I’m back, baby. Shrugging off what I have to say was the hurtful realization that 4thletter had its best month ever when I wasn’t blogging for it (I can only assume that you all kept coming because I was still in the podcasts), I am back, and a month behind in my Batgirl recaps. Let’s start catching up right now.
-Hey, I wrote some stuff. Maybe you missed it. I reviewed the Scott Pilgrim game, heaped some pro-black/pro-fessional praise on Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, and Afua Richardson’s Genius, and wrote a surprisingly well-received piece on manga piracy.
-I didn’t do it, but this comic about a bee by Raina Telgemeier is fantastic.
-I’m still reading Shade (I’m up to volume 3
–Unforgiven
-The countdown isn’t over. There’s one left. 1 Reader, maybe, or 1 Love.
Oh, what, comics come out today? Okay I guess we can talk about that.
David Easterman: Who cares about comical books? (but if that Green Lantern book Gav is buying is The Shield in Space, I might have to start picking that up).
Esther Cobblepot: Definitely: Batgirl 13 Maybe: Birds of Prey 4, Zatanna 4, Doc Savage 5
Jacob Gavin, Jr.: Buzzard 3, Booster Gold 35, Green Lantern Emerald Warriors 1, Justice League Generation Lost 7, Welcome To Tranquility One Foot In The Grave 2, Dark Wolverine 89, Invincible Iron Man 29, Steve Rogers Super-Soldier 2, Ultimate Comics Avengers 3 1
Let me show you the strength of serialized comics.
I don’t mean the usual idea of serialized comics, either. X-Men and Superman are serialized, but they have very short term goals in mind. They aren’t one story, except in the most generous of definitions. I’m talking about one story, released in parts, with each chapter being a vital part of the overall story.
Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond
At the beginning of the story, Miyamoto Musashi is Shinmen Takezo. He grew up under the thumb of a cruel father, and the villagers called him a demon child. He grew up to become just that–a whirlwind of death and violence on the battlefield. He goes off to war and comes back even worse. He decides that he must become Invincible Under the Heavens, and goes out in search of challenges.
He topples everyone he encounters. He eventually runs afoul of the Yoshioka family at one point. They’re one of the most respected sword families, and by challenging them as he did, Musashi disrespected them. His fight with Yoshioka Denshichiro is cut short by a spectacularly poorly-timed fire, and he is challenged to duel him again one year in the future. Den and Musashi are both going to use the time to train and prepare for their battle.
Musashi walks around Japan, looking for challenges and attempting to get better. He destroys all comers, but that isn’t the point of the quest. He has to get better, and getting better doesn’t necessarily mean being the best at swinging a sword. He has to have the poise, experience, and knowledge worthy of a true swordsman.
He meets Sekishusai, one of the greatest swordsmen of the past, and attempts to kill the old man in his sleep. The man’s very presence stops Musashi cold, and their brief conversation completely demolishes Musashi’s idea of skill. He realizes that “invincible” is just a word, and that he has mountains left to climb before he’s as good as he will be.
The challenge was given in what, volume four? Very early on, and in the second Vizbig volume. It’s hard to keep track when you’re reading this series three volumes at a time in the Vizbigs. The second duel begins in the eighth Vizbig volume, 20 normal volumes later. That’s some four thousand pages of story between the challenge and the duel, and we have seen Musashi go through a lot. His idea of swordsman ship has broken down and been rebuilt. He has healed an enemy rather than killing him. He understands what’s worth dying for now. Immediately previous to the duel, he remembered how he approached life as a child, a period of time he spent learning from nature itself. He understands exactly how lucky he has been to survive this long.
So we have this man, this monster, ready to duel one of the most respected swordsmen in the land. If he beats him, the school’s reputation is ruined. Musashi has a reputation for being wild and violent, but he’s different now. Everyone can see it. They mistake his different nature for a lack of respect and pure over-confidence. Den draws his sword and takes a strong stance.
Musashi begins walking forward.
Scenarios play out across the page. Den and Musashi cross swords and Den’s intestines hit the ground. Except–no, they haven’t met yet. Musashi is still walking. There’s at least fifteen feet between them.
Musashi keeps walking. He begins running through possible encounters in his head. “Use the short sword,” he thinks, and his mind’s eye shows him Den’s throat opening under his blade. “No,” he thinks. “The long sword would work just as well.” Den’s throat opens again.
Den changes his stance. He positions himself so that Musashi cannot rush in. He doesn’t know what’s in Musashi’s mind, but something made him change. Meanwhile, Musashi is still running down scenarios. Den’s hands fall away from his arms after one swing. Another swing takes Den’s left leg around the knee.
Den’s stance changes again. Musashi is still thinking. A quick slice across the throat. One down the middle, leaving a gash from shoulder to crotch that severs Den’s entire left forearm.
Another stance change.
Musashi kicks off and into Den’s personal space with a fast swing. Den is caught by surprise and flinches, his sword tilting backward and his entire front side left open. Musashi’s body hits Den’s just before his foot touches the ground after his small step. He looks up. Den’s face is strained, but unbloodied. Musashi looks down at his hand.
No sword.
Den shoves him back, knocking him up a set of stairs, and rushes in with an overhead swing. He misses.
Musashi: “No wonder my hands felt so light.” He says, “My mistake,” and finally draws his sword. He steps down from the temple steps and towards Den again. And the duel that has been four thousand pages in the making finally begins.
I read this story on my way back from San Diego Comic-con this year. It fell on me like a ton of bricks. Musashi’s growth had been so gradual over the course of the series, coming in fits and starts and never quite spelled out for us, that I missed exactly how much he’d grown. Musashi began as a demon, charging face first into battle and focused only on winning and killing. He had skill, and he had style, but he was like a raw, uncut diamond. He got the job done, but he was ugly and unrefined. He bled killing intent all over the place, striking fear into peasants and making an enemy of every man he met. He was young and brash, and focused merely on being the best.
His year walking around taught him that before being the best, you must first become the best. You have to meditate and learn before you can be the best. There is a process. You have to test yourself and your sword. You have to understand that your sword is an extension of your will and be willing to give yourself over entirely to the sword at the same time. It is a way of life, not some mere accomplishment. Being Invincible Under The Sun means nothing if you aren’t worthy of that title.
And in this chapter, all of that backstory reappeared as weight on my shoulders. Like an overnight sensation who has been working at it for five years, Musashi demonstrated the amazing leap he has made in his swordsmanship. Before, he was a monster. Now, he’s good. He takes Den apart tactically, and the sheer force of his silent contemplation forces Den to adjust his stance and defend. Musashi showed no outward sign of his plans at all. He simply kept walking forward.
He beat Den without a sword in his hand.
The sheer level of growth here is astounding, and the way Inoue demonstrated Musashi’s growth is even more astounding. There’s no exposition, no onlookers explaining what’s going on, or captions filling you in. Den recognizes Musashi’s quiet strength, but everyone else is left in the dark. This is a tremendous payoff, and part of the reason why it’s so tremendous is that you don’t see it coming. You know Musashi’s better. You’ve seen the bloodied bodies he’s left in his wake. You’ve seen him have a play duel with the man who’ll soon be his greatest rival. But when he faces Den, so lost in the battle that he doesn’t even draw his weapon, and still comes through, that’s the moment.
After I finished this chapter, I felt tense. It snuck up on me as I was reading. My brain was working as I read, and when I realized Musashi didn’t draw his blade before striking, I felt genuine shock.
Comic books, man. Sometimes they’re amazing. Vagabond and King City. Brandon Graham and Takehiko Inoue. Their books are good for similar reasons (strong, character-focused storytelling, great art, great world-building) and good for different reasons (Inoue flips styles regularly and prides himself on realism, Graham plays with puns and layouts). Both of them, though, are the kind of books that make you believe in comics. They’re refreshing, they’ve got the kind of punch that comes from telling one story, and they’re just good. They’re the kind of good that’s free of caveats. There’s just one man and his tools, and the result is something beautiful.
(Some of the images in this one might be too sexy for work. If so, you should fire your boss and become a boss yourself.)
Reading Brandon Graham’s King City also sparks two thoughts in my mind. The first is “Wow, this comic is fantastic.” The second is, “Wow, that comic made all these other comics I bought this week look stupid.”
The thing about King City is that it’s a dense comic. I don’t mean dense in the sense of the opposite of decompression, if people still complain about that. I mean dense in the sense that there’s a lot to take in, if you just take the time to do so. The book is littered with puns, little bits of cleverness, and swift turns of phrase. They can be as simple as Optimus Prime Roast or a girl obsessed with painting mustaches on billboards, or brief phrases layered with meaning.
King City isn’t really about anything. I mean, sure, there’s a hero and his cat (Joe and Earthling), the femme fatale (Beebay, and in the classic sense of the term, a woman who leads men to their doom), the ex-girlfriend (Anna), the best friend (Pete), and a big fat world-ending menace. At some point, Joe and Earthling are going to have to handle the threat, but King City isn’t about that. Graham will handle that when he has to. In the interim, he’s just going to hit you with the life and times of the cast.
I don’t mind that approach one bit, because Graham’s shifted focus genuinely pays off. Every single page has something hidden or in plain sight that’s worthy of examination. One of my favorite scenes in the comic is the semi-sex scene at the end of issue seven. The scene skips from solicitation to post-coital between panels, like a jump cut in a movie. That is worthy of examination in and of itself, but what I like the best about this scene are just seven short words.
Joe, looking at Beebay, says, “This thing with Beebay is weird. Sometimes her cigarette smoke smells like flowers. Beebay is weird.” That’s one of those things that make you pause and rewind a bit just so you can read it again. I definitely did it, and it managed to get stuck in my head for several weeks. It’s an expression of that screwed up kind of attraction that you fall into by accident, where someone can simultaneously do no wrong and is still not to be trusted. It’s too right, and it’s so good that something must be up. There’s a catch, there’s a trick, there’s something going on that isn’t right. Have you ever felt that?
And I mean, that’s just one page. You can get the depth of Joe’s desire and distrust right there. Two pages later, Graham spells it out for you with another pun and a pointed remark. Beebay has a big butt, and as she walks away, Joe thinks, “Child burying hips.” As she pulls on her stockings, he thinks, “She’s a fucking snake pit though.” Desire and distrust, all wrapped up in one easy to understand package.
Two pages, two hundred words. I could go on and on about this segment of the book (the way that Beebay “leaves my room full of empty” when she leaves, the heart-on joke, the trail of clothes leading to the bed with the impeccable cereal bowl, the way whispers the word “ssex” into Joe’s ear like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, or the Mars penetrating the Venus), but this is just spring boarding off one small scene. There’s so much to enjoy about King City. I could sit down with every issue of King City and find one sequence worth talking about at length, and then do it again and again and again. There’s depth here, and it’s fantastic.
Another thing. One thing cape comics have been doing that blows my mind, and not in a good way, is wasting double page spreads on exposition and talking heads. Who wants to see John Romita Jr draw twenty-odd headshots of people saying “Yes” or “No” to Captain America? That’s wasted page space. In King City, the spreads are used for things with actual impact, like when the big bad monster happens across Anna, or to build mood and set the stage, as in the amazing spreads that just show the kingcityscape. These are punches. Talking heads aren’t even little kid bops.
I don’t read King City when I read what few remaining weekly books I still pick up. King City overshadows them, making them look lazy in comparison. There are books that I dig quite a bit that end up looking like pointless water-treading when you read them before or after reading King City. I usually save King City for the weekend, when I can relax on the couch, read it, take a nap, wake up, and read it again. I consume King City. It’s like the difference between a fast food burger and one you make yourself. One will fill your stomach. The other will make you feel good.
When’s the last time you read something in Justice League or Avengers that resonated as strongly as “Sometimes her cigarette smoke smells like flowers?” Is there any reason why those books shouldn’t resonate, shouldn’t be as personal, as King City? Once you experience something nice, you don’t want to go back to what you had before. No one wants to go back to wearing buttercookies after trying on a nice pair of Air Force 1s. No one wants to drive a Volvo after getting behind the wheel of a Cadillac. King City is like that. It’s enormously creative, clearly a work of love, and the sort of eating that sticks to your ribs.
How can you go back to other comics after that? King City has been a big factor in my slow retreat from corporate comics over the past year. I need to keep upping the ante, and while I’ve found several books that live up to the new standard, a lot have been left by the wayside. No, let me rephrase the question.
Why should I go back to other comics after that?
Brandon Graham, man. He’s making everybody else look bad.
-Ouch, this weekend was a b-word.
-So this p-word is going up with minimal shownotes.
-Sidekick Shodown!
-Esther’s rolling with the Robins.
-David has Captain America’s henchboy turned cyborg assassin turned shield slinger.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!
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Welcome to a very special Too Much Goddamn Deadpool Edition of ThWiP. Why too much? Even though I didn’t even read Wade Wilson’s War this time around? Simply put, Deadpool #1000 has way too much going for it for me to choose a single panel, so I figured I’d give a spot to all eleven of its stories. Adding that to an already stacked week and we have a hefty set.
Avengers Prime #2
Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis
Avengers: The Origin #5
Joe Casey and Phil Noto
I don’t know if I could separate the film and comic versions of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira in my head if I tried. They’re both vastly important, but for different (and sometimes complementary) reasons. Akira was one of the first anime flicks I ever watched, and it made an indelible impression on me. I still have never seen Blade Runner, but I probably feel about Akira like other people do about Blade Runner. I had a tape I dubbed from the video store, the official cassette, the special edition DVD (with the tin), and now I own the Blu-ray
I came to the comic later, and like everything I read back then, I read it in fits and spurts. I read maybe four whole issues when I was a kid, all of them set before the big disaster struck Tokyo. They’re long gone now, but they were pretty stunning. They definitely stood alongside Sin City as being comics that were vastly better than the other comics I owned, even if I was too young to articulate why. It was a little more grown-up, a little more edgy, and Steve Oliff’s colors were amazing. I don’t think I even really knew what manga was at this point–I’d heard about Japanese comics, and my comics-reading uncle had lived in Japan so I was up on some stuff, but I didn’t really know about manga as something different from regular comics. I just knew that Akira was something special, different from the movie and possibly better.
In the late ’90s, I picked up two of the hardcovers that Graphitti Designs put out. The covers are almost identical to the Dark Horse versions. The local comic shop guy was your typical comic shop douchebag, unkempt and rude, and he let the two HCs, which were limited editions and behind the glass, go for fifteen each. Today, they’re worth ten times that. I ended up with books 2 and 4, set before and after everything goes wrong. They did little to show me exactly what the series was about, because I had two sets of 400 non-consecutive pages out of a series that ran over 2000 pages, but it did just increase my fascination with the series as a whole.
Everything was interesting. The draftsmanship, the way Tetsuo swallowed pills, the insane sex scene, the flashbacks, the ruined city… it really hit me in a way most sci-fi doesn’t. I’ve only ever had two holy grails in comics, books that I absolutely had to have at any (reasonable) price. Flex Mentallo was one, but I didn’t know that existed until what, 2005? When I got grown and could afford to buy whatever comics I wanted, Akira was the first and most important holy grail there was.
Finding more of the old Graphitti HCs proved to be almost impossible. Websites that listed them didn’t respond to emails, eBay was a joke, and you’d think that these books never existed. In 2004, Barnes & Noble issued a hardcover version of the Dark Horse volume 1, and I picked that up. It sucked that it was in black & white, but hey: 1) hardcover and 2) I had to have it. I held out hope that I would find the Graphitti versions for the rest, but eventually gave up and started buying the Dark Horse editions… right after they went mostly out of print. That’s no big deal now that Kodansha is rereleasing the series
Finding and reading Akira in its entirety has been a quest some fifteen years in the making. I only picked up the sixth and final volume in early ’08, and that was after some serious searching. I can’t think of another series I’ve pursued off and on for that long. Scooping up the complete Sin City was easy, except for finding a copy of the old school Family Values printing. Flex Mentallo took a few eBay auctions. Akira took effort, for one reason or another.
It was worth the effort, though. Akira is one of my top three favorite books, and a pitch perfect example of how to do a sprawling, huge story without screwing it all up in the end. The art is off the charts, with consistently great layouts and inventive storytelling. It’s probably akin to Cerebus, except if Cerebus was great from the beginning and if Dave Sim didn’t go insane around the middle. It works, and at some 2000 pages, it really shouldn’t work. It should be bloated and ugly and drag, but it doesn’t.
What’s interesting about the English adaptation of Akira is that it goes against conventional manga translating wisdom in a few ways. It’s both flipped and in color, already a tremendous departure from the original work. Jo Duffy’s translation was meant to be appealing to American audiences first, which allowed her a certain degree of freedom in playing with the dialogue. All of this was done with the permission and approval of Otomo and Kodansha, of course, but if you had to make a list of changes to books that manga fans don’t like, it’d probably go 1) flipped, 2) color, and 3) localization. Not to mention its trim size (or more accurately, trim sizes across the various formats) and the fact that it was a computer-colored, story-driven manga released in the early ’90s, when garishly colored, art-driven superhero comics ruled the roost. Akira, in America, shouldn’t be what it is, and yet… here we are.
(An aside: I was at New People in Japantown when I saw a familiar logo on an unfamiliar spine. It turns out that Kodansha took Marvel/Epic’s Akira volumes, reflopped them, relettered them in Japanese, and re-released them in Japan in some very nice slipcased volumes. Every time I go in that building I am tempted to buy them. They have three or four, I think. I’m far from an expert in Japanese editions, but I’ve never heard of companies doing that before. You can see the covers here, along with some incorrect data [it’s definitely the Epic colorization]. Covers are ill, though, right? Someone talk me out of buying them.)
I haven’t talked at all about what Akira is about, have I? It doesn’t really matter. I could do that at any time, about any scene. The images in this post are from issue fourteen of the Epic run, one of the ones I distinctly remember poring over as a kid. The only thing the pages I’ve excerpted are missing is the crazy ill way Otomo would draw moving headlights, something that made it into the film and imprinted onto my mind as something awesome as a young age. (It only happens twice in this chapter, on Nezu’s front and rear lights.) But look at that atrium on akira-01.jpg, the body language on akira-02.jpg, the comedy on akira-03.jpg, the car on akira-05.jpg, the ridiculous camera shifts in akira-08.jpg (panels 7-9 make me swoon), Kay’s pose in panel three in akira-09.jpg, or the way Otomo keeps showing the windup and the effect, but not the impact, or–
pause
Akira is a triumph, one of those comics I try to reread at least once a year and fall in love with a little more each time. It’s over twenty years old, and while it has definitely aged some, it still beats the pants off a lot of things we consider quality nowadays.
And it has the best last page in comics, hands down.
Well, here’s something I never knew about.
Santa Inoue’s Tokyo Tribes
Anyway, DJ Muro produced the entirely too expensive import soundtrack CD
Mark Millar’s in the news due to how his comic Nemesis is officially being turned into a movie. That’s good a reason as any to talk about him. Usually when his name comes up on this site, it’s David cursing his name for saying or writing something stupid. David does not like that guy. I see Millar in a different light.
As a writer, Mark Millar is an extreme mixed bag. His stories are filled to the brim with lots and lots of ideas and it’s a crapshoot on which ones are going to be good and which ones are going to be bad. Most of the time, the bad overshadows the good. Sometimes the contrast causes the story to implode upon itself. Though sometimes it’s also the lack of real substance outside of, “Here’s some crazy shit!” that does that.
It’s telling that two of my favorite Millar stories are Red Son and Civil War (the miniseries itself, not the event). Morrison had a hand in Red Son, giving it an ending that really glued the whole story together. Civil War became more interesting after seeing Tom Brevoort post Millar’s original idea for the series before Brevoort had to play damage control. No pun intended. Millar’s original concept involved killing off Happy Hogan and Pepper’s non-existent child, having Thor come back as part of the series and including Hulk’s return from space as something everyone teams up against. One of the ideas with the Hulk part was that Hulk had so much space poon that the superheroes are challenged by an army of Hulk babies.
I find it funny that the unused Hulk babies idea became one of the bigger ingredients for Old Man Logan later down the line.
Millar belongs to the pantheon of writers who really need a filter of some kind or their writing reaches unfortunate levels of insanity. Other members of this club include Jeph Loeb, Vince Russo and John Kricfalusi. Granted, I hold Millar in higher regard than the rest.
Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s 300
But 300–I picked it up because I recognized Miller’s name, and didn’t care that it was in Spanish because the art was dope. Poring over it and rereading it actually helped me learn Spanish, and I ended up quizzing my teacher over words I didn’t know. “Hace apenas un año,” a caption early in the book, threw me off at first, for example, but once I got it, other words and phrases began to fall into place.
I read and reread 300. I absorbed it, and that’s corny, but really the only way to put it. If you’ve ever fallen into a book like I fell into 300, you’ll understand.
What’s weird is that I’ve been writing about comics for the past five years, slowly getting better at critical analysis, and I’ve only ever written about 300 once, and that was as part of a review of the (in hindsight) crappy movie. Everything else, every other time I’ve mentioned it, has just been in passing, or relating the story above. I haven’t been avoiding it, but I haven’t exactly felt led to write about it, either.
It’s not that there’s nothing to write about. The last time Miller made a comic that wasn’t worth examining in detail was probably his early work on Daredevil. There’s always something to look at and pull apart, whether that thing is how Miller’s changed approach to superheroes intersected with 9/11 and brought Batman kicking and screaming into realpolitik or how 21st Century Frank Miller’s biggest enemy is 20th Century Frank Miller.
(Digression: Miller’s rep in the blogosphere has been boiled down to “WHORESWHORESWHORES” due to the fact that people can’t separate jokes from actual criticism/examination. The image of Miller as a leering, super-serious sexist monster only tracks if you’re ignorant of his body of work–the Martha Washington
I think part of it is that 300 is just a very straightforward book. I’m not saying it has no depth, but it isn’t tough to suss out what Miller’s playing with in the story. If you pull 300 apart, what you’re left with is Miller’s entire career. It’s not an end point, obviously, but it is something that he had to make at some point. Just look at the chapter titles: Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat, and Victory.
300 is everything. There’s the hard Dirty Harry morality, the strength tempered with love, quiet and graceful violence, ugly violence, brotherhood, casual male and female nudity, the rejection of cowardice, some obscenely good one-liners, self-sacrifice, corrupt politicians and priests, and hey, look, what’s that at the end of chapter 4?
Ninjas.
Miller has said that he started Sin City because he wanted to draw manly men, sexy women, and old cars. Daredevil and Ronin had ninjas and samurai because Miller was into manga and martial arts flicks. Miller did covers for the First Comics editions of Lone Wolf & Cub, a series all about duty and honor and the proper application of violence. 300 has its roots in an old movie he saw as a kid. Frank Miller draws what he’s interested in at the time, and you can track those interests in his work. There’s even a 300 tease in the last chapter of The Big Fat Kill
While I don’t think I ever really consciously realized this while reading and rereading, 300 is where close reading began for me. I studied it closer than you usually study comics, due entirely to the fact that it was in another language. It’s not my favorite of his books, though I do like it a whole lot, but it’s kind of interesting to look back at it and everything I learned from it without being conscious of that education. I started picking up on his magic tricks (the last chapter goes first person as Leonidas surveys his enemies for a few pages, and then pulls out to show the full Spartan might) and tics (repetition of dialogue and captions for emphasis and pacing) and interests via, what, osmosis? By accident?
My relationship with 300 is weird. It never quite feels right to read it in English, the movie was several orders of magnitude less subtle than the book (“This is Sparta” was a sentence, not a scream), and the tone is strangely subdued in certain scenes. I think that, craft-wise, this is Miller’s strongest and tightest work, with very little fat worth trimming. It lacks the manic intensity of his more recent Batman work, but it also feels more grown-up. And the ending is dope–Leonidas simply saying “Stelios,” the leap that’s something of a callback to Stelios’s nickname “Stumblios,” all of it.
I’m glad I read it where and when I did.
