Being a comic book fan is a strange and contrary pursuit. Every week, you look forward to buying your books and maybe picking up something new or interesting while you’re in the shop. Then you get ‘em home, read ‘em and wonder why you bought this, or continue to read that. And yet as soon as you’re done with the stack you remember that more comics are just a week away, and which ones you’re most eager to read. As I said, a strange and contrary pursuit; you’re simultaneously remorseful and eager, except when you’re actually reading the comics.
Which is the long way of saying, “I bought Conan: The Mask of Acheron this week and it made me question not only my sanity, but that of the people at Conan Properties and Dark Horse.” The cover blurb says “Based on the new hit film!,” which is your first clue as to quality, because that movie hasn’t been released yet. Although that blurb is a public service, because if this is what the movie is going to be like, I just saved $8 by buying this. There are some errors that annoy the REH scholar in me, such as the superstitious and magic-loathing Cimmerians keeping a shard of an evil artifact hidden in the heart of their village and while we’re at it, let’s mention that it was the Hyborians, not the Cimmerians, who crushed the evil empire of Acheron, but these things, while telling, are not the major source of my butthurt. No, the fact that Conan disappears for huge stretches of time in his own comic/movie is troublesome. We see him as a kid (*SPOILER ALERT* Once again, Conan will have dead daddy issues), then he sorta shows up in time to kidnap a princess who’s pursued by our evil warlord (how did he know to nab her? No explanation is forthcoming), then he fights the warlord in some sort of temple, magically appearing from off-panel just when we need him. The problem is this whole story is told from the bad guy’s point of view, so Conan is nothing more than a periodic intruder in this guy’s life story. Nobody’s paying to see the life story of the bad guy — we’re paying to see Conan *end the bad guy’s life.* If the filmmakers don’t understand that, they don’t understand Conan and they don’t understand Conan fans. Also, a bad guy who walks around waving a dried up starfish mask is no more threatening than every little kid who walks around the beach waving a dried up starfish. That’s science.
Legion of Super-Heroes 15 is also fraught with science, but in a good way. Paul Levitz and Yildiray Cinar continue their epic battle of Legion of Super-Heroes vs. Legion of Super-Villains, with the LSH finally getting an edge on the villains. Tracking them to their hidden other dimension, the LSH fights back and seemingly turns the tide — plus we get another chapter of the long-running Ranzz v. Ranzz battle, as Ayla (yay!) takes it to her big brother Mekt (boo!). Ordinarily, I’d be very excited about next issue, which is the last issue in the series before DC unplugs their universe, counts three and then fires it back up. However, in their incessant promotional push for stuff that happens in three months, DC has already revealed that a good chunk of the LSH dies and the survivors band together to rebuild. If you bother to look at the cover art for September issues, you can pretty much figure out who dies, who reconstructs and who gets thrown back in time to our era to fight zzzzzzzz … Sorry, dozed off there. The idea of a book written by Fabian Nicieza forces my brain to shut down for self defense. This right here is the huge flaw with universe-wide architectural remodeling. You have a writer as talented and careful as Paul Levitz, and then you ties his hands, blindfold him, spin him around, rearrange all the furniture and then tell him to work around it.
Seeing as I am old and crotchety and wish that you would vacate my lawn, I am the target demographic for DC’s Retrospective one-shots. Sadly, a few of them were shorted in today’s delivery, so all I could get is Len Wein and Tom Mandrake’s Batman 1970s. (Note: all issues should hopefully be on the racks by the time you read this.) Wein’s Batman is a clever detective battling (and losing to) a new Terrible Trio while wondering about the business motives of Gregorian Falstaff, the corporate raider eyeing Wayne Industries. I really miss this sort of Batman story — you know, the kind where he’s not a mondo-dismo maniac — so I appreciate DC throwing all us old-timers a few bones with the Retroactive books. Of course, their interest in the hard-core, long-term fan extends no further than these stop-gap books because someone in marketing had a great idea about Wayne Casino brand poker chips, and that’s what they’re going to put their collective energy into this summer (I wish I was kidding about this; check the last page of any DC book). Story editor Ian Sattler notes, “I was disappointed to learn that [the poker chips] aren’t legal tender.” That’s funny, I was disappointed to learn that DC was going to lean on more gimmicks rather than concentrate on original storytelling. It’s a disappointing summer all ’round, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, over at Marvel, the Fear Itself cross-over deal continues. I may hate the company-wide storylines, but at least they’re predicated on the idea of a *story*. The Greg Pak/Fred VanLente/Neil Edwards book Herc further develops that plot (I guess — I’m buying so few of the installments) as Herc battles Hecate and Ares’ son, Kyknos (the Greek God of Affordable Copies), in a Brooklyn that’s overrun with monsters. I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth with this book. Hercules is a winning character, the action is plentiful, the dialogue is entertaining, I like Edwards’ pencils and there’s a sense of humor about the whole thing. I guess when you have Man-Bull as a supporting character and you burn off his hesher hair, I’m going to be pleased. See how easy it is?
Skaar: King of the Savage Land 5 finishes off the mini series in some fashion. This whole series read like there was relevant stuff happening in another title — one I wasn’t reading — so I never quite latched on to this. Also, if you have Skaar as a character and you do very little with him other than have him brood in an uninteresting fashion for all five issues, you’re really not using the “barbarian son of Hulk” plot element to its fullest potential. Sure, it was nice to see Kid Colt, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy in a comic again, but their magnitude of interest far outstrips that of Skaar. He could be a great and fun character, but not if he spends his time moping about where he belongs. You were born on another planet, dude, and it blew up — earth’s not going to feel like home. That, again, is science.
Tiny Titans 42 is a special issue devoted to the love of Bizarro Superman for Bizarro Supergirl. It’s fun, like all Tiny Titans stories seem to be, but what makes it great is the running gag of Terra beaning a love-sick Beastboy with rocks every three seconds. I don’t want to build a Three Stooges tower of comedy greatness, but if I did throwing rocks would be at both the base and near the pinnacle. You can’t overestimate the comedic value of a well-timed rock.
Warlord of Mars 8 is the penultimate chapter in this story, with John Carter finally finding out what he has to do to win Dejah Thoris’ hand. It requires nothing more than escaping from an armed fortress, raising an army of Tharks and arranging for someone else to kill her politically-expedient betrothed so John Carter can wed her with a clean conscience when the guy’s dead. Arvid Nelson has done a bang-up job with this series, introducing characters and alien concepts in a clear, concise fashion, while staying true to the series’ pulp roots and Lui Antonio brings the world of Barsoom to life with beauty and a sense of grandeur. This entire series has been a solid, entertaining read month after month.
Conan: Island of No Return 2, by Ron Marz and Bart Sears, is also very solid comic book. These shorter stories are much better for Conan comics, because they’re true to the character’s episodic pulp fiction roots. Marz gives us the simplest of plots — two beautiful sisters, Brenn and Venya, hire Conan to help them recover a treasure from a remote island, but another adventuring party is working toward the same goal — and that’s it. No daddy vengeance stuff, no end-of-the-world threats, no massive pyrotechnics, no starfish; just treacherous women, ruthless rivals and an exotic locale. Throw in a creepy abomination of a guardian monster and point Conan at it and you have a quality adventure. Bart Sears’ artwork has taken some knocks in the forums for making Conan look rather ugly, but that doesn’t bother me at all. His Conesy is rather brutally featured, but it suits him, and his action sequences — and there are action sequences, thank Crom — are well-rendered and vibrant. And the conclusion is suitably REH in its simplicity and characterization. I’ve never rated Ron Marz very highly as a writer, but this changed my mind; This is the sort of Conan book I could get behind on a monthly basis.
I’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Sergio Aragonés Funnies not only because I love his rococo cartooning, but because he’s a natural storyteller. This first issue did not disappoint. We get a couple of his pantomime one-page jokes, two challenging “spot the difference” puzzles and an extended anecdote about his college years in Mexico, when he helped his father’s movie studio round up extras for a Davy Crocket film. Again, nothing complicated here, other than his crowd shots. Aragonés is a singular talent, and there’s a timeless quality to his work. You could pick this book up in 30 years and the jokes will still be funny, the art will still be fascinating and you’ll still think, “This Aragonés guy is certainly the most charming guy in the business.” Sergio Aragonés Funnies is easily the best thing I read this week, because it’s pure entertainment from start to finish.
-Paul
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