Walking on the Moon

I’ve been playing with a new instant messaging client, Empathy. If you’ve been having trouble getting my attention, that may be why.  Mail me if you see problems.

I finished Wind, Sand and Stars in Bell, Book, and Candle.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #20, Aragones, Evanier, Smith, Wong.  As critical as I’ve been of these guys, I have to admit this issue was enjoyable.  It’s a nice, quirky mystery featuring the Spirit cast in all their likable glory.  Not a world changing story, but a fun way to pass some time.  Nicely done.

Gravel #3 & #4, Ellis, Wolfer, Jimenez.  I thought I’d talked about issue 3, but I don’t see the comments.  This probably isn’t for me.  I’m just not drawn into the world and so the limitations seem more apparent.  There’s a lot of gore and violence that are for their own sake, and the art’s not dynamic enough to make it visceral for me.  I did like the spooky tone in issue 3, but issue 4 is just a fight scene.  I’ll see how the first arc turns out.

Captain America #41, Brubaker, Epting, Magyar, D’Armata.  Continued high quality.  Hard to believe that Brubaker killed the title character 15 issues ago, and that there’s so much excitement in the book that one hardly notices he’s missing.  Well, that’s not quite true; I would like to see Cap back, but this book is continually solid.

Doktor Sleepless #8, Ellis & Rodriguez.  As the first book ends, there are revelations galore, not all of which can be taken at face value.  Still, there’s plenty going on; some mysteries explained (though perhaps not resolved) and some new angles revealed.  Lots of words this issue, but perhaps a telling image or two.  I think that Rodriguez’s clean art could be used to greater effect.  The images seem drawn to spec rather than being a result of collaboration, but that may be my poor vision.

Lots of interesting ideas here about what’s sane and what’s real.  Fun stuff.

Secret Six #1, Simone, Scott, Hazlewood.  Whee-ha this was fun: it’s everything Gravel isn’t.  A cast of dysfunctional but strangely likable villains stumbling toward some kind of team/family bond, an eerie opponent, and an impossible jailbreak on the horizon.  These are genuinely broken people, but you can’t help but root for them as they feel their way through life (and perhaps toward each other).  It helps that the dialog is whip-smart and that the images reveal the minds behind the words. The words and pictures make these people sympathetic and real, even though they’re not admirable. I’ll be back to see how they do.

Reviews of Halting State, The Red Badge of Courage, and How To Lie With Statistics are up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

My capsule review of Nancy Isenberg’s Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr is posted on Bell, Book, and Candle.

I updated the X.509 certificates on lunabase today.  If you have a jabber account, you may see a new one, replacing the one that expired 2 years ago(!).  The local certificate authority is now reasonably well organized (thanks Phil), so future changes should be less painful.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #19, Aragones, Evanier, Armstrong, Amancio, Austin, Rivoche. I should probably drop this. Three short stories with different artists in which I didn’t like any of the visuals and found some of the writing both uninspired and unbelievable.

Captain America #40, Brubaker, Epting, D’Armata. Not much really happens this issue for the amount that goes on. It’s a fast-paced issue with two sets of foils going at one another concurrently. It’s nice to see Brubaker making jump cuts between the two conflicts using dialog overlaps and other bits of writing. Overall this would be a hard place to jump on, but a fun issue for those of us who’ve been playing along.

Glamourpuss #2, Dave Sim. After Cerebus ended, I didn’t think I’d be reading anything else Sim wrote; as I’ve mentioned before, he can be kind of crazy. But man alive can he draw and write about comics. A student of the medium could learn a fair bit just paging through and looking at the layouts. There are some ramblings on various other topics that are of varying quality, but Glamourpuss is worth it for the art and the discussions of art styles of middle 1900’s comic strips alone. And to be fair, the non-comics stuff has its solid moments as well. The book is remarkably original and remarkably good.

Black Summer #7, Ellis & Ryp. This ended up well enough. The series was an exploration of the envelope of vigilanteism with exercises. Unfortunately, the exercises – that is to say the mayhem – and the ideas didn’t mesh as well as they could have. I think this may be because Ryp’s faces and postures aren’t well suited for conveying subtle nuances of character. His layouts are extremely dynamic and convey the adrenalin rush of combat, but don’t convey soul-searching with any conviction. That’s a shame, because the series should have its share of both. Consequently Ellis’s writing carries the weight of the ideas in this issue. There are a lot of words, and one can see spots where I’d rather have been shown a point than told about it. Overall, the words are worth reading and considering, but the visuals aren’t holding up their end.

Madame Xanadu #2, Wagner and Hadley. These two are in synch. I don’t know if Wagner’s experience drawing is helping with the collaboration or if Hadley’s just remarkably good at doing a lot with her art. Here each page is laid out with a unified theme, usually bled to make use of every millimeter of the paper.  Each page draws out both what’s mechanically happening and what it means to the characters (and the world), and is part of the unified whole of the issue and arc. I’m slighting Wagner’s excellent writing here, but his pacing, plot, and characterization are all right where they need to be to bring out his themes. This is remarkably strong work.

I’ve got short reviews of Theodore Rex and WLT: A Radio Romance up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

Two weeks in here:

Captain America #39, Brubaker, De La Torre, D’Armata. The Skull (?) continues his move, but the good guys are moving, too. From a plot perspective things are on the move more than the characterization this issue, but there are still some nice touches. We get to see Sam and Bucky working on the superhero tradition of talking and fighting simultaneously in a sparring session, and Sin find out once again how ineffective she is against real fighters; fortunately she’s a teen-ager and will never notice it. Still great super-hero work.

Madame Xanadu #1, Matt Wagner & Amy Reeder Hadley. Madame Xanadu is one of the many mystic powers of the DC/Vertigo universe who’s never really been a headliner nor a personal favorite, so it wasn’t out of any love for the character that I picked this up. What drew me to it was Matt Wagner who’s been a favorite creator since his Mage days. Wagner doesn’t disappoint in this issue with a fast-paced, introduction of the players and conflicts in this first arc, set in Arthurian times – obviously a setting with which he has some familiarity. The action is brisk and clear, and though the connection to Madame Xanadu is obscure at this point, it’s very diverting. I expected great things from Wagner, but I’ve never read anything by Hadley. Her art is really breathtaking: every page layout conveys the enormities of the settings and powers at play without slowing the narrative; individual panels are clear and crisp. Even the clouds of pixies that surround the magicians are enjoyable rather than annoying. This is a remarkable combination of storytellers. Well worth checking out.

Glamourpuss #1, Dave Sim. The problem with being Dave Sim – or I suppose one of the problems with being Dave Sim – is that you’ve become such an outsized personality that no matter what you set out to do, part of your work will always be judged partially as a reflection of you personally. Given that Sim is perceived as being either ridiculously conservative on women’s issues or downright misogynistic, when I saw what is apparently a fashion magazine parody from him, I feared the worst. Didn’t stop me from buying it, mind you, but I expected some sort of rant trailing off into incoherence thinly disguised as parody. What I got was something else altogether.

Often when a reviewer throws out that phrase – “something else altogether” – they mean that there was a twist in the plot, or a particularly well executed piece of work that elevated it above expectations. Compared to its front cover, Glamourpuss really is something entirely different. (OK, Roy Thomas’s description on the back cover description is accurate, but who would believe it?) The book includes a (workmanlike) parody of fashion magazines in there that does hit the content advertised in the cover blurbs, but basically it’s 25 pages of Dave Sim polishing his considerable art skills by drawing photorealistic pictures of young girls. And he’s very up front about this inside. This is a Dave Sim sketchbook where he’s translating fashion magazine pictures into comics idiom working from lessons from some of the classics of serial comic strips. The word balloons and captions are mostly a discussion of what he’s learning and how he’s executing the work. It’s remarkably diverting and gorgeous to look at.

Whatever one thinks about Sim’s opinions are on Pressing Issues Of The Day, I think his opinions on the study and creation of comic art are fascinating. I think he’s an authentic genius of the comic page and it’s a delight to find him sharing that genius, especially in this bizarre format. A must.

Will Eisner’s The Spirit #18, Aragones, Evanier, Smith, Wong. There’s nothing wrong with this issue – no grotesque misalignments of anatomy or anything – but it still doesn’t work for me. As an Eisner tribute, it’s competent and conservative. As a riff on classic characters it’s a tame placement into modern times. It’s a good comic, but no one seems invested in breathing their own life into it.

Grendel: Behold the Devil #8 of 8, Matt Wagner. Behold the Devil ends somewhat anticlimactically. Wagner’s a victim of his own success here. The Hunter Rose Grendel’s story is immutable in all but details and operatic in scope even before the larger saga grows from it. The revelations in Behold the Devil are really a gilding of the lily – interesting enough for a Grendel completeist like myself, but not resonant. Unlike, say the two incidental protagonists of Batman/Grendel, the non-Grendel folks in this series have their destinies clear from the moment we see them on panel. Innocents caught in Grendel’s whirlwind are on the ride of their lives, but have some hope that they’ll merely be tossed onto fate’s shores somewhere they never expected; actual antagonists are invariably atomized (except Batman, of course). These two are clearly going to be annihilated as soon as their fumblings catch Hunter’s eye.

Wagner’s been able to tell exciting stories within those constraints before, but he’s running out of new angles. I don’t begrudge him the attempts, he’s a brilliant creator. And there’s plenty of craft on display here; Wagner’s storytelling and art are clear and keen. Sadly that craft is in the service of a story only an aficionado of Hunter could like, and they know how it comes out.

I’d call it a noble miscue.

Anna Mercury #2, Ellis and Percio. There’s no way that the second issue of this could be as good as the first – and it isn’t – but the ride’s still fast enough that no one’s catching their breath. It’s got the same feel as Speed or the first Star Wars (Episode IV).  You don’t want to look away for fear you’ll miss something.  Beyond that there’s still the seed planted in issue 1 that there’s still more to this than meets the eye. High energy fun.