Gloria Steinem on Wonder Woman (Pt. 2)

"The Wonder Woman stories not only depict women as culturally different (in ways that are sometimes constructive and sometimes not), they also hint that women are biologically, and therefore immutably, superior to men.

"Few modern feminists would agree. There are as yet no perfectly culture-free testes to prove to us which traits come from conditioning and which do not, but the consensus seems to be that society, not biology, assigns some human traits to males and others to females. Women have suffered from being taught to develop what society considers the less-valued traits of humanity, but this doesn't mean we want to switch to a sole claim on the 'more valuable' ones either. That might accomplish nothing more than changing places with men in the hierarchy. Most feminist philosophy supposes that the hierarchy itself must be eliminated, that individuals who are free of roles assigned because of sex or race will also be free to develop the full range of human qualities. It's the multitudinous differences in individuals that count, not the localized differences of sex or race.

"For psychologist William Moulton Marston—who under the pen name of 'Charles Moulton,' created Wonder Woman—females were sometimes romanticized as biologically and unchangeably superior. 'Women,' he wrote, 'represent love; men represent force. Man's use of force without love brings evil and unhappiness. Wonder Woman proves that women are superior to men because they have love in addition to force.' If that's the case, then we're stuck with yet another social order based on birth."

—Gloria Steinem, from her introduction to Wonder Woman (Bonanza Books; 1972)

Gloria Steinem on Wonder Woman (Pt. 1)

"The trouble is that the comic book performers of such superhuman feats—and even of only dimly competent ones—are almost always heroes. Literally. The female child is left to believe that, even when her body is a as grown-up as her spirit, she will still be in the childlike role of helping with minor tasks, appreciating men's accomplishments, and being so incompetent and passive that she can only hope some man can come to her rescue. Of course, rescue and protection are comforting, even exhilarating experiences that should be and often are shared by men and boys. Even in comic books, the hero is frequently called on to protect his own kind in addition to helpless women. But dependency and zero accomplishments get very dull as a steady diet. The only option for a girl reader is to identify with the male characters—pretty difficult, even in the androgynous years of childhood. If she can' do that, seh faces limited prospects: An 'ideal' life of sitting around like a technicolor clothes horse, getting into jams with villains and saying things like 'Oh, Superman! I'll always be grateful to you,' even as her hero goes off to bigger and better adventures."

—Gloria Steinem, from her introduction to Wonder Woman (Bonanza Books; 1972)

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas...

I have short reviews of Dylan Horrocks' must-read Hicksville and Simon probably-should-read 100 Days of Simon in the last two issues of Las Vegas Weekly. You can go read them if you like.

By the way, did you know the Dylan Horrocks who wrote and drew Hicksville is the same Dylan Horrocks who had a short run on DC's previous volume of Batgirl, which kicked off with the cover above? It's true! I suddenly want to break out that longbox and re-read that run now, knowing the guy who wrote Hicksville wrote it.

I really rather liked pencil artist Adrian Sibar's weird art work, but I would have loved to see what a Batgirl run written and drawn by Horrocks would have looked like...

(Kinda sorta) review: Green Hornet: Year One #1

Batman: Year One had a very specific conceit, built right into the title—it was not only set during the first year of Batman’s career, but encompassed the entirety of that first year.

While not writer Frank Miller’s most popular or influential Batman comic, it was certainly a pretty influential one, putting the term “Year One” into the comic book lexicon. Of course, repeated usage of the term and the various variations of it over the years have devalued it: There was Batman: Year Two, Batgirl: Year One, JLA: Year One and Robin: Year One…the same “year” covered in “Batman Year Three.” There was that one summer where every DC character with a title got a “Year One” annual. Paul Pope had his Batman: Year One Hundred riff, and, more recently, Nightwing, Green Arrow, The Teen Titans, Black Lightning and even Metamorpho got stories branded thusly.

In fact, the term has lost its meaning enough that DC seems to have abandoned it completely, with Geoff Johns-penned origin stories going instead with Secret Origin.

Dynamite Entertainment using the “Year One” branding for their second Green Hornet miniseries, Green Hornet: Year One struck me as a little odd, since its thus far been such a DC Comics term, but maybe that Jack Black and Michael Cera Bible movie reclaimed it from DC.

In any case, all “Year One” stories that don’t, in fact, focus on the first year of a character’s fictional career tend to bug me a little. If it’s not actually about the first year, why not call it something else? (An insect-themed would be cool, I think, like Green Hornet: Chrysalis or something would be rad, wouldn’t it? No? Just me?)

So this is Green Hornet: Year One, which jumps around through time: 1921, 1931, 1934, 1938, 1926. It’s the origin story of both Britt Reid and Kato, told as separate, parallel threads, which eventually unite in Chicago in 1938, when we see the pair with their masks and start fighting crime with kung fu and gadgets. The exact point where the two threads intersect isn’t revealed in this first issue.

I’m happy to report that the only thing that bugged me about the book was wondering about the sub-title. (Well, that and the need for so many Green Hornet comics in the market in so short a period of time. And the $3.99 price tag.)

Matt Wagner writes (and earns an “art direction” credit…as well as providing one of the four covers), and Aaron Campbell provides the pencil and ink art.

The story is fairly straightforward and has few surprises, but then, it doesn’t really need much in the way of surprises or even a terribly unique approach: The Green Hornet is a fairly generic mask, fedora and long coat hero, one engaged in fairly generic mask, fedora and long coat hero type of crime-fighting activities.

Wagner does hone in one aspect particular to the character, his masked chauffeur sidekick, and transforms the relationship from hero and sidekick to a pair of heroes…at least judging by the way panel-space and attention is equally divided in this issue.

While I would probably have been more into this book if Wagner drew it as well (simply because I’m a big fan of his art), Campbell’s stuff is pretty solid. It’s highly representational and quite detailed. I’ve read two Dynamite Green Hornet comics in about as many weeks, and this one is definitely the better-looking in terms of art and colors. It’s also the better-written of the two.

These guys don't even have to change clothes before going to a parade or pub today.

Well, except for maybe Kato...

Huzzah!

Blog@Newsarama is back.

So there was a comic book convention this weekend.

That’s the cover of an Image one-shot written and illustrated by Ryan Ottley, shown as part of a slideshow at this weekend’s Emerald City Comic Con. Let’s hear it for high concepts! (Also, please note that there appears to be a baby’s head in the mouth of the Grizzly Shark. Perhaps Tucker Stone was on to something after all.)

What other news came out of the convention? And, more importantly, what do I think about that news?


Or, “Power Girl to be cancelled in a few months”: Well, perhaps that’s overly pessimistic, but it’s the first thing that sprung to mind when I saw the headline “Palmiotti, Gray and Conner off of Power Girl.” I’ve only read a handful of issues of the series, but Amanda Conner’s art was far and away the most appealing aspect of the book—it’s what got me to read those few issues, it’s what would get me to read a few more, and it’s usually the thing I see praised most when the book is being praised by anyone (Her art, and the general tone of the book).

If Conner couldn’t do more than twelve issues, and wanted to move on rather than take a break before returning a month or three later, I could sort of see why co-writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray would also want to move on too, but, on the other hand, I always got the sense from reading Palmiotti’s columns and posts around the Internet that he was super-enthusiastic about the character and the book and was going to be on it until it was pried from him.

Certainly someone somewhere should be able to replace Conner and bring much of what she brought to the book. Kevin Maguire is probably the most obvious choice in a lot of ways, and I know J. Bone could do deliver big, fun, funny, cartoony and sexy on a monthly basis, or maybe there’s a newcomer out there somewhere.

I will be curious to see what DC does with the title next. The Comic Book Resources article I linked to above ends with Palmiotti giving advice to his successors, which gave me the impression he wasn’t sure who they would be yet. Power Girl sells poorly enough that changing the entire creative team and possibly direction of the title only 12 issues in seems sort of radical.

The last Beat analysis had PG just below 22K for the eighth issue, below Supergirl and Wonder Woman, as well as both Titans books and Booster Gold. Unless DC ends up bringing in some pretty big names, it’s hard to imagine a Power Girl monthly being around this time next year.


Best news of the weekend (that I heard): Boom Studios, the comics publisher which has been cranking out some great kids comics of late, will be doing a Darkwing Duck miniseries starting in June.

I was a longtime watcher of the “Disney Afternoon” block of after-school cartoons, with Darkwing Duck following a close second to Duck Tales as one of my all-time favorites. Let’s see, I would have been…14 when the show debuted, which was right around the time I started getting into comics and superheroes, so it clicked with my waning interest in Duck Tales and waxing interest in superheroes.

I haven’t tried re-watching it since—despite having taped some of my favorite episodes on blank VCR tapes—so I’m unsure of how well it holds up, but I remember liking the premise (What if Batman were a Disney duck?), the lead actor’s voice a lot (as well as that of his evil opposite, Nega-Duck) and that gun he had that you could stick anything in and it would shoot it out the front. (Hmm, I guess I should check Youtube for old episodes…)

I, uh, I thought I might have more to say about this then simply, “Neat, I’m looking forward to this comic book!” But I guess not. Oh well, this sounds neat; I’m looking forward to this comic book.


I’m not at all surprised that Ian Sattler isn’t familiar with the term “women-in-refrigerators”: Considering I wrote a bit about the fact that DC killed off a little girl in Justice League: Cry For Justice (and read a ton about it over the course of the last week or so), I figure it’s worth following up on what Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler and writer James Robinson had to say on the matter.

Here’s a bit from a Comic Book Resources report on a “DC Nation” panel:

Sattler said he disagreed with the assessment that the character was “fridged” (i.e. that her death was pointless). Robinson (the writer of the story) quickly added, “The decision has been controversial and one that I know has been greeted with displeasure by some. I'm sorry if it upset people. In all honesty, they wanted to kill Speedy too, and I said no, so give me some credit for that."

It appeared that Robinson was joking about wanting to kill Speedy, although some in the crowd were unsure. Sattler jumped in and said, “I’m proud of the story and stand by it. I'm happy it upset people because it means that the story had some weight and emotion.”

Robinson and Sattler also added that this story needed to be told to get Green Arrow to a specific place story-wise, as the character is going to have a “big” year. During the panel, Robinson also noted, “If you see what DC has planned for Green Arrow; Star City (Green Arrow’s hometown) will be one of the greatest cities in the DCU.”

Two quick things.

First, there’s the repeat of the “I’m happy it upset people because it means that the story had some weight” bit. That’s…a peculiar take away. Were some readers upset specifically because Lian Harper, the child of Roy Harper (a.k.a. Red Arrow, a.k.a. Arsenal, a.k.a. Speedy) died? Sure, I’ve read reactions from fans specifically upset that that particular character had died, at least one of whom described herself as a Lian fan.

I read far more people reacting not to the fact that a character died, but to the fact that DC killed her, or the way in which DC killed her. You know, how crass and exploitive it is, how meaningless and pointless it is, how out of place it is in a Justice League comic that barely mentions her dad, let alone Lian herself. What it says about the publisher, the writer, the reader, and what the publisher must think of its readers. Where it fits in the pattern of superhero decadence and so on.

I’m sure we’ll see when sales analysis of the issue is released that, dead kid or not, it’s nowhere near as successful as Blackest Night or Sieige or Batman and Robin, and, more likely didn’t even sell as many copies as it’s parent book, Justice League of America, which didn’t feature any dead kids that month (Future issues of Green Arrow following up on that plot point may see an uptick, but then, Green Arrow sales are so low almost anything would have caused an uptick in interest and sales…)

Apparently Sattler subscribes to the “no such thing as bad publicity” school of thought. But even if that is true, it doesn’t mean people approve of whatever is generating the bad publicity.

Secondly, I thought it was kind of funny how the report says Sattler and Robinson went on to explain that “this story needed to be told to get Green Arrow to a specific place story-wise, as the character is going to have a “big” year.”

Something terrible happening to a female supporting character in able to motivate a male hero is pretty much the text book definition of women-in-refrigerator-ism, isn’t it?


(Oh, by the way, the above image of Green Arrow cradling the lifeless body of a little girl he and the rest of the superheroes of the DC Universe were unable to save is part of a splash page. Standing immediately to the left of Green Arrow is his wife, Black Canary. She looks like this in the same panel: Is she covering her face because she can't bear to look upon the body of her kinda sorta step-fake-granddaughter? Or is she slapping her forehead because she can't believe DC even put her in a stupid scene like this?)



File under Things That Probably Should Not Be: Star Wars burlesque…? Um, hmmm. A sexy storm trooper and a Jaba the Hutt balloon dance thing seem so, so, so wrong, and yet I couldn’t look away. They definitely gets points for creativity, including some of the last characters you’d expect to see (Chewbacca, the aforementioned Jabba, both droids), and only using slave Leia and none of those ladies with two tentacles for hair like that one dancer of Jabba’s. The photo gallery linked to above is at CBR, and they use black bars to cover up the pasties for some reason (does that make looking at a photo set of a Star Wars burlesque show at work more acceptable?); LA Weekly has a slideshow sans bars…and another of the same troupe’s video game themed show (Sadly, no Pac-Man, as the poster for the show suggested).

Review: Hulk Vol. 3: Hulk No More

This comic filled me with a deep sense of existential dread. It is written by Jeph Loeb, so I expected some sort of negative feelings to surface during the reading experience (and be mitigated by the fact that this volume features the Defenders drawn in Ed McGuinness’ Masters of the Universe figures-filled-with helium style), but I wasn’t expecting to end up pondering the lack of meaning in comic book superhero adventures—heck, in life itself!—before I was half way through the collection.

I’m well aware that comic book characters like The Hulk aren’t really real in the way that you and I are real, and that what occurs in comic books featuring him is merely whatever the editors, writers and artists want to have occur to him. He’s a character, a license, a logo, forced to dance to the whims of whoever happens to be collecting paychecks in return for making him dance for our enjoyment in any given month.

To what end? Well, whatever other goals or motivations certain creators may have, it is ultimately to entertain readers, I suppose, enough so that they will pay another $3.99 the following month for more of the same.

That’s true of all corporate super-comics, but I can’t remember ever having read one that was as obvious about it as the opening three-issue story arc collected in this volume.

The Grandmaster, a cosmic god of the Marvel Universe, tells our hero that he can give him back a dead past love of his (Jarella, as referenced in a brief, three-page flashback) if The Hulk promises to fight to the death in a game of his.

The Hulk agrees, and hand-picks a team: Namor, Dr. Strange and The Silver Surfer, each pulled from the moment in their pasts where they similarly lost their lady loves, and given the same deal.

The Red Hulk, meanwhile, is playing for The Grandmaster’s brother, The Collector, and has put together his own team of evil opposites, The Offenders: Baron Mordo, Terrax and Tiger Shark.

They fight for a couple of issues, Marvel villains enter the fray, things occur with little rhyme or reason (for example, a two-page splash—of a $3.99 comic book!—is devoted to Tiger Shark chomping on Namor’s throat with admantium teeth, but the Avenging Son doesn’t even suffer a wound), and ultimately The Red Hulk kills everybody, and everyone then gets brought back to life with their memories wiped of the entire event.

So three issues later, nothing has changed for any of the characters at all, and it was as if the story arc never even happened.

At least I got to see McGuinness draw Namor though, and, of course, there’s this:

That is fantastic. Jeph Loeb got paid in U.S. dollars to write something like:

Two-page Splash.

Red Hulk is on the Silver Surfer’s surfboard, holding Terrax’s ax in one hand and shooting the power cosmic out of his other hand while flying through space.

RED HULK: Most fun I ever had with my clothes on!

That fact is honestly a more awe and wonder-inducing than any event that occurs within the story.

After the Defenders vs. Offenders trifle ends, Loeb and McGuinness get back to the business of teasing the Red Hulk’s origins. Incredible Hulk #600 was the issue solicited like so:

WHO IS THE RED HULK?! THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN IS GOING TO TRY AND FIND OUT! GREEN HULK! RED HULK! SPIDEY! SECRETS REVEALED!

Sort of makes it sound like it would be the one revealing Red Hulk’s true identity (Betty Ross. It has to be Betty Ross, right?), doesn’t it? It does no such thing.

“Seeing Red” opens and closes with Ben Urich, the only reporter in the Marvel Universe, in front of his type-writer, banging out a “This story will never see print” story, about how government conspiracy he stumbled upon, revealing that a military agency is actually the invention of MODOK and AIM, and dedicated the research of Hulks. Spider-Man, She-Hulk, Doc Samson and Rick “A-Bomb” Jones all guest-star. Red Hulk’s origin and identity remain undiscussed, but Bruce Banner loses his ability to transform back into the Hulk after all of his gamma radiation is sucked out of him.

Finally, in the title story, “Hulk No More,” Norman Osborn attempts to find out whether or not Banner can turn into the Hulk any more…by having Ares attack him.

These last two stories seem oddly disconnected from the first one, which has nothing to do with it save the presence of the two Hulk characters (and the creative team), so the book reads a bit like some sort of graphic novel version of a flip-book, rather than part of a unified, ongoing storyline.

Despite its soul-troubling meaninglessness and Loeb’s…Loeb-ishness, looking at McGuinness playing with Marvel character designs old and new isn’t a bad way to spend the better part of an hour. Of course, I say that as someone who read Hulk No More in a trade I borrowed from a library.

I imagine I wouldn’t feel the same if I dropped $16 on it, or the…let’s see…$21 it would have cost to read these stories in single issue format. There’s an awful lot of splashes and double-page splashes, and a real scarcity of story for such expensive comics.

Review: Fantastic Four: The Master of Doom

The second half of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s short run on Fantastic Four is collected in Fantastic Four: The Master of Doom, and it ends quite a bit more strongly than it began.

Ironically, the last few issues were ones in which the presence of Millar and Hitch were increasingly diluted, as Joe Ahearne scripted the last two issues from Millar’s plot and Hitch worked with additional pencilers Neil Edwards and Stuart Immonen on those issues (Throughout the eight issues collected in this volume, seven different artists assisted Hitch on inks, although the artwork remained surprisingly consistent looking until Hitch had to be helped with pencils too).

I think this fact is more of an interesting coincidence than any sort of indictment against the two guys with their names above the logo on the cover. While they may not have done as much during the finale as they did during the build-up, it’s very much still their story, and the fairly satisfying conclusion is clearly one that Millar had envisioned and been working toward, before either getting too busy or moving on to devote his full attention to more successful and lucrative endeavors.

The volume title takes its name from the climactic story arc, which is teased and foreshadowed throughout the entire volume, with little in the way of a meaningful break (The family’s trip to spend the holidays in Scotland and the children’s encounter with a Lovecraftian monster god—which Hitch does a great job of designing—being about it).

So who is this Master of Doom? Well it’s, um, Doctor Doom’s former master, the so-called original supervillain under which Marvel Comics’ greatest bad guy apparently apprenticed under for a while. He looks a bit like a naked Judge death in a veil, and he’s accompanied by a new apprentice, and the pair of them are traveling through alternate realities, killing Marvel Universes and Fantastic Fours on their way to check up on how Doom is doing in his dimension against his Fantastic Four.

I can imagine this development may have proved galling to long-time Marvel fans, as the idea that Doctor Doom—who is really pretty much a perfect supervillain—needs his origin retconned can’t have been a popular one, but in trade form one doesn’t have months between issues to think about whether or not that’s a dumb idea and, if so, how dumb an idea it actually is.

Millar does a fair job of presenting the Master as a terrible, apocalyptic threat, using many of the hyperbolic tricks Grant Morrison employed during his JLA run, and while Hitch’s designs for the new villains are pretty uninspired, he does occasionally land a great, menacing image, like the pair riding black vapor trails through a shining New York afternoon.

So the villains are built up as the ultimate of ultimate villains, they dispatch everyone, even Doctor Doom, and then it’s up to the FF to save the day against these impossible odds. They eventually see the way to do it, but to do so they’ll have to do something awfully unheroic—kill an innocent person—and, faced with two bad choices, Reed Richards must find the impossible third way (You know what else is ironic? That this story is plotted by Mark Millar, who wrote Civil War, in which Reed Richards constantly chose the lesser of two evils instead of either bothering to find the impossible third way).

It all comes down to our FF and a few allies trying to hold off armies of infinite, alternate universe versions of themselves while also dealing with a guy who seems like the biggest Big Bad they’ve ever battled.

It’s an exciting, imaginative story, and one that ends much more optimistically and, well, heroically than almost anything I’ve read from Millar since he was writing DC’s superheroes.

That’s followed by the resolution of the Ben Grimm/Some Random School Teacher Lady sub-plot, which is remarkably effective and even a little touching.

I’m still not convinced Hitch is the very best artist for The Fantastic Four (which, of course, does make him an interesting choice), but his art seems to flow better with Millar’s scripting through most of this volume (perhaps because he was slowing down, and didn’t have the time to over-reference and over-render everything to the extent he did earlier in the 16-issue run?).

He seems to have gotten a really good handle on The Thing by the time he leaves the book, giving the big brick gorilla expressive, soulful eyes, but for everything he does right, he does something as wrong as Doctor Doom’s nose—no longer the little bolted on triangle of Kirby’s design, but a big, honking metal bird-beak. I can’t look at Hitch’s Doom without giggling a little; it’s just too realistic, to the point of complete silliness.

It’s a little difficult for me to judge how clever the ending of the Master of Doom story arc was, given that the reveal of his identity seemingly invoked an old, obscure FF story I’d never read or even heard of (I assume; otherwise Millar just assigned him a back story that sounds like an old, obscure FF story I’d never read or even heard of and…well, that might be kind of cool, actually). At any rate, much of what seemed wrong about the presentation of the villains is made to feel right by the end (well, it felt right to me anyway).

I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that this volume was so good it redeemed the first volume (and, obviously, it didn’t suddenly turn the book into the sales juggernaut Marvel was probably expecting a Millar/Hitch book to be…and the major development regarding Doom seems to have so far been pretty much ignored in the Dark Reign business I’ve read, despite Doom playing a prominent role). But even still, it ended well, so that I left the Millar/Hitch FF run with much warmer feelings toward it then I had at the beginning, and that’s certainly something.


********************

OH, YEAH: I forgot to mention that there’s a point in the Master of Doom story where the big bad guy and a guy with similar powers think really hard at one another and bend reality and fill up a splash page with Marvel characters and alternate reality Marvel characters, which results in this:
Was there an issue of What If…? entitled What If Captain America was a Tyrannosaurus Rex for Some Reason…?

And, if not, why not?

Review: Teen Titans: Deathtrap

You know those occasional issues of super-team comics which focus on the changing of the line-up? Where the plot more or less stalls for 22 pages while the writer checks in with the various characters, who take turns explaining to one another why they’re leaving the team, or why they’re joining the team?

After slogging through two trade paperbacks’ worth of Sean McKeever’s disappointing run on Teen Titans, I realized that during that period the series had begun to seem like an entire regular, monthly series comprised of nothing but issues like that, or perhaps a single changing-of-the-line-up issue decompressed into a year’s worth of comics, McKeever’s plotting and characterization too often taking a back seat to explaining changes in the cast.

So I was quite surprised when I got to Teen Titans: Deathtrap to find out just how focused and tightly-plotted a book it was. It collects a crossover between three different titles—Teen Titans, Titans and Vigilanted—and featured McKeever and Marv Wolfman taking turns writing chapters, and yet it was the most consistent, straightforward and accessible of the Titans trades I’ve read recently.

I won’t go so far as to say that it’s a good comic book, but it is a more-or-less complete story, but it’s definitely a better chunk of comics than On The Clock and Changing of the Guard. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. I could make sense of it without having to consult Wikipedia, creator message boards and interviews, and my memory of past DC solicitations. It was also the only one of the three that seemed to know where it was going from chapter to chapter.

It’s got a lot of problems, big and small, but it doesn’t dare you to keep reading it, the way those other Teen Titans trades did, and, as an added benefit, there’s less splatterstick gross-out gore and creepy sexual bits.

The most apparent problem is probably just how ugly a comic book this is; if the scripting seems better thought-out here than in the Teen Titans trades immediately preceding it, the art is just as slap-dash and drawn-by-whichever-artist-had-a-hole-in-his-schedule as the earlier chunks of the title. There are five artist credited as pencillers, and six as inkers, and it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that very few of them have anything approaching similar styles.

What surprised me most about the art were the fairly obvious mistakes sprinkled throughout, which not only passed the original editors of the various titles unnoticed, but apparently that of the editors assembling this trade collection as well (Unless they were noticed, but the general philosophy is something along the lines of “Eh, fuck it—no one buys these trades for the art anyway, it’s just not worth redrawing a half-dozen panels.”) These include the smooth, bald head of Cyborg sprouting hair between pages, Static changing his costume design during a plane ride and Eddie changing clothes three times during the same flight, including taking off his street clothes to don his old Red Devil costume, complete with the red skin he wore under it….? Or Something?

Perhaps less apparent, but somewhat fundamental, was the slow realization that it’s rather weird that this is story is collected as Teen Titans: Deathrap instead of Titans: Deathtrap (The spine has the number “11” on the cover too, so this is apparently Teen Titans Vol. 11). The teen team, the one appearing on the cover of the trade, is the focus of only the first chapter of the book, in which Cyborg apparently tries to kill them all using the high-tech defenses he built into their headquarters.

After that, they jump into a jet plane to fly to New York City and join the adult Titans in their hunt for the hero-turned-villain Jericho, and don’t reappear until near the climax of the book. So there’s about 100 pages or so which are Teen Titan-free, and focus on the grown-up Titans and Vigilante trying to track down Jericho—the Titans to apprehend him and save him from himself, Vigilante to kill him.

Perhaps Teen Titans trades sell better than Titans ones, and thus that was simply the best way to brand the book? I don’t know; it was simply something that confused me (And, I admit, disappointed me a bit, since that is such a weird and interesting line-up, and it seemed to be composed of characters that McKeever would have more-or-less exclusive control over, making future issues of his smoother and less likely to have to explain comings and goings).

Here’s the story: After Cyborg, working through Titans Tower, tries very hard to kill the new and improved Teen Titans team, it’s revealed that someone is possessing Cyborg and that someone is Jericho, the body-possessing Titan who went from being the second-hairiest character during the classing Marv Wolfman/George Perez run to being a crazy maniac attempting to kill all the made-up presidential candidates in DC’s ill-advised, chicken-shit piece of garbage 2008 miniseries DC Universe: Decisions (A book so damn bad that DC never even collected it…? They collected Countdown!).

The new Vigilante, Vigilante IV? (…or V? Maybe VI…?) is on Jericho’s trail for…some reason. He also has a back-story and motivations I never really figured out, as this storyline seemed to run parallel to several ongoing sub-plots of his own title that crossed over with the two Titans books here. It wasn’t a negative type of confusion I felt when these elements would come up, though. That is, I knew what I didn’t know, and I knew why I didn’t know it and where I could learn about it if I cared to, and it was made clear I wasn’t missing anything important—for all intents and purposes, all one needed to know was that this Vigilante was of the Punisher-type, rather than the original singing cowboy type. (Well, I didn’t understand why the Vigilante narrated all of the chapters of the story featuring him, but not the other chapters, which were narrator-less…I’ll never understand why so many comics are written with inconsistent points-of-view like this).

Jericho’s deal is that all of the body-possessing of villains and other’s that he’s done over the years has left psychic residue in his own mind, so he picks up bits of other people’s personalities, including an awful lot of villains’ personalities. He wants to prove himself the world’s greatest assassin, one-upping his father Deathstroke by killing all of the current Titans, and he plans on doing it with a really stupid death trap.

The idea is to create an elaborate hostage situation, get all of the Titans in the same room with him and the hostages and then—wait for it—blow them all up. With dynamite.

It’s a pretty Wile E. Coyote kind of plot, and it falls apart if one thinks about it too long (that is, at all). I got the impression that Wolfman and/or McKeever came up with the nature of the death trap first, and then plugged whatever Titans were on the teams at the time into the scenario, but it’s the sort of trap that you might spring on, say, Batman and Robin, but the Titans?

Regardless of how much dynamite you use, it wouldn’t be enough to blow up Miss Martian (who is invulnerable and can turn intangible) or Bombshell (who absorbs energy). I don’t know for sure, but I would expect Blue Beetle’s armor and or force fields could protect him. I think Donna Troy’s as strong as Wonder Woman, and can take an explosion. Raven can teleport herself…and everyone else. The Flash could outrun and explosion, or vibrate through the concussive force. Or, um, just run everyone out of range of the explosion in a split-second before it goes off.

Obviously the Titans don’t all get killed anyway, but it’s a pretty drama-free climax, given the mundane nature of the threat and, more disappointingly for me, the lack of imagination in its creation. If you’re going to be using The Flash in your comic, you really have to at least think of half-assed, comic book science explanations for why it might be possible to hurt someone who can move at light speed, you know? Sure, it ain’t always easy, but seeing writers wriggle through the obstacle course previous writers have established for them is at least part of the fun of reading corporate, serial super-comics that have been around for decades.

Not that the Flash plays a very big role in the story. Few of the characters actually do…in fact, most of the characters are lucky to even get a few lines. Cyborg, Beast Boy, Donna Troy and Vigilante have fairly large roles, and Ravager gets a bit of a spotlight near the end, but after the first, Teen Titans-focused chapter, it’s very much a Vigilante vs. Jericho story, with a few of the Old New Teen Titans in supporting roles.

So Teen Titans: Deathtrap? Not very good—but much less not very good than some of the other Teen Titans trade paperbacks one could read instead.

A quick note on whether or not I'm back yet:

I'm back.

I spoke too soon.

I know I just posted a couple of hours ago that I was going to be taking a few days off of posting, but in the time since I learned that Blog@ is going off-line for a bit while the site changes servers and gets and upgrade and stuff. Since I had already written this week's installment of 'Twas the Night Before Wednesday, my weekly look at some comics being released the following day, and since it's time-sensitive, I figured I'll just post it here so as not to let it go to waste.

A-Team: Shotgun Wedding #1: This is the first of IDW’s A-Team comics out the gate, a four-part, bi-weekly limited series co-plotted by Joe Carnahan (director of the upcoming film adaptation of the TV show), written by Tom Waltz and drawn by Stephen Mooney. Will it be any good? I don’t know, but John K. Snyder’s cover of the first issue features Hannibal chomping on a cigar, dressed as a priest, with a gun in one hand and a bible in the other, with an explosion in the background. So it definitely looks promising.

Batman and Robin #10: The next pencil artist playing Robin to writer Grant Morrison’s Batman will be Andy Clarke, who, with Scott Hanna, will providing the art for the story arc which kicks off this issue: “Batman vs. Robin.” Preview here; check out little Damian in his business suit! He’s so adorable in his evil!

Ghost Projekt #1: Writer Joe Harris and Steve Rolston launch a five-part miniseries about a U.S. weapons inspector and Russian agent investigating an abandoned Cold War-era research facility in Siberia…and the strange weapon stolen from it. You can download a 13-page preview here.

Greek Street Vol. 1: Blood Calls for Blood: This wonderfully priced $10, 145-page trade paperback collects the first five issues of Peter Milligan and David Gianfelice’s transplant of the ancient Greek tragedies to a modern London setting. You can download the whole first issue here.

Grimjack Omnibus Vol. 1: IDW launches a collection program of John Ostrander and Timothy Truman’s modern classic. This $25, 400-page book collects stories from eight issues of Starslayer and the first 13 issues of Grimjack.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt Vol. 9: Writer and cover artist Mike Mignola and artist Duncan Fegredo weave a tale of Hellboy, an ancient order of monster hunters, ancient giants and a foe from a previous Hellboy arc in this $20, 190-page trade. You can see a preview
here.

Hulk: Let The Battle Begin #1: This looks like one of those fairly random Marvel one-shots pairing a new story with a back-up reprint or suchlike. Jesse Snider and Steve Kurth tell a Hulk versus the Wrecking Crew story, and the solicitation promises “rocking extras giving YOU the goods on WORLD WAR HULKS.” It’s $4 for a 40 pages.

Justice League: The Rise and Fall Special #1: This one-shot co-written by James Robinson and J.T. Krul follows up on the developments that occurred in Robinson’s Cry For Justice miniseries, and I have no idea where it’s going next or how it fits in with Robinson’s run on JLoA, and why it’s happening in a one-shot instead of in JLoA. Mike Mayhew handles the art, and it’s a $4, oversized issue. Some details on the event/story here.

King of the Flies Vol. 1: Hallorave: The first volume in a planned trilogy of graphic albums, this $19, nine-inch-by-12.5-inch, 64-page hardcover by European creators Mezzo and Pirus tells the story of a teenager in conflict with his stepfather. You can check out a slideshow of the incredible artwork and a collection of reviews here.

Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers Unleashed #1: Lockjaw, The Pet Avengers, Chris Eliopoulos and Ig Guara are all back for a second go round. Check out Roger Langridge’s cover…they really oughta get him to do a one-shot or something.

The Mystic Hands of Dr. Strange #1: The Sorcerer Supreme is the latest Marvel hero to get his own black and white anthology one-shot. Frank Brunner, Mike Carey, Kieron Gillen, Ted McKeever and Peter Milligan are among the creators contributing the four short stories to this $4 special.

The Twelve: Spearhead #1: The stars of the seemingly abandoned limited series The Twelve return in this oversized, $4 one-shot written and illustrated by Chris Weston, the artist of the ill-fated series starring a dozen of Marvel’s minor Golden Agers. I’d really like to see Marvel finish the series they started, but I like the idea of new material featuring these oddball heroes a heck of a lot better than having them remain unused until such time as the series actually concludes…if it ever does.

Warlord: The Saga: This $18, 145-page trade paperback collects the first six issues of the current, Mike Grell-written volume of the Warlord monthly, in which a team of newcomers arrive in Skartaris and cross paths with Travis Morgan and his running crew. Joe Prado, Chad Hardin and Walden Wong provide the art; Grell’s art should show up in the next volume, although he handled the covers for these issues.

A quick note on EDILW updating this week:

Hey gang. I think I'm taking a bit of a reverse vacation over the course of the next few days (That is, I'm not going anywhere, but I'll have a guest visiting from out of town). I probably won't be able to be a responsible host and blog about comics here at the same time, so I just wanted to post something to preemptively explain why I might not update until Thursday-ish or Friday-ish. I've just read a stack of graphic novels, so I have a bunch of stuff to review, so maybe I'll double-post for a few days later in the week to make up for letting EDILW lie fallow for a bit.

Review: Kevin Smith's Green Hornet #1

The first issue of Dynamite Entertainment’s new Green Hornet miniseries is by far the best comic book writing I’ve seen from Kevin Smith in about eight years.

I’m afraid that speaks more to the weakness of Smith’s recent comics output since he returned from his break (the second half of Spider-Man/Black Cat, Batman: Cacophony) then it does to the strengths of Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet #1.

In fact, the script for this issue isn’t exactly new, as it’s reportedly based on Smith’s script for a Green Hornet movie that he’s been attached to in various capacities over the years. The credit page gives Smith a “script by” credit, and Smith’s old Green Arrow pencil artist Phil Hester a “breakdowns by” credit, with artist Jonathan Lau handling pencils (Colors, provided by Jonathan Lau, are apparently put right on top of the pencils, with no inking).

The book’s unusual creation process is, I think, alone worth piquing a comics fan’s interest—if nothing else, it’s interesting to consider a comic book adapted from an unused film script for a never-made film adapting a superhero from the radio, TV and comics. And to wonder how Smith’s writing differs between the two media.

In the past, I would have guessed that his film work tends to be quite a bit better, as there’s so much money involved, and every word we eventually hear in it had a lot more filters to pass through, a lot more collaboration. His “View Askew-iverse” movies vs. his comics in the same fictional universe and starring the same characters tend to attest to this…in general (Oni’s four-part Jay and Silent Bob miniseries with Duncan Fegredo, which Smith partially cannibalized for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, being the exception, but then that film was by far Smith’s worst).

Is that why this is better than, say, the first issue of Batman: Cacophony, then? That Smith worked a lot harder on it, went through more drafts, and was much more careful, whereas that Batman miniseries was a paycheck waiting to happen, Smith a star writer immune to aggressive editing? Or was the Smith a few years ago a better writer than the Smith of today? (Intense laboring over his early Marvel work is certainly one way to explain the delays). Or maybe there’s something about the color green and the presence of Phil Hester that brings out the best in Smith?

I don’t know, but, like I said, these things are fun to consider. Well, they’re fun for me to consider, and that’s all that really matters here.

The book opens with a “Then” caption, and a sequence of The Green Hornet and Kato suiting up, getting in their sweet ride with green headlights, and then sneaking up on a meet between two rival crime families…which they proceed to break up, effectively ending organized crime in their fictional city.

It’s around page 17 that Britt Reid tells his wife Janet that he’s completed his mission, and would be hanging up the green fedora for good, in order to spend more time with his family, which includes a young son.

You probably know where this story’s going…and if not, the “Today” caption on page 21 oughta do the trick.

Britt Junior, a young, rich, in-shape scion of his father’s fortune is a layabout with no direction in life, a source of tabloid fodder. This is apparently going to be something of a Green Hornet: The Next Generation sort of story, as you could probably guess if you looked closely at the Kato in Alex Ross’s cover (or at all at the one in J. Scott Campbell’s cover) and noticed that this Kato’s a she.

Rated on the spectrum of Kevin Smith comics, this one’s somewhere in the middle—nowhere near as bad as the more terrible, even embarrassing comics to carry his byline, but not up there with his better work (His Oni stuff, Daredevil and Green Arrow) either.

It’s pretty generic stuff, but not necessarily bad generic. It’s a fairly straightforward, superhero movie-serious take on a rather derivative hero, free of any big mistakes or glitches, and thankfully able to avoid any of the unfortunate retrograde racial aspects that the Kato relationship can threaten (It’s been a long while since I’ve checked in with it, but I thought Dynamite’s Lone Ranger revival similarly did a good job of making the Ranger/Tonto relationship work well in the 21st century).

It’s also, remarkably, thankfully free of many of the weaknesses common to Smith’s work—I don’t recall seeing any gay jokes, or randomly applied sex jokes or juvenile potty talk and many of the pages are even free of Smith’s verbose scripting. Only a couple of pages between Britt and Janet look like the panels are threatening to burst under the weight of the dialogue balloons.

The art is clearly laid-out and easy to read. I might have preferred Hester himself pencil it, but that may simply be because his art is a known quantity to me, and I like it (And I’m curious what his Green Hornet and Kato would have looked like).

Lau’s art is at its best when the men have masks on, but I liked his elongated figures and the action scenes were presented well. Like the script, there’s nothing really bad or wrong to complain about regarding the art.

All in all, it’s not bad, but given how many Green Hornet comics Dynamite has planned for the near future, I think they needed more of a creative homerun than this issue provided if they plan to sustain interest in the franchise.

Of course, maybe the plan is simply to have enough series in the works to sell a ton of comics and trades around the time of the eventual movie’s release, in which case the simple fact that this isn’t toxic or radioactive is a triumph.



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By the way, I think DC should totally do this with Smith’s script for a Superman movie from the late nineties. Maybe with Keith Giffen doing breakdowns and Kevin Maguire penciling…? It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember liking it (better than Superman Returns, that’s for sure!) and there being some neat, JLI-like scenes between L-Ron and Lex Luthor or Brainiac.

Discussion question: If Girl Comics isn't a completely fantastic comic book, does it risk doing more harm than good?

I haven’t read Marvel’s Girl Comics #1 yet, and won’t read it for probably many more months (I’m waiting for the trade, as I think I’ve mentioned), so I can’t say anything about the quality of it. I like Amanda Conner’s cover, I like the logo (if not the title), and I like a lot of the names on the creative roster, although I imagine like most anthologies I won’t like every story in it.

I have been reading a few reviews of it though, and this one in particular from Christopher Allen got me thinking. Allen writes, in part, that it was “ghastly,” and “the unknowns are unknown because they’re not ready yet and the known, normally competent writers…phone it in.”

I haven’t read enough reviews to even guess what the general consensus on the book is just yet (other than the fact that everyone seems to like Doctor Octopus story), but what if Allen is dead-on, or even that a majority of the reviews lean towards Chris Sim’s assessment (“As to the stories themselves, they’re the mixed bag that usually comes with an anthology title”) than Jill Pantozzi’s (I didn't like it...I loved it.”)…?

What if Girl Comics fails to be totally awesome, will it ultimately do more harm than good when it comes to female writers and artists working on Big Two super-comics? If sales are wretched—and surely the single-issue sales will be poor, based on how Strange Tales and pretty much every other anthology ever does in the direct market—if critics and/or just comics readers with Internet connections receive it poorly, will it be used as an example (publicly or privately) of why Woman Writer A or Female Artist B isn’t getting more work at Marvel or DC?

You know, like, What about Devin Grayson? No, no one liked her short story in Girl Comics #1. Should we assign this one-shot to Up-and-Coming Female Writer, or Up-And-Coming Male Writer? Up-And-Coming Male Writer…remember Girl Comics? Male writers just plain sell better than female writers.

And like that.

I don’t know. I would hope not. I’d be kind of surprised if that did happen (Marvel definitely committed themselves to throwing more work at more female creators this year, and we’ll be seeing a lot more work from a lot more ladies at the publisher this year regardless of how Girl Comics is received by the market and by the critics and by the fans).

But then, it hardly ever does to be surprised at the cynicism of some of the players in the Big Two Super-Comic Industry.

Anyway, what do you guys think? Does Girl Comics present the danger of being seen as a sort of referendum on female creators working in general on superheroes in general?