9/02/15

MIRACLEMAN #1 (#17) — And so we come to the golden age of Our Neil. As-quick-as-possible context-check since this issue for all intents and purposes is a straight-up reprint: Before Marvel finally started reprinting these, I had read the first half of the Moore run but had no idea how it ended and was therefore riveted to finally pick up the tale; thought that it definitely started relatively coasting a bit in the early double-digits before landing hard there in the final three issues with Totelben, #16 in particular standing out as one of the strongest capstones in all of Moore’s various acclaimed runs; aaaand I’ve consumed pretty much I think just about everything Gaiman has ever pumped out over the years, comics, prose, got the Mirrormask DVD on the shelf, still dissolve into a complete puddle any time anybody even mentions that Helena Bonham Carter clone they got to play the T.A.R.D.I.S. on “The Doctor’s Wife,” etc., and like any regular consumer of monthly periodicals such as yourself, I have also been an ardent supporter of Mark Buckingham’s work on FABLES for all this time as well, All Of Which Is To Say that I was very very interested to see what trouble these gentlemen were getting into over on this title back when good old Our Neil was just hitting his stride on that “The Doll’s House” arc of SANDMAN in regular monthlies. And but let’s also all together just take a minute to appreciate how horrific of a following gig this really was, one of the worst of all time. Think Romita Sr. crashing in to Ditko’s situation back in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #39 or, exponentially more terrifying later on, easing the reader through the passing of the greatest run of all time with FANTASTIC FOUR #103 (we shall not even speak his name but to say King), or certainly Alan Brennert found himself in an unenviable situation when tasked with the scripting of DAREDEVIL #192, Klaus Janson’s surely-much-appreciated continued presence notwithstanding. These monster runs, Ditko & Kirby giving birth to Spidey and Marvel’s First Family and Miller showing us just how great Daredevil could be, what Alan Moore & Leach/Davis/Totelben/et al. accomplished in those first sixteen issues of MIRACLEMAN deserves to be spoken of with the exact same reverence and awe. This run was monumental and cannot be overstated and actually not fully appreciated unless you were someone who was tweaking out at the newsstand waiting for the next installment and then running home to your tiny one room to take down some more speed and find out what happened next just as fast as you could, a sub-set of consumer that Warren Ellis has gone on record as not only claiming membership in but defining and of which I was just a bit too young to partake in sadly. But the much-discussed deconstructionism tendencies of the mid-eighties, applying actual laws of physics and even realistic characterization to Silver-Age-inspired insanity, all of that business that was supposed to have caught critical mass in hallowed 1986, it actually got started with a dream of flying in 1981 first composed by the at-the-time reigning word fountain in all of comics, who then a few years later handed the keys to Olympus to his protégé, a young tousle-haired thirty-year-old with only a couple of DC titles under his belt that would eventually stand out among others as shining examples of what a line for mature readers should look like when they figured out to call such a thing Vertigo three entire years later.

So, though. The beauty of this issue, this new beginning, is that if you know all of that and are turning the pages with baited breath (accrued and magnified all these years later, even) to see how exactly Gaiman/Buckingham/D’Israeli/Klein rose to the formidable challenge or but also if you have no idea about any of that and someone just put this issue in your hands and said, “You must read this,” it will just about hit you in the same way. All of the framing craziness is in the recap but actually barely creeps in on the actual reading experience. We’re a couple of years later and four pilgrims are making their way up thousands and thousands of steps to the peak of Olympus to seek an audience with our eponymous hero to quote pray. This story isn’t about Michael Moran or Miracleman and really almost isn’t even about the pilgrims, it’s about this new world that we’re in, the Golden Age, and their journey, their climb. It’s all about getting acclimated to the new rhythms of this story that resound almost the same as what’s gone before but with new harmonic overtones unlike anything we’ve seen thus far. And even in this world of seemingly limitless hope, there are still surprises. All told, while Buckingham’s art is suitably grandiose and majestic, the plot of this parable appears on the surface relatively sparse and plain, owing a linear and thematic debt to Chaucer, while still communicating to the reader that we have journeyed to an entirely new place never glimpsed before in all of comics, not even in this very title that has been so groundbreaking up until now. This world has changed and will never be the same and we are only with each and every turn of the page just beginning to learn what sort of realm in which we find ourselves. And the story is only beginning . . .

GRANT MORRISON’S 18 DAYS #3  — Well. An all-flashback issue to the birth of our antagonist is certainly something that I didn’t in any way expect here. But it works. It’s certainly a pretty creepy deal, the specifics of the birth that I won’t divulge here. But this was actually probably a pretty necessary call, as it has seemed like kind of a weird set-up in the first two issues, how unbalanced it is, like Arjuna’s crew is clearly on the side of the “good guys” and Duryodhana has very much been cast as the villain thus far, so it is interesting to rewind all the way back to check out the horrifying circumstances of his birth, showing what a loyal great guy Bheema is along the way at no extra charge. This is a reasonably engrossing series that seems to be still just barely getting started. Isn’t the whole deal supposed to be Krishna explaining all the hidden truths of the universe to Arjuna out in the middle of the battlefield right before the battle erupts? I’m not making that up, that’s THE BHAGAVAD GITA, right? This book is just going to blow up here at some point, but it’s quite compelling all along the way already.

CASANOVA: ACEDIA #4 — All right, this is a lovely and charming issue of something, but is has so little to do with LUXURIA and GULA, it might as well be a different series. Hooray for artistic growth? I mean, I get that this is a flashback starring the guy who’s Casanova’s* boss in the new timeline, but that’s just a pretty strange move for the final issue of an arc. This is the final issue of the arc? I don’t know, I don’t want to be one of those cliché “His shit was better back when, man,” sort of guys, I seldom ever am, we all know the back half of The Beatles discography is clearly the stronger situation, but over here, this is just scanning as one more book Fraction is knocking out in between banging out television noir erotica for Chaykin to draw all beautiful-like or of course the deep time-stoppin’ orgasm insanity going down with that Chipper, as opposed to back when, those first two volumes of CASANOVA, when it was readily apparent to one and all that dude was like cutting open the veins on his wrist and pouring that into the ink they used to print the comics. All that green and blue was Fraction-blood! And those were some of my favorite comics ever. These are certainly still good. Bá shows up and knocks the lights out on the main feature. This one’s just not giving me an extra-dimensional six-fingered death-punch like the old shit used to. Man. Still loving the Chabon business, though. The ? & the Mysterians answer was disco perfection. Maybe give us more than three to five pages of this one of these days.

PROVIDENCE #4 — All right, I liked this one better than last issue. I don’t know if it was the more rural horror or what, but this one sat a little bit better with me. It just felt a little bit more old school, or maybe the lead wasn’t quite so detestable? Whatever the case, it was a nice little jolt of the scary business. And even though we ventured far away from the streets of the city, Burrows continues to drop the Gibbons compositional greatness throughout. Strong storytelling work throughout.

PLUTONA #1 — ooooohh, Jeff Lemire, you are so good. I certainly never doubted that this would be another great one, and that has already proven to be the case. Emi Lenox shows up with a style perfectly suited to chronicle our middle-school-aged characters who have stumbled upon the body of our eponymous heroine by issue’s end. There’s a very cool Spielbergian going-about-the-regular-business-of-growing-up vibe running throughout the issue that grounds this whole thing and is no doubt going to make for very compelling characterization going forward. Fans of DESCENDER, TRILLIUM, SWEET TOOTH, get on board now. Lemire is still right at it.

8house #3: KIEM — Well, no surprise, but Brandon Graham does it again again again. Of course, a massive amount of credit must be heaped upon Xurxo G. Penalta, who produces very finely rendered full color art on 30 stunning pages that looks like it took him a very nearly Nate-Powell level of time/detail/tightly-focused-insanity to accomplish. But this is yet another glorious edition of the more European mode of hard science-fiction that Graham has been perfecting these past few years, this time based on the exploits of a soldier who is projected into the reanimated corpse of her twin who has been shot far into space to the crucial place where he needs to be. Lots of space in the pages and room for the story to breathe, so we’re just getting started here, but you can take a bath in this art. And of course, if you love MULTIPLE WARHEADS or Graham & co’s take on PROPHET or any of the other 8house fare or the NONPLAYER reference made you crinkle your ears, of course you can’t afford to miss this one.

JUPITER’S CIRCLE #6 — This one started out like great fun and certainly seems to be laying some overall compelling groundwork for the shitstorm that eventually erupts over in the main book, but that’s all macro. As an experience unto itself, this issue totally fizzled out. I mean, there’s no ending, right? Because that was an anti-ending. It was even more confusing that they made a deal about this being the end of Volume I. Huh. Issue #s 2 and 4 certainly had more resounding endings. I guess we’re supposed to be all unsettled about all the horrible things that happen much later. It is pretty cute how pumped Millar is about Skyfox being the best character he’s ever created in the same column where people are like, “I love what you’ve done with the Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark archetype.” Not exactly breaking new ground here. Good fun, though, to be certain.

BOMBSHELLS #2 — Well, this one might actually be better than the first issue. The advancement of the Diana plot was certainly very compelling. I love the anyone-can-show-up vibe. Why not cue Mera? Of course, this philosophy plays out in spades there at the end when I was expecting the action to cut to Gotham and it most resoundingly did not. Those surprise guest stars are acceptable! And I feel like a fool, but all last issue and this one, I kept being like, “Okay, that’s Kara, but who’s the other one?” This book was cool enough when it was just the three originally announced leads, but certainly the more the merrier.

THORS #3 — The art quality has seriously plummeted from the first issue. And these guys are both so talented on their own (and when they’re not on deadline, I suppose). Aaron’s script certainly keeps things humming along, but I’m not quite as thrilled about the whole deal as I was after #1. Bring on another TO BE CONCLUDED . . .

SILVER SURFER #014 — Man, reading this, you almost get the sensation that that whole SECRET WARS universe-erasing situation that Hickman and his buddies have been up to lately was actually done in service of Slott & Allred’s terrific idea about what to do with Norrin & Dawn next over on this title right here. It’s interesting that Slott scripts Dawn to bring up Utopia early on because I was certainly picking up on that vibe, the whole divide-and-conquer thing. And the split-page at the end seems to bear that out on some level. Is Dawn really the true power source? Some kind of Celestial Madonna situation? Are still allowed to even use that title? This is certainly one for the ages. Hey, Silver Surfer blows up Galactus! What more d’ya want out of your mighty Marvel magazine periodical?!?

DAREDEVIL #018 — Class act. That is certainly how you do it. I actually had no idea that this run was coming to an end until last issue, so this whole deal just about took me by surprise, but of course, it was quality all the way. And it had all the things that we DD fans want most. Matt got to dress up in the mask of a dead man and go WHAP!WHAP!WHAP! on Wilson Fisk’s face/body and be repeatedly smacked upon in return, as is the nature of their relationship. He got to smell his friend’s newly remissive body chemistry, classic Murdock-style good news. He got shut down, if not actually disbarred (I think?), and but most of all, his best friend told him exactly what makes him such a good and great Matt, which is all any of us could ever ask for. Cue that sudden inexplicable in-costume diving-out-into-the-middle-of-the-night double-splash. Because it doesn’t have to make sense. We’re just grateful to have been taken along for the ride. Misters Waid, Samee, Rodriguez, Wilson, Caramagna, and Martin and Rivera and everybody else, thank you so much for making ol’ Hornhead fun again and still as great as he ever was. One of the greatest runs in a noble tradition of magnificent runs on the character.

*or whatever his name is now