Ah, vacation. My impulse to throw books
into the beach bag is as strong as this guy's, but I'm old enough and
experienced enough to curb it before I get to 24. And while I'll
agree that the mass-market paperback is still the ideal medium for
the journey, I'm finding that after my second glass of wine the eyes
take longer to focus on the print. Better, then, to add a few comic
books to the mix.
It's been a DC summer for me — I
guess most summers are (that shouldn't surprise me, but it does).
I started with Ed Brubaker and
Cameron Stewart's Catwoman: No Easy Way Down. As
a storyteller, Brubaker is a patient craftsman who revels in the
slow-reveal of subtle emotional surprises. He is well-served by
Stewart's art, which riffs off Darwyn Cooke's aesthetic of bold lines
and pastel colours.
Midway through the book, however, the
storyboard is given over to Javier Pulido, who really strips
it down, even pulling in some formalist experimentation that reminded
me of David Mazzucchelli or Art Spiegelman. In these two pages he
illustrates a character's inner struggle with her addictions:
Pulido's technique doesn't just elevate
Brubaker's building-block approach to narrative, it also turns up the
heat on the title character's sexual tension — and confusion —
with the characters around her (including, of course, the Batman). It
is a fabulous few pages, but sadly short-lived. The storyboard is
handed back to Stewart, and the experiments come to an abrupt halt.
It's a shame, but it's still well-above-average for the industry. To quote Abe Lincoln, if you dig this stuff, you'll really dig
this stuff.
And
Brubaker gets a lot of
love from the comic book store set — even the reliable grump Frank Miller
sings his praises.* Hey, Brubaker deserves it — the dude's not just
prolific (and how!), he's engaging. But the possibility that he might just be the industry's brightest light,
however, is an unsettling thought.
Chalk it down to
writer's envy. If you even dabble in story-telling, your brain knows
it's all smoke-and-mirrors, or sleight-of-hand. When you read someone
else's work, and that someone is trumpeted as God's Gift To The
Genre, you want to be hit with a Houdini (or, if you prefer meta,
Penn & Teller). When you get to the end of the story, you want to
say, “Wait: what just happened there? How'd he do that?” Well,
with Brubaker you pretty much know. He's got fluid hands, but the ace
of spades always turns up behind your ear, or under your tongue. It
won't be found inside that iced trout you just brought home from the
market.
Miller's
tip-of-the-hat is generous, deserved, and spot-on. Brubaker's
writing is every bit as accomplished as Miller's was in Year
One, and when coupled with a
talent like Pulido's, it dazzles (akin, say, to the riskier
Miller/Mazzucchelli Daredevil: Born Again).
But it's still safe. Snotty
old sod that I am, I keep hoping for something to knock me
over.**,***
Speaking
of “safe,” DC has gone and followed up last year's punky Batman:The Court Of Owls with The
Night Of Owls (A) and
City Of Owls (A):
two very safe — and
entirely disappointing — volumes in the DC canon. Scott
Snyder is still in charge
of the story, and he's proficient enough to hold reader interest
until the Big Reveal at conclusion.**** But the deeper delight of
Court was Greg
Capullo's playful art.
Capullo is still on board for much of the two books, but he seems
reined in. Worse, because both these books rely heavily on
character-title cross-over, other artists show up with the standard
DC template, producing fare which ranges from the merely acceptable
to the completely risible.
In the
latter category is the industry's rendering of female characters.
Look, I am not opposed to pin-up art. If you guys really need to
express your horny little ids, that's what those Betty & Veronica
back pages are for (ditto, Tumblr). Or, if you fancy yourselves the
next Howard Chaykin
or Wally Wood,
throw something up on Kickstarter. Your overlords openly rely on horny
45-year-old SWMs eager to part with chump change — go on, and beat them
at their own game for once.
But
this business of forcing your heroines to mince about the rooftops,
or daintily break ribs and teeth,
while holding Calendar Girl poses leeches
emotional oomph from
your sequential art. Seriously: DC's writers do a better-than-average
job of presenting kick-ass women characters, and you fan-boy artists
have to dress it up like a Victoria's Secret pillow-fight?
You
haven't the faintest clue just how sad
that makes you look. And
lest you miss my point, let me spell it out for you: this isn't a “I
guess we'll just cave in to the femi-nazis” issue — it's a “How
porni-fried and stoopid do your brains have to be for you to commit
that shit to paper?” issue. Take your hands off your weenies and
get a grip on your art.
Anyway,
the Owls storyline is
finished, and it's forgettable. Feel free to read it and leave it on
the beach.
Next: some pulp,
including Stephen King.
*“Brubaker's
got the chops. This is one damn fine comic book.”
**“Bowl me
over” — the way Elektra: Assassin did, back in the day
(FWIW, Brubaker's Vertigo title Fatale is playing out
quite promisingly. But as with television, I'm not giving it my
endorsement until that show is over).
***I feel the
same way about Neal Gaiman's stuff.
Whenever I finish something by him I tend to think, “Nicely done.
But, uh, isn't there a faster
way to get the same
results?” There probably isn't, which is why a little additional
flash delivers such incomparable value. In Gaiman's case, the
spectacular movie Coraline
outshines the book. In
Brubaker's case, Pulido's art is just the thing to fan the spark of
this viewer's interest.
****Which
I thought was rather ho-hum, finally. I haven't followed Batman's New
52 story arc all that
closely, but from what I gather in the 'Owls' books alone, he's
already been subjected to some tectonic relationship-jolters. The one
at the end of 'Owls' oughtn't to generate more than a shrug and a
“So?”
1 comment:
One thing to be said for Mignola's stories/characters: his women generally don't fit the porn-pose portrayal well. Not that they aren't fundamentally comic book girls and relatively the weaker figures, or that they don't ever get something of the Victoria's Secret treatment, as passed from artist to artist; but as written, and as Mignola and favored artists (especially Guy Davis, Ben Stenbeck) seem to have preferred to draw them, they're a shift away from the main trend toward something recognizably human. Deserves more attention.
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