Thee Hembeck Challenge

Copped from Mighty God King via See Below.

50 Things I Love About Comics

1. Peanuts and its collection of morose, neurotic, and quixotic kids made a big impression on this neurotic, quixotic, and morose individual.

2.  Batman in nearly all his incarnations (with the notable exception of Knightfall and Clooney/Kilmer’s rubber nippled bat-performances) and  “Bat,” as a prefix to just about anything. The Batmobile, Batcopter, Batarang, Batdance, and the oft-cited “Bat-Shark Repellent.” Favorite Batman artists: David Mazuchelli, Neal Adams, Brian Bolland, Jim Aparo, Bruce Timm, J.H. Williams, and Dustin Nguyen’s art in Detective Comics is really starting to grow on me.

3. Chris Ware as an artist representative of both comics past and future. Ware is obsessed with history (Chicago’s World’s Fair notably) as well as the idea of commodifying nostalgia. And while his hand-drawn font work and cleanly rendered characters often reflects those sensibilities, his graphic design sense is innovative and has taken page/panel composition beyond left-to-right and up-to-down American reading instincts in a way that is effective visually and emotionally. Ware is also representative of a breed of comic book creators who tend to be a morose, neurotic, and quixotic lot whose self-inflicted miseries are resonant of my own. (See also: Art Spiegelman, Ivan Brunetti, Kilhoffer, Chester Brown, et al.)

4. The X-Men. And okay, if I keep writing/posting pics as above– this post will be far, far too long. Maybe I’ve already lost you. Anyhow the X-Man I have always liked in particular is Cyclops. A lot of folks think Cyke is a humorless prick but I’ve always responded to his no-nonsense leadership, especially in opposition to gimmicky anti-heroes like Wolverine or Gambit. I mean, when in de hell does anyt’ing Gambit say makey sense, cher?

5. Promethea and the idea that its heroine is both inspiration and imagination manifest. This is Alan Moore’s love letter to comics and writing and the pure joy of creating art. Even with all the metaphysical Tarot/Kabbalah/Magick stuff, I found Promethea to be one of Moore’s most accessible and enjoyable stories. The setup: a college student studying poetry becomes the latest embodiment of the Promethea archetype whose crimefighting becomes the entry point into the history of magick/religion, creation and the apocalypse. Dense with references to comics history, literary jokes, and metatextual elements– the plot (at least in the first 2-3 trades) moves it all along engagingly, thanks largely to J.H. Williams’ fantastic art. And why Weeping Gorilla doesn’t have his own title is a mystery.

6. Grant Morrison’s acid-washed approach to comics and continuity. Yes, sometimes he’s too clever for his own good (not ashamed to say The Invisibles lost me several times during its run) but his work on X-Men, Animal Man, and especially All-Star Superman have distilled those characters so cleanly while marrying them with a wildly inventive approach to science fiction, post modernism, and lateral thinking. Okay, the Xorn/Magneto thing wasn’t great but so much about the rest of that run was, more for how he defined the X-Men’s weaknesses than their strengths. I’m loving Final Crisis so far and while Batman RIP is making less and less sense with each installment– I’ve been thrown more by the subpar art in the latest issues  than the Batmite-haunted, post-hypnotic-trance drug-addled hypen hyphen Bruce Wayne. Jezebel still seems pretty thin as far as love interests go, though.

7. Tin Tin and his swoopy hair.

8. Peter Milligan’s psychological loop de loops on Human Target. Milligan always likes to explore notions of identity and pathology, but with a protagonist who sublimates his own personality to embody (rather than impersonate) potential targets of assassination, individuality and the sense of self become blurred in a plot that’s equal parts noir, Day Of The Locust, and double-oh seven.

9. Joe Sacco and his humane and accessible reporting on complex political situations.

10. Ivan Brunetti’s ascerbic one-page biographies of artists, philosophers, and musicians.

11. Los brothers Hernandez– Jaime for his immaculate line-work and Gilberto for his manic magical realism.

12. Runaways as conceived and written by Brian K. Vaughn. Wordier thoughts on the series here.

13. “My Spidey-sense is tingling!“

14. Frank Miller & David Mazuchelli’s collaborations on Batman and Daredevil.

15. While it’s been erratic in quality, I’m thankful that we have Buffy: Season 8 and that Joss Whedon’s brain was available for Astonishing X-Men. A sensory-stimulant loaded ball of string? Awesome.

16. Fables and Hellboy as a reminder that there’s a lot of fantastic folklore and mythology in the world, and that stories evolve and change with a society. Of course there are assholes out there who wouldn’t know what to do with a decent story, if it laid eggs in its head and ate its way out. Replacing a fairy tale and fables’ moral/social subtexts with g-strings and slasher villains doesn’t count (especially when the originals are already sexually charged if not outright metaphors for sexuality to begin with).

17. Speaking of Hellboy, I’ve always loved Mike Mignola’s use of shadow and the particular texture he gives to stone and metal. Also if anyone has a spare $250 (plus shipping) lying around, go ahead and get me this.

18. THWIP! SNIKT! BAMF!

19. Dan Clowes before Hollywood started distracting him from making some goddamn comics already.

20. Charles Burns and surreal wrestler/detective El Borba arriving at the best possible moment in my life to appreciate it.

21. Elseworlds

22. Planetary as example of Warren Ellis as a genius rather than a self-indulgent mook.

23. James Robinson and especially Starman, a hero who almost makes me miss those misbegotten 1990’s.

24. Scalped and Criminal as representatives of the popularization of crime/noir comics.

25. Achewood

26. Dynamite’s Lone Ranger, which stand apart from other “gritty reimaginings of popular characters,” by actually being good.

27. Gotham Central

28. Spider-man’s eyes as drawn by Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr., before McFarlane and other shmucks made them so huge that they extended past his cheeks and into his neck.

29. Maus, for convincing my mom that comic books might actually be worth reading!

30. Batman always beats Superman

31. Calvin-ball

32. The following scenario recurring ad infinitum…
(Hero throws trademark stick/boomerang/shield/web at Villain.)
Villain exclaims, “Fool! You missed!”
Hero responds, “That’s what you think, scoundrel/thief/scofflaw/etc.!”
(Weapon richochets striking Villain in anticipation of their next move! And/or strikes nearby object which topples and smashes Villain in anticipation of their next move!)

33. Lex Luthor as a distillation of capitalist conservatism and Ayn Rand-ian objectivism taken to its logical super-villainous end. Luthor is the true antithesis to the Batman/Bruce Wayne archetype (much more than say the lamely shoe-horned into continuity and tedious Hush). Luthor/Wayne are individuals whose guile and willpower enable them to be the equal of those with super-powers. It’s the pull-yourself-up-by-your-non-radioactive-boot-straps philosophy of post-humanism. Of course being absurdly rich didn’t hamper their efforts.

34. Amanda Waller is a similarly compelling villain as a hawk-ish patriot whose loyalty to her country supersedes silly things like civil rights and due process. While it gives my pinko-liberal heart comfort to see such an individual regularly cast as the villain, it also gives my critical thinking brain great pleasure that she’s not simply a cackling and selfish power-mad type. Her methods are ruthless, her belief system adamant(ium), and she exists in a complex political reality where her perspective is just as often seen as the legitimate if not politically expedient choice. She’s a character born of a rightful distrust of the players behind closed doors who are dictating our wars and the sacrifices demanded for them.

35. Madman and its pastiche of pop art and B-movie camp. Somehow its airy adventurism and open-ended existentialism seems at odds with what one typically expects of an artist whose faith is based who was raised within on the restrictive edicts of the Mormon Church. I don’t get it either, but damn if Madman isn’t a lot of fun.

36. Top 10, particularly that in a world where nearly everyone has super-powers– a hyper-intelligent dog wearing a humanoid exo-skeleton gets to be police captain.

37. Vertigo should probably be way higher up on the list but renumbering at this point would be a pain in the ass.

38. Little Nemo and discovering artists and comics from before my time like…

39. Krazy Kat

40. Jack Kirby and especially his Fourth World zaniness

41. Will Eisner, although I gotta say I’m far more enamored with his memoir-ish stuff like Last Day In Vietnam and haven’t really grasped the full appeal of the Spirit as a character.

42. Great movies, the kind I wished were around when I was a kid are finally being made from comics.

43. DC comics obsession with heroic legacy

44. Marvel’s lack of obsession with legacy

45. Gorillas who are often accompanied by brains in jars

46. Stan Lee-isms like, “Excelsior!” or “Make mine Marvel!” And all the little bits of alliteration in the credits of Silver Age comics.

47. Magneto, master of magnetism!

48. Alfred Pennyworth, maker of fantastic watercress sandwiches! (Among other worthy skills.)

49. Caesar Romero often didn’t shave his moustache when playing the Joker in the 1960’s Batman TV series.

50. Having the good sense to avoid absolute dreck like Hack/Slash and generally making fun of assholes like Rob Liefeld.

Ultimate Assasin-ine

Taking place in a universe where super-villains have killed all the heroes and divvied up the world amongst themselves, Mark Millar’s Wanted is a problematic power fantasy, even if one ignores the seemingly sanitized Hollywood adaptation starring Angelina Jolie’s tattoos and blimp lips. Violent and prurient in increasingly dull ways, Wanted’s problems are largely in the lack of meaningful details. The main character Wesley Gibson feels emasculated, hates his boring office job, attempts to express his unique identity through bourgeois consumer choices, and is paralyzed by confrontation. He’s a mess because his father left his mother while he was still an infant– the sort of cliché that is supposed to neatly explain the miseries of Wesley’s clichéd life, but does so only in the most unsatisfactory way. Wanted wants you to identify with the “quiet desperation” of Wesley’s life, and concludes with mixed messages about those whose desires resonate with Wesley’s rise to infamy.

Other than the dropping of brand names and off-hand references to food that he likes, the first real sense of Wesley we get is that he’s “more than a little afraid of the scary fucking bitch,” that is his “African-American boss.” This is also the first place where I started to realize that I might have some serious problems with this book. Wesley, in his internal monologue continually refers to his “African-American boss,” a figure never given a name, but who torments him as a cipher threatening in both her blackness and lack of femininity (she’s butch in both physical appearance and character).

But before we’re able to absorb the latent racism and Wesley’s white-man-as-victim-complex, the Fox, a tarted-up stand-in for Hally Barry (in an outfit that echoes both the fiasco of Catwoman and the promise of nudity in Swordfish) crashes into Wesley’s life. The Fox reveals that Wesley’s father was, “The Killer,” essentially the baddest ass hitman slash super-villain that ever was and that Wesley’s just inherited his fortune. Soon, the Fox promises that she’ll be whisking Wesley away to Hogwarts where he can finally achieve his magical destiny and confront his father’s killer “He-who-must-not-be-named” in a climactic duel to the death! Sarcasm aside any similarity to Harry Potter are only those which manifest in all adolescent power fantasies of inheritance and destiny. But Wanted’s manifestation of that fantasy is particularly ugly and I’m still wondering how much of it is by design and how much of its repugnance is inherent.

After a training montage where once ineffectual Wesley actualizes his hidden super-human ability to shoot a gaping hole into any target he sets his eyes on, the character is transformed into an Eminem look-alike in a ninja-ish black leather combat suit. JG Jones’ art is sharp throughout, but in utilizing Eminem as a reference point we get more indicators that Wanted is a white boy’s fantasy world. A white boy’s fantasy wherein he gets to work out all the racism and misogyny (we’re thankfully spared homophobia for the most part) that is his birthright, otherwise denied by political correctness and whatever other leveling forces have impacted white entitlement. It’s much like Falling Down for the iPod generation, or rather the Columbine generation where power fantasy has mixed interminably with real life violence.

Some might say I’m not getting the point of Wanted. It’s not supposed to reflect the good but the bad in a world where the villains have claimed victory. And if Millar gets to pepper that villainous world with his stock references and reinterpolations of classic comic book characters, then all the violence and hate is really pointing towards a post-modern critique of our own popular culture. Brian K. Vaughn, an author whom I admire and respect greatly writes in the book’s introduction that Millar,

“perfectly [subverts] the classic hero’s journey familiar to every comic fan… [challenging] us to think about the mundane world we’re all a part of, and the hidden price of entering the hidden special world we all one day dream of joining… Those of you who refuse to see what the conclusion is really saying will probably want to burn this beautiful collection the second you put it down… I think Wanted has the bravest, most interesting finale to a comic ever.”

And I can almost see where one might be convinced that Wanted’s bile has targets and intentions much different from those that I am reading– but I can also flatly disagree with Vaughn’s assessment of its ending. It’s not a life-shattering plot spoiler to tell you that after all the bullets, boobs, and wah-wah-white-boy-who-never-knew-his-dad, that the final two pages are a metatextual indictment of consumerism and passivity pointed directly at the reader.

Comic collectors obsessed with gadgets and collecting artifacts of their youth being particularly guilty of ignoring the political reality that surrounds them; where real villains rig elections, ignore and inflict suffering upon the poor, and generally get away with murder. A worthy message that deserves greater exploration in most media. But ending the story like this is telling not showing, and it’s two pages in almost two-hundred pages of ugliness in which consequences only effect those with the slowest drawn gun.

-chris

p.s. Why the fuck does “The Killer” look like Tommy Lee Jones?