By Miles Baker and Isaac Mills
Miles’ Book of the Month
Criminal #2
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Icon, 2008
Back in December, I picked the Criminal collection known as Lawless as my book of the month, and here I am again extolling this series’ virtues. The series never stops impressing me for how interesting the plot and main characters are, but also how they both work on deeper levels. I also get a kick out of seeing interconnected stories, where locations serve as characters.
This month’s issue, “Wolf Among Wolves,” focuses on Teeq Lawless, the father of the protagonist of Lawless. In that book, you heard and saw in a few flashbacks how much of a monster Teeq is, and how it fucks up his sons — but in this issue you really get to see the kind of monster he is. As the issue begins, Teeq returns home from his third tour of duty in Vietnam, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and the children he barely remembers conceiving feel like aliens to him. So he drinks. And he drinks. And between the drinking and shellshock, he’s suffering from black outs, which are wonderfully depicted with all-black panels. In the meantime, he’s rendered a lot of debt with a man named Barber. And so, like any good crime story, Teeq’s back is to the wall and he has to come up with a lot of money really quickly.
This is a great issue to pick up because it’s self-contained; everything you need to know is on the page, but the book is infinitely more interesting when you’ve read Lawless. The Lawless family is certainly a bad ass one. It’s neat to see how Tracy, Teeq’s son, is in many ways his father’s son, but better – a better shot, less of an asshole, more moral. But that doesn’t mean Teeq is without heart or sympathy. Here’s what the narrator says about Teeq: “And he thinks about walking back in there and just killing them all. But then he thinks about his kids and what would happen to them if he did. And something happens then, when he remembers his sons, and thinks of their innocent eyes. A horror sweeps through him. A father’s fear and protectiveness. A love for his sons that hurts him inside. Eventually, he’ll learn to hate them for that.”
Maybe I’m just sick or something, but I find that kind of thing incredibly fascinating, and I just can’t get enough. The book works on so many different levels and they’re all amazing. Phillips’ art is still amazing. And there’s no damn reason this book shouldn’t sell millions of copies ever week, even when there isn’t a new issue out, goddamn it.
Isaac’s Book of the Month
The Brave and the Bold #12
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Jerry Ordway
DC Comics, 2007
Gentle reader, you may be curiously asking yourself “what makes a book of the month?” Well young one, the word “awesome” is bandied about quite a bit these days, but for a comic to be book of the month it must be chock full of awesome.
In the case of The Brave and the Bold #12 this awesomeness is accomplished through an epic, nearly the full issue long battle between Megistus (the foe who has been built up since the beginning of this volume of Brave and the Bold), the character development of June of the Challengers of the Unknown fame, the saving of the Earth, the necessary team-ups (that is to say, Superman was there but he really couldn’t save the day by himself. Usually we have to pretend like he needs the other JLA guys — no pretending needed in this issue. The threat was just that dire!), and back to back quotations that are cool and/or hilarious. And usually those quotations are just as good or better when taken completely out of context.
For your pleasure, here are some quotes that contributed to this issue being so great:
-“Red: Hey, Junie, c’mon, we’ve faced worse.
June: Not… really…
Red: Okay, true.”
—“I keep tellin’ ya, Red… ya can’t call it an astronaut diaper if ya wear it all the time!”
—“How do we defeat a cloud?”
—“You are the least comforting human being I have ever met.”
—“Good—because I see about a thousand mutant fish flying this way–!”
How could you not want to read this issue? I haven’t even told you anything that really happens in it and you already want it. But to whet your appetite further, I’ll give you a basic summary of what happened (I’m really just whistling in the dark now, I know you’ve all left your houses to go buy this comic after the “thousand mutant fish” part, but please humour me while I type a little more. The soothing rhythm should help me fall asleep.).
Throughout the previous issues of Brave and the Bold, powerful alchemical devices were gathered for some sinister purpose, items such as the philosophers stone, the Orb of Ra, and Green Lantern’s power battery, to name a few I can think of, all in an effort to attract a wave/cloud of radiation to earth (the same radiation that effected amounts of kryptonite and created the red kryptonite that tends to transmogrify Superman into a 50ft. tall baby, or a robot, or whatever the writers wanted to change him into for a period of 24 hours), so that everything would get seriously messed up on the planet. And what with Megistus having Green Lantern’s power battery turning the sun green, the beginning of the comic has the Challengers of the Unknown, with a powerless Superman and Ultraman (green sun remember, not yellow), and a Green Lantern running on empty with his ring, crammed into Wonder Woman’s invisible plane flying to the sun.
Mark Waid is known for being a DC historian, so it comes as no surprise that he can grab all these elements of the DC universe and cram them all together to make such a great story, but I can see how hard it is to find that line between making all these elements cool and going over board ending up with a really cheesy book.
I needed to point out that difficulty before voicing my one complaint that isn’t really a complaint. Sending Green Lantern into the void of space with little more than an invisible plane suit, he starts to recite the oath which always precedes a Green Lantern charging his ring up from his power battery (the idea being that he is trying to recharge almost by induction or something being close to his lantern) but cuts it short, saying “Just recharge already!”
I know the oath is really cheesy, but having the guy go through the speech was the only thing giving some danger at that moment of the comic. If he could just go “presto I’m charged!” that defeats the purpose of having him overcome adversity while we cheer on in the background.
Anyways, that really isn’t much of a complaint at all, I probably just wanted to nerd out, as always, over the Green Lantern oath. It’s a great book, with beautiful art, and if you don’t have it, get it. The whole twelve issue run will probably be collected into trade soon, so look into that.
