy It: If you like superheroes, yes. Even if you don't, it's pretty good.
Waid has always been an interesting writer, with a lot of good stuff going on but one who occasionally goes off the rails. I hear the end of his run on FF wasn't that good, but I loved this collection. This is glorious superhero storytelling, even though Waid tries to tell us they're not superheroes. Well, okay, but they sure act like superheroes. I have never been a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, but it seems like this is how they should be done. They have a company, and Sue putting Johnny in charge of its finances is genius. They have adventures with a scientific spin on them. Hey - they're science heroes! Reed and Sue act like a married couple. I don't like married couples in comics that talk about sex all the time, because that's not how married couples talk, especially ones with children (believe me, I know). But they flirt a lot, they argue without malice, and they complement each other perfectly. And Doctor Doom is nice and evil. Good to see. Doom, along with Magneto, is the big bad villain of the Marvel U., but where as I don't mind a sympathetic Magneto, I don't want a sympathetic Doom. He's an absolute tyrant and he's just evil. Waid's Doom wouldn't cry when the World Trade Center fell, he would curse the terrorists who did because he always failed at it.
Wieringo's art is decent. I've never been a huge fan, and his cartoonish style doesn't work well with Doom's look, but other than that, it's fine. His wavy lines on his characters' heads bug me. Sorry.
The Legend Of GrimJack Vol. 4
The Talent: John Ostrander, Timothy Truman, Steve Erwin, Tom Sutton, and Paul Guinan.
Published By: IDW.
Collects: Issues #15-21 of the old First Comics series.
Will Set You Back: $24.99.
Should You Buy It: You mean you haven't bought it already????
Yes, it's a little spendy. Who cares! GrimJack is a brilliant comic book series, with Ostrander working at the top of his game and Truman's art looking more astonishing every time you look at it. Then, Truman leaves. Boo-hoo! The art suffers a fraction when Erwin comes on, but it's still good, and does nothing to embarrass the story. The nice thing about this volume is it contains the Trade War saga, when the conglomerates that control Cynosure go to war. Now, the story is good, but people from previous issues keep popping up to play important roles. The neat thing about the earlier issues is that Ostrander makes it seem like they're single-issue stories that won't have any impact on the future. Therefore, you can read them for the story and enjoy them, but he can tie them into a bigger story that you're not even aware of. That's good writing. These are excellent comics. If you already have them in the single-issue format, go read them again. If you don't, run to the store and pick up the trades.
Gun Fu
The Talent: Howard M. Shum and Joey Mason.
Published By: Image.
Collects: Gun Fu #1 and Gun Fu: The Lost City #1-4, originally published by Axiom.
Will Set You Back: $14.95.
Should You Buy It: Sure, why not?
Gun Fu is a largely inconsequential story of Cheng Bo Sen, a Hong Kong cop in 1936 who speaks in hip-hop lingo that nobody notices who keeps getting sent on suicide missions against the Nazis by Queen Elizabeth (who, of course, wasn't the queen in 1936) because he's a loose cannon. It's very fun and frenetic and goofy, and the art keeps up with the wacky story. Bo Sen says stuff like "What up, dog?" when he meets the queen, "Cracker, please. You'll be Satan's bitch before the day is over," to the Nazi soldiers, and "My ride is booming and I'm ready to stick the key in the ignition - you know what I'm saying?" when he rescues a foxy lady. He goes to the jungles of South America to stop the Nazis from finding a lost city filled with treasure, and mayhem ensues, with Nazi monkeys a highlight. The only big problem I have with the book is that Bo Sen gets all sappy right at the end, when he has to leave Adrima, the girl he met in the jungle, behind, because it's completely out of joint with the rest of the book, but other than that, it's fun. Fun fun fun.
Legion Of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga
The Talent: Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, Larry Mahlstedt, with Pat Broderick, Curt Swan, and Romeo Tanghal.
Published By: DC
Collects: Legion Of Super-Heroes issues #287, 290-294, Annual #3.
Will Set You Back: $14.95.
Should You Buy It: Probably not.
It's not that The Great Darkness Saga is all that bad. It just hasn't aged all that well. It's from 1982-83, after all, and a lot has changed in comics since then, and maybe I'm just too jaded to really enjoy this fully. It's nice to see Darkseid being big and bad-ass, and the fact that the Legion doesn't know who he is seems kind of bizarre, but he gets beaten awfully easily, it seems to me. The whole storyline sets up this great cataclysmic event, but when the Legion ends up fighting Darkseid, they seem to handle him pretty well. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, I guess. I was always curious about this story, but it just didn't do it for me.
Legion Of Super-Heroes: Teenage Revolution
The Talent: Mark Waid and Barry Kitson, with a few other pencillers and a bunch of inkers.
Published By: DC.
Collects: Teen Titans/Legion Special #1 and Legion Of Super-Heroes (Vol. 7,000,000) #1-6.
Will Set You Back: $14.99.
Should You Buy It: A cautious yes.
Another Waid entry, and it's pretty good. Kitson's art is well suited for this kind of straight-forward superhero space opera, and although there are a lot of characters (it's the Legion, after all), Waid does a nice job of making sure we know who's who and what's going on with them. The long-term story about the coming war is set up nicely with a lot of mystery and tension, and I'm interested in finding out where it goes. As with all of these kinds of things, there's a fine line between building the tension and stringing the reader along because you don't have an ending, and although the war plot doesn't come to a head in this volume, I don't feel like Waid is stringing us along. He's just putting all the pieces in place.
So why is this "a cautious yes"? Well, there is the danger that, just like The Great Darkness Saga, this could be all set-up and poor pay-off. We'll see. I was also turned off by the "teenage revolution" aspect of the book. Waid kept bashing us over the head with it, and it's such a cliché, and by the time he mentioned it for the hundredth time it was really starting to bug me. It's too easy to make this a generational fight, and although he tried to mitigate a bit throughout the book, it wasn't enough. I didn't like that aspect of it, and it bothered me the whole time I was reading it. If it doesn't bother you, I say go for it - it's a fun superhero book.
Runaways Vol. 1 HC
The Talent: Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, with Takeshi Miyazawa, Craig Yeung, and David Newbold.
Published By: Marvel.
Collects: Runaways #1-18.
Will Set You Back: $34.99. Again, for 18 issues that's damned good.
Should You Buy It: Yes.
The first question I have about Runaways is: Why go on? Couldn't Marvel have given Vaughan about two more issues to resolve anything he wanted and then killed it for good? I'm not saying the new series is bad, it just seems like there's nowhere to go without feeling artificial. The last issue sets up the new series, but it doesn't do it well. Oh well.
This is a nice series. The art is strong, the story hums along, always keeping the larger story in mind, there's a lot of good characterization and dramatic tension. When you, good readers, recommended it, you mentioned the BIG TWIST. I don't get it. We know early on that there's a mole in the kids' midst (if you haven't read it, that's not giving anything away, because we find out so soon), so finding out who it is isn't that surprising. We expect one of them to be the mole. Maybe that's not the BIG TWIST - there's another one, I suppose, but it seems like a logical extension of the whole story. It's not surprising this series died with the reading public - I'm somewhat ashamed I didn't buy it - but that shouldn't deter you from buying it. It's a superhero comic book in the Marvel U. that doesn't take place in New York and guest stars Cloak and Dagger (come on - Cloak and Dagger!). Yes, it's another generational story with the kids being the good ones, but it's more organic than Legion Of Super-Heroes. Yes, it's a lot of cash, but it's completely worth it. Even with the somewhat weak ending.
The New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract
The Talent: Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, and Romeo Tanghal.
Published By: DC.
Collects: The New Teen Titans #39-40, Tales Of The Teen Titans #41-44, Annual #3.
Will Set You Back: $19.99.
Should You Buy It: Eh.
This is one of those stories that is better for its impact than its actual quality. Perez's art is beautiful, but it's kind of a weak tale, isn't it? Maybe it's because we know Tara is a bad guy. There's no surprise. Even if I knew it going in, it would have been nice if the moment had been a little more shocking. It's not. Tara is a weird character, too - everything about her seems mapped out, and she can't deviate from the script. Yes, I know she's a fictional character, but the best fictional characters surprise you - Tara goes through the motions, and she's never really a true "character." Maybe if I had read the preceding issues, when she was a member of the team, her betrayal would hurt more and her weak attempts at redemption might make more sense, but here it doesn't.
Brother Blood has always seemed like a lame villain, too, and the fact that he's the centerpiece of this volume (yes, Deathstroke is Tara's mentor and has the big fight with the Titans at the end, but it's still Brother Blood) weakens it. Deathstroke is such a great villain, and his weird relationship with the teenaged Tara (were they really lovers? do we ever find out?) is a strength of the book, but it never fleshes out. It's strangely unsatisfying.
Like I said, this story is more noteworthy for its impact than its quality. The introduction of Nightwing, Kid Flash quits the team, Tara dies, Jericho joins - it's all here! But it's still not a great trade paperback.
So there you go, my fine readers. See how I take care of your questions about whether you should buy trade paperbacks? It's all about the love, people!
I should mention, even though it might be too late, that there are SPOILERS in the comments section. So if you haven't read Runaways yet, you might want to skip that part. Sorry if I was too late for some of you.
So, in alphabetical order:
Batman: Under The Hood
The Talent: Judd Winnick, Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen, Paul Lee, Cam Smith.
Published By: It's Batman, fools! It has to be DC.
Collects: Issues #635-641 of the ongoing Batman series.
Will Set You Back: 999 pennies. For seven issues, that's not bad.
Should You Buy It: Well, maybe.
This isn't bad. I was expecting a little more, however. It's seven issues of set-up, basically, for the big Jason Todd reveal (sorry for the spoiler, but it's not like any comic reader doesn't know this). That's a bit disappointing. I don't mind if Winnick wants to do a grand big epic with lots of sub-plots - hell, it's what made X-Men so great for so long - but by the end, all that has happened is that the Red Hood has set himself up in business and he's had an inconsequential fight with Batman. That being said, Winnick does a nice job setting everything up, and the art is gorgeous. Mahnke is one of those artists who seems to make everything he works on better. That's nice. I don't mind that Winnick brought Jason Todd back, but he's the kind of character who seems to work better dead. Like Bucky. Let's hope they never bring him back. I mean, that would be silly, right????
The Coffin
The Talent: Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston.
Published By: Oni Press.
Collects: Issues #1-4 of the mini-series.
Will Set You Back: $11.95.
Should You Buy It: Yes.
Since Deep Sleeper was so freakin' excellent, I thought I should pick up Hester and Huddleston's previous collaboration. It's not as good as that, but it's still a fine read. Ashar Ahmad is working on an experiment for rich industrialist Mr. Heller (I forget his first name) that will trap a soul in a metal case (a "coffin") just as the body dies. This will, presumably, allow someone to be immortal. Mr. Heller wants the research because he wants to live forever. He sends people to kill Dr. Ahmad and his lovely assistant (and mother of his daughter), Liv Goldenthal. Liv dies (she's a woman, after all), but Ahmad manages to get inside his coffin and his soul survives. He goes after Heller to save his daughter. It's all about revenge, people!
There are a lot of things to like about The Coffin. First, Huddleston's art is spectacular, especially his scenes of the afterlife (or wherever Ahmad goes when he "dies"). The story looks like a simple revenge fantasy, except Hester doesn't allow it to be. First, Dr. Ahmad is a jerk. He doesn't acknowledge his daughter at all until after he dies, when he has a bit of an epiphany. It's all very Scrooge-like. His journey from scumbag to hero is the crux of the story, and it's interesting that he had to die to figure out what makes a good man. Heller and his assistants are interesting characters, as well. Heller is a monster, but he has a goal that many people, I think, would become a monster to attain: immortality. The nice thing about both of Hester's projects with Huddleston is that they don't offer easy answers and they challenge the reader to look at their subjects in different ways. Isn't that a good reason to read anything?
Oh, and by the way: it says it takes place in Phoenix, but trust me - that ain't Phoenix. Research, people!
Cravan: Mystery Man of the Twentieth Century
The Talent: Mike Richardson and Rick Geary.
Published By: Dark Horse.
Collects: It's an OGN.
Will Set You Back: $14.95.
Should You Buy It: Sadly, probably not.
This is another book I really wanted to like. Really. It's not that it's bad, it's just uninspired. Like when I reviewed Persepolis 2, this is a book that, if it succeeds, it succeeds largely on the strength of its subject matter, the mysterious Arthur Cravan, who disappeared in 1918 and may or may not have written The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Cravan's life is so fascinating that you can go through the book easily, marveling at his relationships with Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion, Leon Trotsky, and various artists of the Dada school, but it's a strangely dispassionate telling of his life, like Richardson was penning a press release. It's unfortunate, because this is obviously a man who begs for full-scale literary treatment. Geary's art is very nice, but it doesn't rescue this. It's a shame.
Fantastic Four Vol. 1 HC
The Talent: Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel, with Mark Buckingham, Casey Jones, and Danny Miki.
Published By: You know who publishes this!
Collects: Fantastic Four #60-70, 500-502.
Will Set You Back: $29.99. For 14 issues, that's pretty good.
Should You Buy It: If you like superheroes, yes. Even if you don't, it's pretty good.
Waid has always been an interesting writer, with a lot of good stuff going on but one who occasionally goes off the rails. I hear the end of his run on FF wasn't that good, but I loved this collection. This is glorious superhero storytelling, even though Waid tries to tell us they're not superheroes. Well, okay, but they sure act like superheroes. I have never been a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, but it seems like this is how they should be done. They have a company, and Sue putting Johnny in charge of its finances is genius. They have adventures with a scientific spin on them. Hey - they're science heroes! Reed and Sue act like a married couple. I don't like married couples in comics that talk about sex all the time, because that's not how married couples talk, especially ones with children (believe me, I know). But they flirt a lot, they argue without malice, and they complement each other perfectly. And Doctor Doom is nice and evil. Good to see. Doom, along with Magneto, is the big bad villain of the Marvel U., but where as I don't mind a sympathetic Magneto, I don't want a sympathetic Doom. He's an absolute tyrant and he's just evil. Waid's Doom wouldn't cry when the World Trade Center fell, he would curse the terrorists who did because he always failed at it.
Wieringo's art is decent. I've never been a huge fan, and his cartoonish style doesn't work well with Doom's look, but other than that, it's fine. His wavy lines on his characters' heads bug me. Sorry.
The Legend Of GrimJack Vol. 4
The Talent: John Ostrander, Timothy Truman, Steve Erwin, Tom Sutton, and Paul Guinan.
Published By: IDW.
Collects: Issues #15-21 of the old First Comics series.
Will Set You Back: $24.99.
Should You Buy It: You mean you haven't bought it already????
Yes, it's a little spendy. Who cares! GrimJack is a brilliant comic book series, with Ostrander working at the top of his game and Truman's art looking more astonishing every time you look at it. Then, Truman leaves. Boo-hoo! The art suffers a fraction when Erwin comes on, but it's still good, and does nothing to embarrass the story. The nice thing about this volume is it contains the Trade War saga, when the conglomerates that control Cynosure go to war. Now, the story is good, but people from previous issues keep popping up to play important roles. The neat thing about the earlier issues is that Ostrander makes it seem like they're single-issue stories that won't have any impact on the future. Therefore, you can read them for the story and enjoy them, but he can tie them into a bigger story that you're not even aware of. That's good writing. These are excellent comics. If you already have them in the single-issue format, go read them again. If you don't, run to the store and pick up the trades.
Gun Fu
The Talent: Howard M. Shum and Joey Mason.
Published By: Image.
Collects: Gun Fu #1 and Gun Fu: The Lost City #1-4, originally published by Axiom.
Will Set You Back: $14.95.
Should You Buy It: Sure, why not?
Gun Fu is a largely inconsequential story of Cheng Bo Sen, a Hong Kong cop in 1936 who speaks in hip-hop lingo that nobody notices who keeps getting sent on suicide missions against the Nazis by Queen Elizabeth (who, of course, wasn't the queen in 1936) because he's a loose cannon. It's very fun and frenetic and goofy, and the art keeps up with the wacky story. Bo Sen says stuff like "What up, dog?" when he meets the queen, "Cracker, please. You'll be Satan's bitch before the day is over," to the Nazi soldiers, and "My ride is booming and I'm ready to stick the key in the ignition - you know what I'm saying?" when he rescues a foxy lady. He goes to the jungles of South America to stop the Nazis from finding a lost city filled with treasure, and mayhem ensues, with Nazi monkeys a highlight. The only big problem I have with the book is that Bo Sen gets all sappy right at the end, when he has to leave Adrima, the girl he met in the jungle, behind, because it's completely out of joint with the rest of the book, but other than that, it's fun. Fun fun fun.
Legion Of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga
The Talent: Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, Larry Mahlstedt, with Pat Broderick, Curt Swan, and Romeo Tanghal.
Published By: DC
Collects: Legion Of Super-Heroes issues #287, 290-294, Annual #3.
Will Set You Back: $14.95.
Should You Buy It: Probably not.
It's not that The Great Darkness Saga is all that bad. It just hasn't aged all that well. It's from 1982-83, after all, and a lot has changed in comics since then, and maybe I'm just too jaded to really enjoy this fully. It's nice to see Darkseid being big and bad-ass, and the fact that the Legion doesn't know who he is seems kind of bizarre, but he gets beaten awfully easily, it seems to me. The whole storyline sets up this great cataclysmic event, but when the Legion ends up fighting Darkseid, they seem to handle him pretty well. Sound and fury, signifying nothing, I guess. I was always curious about this story, but it just didn't do it for me.
Legion Of Super-Heroes: Teenage Revolution
The Talent: Mark Waid and Barry Kitson, with a few other pencillers and a bunch of inkers.
Published By: DC.
Collects: Teen Titans/Legion Special #1 and Legion Of Super-Heroes (Vol. 7,000,000) #1-6.
Will Set You Back: $14.99.
Should You Buy It: A cautious yes.
Another Waid entry, and it's pretty good. Kitson's art is well suited for this kind of straight-forward superhero space opera, and although there are a lot of characters (it's the Legion, after all), Waid does a nice job of making sure we know who's who and what's going on with them. The long-term story about the coming war is set up nicely with a lot of mystery and tension, and I'm interested in finding out where it goes. As with all of these kinds of things, there's a fine line between building the tension and stringing the reader along because you don't have an ending, and although the war plot doesn't come to a head in this volume, I don't feel like Waid is stringing us along. He's just putting all the pieces in place.
So why is this "a cautious yes"? Well, there is the danger that, just like The Great Darkness Saga, this could be all set-up and poor pay-off. We'll see. I was also turned off by the "teenage revolution" aspect of the book. Waid kept bashing us over the head with it, and it's such a cliché, and by the time he mentioned it for the hundredth time it was really starting to bug me. It's too easy to make this a generational fight, and although he tried to mitigate a bit throughout the book, it wasn't enough. I didn't like that aspect of it, and it bothered me the whole time I was reading it. If it doesn't bother you, I say go for it - it's a fun superhero book.
Runaways Vol. 1 HC
The Talent: Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, with Takeshi Miyazawa, Craig Yeung, and David Newbold.
Published By: Marvel.
Collects: Runaways #1-18.
Will Set You Back: $34.99. Again, for 18 issues that's damned good.
Should You Buy It: Yes.
The first question I have about Runaways is: Why go on? Couldn't Marvel have given Vaughan about two more issues to resolve anything he wanted and then killed it for good? I'm not saying the new series is bad, it just seems like there's nowhere to go without feeling artificial. The last issue sets up the new series, but it doesn't do it well. Oh well.
This is a nice series. The art is strong, the story hums along, always keeping the larger story in mind, there's a lot of good characterization and dramatic tension. When you, good readers, recommended it, you mentioned the BIG TWIST. I don't get it. We know early on that there's a mole in the kids' midst (if you haven't read it, that's not giving anything away, because we find out so soon), so finding out who it is isn't that surprising. We expect one of them to be the mole. Maybe that's not the BIG TWIST - there's another one, I suppose, but it seems like a logical extension of the whole story. It's not surprising this series died with the reading public - I'm somewhat ashamed I didn't buy it - but that shouldn't deter you from buying it. It's a superhero comic book in the Marvel U. that doesn't take place in New York and guest stars Cloak and Dagger (come on - Cloak and Dagger!). Yes, it's another generational story with the kids being the good ones, but it's more organic than Legion Of Super-Heroes. Yes, it's a lot of cash, but it's completely worth it. Even with the somewhat weak ending.
The New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract
The Talent: Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, and Romeo Tanghal.
Published By: DC.
Collects: The New Teen Titans #39-40, Tales Of The Teen Titans #41-44, Annual #3.
Will Set You Back: $19.99.
Should You Buy It: Eh.
This is one of those stories that is better for its impact than its actual quality. Perez's art is beautiful, but it's kind of a weak tale, isn't it? Maybe it's because we know Tara is a bad guy. There's no surprise. Even if I knew it going in, it would have been nice if the moment had been a little more shocking. It's not. Tara is a weird character, too - everything about her seems mapped out, and she can't deviate from the script. Yes, I know she's a fictional character, but the best fictional characters surprise you - Tara goes through the motions, and she's never really a true "character." Maybe if I had read the preceding issues, when she was a member of the team, her betrayal would hurt more and her weak attempts at redemption might make more sense, but here it doesn't.
Brother Blood has always seemed like a lame villain, too, and the fact that he's the centerpiece of this volume (yes, Deathstroke is Tara's mentor and has the big fight with the Titans at the end, but it's still Brother Blood) weakens it. Deathstroke is such a great villain, and his weird relationship with the teenaged Tara (were they really lovers? do we ever find out?) is a strength of the book, but it never fleshes out. It's strangely unsatisfying.
Like I said, this story is more noteworthy for its impact than its quality. The introduction of Nightwing, Kid Flash quits the team, Tara dies, Jericho joins - it's all here! But it's still not a great trade paperback.
So there you go, my fine readers. See how I take care of your questions about whether you should buy trade paperbacks? It's all about the love, people!
posted by Greg at 12/05/2005 06:11:00 PM
20 Comments:
The "Big Twist" in Runaways turns the best and most likable character into a villain, and writes him out of the book. The next volume suffers greatly without him, as the rest of the cast are pretty much stock teen characters like The Dumb Jock, The Insecure Dork, The Drama Queen and The Cute Kid.
"but where as I don't mind a sympathetic Magneto, I don't want a sympathetic Doom. He's an absolute tyrant and he's just evil."
The best villains are sympathetic, at least to the extent that they have motives which make sense and resonate beyond the insipid notion of just being "evil." "Pure evil" is a stupid motivation - and so is obsessive jealousy of Reed Richards, for that matter. The best Doom stories are the ones that make his desire for power an outgrowth of a perverse idealism. He's Marvel's greatest villain because he's the superhero instinct warped and bloated until it becomes entirely about the need to impose order.
I don't want Doom to be capable of becoming a good guy (the way Claremont reformed Magneto), and the notion of him crying at the World Trade Center is laughable at best (he's not even supposed to have tear ducts anymore, for Christ's sake), but the character is most compelling when he's written as a tragic figure: someone who could, if circumstances had been different, become a force for good, and has now become a tyrannical, utopian monster.
(You'll note that I'm talking about which versions of the character are most compelling, not which ones are more prevalent or more "real." The character has been written so inconsistently over the years that it scarcely makes sense to me to talk about anything else.)
You love everything, hippy!
I agree about Runaways' twist. I know there was supposed to be a traitor, but to make the most interesting, cool character the traitor was a bad move. What I looked forward to was seeing how Alex molded the team and helped them mature. I figured it was going to be the mature, smart kid helping the immature kids grow. Without him, though, it's just a book about some annoyinglu spoiled mallrats. Also, it was rare to see a black guy be the coolest character in the book. I'm too used to characters like Triathlon as the token black.
I know it's petty, but as a black person it was nice to see a black person being the coolest character in a book, which happens rarely. The other time was in Generation X, and that character was killed too. What made it worse in Runaways was that as soon as Alex died, he was already forgotten a few panels later. It was treated as totally inconsequential. Even the girl who was supposed to be his love interest seemed to shrug it off.
So basically, in addition to killing off the only reason I read the book, they treat his death as an almost nonevent on top of that.
Oh yeah, and Lungfish has a point. The remaining members are basically a "Breakfast Club" teen movie stereotype.
Recently, I read the 4th Runaways digest, and was unimpressed. The book seems to be looking for a point to its existence. That new member of the team doesn't do anything for me.
I like Doom portaryed with a twisted nobility, a la the Byrne issues of Fantastic Four or Triumph & Torment. He's a ruthless opponent who will kill you as soon as look at you, but he won't allow his subjects to come to harm. He thinks he's above everyone, but he has respect for a worthy enemy.
I read "The Great Darkness Saga" this past summer, and the part that stuck out the most to me was Invisible Kid II. God, I hated him.
I used to more or less buy into the "Doom as a sort of noble villain" theory until Waid convincingly disabused me of it. (One of the key, telling points: 90% of the talk about Doom's honor and nobility comes from Doom himself!)
But he's somewhat complex, too. He's not "pure evil," and maybe wouldn't have become a supervillain without his Richards obsession. But I bet he'd still be an arrogant, insuferable asshat.
The thing that I've always liked about Doom was that he does represent ultimate evil in the Marvel Universe. He's only tragic and misunderstood in his own head. He can't bear the thought that he isn't the smartest person on the planet, and he's taking that out on everybody else. Reed is just a very convenient focal point for his rage. That's what makes him work as an ultimate evil -- he has a motivation, but it's so embedded that he cannot be reasoned with, he cannot be sympathized with, and he will not stop until he gets what he wants. Waid demonstrated just what lengths Doom will go to, and thus made him truly scary for the first time in a long time.
maybe wouldn't have become a supervillain without his Richards obsession. But I bet he'd still be an arrogant, insuferable asshat.
Doom's obsession with Richards wasn't all that made him a supervillain. His belief that he could pound the world into a better place - and thus had a moral imperative to do so - did. He already had his oppressed gypsies and his dead mother to deal with, and that's always struck me as the source of that massive chip on his shoulder.
(Of course, if he were a superhero AND an arrogant, insufferable asshat, then he'd just be a smarter, cooler version of Namor.)
Every writer has gone their own route with Doom. The Doom of "Secret Wars" certainly was more interested in godhood and perfection than in killing Reed Richards, for instance. Mark Waid didn't "discover" anything new about the depths the fictional Doctor Doom would go to, any more than Scott Lobdell "discovered" Magneto was really a crazy genocidal maniac. Waid just wrote a Doom that was pretty much entirely about Destroying The Accursed Richards, which didn't leave room for the more traditional Doomian "sense of honor" stuff.
Ultimately the "Doom just wants to kill Richards" take strikes me as boring. It gives the impression that if he ever pulled it off, Doom will just shrug, hang up his super-armor and take up knitting. The Doom who wants to impose his own stultifying order on the world is at least doing something.
Let's see ...
The problem with Runaways and the ending, I think, is that Vaughan did want to continue the series, and I agree, losing one of the best characters and still moving on is difficult (and, like I said, I haven't read the new series, so I'm not making a judgment call on that). As it stands, I don't mind the big reveal, because it makes sense within the context of the story. I hadn't thought of T.'s objection that he's black and it's a shame to lose one of the good black characters in comics - that is a very good point, and I wonder if Vaughan considered it. I doubt it.
All the points about Doom are fine - I don't mind if he has some kind of twisted nobility, especially when that nobility exists largely in his head. I just don't think he works as a sympathetic character - granted, I haven't read tons of Doom-related material, but the best portrayels of him are the ones where he is pure evil, or at least purely tyrannical. I also don't want to hear how he looks after his subjects. Latveria looks like a third-world country whenever it's shown, while Doom lives in technological comfort in his castle. He could turn it into Wakanda, but he chooses not to. Because he's evil.
The thing that I've always liked about Doom was that he does represent ultimate evil in the Marvel Universe.
Thanos wants to kill everybody. Ditto for Apocalypse, only with far less style. Does Mephisto get no points here? He's the actual devil, after all. The Red Skull is an evil super-Nazi with a skull for a head. If we're talking body count, Galactus probably beats everybody hands-down. Hell, the Silver friggin' Surfer has to have killed a couple hundred billion people at least, and he's a "good guy." I'm not saying I'd vote for the guy, but there's worse supervillains than Doctor Doom.
Latveria looks like a third-world country whenever it's shown
No, Latveria looks like a bizarre combination of 19th century Bavaria and feudal Europe whenever it's shown, because Stan and Jack had no idea what Eastern Europe looked like. And even then it's not consistent: in Secret War, Bendis had Latveria as a modern, high-tech state with gleaming modernist buildings everywhere. Latveria itself isn't all that fleshed out, beyond the notion that (1) it's ruled by a crazy supervillain, and (2) the people seem to really like that supervillain. Why is that? I've no idea, maybe they're all being mind-controlled, but a lot of non-Doom characters have made this observation over the years.
He could turn it into Wakanda, but he chooses not to. Because he's evil.
Doom is evil because he's a dictator. He doesn't get points off his dictator card for being a "bad" dictator.
Now Wakanda, THAT really bugs me: Black Panther is also a dictator. Yes, I know, he's a "nice" dictator who is written by Reginald Hudlin and beloved by incarcerated Luke Cages everywhere. But he's a dictator. What happens to dissidents in Wakanda? Are there no pro-democracy movements? What happens if a Wakandan doesn't like T'challa's foreign policy? He doesn't get a vote. What if he starts a protest movement? I'm betting he gets a guy in a panther suit sticking him in a detainment facility somewhere, which is your basic superhero equivalent of what goes on in dictatorships.
Brother Blood has always seemed like a lame villain, too, and the fact that he's the centerpiece of this volume (yes, Deathstroke is Tara's mentor and has the big fight with the Titans at the end, but it's still Brother Blood) weakens it.
I don't understand how you came away with this impression. Brother Blood figures in the first story of the collection, but after that, it's all Deathstroke/Hive, with no Brother Blood at all.
Latveria is in that same part of the world where the Universal (and Hammer, for that matter) horror films take place. A place where, even though it's often supposed to be Transylvania or something, everything looks vaguely Germanic, and everybody speaks English.
I also have the vague notion that Latveria wasn't explicitly *Eastern* European at first, but more like some offshoot of Switzerland or something.
I've never been entirely convinced that Doom isn't justified in hating Reed Richards. The guy's as arrogant as Doom is, he's just nicer about it. I mean, he's such a twit that his wife has sexual fantasies about a fish!
Be nice now, Kelvin. He's a very sexy fish.
Richards may be arrogant, or he may simply be a genius with poor social skills. Doom hates Reed because he believes that Reed screwed with Doom's experiment in college, thus causing it to blow up and scar his face. As far as any of us know, that's not the case -- Doom is simply too arrogant to admit he made a mistake (that Reed spotted), so he blames Reed. I'd call that unjustified.
Comments on The Judas Contract:
It was already revealed in NTT #34 that Tara was a traitor. It was no longer a secret by the time The Judas Contract started. Deathstroke and Tara were clearly lovers.
I don't fully understand your reasons for disliking the book. I venture to say that the reasons you gave seem sort of trivial. The more character-driven stories in the book (i.e. #38, #39 and #42) are some of my favorite comics of all.
I think Judas Contract probably was the final nail in the coffin of New Teen Titans superstar status. Awful, awful book.
And yes, Terra and Deathstroke were clearly lovers. Marv Wolfman has mentioned in interviews that in retrospect that was a big mistake that he regrets and was simply inappropriate.
Perhaps the best depiction of Doom I can recall is the future series Doom 2099. In it, Richards and every other hero is gone, leaving Doom to reclaim his throne and his own identity. Doom ends up being depicted (in the first 25 issues, at least) as a king seeking to conquer and fortify his holdings.
As for Doom hating Richards, I've always wondered if Doom didn't hate Richards because he found a flaw in Doom's calculations, or if Richards made Doom, for that one moment, doubt himself and alter it to Richards' suggestion and it then blew up on him? Hmmm...
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