Earlier this week I wrote a mid-size essay concerning how I feel so far about DC’s “New 52.” I re-read it the next morning, cleaned it up a bit and then threw the whole thing away. There were two reasons for this. One, everybody with an internet connection and a vested interest in comic books is writing about the New 52 — there’s not much that hasn’t been said. Two, I wrote a lot of argle-bargle and fooferall, but at the very end of the piece I finally stumbled across what it was I really feel about this whole deal, and it was concise enough to fit in a few sentences, not a big honking post.
Dear DC: I don’t care how great your sales are right now — anybody can sell issue number one. But if you don’t have life-altering stories in the pipeline for later this year — I’m talking specifically about comics on the order of the O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern & Green Arrow, Miller’s Dark Knight Returns or Moore’s Swamp Thing — your current huge audience is going to evaporate by issue seven. Because nothing I’ve seen so far has justified the “new, different, better” stuff that’s being thrown around. It’s all the same stuff, with new creative teams moving the pieces around to their liking.
Case in point is the only New 52 I bought this week, Legion of Super-Heroes 1 by Paul Levitz and Francis Portela. After years of missing the boat on LSH, I finally caught on in a big way in 2011. How does the Legion fare in their brand new beginning? Well, the surviving Legion members are still licking their wounds from their battle with Saturn Queen, the team is still split by time and space, Mon-El is still trying to get everything under control while simultaneously adjusting to the loss of his Green Lantern Power Ring, Brainiac still wants to wrest the leadership away from Mon-El — this is issue 17 of the series they just cancelled as far as I can tell. Levitz wrote the previous 16, and this just continues many of the plots he already had in motion. This is great news for me — I was really enjoying Levitz’s run — but it proves that there was no reason to pull the plug on the prior incarnation other than it’s more fun to market the New 52 than the New 51 plus LSH. With that in mind, this is the best of the New 52 as far as I’m concerned, because Levitz is focused on telling a story, not wiping the slate and starting over with LSH: Year One in the Year 3000.
Another number one this week? Game of Thrones 1, by Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson (Dynamite Entertainment). I’ve read the book but haven’t seen the show, your honor, so I feel qualified to say I didn’t picture some of these scenes the way Patterson drew them. Maybe this is more like the HBO show, but I thought the lands beyond the Wall weren’t primal or grim enough and Eddard Stark’s sword, Ice, is in no way representative of what a greatsword should look like — too short, too puny. Another cavil is with the pacing; a lot of ground is covered in this one issue, so some elements seem glossed over, or worse, missing entirely. I want to like this — a rising fantasy tide carries all fantasy comic books, you know — but I fear the density of George R.R. Martin’s prose is going to be gutted by the austerity of 22 pages plus ads.
The Ape/Human war that’s been brewing through five issues of Planet of the Apes (Boom) finally blossoms into full-on war between the species. The humans of Skin Town have split up to attack on several fronts, and hoo-boy, pregnant lady Sullivan procured a Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher from Brother Kale. Following Chekhov’s law, that RPG goes off before the end, and it means bad news for the humans. We also get the backstory on the slaughter at Delphi, when the Apes really gave it to the humans, as seen through the eyes of Bako, who was there. Daryl Gregory has plotted a mean and taut little story that continues to ratchet up the tension these past six months, and Carlos Magno’s art serves that story well. POTA has turned into one of the better sci-fi action comics out there, and it’s stayed on-schedule. If you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy — and as an American, it’s your birthright — POTA is definitely worth checking out. This one just keeps ascending.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is also on the rise. In issue 2 we discover more about Raphael’s mysterious absence from the rest of the guys (touch of amnesia, doesn’t remember ‘em) we get another sizable chunk of the Turtles’ origin and we witness Raphael and Casey Jones meeting for the first time. That’s the best part of this book for me. Their original meeting was a brief “good guys fight one another because they misunderstand each other’s intentions and then team up,” while this is a more heroic first encounter; Raph saves Casey from a beating, then Casey reveals his masked vigilante persona to Raph and the two make plans to go beat up bad guys. Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz and Dan Duncan have done a fine job recapturing the spirit of the original B&W series while mixing things up enough that I’m not certain what’s going to happen next. Surprise (and relieved) hit of the summer for me; this could have been depressing and terrible, but instead it’s fun and exciting.
Also surprising this month is Conan: Road of Kings 8. Last month I was whining about Roy Thomas saddling Conan with a child (not his, don’t worry) and lamenting how many ways that could turn to crap. This month, it didn’t turn to crap. Thomas has the little ankle-biter be more help than hindrance to the Cimmerian (look at her distract those guards!), which is kinda stupid and unbelievable — most kids under 9 don’t talk this easily to adults or spontaneously demonstrate a gift for lateral thinking that wasn’t present last month — but, well, this was at least a good read. I’ll accept a child generating an impromptu and successful strategy for getting past guards if you give me enough Conan slashing and head-crushing giant insects in a catacomb. Mike Hawthorne’s art however, ehhhhh, it’s not growing on me, but I can successfully ignore it in favor of the words.
Tiny Titans 44 is thankfully unaffected by the New 52 stuff, because it’s a DC Kids book. Beast Boy is terrified of the crossing guards, who happen to be the members of the Doom Patrol. There are some good laughs in this, but it seemed a little one dimensional. I know, griping about kids comics not having enough symbolism and deeper meanings is petty and stupid, but Tiny Titans usually has a couple of jokes that are there just for adults — I couldn’t find ‘em this issue. That’s OK, they can’t all be the issue in which Baltazar and Franco poop all over Red Hood (metaphorically).
The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror 17 is maybe the scariest comic I’ve read this year. Zander Cannon and Gene Ha craft an homage to the silent vampire film Nosferatu that is visually beautiful and delightfully eerie, and then Jim Woodring delivers a throwback EC Comics-style horror story that is stomach-churning and quite high-brow. My only complaint is that neither story is shticky enough to really feel like a Simpsons’ story, but they’re both fantastic examples of two different approaches to horror comics. This is a $5 comic (!), but it’s worth it.
Dark Horse Presents 4 costs $8, and it’s also worth it. There’s a terrific Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson Beasts of Burden story in here, Carla Speed McNeil continues the very good Finder series, Chuck Parker and Sanford Greene get down to giant octopus fighting in their new chapter of Rotten Apple, and Steve Niles and Christopher Mitten give us a new serial to enjoy, Criminal Macabre, which is about a hardboiled detective who’s just recently risen from the grave. How hard-boiled is apparent when he brawls with his undead mentor and destroys his office, just because he likes a dust-up. DHP has gone monthly as of this issue, which is a blessing and a curse. If you want to keep up with it that’s $100 a year just for one book; however, the book in question is the best anthology going in terms of stories, variety and packaging, so the $8 seems like a deal.
Northlanders 44 is less of a steal and more of a gift. Brian Wood continues Northlander’s victory lap with this third installment of the tale of Iceland’s settling by violent Norwegian immigrants. Ulf Hauksson continues to consolidate his power — that means slaughtering anyone in Iceland who looks at him askance, particularly if they’re affiliated with the Belgarsson family — and trying to beget an heir on his wife, Una, recently freed from slavery. Like every issue of Northlanders to date, this one depicts hard people doing terrible things to each other for the right reasons and for the wrong reasons. And then in the middle, Brian Wood sets a scene between Ulf and Una that makes you question whether Ulf is sociopathic by nature, or if the price of an ambitious man’s dreams is simply always paid in blood. While you’re pondering that, Ulf lays bare his heart to his wife and reveals that he may indeed be insane with bloodlust, but he’s also a romantic and a dreamer, as well as being revenge’s number one fan in the whole world. No other comic on the racks attempts to depict the interior life of its characters — or to humanize them, for good or ill — as Northlanders well as does. I’m going to miss this book so hard in six months.
Yeah, Northlanders is the best thing I read this week. I toyed with the idea of removing it from contention since it’s dead in the water (and because it’s always the best thing I read, except for that one time), but as long as Northlanders exists I’ll chose to celebrate it.
-Paul
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