Comic book reviews for the week of January 19th in six sentences (or less)

BEST OF THE WEEK

SUPERIOR #4
Writer: Mark Millar
Penciller: Leinil Yu

I know, right? Trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are. Welcome to the continuing adventures of Mark Millar’s Superman analogue, Superior, and this week’s Six Sentences or Less... Best of the Week. In this issue Superior meets his Lois Lane counterpart, Maddie Knox, helps his friend out with the local bully and, oh yah, volunteers to help end the war in Afghanistan.

With that last point Millar is clearly riffing off some of the material he was exploring in ULTIMATES 2, namely if superheroes really existed would they feel or be compelled to enter into their country’s war efforts? This is hardly virgin territory. Take a look back at some of those World War II era comic books where your favourite DC heroes stepped up to take on the Axis armies. But after the Comic Code came along it was deemed that superheroes were destined to stop bank robbers and fight their way out of elaborate death traps. And so the motifs of the modern superhero were forged.

Having said that, I think the question of why mainstream superheroes don't fight in wars is one worth answering. Thorny and nuanced political motivations aside, surely its not that big a leap to go from stopping an alien invasion to routing out terrorist cells or fighting alongside soldiers. The basic principles at play are the same. There are people with weapons trying to inflict damage on other people and you need to put your life on the line to stop them. If superheroes existed in real life are we so naive to believe that they would be blind to the good they could do on behalf of their fellow countrymen during war? Patriotism doesn't vanish just because you can bench press a tank. Its hard to belive that the Justice League would go out and stop a genocidal alien conquerer but then draw the line at meddling with wars on Earth, because, you know, 'politics are scary.' Hell, even Superman isn't immune to call of home and hearth, fighting on behalf of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Some comic books sidestep the issue of superheroes and war by portraying the government as corrupt or the soldiers bloodthirsty quasi-criminals, thus giving the hero a moral reason to remove themself from the fray.

Aside from the fact that war is bloody, graphic and fairly unheroic, if hyper-powered heroes actually did decide to wage war the whole thing would probably be over fairly quickly and it would beg the question 'what took you so damn long?' Periodically Superman does develop a god-complex and sets out to protect the entire world, but somehow events always transpire to show him that he’s better off sticking to his little corner of the globe.

No, better our funny books ignore the issue altogether and go back to giving us our four colour slug fests.

The great thing about Millar’s reinvention of Superman is that he’s not trapped into the traditional prudish trappings of the character. Superior can swear, threaten little kids with death and volunteer to go to war on behalf of his country and its all totally believe within the confines of the character.

Some bloggers like to talk about how today’s modern superhero comic books are violating the sanctity of their childhood. A sentiment that I see repeated frequently is that in the rush to make long established characters dark and edgy the core elements that define these characters are often abandoned. That’s only part of the story. In reality, writers were handcuffed for decades and the freedom to take characters to darker places was often was often denied them. So all that’s happening now is that the depths of these decades old characters are now finally being fully explored. Unfortunately that means portraying them in a fashion that readers are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with, hence the angry backlash.

What makes a character like Superior so great is that Millar is able to play around with all of Superman’s powers but bypass his restrictive mid-western upbringing and stupefying continuity. All things considered, given Millar’s history of extreme subject matter in his comic books, SUPERIOR is relatively tame. Sure there’s some swearing but what human being wouldn’t drop the F-bomb given the discovery that they have superpowers. And considering that DC is so anal retentive about their intellectual properties that they editorially mandated that an adult Clark Kent can't be shown sharing a beer with his father, its refreshing to see an adult version of the character that doesn’t treat its readers like they’ll be emotionally traumatized if their idol ever does something human.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #500
Writer: Matt Fraction
Penciller: Salvador Larocca & Frank D’armata

Marvel continues its proud tradition of renumbering their series with their latest issue of IRON MAN. I’m not an IRON MAN reader so I was grateful to see that this quincentennial issue was a (mostly) self contained story. The art was good, the writing passable. So I’ll probably check in again in another 500 issues. See you then.

Comic book reviews for the week of October 13th in six sentences (or less)

Hey everyone, these are 24 hours late because we suffered a power failure last night (which feels like the modern equivalent to 'the dog ate my homework').

Best of the Week

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5

The current chapter of Grant Morrison’s Batman epic is drawing to a close. And even the most casual fan of either the writer, or the character he’s playing with, has to respect the lengths to which Morrison has gone to mine the lesser known aspects of the franchise and reconcile some of its more fantastic elements. Suddenly, everything is on the table, because it all happened. Every cockamamie Silver Age story that was wiped away by CRISIS OF INFINITE EARTHS with an embarrassing shrug actually took place. It’s like the Batman franchise has been rebooted on the sly and decades worth of stories are now relevant again, or at least deserve a chance to be re-examined in the wake of Morrison's stint.

Hellblazer: City of Demons #1

I’m not sure why the Hellblazer franchise decided to spin this story out into a miniseries, because right now there’s nothing taking place in these pages that can’t be handled in the main title. Is Vertigo sitting on a backlog of ‘blazer stories and wanting to see some return on their investment? Anyway, I would have passed on this if it wasn’t being pencilled by the fantastic Sean Murphy. You might remember him from his work on JOE THE BARBARIAN and Learning with Wolverine. There’s nothing here that you don’t see in a straight of ‘blazer story. John Constantine drinks, smokes, acts like a dick and is apparently still British. All good in my books, but I’m still curious to see what makes this story so special.

Knight and Squire #1

Combining Paul Cornell, the current writer of ACTION COMICS, with Knight and Squire, one of Grant Morrison’s great reinventions seems like a recipe for printing money. In reality it’s neither good nor bad, but just kind of...there. The writing is solid, the art passable but not spectacular and its full of British-y goodness. Surprisingly, it does nothing for me. The story deals with heroes and villains that gather to socialize once a month at a local pub, prevented from fighting each due to the influence of ‘truce magic.’ As you might expect, the truce is broken and chaos ensues. I’m willing to stick with the story for another issue, but this title will really have to up its game if it expects to keep me as a reader.

Green Lantern #58

One of things that impresses me about Geoff Johns is the man’s ability to stick with a title. In today’s comic book market, some writers can’t stay with a book longer than an arc or too. Yet Johns frequently manages to write on a title for years, a rarity in any age and practically unheard of today. With Doug Mahnke rocking the pencils and Johns continuing to pen the story he’s been working on for the last five years this title is consistently at the top of my pull list. This month we’re treated to the continuing adventures of the Rainbow Raiders. Johns is doing an admirable job portraying the disparate personalities that banded together after the events of THE BLACKEST NIGHT in a realistic and believe manner. (Well, as realistic as a group of aliens with multicoloured magic wishing rings can ever hope to be)

Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors

Peter J. Tomasi might not be gracing the pages of the GREEN LANTERN CORPS anymore, but he’s not too far from the GL franchise thanks to his work on EMERALD WARRIORS. I get the impression that Johns uses the main GL title to tie the franchise into the DCU and move events forward. This leaves GLC and now EW to pick up some of the dangling plot threads and flesh out the larger world of the Corps. Its a system that works really well for all the titles involved. And Fernando Pasarin is just killing it on pencils. I’m not used to seeing art this great on a book that I consider to be part of the expanded DCU and not a core title.

Superman #703

I’m conflicted. On the one hand I respect what J. Michael Straczynski is attempting to do with the Superman franchise. He’s trying to approach the character in a fashion that he believes has never been done before. And I respect that. On the other hand, I’m not sure he’s been entirely successful in his aims. Let’s face it, when you have a publishing history as long as Superman does there aren’t very many unexplored angles. While readers may never have seen it in such an elongated form, the concept of a reflective Superman has been done before, many times over. Done properly in the course of a single issue it can be a powerful tool. Spread it across an entire story arc and it can border on tedious. This month, Superman continues in his mission to walk across America. He gets in a fight, wins it and everything looks pretty much the same as it has in his world for the last 70 years. I’m not willing to write JMS off yet. But at this point I’m look forward to his SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE book more so than I am his work on the main title.

Superior #1

Say what you will about Mark Millar, and the man certainly has his fair share of detractors, but the man knows how to make the most of what he has. If he’s not promoting himself, or his work, he’s name dropping his Hollywood connections or stepping outside his traditional box to try new things, like directing a film for pete’s sake. The man is a shameless huckster and the comic world is better for it. Whether you like or dislike his writing most people seem to have an opinion about it. Which means you’re probably reading what he puts out and that’s the point of the whole thing. Anyway, SUPERMA…I mean SUPREM…er…SUPERIOR #1 is a straight up origin tale with Superman like overtones. Most origin tales are limited by what they can do as they’re too busy checking off the obligatory narrative plot points. With any luck the second issue will allow Millar to start monkeying around with conventions of the genre.