I’m way, way behind on my comic reviews, so I’m going to try to take care of the rest of mine as quickly as possible.

She-Hulk #19

The evil gamma-spawned super-genius called the Leader is finally brought to trial for his many crimes, and Jennifer Walters, who used to be the She-Hulk before she very recently lost her powers, has to watch as her own law firm elects to defend the big-brained scoundrel. Even worse, Jennifer is called to the stand to testify that getting gamma powers changes your personality. Also, there’s new mystery about Pug and his new hairstyle, and we finally learn what Mr. Zix did to the hapless Stu Cicero when he learned the robot lawyer’s true identity.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Jenn is, frankly, hilarious when she’s getting harmlessly humiliated. (And She-Hulk really did sleep around a lot. ‘Bout time someone asked whassup with that.) The Leader is fairly funny, too, and Mallory Book is turning into a great non-powered archnemesis for Jennifer.

Hellboy: Darkness Calls #3

Not as good as some Hellboy comics, but still a great example of how to do horror in a comic book. Lots of great stuff with the Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, and other figures from Russian mythology. Koschei is especially cool. Oh, and we get some good moments with Hellboy sitting around smoking with a low-level house spirit.

Verdict: Thumb up. Whether as artist or writer, Mike Mignola is the best horror creator in comics.

Tales from the Crypt #1

Not the original horror comic from the ’50s, but a revival from a publisher called Papercutz. And yes, that is an awesome cover by Kyle Baker. How I wish the inside of this new series was as good. The artwork is crude and too bright for a horror comic. The writing is sub-standard. They get the form of the classic EC Comics right, but they work so hard on modernizing them that they completely forget to add any of that wonderful creepy horror you got from the old “Tales from the Crypt” comics.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t thrilled. I was bored.

Shadowpact #14

Zauriel, angel and former Justice Leaguer, attacks Blue Devil, reluctant demon and member of the Shadowpact, because his superheroic exploits have convinced too many people to sell their souls for demonic powers because they think he’s cool — and Blue Devil agrees with him! But he’d rather avoid getting killed by Zauriel, so he quits Shadowpact and starts a public relations campaign to reveal his sins, crimes, and shortcomings to get people to stop emulating him. With Blue Devil gone, the rest of the Shadowpact draft Zauriel as a member, and the evil Dr. Gotham starts some rotten plots into motion.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Though I can’t see a lot of people really looking up to Blue Devil (Shadowpact isn’t anywhere near the big dogs of the DCU like the Justice League or the Justice Society), I like the idea of B.D. trying to atone more for his past actions. And I love the bit with the lawyer offering to defend Blue before an infernal court of law.

Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.

This is the first volume of a trade paperback collecting the early issues of the 1999 series “Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.” about Courtney Whitmore, the new Star-Spangled Kid (now Stargirl in the Justice Society), and her stepfather, Pat Dugan, who used to be a sidekick called Stripesy and now pilots an oversized robot called S.T.R.I.P.E. The characters have an adversarial relationship — Courtney hates her stepdad and spends as much time antagonizing him as she does fighting crime.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This was writer Geoff Johns’ first comics work, so there are a few growing pains, but the whole thing makes for a very fun comic. Courtney is a wonderful character, a fun, funny, upbeat teenage rebel. Johns based the character on his younger sister, Courtney, who died in the explosion of TWA 800, and I think that helped give the character a vitality and realism that lots of other comic book characters lack.

This is part of an occasional series I’m working on covering comic books with strong political content. In honor of Independence Day, I’d like us to take a look at the comic book versions of our national personification, Uncle Sam.

Of course, Uncle Sam, the bearded, top-hatted guy who wants YOU for U.S. Army, had his origins long before comic books (though his appearance was often refined in editorial cartoons in the 1800s). But during World War II, Quality Comics made him a superhero for a few years.

Uncle Sam’s first comic book appearance in 1940

The comic book version of Sam had various mystical powers and helped fight the Nazis ’til his comics were cancelled in 1944. DC Comics bought the rights to the character and revived him a few years later as the leader of a team called the Freedom Fighters. Later, they wrote a new origin for him in which he became the literal Spirit of America, reborn every few years in the body of a dying patriot.

My personal favorite incarnation of Uncle Sam in a comic book is from 1997’s “Uncle Sam,” written by Steve Darnell with art by super-painter and former Lubbockite Alex Ross. It was published by Vertigo Comics, a division within DC for more mature stories. It’s a much darker and less optimistic vision of Uncle Sam and America, but it’s also much more compelling. This is an Uncle Sam for grownups and realists.

The ’97 version of “Uncle Sam”

This one isn’t a superhero, and the story itself isn’t told in a superhero universe. In this comic, Uncle Sam is a deranged homeless man who just thinks he’s the immortal Spirit of America. Either that, or he really is the immortal Spirit of America who’s become paralyzed by guilt and shame over the state of the nation. It’s hard to tell, since he keeps having flashbacks of himself as a Revolutionary War soldier, and he gets into conversations with the national personifications of Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

Of course, these may just be hallucinations. It doesn’t seem likely that he’s able to talk to cigar-store Indians and lawn jockeys, or step into paintings, or live through fire, or grow to giant size. But we’re never entirely sure, because Sam’s never entirely sure either.

You should be nicer to your Uncle.

This is, at its heart, a broad examination of America’s history — specifically, the parts of our history (and our present!) that we feel less than proud of. Racism and slavery, the Indian wars, Shay’s Rebellion, Andersonville, Kent State, and far too many massacres and assassinations — the times when Americans have killed, hurt, or oppressed each other because of hate, greed, ideology, or stubbornness.

This is not a comic for the blind, knee-jerk nationalists out there. This is not a book for the “Love it or leave it” crowd. This is not a comic for people who think it’s treasonous to say we aren’t perfect. This is a book that takes a long, hard look at our history, forces us to look at the worst times, and tells us in no uncertain terms that we did wrong, that we failed, that we didn’t live up to the idealistic standards that we should have. Heck, Sam even meets up with a new incarnation of himself who claims to represent “the New America” — a country of media buzzwords, conspicuous wealth (but only for a few), consumerism, hypocrisy, and contempt. And Sam has to confront the question of whether America has changed from the land of freedom, justice, and equality to a nation of far shallower and less noble urges.

If all you want is a book full of marching bands, presidential portraits, and sanitized, whitewashed history… Well, you’re gonna hate this one. You’re gonna think it’s unpatriotic and anti-American. But it isn’t. As far as I’m concerned, a big part of being a patriot is knowing the nation’s history, knowing and accepting the times when we’ve failed to do what’s right, and — most importantly — resolving to do better in the present and the future. A patriot wants his nation to be the best ever, and you can’t move the country forward while keeping your eyes closed.

Will work for liberty

You’ll probably hear a lot of people say that this is a liberal comic book, and in a way, it is. But it was written in 1997, when Bill Clinton was president, and Darnell and Ross have said that they wrote it as a commentary on American history and current events. They’ve also said that if they re-wrote it today, they wouldn’t have to change very much of it…

The final message of the story: America isn’t perfect. Heck, it may never have been perfect, not the way we imagined it in elementary school. We’ve made mistakes, sometimes really, really big mistakes over the past 231 years. But we’re better as a nation when we’re trying to live up to the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Powers That Be will snicker and sneer and tell us that freedom and equality are outdated antiques in the modern world, that civil liberties will have to wait ’til we’re not in a crisis, that money is the only real American value. But they’re lying to you, because they’re afraid of the power you hold over them. “Liberty and Justice for All” has always been something worth fighting for. Every version of Uncle Sam would agree.

(Previously: Politics in Comics: Watchmen)

I spied this bit of news from today’s paper…

A Hong Kong Chinese artist has won Japan’s first Nobel Prize of Manga for artists working in the comic book genre abroad.
“Sun Zi’s Tactics” by Lee Chi Ching, 43, beat out 145 other entries from 26 countries and regions around the world, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said Friday in a statement.

Lee’s historically themed adventure series ran from 1995-2006 in Chinese, and has been translated into numerous other languages, it said.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, “manga” is what the Japanese call their comic books. The style is pretty distinctive — big eyes, little nose, wild hair — and the look of Japanese manga have been slowly bleeding into American comics for years. There aren’t so many superheroes in manga — science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and action tend to be the most popular. Manga is often considered more explicit in terms of violence and sexuality than American comics are.

Manga is also very big business in Japan. They’re widely read by adults and females, and they sell more manga in a week than the American comic book industry sells all year.

The book that won the international prize, Lee Chi Ching’s “Sun Zi’s Tactics,” may not even be available in America right now — heck, it may not even be translated into English yet. Hopefully, winning the award will get some publishers interested in making it available for Americans…

DC Comics has released a new teaser image where they hint at some upcoming events they’re working on. Click here for the full image.

Among other things, they’ve got lots of superheroes who are apparently working with the bad guys. They’ve got the Martian Manhunter hanging out with the Joker and Catwoman, they’ve got Mary Marvel hanging out with Eclipso and Granny Goodness, they’ve got three different versions of Superman, including the Cyborg Superman, the Superman from “Kingdom Come,” and a Superman wearing an all-black costume.

You’ve also got the Trickster from the ’60s wearing the costume of the irritating kid Trickster from a couple years ago and carrying the Piper’s flute. I’m not sure which of the Tricksters had the worse costume, but I’d like to think that even I could pick out something more fashionable.

Beyond that, I dunno. There’s no way to tell if teasers like this will be accurate in any way. I find myself most intrigued by the bit with the Martian Manhunter — as silly as his old “Brazilian hoochie-koochie girl” costume was, I haven’t been at all fond of the new “I’m a brooding emo loser with a pointy head” version of him. If this storyline would turn him back the way he was, I wouldn’t mind a bit.

How ’bout you? See anything in that image that you think looks like it’ll be interesting?

A very red cover for a very blue hero

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present for you: “Blue Beetle” #16, the Best Comic Book I read last week.

“Blue Beetle” is about Jaime Reyes, a teenager in El Paso, who stumbles upon an alien artifact that fuses to his spine and gives him the ability to conjure up a turbopowered suit of hypertechnological weaponry. Jaime is a pretty reluctant superhero, as the alien armor scares him (it has a mind of its own) and he worries that his family or friends could suffer as a result of his actions. The series has been a bit up-and-down, but it does star one of the most appealing protagonists in all of comics. The supporting cast is also absolutely stellar — the characterizations are rich, fun, detailed and consistent, from his family, to his best friends, Paco and Brenda, to the Posse, a street gang of low-level magic-powered metahumans, to Brenda’s aunt, La Dama, a local crimelord.

“Blue Beetle” is also interesting because it’s the only comic from a major publisher that’s set in the Southwest, and the only one with an almost all-Hispanic cast. Your average American comic book is populated almost entirely by white people, maybe one or two black people, and zero Hispanics — a bit funky for a nation with such a large Hispanic population.

Anyway, this issue is written by John Rogers (one of the writers of the new “Transformers” movie and the proprietor of the Kung Fu Monkey weblog), with art by Rafael Albuquerque. The title alone (“Total Eclipso: The Heart”) gets a thumbs-up from me. Plot: Eclipso, a demon inhabiting the body of Jean Loring, the Atom’s ex-wife, decides that she wants a new host, and she settles on the child of two of the magically empowered gangsters in the Posse. Luckily, Traci 13, the daughter of Dr. Thirteen, Ghost-Breaker, shows up to help with her trademark whacko spellcasting. She gets run off, but enlists Jaime and Paco to help. Much fighting occurs, including the following bit of fun chatter.

Evil stink? That’s why I use Beano!

Paco eventually ends up grabbing the baby but finds that this act has caused him to be designated the baby’s champion, forced to fight Blue Beetle, mystically enslaved and turned into the form of his deepest power fantasies. Is there any way for Paco to survive? Can the baby be rescued? Will Jaime and Traci smooch? I cannot reveal these awesome secrets — you’ll have to go buy the comic yourself to find out.

This is an excellent, wonderful comic book. The dialogue is great, the plot twists are great, there are so many moments of pure fun here. There’s Traci name-dropping the late Ralph and Sue Dibny. There’s Paco begging Jaime to wish for a Porsche. There’s the total awesomeness of Jaime’s entirely unexpected power fantasy.

I ended up getting a lot of wonderful, fun comics this past week, but this one was the very best I got. Verdict: Thumbs-up times a billion. Go get it.

(And yes, I’m way behind on my comics reviewing — having houseguests makes it tough to find time for writing. I’ll try to finish up my reviews a bit later this week, promise.)

 

Funeral Details

Oh my gosh! Captain America is GETTING A FUNERAL!!!1!

It’s a funeral fit for a superhero. In the drizzling rain at Arlington National Cemetery, thousands of grieving patriots solemnly watch as the pallbearers — Iron Man, the Black Panther, Ben Grimm and Ms. Marvel — carry a casket draped with an American flag. Yes, folks, Captain America is dead and buried in the latest issue of Marvel Comics’ “Fallen Son,” due on newsstands the morning after Independence Day. After 66 years of battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull, the red, white and blue leader of the Avengers was felled by an assassin’s bullet on the steps of a New York federal courthouse.

It’s a little embarrassing that the national media is still running news articles about this. Wouldn’t you think a reporter would want to avoid getting roped into a publisher’s PR ploys?

I find myself having a really tough time caring about this. The “death” of Cap was never meant to be a good story — it was designed, from the beginning, as a publicity stunt to sell a few extra comic books.

And anyone who really believes that Captain America is really dead? I got this big bridge out in Brooklyn I’ll let you have for cheap.

So yeah, color me cynical about every single thing about this funeral.

 

In Blackest Night

DC spent the last couple of weeks bragging that all the fans of former Green Lantern Kyle Rayner would hate them after the “Sinestro Corps” comic. Turns out that most people think it’s A-OK.

There are spoilers ahead. But you’ve probably already heard the rumors and seen the previews of future covers, so there aren’t any great surprises if you’ve been paying attention.

We start out with the evil Sinestro, disgraced Green Lantern wearing a yellow power ring and serving a cosmic god of fear, making dastardly plots. He sends out a few thousand yellow rings to the most evil and most fearsome creatures in the galaxy, recruiting them into his new Sinestro Corps. Kyle, who doesn’t have a ring but is basically powered by pure souped-up mega-Lantern energy, gets kidnapped by Sinestro and attacked by all of the monsters in the Sinestro Corps. He gets completely depowered when Sinestro rips Ion, the Lantern symbiote, out of his body, then Sinestro reveals that he was responsible for the death of Kyle’s mother. Kyle is entirely demoralized, and Sinestro forces the evil Parallax entity into Kyle’s body, turning him into a newly evil demigod — the same entity that Hal Jordan himself spent a few years as…

On top of all that, the Sinestro Corps attack Oa and free two of the prisoners being held there — Superboy Prime, the Big Bad of last year’s “Infinite Crisis” storyline, and the Cyborg Superman, who destroyed Coast City, Jordan’s hometown, all those years back. Of course, they get inducted into the Sinestro Corps, along with the Manhunter robots who’ve plagued the Green Lanterns for ages.

You think I’ve spoiled the whole story now, don’tcha? Wrong. I haven’t told you who’s really behind the Sinestro Corps. It ain’t Sinestro. It ain’t Parallax. It’s…

No, I ain’t telling. Check it out for yourself.

As for Kyle as the new Parallax, I really can’t say I mind. For one thing, I don’t think it’s going to be a permanent change. DC is already pushing Kyle as a character in a few upcoming series, and he’s sure not Parallaxized in those. Second, it’s a great plot turn that really emphasizes how evil the Sinestro Corps is, and what a colossal danger they’re going to be. I haven’t yet heard any fans of Kyle Rayner who are really, really unhappy with this.

This whole issue is a textbook-perfect example of how to create great arch-foes for your heroes. You’ve got a few spotlight characters (Sinestro, Parallax, Superboy Prime, the Cyborg Superman) to oppose your spotlight heroes (Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle’s subjugated personality), along with an organization that’s a twisted mirror-image of the Green Lantern Corps. If the rest of the storyline is as good as this one, it’s going to be big, big fun.

Geoff Johns is the writer, and he rocks. Ethan van Sciver is the artist, and he rocks, too. The dude draws scary alien monsters like nobody’s business.

I missed reviewing last week’s issue of “Countdown,” so I’m going to take a quick look at last week’s and this week’s.

 

Only one of these characters appears in this issue.

In last week’s Countdown #45, we catch up with Donna Troy, who’s trying to fight off the alien Forerunner in Washington, D.C. Basically, Forerunner is tougher’n spit. Donna’s got powers like Wonder Woman and fairly recently spent some time as one of the Titans of myth, but she has serious trouble with Forerunner. But in the end, she and Jason Todd are saved by one of the transdimensional Monitors. Forerunner, distressed that the Monitors consider her nothing more than an untrustworthy weapon, resolves to sever her links to them and stay on Earth.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Olsen is still trying to discover why he’s starting to manifest superpowers, and Holly Robinson, who took over for Selina Kyle for a while as Catwoman, meets up with someone who offers her charity and shelter. And a few timelost members of the Legion of Super-Heroes sit around the Justice League’s satellite HQ and verbally spar with the JSA’s Dr. Mid-Nite.

Much of this issue is fairly pointless, but the big fight between Donna and Forerunner is a nice fat dose of happy, so I’ll give it a thumbs-up.

 

Beware! The Return of… a villain no one ever liked.

And in this week’s Countdown #44 (remember, they’re numbering this entire series in reverse), Forerunner meets up with Monarch, who is probably DC’s biggest archvillain failure. Way back when, in a mini-series called “Armageddon 2001,” Monarch was going to be the ultimate Big Bad — a planetary conqueror from the future who was secretly a superhero gone bad. But which hero was he? There was a big build-up, but people figured out pretty early that he was going to be Captain Atom. DC didn’t want their big suprise spoiled so easily, so they rewrote the end to make him… Hawk. As in the old ’60s duo Hawk and Dove. This was almost impossibly lame. Anyway, DC has spent years trying to somehow make this make sense, including everything from declaring that Hawk was possessed by an evil sorcerer to creating a new Monarch who really was Captain Atom — they’re apparently going with the Captain Atom angle for Countdown. It doesn’t keep him from being lame, but he somehow talks Forerunner into joining forces with him, at least temporarily.

Elsewhere, Holly Robinson finds herself taken in by either the goddess Athena or a bunch of Amazons. The story isn’t real clear on that point. Jimmy Olsen tries to purposely put himself in danger to see if he activates any more powers, and this time, he temporarily acquires the ability to shoot sharp spines out of his body. So far, all of his powers match up with powers he had during the old Silver Age series “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen,” which is one of the world’s primary sources for pure Whacko-Weirdonium.

The Piper and the Trickster are on the run from everyone after being involved in the murder of Bart Allen in the final issue of “The Flash,” and Mary Marvel finally meets up with Captain Marvel, who now has shaggy gray hair, a white costume, and is the Official Guardian of All Magic. Cap says that Mary’s changed — she’s wearing a black costume and really savagely beat the snot out of the baby-suit demon from a couple issues back. Mary gets mad and takes off.

Okay, I know DC is trying to raise warning flags about that possibility that Mary has become corrupted by Black Adam’s powers, but could I just say that Captain Marvel really comes off as an utter cobag here? First of all, Mary is his sister, and he let her sit in a coma for months, took away her powers, and refused to have anything to do with her. Then he whines about her fashion choices and complains that, when she met the horrific demon from hell wearing dead babies strapped all over him and threatening to kill her and other people, she shouldn’t have beaten it up quite so badly. Cap, dude, just because you’re the Official Guardian of All Magic, that does not give you permission to be a jerk to your sister.

Verdict: Gaaah, I dunno. I didn’t find myself completely hating it, but it sure seemed sloppy. I think we’ll call this one a thumbs-down.

Wow, I actually said those were going to be short reviews? I need to work on my “not rattling on for hours” skills…

 

Things always get chaotic when family comes to town.

I’m afraid my blogging is going to slow down quite a bit over the next week or so. I’ve got family around for a visit, and I won’t have time for very much writing until after the 4th. I’ll try to get a few reviews together, but I won’t have time to do very much.

If you ain’t happy with that… Mmm-mmmm, sorry, can’t hear you, too busy eating this deeeelicious rhubarb pie my momma made for me…

This is the first in an occasional series I’d like to do covering politics in comics. True enough, many comics are perfectly happy to limit themselves to good vs. evil fisticuffs, but every once in a while, a comic comes along that wears its political opinions on its brightly-colored spandex sleeve. They’re often (but not always) some of the best and most interesting comics out there, and they often manage to entertainingly infuriate people who tend to get entertainingly infuriated by political matters.

Let’s get things started with a comic that’s widely considered the best ever made.

The classic 1986-87 miniseries “Watchmen” is the main reason that Alan Moore is currently acclaimed as the best writer in comics. His epic DC series follows a number of costumed vigilantes, including the sadistic, doomed Comedian, the mad, enigmatic Rorschach, the intellectual but naïve Nite-Owl, and the inhumanly powerful and usually completely nekkid Dr. Manhattan, as they investigate a number of strange crimes in a world teetering on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Moore wrote “Watchmen” with the express purpose of dragging comics out of the often-juvenile ghetto they’d been relegated to. His success won him worldwide fame, plunked the comics genre into a decade-long “Dark Age” when gritty realism reigned, and earned “Watchmen” a reputation as one of the Best Comic Series Ever.

“Watchmen” is a series grounded in politics — Moore wanted his series to be more realistic than the typical long-underwear comic, so he gave his “costumed adventurers” a weakness that most people are vulnerable to: the law. In Moore’s continuity, the Keene Act was passed in 1977 and banned costumed vigilantes. Most of the nation’s heroes retire, with the exception of government agents like the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, and Rorschach, who just plain refuses to obey.

Nite-Owl and the Comedian try to quell a riot

On top of that, the existence of government agents as brutal as the Comedian and as awesomely powerful as Dr. Manhattan cause major changes in world events. Dr. Manhattan is able to win the Vietnam War almost single-handedly — a victory that allows Richard Nixon to repeal the 22nd Amendment. In “Watchmen,” Nixon has been President for five terms.

Most notably, the comic examines how political biases would determine coverage of costumed vigilantes in the media. “Nova Express,” a glossy liberal news magazine, campaigns against vigilantes and derides them as hyper-violent fascist stormtroopers. The hard-right “New Frontiersman,” on the other hand, is an enthusiastic supporter of costumed vigilantes, depicting them as the world’s elites, society’s only hope of surviving everything from communist subversion to juvenile delinquency.

Who watches the weirdies in the colorful spandex?

So are the heroes liberals or conservatives? Yes and no. Rorschach is definitely conservative and a big fan of the “New Frontiersman,” and the Comedian is an enthusiastic government operative. But they don’t entirely pass muster as political heroes — the Comedian is a thug and not much else, and while Rorschach has a great deal of cool, the dude’s also nutty as a bag full of walnuts. Ozymandias is a very wealthy capitalist, but he’s the owner of the left-leaning “Nova Express” — and his actions at the end of the book won’t endear him to many liberals out there. Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre both come across as somewhat squishy liberals. The only truly apolitical character in the story is Dr. Manhattan, and he’s not only the most powerful person in the world, he’s pretty darn close to being a god. He’s the cold, emotionless universe made flesh, and he cares not one bean for which party is running the country.

It seems to me that, though they may have political opinions, very few of the characters in “Watchmen” have consistent political opinions. In that, they are like most of us — caring passionately about some things, violently opposed to others, but mostly untouched by the crude politics that are supposed to run the world.

In the end (hopefully no spoilers here), the entire story turns on seemingly eternal political questions: Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? What is the line between terrorist and hero? Can an elite few decide the fates of the masses? Do the ends justify the means?

Everyone seems to think those are easy questions. In “Watchmen” – and in much of real life – they aren’t. Conservatives may find themselves unexpectedly favoring stereotypically liberal points-of-view, and vice versa.

“Watchmen” provides no easy answers to those questions. That’s an exercise left to the individual reader.