Dibujante de Munequitos explores the life, career, artwork and relationships of Ric Estrada, former comic book penciler who spent much of his career working at DC Comics and was the first artist to draw such popular characters as Power Girl. Ric has led a very interesting life filled with connections with interesting people, such as the late Ernest Hemingway.

In viewing some of the unedited footage of the film (such as this interview with Paul Levitz, president of DC Comics), what intrigues me most about Ric is his religious convictions and how he implemented them in his every day life and work. The comics industry is rampant with atheism, and Ric stands out as a man who isn’t afraid to make his convictions a part of his projects and known to his coworkers.

Seth, Ric’s son and my friend, is striving to raise funds for this film to pay tribute to his father, who is currently undergoing radiation treatments for cancer. Ric is currently in good spirits, according to Seth, but the nature of cancer is such that nobody can be sure how much longer he’ll be around, therefore time is of the essence in securing these funds and completing this project.

If it is within your means, support this film and show your support for artistic expression through the comics medium. See the links in this post for more detailed information on Ric’s life, the film’s progress & content, and benefits of donating.

Take Country singer Brad Paisley’s recent single “Letter to Me”, add some selective clips from all 6 Star Wars movies, do some creative editing and you wind up with an entertaining video.

Dabel Brothers, the comics publisher best known for the Sci Fi/Fantasy book adaptions, made official today what has been known since the author announced it on his website several weeks ago.  They will be adapting Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files series of novels.  But before the first direct adaption comes out in mid-2008, the first book Storm Front, Jim Butcher will write an original 4 issue mini-series which will begin shipping in April.  Jim Butcher is a big comics fan and has worked numerous references into the series, from numerous comparisons of Harry to Batman to his transportation, a VW Beetle aptly named the Blue Beetle.

For those out of the know The Dresden Files series follows Chicago’s only wizard PI Harry Dresden as he investigates the supernatural, either for his clients or when the Chicago PD employs him as a consultant.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman

The first trailer for next summer’s Iron Man movie has been released. I don’t know enough about Marvel continuity to know if they got Tony’s characterization right, but I really liked what I saw. Robert Downey Jr. looks great. And the special effects are spectacular (especially the flying). This is the first Marvel movie since the X-Men franchise I would go to the theater to see. And it could easily be the best of the Marvel movies. I guess time (and more in depth trailers) will tell.

I got to speak with such local luminaries as Matt Feazell, Suzanne Baumann, and Marty Hirchak, as well as owner/Lil’ Lulu advocate Dan Merritt. Scott McCloud was there, as was John Hickey.

Who is John Hickey? John’s another filmmaker/gamer/fanboy like myself, and I was very pleased to meet such a like-minded spirit. John also documented Free Comic Book Day at Green Brain Comics, and so I present to you both short documentaries.

First, here’s mine:

It’s the shorter of the two, clocking in at 2:32. Most of my youtube videos are between 1 to 3 minutes long, simply because I can’t make them any longer without going over the 100 MB limit, at least not without sacraficing the quality of the video/audio itself. I find it challenging and a bit restricting at the same time.

John’s documentary, by contrast, is nearly nine minutes long. And I think it looks pretty good, even with the compression. I like the structure of it, which pretty neatly divides the film into two halves, and I like the general overview of the Free Comic Book Day event. Mine kinda assumes that you know what Free Comic Book Day is already. And so, here’s John’s:

And there you have it. Two very different perspectives on one cool event.

And now it’s happened. I direct you all to your copies of this week’s Astro City: The Dark Age, Book Two # 3– and you all are reading Astro City, aren’t you?– where I have, at last, achieved the pinnacle of comics glory. I feel like I’ve come of age– it’s like puberty all over again, only without the hair growing in new and strange places.

What did surprise me– and excite my interest– was the announcement that novelist Jodi Picoult was going to be writing it. She’s a very popular writer and, from what little I’ve read, very good with complex issues of identity and morality. She’s lauded for her convincing female characters, and so I thought I’d give it a try.

As always with Wonder Woman, I found myself once again underwhelmed.

There’s no deep morality here, no real character work. The plot is pedestrian and not in a fun way. What we have instead is meta-fiction:

Meta-Fiction is fiction that is about itself: fiction that is aware of the devices of fiction, fiction that explores the relationship between authors, works, and their audience, fiction that comments on itself and its genre.

It’s one of– if not the– hallmark of Post-Modernism. Some people will tell you that post-modernism is a mark of maturity or intelligence. What post-modernism usually means is that the author has no idea how to tell an actual story about actual characters, so instead they write about themselves writing.

I don’t hate meta-fiction, or even post-modernism– I’m just wary of it as an end in and of itself. As a means, though– as an ingredient and a storytelling device, it can add depth and context.

The best example I can think of is, of course, Astro City. In Astro City, Busiek gives us well-plotted, introspective stories with deft, multivariate characterizations that support human, moral themes– themes of love, failure, redemption, identity. In addition to all this, he comments on the history of the superhero genre and its defining trends. He shows us archetypes and investigates their usefulness.

As others have noted, Busiek does (at times) fall into the trap of the epiphany-type story. But, especially in his longer stories, he provides work that not only stands on its own, but is deepened by the meta-themes.

But in the case of Wonder Woman number 6, Picoult’s story is not deepened by her meta approach, because there’s really nothing there beyond the meta. Instead of a story, we have an argument: that Wonder Woman is just as cool as her male cohorts.

But the logic at play here– that Wonder Woman is cool because she saves the world– fails to see the fundamental flaw in Wonder Woman, one which Your Friend and Mine, The Amazing Alan Kistler has pointed out in his excellent profile-in-progress: Wonder Woman has no core identity: she’s gone from bondage-chick to spy to goddess; she’s all over the map. Or, at least, her core is not one that’s conducive to good storytelling.

As my wife pointed out to me this afternoon (hi Mary!), Batman is a character who is defined by his origin. His parents are murdered before his eyes; he is motivated by grief and rage to fight crime. Superman is the last surviving son of an advanced race and is given a strong moral upbringing by kindly farm folk; he is Good and Inspiring. Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben is murdered, a death that Spider-Man could prevent; the twin themes of responsibility and maturity have defined Spider-Man.

Wonder Woman is sent by Amazons to engender peace and justice. It’s such a hazy origin, and it tells us nothing about her personality. In the case of the Big Three (Spidey, Supes, and Bats), their origin stories speak volumes about who they are.

The reason why Wonder Woman doesn’t sell as well as the others– the reason why she’s not as “cool”– is because she lacks a real viable core.

Now, she has had a core in the past– two of them, in fact. But the first one– Moulton’s original bondage-object philosophizer– is diametrically opposed to the second:

The problem with this characterization (Wonder Woman as Feminist Icon), which has defined the character for so long, is that it lacks real definition and real conflict. It’s a Sidney Poitier characterization: a minority character who is perfect and good and without flaw or equal.

And, y’know, that’s fine, to a point: there was a need for that kind of characterization, and it helped overcome years of stereotyping. But it is not a viable, long-term option for serial fiction.

And so, without a real story to tell, Picoult has fallen on a meta-fictional approach: she’s trying to validate Wonder Woman in fictional form, which is doomed to failure because the answers for which she is searching are not present.

The best way to show a character is cool is to tell good, interesting stories about that character, which is diametrically opposed to a post-modernist, meta-fictional approach.

You know who should write Wonder Woman? You know which “hot” novelist not only routinely tells good, interesting stories about actual people, but also understands the fundamental differences between men and women? Joyce Carol Oates.

If Joyce Carol Oates wrote Wonder Woman, you can bet your ass this shallow, limiting “feminist symbol” iconography would be replaced by an actual character. That the conflicts would be interesting, that the stories would affect you, that they would hurt you and you would like it.

That would be a Wonder Woman worth reading. As it stands, I can’t recommend this one anymore than Heinberg’s.

==Tom Russell

I didn’t attend the event, because I hadn’t read the book. And it’s neither in my nature or my budget to shell out twenty bucks for a book I’ve never read by an author I’ve never read, no matter how pretty the pictures are. And so I waited for the book to come to my library.

I’m glad I did.

There are spoilers for both Pride of Baghdad and Justice League of America 1-6 within, along with potentially disturbing images from both.

Pride of Baghdad is about a group of lions that escape from the Baghdad Zoo during the current war in Iraq. Now, I don’t need to tell you that the Iraq War is a very, very contentious topic in our politically-charged times. Pride of Baghdad, however, is not exactly political, insomuch as you cannot categorize it as being Left or Right, for the war in Iraq or against it.

I think the book is against war in general, but it doesn’t make a specific statement on this specific war. We have a wise and embittered turtle who puts forward the general viewpoint that war is a meaningless waste of life, an unceasing cycle of unthinking violence. The same point that has been made in every anti-war story, especially when it’s an allegory.

I’m not saying it’s a bad or invalid point; just one we’ve seen before. At the same time, Vaughn refuses the story to be as simple as all that. The story is anti-war, but it is also pro-freedom. And, as a dialogue bubble is helpful enough to point out:

Or, as the back cover blurb explains,

In documenting the plight of the lions, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD raises questions about the true meaning of freedom – can it be given or is it earned only through self-determination and sacrifice?

And so rather than say, “War is bad, we never should have invaded” or “People were suffering, we needed to help them”, it says both, juxtaposing them and asking us to discuss and decide for ourselves.

It also contrasts the luxury of the zoo (of captivity, of order) with the dangers of freedom. And it does this through some pretty decent character work, and some fairly horrific sequences.

(Tiny thumbnail for the squeamish; click to enlarge.)

On the one hand, this image crystallizes this contrast between freedom and safety. It has a strong visceral impact. At the same time, it’s a friggin’ giraffe getting his head blown off. I really didn’t need to see that.

And then there’s the gang rape. Yes, you read that right.

If I didn’t need to see the giraffe, I really, really, really didn’t need to see that. But, at the same time: this flashback gives us vital insight into one of the lead characters, explaining why she prefers the safety of a cage to the wild. It makes for a strong contrast between her and the other lions, who want freedom but don’t necessarily understand what it entails. She is the wisest and the oldest, because among them she alone has been hurt by the world.

So: the gang-rape, like the exploding giraffe, makes sense character-wise, thematically, and plot-wise. Can one then fault Vaughn for using it?

I don’t have an answer to that one, but I can answer a related question: did I like it? No. I didn’t like the gore, I certainly didn’t like the rape, and I wasn’t particularly fond of the story. I can appreciate its artistry and technical felicity, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it or got a kick out of it.

I’d like to say that it moved me to think about the nature of freedom, but it didn’t, not really; everything the book wants to say is said, and more succinctly, on the back cover copy.

From what I’ve heard, Vaughn never intended it to be a deep work; just an entertaining, shallow read that raises a few questions and makes your heart go doki-doki. For me, it didn’t work; it left me kind of cold.

And I think the gore/sexual violence might have had something to do with that, which is strange, because those were the most visceral (if not exactly the most enjoyable) parts of the book.

And one thing comics have over prose is the ability to crystallize thematic threads and character in a iconic, visceral way. I think it might even do a better job of this than film, because while film moves in time, comics linger, allowing the image to burn itself into your brain.

Pride of Baghdad got me thinking about the use of sensationalist material in thematically relevant ways; this same question (or perhaps a better word is uneasiness) was aroused in me by Justice League of America # 6, the concluding chapter to the Tornado’s Path story arc by Meltzer, Benes, Hope, Leigh and Sinclair.

To recap briefly: the Red Tornado is tricked into assuming a human body. An intelligent and well-dressed Solomon Grundy steals the android body with the intent of becoming immortal. He fuses it with the Amazo android for reasons I still don’t quite understand, and tries to kill Reddy for reasons I still don’t quite understand. The Justice League of America reforms, asses are kicked, and Reddy is restored to his android body.

Some of these things, from my viewpoint, don’t exactly make sense plot-wise. But they do make sense thematically and emotionally, which I feel is one of Meltzer’s strong points.

Reddy, Grundy, and Amazo echo one another thematically. All three could be accused of not really being alive. The thought of Grundy, however more intelligent in this incarnation, being a mastermind is, from a plot standpoint, blatantly ridiculous.

But as someone who has died again and again, supposedly comprised of unliving swamp matter and therefore “not alive”, not counting, he provides a perfect foil for the Red Tornado. Making Grundy intelligent actually makes sense thematically: if Grundy is dumb and the Red Tornado intelligent, than one could argue that Grundy is non-living and Reddy alive, using intelligence as the test.

By making Grundy intelligent, it negates that argument retrospectively; Grundy is intelligent now and therefore alive, therefore he was always alive, even when he was not intelligent. And so, Meltzer defines life not as sentience, but as existing.

But, you know, I don’t even think that’s the real thematic question; “what makes one human/do androids dream of electric sheep” is one of those facile themes that keep science-fiction writers up at night. I think the real question (and one that I personally find much more interesting and satisfactory) is one of personal identity.

What makes Solomon Grundy Solomon Grundy? Is it stupidity? No, not if he’s intelligent. Is it the fact that he keeps coming back to life? What if he did become immortal: would he still be Solomon Grundy?

There must be some essential thing that defines him, and it’s not anything as simple as a name or an origin story.

What makes Red Tornado Red Tornado? Is it his android body? Well, if you take that away, he’s still the Red Tornado. How about his tornado-blast arms? If you take those away, does he cease to be who he is?

Ouch.

That’s a visceral image.

And, like those in Pride of Baghdad, it’s an image I never wanted to see. And, again, like those in that other work, it’s an image that crystallizes the story’s thematic concerns iconically.

Reddy is not defined by his android body; after all, we saw it taken away from him and he’s still the same person. And he’s not defined by his arms; he’s lost one. What do we define him as then? How do we boil him down? Is it even possible to explain the mystery of personality, of the soul, in a single gulp of verbiage?

If I had to define Red Tornado in one fell swoop, if I had to sum him up, from the little that I’ve read, I’d have to say that he’s good.

He’s one of the good guys, he does the right thing, he doesn’t give up.

Reading some of the old JLA/JSA team-ups in which he appeared, he always seemed to be bungling everything. But that didn’t make him any less good, and he never stopped trying. No matter how bad the odds.

And that is how I would define him. Albeit, that’s how I would define most of DC’s heroes. But there you go.

How then, do we define Solomon Grundy? He’s a bad guy. He’s selfish, crude, and angry, completely without charm (even with a nice suit). And Meltzer & Co. gives us a nice iconic image to define Grundy as well.

Well, maybe nice is the wrong word. Because if I didn’t want to see Red Tornado’s arm pulled off, I certainly didn’t want to see Grundy eat it.

But at the same time, that pretty much sums up Grundy, doesn’t it? Sensationalist, yet it works: and thus, I’m ambivilant. I’d much rather these points be made is less gruesome terms; at the same time, wouldn’t that be less visceral?

And, since Reddy is good and Grundy is bad, Reddy wins. In a desperate fight for his life, he kills Grundy by cutting him in half.

But… superheroes don’t kill, do they?

Well, this isn’t the first time Grundy has died. And we know he’ll come back, probably dumb as a brick again.

But while we could excuse it before, as Grundy wasn’t really alive, we can’t do it now. We’ve seen a Grundy who is just as much alive as Reddy. Granted, Reddy is acting in self-defense.

This confrontation between Reddy and Grundy is deliberately mirrored in the big JLA/Amazo fight.

The Amazo Android is generally thought of as non-living, as Grundy and Red Tornado were before him. And he is generally defined as evil. Because he is evil and the JLA is good, they win, destroying the non-living android.

But wait. This one has many of Red Tornado’s memories. He’s not acting out of malice. He just wants to go “home” to “his” family. When he is rejected, he acts out violently. He is befuddled as the Justice League (his friends!) attacks him. He calls out for the Tornado’s wife as he expires.

This Amazo is capable of memory and thought and bewilderment. He is a figure of pathos, destroyed by the Justice League of America simply because he is evil: something he hasn’t chosen.

Which brings in the whole question of free will. Do we get to choose who we are, or are we born with it innately? Is personality programmed into our genetic code? Can we help being who we are? Do we have any control at all?

These are heady questions for a Justice League of America story.

I’m not sure if Meltzer asks them as deftly as I would like; I think the pacing is a bit off, to be frank. A bit too slow in the middle stretch and a bit too rushed elsewhere. I’d really have preferred to spend several days with Red Tornado; I’d like to see the characterizations developed a little bit further.

Another problem I had with it, and one I had with Identity Crisis as well is the meta-textual captions. The opening of that controversial story dwelled on the craft of the novelist, and mused that by starting with minor characters, the author opens up the possibilities that anything can happen.

In this story, Red Tornado reminds us that this is a story about love and friendship and history and destiny and passion and coming-of-age. I can’t imagine anyone actually saying that about themselves. It’s too cute for me.

But otherwise, I enjoyed this story. It wasn’t great, and sometimes I wondered if it was even good, but all-in-all, I’m more likely to re-read it than to re-read Pride of Baghdad, ostensibly the more “important” of the two stories I’ve talked about today.

==Tom

Spoilers behind cut.

Well, I kinda knew my chances were slim. Like I said in the video, I think I did alright considering all the circumstances, and coming in sixth doesn’t sting so bad when the guy who comes in second only took 1.37%.

This means, of course, that I’ll be writing more articles for Monitor Duty, including one about Civil War.

In case I did win the election, I’ve been watching the complete run of the original Yes, Minister for, um, research.

The final episode of that terrific series did remind me in a lot of ways of Civil War, and so a comparision between the two will frame that essay.

As a fan of the Dibneys, I had an immediate and visceral reaction to the news that Brad Meltzer had murdered Sue in one issue and raped her in the next, the retcon equivalent of necrophilia. And then there was the whole mind-wiping thing…

And then I read it, and I found it, for the most part, to be genuinely compelling and thoughtful. There were some parts that were a little silly (here, Jean, have this crossbow…?) and some parts that were a clichéd and underdeveloped (Captain Boomerang and Son!). But it was a superhero story that took superheroes seriously and enthusiastically, both as icons and as people. They make difficult decisions but I didn’t feel that those decisions tainted them in anyway: I didn’t feel that I was reading another tiresome adventure into the Dirty Spandex sub-genre.

As a story, it’s deeper and more pleasurable to read than, say, Infinite Crisis. No gore or nihilism in Identity Crisis. The trauma is largely off-camera– largely emotional.

At the same time, they still killed Sue. They still took a giant dump on my childhood. And I’m largely skeptical about any superhero story that requires that level of transgression to get its desired impact.

And yet– I’m very, very glad that Brad Meltzer wrote it. Not that it was written. I hate the fact that it was written. But I’m glad that Meltzer was the one who did it.

It should be common knowledge by now that the murder/rape of Sue Dibney was an edict of DC’s top brass in order to boost sales. Brad Meltzer (a better comic book writer than novelist, in my opinion) did not wake up one morning and decide to totally destroy the Dibneys.

DC came to Meltzer with the idea, and he worked within that framework. And, for the framework he had to work in, he did work that I find to be quite admirable.

Now, Meltzer certainly could have said, “Look, you can’t do that to Ralph and Sue. It upsets the balance. Nothing bad should ever happen to them, because bad things don’t happen to Ralph and Sue.”

But, if Meltzer had turned the assignment down, that wouldn’t have been the end of it.

DC would have found someone else to write it.

And if that someone else turned it down, they would have kept going until they found someone– anyone– who was willing to write it.

Can you imagine Frank Miller’s Identity Crisis, the sheer putrid ugliness that such a thing would entail? Meltzer at least has respect for these characters. In Miller’s hands, the Dr. Light-Sue scene would be exploitive and degrading. “Let’s be shameless here, Rags– let’s put in a nice ass shot, huh?”

Or what if they got Kevin Smith to pen it? While he might rein in his pop culture references, the whole thing would be buried in miles of prose and bad plotting. (Not to mention that we’d still be waiting for the last two issues.)

And let’s say no big name creator would touch it. That’s fine; there’s always someone looking to break in, or a new kid on the block looking for his big break.

I mean, look at Ron Marz. He’s not by any stretch of the imagination a great writer, but I have a lot of sympathy for the man. He was given three issues to make Hal Jordan insane and genocidal, to kill off the Green Lantern Corps, and replace him with a new Lantern. Let me ask you: can any writer pull that off in three issues?

It’s an essentially impossible task, and one that’s going to generate a lot of flack besides. If you were given that thankless task and that same basic plot, how would you do it?

Perhaps a truly great writer may have pulled it off, but I kinda doubt it.

Sure, someone could have taken Identity Crisis’s same basic asinine and offensive plot– Sue Dibney is murdered, was raped in the past, JLA used to do mind-wipes– and written a better story than Meltzer. (Anyone could always do something better.) But it could have been — and probably would have been–so much worse.

So very much worse.

And I’m not saying that that makes the story good. I’m still conflicted about the plot, no matter how well it’s told.

I’m still angry about what happened in that story, but I’m not angry at Meltzer. In fact, I’m rather thankful that he wrote a damn fine crackerjack story, and that he made people care about Sue– if only through Ralph’s grief. I’m grateful that he wrote an actual story with a focus, a beginning, middle, and end, character development and themes, which is more than I can say for Civil War or Infinite Crisis.

I’m not really writing this as a defense of Identity Crisis– one’s own feelings are one’s own feelings and mine are, again, ambiguous– or to even engender discussion about that particular story.

But I’m hoping some of our commentators (and my fellow Monitor Duty contributors) might weigh in on this controversial and seldom discussed topic of the responsibilities of the writer in editor-driven comics.

Should we canonize them for becoming martyrs to an angry fandom, or demonize them as collaborators? Is it better for someone to take a stand, or to try and do their best with the impossible and unsavory?

What if you (and most comics fans I know are also hopeful comic-book writers) were asked to do something terrible to your favourite character? Would you turn it down and let someone else, someone who doesn’t care for, respect, or “get” the character, massacre them? Or would you go ahead and write that story, the logic being that, if it has to be done, it should be done with love?

I eagerly await your opinions.

Because nothing says I love you like M.O.D.O.K.

Just kidding, Hutch. Hutch? What are you doing with that flame thrower…? Ahhhhhhhh!

Ahem.

The question was, could changes in the dialogue and captions make it a “workable” mystery story. Brian Cronin explains,

I can get behind "I liked it even though it wasn’t," or "I didn’t really care about mystery aspect, because I liked it for the character work," or "The mystery was not the point of Identity Crisis, the point was the examination of the heroes vis a vis the mind-wipes, so the murder was secondary, so the fact that it didn’t work was unimportant," or something like that.

That stuff is totally subjective. I wouldn’t dream of saying you shouldn’t like Identity Crisis.

But "workable mystery," I believe, is an objective thing.

So I don’t think "it worked for me" cuts the mostard here. The complaint about the mystery in Identity Crisis is that it was a puzzle whose solution did not make sense. Based on the facts presented to us, you simply could not solve the mystery.

And he’s right: as a mystery story, it doesn’t play fair.

Spoiler for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) by Agatha Christie below.

If the author is playing fair in a mystery story, a reader should be able to solve the mystery before the protagonist. Now, I’m not saying that they have to; I’m just saying that the possibility should be there. All the clues and all the suspects should be there, so that by the time you reach the end of the story, the reader isn’t saying, “Boy, that came out of left field, that’s pretty clever” but rather, “Oh my God, it was staring me in the face the whole time, I can’t believe I missed it!”

That’s playing fair.

Stories like Agatha Christie’s famous The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, in which the narrator turns out to be the murderer, or John Franklin Bardin’s The Deadly Percheron, which is a great psychological story with dwarves and giant horses, don’t really count as mysteries because they don’t play by the rules. They’re riffs, if you will– jazz variations on the mystery form. But not actual mysteries.

Mysteries play fair. Which brings me to the title of this post…

Back in the Golden Age of Comics, there were a fair amount of murder mystery stories. Now, I’m not going to say that they’re particularly good murder mystery stories. Or that they were hard to figure out. And sometimes, yes, they broke the rules and didn’t play fair. But one thing they did was encourage the reader to play; they’d challenge the reader to find the solution before the protagonist did. And they weren’t subtle about it, either. Nothing was subtle in the Golden Age.

Check out this panel from Detective Comics # 41:

They lay it right out for you: these are the suspects, which one do you think did it? There’s no insane ex-wives with tiny footprints and a flamethrower here! It plays fair, and it demands your participation!

Now, granted, if you were going to actually check off one of these suspects, it would forever ruin the value of your comic. But so what? It’s peerlessly cool besides.

You get a similiar challenge in this old Plastic Man story from Police Comics # 17, which not only challenges you at the beginning of the story–

–but actually challenges you to rethink your answer–

–and offers career advice:

I mean, how frickin’ cool is that?!

Unfortunately, Golden Age Nostalgia doesn’t run as high these days as Silver Age Nostalgia: you’re more likely to find a talking gorilla pop up in a modern-day comic than these old check-box mystery panels. In fact, I can’t recall ever seeing them in any Silver Age comic, let alone Bronze or Tupperware or whatever we’re in these days.

And that’s too bad. Because, like I said, I kinda miss ‘em. Not that I was old enough to read these comics when they first came out– or to read the Silver Age ones, for that matter– but it’s still a trope that I’m sorry to see gone.

Has anyone seen any examples of check-mark/jot-down-your-guess panels in the years after World War II?

I am clearing them up with this video, and posting it to every place I posted the original– which includes Monitor Duty. Thank you.

I do agree with Hutch that this film is more of a new mythology– but I think that might be to its detriment. Confused? Read on!

So, last night, Mary and I went to see Lady in the Water at the dollar show. We had read the bad reviews, but figured that we might enjoy it anyway– after all, the critics savaged Hudson Hawk, easily one of the greatest satires ever made.

To make a long story short, we really didn’t enjoy it. There were some moments that were neat– the grass monster certainly was original. And Paul Giamatti’s big scenery-chewing scene, in which he tells his deceased family that he loves them, was as sincere and genuine and heartfelt as anything we’ve seen in a long time.

I only wish that that thread, and the character, had been developed further. That M. Night Shyamalan had delved deeper into his pain. Or that the revelation about his family’s murder earlier in the film hadn’t come completely out of left field. That I could believe the character or, in fact, that I could believe any of the perposterous and flat “characters” that populate the apartment complex where the story goes down.

But if he was to do that, then it wouldn’t be “a bedtime story”. The poster promises us a bedtime story, and those words “bedtime story” are said over and over again. Apparently, this started as a bedtime story that he told his kids. Which makes me feel sorry for the younguns.

Because, really, this contrived mess isn’t a bedtime story. So let me tell you what a bedtime story is.

Bedtime stories are typically short, not only in the telling but in plot complications. You can draw a simple and direct line from point a to point b to the moral of the story (if there is one). Take Little Red Riding Hood, for example. Little girl on the way to grandma’s, talks to a wolf, wolf eats grandma, wolf eats Hood, woodsman kills wolf: shouldn’t talk to strangers. Simple, direct, clean, and above all, memorable.

Bedtime stories are an oral tradition, and therefore they have to be memorable. Their scope is limited even as fantastical events occur; every complication only serves to further the moral of the story. There are rarely more than a half-dozen characters (the exception being “groups” of characters, such as the Seven Dwarfs, who really function as one character). Any more than that, and the story ceases to be memorable, it stops being passed down.

But the story of Lady in the Water does not follow a simple line, nor do I think that was Shyamalan’s aim. At the same time, it’s incredible disingenious to call it a bedtime story or fairy tale, because it’s not that at all. And what’s remarkable about this, is that Shyamalan knows how to tell a bedtime story. He’s done it three times before: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs are all bedtime stories.

Each focuses on a very limited cast of characters. In each, the plot is extremely easy to relate orally (though the “clues” to his twist endings are a little harder to communicate effectively). There are fantastic elements in each, from the dead to the superhero to the aliens, but they are very limited in their way. There’s only as much as is necessary.

But Lady in the Water, like The Village before it, is not so simple and uncluttered. The fantastical elements are extremely complex, like each exists as a testament to the mythology of an entire, strange, and lost culture. These two films are really about social systems with incredibly complex rules and symbiotic relationships. They’re not so much bedtime stories as they are bedtime story universes.

There’s an Albert Brooks film called Defending Your Life (yes, we’ll get back to M. Night momentarily). It posists an afterlife in which, in order to move on to the next state of being, you must go through a sort of trial in which several moments from your life are scrutinized. The prosecution attempts to make the case that you lived in fear, or shallowly, or badly: that you don’t deserve to go on to the next world. Your defense counsel tries to presuade the judges otherwise. If you win, you go on; if you lose, you are reincarnated back on earth as another human, or an ant, or a cow, or whatever.

Brooks spent a lot of time figuring out his world and explaining it; the story itself, though, was not nearly as appealing as the concept. Which is a shame, because it’s a good concept; it’s a good setting for many different kinds of stories.

I kinda wish Brooks could bring the idea to television– a sort of slightly supernatural Law and Order in which guest stars could ham it up through different stages of their life, which brings a whole biopic angle into the proceedings. It would be great television, relatively low-budget, infinitely interesting. But I’m sure it will never come to be– which means that this great premise was squandered.

And I think that’s the case with Lady in the Water and The Village: they have interesting premises, but don’t tell the right story from those premises. If there is such a thing as a right story: I think that Lady in the Water, with its complex relationships between tree monkeys and grass dogs and water nymphs, would make great television. Behold! the people this narf meets this week: which one is the one she’s supposed to meet? Watch! as we get to see a goofy narf this week, a childlike one the next, a more sultry one when it’s sweeps week.

I doubt we’d ever see Defending Your Life: Special Victims Unit or Ladies in the Water anytime soon: I don’t think either Brooks or Shyamalan would be interested in exploring this territory again, first of all; secondly, “serious” directors don’t “do” TV– with the wonderful exceptions of Sidney Lumet, David Lynch, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (Not bad company, that.)

The thing about a setting, about a universe, is that the possibilities are endless. The problem with Lady in the Water is that all those possibilities are closed off to present a narcissistic (M. Night is a martyr that will change the world?), juvenile (movie critic killed by grass monster?), contrived and unrewarding attempt at a “bedtime story”.

So, we all know that the noisy Marvel summer-ish crossover of 2006, Civil War is reaching its end. And when there are noisy summer crossovers, there are deaths: meaningless deaths, “important” deaths that will be retconned away in a couple years– because we all know that the story doesn’t “count” unless there’s some bodies.

Which I think is ridiculous, but that’s not the point of this discussion.

What is inevitable is that someone big is going to die in Civil War # 7. My guess? It’s going to be Tony Stark.

And the reason why I think the corpse is going to belong to Tony “Iron Man” Stark is that, if you look over the last six issues, Tony Stark is actually the main character of the miniseries.

Which character has more screen-time than the other heroes? Tony Stark. Which character are we more likely to see out of mask than in? Tony Stark. Which character has moments like these:

Well, it sure as heck isn’t Captain America. Or even Hank Pym, or Reed Richards.

Tony Stark is the only one who doubts what he’s doing, who is given introspective moments. Now, I’m not saying these are high quality introspective moments. I don’t think the dialogue or the art delivers like it should.

But he is the only character who gets them. He’s also the only character who is truly proactive. Captain America reacts to what Iron Man and the Pro-Registration heroes are doing. But Tony’s the one that gets the ball rolling. He’s the one that makes the plans.

He’s also the one that seeks out Pro-Registration support. People gravitate to Cap, I guess on dint of his Cap-ness, while we see Tony actively going out and trying to win people to his side.

He’s the active character, and since he’s the only one that doubts, and since he’s the only one that gets all the moments– I would say that he is, in actuality, the main character of this crappy ensemble mini. Which means that he’s being set up for a Big Dramatic Moment, probably some kind of last-minute realization that what he has done is wrong.

(And, no, I’m not getting into any political argument or making any value judgments here. I’m just saying, that’s what Tony will think.)

And then he’ll sacrafice himself, and we’ll have our Big Death. That’s my prediction, and it could be horribly, horribly, horribly wrong, as my predictions often are. But there you go.

Now, whether or not it will stick, I have no idea. After all, there’s still an Iron Man series to put out. But since the Iron Man suit is a suit of armour– one that can be (and has been) worn by other people– they’d have no problem continuing to publish.

And, really, Tony Stark is a broken character by this point, if he was ever good or interesting at all. Really, he’s just another playboy superhero with a lot of toys. His rogues gallery lacks the weirdness of Spider-Man’s, or the grandiose menace of Captain America’s.

I think the only reason he still has a series is that he’s a legacy character: like the Fantastic Four or Wonder Woman, he’s not being published because it’s any good, or because the sales are spectacular. He’s being published because he’s always been published.

The last time Iron Man was good, as far as I’m concerned, was when Kurt Busiek was writing it, for about the first dozen or so issues. His take on the character was more Tony Stark and less Iron Man: billionaire playboy goes to exotic locales, romances exotic ladies, has exotic adventures and, every once in a while, becomes Iron Man and kicks ass. His ass-kicking prowess was not contingent on being Iron Man.

I think Busiek had less time to develop the idea then than he would today: in today’s decompressed comics, Tony Stark would be the suave ladies man have continental adventures. And that would be very cool.

Now, we’re stuck with a jerk.

Kill the bastard.

Just make sure when you bring him back, that he’s not a teenager again. Because that was lame.

Fellows like Neal Adams, who are tremendous artists and work from photographs so they get very realistic, are not drawing in a style that (to me) is the best for comic books.

– Shelly Moldoff, Alter Ego v.2 # 5

It could be comics if those who know how to paint also knew how to tell a story! Who knew what pacing was, and didn’t just jam a lot of pretty pictures together into a page, pages, and call it a story, continuity! It ain’t!

– Alex Toth on painted comics, Comic Book Artist # 10

I think that Steve McNiven, the penciller for Marvel’s Civil War, is a very, very talented illustrator. His figures might be a little stiff, but they have a certain weight to them, a solidity: as if they’ve been carved out of stone. The costumes look real and worn; it’s nice to see the seams of Wolverine’s mask, and the little dings in Iron Man’s armour. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone pay so much attention to lips before. Real honest-to-God pink lips on men and women alike, some of them carefully adorned with the small lines we all have. It makes me want to reach into the comic and give them all some chapstick.

I think Steve McNiven is a terrific illustrator. (I certainly can’t draw nearly as well as he can.)

But I think he’s a truly awful storyteller.

Before you enlarge this panel (from Civil War # 4), try to guess what’s happening. Don’t try to read the dialogue balloons. Just read the panel itself, the visuals.

Thor is so huge, so prominent in this panel, that you would think it was about him. He takes up the center; everyone else flows towards him; he dominates it.

But Thor is not in any way, shape, or form what that panel is about. It’s about the Anti-Registration heroes, most of whom are to the right of Thor. They’ve been incapacitated by an audio frequency that “puts the human brain into shutdown.” That’s what Sue and Reed are talking about. That’s what the panel is about, and what the focus should be on: if there are human brains going into shut-down, I want to see it, damn it!

McNiven’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t know quite how to put his figures on a page. A Kirby, a Ditko, a Sekowsky– not to mention Toth and Moldoff– they know how to make every panel count, they know how to sell a point and tell a story visually. Is their work as pretty as McNiven’s? Is it going to sell as well with the fanboys? No. But it will stand the test of time.

Something I’ve noticed with a lot of “pretty” artists is that they’re not really very good at telling a story visually, at keeping things clear and clean and uncluttered. Terry Dodson is one example. Look at this panel from Wonder Woman vol. 3,467 # 1:

The cheetahs circle Donna Troy and “Steve” threateningly, and this circle motif is repeated in the panel, spiraling in towards Donna and “Steve”. That’s all very good, but one thing I missed the first time I read this was that Cheetah is taking possession of Donna’s magic lasso.

In the very next panel, that lasso is around Donna’s neck. And so I went, “Whoa! When’d Cheetah get the lasso?”

And so I flipped back a couple pages, and flipped fowards, and flipped back, and, there it was, the panel right above it, the snatching of the lasso.

The thing is, if Mike Sekowsky had been telling this story, you’d be damn sure I wouldn’t be wondering when Cheetah had gotten ahold of that lasso.

And, yes, the circling cheetahs do spiral in towards the rope as well– but the focus of the panel isn’t on the rope like it should be. Maybe Dodson at least knows how to tell a story, but he lacks the expertise…?

Now, I personally don’t like Mr. Dodson’s illustrations, and I only bring him up as an example of another highly-acclaimed illustrator who, while very different from McNiven, shares his inability to properly place figures in a panel. About the only thing Mr. Dodson can do right, as far as I can see, is that he can draw breasts very well.

But, y’know what, so can I.

Anyone can draw breasts just as well as Terry Dodson.

This truth should be very liberating. I’d be happy to draw Wonder Woman instead of Terry Dodson. Hell, I’d be happy to write it, too. You bet your sweet dupa that I’d turn in a script each and every month, on schedule. And no splash page nonsense, either. I’m talkin’ six panels a page, baby!

Ahem.

One thing Mr. Dodson does have over McNiven is that his figures are very expressive. The faces and bodies have a certain elasticity to them, and this is one of the great secrets of comic books. Films are about movement, about continuity, about ballet and grace. But comics are about this moment, and that one. It’s one action in snap-shot and the next in snap-shot without a whole lot in between.

So instead of the subtly shifting face of an actor, comic book artists work with extremes of human expression, in over-the-top takes that project not only attitudes but whole personalities. Great superhero comics are about great, operatic emotions– and you can’t handle these emotions if everyone is always looking serious.

Like poor Tony Stark.

Look, I know that Civil War is a serious comic. I know that Tony Stark is more-or-less the main character. (My argument for that will come in a future post.) But if I wanted to see some deadpan sad sack running the gamut from ennui to introspective, I’d pick up some Chris Ware.

You don’t have an actor playing Tony Stark. You don’t have the luxury of a voice, of a moving body, of character being revealed through motion. In comics, all you have is a snap-shot, one placed right next to another. You need extremes. You need recognizable emotions, and you need to get this information across in mere seconds. If we have to stop and look at your pretty pictures, than you’re not telling the story.

So, c’mon, McNiven. Give us some real emotions to work with!

WTF? It looks like Cap’s jaw is about to come off! And what’s wrong with his eyes?

And so, here’s the big problem– because McNiven’s work is so chiseled-from-stone looking, because each and every curl of the lip has been lovingly created by the master’s graphite, when he does go for expressive, intense emotion, it feels out of place. It feels forced and looks lifeless.

And, you know, this brings up another thing: why the abundance of close-ups? It can’t be that he doesn’t know hwo to draw a figure: his figures are nice and muscly, very sturdy. Why would someone tell a story mostly in close-ups when they reveal his greatest weakness?

It’s not that the close-ups aren’t exquisitely rendered: they’re very detailed, and it looks like there are muscles and bones and life underneath the skin. But his expressions, the illusion of a character experiencing emotion, are by far his weakest spot.

I think it’s because (like I pointed out in my review of Civil War #1-2), McNiven doesn’t realize that he’s doing a comic book. He thinks he’s doing a movie– which is also why so few panels are adjacent and so many of them are piled, one on top of another, like frames from Cinemascope.

The only other reason I can think of is that he wants to show off those meticulously chapped lips.

I would like to thank Mr. McNiven, wherever he is: if not for his work, I never would have spent an hour of my life trying to photoshop Tony Stark pouring lemonade into Tony Stark’s head.

==Tom

Note: I will concede that, having enlarged the panels to ginormous porportions in the pop-ups, it becomes very clear in most of my examples what, exactly, is going on. If only that had been the case on the physical page…

But that’s not what this entry is about. It’s about the back-up story, “Superman’s First Exploit”. On the first page, after the splash panel, there is a two-panel depiction of Superman throwing a baseball from Metropolis to Japan to open their baseball season.

Now, my first reaction upon seeing this, as it is with many of the things I’ve seen in old Superman comics, was, “Awesome! Superman just threw the opening pitch of a Japanese baseball game from Metropolis! Kick-Ass!”

My second reaction was, wouldn’t the ball be travelling at such a velocity as to kill the catcher?

I pointed this out to my wife, who then pointed out to me that it is daylight in Metropolis when the ball is thrown, and it is daylight in Japan when the ball arrives. Which I found to immediately be a much more interesting discrepency.

Now, with Metropolis on the eastern seabord of the U.S., that makes for a difference of eight hours by my count. So, for the ball to land in Japan with similiar daylight conditions as to Metropolis, it would have to take eight hours to get there, right?

But the text strongly implies that the throw is nearly simultaneous. How, then, do we make up for the eight hours?

I’m not asking this in the spirit of, “Oh, look at the mistake in this old Silver Age comic”, because I love old Silver Age comics. I ask this in the vein of, “boy, wouldn’t it be fun to come up with an explanation for this”.

==Tom

I am hard at work on a good many articles for your consumption, including the second part of The Nineties: Were They Really That Bad?: Howard Mackie, which should be coming soonish.

==Tom