BOUGHT:
For Superman, they went with blue and red, which are the colors of his costume, minus the little bit of yellow on his belt and S-shield, of course. I'm...not entirety sure why they didn't go with "Superman: Red, White and Blue" as the title, given that "red, white and blue" is a pre-existent phrase and, well, there's obviously a lot of white in the book.
Heroes Reborn: America's Mightiest Heroes (Marvel) This collection of a the backbone of a Marvel mini-event—the seven issue Heroes Reborn miniseries and the concluding Heroes Return #1 one-shot—was mildly confounding, being on one hand merely the continuation of a sub-plot from Jason Aaron's now three-and-a-half-year Avengers run, but being published outside of the Avengers title proper, and given various spin-offs and tie-in issues by other creators (none of which are included here). In fact, I had to wait to get my hands on Avengers By Jason Aaron Vol. 9: World War She-Hulk before reading this, so I could consult the inside-cover guide to know which wo read first, Heroes Reborn or Vol. 9; for the record, Heroes Reborn comes first, but it's distinct enough that one could skip it entirely and still make sense of Vol. 9).
Kaiju No. 8 Vol. 1 (Viz Media) In the world of Kaiju No. 8, Japan is attacked by giant monsters often enough that they've got an organized way of dealing with the incursions...and the clean-up of the gigantic corpses that inevitably follows them. The Japan Defense Force, wearing special, strength- and endurance-enhancing suits made from the muscle fibers of defeated kaiju and wielding powerful guns, are responsible for intercepting and dispatching the kaiju. They have pretty cool jobs.
Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 16 (Viz) Bad news for those of you—okay, those of us—who shipped clueless Tadano with recovering gal Manbagi (I just love the fact that her reaction to anyone being nice to her, or the thought of Tadano romantically, infuriates her, and causes her to lash out comically at hi, you know?). In this volume, she more-or-less confesses her feelings to Tadano in about as direct a way as any of the kids in the series ever discusses their feelings (she grabs his hand and asks if he like anyone), and he replies that he doesn't ("No, uh... ...not exacty...I mean, no! I don't!").
Regardless, the idea is basically the same as all the Batman anthologies. A few contributors play directly with the colors in the plotting of their stories, like Dan Watters and Dani's "Human Colors," in which a Fifth Dimensional imp steals all color from the Earth and gives them to Superman in a box, forcing him to decide if he wishes to restore them or not (the story is mostly black and white, with red and blue added in the last three pages, as Superman decides to release the colors out one at a time.
For the most part, though, these are all stories that try to get at some defining aspects of the Superman character that happen to be told in a limited palette that is heavy on blue and red, and a few of them even kinda cheat, with several using a great deal of gray and a couple using flesh coloring (Rex Ogle and Mike Norton's "Ally" uses the whole dang rainbow for two pages, but to achieve a particular effect; that's a nice story, but I'm afraid it's going to age poorly, as the example Superman sets is one that is pretty likely to be undone in future stories).
I think a pretty smart essay could be written about what these stories say about how DC Comics think about the character, and what many creators think of him—Superman's Smallville, Kansas upbringing and the example set by his Midwestern, salt-of-the-Earth parents seems to be a big part of it, being played up in five of the stories.
Bizarro and Mr. Mxyzptlk seem to be the most popular villains, getting starring roles in two stories apiece, as well as several cameos, while Luthor stars in only one story (in addition to a few cameos and namedrops)' that's the same number of stories afforded to Superman villains Cyborg Superman and Toyman, and some borrowed villains like Kilg%re and Prometheus.
"Superman" refers to, of course, Kal-El/Clark Kent; of all the stories, only one features any other version of Superman. That's Chuck Brown, Denys Cowan and John Stanisci's "Into the Ghost Zone," which stars the Val-Zod version of Superman from The New 52's version of Earth-2 (and his version o Krypto, which I don't recall ever seeing before). (Evan "Doc" Shaner's cover for the final issue shows about 30 different versions of Superman, from Comet the Super-horse to Steel II, from Power Girl to Super-Man, from Apollo to President Superman.)
Oddly, there is only single, one-panel reference to either of the Superman-Red/Superman-Blue storylines, and it comes during Brandon Thomas and Berat Pekmezc's " A Man Most Saved," in which a man Superman has rescued a dozen times recounts several of those instances (a red, electric Superman saved him from a cruise ship attacked by a tentacled sea-best once).
I'm too tired and not well compensated enough to bother with such an essay here, I'm afraid. So let me just tell you the stories I liked the best.
They are, in the order they appeared, these:
1.) Michel Fiffe's "Kilg%re City" was a treat in part because Fiffe is such a distinct talent, and not one that usually gets to work on high-profile, mainstream characters like Superman (same goes for James Stokoe, who also contributes a story to the book). Fiffe has Superman teaming up with Booster Gold, Cyborg and Hawkgirl, apparently just because Fiffe likes those particular characters, and fighting his way through an entire city that has been taken over by Kilg%re and populated by Kilg%re-controlled versions of various Superman villains (Brainiac and Cyborg Superman appear in this story, though neither is the main antagonist). It's drawn in Fiffe's simple style, mostly as a black and white story with some blue and red shading here and there, with the exception of the big guy's costume. The last page, in which Fiffee fills the background with seemingly every DC hero he likes—Justice Leaguer, Titan, or randos like Ambush Bug and The Creeper—is pretty great, and adds punch to Superman's final words to Kilg%re.
2.) Mark Waid and Audrey Mok's "Namerpus" has Superman turning the tables on Mr. Mxyzptlk and visiting the Fifth Dimension to play tricks on him. It's a clever reversal of traditional roles, and Mok renders the action in a super stripped-down style, in which everything is colored either blue or red (or flesh-colored). That Superman's insufferability—as Mxy sees it—and all-around nice guy-ishness only serve to really twist the blade in Mxyzptlk is all the more a delight.
3.) G. Willow Wilson and Valentine De Landro's "Deescalation" has a very Christopher Reeves-esque, bumbling Clark Kent in the middle of a convenience store robbery, in which he can see the would-be stick-up-man is new at this and not entirely committed to a life of crime yet and is able to talk him down. It's a clever bit of storytelling, showing Clark going well out of his way to resolve the situation to the benefit of all involved when we know he could just resolve the situation in a split-second using his powers. The style is highly realistic, which befits the story, and colored all in shades of red and blue.
4.) Sophie Campbell's "Hissy Fit" finds Superman and Supergirl preparing to move from the Arctic Fortress of Solitude to an Antarctic one and Streaky the Super-Cat does not react well to being presented with a cat carrier (even if it does have an S-symbol on the side of it). Her tail and fur fluff out, her eyes turn red and she melts it in half with her eyebeams, then goes flying out to sea at top speed, cutting a container ship in half as she flies through it. She eventually finds her way to her new home, but she does it on her own terms. The super-animals are fucking terrifying, especially when written realistically, as Streaky is here (Think about it, all the powers of Superman, with the brain of a house cat). Campbell sells the joke well, in a wordless story that really showcases her abilities at characterization (feline as well as super-human). The story is mostly drawn in blue line on a white field with little shading, red reserved for heat vision and the drawing of Streaky in freak-out mode.
5.) Matt Wagner has drawn a couple of series set in Batman's Golden Age setting, so it's nice to see him tackle the Man of Steel at a similar point in "Scoop." Here Superman, resembling his Fleischer cartoon appearances, finds himself torn between being the star of all of Lois Lane's front-page stories while Clark Kent tries his damnedest to get people to read his earnest exposes, which keep getting relegated to the back of the paper. It's a fun story of the Lois/Clark relationship, punctuated by lots of powerful images from a master cartoonist.
BORROWED:
The Heroes Reborn story, while intentionally calling to mind the 1996-1997 event in which Marvel farmed out production of several of its lower-selling titles to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld to often hilariously silly results, is actually the culmination of Aaron's sub-plot involving his new version of the Squadron Supreme, the Roy Thomas and John Buscema-created analogues to DC's Justice League of America. Aaron's version, The Squadron Supreme of America, recasts the team in the mold of a nationalistic answer to Grant Morrison's JLA, with a line-up consisting of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan and The Flash Wally West analogues answerable to a now-evil Phil Coulson and one of several super-teams set in opposition to the Avengers (alongside Russia's Winter Guard, Dracula's team of vampires, and Namor's Defenders of The Deep).
That former Batman/Superman and JLA: Classified artist Ed McGuinness draws large chunks of the story, as he has here and there throughout Aaron's run, only highlights the anagalous nature of the characters, as some appear to be only slightly modified versions of their DC counterparts, like Princess Power, who is drawn like Wonder Woman in a different outfit (indeed, so brazen is the appropriation that at the climax, Nighthawk gradually turns into Batman for a couple of panels before slowly turning back into a character roughly shaped like Batman).
I've long enjoyed Aaron's Morrison-like, bombastic approach to the Avengers as a team and his over-the-top storytelling—I'm still reading nine volumes later, after all, so I never lost track of it like I did other Marvel titles I was enjoying, like the very strong Amazing Spider-Man by Nick Spencer or Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk—and this has been, in many ways, my favorite run of the team that I've read so far (Or, perhaps, tied with Johnathan Hickman's run; I don't know, it's not really a competition or anything).
That said, this was actually something of a slog to read through, in part because of the rigid structure—issues #2 through #6 are each solo stories starring a member of the Squadron, with short back-up in which the Avengers gradually assemble to battle them in the last issue—and the lengths Aaron goes to write the Squadron as twisted, although sometimes just slightly so, Justice Leaguers. The bulk of these stories involve DC-izing the Marvel analogues in ways that are cute, clever or sometimes just tedious (Superman analogue Hyperion has Peter Parker as his Jimmy Olsen-like pal, for example, and The Hulk talks in Bizarro-speak), but, because they are the villains, this also means making them darker, and so some of the stories just seem like spectacularly bad takes of DC characters. Of, it should be noted, the sort that DC itself occasionally publishes in it's out-of-continuity stuff. Marvel's version of a Superman that kills, then, or a Wonder Woman who is the universe's ultimate take-no-prisoners warrior is just as tedious as DC's versions, and Aaron doesn't seem to be saying anything about the wrongness of those takes, as much as he's having fun playing with them.
The story opens in a world in which there are no Avengers; they haven't been shipped off to another "universe" run by Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld here, they've all just forgotten that they were Avengers, exactly. How this is accomplished is revealed at the climax, sort of. Mephisto, who Aaron has been using as his overarching, usually behind-the-scenes villain throughout his entire run, has gifted Coulson with an infernal version of the reality-warping cosmic cube, with which Coulson remade the world into its current topsy-turvy state, in which there were never any Avengers team, because the presence of the Squadron Supreme would have made them superfluous.
Unfortunately, this new world is mostly made in ad hoc fashion; Coulson, say, doesn't break Rick Jones' radio on the night before the day unlike any other, for example, nor does he stop the various founding Avengers from becoming superheroes. The Avengers are all more-or-less extant in this world, they were just never a superhero team. As to why Reed Richards and company never got bombarded with cosmic rays or Peter Parker bitten by a radioactive spider, things that should have nothing to do with whether or not there are any Avengers or a faux JLA in the Marvel Universe, it's not addressed. Don't think too much about it, Heroes Reborn seems to insist at every turn.
For some reason, Blade remembers the old world where he was an Avenger, though, and he sets about trying to find and assemble a team—Captain America, Thor, Echo, the now toddler Starbrand and Black Panther—while we get a series of Justice League pastiche adventures which show us what this new world is like to some degree. At the end, the two teams fight and obviously the Avengers win, perhaps in part because the Squadron members gradually start to realize their world is wrong, and they end up fighting to hold on to it even if their belief in it begins to flail or fade.
McGuinness, inker Mark Morales and color artist Matthew Wilson are responsible for the first and final chapters, as well as the short bac-ups featuring the Avengers being awoken member by member. Issues #2-#7 of the Heroes Reborn miniseries, or the second through seventh chapters of the trade, are each drawn by a different artist, so Aaron's Avengers remains as visually all over the map as usual. Of those contributing, the James Stokoe-drawn and -colored Doctor Spectrum, the Green Lantern analogue presented as a only slightly more asshole-ish version of Geoff Johns' take on Hal Jordan, is the most notable in its style and quality.
That story, given it psychedelic coloring, rainbow-narration box and cosmic-scrambling of familiar character, recasting Rocket Raccoon as a Lobo-esque bounty hunter with a big, honking, wooden gun named Groot, is one of the more fun of the pastiches. The Hyperion story focuses less on the character as a Superman who uses lethal force than on the new universe in general (although it's notable that there's a love triangle involving the analogues of "The Trinity," just as Morrison wrote among his "Eatrth-2" analogues of the same characters in his Crime Syndicate JLA: Earth 2). That's followed by a Blur story which reads like a Mark Millar or Morrison issue of The Flash during Wally West's time in the title role (and obviously owes a bit to Mark Waid as well), the Stokoe-drawn Spectrum story, a Nighthawk story which asks what if Batman was as mentally ill as he sometimes seems and sends the character into an Arkham-ized Ravencroft, a tale of the hard-drinking Power Princess who bears more than a passing resemblance to The Boys' Queen Maeve.
After the solo stories, the whole team assembles for the climactic battle, which also involves Coulson and "The Hellahedron!'
At the end, the world is righted, the Squadron find themselves scattered in a new world and haunted by their memories of their old world—I guess here is where the title comes to play, as like the Marvel characters loaned to Image so long ago they were temporarily in a remade world and then find themselves thrust back into the one they originally came from and ultimately belong to—and there's a hint of a big, strange threat from Mephisto.
I'm sure this was a blast for Aaron to write. I wish it was half as much fun to actually read, though.
Much less cool are the jobs of the poor grunts who have to don special protective gear and get to work sawing up those giant corpses and, worst of all, cleaning up up their intestines. Kafka Hibino has long dreamed of joining the Defense Force—and, in fact, made a childhood promise to his friend Mina that they would both do so—but he's long languished on a clean-up crew, while she's gone on to become a captain....and to grow distant from him.
When a new, young recruit with dreams like those Kafka used to have joins his clean-up crew, his desire to join the Defense Force is reignited and, despite his relatively advanced age of, let's see here, late thirties, he decides to give it one more shot.
This time things will be different than the previous times he's tried out, though. Mainly because while he was in the hospital, a bizarre creature floated up to him, said "I found you," and then crawled inside his mouth and down his throat, transforming him into a monster...though a more-or-less human-sized one. Kafka is now on the Defense Force's hit list—designated Kaiju Number Eight—although he's able, with some concentration, to resume his human form and hide his new, monstrous side.
Of course, his new side has certain advantages, like super-strength, and during the dangerous field test to join the Defense Force, when the various would-be recruits are sent into combat with an actual kaiju captured for just this purpose, something goes wrong, and Kafka must become a kaiju in order to save the day.
That's where the first volume of Naoya Matsumoto's new manga series ends, leaving whether or not Kafka will be able to be fight kaiju as a kaiju or not, and just what the hell happened to make him one, until the next volume to be resolved.
The world-building, relatively simple as it is, thanks to Japan's generations of giant monster-fighting film and TV franchises, is fast, efficient and convincing, and Matsumoto wrings genuine tension and drama out of the hero's strange plight.
I can't wait to see what happens next, which is, of course, the ideal state of mind to be in when one finishes reading the first volume of a new manga series.
Later in the volume, during a play in which Komi and Tadano play opposite of one another and her character tells his "I like you," Manbagi says she gets it now.
This is only a terrible turn of events for one reason, of course. It's been obvious since the start that there is something special between Komi and Tadano and that they will end up together at series end. The fun thing about Manbagi making for a love triangle—well, a "like" triangle, I suppose—was that it went a way towards delaying the inevitable. If that complication has been resolved already, though, it seems we're one step closer to the eventual, inevitable conclusion of the series and I, for one, am most definitely not ready for that.
Marvel Action: Chillers (IDW Publishing) Unstoppable Wasp writer Jeremy Whitley teams with several different artists—all great ones—for a Halloween-appropriate series of unlikely team-ups, all of which build to a big climax in which a half-dozen heroes face off against Iron Dracula. It's a really fun book to read, even in January, long after the official close of the spooky season it was created to coincide with. Whitley also has a pretty neat idea for how to deal with werewolves in a non-lethal manner, a theory developed and tested against Capwolf by a teenage Elsa Bloodstone. More here.
Otto: A Palindrama (Dial Books for Young Readers) Jon Agee, known for his picture books as much as his love of wordplay, makes his graphic novel debut with this impressive book in which every line of dialogue, every name, every big of incidental writing in the background is a palindrome. Structurally, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, but that structure is mainly to set-up a seemingly never-ending series of palindrome gags. More here.
Shang-Chi By Gene Luen Yang Vol. 2: Shang-Chi Vs. The Marvel Universe (Marvel Entertainment) I spent enough time on the message boards of the late-nineties and early '00s listening to people talk about super-comics that it's often easy to imagine what a fan's discussion of certain kinds of books might be like. In the case of the second collection of writer Gene Luen Yang's new Shang-Chi ongoing, it's easy to imagine Marvel fans decrying the Yang's strategy of marking out territory for the character in the Marvel Universe through a series of team-ups, many of which involve him coming into conflict and defeating or at least not losing to a more popular, better-known Marvel character. Can Shang-Chi defeat the Thing in hand-to-hand combat? Sure. Can he take down Iron Man, even if the old Shellhead is snug inside his super-armor? Of course he can. What about Thor; surely Shang-Chi can't go toe-to-toe with the Mighty Thor, can he? Read on! There's an artificiality, maybe even a cheapness to the strategy, but, well, I can't say it doesn't work; after all, the main reason I picked this volume up, after the rather disappointing first volume, was that I wanted to see how Yang and artist Dike Ruan had the hero interacting with other heroes.
REVIEWED:
Two volumes in, I think the book is a disappointment, and Yang seems to be slumming, his talents somewhat wasted in making a D-List Marvel character into a B-List one to meet potential demand created by the movie business, but the second volume is better than the first which is, at least, a good trajectory for a book to be on.
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