Everyone is thinking about Star Wars today. J.J. Abrams is doing Star Wars VII after all, in spite of the early announcements that even though he was interested he wouldn't take on the storied franchise. He is at the helm of the 2013 release now. I'll bite and announce my support. If you didn't like his Star Trek, well, your mistake I guess. J.J. Abrams didn't make the Star Trek movie you wanted maybe, but he did give you the Star Trek movie that the franchise needed. It's a super promising start. The new movie, with an unknown villain played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is, frankly, awesome, should rise above all expectations. Star Wars VII will likely be awesome too.
But, I'm not here to talk about movies and stuff. I talk about comics, my particular area of expertise. As it relates to Star Wars, that means I'm talking about the new Brian Wood series simply titled Star Wars. The concept is that Wood will take over after A New Hope and re-write the entire series in perpetuity. Of course, he only has a couple of years before Disney owns the entire product and the licenses move from Dark Horse back to Mighty Marvel. Let's hope he and his team have some books already in the hopper and at least get around 30 issues of this series out before DH loses the rights. The first issue is solid and sold out. It's heavy on Wedge, which will please the shit out of my 30-something make friends who all seem to have a man crush on this bit player in the early SW universe. There's hardly a lightsaber to be found and only a bit of Vader. The story is focused on the rebel's regrouping to locate a new base after losing Alderaan. I won't say that the first issue blew my ears back, but it holds serve on a promising concept, "What if Star Wars was run by someone other than George Lucas?"
I recently read four new graphic novels: the first collection of the new series premised on Alan Moore's old Image product Prophet, the last book of Scalped, Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire, and Scene of the Crime by Ed Brubaker. Prophet is really interesting. I didn't even know it was happening, much less something I ought to read, until I was informed as such by Bryan at Wizard's Asylum. 90's throwback books don't usually grab my attention, especially given my deep hatred for the 90's comics. Of course, it intrigued me that this had been a Moore project from the early going, and Bryan's rec carries a lot of weigh with me (he's generally more selective than I am). From the opening pages, the artwork has a primal feeling to it. The writing is sparse. It's practically all narration. The imagery is stark and imaginative. It's like dreaming sci-fi from the cromagnon. It has an Aeon Flux feel to it without the clear lines and glossy art. You are left with a tension of never quite knowing what to expect, which is excellent when the late payoff occurs in the story. Sometimes, you get the feeling you're reading Heavy Metal, a series of one-off episodes with no clear connection. But, there is an overarching, unseen narrative that will bring everything together. I would recommend this book -- it's fresh and appealing.
Scalped is one of the greatest comics of all-time. I like Jason Aaron, but I love R.M. Guera. I have other posts explaining what this book is all about, so I'm not going to delve into the concept again, but suffice it to say this is the swan song for Aaron and Guera's Indian Sopranos series. I hate knowing those things going into reading a book because I always have unsaid expectations about what the book ought to produce to finally finish all of the remaining plot lines and satisfy my expectations for the characters. I think Aaron takes some easy ways out in the finales, he takes some unexpected plays with a few other characters, he has a lot of big reveals, and helps to explain why it was all said in the first place. It was a good, not great, ending for an excellent series. In my opinion, it was my satisfying than Y: The Last Man (a real let down), but not as epic as Promethea, one of the better endings in comic series history. It retained the voice of the book, which is a crucial point worth hammering home. Dash's story, Dash's rules. Scalped will be missed.
Underwater Welder is something everyone should read. Why? Because it's an original graphic novel by Jeff Lemire, one of the best comic book writers everyone should be reading. It's about the hauntology of family and the way our myths about our parents affect our lives forever. And it's wonderful. Jeff Lemire is the wildly successful author of the highly acclaimed graphic novel Essex County and the DC/Vertigo series Sweet Tooth. I won't belabor his pedigree, but it's excellent work and all of it deserves your attention. Underwater Welder meets those standards. For readers of Lemire's early work, this will be immediately recognizable. His visual aesthetic is consistent. Here, he opts for some new splash page work that is unlike Essex, but meets with some of his recent opening pages in Sweet Tooth, which I have loved. His writing is precious. No one writes melancholy like Lemire. He expresses the gaps between people in a way few writers of any medium have done well. There are no spandex or laser guns in these books, but the messages are no less heroic in content and epic in scale. If it weren't for Jonathon Hickman, Jeff Lemire would be my favorite new comic book creator.
Scene of the Crime was my favorite of these books. I am a Brubaker hack though, so that's not entirely fair. I also love the modern crime comic. I like big mystery because it gives me a puzzle to solve while I'm reading. Scene is typical of the Bru crime novels we know today, like Criminal or Gotham Central. A gumshoe gets caught up in a case that looks open and shut but turns out to involve drugs, cults, sexual deviance, and family betrayal. The aesthetic from Sean Philips and Michael Lark is readily accessible and consistent with those books. The writing style is similar to the successful Criminal series. The arc is long and the detail is a bit more intricate. I suspect today people would be concerned that this book was too detailed for comics, the pacing too slow. Bru himself might prefer to move the story along a bit quicker for the readers. For me, this was about right. I'm a fast reader and a 4-issue arc goes by in under an hour for me typically. This book was slightly more involved and therefore gave me a bit more to chew on. I'd love to see Bru go back to this book, maybe as a regular series or an occasional on-going (bi- or tri-monthly).
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
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