Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time…which, as all children and people of good heart well know, is when all tales of note begin….there was a war in the lands where fables and fairy tales are true and not just the fanciful imaginings of scribes like the Brothers Grimm. The forces of malevolence prevailed and those who fought on the side of righteousness fled their homelands for life in the mundane world…for life in our world. Using guile and magic and steadfast cunning, the exiles created a community…Fabletown…hidden in plain view…amongst the mortals and thrived while dreaming of the day when they could return to the land of fables and fairytales and overthrow the Adversary (as the ruler of the malevolent armies was known; the Adversary is, surprisingly enough, actually Gepetto, the puppet maker who crafted Pinocchio) and take back the magical lands that are rightfully theirs.

This then is the back story of Fables, the unflaggingly clever, charming, rollicking, and intriguing Vertigo Comics series created and written by Bill Willingham. The conceit of having legendary characters such as Snow White, Little Boy Blue, Prince Charming, Little Red Riding Hood, Old King Cole, and the Big Bad Wolf interacting in an exile community on Earth could have quickly become gimmicky and cloying in the wrong hands but Willingham deftly avoids every false note and tiresome cliché in his sprawling tales of love, life, adventure, intrigue, politics, and intrigue.

With those Fables who can pass for human living in the city and those who cannot (the Three Little Pigs or the Giants, for example) living, sometimes quite reluctantly, on a secluded farm, the avenues for drama are seemingly endless. And with the breadth of mythology and fable to draw from, the cast of characters are likewise bountiful beyond measure.

Many characters take their turn on the stage but at the heart of the series are the fierce Big Bad Wolf, the son of the majestic and haughty North Wind, who can take human form as Bigby Wolf, the erstwhile Sheriff of Fabletown, and his new bride, Fabletown’s former Deputy Mayor, Snow White. Their prickly…and then passionately romantic…relationship is the emotional foundation of the series. Even having given up their positions in Fabletown for a place out on the farmlands with their children, Snow and Bigby remain important players in the Fables saga.

With the Fables title too small to hold his rampaging ego, one character, the amoral but still charming rogue Jack (almost every Jack in fairytales is and was him) struck out in his own title, Jack of Fables (co-written by Willingham and Matthew Sturges), chronicling his own misadventures (both in the current mundane world as well as his many fantastical experiences in the days before the Fable homelands were conquered the Adversary.)

The Fables experience also flowed through the gorgeous pages of 1,001 Nights of Snowfall, a delightful graphic album featuring Snow White in the role of Scheherazade, the clever woman who survived her murderous husband’s wrath by telling him fascinating tales for 1,001 nights in The Arabian Nights. Charles Vess, Brian Bolland, Jill Thompson, John Bolland, and John Bolton are among the artists who illustrated various chapters in the volume.

Fables (and its spin-offs) are full of love, light, laughter, adventure, and magic. Lots and lots of magic. It’s a wondrous thing indeed.

Death is Only the Beginning...

This is the trailer for the direct-to-DVD animated movie, Superman/Doomsday, an adaptation of the Death of Superman arc. The DVD is due out on September 18th. It's included here because I think it's kind of cool.

Now the Time is Here for Iron Man to Spread Fear...

Tony Stark is a tool. That was, for a hot minute anyway, almost the name of this blog. I’ve never completely warmed to Iron Man over the years…he always seemed steeped in patrician arrogance even when he was raging alcoholic and that just irked me for whatever reason…but right now I’m pretty much over him as a character right now.

He has, in a typically smug and self-righteous manner, made himself The Man (writ large) in the Marvel Universe with his zealous championing of the Superhero Registration Act and his assumption of the role of Director of SHIELD. And the Marvel Universe is not really a better place for that.

As far as the Superhero Registration Act goes I can sort of understand his position without agreeing with it. Here in the real world if there were people who had superhuman powers I might indeed want them to be regulated and registered. But the Marvel Universe is not…and nor has it ever been (sorry, Stan)…”the real world” (once you have people who can burst into flame, lift school buses over their heads, or control the weather running around the notion that the MU is just like the world outside your window is immediately revealed as a blatant falsehood) and in the context of that Universe, Stark’s self-serving “futurist” excuses for persecuting his so-called friends don’t hold water. Unless, of course, Tony Stark is a tool…then it makes perfect sense.

Stark has all but forsaken his role as a “hero” with his storm troopers going nuts on draft resisters (which is, basically, what the anti-registration folks are given the so-called 50 States Initiative), the establishment of his other-dimensional prison (where people are held indefinitely without due process), the fact that he gave relatively free reign to a nutjob like Norman Osborn (who, in turn, put nutjobs like Bullseye and Venom on the federal payroll to track down super-beings who refuse to register...yeah, Osborn and the rest of the Thunderbolts are injected with nanites that are supposed to keep them under control but you know that that little plan is going to go horribly astray at some point), and his Draconian manipulation of events to further his ends (as revealed in the final issue of Civil War: Frontline)…”the ends justifies the means” almost never being an acceptable excuse for anything (unless, of course, you’re a tool…and then anything goes.)

Now I will be the first to admit that the Superhero Registration Act goes against every Libertarian bone in my cynical body and thus I was not inclined to be on Stark’s side from the word go (hell, the other side…however smug and self-righteous they were and are as “rebels”…was led by Captain America. CAPTAIN AMERICA…dude, 99 times out of a 100 I’m going to be on Cap’s side because, well, he’s Captain America…and yes I refuse to speak of him in past tense because I know that he will be back sooner or later…) but the heavy handed way the pro-Registration side” continues to act and behave (we could do a whole “Hank Pym is a tool” rant but it would be redundant and not worth the effort) does nothing to win me over to their arguments.

Mayhap Tony Stark can be redeemed in my eyes at some point. I don’t see how but I will continue to try to keep a somewhat open mind. But until that time I will hold firm to my belief that he is indeed a tool until he (and, more to the point, the people writing his adventures) see fit to prove otherwise.

More, More, More (How Do You Like It? How Do You Like It?)

Countdown to…well apparently they’re counting down to the Final Crisis (“final” huh? Yeah, okay, whatever…) but Countdown itself is already spinning off the tracks by ignoring the things that made 52 work as a weekly comic.

I liked 52 a lot (the weekly thing didn’t mean much to me because I get my comics once a month) even though parts of it rambled pointlessly (the space heroes thing especially) and even though it finished the galling and annoying thing that Identity Crisis started, that being the deaths of the most grounded, happy, and fun-loving married couple in super-hero comics, Ralph and Sue Dibny (are comic book writers really so cynical and/or emotionally scarred that they don’t think there should really be such a thing as happily married super-hero couple?) But hey, they told a good story featuring characters that don’t often get such a high profile spotlight and they got it out each and every week for a year…kudos all around for that.

But the problems already creeping into Countdown did start to crop up near the end of 52. The World War 3 spin-offs were a blatant, undercooked money grab and the truncated final issue of the main series (the writers apparently wanted and expected to have 52 pages for the final issue but were denied by editorial concerns over having the increase the cover price on the last issue of the series) had to cram so much stuff in that it was just barely coherent.The main problem with Countdown is that it appears to be much more editorially driven…as opposed to the writers steering the ship on 52…with its overall impact being diluted by stream of scenes and plots that lead into and out of other titles as well as burgeoning number of crossover series (something 52 eschewed save for the World War 3 thing.) A glance at the latest Previews shows DC scrambling to exploit the Countdown “brand” to the utmost. With 52 weekly issues to tell its story one wonders why so many spin-offs are needed (of course, one really already knows why…mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money…which makes sense DC Comics is a business first and foremost.)

Countdown to Mystery…Countdown to Adventure…Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer…Countdown Presents: Lord Havok and the Extremists…Captain Carrot and the Final Ark (a Countdown tie-in we’re told)…Death of the New Gods (spinning out of Lightray’s fate in Countdown)…yadda…yadda…yadda…

Add to that the continuing attempts to draft off of the success of 52 with series such as Booster Gold, Infinity Inc., 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen, Black Adam: The Dark Age, Crime Bible: The Five Lessons of Blood and you get a feeling that DC feels that their bread is buttered on the side of events and as many event spin-offs as they can jam into the pipeline. It’s a short-sighted plan…but hopefully something cool will come of it nevertheless. We shall see.

Palomar, My Palomar

Gilbert Hernandez is my favorite comic book writer. This takes nothing away from the efforts of others working their craft in the field but for my money Beto is the most engaging, thought-provoking, and imaginative writer currently using comics as his chosen medium. That he is no slouch when it comes to cartooning is a delightful, undeniable wonder as well.

At the heart of his expansive body of work are the tales he continues to craft for the monumental Love and Rockets series he co-created with his brothers Jaime and Mario. The 50-issue volume one run of L&R is inarguably one of the greatest comics series ever published (were I, for whatever reason, lost on a desert island for a long period of time they are certainly the comics I would want to have in library there.)

Gilbert’s most bountiful and intricate L&R tapestry was, of course, the fictional Latin American town of Palomar with its colorful and interesting…simple folk and complicated souls in the same instant…citizens. The sprawling, sobering, humorous, life-affirming, fanciful, bittersweet masterpiece that is the story of the town is told in the massive, utterly magnificent 522-page hardcover collection, Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (if there is a better comic book collection I haven’t seen it.)

Hernandez left Palomar behind to follow the amazing force of nature that is Luba, the towering id of the Palomar stories, to America but he’s returned to it in New Tales of Old Palomar, a 3-issue magazine-sized series from Fantagraphics Books and Coconino Press.

New Tales throws the spotlight on untold tales from the town’s past with “The Children of Palomar”. We know the final fates of many of the characters already but these grand little stories delve into episodes we were no previously privy to and, in the process, they add nuance, insight, and pathos to the things we know will happen to the characters in their futures.

The first issue features the “secret origins” of two beloved Palomar denizens as well as telling vignettes about relationships that would develop in due course (we can see, for example, the moment when feisty Carmen began to fall in love with bookish but stolid Heraclio.) The second issue focuses on an odd adventure shared by the young, ever-petulant Gato along with the doomed Pintor and Manuel whose deaths would one day become poignant chapters in Palomar history. Sheriff Chelo, the bright and unwavering maternal heart of Palomar, is at the heart of both issues saving, nurturing, and protecting the children (of all ages) of the town.

New Tales is a wonderful addition to the Palomar canon (the 3^rd issue is due to be published in the fall.)

Something Sinestro This Way Comes

I’ve never been much impressed with Sinestro. Maybe it’s the mustache…that long, pencil thin mustache thing he’s into doesn’t really do much to make him seem as terrifying and imposing as they tell us he’s supposed to be.

Or maybe it’s the name. “Sinestro” seems a bit on the nose (as smart as the self-appointed Guardians of the Universe are supposed to be you would think that somebody named “Sinestro” was going to turn out to be a bad guy but they took him on as one their Green Lanterns just the same.) Of course the name comes from the great, cheesy Silver Age tradition of on the nose super-villain names (Dr. Doom, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Evil Star, the Legion of Super-Villains, Evilbadguy…okay I made that last one up but you get the point :-) so I guess I should cut the guy some slack there (we suspend disbelief…see what I did there?...in regards to so many things in super-hero comics we can and do live with silly monikers on super-villains and disregard the fact that here in real life most “evil” people don’t really think of themselves as being evil and so don’t usually pick a name to brag about how sinister they are.)

But I digress (sorry about that, Peter, but I couldn’t help myself.) The Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special is the proper introduction to a concept that was, in hindsight, long overdue: a corps of yellow power ring wielding brigands being brought together to terrorize the universe and to do battle with the recently-revived Green Lantern Corps. As the title gives away this assemblage of evil is called the Sinestro Corps (on the nose once again but what else were they going to call themselves?) and their rings feed off fear.

Sinestro (who apparently has been watching Disney’s Aladdin a few times and has decided to invoke the spirit of that movie's villain, Jafar…he refers to Kyle Rayner as “alley rat” a couple of times during the course of the issue) is still a bit less than terrifying (though I do like the snazzy new uniform…certainly his best look ever) but the Corps he’s bringing together is as horrifying and deadly a bunch as could be imagined. The Sinestro Corps assault on Oa, the homeworld of the Guardians and the Green Lanterns, to retrieve a couple of recruits being held prisoner there is brutal (much Lantern blood is spilled in the process) and promises much mayhem to ensue.

Geoff Johns gives familiar good guys…Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, the new Justice League…interesting turns but the day belongs to the bad guys as the war (that will rage in the pages of Green Lantern…and maybe, given the revelation of Sinestro’s Guardian, in Countdown and elsewhere) is given a taut, suspenseful kickoff. (We will give a pass to the fact that an extremely powerful character is beaten and turned with surprising ease and that some of the supposedly noble Green Lanterns behave like petty school children.)

The art is top notch all the way through with Ethan Van Sciver delivering the goods on the main story and Dave Gibbons doing the same on the backup story that recaps Sinestro’s origin.

It’s a very promising beginning to what could a very cool storyline. We shall keep a good thought.

Images © and ™ 2007 DC Comics, Inc.

More Than Some Pretty Face Beside a Train...

Superman is THE super-hero…THE comic book character…THE most iconic character to come from comic books (no valid arguments to the contrary exist…this is not a slam against Batman or Wonder Woman or Spider-Man or The X-Men or any other character you can name it is, quite simply, a fact) and there have been times when the stories crafted about him were worthy of his place in literary history. To wit, these stories I’ve chosen as my favorites:

“Superman for All Seasons” by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
A grand, subtle, heartwarming, beautifully drawn…Sale captures the odd combination of Clark Kent’s alien origins and Kansas farmboy upbringing better than anyone before or since…retelling of the Superman story and his place in the world.

“Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” by Alan Moore, Curt Swan, George Perez, and Kurt Schaffenberger (Superman [1^st series] #423 and Action Comics # 583)
Alan Moore’s fond farewell to the “Silver Age” Superman…as the decks were being cleared for John Byrne’s reboot of the Man of Steel…with some lovely art by THE “Silver Age” Superman artist, Curt Swan.

“The Death of Superman” by Jerry Siegel and Curt Swan (Superman [1^st series] #149)
Not the bloated, over-hyped story from the 90’s but the powerful “imaginary story” from the early 60’s that managed to tell a MUCH better story in a single issue.

“Kingdom Come” by Mark Waid and Alex Ross
There is a huge cast of characters in this powerful tale of super-beings run amok but at its heart this is a story of Superman…older and having isolated himself from a world that he no longer understood or fit into.

“Of Thee I Sing” by Garth Ennis and John McCrae (Hitman #34)
Superman’s impact as an American icon…a immigrant who came to this country and embraced its ideals with all of his considerable might…is ably explored in this surprising issue of an otherwise somewhat cynical series.

“For the Man Who Has Everything” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Superman Annual #11)
A great story that features Superman getting his heart’s desire…a Krypton that didn’t explode…through the malicious manipulations of one of his arch-enemies and finding, once again, that you should be careful what you wish for. It has great character bits with his friends Wonder Woman, Batman, and, especially, the Jason Todd version of Robin the Boy Wonder (arguably that recently resurrected character’s shining moment.)

“Faster…” by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (All-Star Superman #1)
Freed of the current continuity of the DC Comics universe, this story celebrates the expansive, gloriously over-the-top adventures of Superman and his arch-enemy, the mad genius Lex Luthor.

“Superman’s Return to Krypton” by Jerry Siegel and Wayne Boring (Superman [1^st series] #141)
Superman’s co-creator crafts a moving story about Superman going back in time to his homeworld where he gets to know his parents, falls in love, and, of course, eventually loses it all again as Krypton succumbs to its fate.

“The Exile at the Edge of Eternity” by Jim Steranko (Superman [1^st series] #400)
The legacy of Superman is explored into the distant future in this groundbreaking tale.

“What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” by Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke, and Lee Bermejo (Action Comics #775)
Superman “old-fashioned” values are put to the test against the grittier, more “kewl” actions of more brutal super-heroes…such as The Authority…and they stand up to the challenge.

“Where No Superman Has Gone Before” by Len Wein and Jim Starlin (DC Comics Presents #27-29)
The “Silver Age” Superman goes on the most amazing journey of his life…to the very gates of Heaven itself…in a underrated story co-starring the Martian Manhunter, Supergirl, and The Spectre.

“Survivor” by Dave Gibbons and Ted McKeever (A1 #1/A1 Big Issue #0)
Superman is never named in this delightful tale of a super-powerful alien who fights a battle for truth, justice, and the American way but it is, of course, about him just the same.

All characters and images copyrighted by their respective publishers

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hulk

The Marvel Universe is in a state of manic flux of late.

Bucky is alive and Captain America is dead. The Avengers have disassembled, reassembled, dissembled again, split in two, and are now, through the auspices of “The Initiative”, in the process of spreading super-hero police state glory to all 50 states.

The Civil War has codified the differences between super-heroes into two distinct camps: either you’re a good citizen who registers with the government or you’re a lawless vigilante who will be hunted down and tossed into a other-dimensional prison without such pesky concerns as due process (this dichotomy was always there…Captain America, agent of SHIELD versus Spider-Man, masked menace…but the differences are now separated by an angry, burgeoning chasm that is more bitter and poisonous than it has ever been.)

Millions of sentient beings have fallen victim to annihilation out in the cosmos while the mutant population on Earth has been reduced to a statistically insignificant species.

The United States government is at war with the Inhumans and with Atlantis (and not on the best of terms with Wakanda.) And apparently there are Skrulls everywhere.

And then there’s the Hulk.

Having by exiled off the planet by a covert group of self-appointed guardians of the world…Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt, and Dr. Strange (the other members of their smug little cabal…Professor X and Prince Namor…were, respectively, not present for this particular decision and violently opposed to it ), the Hulk ended up on a violent world…Planet Hulk…where he became a slave gladiator, a rebel leader, and, eventually, a warrior king complete with a pregnant warrior queen (we suspend disbelief enough to go with the notion that beings from different worlds are biologically compatible enough to co-create children.)

But there are no happy endings in the life of the Hulk, of course. The ship that carried him to his new home malfunctioned destroying the world, his wife, and his unborn child and now, with the aid of the survivors of the cataclysm, the Hulk has come home…angrier than ever, more wily than ever, and more focused than ever. As Black Bolt has already found out, it brings a whole new level of meaning to the pithy phrase “Hulk smash.”

Planet Hulk was a grand story…an epic tale of triumph and tragedy…that worked so well because it was largely removed from the rest of the Marvel Universe goings-on (the over-sized hardcover collection of the storyline is a lovely thing indeed.)

World War Hulk has the potential to be a grand story…and its off to an engaging start for the most part…though its chances are somewhat mitigated by the fact that its editorial tentacles are spreading out so far (when we’re being “red skied” by a WWH branded issue of Ghost Rider that has nothing to do with the overall story beyond its final page, it’s an ominous sign.) We shall keep a good thought for the rest of the series just the same.

Hulk smash. Fanboys rejoice.

All characters and images copyrighted by their respective publishers

Hail and Howdy, True Believers

When I was a boy (many moons ago) a guy who was trying to get next to my mother gave me a big box of comics he found in a used bookstore in San Francisco. There was some Marvel stuff in there...a couple of things from other companies...but it was mostly DC stuff. Superman, Adventure Comics, Batman, and a bunch of the grand old 80-Page Giants (I loved those things!)

Now I had been reading comics before this but this was the biggest chunk of four-color wonderfulness that I had ever gotten. My love of comic books led to reading Greek Mythology, Science Fiction, and then (and now) everything that caught my eclectic fancy. I am an avid reader still but even as I savor "real books", the comic books remain even as I creak along into my dotage.

My all-time favorite comic series is Love and Rockets but before you write me off as one of those "too-cool-for-the-room" indie comic snobs I am also an unabashed super-hero fan. I know that they are preposterous and utterly silly but I don't care.

And I am a big fan of the most preposterous and unwieldy super-hero concept of all: the super-hero team. I loved the Legion of Super-Heroes when I was boy and I have stayed with them through thick and thin ever since; the same is true of the Avengers.

About this blog, it will be updated serendipitously. I've been out of the weekly comic habit since 2001 when I started getting my comics in monthly shipments from the fine folks at Discount Comic Book Service so current reviews will not be a feature (though reviews there will doubtlessly be.) We shall throw ourselves upon the tender mercies of Great Rao and let whatever happens here happen.

I'm Michael...a comic book fan...suspending disbelief since 1965.

Namaste, y'all.