Let's take a little time away from laughing at the ridiculousness of Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predator, to appreciate one of the long lost crossover masterworks, Godzilla vs. Barkley.
Instead of writing up a long plot summery, I've decided to give you an abridged look at this classic piece of sequential art, presenting all the most important bits, removing unnecessary plot points and context. Enjoy.
Yesss, indeed.
I made the prediction that there was no way that Iron Man and the rest of his pro-registration goons were going to win Civil War. And I was so very wrong.
Now, it's too early for me to start bitching about this new status quo or how it will effect the next few years of stories. (I don't read that much current Marvel anyways.) Luckily, it will probably be nullified by some other huge event by 2010 at the latest.
But what I am left really thinking about is how the ending of Civil War, specifically Captain America's simple surrender, must be angering legions of fans but how it also makes a lot of sense. It was perfectly clear from the very get-go that Iron Man was the villain of the series and that Cap and his band of rebels were the one's worth rooting for. But why is that? I think that the general pro-Cap sentiment among fans was grounded in the idealism that superheroes represent for people. It is the same reason why some people get all bent out of shape about Batman killing in the movies: superheroes are good, just and should not be questioned or lowered in stature. By subverting superheroes (also mistakenly called "darkening" them) creators undermine the virtues that are projected onto the characters.
It is this and the plain fact that the Stamford accident is purely fictional that makes Iron Man's side so hard to accept and Cap to easy to root for. But let's be perfectly serious, if 9/11 were caused by superhumans (good or evil, doesn't really matter) instead of religious terrorists, you'd bet that we in the real world would all be calling for superhuman registration as well. It makes sense that a vast majority of people in the Marvel universe would side with the government and be in favor of registration and so it makes sense that a hero so dedicated to the people to surrender to such an opinion, like it or not.
Perhaps the "problem" of Civil War's resolution has less to do with flaws in the series and more with a fundamental flaw in fiction, that we can only get so close to the characters, that we can only understand their motivations to a limited extent. It is this distance from the character's reality (or even our own distance from the event Stamford is so shamelessly based on) that makes it hard to look past the idealism of Captain America and to see just how practical Iron Man and SHIELD are being. To say that the ending of Civil War sucks is perfectly reasonable, but to say that it isn't the way it should have ended is simply a fandamentalist delusion.
That being said, I am glad that the only contemporary Marvel comics I am dedicated reading are Runaways and Punisher MAX. Everything else I'm reading was published decades before Civil War.
This last week wasn't the best. I spent four days home from my job due to a lack of work, I suffered from a terrible sinus infection and northern Indiana was blanketed with inches upon inches of snow. Luckily, with the time I was snowed in, coughing, snotty and unpaid, I was able to finally read Black Hole by Charles Burns, which I had checked out from the library a month before. I read the 350+ page graphic novel in on sitting, which may not have been the best for my health, but it certainly allowed me to get the full experience of the story.
Black Hole is the story of several teenagers living in 1970's Seattle, where a strange new STI mutates those who are infected. The lucky ones are given strange yet concealable deformities, while the unfortunate are mutated beyond recognition.
The best thing about Burns' graphic novel is that it not about the disease (called The Bug), which would have limited the story to the realm of horror. Instead, Black Hole focuses on the characters, their desires and fears, and very little of the conflict has to do with the Bug directly. Black Hole is essentially a coming-to-age/love story set in a viseral and surreal world. The story telling and characterization is excellent and the artwork is both clean, precise and perfect for the dark and nostalgic tone of the story. The way Burns examines the theme of "otherness", both in terms of the perfect object of desire and the threatening opposite, is brilliant and fascinating.
According to Wikipedia, Black Hole was originally serialized over the course of ten years, which may account for the only problematic element of the story. The story seems to want to be bigger than itself, somehow universal and far-reaching, almost cosmic or mystical in stature, but that is difficult to achieve with a story that is so focused on characters unique as their individual deformities. But this is really just a minor compliant as the story only falls into this mode during a handful of sections, concentrated at the beginning and end.
I highly recommend Black Hole, as a graphic novel that is a perfect balance of darkness and nostalgic idealism. It's not a perfect book, but its without a doubt one of the best and most original books published in recent memory. And if you're a fan of Brian Wood's Demo and you still haven't read Black Hole, you have no excuse.
After being sick for a few weeks, I've finally gotten around to checking out my comic book-related feeds and what do I find? The preview of Batman #663 posted at Every Day Is Like Wednesday. You know, the one with prose.
I am giddy. It'll be nice to have something different come along, especially in a Batman book, especially by Grant Morrison.
Now, I'm not exactly sure why Caleb is having what seems to be a negative reaction to the format of the book. Even moreso, I'm surprised by a reader's comment on the post saying, "What the hell is this thing?! I thought it couldn't get any worse than Arkham Asylum!" I think this comment is strange because the prose isn't exactly strange when compared to works by other postmodern authors. Is there a more widespread negative reaction to this preview, as I have been cut off from the comic blogosphere for a while?
Are comic book fans, especially those of superhero books, out of touch with prose fiction? Is it inaccessible? Or even threatening that it unnerves us should it appear in what we expect to be "comics only" spaces?
I don't mean to sound snotty or pretentious (although anyone talking about prose vs. comics is bound to), but I love a good ol' non-comic book now and then. I won't try to argue which medium is better, as that is a ridiculous discussion, but I will say that my recent reading of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was more rewarding than any comic I've read in the past year*. But I do know that many comic book fans do not read much other than comics, and then there are those who only read prose that is related to popular sci-fi/adventure franchises. Everything else seems to be considered either unaccessible or boring.
I have no solution to the problem, but I do implore readers to give Batman #663 a chance. Prose fiction may seem strange in your monthly publications from DC, but it's not that big of a deal. It could be good. It's Grant Morrison for Christ's sake. Give it a read, even if it's "not a fucking comic book."
*It is also the major reason I have not been blogging in the past few weeks, along with lessened computer time and being sick lately. And I only say it's better than any comic I read in the last year as a safe estimate, but it could very well be better and more rewarding than any comic ever. Seriously. Read it.
