Walking on the Moon

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I mentioned a while ago that I’d bought but not read Warren Ellis’s and Raulo Caceres’s Crécy. Leaving it unread didn’t last very long, but I haven’t written anything about it.

It’s quite phenomenal, actually. Scott McCloud is fond of talking about the uses of comics beyond entertainment, and Crécy is an example he should point at. Exactly what it’s an example of is hard to describe pithily, but it’s certainly excellent.

Crécy is a little bit of historical fiction, a little bit of dramatic sociology, some military history, a discourse on the longbow, and a lot of Warren Ellis ranting. The focal point of all this is the 1346 Battle of Crécy. You can read all about that battle on Wikipedia some time, but frankly, unless you’re a big fan of 14th century history, you’ll be hard pressed to finish the article. I guarantee that if you sink the seven bucks to buy this comic, you’ll be able to describe the battle, its technology, and its implications for weeks afterward. You may just corner random people and start ranting about it. It may be difficult to shut you up about it.

Ellis tells the story from the perspective of a fictional archer in the battle, but one who is aware he’s talking to 21st century readers and is cognizant of the intervening history. It’s more effective than it sounds. He deftly manages to keep the reader in the 14th century slogging through the mud to what any contemporary would assume will be a slaughter and connecting the dots between that world and ours with humor and insight. Humor and insight are only two of the techniques, actually, but they’re the strongest.

Ellis is a formidable voice, and an artist could be overwhelmed by him; Caceres is more than up to the challenge. His art is beautifully detailed and cleanly laid out. He gets a fantastic amount of detail on to the page without cramping it. Furthermore, in service to Ellis’s far-reaching goals for the work – part tactical and technological study, part illumination of the human condition – Caceres has to communicate everything from detailed drawings of demonstrations of 14th century armaments, to comprehensible maps of the battlefield, to vivid images of human beings in close combat. He spans these styles with an aplomb that trivializes their difficulties.

The result is an illuminating, entertaining, thought-provoking description of an event that I’d assumed only held interest to the D&D crowd.

Get a copy and enjoy.

I’ve posted reviews of Wealth and Democracy, Babbitt, and Don’t get Too Comfortable on Bell, Book and Candle.  Been a long time coming.

What a good week.

• Love and Rockets #20
  • Saying bad things about Love and Rockets is kind of hard to do.  The art’s beautiful and the characters are all familiar and well written.  It’s strange to be writing that nothing happening is the biggest down side of this thing, after just finishing saying how watching nothing happen in Captain America is a good time.  I really should go to the graphic novels.
• Grendel: Behold The Devil #0
  • Another 80’s weakness of mine is Matt Wagner’s Grendel.  This is a preview for a series due out in November featuring the Hunter Rose Grendel – that is the original Grendel – perhaps revealed through the research of the Christine Spar Grendel.  The framer here is as nice an intro to Hunter as one could expect.  I even jumped and I’m a veteran Grendel reader.  Nice lead in.  I’ll look for the series.
• Black Summer #1
  • Warren Ellis’s new superhero project for Avatar gets off to a cracking start.  The preliminaries set the stage nicely for this issue’s confrontation between Tom Noir and the forces stirred up bu John Horus’s assassination of the President.  It’s a fast-paced episode where we hit the ground running with Tom.  There’s also just the right amount of backfill to tease the Seven Guns’ history.  This is a rarity:a first issue that one would have to buy the next issue.  I’m committed already, but I think readers who pick this up will have a hard time putting it down.
• Doktor Sleepless
  • Warren Ellis is touting this as his next effort in the vein of Transmetropolitan, and I’m interested in that.  There’s a lot in here that people who read his blog (guilty as charged) have heard snippets of and his vision for the title is broad and exciting.  He’s aggressively tying the print material to an evolving wiki and other web resources and generally trying to create an example of a new media.  I’ll be sticking around for it, but I’m a little concerned that the first issue wasn’t terribly effective as a narrative.  It’s clear that our man Sleepless is up to something, but it’s very unclear what he’s up to or why I care.  OK, I care because it’s Warren Ellis writing as a futurist, but why someone else cares is open to question.  I’ll be around to find out, though.
  • Sig file fodder: “Electricity can only be replenished by whisky.  This is actual physics.  Do not argue with me.  I am a Doktor.”

And I haven’t even gotten to Crecy yet.

• Shazam The Monster Society of Evil, issue #4 of 4
  • Jeff Smith  has tied up his Captain Marvel series in fine form.  It’s still a little disconcerting to see old CM rendered in Bone style rather than looking like Fred MacMurray as he should.  Overall he captures the whimsy and adventure of the Fawcett Marvels’ universe very well, dropping just enough grit in to keep it from being too dull without marring the place up.  And anything featuring 2 100-story columns of cockroaches is pretty awesome.
• Captain America #28
  • I hate to keep reviewing CA issues by saying that the pot’s cooking, but the pot’s cooking.  It’s a great strength of Brubaker and Epting that this continuing simmer doesn’t feel like a slog.  It’s honestly envoyable to watch this all unfold.  It’ll be nice when something does come to a head, but this kind of stake out isn’t a chore.
• Will Eisner’s The Spirit
  • Still great.  We get a nice bit of characterization of Satin that’s not news to any old Spirit fans, and a continuing slow burn of the Octagon/Octopus plot.  Really the only place this could go is down.  And I’ll be there when it does.

• Jonah Hex #21
  • Another solid issue. Well drawn, clear storytelling, and an interesting read. It remains an unconnected series of vignettes, which limits my love for it. It’s so nice to see a non-superhero big 3 book that I’d be willing to keep reading it on that basis alone. Fortunately, it’s also decent work.
• All-Star Superman #8
  • Still great stuff in general, but man do I dislike Bizarro stories. I understand that any reworking of the silver age is going to have a couple, but man do I dislike the Bizarros – I totally feel for Zibarro here. Morrison manages to put some clever ideas in there (and kudos for actually stating the probability figures correctly on Zibarro’s appearance), of course. The overall plot’s moving along at just the right pace and now that Superman’s back off the Bizarro World, I’m really looking forward to next issue. Do I have to say that I’m enjoying the art? Well, with this being a Bizarro story, I followed the action for pages at a time without reading the horrible pigdin English coming out of the Bizarros’ mouths and felt the pacing and followed the story. Awesome.
• Nexus #99
  • It’s tough to overstate how happy I am to see new Nexus book from Baron and Rude. Nexus is probably my favorite comics series from the 80’s, and really doesn’t need any qualifiers for greatness. The first 51 issues are as good as anything ever done in the medium, and though it wandered a little in the next 48, it’s still an amazingly strong comic. The Dude’s art just gets better with age, and the plotting and world view stills feels as fresh and crisp as if it had been being published consistently rather than just coming off a 10 year hiatus. Grab a copy and play along!

I didn’t have a lot to say about Deadeye Dick, but what I did have is up on Bell Book and Candle.

• Moon Knight #11
  • Man, I need to drop this.  This time little happened with jarring out of order storytelling.  One more issue, I promise.
• Will Eisner’s The Spirit #7
  • Filler issue where a few other comics artists take a swing at the new Spirit.  The Simonson Sprouse & Story and the Palmiotti stories are OK, but nothing too special.  I didn’t enjoy the Baker story at all – which is very rare for me.  This issue really showcases how hard it is to write a Spirit story.  These folks are all great comics creators, and working in the 8-page boundaries and other conventions of a Spirit story none of them nail it.  There’s nothing awful here, but nothing brilliant, either.  I’d skip it unless you’re a completist.
• Jonah Hex #20
  • Hex continues to be solid.  Nothing jaw-dropping, but a  solid run with an interesting anti-hero.  Consistently decent.
• Captain America #27
  • The pot continues to stir.  We check in with all the major players and things move.  I don’t quite buy the Winter Soldier’s motivation, but if you believe he’d want to do this, it’s nice to watch him work.  Great superhero stuff, even in the constraints of the big doings at Marvel.
• Black Summer #0
  • If you know what Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp are up to this summer, you don’t need to see this.  If you’re not, this lets you see the set up and a few pages of sample art for a buck.  It’s worth that to read Warren ranting in the back.  Worth a buck, easy.

I wrote a short review of The Great Gatsby, which deserves a long one. Fortunately, many others have handled that for me. Mine is up in Bell, Book, and Candle.

And I noticed that for the last 8 years my pages have had Jane Austen’s name spelled wrong. That’s the way to critical credibility.

I was feeling kind of crappy this weekend and spent most of Saturday just vegging out. To help with that, I picked up Volume 2 of The Essential Marvel Two In One, and really a better time is tough to imagine.

Two in One was one of those great 70’s titles that was hanging out there on the edge of the Marvel Universe, but that didn’t have to be The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine every month. It wasn’t exactly the Marvel flagship. It had two important things going for it – the creators didn’t take it more seriously than a comic book, and lots of great creators were thrown an issue or two as a chance to prove themselves. It also starred the Thing, one of Marvel’s most over-the-top heroes.

The result is a charming set of fun stories and general tour around the characters and situations in the Marvel Universe. Several series had their loose ends tied up in MTIO and a few actual important Marvel Universe events happened in there, too. Mostly, though, they’re fun single-issue or two-issue stories with a charismatic and visually appealing star that make it a great way to waste an afternoon.

A pleasurable guilty pleasure. (To get a feel for the series, I recommend Mark O’English’s amazingly complete and remarkably entertaining Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Home Page.)