COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (4 November 2024)

For this week’s reminder, let’s go back to headshots…

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (28 October 2024)

First, some housekeeping: I’m still struggling to conciliate the blog with other commitments, but instead of going on yet another hiatus, I’m shifting into a biweekly rhythm, so the longer Thursday posts will now appear only every other week (the Monday cover compilations should continue to roll smoothly, though).

This is also the time of the year when I pick my favorite recent horror movie. Alas, for the same time-constraining reasons, I’m afraid I haven’t been keeping up with the genre as much I used to… Everyone keeps telling me The Substance and Longlegs deserve my attention, and I trust them, but I just haven’t gotten around to watching them yet. And that’s the thing: horror cinema has been gaining so much quality, popularity, and acclaim that I’m not sure I’d have much to add to the general discourse, anyway.

That said, I can’t resist the thematic pull of Halloween, so I figured instead I’ll just use these end-of-October posts to recommend less fashionable viewing alternatives, from obscure oddities to older classics. This time around, I’ll kick things off with one of the latter…

In the past, I’ve recommended the first Dr. Mabuse film (1922’s silent opus of German expressionism) and the final chapter of Fritz Lang’s trilogy (1960’s puzzle box of Cold War science fiction), so I may as well add, in case anyone was wondering, that the second entry in this gothic series about the titular evil genius, 1933’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, is also definitely worth your time. Sure, the fact that this is an early talkie means that, for every neat piece of sound design (like in the opening sequence), you also get some uneven pacing here and there, although I’d argue Lang more than makes up for this through his inventive visuals, including a number of comic book-worthy scene transitions.

While The Testament of Dr. Mabuse works perfectly fine as a self-contained thriller with original characters, I’m particularly fond of it as an epic sequel. Like its predecessor and its successor, the film follows a bunch of doomed figures in Dr. Mabuse’s orbit without really anchoring the narrative around a specific hero that we’re expected to identify with, despite the presence of the sarcastic Inspector Lohmann (from M, Lang’s masterpiece). As a result, the movies posit a decadent world without a clear counterpoint, where Mabuse isn’t so much a threat to a benign social order as a reflection of society’s darker side… That’s as far as the structural similarities go, though. Rather than rework the same beats all over again (like Hollywood tends to do), the story steams forward while recontextualizing the core concept.

At one point, during the previous film’s climactic shootout, Mabuse said: ‘I feel like a state inside of a state with which I’ve always been at war!’ Here, though, he’s no longer just an anarchic undercurrent, but the promise of fascist takeover – and it’s this, more than the super-powers, that elevate him into supervillain territory… and elevate The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, beyond a crime story, into chilling horror. Since we’re talking about a German film from 1933, it’s hard to disregard the parallel with the outside world, regardless of the makers’ intentions at the time. I suppose I also don’t have to spell out why it’s been on my mind this election season.

That’s it for this year’s film recommendation. Now, as a reminder that comics can be awesome, enjoy 20 hysterical covers with Jack Kirby’s giant monsters:

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Even more Batman movies without Batman – cult movies edition

I get a huge kick exploring various connections within pop culture, including the thematic and stylistic links between Batman comics and cinema. To be fair, many of the comics are quite open about their influences, to the point that one of the rogues, Film Freak, once crafted a whole crime spree in Gotham City around a macabre journey through movie history, including this awesome tribute to Buster Keaton:

Catwoman (v2) #59

That said, with these posts I’m normally not interested in films that are explicitly referenced in the comics, nor am I interested in films that actually include characters from the comics (so, no, I won’t be writing about Joker: Folie à Deux for now, like I did about the first picture). Instead, I’m fascinated by movies that *feel* like they belong in the same universe as the comics, to some extent, but where Batman’s actual cast is missing from the story.

Last month, I did this exercise with a bunch of blockbusters. This time around, I’m suggesting some less obvious, less well-known works (at least outside of specific cinephile circles) that different fans of the Dark Knight should appreciate…

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS (1948)

Behind this badass title hides an uneven movie, but one with a lot to recommend. It’s a visually engaging film noir that taps into much of what made this type of expressionist crime thrillers so appealing, as a deadbeat veteran kills a guy in the very first scene, setting up a paranoid manhunt which will keep him trying to escape the authorities, the criminal underworld, and his own impulses. Interestingly, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is mostly set in Hollywood’s version of postwar London, portraying a bombed-out Britain with fuel rationing, rampant contraband, and corporal punishment, thus framing the protagonist’s own doom within a whole country struggling to recover from the recent conflict. It’s also a morality tale, to some degree, exposing the danger of uncontrolled PTSD and of being let down by the system while emphasizing the need to face the consequences of your actions and to work together to improve living conditions (Burt Lancaster even threatens an antivaxxer, at one point). More than the chiaroscuro lighting or the way the movie integrates the historical background, it’s this last feature that reminds me of some Batman narratives, namely those about recidivist criminals facing their mistakes… although in their case the redemption or comeuppance tend to come in a different form:

Batman & Robin Adventures #14

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THE MAN FROM HONG KONG (1975)

Ozploitation meets kung fu cinema in this propulsive, no-holds-barred action fest about an agent from Hong Kong’s Special Branch (committedly played by Jimmy Wang Yu) who goes to Australia to supervise an extradition and ends up totally trashing the place by going up against a local crime lord. There are obvious elements of copaganda (hell, the opening credits play over footage of police force training in HK) and a clear Dirty Harry influence, but also a conspicuous James Bond vibe, as Wang effortlessly beds Aussie babes (with way more tongue action than your average 007), drives around in a convertible, and remorselessly slaughters henchmen abroad (as one guy puts it: ‘This country’s got a small population and he’s getting through them very fast!’), including the most brutal of restaurant kitchen fights (sorry, Monkey Man!).

I suppose I should illustrate this one with a martial arts scene, but I can’t resist going with a classic confrontation against racist Australians:

Detective Comics #591

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PASSWORD: KILL AGENT GORDON (1966)

The story of a CIA agent trying to break up an arms deal with the Vietcong may be hard to take seriously, but Password: Kill Agent Gordon doesn’t expect you to take anything very seriously – it’s all just a pretext to globetrot from Paris to Tripoli (and eventually end up in a Spanish bullfighting arena, for some reason) while kicking ass, getting laid, and playing with the Cold War, Bond-style. This one was put together by a Eurospy dream team: the director, stars, and composer were all involved in loads of similar pictures and they knew exactly what they were doing. In fact, what most reminds me of classic Batman yarns is the movie’s shameless commitment to providing constant thrills, no matter how irrelevant (or even contradictory) they may be to the plot… Just in the first few minutes, our hero is kidnapped, only to be revealed it was only his colleagues trying to surprise him, then someone points a gun at him, but it’s just a perfume advertisement, and shortly thereafter he gets attacked by a couple of thugs who, it turns out, got the wrong guy and actually wanted to beat up someone else! It really is like a faithful adaptation of those comics where practically every page finishes on a cliffhanger, which can lead either to a fake-out or to yet another bombastic fight scene.

Batman #220

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RUNNING OUT OF TIME (1999)

An action-packed, ultra-convoluted cat-and-mouse game between a genius super-cop and a genius super-criminal is pretty much the foundation of the best Batman comics, so if one of my favorite directors, Johnnie To, gets on the case, you bet it’s going to show up in one of these lists sooner or later… Now, this is from when To was still a bit rough around the edges, but you can already count on his signature slick mise-en-scène and deadpan humor. What’s more, he has always been great at using small touches and visuals to signal characters growing closer to each other, and his mastery is definitely in full display here, as the ‘cat’ and the ‘mouse’ progressively bond. For all the shooting, punching, and speeding cars, Running Out of Time is ultimately a love story!

Legends of the Dark Knight #185

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SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1947)

Fritz Lang directed (brilliantly) this take on the vast subgenre of psychological thrillers about women suspecting sinister things about their husbands… but instead of the typically fragile, insecure protagonist driven to the brink of madness, the awesome Joan Bennett plays the lead as ultra-determined, rational, and resourceful, taking charge of the situation even as Secret Beyond the Door gradually evolves from psychodrama to pre-giallo slasher movie. While fans of the Dark Knight are bound to appreciate the eccentricities of the twisted villain of the piece, I’m sure the main appeal will be the dark tone of the final stretch, which feels like an apotheosis of cinematic gothic horror.

Batman: Black & White (v3) #2

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TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD (1966)

Finally, this is just the sort of pulpy adventure that Batman comics occasionally went for in the Silver and Bronze Ages, with Tarzan fighting off treasure-hunting mercenaries in Mexico. Although he sports the obligatory athletic physique, this isn’t Hollywood’s iconic King of the Jungle speaking broken English, but rather an articulate, world-weary, highly intelligent version of the character (closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ creation). As a result, it’s not difficult to picture the Caped Crusader in this combination of brawns & brains, even if Tarzan is more willing to pick up a machine gun… That said, I’m not going to lie: Tarzan and the Valley of Gold definitely lacks both the high production values and the woke revisionism of 2016’s The Legend of Tarzan. Still, there’s an old-school charm to the proceedings. And while an early set piece involving a giant bottle could’ve been drawn by Dick Sprang, on the whole the movie is as gritty as it is campy, so I see it appealing to fans of the Haney-Aparo era of The Brave and the Bold.

The Brave and the Bold #107

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (21 October 2024)

This week, a tribute to the classic archetype of the pulpy mystery man!

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Just one of those weeks…

I’m sorry, this is one of those weeks when I’m just not available…

 MONDAY

Batman #110

TUESDAY

Detective Comics #320

WEDNESDAY

Detective Comics #513

THURSDAY

Detective Comics #516

FRIDAY

Detective Comics #526

SATURDAY

Detective Comics #530

SUNDAY

Batman #374

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (14 October 2024)

As the world drastically falls apart, I suppose there is little consolation left, apart from the fact that comic books can be awesome… In particular, this week’s selection pays tribute to covers that draw on the aesthetics of pulp paperbacks, movie posters, heavy metal concerts, and all the rich tradition of eerie beauty that can be found in the schlockiest corners of pop culture!

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A couple of offbeat spy novels

When I’m not compulsively watching spy shows on TV, spy fiction tends to occupy a sizeable portion of my reading time, so I thought I’d share a few impressions on a couple of novels that approach the genre in very different ways:

54

(Wu Ming, 2002)

“ITALIAN SOLDIERS!

The Slovenian people have launched an inexorable struggle against the occupying forces. Many of your comrades have already fallen in that struggle. And you will go on falling day after day, night after night, for as long as you remain tools in the hands of our oppressors, and until Slovenia is liberated!”

54 aims straight at so many of my pleasure centers: it’s a kaleidoscopic Cold War epic, largely set in the 1950s (in the titular year) and starring, among others, Hollywood actor Cary Grant, who gets assigned by MI6 with a mission to woo Marshall Tito, pulling communist Yugoslavia further to the West.

The book zooms in on a variety of perspectives and voices, from Grant’s Palm Beach mansion to a working-class bar in Bologna, linking up the stories of very different people in very different places (there are even a few chapters written from the point of view of a television set, in what is probably my favorite subplot). If at one point you’re following revolutionaries in divided Trieste, the next pages may be set in Bristol, or Moscow, or perhaps focus on the underworld of organized crime emerging in Naples under the command of Lucky Luciano (the real-life gangster whose fascinating saga was chronicled in Francesco Rossi’s impressive 1973 film named after him, which is basically Italy’s answer to The Godfather), yet it all gradually comes together.

Despite the many detours and occasional esoteric debates about postwar Italian and Balkan leftist politics (which I actually can’t get enough of!), there is plenty of overlap with the sort of material that usually pops up in Gotham Calling. After all, much of 54 tells the type of middlebrow international intrigue thriller that Cary Grant could’ve played in, halfway between Notorious and North by Northwest (of course, it helps that I can perfectly hear his specific tone and accent in every line of dialogue). The second half of the book does meander a bit, but it ultimately culminates in one hell of an action scene.

Moreover, Wu Ming – a collective of Italian writers – wonderfully capture Grant’s larger-than-life charisma and the idiosyncratic ego that must’ve come with it:

“How astonished he had been, in the late thirties, the man of the new century. Astonishment went hand in hand with awareness: who had never yearned for such perfection, to draw down from Plato’s Hyperuranium the Idea of ‘Cary Grant’, to donate it to the world so that the world might change, and finally to lose himself in the transformed world, to lose himself never to re-emerge? The discovery of a style and the utopia of a world in which to cultivate it.

Meanwhile, there was an Austrian dauber out there winning a career and followers, whose speeches hit the hearts of the Volk ‘like hammer-blows’, and a distant clang of weapons heralded the worst: the clash of two worlds.

Against the world of Cary Grant, the dauber had finally lost with dishonour, in a puddle of blood and shit.

Without a doubt, the Russian winter was partly responsible, but one thing was certain: the New Man, at least for the time being, wouldn’t be having to tuck his trousers into two-foot-high leather boots to march the goose-step.

The New Man, if there was such a thing, would be reflected in Cary Grant, the perfect prototype of Homo atlanticus: civil without being boring; moderate, but progressive; rich, certainly, even extremely rich, but not dry, and not flabby either.

Even some of the most vehement enemies of capitalism, of America, of Hollywood, were willing to concede that the baby was one thing, the bathwater quite another.

Cary Grant, born a proletarian and with a ludicrous name to boot, had defied fate with the ardour of the best exemplars of his class. He had denied himself as a proletarian, and now he was bringing dreams to millions. If one individual could achieve it, there was no reason why the rest of the working class shouldn’t have it as well.”

Although I quite like the passage above, and some of the others, on the whole I can’t say I’m entirely in love with Wu Ming’s writing. The prose tends to feel too didactic for my taste and the dialogue is full of heavy-handed (and sometimes repetitive) infodumps, with characters saying stuff like ‘as you well know’ and ‘as you have mentioned,’ or awkwardly name-dropping famous people and situations just for our benefit.

I realize not every reader will be as familiar as I am with the era’s geopolitics and regional culture, but there are many ways of conveying information… John le Carré, for instance, often had lengthy, talky briefing scenes with characters carefully explaining this sort of stuff to each other, but he always figured out witty ways of presenting things. Rather than a chore in the name of a necessary set-up, those moments of exposition were absorbing and entertaining by themselves.

And le Carré isn’t the only alternative. At one point, in a bit of tongue-in-cheek intertextuality, Cary Grant starts reading Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale and, although his view is pretty dismissive of that novel, the contrast with the quoted excerpts does not really help. I’m not the biggest Fleming fan but, in just a few sentences, his style comes across as much tighter and incredibly gripping compared to most of 54.

I’m also a geeky, pedantic nitpicker, so I’m not fully convinced about some of Grant’s reactions. After WWII’s propaganda effort, I don’t think he’d need to be persuaded of cinema’s ability to shape people’s dreams and political ideas. And while I think the inclusion of Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief in the narrative is a happy choice (not least because that caper is also about what happened to the former antifascist resistance), I have to wonder how Grant could consider that script an unpromising vehicle for his return to the screen after a hiatus (?), given that this piece of fluff seems perfectly suited to his suave image (especially in contrast to Howard Hawk’s Monkey Business, the very silly comedy he had just starred in). Plus, there is that bit where a Soviet official complains about Hollywood’s ‘dreary war films in which the Russians never even made an appearance,’ showing an ignorance of wartime movies that I suspect the character may share with the authors.

That said, of course the most gratifying way of reading the book is to just accept that it ultimately takes place in an alternate reality, starring a parallel version of Cary Grant, so not every single detail has to match our ‘real’ world. Once I embraced this attitude, I had a lot of fun. Wu Ming’s take on Grant has a particularly amusing payoff in the coda, where a psychiatrist desperately tries to make sense of what the hell is going on in his head!

As the plot tapestry unfolds, 54 becomes an exciting read – and even a thought-provoking one, especially when you consider that it was written against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, 9/11, and Berlusconi’s first return to power, all of which linger in the subtext.

In any case, it’s hard to resist a book that features such a spirited monologue from Tito:

“It happened five years ago. Kardelj, who had had dinner with me that evening, was clarifying the issue of Leninist theory in Yugoslavia, and rejecting the accusations of ‘Trotskyism’ issuing from Moscow. The mirror spied on us from the end of the corridor, our lookalikes copying our every move, perhaps preparing to reproach us. Here we were, well fed and clothed, so unlike the days of the konspiracija. Was it just vanity that dictated the stance that would consign us to history? We discovered (at dead of night it’s inevitable) that there was something monstrous about the mirrors. Kardelj said the mirror is an infernal machine, because it separates the individual from the community, stimulating his petty-bourgeois narcissism. I replied, ‘So how do you trim your moustache, by leaning over puddles?’ adding that, on the contrary, the mirror unites the individual with the community, and its admission into proletarian houses has cemented class pride, that sense of decorum thrown back in the bosses’ faces, ‘We have been naught, we shall be all! We can be, and we are, more stylish than you are!’ It was thanks to that decorum, to that pride, that the war was won.”

THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

(G. K. Chesterton, 1908)

“The suburbs of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its skyline was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretentions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretentions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable.”

If 54 was chockfull of characters and events unfolding at a breakneck pace, grabbing me with the elaborate plot despite the pedestrian prose, The Man Who Was Thursday managed to pull off an even faster rhythm while consistently spitting out the wittiest turns of phrase. The narrator’s voice was sharp and piercing, like a killer’s knife, and genuinely funny, often making me laugh out loud while frantically turning the pages between cliffhangers.

So much of the joy stems from the dramatic surprises that pop up in every single chapter – hell, in every few pages – so I don’t dare reveal too much about the story, except to say that, like the novels of Joseph Conrad written at the time, at the dawn of the 20th century, it is set in the milieu of terrorists whose radicalism has at least as much do with philosophical fervor as with directly responding to working class living conditions.

For the most part, the book pits secret police agents against the Central Anarchist Council in a narrative that ticks – and even anticipates – many of the beats associated with the James Bond yarns quite a few decades later: the archvillain is a larger-than-life genius running a transnational organization whose facilities are reached through a beer bar table that shoots through the floor into a subterranean vaulted passage lined with guns.. and there are vicious fights as well as plenty of chases involving horses, cars, a balloon, and even an elephant!

That said, G.K. Chesterton ramps up the surrealism, as if already parodying the formula. His intellectual absurdist humor feels like a bridge between Voltaire’s Candide and the writings of Woody Allen, Douglas Adams, or Terry Pratchett (not to mention Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub), whom he no doubt influenced. The result is simultaneously a rollicking thriller, a slapstick comedy, and a political satire, especially when characters enthusiastically debate their ideas, like in this dialogue with a forerunner of punk nihilism:

“ ‘What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?’

‘To abolish God!’ said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. ‘We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.’

‘And Right and Left,’ said Syme with a simple eagerness, ‘I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.’ ”

There may be a twist too many. Near the end, The Man Who Was Thursday, true to the promise of the subtitle (A Nightmare), veers into stranger and stranger territory, jumping from wild farce into outright metaphysical allegory. As much as he reveled in the sense of fantastic chaos that drives much of the book, and although not unsympathetic to the plight of the masses, G.K. Chesterton was still a conservative Christian suspicious of modernity, subjectivism, and anarchy, which increasingly shines through (or, rather, it’s there from the start, but it doesn’t prevent his initial descriptions of revolutionary intellectuals, poets, and zealots from being hilarious… and oddly relatable, still today).

Honestly, I share much less with Chesterton’s worldview than I do with Wu Ming’s political leanings. And yet, at the end of the day, I had way more of a blast with this literary classic, not least because of the sheer pleasure provided by the paradoxes that fill its prose. I can’t resist adding a further quote from the opening paragraph, about the incredible Saffron Park:

“Even if the people were not “artists,” the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat—that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art.”

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (7 October 2024)

This week, a tribute to awesome comic book covers that beautifully integrate lettering into the overall layout:

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80’s-style action comics

Predator: Concrete Jungle #2

With its foul-mouthed, sweaty badass men (and women), anti-government attitude, and casualty-heavy set pieces, the 1980s’ wave of outrageous action movies had a specific vibe that has become affectionately known in some circles as ‘absurd macho bullshit,’ making this the subgenre that best channeled a zeitgeist of military buildup and coked-up neoliberal excess. The greatest films of the lot seamlessly fused various dimensions: besides delivering streamlined, relentless narratives packed with ‘fuck yeah’ moments, Predator, The Terminator, Aliens, and The Thing actually provided a catharsis to Cold War anxieties through displacement, projecting the conflict against ruthless sci-fi entities.

Comics at the time sought – and often managed – to emulate these movies’ testosterone-fueled brand of storytelling. Mark Verheiden and John Arcudi, in particular, spent much of their early careers writing comic book spin-offs of these licensed properties for the recently created publisher Dark Horse and, for the most part, they did a hell of a job at it.

Aliens: Outbreak

It all started when Verheiden penned a bunch of follow-ups to Aliens, beginning with 1988’s Outbreak, about a mission targeting the xenomorphs’ home planet. That comic perfectly nailed the franchise’s misanthropic spirit, with the protagonists screwed both by viciously deadly extraterrestrial creatures and by corporate yuppie douchebags in a dystopic vision of an industrial, rapaciously capitalist future. Thematically, it extrapolated from a variety of trends of the Reagan years, including a great bit with predictions about the evolution of commercial television (‘In a resurgence similar to that seen during the mid-1980s, religious programming became a television staple, outnumbering non-doctrinal programs nearly 100 to 1.’).

Outbreak showed that comics could feel like proper sequels to this type of films, compellingly expanding their world while being way cheaper to produce. Much like James Cameron’s blockbuster, here was a very cool science fiction/horror/war yarn – one with seriously high stakes and worthy additions to the series’ lore (as we learned about new facets of the xenomorphs’ odd biology).

Indeed, for all those disappointed and frustrated souls let down by the way the 1992 movie Alien3 quickly dismissed the set-up at the end of Aliens, this is the story you want to read. The survivors from that second film actually get some solid character development, building on their understandable PTSD, and the plot structure is much more original than in any of the ensuing films… Let’s face it, apart from Prometheus, the movies are all more or less inspired close variations of the same formula and familiar elements (recently remixed once again in Romulus, which Fede Álvarez effectively approached with the sort of unpretentious ‘b-movie’ fun of his Don’t Breathe), but Outbreak actually moves things forward rather than merely repeat the wash cycle. The same goes for the book’s own direct sequel, Nightmare Asylum, which further developed some of these characters – and advanced the series’ posthuman motifs – by placing them in a whole other scenario, before the equally riveting third installment, Earth War.

(When Alien3 came out, Dark Horse preposterously tried to keep these comics in continuity by changing the characters’ names, which significantly reduced the story’s power. Stupidly, that weirdly retrofitted version got republished in Aliens: Omnibus vol. 1, which is why I recommend getting the collection Aliens: The Essential Comics instead… or, you know, just ignore the new names as you read.)

Aliens: Earth War

I also appreciate that these early Aliens spin-offs don’t just read like illustrated screenplays, but rather like damn comics, complete with a clever use of characters’ internal voices. Following Mark A. Nelson on Outbreak, artist Denis Beauvais brought a more impressionistic approach to Nightmare Asylum. Thus, while Mark Verheiden’s narrative struck a fine balance between innovation and familiarity, Beauvais’ stylized painted artwork helped gradually turn the book into even more of its own beast rather than a mere afterimage of the movies.

With the same spirit – but a with very different style – the awesome Sam Kieth then pushed horror to a whole other level when he was brought in for the massively epic conclusion of Verheiden’s trilogy. By the time we got to Earth War, gone was any lingering sense of storyboarding: as you can see above and below, Kieth’s cartooning splattered each page with defiantly unrealistic anatomy and challenging, highly creative layouts.

Aliens: Earth War

In turn, if what you want from this subgenre of licensed properties is a greater sense of aesthetic recognition and fluid continuity from the screen to the page, then the team to beat is penciller Chris Warner and colorist Chris Chalenor, who showed a real knack for transposing the films’ visual style into comic books. Reading their mini-series The Terminator: Tempest and Predator: Concrete Jungle (which originally came out around 1989-1990) really does feel like you’re watching what could’ve been perfectly satisfying sequels to the original Terminator and Predator movies.

The Terminator: Tempest #2

I’m especially fond of Concrete Jungle.

Although John McTiernan’s Predator is one of those near-perfect epics that inevitably loses something by becoming part of a franchise (as its seemingly unbeatable villain is banalized and gradually diminished, softening the initial impact), it still managed to produce plenty of fun sequels on the screen and one the page… A few are really strong (the first Batman versus Predator comic, Nimród Antal’s delightfully schlocky Predators, Dan Trachtenberg’s back-to-basics, revenge-of-the-Comanche prequel Prey) and even some of the ones that are kind of a mess (1990’s Predator 2, 2018’s The Predator) have their fair share of neat moments and ideas.

Concrete Jungle is one of the best. Instead of just relocating the original high concept, it throws everything but the kitchen sink at the reader, as the brother of Dutch Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character), who happens to be a cynical NYC homicide detective, also finds himself being hunted down. The thing is that this is only the tip of the iceberg: before the end of the story, he has to fight off not just a large-scale alien invasion, but also the CIA *and* a Colombian cartel…

Predator: Concrete Jungle #2

There are the obligatory nods to Predator’s most famous moments (‘If it could bleed, it could die.’), but also a handful of looser riffs on stuff like They Live (‘All you have to do is look’) and Rambo: First Blood – Part II (‘Should have guessed, you’re giving me to them.’).

Plus, as you can see, along the way you get all sorts of generic eighties’ action tropes, from New York street gangs to slimy drug pushers, from brutal torture to massive explosions, from awkward Latin American stereotypes to cynical government conspiracies. You even get one of those over-the-top arguments between a police detective and his chief:

Predator: Concrete Jungle #2

Mark Verheiden’s script is pretty tongue-in-cheek (at one point, a couple of yuppies in the subway discuss the ratings of a show hosted by Charles Manson), but it also delivers the goods, with plenty of badass one-liners and thrilling set pieces.

Verheiden went on to write a couple of follow-ups to Concrete Jungle, with art by Ron Randall. In the same balls-to-the-wall style, Cold War has predators attack a Soviet base in Siberia, gradually generating a geopolitical crisis in a tale that oozes with late-Cold War cynicism (in a classic sci-fi twist, it depicts humans as viciously self-destructive, regardless of the extraterrestrial monsters). Less inspired, Dark River goes back to the American jungle and it even resorts to the lame trope of bringing back characters killed in earlier stories…

The latter misstep may be explained by the fact that, for once, Dark River wasn’t edited by either Randy Stradley or Diana Schutz, two people who clearly knew exactly what to do in order to achieve *just the right vibe*. Fortunately, they did continue to work on this sort of material for a while. In the ‘90s, Stradley penned the first Alien vs. Predator comics (which, needless to say, are much niftier than the subsequent films) and Schutz edited, among others, John Arcudi’s and Evan Dorkin’s grimy mini Predator: Big Game, which went even further in terms of ferociously nailing the first movie’s unabashed rawness:

Predator: Big Game

That said, along with licensed properties, there were also plenty of original series that had the same *tone* as Hollywood’s high-octane movies. I’ll be looking at those in a future post…

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (30 September 2024)

Yep, it’s time for another reminder that comic book covers can be awesome.

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