Sandra’s Book of the Month
Detective Comics #857
Greg Rucka (w), J.H. Williams III (a), Dave Stewart (c). DC Comics.
When I was looking through my pile to decide what I was going to choose for the Book of the Month there was only one title that really stood out, and that was this month’s issue of Detective Comics. The thing about this series that really makes it outstanding is the beauty and the intricacy of the art. Williams and Stewart create some of the most dynamic and bold art that I’ve ever seen, in this or any other series. Williams’ pencil lines are detailed and add a great flow to the story, especially with the insane use of all those dynamic panels. Combined with Stewart’s painting style and use of colours it just makes me all giddy and happy to be reading. There hasn’t been an issue in this four-part arc that hasn’t made me rave about the series, so it only seemed appropriate for this to be my pick for the month. — Sandra Yao
Isaac’s Book of the Month
Incredible Hercules #134
Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente (w), Reilly Brown (p), Nelson DeCastro (i), Guillem Mari (c). Marvel Comics.
I recently saw some episodes of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, and, instead of being disappointed, found they held up really well to my expectations. Yes, sometimes the art wasn’t of the best quality, and sometimes they switched which turtle should have been voiced by which actor, but the jokes! The puns! Looking back, it’s not so hard to trace the source of my sense of humour — 90% is from all the cartoons I grew up with. Add in a love of alliteration and loquaciousness courtesy of Darkwing Duck and Stan Lee, and presto, you’ve got an Isaac. More or less.
But for whatever reason, not everyone is into that sort of thing, and there’s just a dearth of zaniness these days.
Thankfully, we have The Incredible Hercules.
You know the intro page Marvel books tend to have? Hercules doesn’t have a rundown of events leading up to this issue (they COULD have used one; we’re dropped in with Hercules dressed as Thor accompanied by his “amnesiac child-father” surrounded by a good army of trolls), but instead it’s basically a critique of current Asgardian couture trends. Not only is it hilarious, but it tells us everything we could want to be told going into the issue: Herc is impersonating the Mighty Thor — have fun readers! Anything else, dealing with particulars of back story or whatnot, are dealt with in the story, or, if not, are simply not relevant to a fun stand-alone issue.
Don’t get me wrong, this issue has a story beyond what happens between the two covers — it’s not exactly a “stand alone” issue, but if for some reason the next issue were never to be made and I couldn’t see what happens next, I’d still have had a blast with this book, and that says everything. No excuses need be made that I “need to read all the issues together to enjoy this one issue” — no, that would entail me reading one good graphic novel, not a good series of individual comics.
Speaking of old-school cartoons, there’s a scene where Hercules has to convince these dark elves that he’s really Thor, so he goes through a quick succession of trials — three trials in as many pages (he fails the last one, but two out of three is close enough apparently). It’s the kind of rapidity between schemes you might expect from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with the feel and dialogue of a Justice League International story.
Also, the juxtaposition of Hercules, a classical heroic figure, with a modern setting — giving any real consideration to the things he would like in said modern setting — is pretty brilliant. Which means, of course, that I can’t believe Hercules references Star Trek — but upon reflection you know this is one womanizing demi-god who would certainly worship Captain James “alien-skirt chasing” Kirk. — Isaac Mills
Miles’ Book of the Month
Strange Tales #1
Various (w + a). Marvel Comics.
I was tempted to give this month’s title to one of the Ed Brubaker collections that came out (Gotham Central and Sleeper) but I don’t think Strange Tales got its due. This was so much better than Wednesday Comics. That was a cool experiment, and artistically it won, but storytelling-wise it failed. This, however, wins on both fronts. Storywise, each piece is only as long as it needs to be; some are one page, some are seven pages. It’s exactly as it needs to be to tell the jokes it’s telling and get on with something else. You get some amazing and unusual art and hilarious short stories by some of the most talented people in comics. The one pager “The Blue Hair” by The Perry Bible Fellowship is one of my favourite things I’ve ever seen, Jason’s story is too cute for words, and Michael Kupperman writes a Namor that I’d love to see have an ongoing series. All of that plus no interior ads make this a buy-worthy title. — Miles Baker
Hmm, regarding the art in Detective; I’m not a big fan of it. It’s definitely original and dynamic, but it’s also confusing. I don’t find the art flows very well and I don’t like how Batwoman is coloured white…not caucasian or off-white, but WHITE. She looks like an albino that died and came back a ghost, then doused herself in baby powder for good measure. This confuses me and makes me think it would be hard to keep a secret identity.
The art is pretty, but like I said, confusing. I found Willams’ art similarly confusing when he was drawing Promethea, but that series was about crazy fever-dream magic and was supposed to look ethereal and trippy. Assigning art like that to a gritty detective series just doesn’t seem like a great fit to me (though i will admit that he has toned it down a bit).
*Drops by, looks at choices, nods in approval, high-fives Isaac, leaves*
Caesar, man, I don’t think you could be more wrong about Williams art. This flow is fantastic. I’m never — even for a second — confused about what’s going on or exactly how the action is moving.
It’s the kind of art that you don’t rush though and you take your time with. But I think it’s crystal clear as to what’s happening.
And I think the white colouring on her is a great choice. She’s really pale, she doesn’t see the sun because she’s up all night. And if you notice they do make her a little more pale in costume than out, and that’s a great choice. Maybe not totally realistic, but it makes her look more menacing in the Batwoman costume.
*recieves my high five* awesome
as for the art in detective, it is phenomenal, and adds a great deal of “visual character” to Batwoman- unfortunately it’s a case of great idea done too late. If Batwoman was this interesting when she debuted, maybe I’d be buying detective comics right now, but because I started off not liking the character I was turned against from the get go, and any change now (positive though it totally is) is just hard turn retconning. which hurts me.
I think I’ve said this before.
And I NEED to find a copy of that Strange Tales book, it looks fantastic, the cover alone is probably worth the price of admission on it.
I’ll admit that the flow in the most recent issue actually wasn’t bad…but in the first couple of issues I didn’t like it at all. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great art, I just don’t like the fit with this book.
And the pale thing still bugs me, because, seriously, nobody is that pale without some kind of flaw in their pigmentation genetics. I’M a pasty bastard and I still don’t look like that. And neither does anybody else in the book (except for her sister; so, what, are they albino sisters?). And it further bothers me because anyone with half a brain could put together that the GHOST WHITE red head with the same build as the GHOST WHITE redheaded Batwoman, might in fact BE Batwoman. If Maggie Sawyer doesn’t figure out who she is about two seconds after laying eyes on Batwoman, then Maggie Sawyer is retarded; and if Kathy doesn’t expect to be found out in short order, then she too is retarded.
Then again, she’s wearing a red wig to disguise the fact that she has identically-coloured red hair, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
You know, it occurs to me that I’m a little biased because I don’t like Batwoman as a character. More accurately, I didn’t like her introduction into the DC Universe because it was a pile of fucking bullshit from start to finish. And here’s why:
The media push surrounding her arrival, touting her as “The first lesbian superhero.” A cheap ploy by DC to show a bit more diversity in their character lineups; this robbed the reader of the chance to find out on her own and instantly puts Batwoman in the “gimmick” category. It was about one step more subtle than taking out an ad in every newspaper in the country that read “COME BUY OUR COMICS BECAUSE WE HAVE A LESBIAN BATMAN.”
Her appearance in 52 was, despite all the hooplah, forgettable and pointless. She didn’t really DO a whole lot and her entire presence felt shoehorned. A lot of promises were made for explanations (i.e. why is everyone letting this weird lesbo chick prance around in a Batman outfit? Do you know how pissed people in the Bat-family get when stuff like that happens? Who trained her? Where did she come from?), but the only explanations we got were, “Shut the hell up” and up until recently, Batwoman did practically NOTHING after 52 — that was THREE YEARS AGO.
So, here I am, three years later, still wondering why I should care about a lesbian gimmick character with a Bat-symbol pasted on her tits who’s only notable relevance to the DC universe is that she once dated an actual GOOD and well handled character, Renee Montoya, which no one really talks much about anyway.
Anyhoo. Detective Comics is pretty decent so far, and Rucka is a good writer, so maybe he can make me give a crap about Batwoman the same way he and Brubaker made me care about Renee Montoya.
Ceasar, you should check out Rucka’s interview on Wordballoon. He talks about the media shitstorm that started with that silly outing — which is why she was shoehorned into 52. He says that readers should be skeptical about her given her poorly thought out intro.
So Rucka is aware of your complaints and I think he’s addressing them pretty well. Next isues are apparently her backstory, so expect more Rene too.
yeah, those are pretty much my feelings in regards to Batwoman, not to mention the whole Book of Blood (I think that’s what it’s called) prophecy “twice named” Kate Kain stuff… that exact same prophecy would have fit even better with Cassandra Cain (whose name actually is spelled the way the prophecy mentions it, at least I think that’s true, I remembering thinking that years ago) so it was also a case of the powers that be ignoring and spitting on a character I like. Which happened a lot to Batgirl.
Glad to hear Rucka is aware of these problems, will have to check out his comments about it sometime.
just to be clear, I agree with Ceasar in regards to Batwomans introduction and lack of interestingness in 52- the super white face and red wig on top of red hair is ok with me. kind of in the same vein of how I don’t mind that people with domino masks can pretend like nobody knows who they are.
Yes, I know Rucka has his heart in the character, and I know he’s going to try to do good with her, and I’m all for that. I’m sure if he does a good job with her I’ll like Batwoman a lot more than I do now, even though another Bat-person in the picture strikes me as unnecessary. It will just take some effort and time, is all. I’m looking forward to getting some answers (in the form of backstory).
Isaac, I hear what you’re saying with the domino mask thing. I’ve pretty much accepted that as well, except when the domino-mask-wearing-person in question hangs out with the same people with and without the mask. It’s one thing to suspend my disbelief when the superhero tends to only be seen from a distance by the public, but when he has face-to-face conversations with the same person with and without his tiny mask and they don’t figure out that, y’know, THEIR BOYFRIEND IS NIGHTWING or whatever, that’s when I get annoyed.
Actually, I have no problem believing a domino mask can hide your identity with the general public- sometimes people are hard to tell apart! It’s the anonymity of crowd culture.
My suspension of disbelief comes into play when your close friends have no idea who you are and you walk up and say “Hi Ms. Ferris whose name I somehow know”. It’s actually kind of hilarious- if it didn’t happen, how could we enjoy the scenarios revolving around average joes wishing their fave girls would notice them- instead of their own heroic alter egos.