Tag Archives: face down in the mainstream

Facedown in the Mainstream: Dungeons & Dragons,#0

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Rogers, Irvine, Di Vito, and Bergting.

Years ago, when the Vom Marlowe was but a tot, she played D&D. And before anyone leaps down her throat, she would like to be very firm and forestall complaints from all and sundry gameboys. Yes, it was D&D. Not AD&D. Played from a skimpy pamphlet and some funny looking dice we had to mail order. So there.

Gaming creds out of the way (no, I still cannot remember what the devil Thaco is, thank you kindly), I shall move onto the actual comic.

This is not a good comic.  I shall admit this upfront.  It has a dragon on the cover (or at least on my cover, I understand there are several).  The human hero has shoulder muscles the size of a Toyota Prius, the colors are a tad murky, the ink is a bit thick, the plot is simple, and the jokes are silly.  And yet…  And yet…

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Continue reading →

Face Down In the Mainstream: What if? Astonishing X-Men is Astonishingly Good

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What if Ord Resurrected Jean Grey instead of Colossus?  Written by Jim McCann, Art by David Yardin, Ibraim Roberson, and Kai Spannuth.  February 2010 One-shot.  (It contains two other stories, but I don’t care one way or another about them, so I’m leaving them out.)

I admit that I didn’t read the story about Ord resurrecting Colossus (whenever that was…), and I have only vague white-noise understanding of the main plot points here, but it didn’t matter.  I’ve gotten a certain amount of flack for failing to understand continuity plot points in the past, and I maintained then and maintain now that if comics are to get new readers, they’re going to have to accept that some folks won’t have read all 80-gazillion crossover title storylines, and that a good, a strong comic will clue in new readers or find other ways to engage them besides the longer plot throughlines.

And this comic is a perfect example.

We start off with a lovely page explaining the set-up of the one-shot story.  In our world (the main continuity world), Colossus was resurrected instead of Jean Grey, and he united the X-Men.  In this alternate world, it works differently.  Dun-dun-dun.

I’m going to mangle this, because I have bare-minimum knowledge, but it seems to be:  The planet Breakworld has a prophecy about a world-destroying force tied to mutants.  Sensibly, they’d rather not be destroyed, and this ends up in some sort of complex involvement with Jean Grey and Phoenix and the X-Men.  And Emma Frost thinks that Jean Grey is going to kill the planet and–look, it’s all too complicated, I’m sorry.  There’s a baddy named Cassandra who looks like one of those old pickleheadjar people, and a dude/lady named Ord with a white sausage wrapped around their head who they’re interrogating.  Just go with it.

Let the plot flow about your heart like a river, it’s relaxing.  Promise.

So, we’re following this inner X-Men fight.  Look at this composition:

See how the colors shift from warm, muted tones to icy gray at the bottom?  The figures are lovely, well drawn with interesting poses and good features, but it’s the colors that caught my attention.

While there is linework here, it’s in a very painterly style.  The colors of the lines shift with the colors of the painting–in the top panel, the lines are soft, warm browns but at the bottom, there is cool gray and even white.  Lovely stuff.

That’s a pretty obvious example, and is the one that first caught my eye, but as we move through the story there are other examples.  Flashes of cool gray taking over everything, dark icy eyes turning into fiery hot flames when Phoenix starts possessing Emma.  I wish I could scan the whole darn thing, but there’s those pesky copyright issues, and besides, I want everybody and their cousin to rush out and buy this thing.  (Go, I shall wait right here until you’re done.  Have it in hand?  Good.)

So in the plot, Emma holds hands with three hot blonde schoolgirls in cute preppy schoolgirl skirts, as if this was a twisted porno.  They all channel the Phoenix, and then the power turns the pretty girls into zombie looking corpses.  At which point….

The girl heroine is awoken by her plucky dragon!  And my heart soared.  This is what comics is about folks.  Awesome girl, plucky dragon, great art, cool things happening.  Check out the more subtle color shifts in this one.  We start with darkness, but it’s tinted with the warmth of the sky.  The girl is soft brown and her dragon is soft red, and it’s all sweet and warmth, slowly awakening…and then, as they encounter the horror, the colors shift to pale grays.  Neat!

Also, check out the beautiful painted slouchy socks next to the harsh metal surfaces.  Really, really well done, I thought.

So, this being a comic, Kitty runs to check out the problem, Jean Grey awakens, and there is a big battle with Emma Frost, who is possessed by the Phoenix.  There’s some awesome shots of Jean and Emma fighting, and Jean’s pink power makes for a wonderfully feminine power touch to the fierceness and the battle.  But Jean and Wolverine and the X-Men can’t fight her completely, and Kitty…  Well, let me show you.

She rips out her heart.

It’s gorey and fierce and wonderful.  I was talking a bit about the heroines of comics in my WonderWoman pants rant, and one of the problems I see is that the women aren’t allowed to be as fierce in their defense of worlds as I would like.  Now, I’m not saying that, oh violence is hunky dorey per se, but I am glad to see that in this case, a young woman, with the help of her female mentor, did what needed doing to take out a planet-killing monster.  This particular comic is a battle of females, and it was beautifully done.  Kitty looks powerful and good, strong and young and feminine, saving the world.

There’s a kind of warmth and sweetness in the painting of Kitty.  Powerful, violent, but sweet and tough.  The expression and curves reminds me of the best of the Pepper Project series.

Which means, naturally, that she dies.  Freaking bad villains and their stupid power backlashes, dammit.  (Since it’s the Phoenix that killed her, I’m just going to assume that she gets to come back.  Don’t disabuse me of this notion, OK?)  Anyway, the whole comic really has a lovely feel to it, a warmth and intensity that I deeply enjoyed.  I’m sure that since it’s a painting style that it must have taken a gazillion hours to do, but I hope that more like these come out.  I’d buy them in a heartbeat.  Highly, highly recommended, even if you don’t know the plot.

Why do I do this to myself? the Brave & the Bold #33

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Wonder*Woman, Zatanna, and Batgirl

J. Michael Straczynski & Cliff Chang

It looked good on the stand in the Borders, I swear.  Three female superheroes, linked arm in arm, strolling over a bunch of fallen villains (including a monkey with a ray gun!).  How could I go wrong?

Well, to start off with, Wonder Woman makes yellow light explode out a man’s pants, and not in a good way.

First, I couldn’t tell which direction the yellow stream is even supposed to be going.  And what’s with the old duffer’s flying trucker cap?  Isn’t it enough to be disrobing one person per panel with unfortunately pee-yellow light explosions?

Grand Ballroom, this way to the yellow pants!  It’s like a Dr Suess, except not funny.

Anyway.  Zantanna pops by via a mirror and tells Wonder Woman she wants a ladies night out.  No, I’m not kidding.  Eight minutes later we watch Batgirl capture some purse-snatchers.  Purse-snatchers!  The cover promised me monkeys with ray-guns, dammit!

As Batgirl leaves the scene, we get this:

I stared at this page and tried to figure out what the heck is happening.  Finally, I decided that her bike flies between panel 4 and 5, although I don’t know why.  Apparently so we can see Wonder Woman hanging onto the middle of the bike?  I don’t even know.  Where the hell is my armed monkey, dammit?

Zantanna and Wonder Woman convince Batgirl that even supes need to relax or the stress puts them off their game.  They need to go dancing to relax!  I’m not making this up.  By now, I have resigned myself to never seeing the ray-guy monkey and to reading lame jokes about shoes, and in that respect, I am not disappointed.  Alas.

When the get to the club, Batgirl doesn’t dance, because her shoes are too tight, but she doesn’t want them magicked because her dad bought them for her.  Aw.  Or something.  Besides, no one asked her dance!

Whereupon the handsome fella below gets hit in the back of the head with a pink paintball and the action resumes and the monkey appears and–!  But no.  I’m afraid not.

Instead, as you can see, there’s some pathetic hipster dancing with a guy who might as well be wearing gold disco chains.  Blah, blah, blah dancing.  Blah, blah, blah girls eating fries in a diner.  Blah, blah, blah heartwarming talk about Batgirl’s dear old dad.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?  When Wonder Woman starts talking about “her people” the Greeks and how they used oracles as a kind of pretechnology super-computer for getting intel, I just wanted this stupid comic over.  I wasn’t getting my monkey, I wasn’t getting girl-group fighting, I got a comic book with family scrapbooking and a cheap plot twist at the end that made me roll my eyes.  You know it’s bad when the most interesting thing in the comic is an ad that appears to be for puffer-fish.

Face Down in the Mainstream, Illustrated Edition

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This is my first Face Down in the Mainstream post here at our new home, and I assume there are some new readers.  This column chronicles my attempts to find a mainstream comic to read and enjoy.  Said comic must be currently running, not an older trade, and ideally focus on female superheroes, although I’m not going to ignore the more traditional male heroes.  I read comics more for art than words, and I frequently read manga in Japanese without ever knowing what the words mean. Thus far my favorites have been Detective Comics Batwoman and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man.

For the first column in our new digs, I wanted to do something a little special, but as you will see, my options were limited.  But I did what I could.

So, I crafted a whole bunch more pages, but I won’t bore you all further.  The truth is, this first page is about as much as you need to know about how I felt about this comic.

But I do try to do a good job on these little reviews, so here’s the usual textual explanation with images yanked from the comic as examples.  This comic has a nice explanation of the story-up-til this point in the front, and then leaps directly into the action, which is an X-men team battling a giant purple robot.  Despite the purpleness of the robot and the colorful nature of the X-men costumes and faces, this comic is rather bland.  Sure, you have people in  green and yellow tights, but the overall color scheme is simple and in many places, so oversaturated with neutrals that the colors of the suits don’t even pop.

The jungle scene in particular disappointed me.  There was plenty of green and blue, but not much was done with that.  All very flat, alas, and no interesting ink patterns to spice things up.

Here’s a particularly good example of what I mean:

It’s not bad, is it?  It’s just overwhelmingly dull.  A shame.

The story itself chugs along OK.  People do things, other people react, villains plot to take over the world, the X-men try to make sure that the emotionally tender member of their team is OK, and so on.  It’s just—  I didn’t really care one way or the other.

I found the twist at the end utterly predictable, and I’m pretty sure I know where the character foreshadowing is going.  The cute picture of Rogue on the cover, holding the guts of the giant robot, didn’t really come about much in the comic, but it didn’t really not either.  I mean, they do battle the robot and she does win, but there isn’t much struggle to get the victory.  The emotional reactions don’t last much past a single panel (except for Kitty’s, which was caused by events in a previous issue), so it’s hard to take any of them very seriously.  There’s not much sacrifice or bonding or character development, and while the external plot does move forward, I’m not finding any themes or depths.  It’s a villain who wants to take over the world  using giant robots, you know?

So anyway.  Not bad, not good, rather dull.  I’ve got my eye on a few new likely looking suspects in the rack at my local Borders, but first I’ll need to shovel my way out.  *sigh*

Face Down in the Mainstream: Astonishing X-Men, Grumpy Vom is Grumpy

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Astonishing X-Men #30 by Ellis, Bianchi, et al.

I picked this up because the art looked cool. And, you know, the art is cool. The inks are interesting, with washes as well as lines and a very grimy palette of off green and brown and blue. The anatomy is well-done overall. The facial expressions, while not perfect, are realistic. There are some clear artistic patterns like large pouty lips. There are attempts to make the layout interesting by using weapons as layout lines. See?

Pretty, isn’t it?

But it was not enough.

For one thing, the art is very realistic. It’s not picture perfect (blue lion mutants with glasses don’t actually exist), but it’s styled to be real. The artist likes to include things like red lines in the eyes, to show the craziness of the villain or spittle flying to show that people are shouting.

Unfortunately, the craziness comes off more like caaaaaaaarrrraaaaaziness and the spittle just seems sort of gross. The story is just–irritating, and the art could be so awesome, and yet it doesn’t all mesh the way a visually told story should.

Instead of making me look forward to more or compensating, the art just reinforced those parts of the story that pissed me off. The basic plot is that the X-Men have found the source of some fake mutants. Their ex-fellow, Forge, has gone bastshit (as one does) and started to make fake mutants to combat evil warriors from an alternate dimension. They’ve denned Forge in his lair in order to stop him.

And Forge proceeds to act like a cartoon villain, right down to the rolling red eyes and the spit and the dramatic gestures and weird poses. It’s sad. I actually felt bad for the guy.

Especially when they cut off his leg and then laugh about it. I mean, jeez, people. Aren’t you the heroes? Wasn’t this guy your old pal?

(And maybe Forge really is a terrible person worthy of laughter, but really, people. Cutting off someone’s leg and then laughing is just bad form. Tacky! Yes, he had some mutant-dampener in it, but I don’t care. Show a little respect!)

The X-Men battle the fake-o mutants with no trouble. Forge wanted to lure the X-men into dealing with the cause of the interdimensional warriors by mounting an attack via a large cube (as one does). The X-Men tell Forge off, then whack off his leg in response. Which is gratitude for you, I guess.

You’d think, after the random amputation and cracks about how dumb/crazy Forge is to believe that the interdimensional warriors are a Threat To Humanity As We Know It, that they’d all just leave. But no. The blue lion guy has his girlfriend nuke the place from orbit, just to be sure. Which blows up the special cube and therefore through it to the interdimensional warrior scout dudes’ homeworld, which, blue lion now explains, is probably toast.

Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? I mean, clearly Forge was blood-thirsty and crazy for trying to send a couple of mutant warriors through to make sure no one messed with our Earth. So much better to just toss in a great big old world destroying bomb without bothering to make contact.

Face Down in the Mainstream: Spider-man!

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Marvel Adventures Spider-man (ISSN: 1548-5056) #55
Tobin, Camagni, and Sotocolor

Geekery question: The title page lists Jacopo Camagni as pencils, but doesn’t list any further artists besides Sotocolor for color. Does anyone know who does the inks? Is it Camagni?

I admit, I’m a little leery of Spider-man comics. Between the truly terrifying Spider-man lip glosses (who would put lipstick from spider-human mutations on their lips? Marvel, get a grip!) and my short but rage inducing brush with Amazing Spider-man’s innards, I was nervous when I got a suggestion last week from Tucker Stone that I should check out a Spider-man comic.

Now, usually I shop for my comics at the Borders, and thus was the case for this week’s haul. I dutifully pawed over the shelves, looking for the correct iteration of Spidy that was recommended. Fantastic? Awesome? Something-something Spider-man…I’d forgotten my list. Ah! I saw a fetching looking number with old skool inks and a limited pallete cover, and thought: Ah-ha! This must be it. I read the first few pages to check. Cute art: check. Funny: check.

I hauled it home and read it on the porch, with the dog at my feet, and laughed and laughed.

It turned out that I’d bought the wrong comic, but that’s OK. I’ll take my list with me next time.

Now, to re-iterate briefly the purpose of my column, since I haven’t been as clear as I should be. I’m a comic-loving manga addict, who has enjoyed some American comics in the past (Sandman), but who has never found and been addicted to a mainstream, superhero comic, despite knowing about and loving both superheroes and comic art of many types. I’m looking for a comic that stars a woman, that’s currently running, and that is awesome. Manga often run into the double digits or more (a volume is roughly a year’s worth collected) and I’ve hopped into the middle of many a manga, so I’m pretty good at catching on to what happens in a regularly told story. Some American comics are, shall we say, designed to require the person reading to collect all four or whatever, and so sometimes lose me. I think this is dirty pool, especially if the comic isn’t honest about it. I’m looking to fall in love, not have a long run of terrifying blind dates whose only redeeming quality is that I can tell my friends about them at our next bar night. /too long explanation of column digression

But back to Spidy.

This comic is hilarious and awesome. I had no idea who anyone was, besides Peter Parker, but I caught on fast, and had a rollicking good time. This comic has some of the best body language art I’ve ever seen. Check out the first page:
The principal is so menacing and Peter is such a doofus, the way he’s leaning back but still trying to defend himself, and the girl in the background is so sulky teenager. How is this not awesome?

Plus, the squirrels! Hee!

The comic has a great story format, too. It starts at the end, the time that Peter and Gwen are getting into trouble at school. Then it skips to the beginning of the day and tells us how they got there. It’s not new, but it’s clever and fun.

The start of Peter’s day is shown below. One of the things that I love about this comic is how wonderful the art is for all of the characters. It draws me in and makes me suspend my disbelief. It’s a lot easier to believe that Spidy can climb walls when his world looks so real:

The chemistry teacher is spot-on. She looks like a chemistry teacher I had once. And they really do pay attention, this artistic team, to the way people look and dress. That awful lime green is really in right now and it’s being paired with purple.

Peter’s friend, Chat, isn’t a superhero, but she’s fun and wonderful. She’s the brunette with the terrible taste in salads above.

The plot isn’t all that new: A baddie tries to kidnap Gwen, who is the daughter of a cop, and Spidy has to save her. She’s not completely helpless, though, which I appreciated. She’s the one who suggests climbing the building to get away from the cops who are radioing in their location and also tells Spidy what to do.

But what I really love about this page? After getting off the building, Gwen pulls down her skirt.

That’s what real girls do. We don’t leave our fannies exposed to the air for random fanboys to gawp at our panties. We pull down our skirts, so we don’t flash anyone and so we’re not cold. I loved this, because it’s so natural and so real. Gwen is a great girl and I really like her. What the realness of the comic allowed me to do is see her as a real person. At one point, when she’s running up some stairs, I thought Hey, cute boots. The chances of me thinking that in most comics I’ve read so far are nil. (Maybe Batwoman, but that would be in a Hey cute fetish boots way, which is not the same.)

Removing the voyeuristic sleaze that I always seem to feel when I read these comics was a great relief. There’s a kind of internal guard that always remains up. When I get together with just women, I relax my guard a bit. Reading this comic was a bit like that. I had some trust that this cool Gwen and this cool Chat wouldn’t suddenly be tied up in weird racy costumes and semi-tortured for the titillation of the reader. No, they’re characters who the writers respect, not objects. I found it relaxing.

The plot goes as plots go: Spidy gets to confront the baddie, with a bit of help, and there’s a cool fight. Then he has to go back to school and face the music. We wind up at the principal’s office at the end, and Spidy is just a kid again, getting in trouble for something the adults don’t understand. It’s fun and funny and great action.

Highly recommended. I will be buying the next issue, and the next after that, and the next after that.

Face Down In The Mainstream: Supergirl

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Supergirl #44 October 2009

Gates, Igle, Sibal

In my relentless quest to find interesting and readable mainstream comics that have female characters in plots that don’t make me reel back in horror, I picked up Supergirl. Oddly, I thought that since the comic was named after her, it would feature her character.

Just goes to show that I am ignorant about comics.

The comic begins with no introduction or backstory and focuses on a strange, large, lumpy man in lavender spandex. He’s been captured by someone and he wants out. Eventually, he fights a John McCain lookalike and frees himself:

His eyes glow red and he speaks in Zapf Dingbats, so you know he’s crazy or possessed.

We switch to a scene with the Supe himself, walking with Lois Lane, who is looking dumpy and strange in loose and unattractive eighties style modular knits. There’s talk between various big dogs while Supergirl (I had to guess based on her outfit), looks left out and or pensive. Eventually, they allow her to go talk to her childhood best friend, as long as she is chaperoned by some other guy.

Meanwhile, a female reporter in Frederick’s Of Hollywood hookerwear tries to find some leads.

Supergirl fights her childhood friend and gets possessed, which you can tell by the cover of the comic and the odd overlay of purple glowy light on her face in the last panel.

That’s it, really.

Lumpy men in gross purple bodysuits and a sad, forlorn, actionless and directionless mini-superheroine.

Ugh.

Note to comic writers: Come on. Who thought this was a good idea? The heroine takes no action. She has zero growth. No initiative. Hell, she has no character! And the art sucks.