Spotlight on The Adventures of Tintin – part 1

Posted on January 27, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

Something I would like to do more this year is to write about Eurocomics – especially the old Franco-Belgian bande dessinée albums that were such a huge part of my childhood. Today, let’s have a closer look at just a few of the various layers we can find in Hergé’s seminal series The Adventures of Tintin, about the globetrotting escapades of the titular young reporter and his dog, Snowy (‘Milou’ in the original).

tintintintintintin

This series was originally published between 1929 and 1976, so naturally there is a striking evolution throughout. I cannot wholeheartedly recommend the first stories (the anti-communist Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the colonialist Tintin in the Congo, and the anti-American Tintin in America) except for completists – even setting aside the ultra-reactionary politics (which apparently matched the tone of the Belgian catholic newspaper that originally published the comic), the artwork and plotting are pretty crude. Hergé was still finding his feet through fairly simple gag-driven narratives. To be fair, though, each of these already feels like a giant leap in quality compared to its predecessor and you can certainly discern some inventive uses of the medium among the goofy comedy and cringeworthy stereotypes – especially in Tintin in America, which comes off like a madcap, surreal mash-up of caricatures about the United States taken from westerns and gangster pictures.

It was with the fourth installment, Cigars of the Pharaoh (initially published in 1932-1934), that Hergé first nailed the ‘rollicking mystery’ style that would become the series’ core identity. The art was sharper (although the collected versions I read were partially redrawn by Hergé later on, so it’s hard to measure how much sharper) and the plot more elaborate (if not without some contrived coincidences), but not at the expense of any entertainment value – if anything, Cigars feels even more like a thrilling serial, as Tintin starts out by exploring an Egyptian tomb and ends up in the throes of an international drug-smuggling ring that stretches all the way to India… Along the way, he finds himself lost at sea, alone in the desert, buried alive, attacked by a tiger, and hypnotized by an evil fakir (plus, he spends some time living in the jungle, where – in a delightfully bizarre sequence – he learns how to communicate with elephants).

There are also chases and gunfights galore…

Cigars of the PharaohtintinCigars of the Pharaoh

(Notice how the larger page size of European comics allows Hergé to get away with an impressive splash and still cram plenty of twists onto the bottom of the page…)

The sequel, The Blue Lotus, was an even more ambitious Boy’s Own adventure, as Tintin and Snowy faced the remainders of the last story’s drug-smuggling ring, only to find themselves caught in the middle of the Japanese occupation of China. The Broken Ear then took them to a Latin America embroiled in revolution. By the time we get to The Black Island (set in the UK) and King Ottokar’s Sceptre (set in a fictitious kingdom in the Balkans), we find Hergé in full command of the medium, having overcome an earlier tendency for wordy dialogue and now striking a reader-friendly balance between words and pictures. His style became so seamless as to appear misleadingly simple, to the point where it is easy to dismiss or underestimate all the craft in display, but you really shouldn’t do so.

In 1938, when Action Comics #1 blew up the horizon of, well, action comics in the US, the European version seemed like it already was miles (or, rather, kilometers) further down the road in terms of narrative sophistication, not to mention pure kinetic power. By the time we get to The Crab with the Golden Claws, we find an Hergé successfully exploring the potential of splashes to elevate action beats, having already developed other formal techniques, including the ability to mine sudden ellipses for both pacing and humor…

tintinhergéThe Crab with the Golden Claws

(Tintin doesn’t look like an alpha male at all, but the series keeps suggesting that he is a badass brawler, as well as pretty comfortable handling a gun…)

Hergé’s incredible pace is arguably the main reason to read these books, as Tintin himself can be a relatively bland – if likable – hero most of the time. Without a trace of cynicism about the press, he’s a journalist who never seems all that keen to write or publish – his investigations are driven by curiosity and by a committed sense of justice, but he could just as easily have been a scholar or a detective instead. His strong determination and altruism reflect an age of ‘undeconstructed’ archetypes, especially when it comes to fiction aimed at younger audiences, which is bound to feel too naive for some modern readers (then again, they may find it refreshing). Tintin’s uncomplicated feelings are probably also a byproduct of the fact that the whole thing is plot-driven, with little patience for psychological drama.

Still, we do occasionally get some interesting characterization of other cast members, most notably of the flawed Captain Haddock – a bigoted, short-tempered alcoholic who becomes Tintin’s closest (human) friend. With his rough ways, Haddock can serve as equal parts sidekick, emotional id, and comic relief.

Hergéadventures of tintinPrisoners of the Sun

The continuity becomes more intricate starting with The Secret of the Unicorn, including a few two-parter albums and plenty of callbacks to earlier tales, weaving an expanding web of cameos and story connections. This is not to say that there is any lack of accessibility or instant gratification when you read each individual volume, especially as they dabble in different subgenres: The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun are my platonic ideal of an old-school explorer’s fantasy, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon are hardcore sci-fi, The Calculus Affair is a Cold War spy yarn, The Castafiore Emerald is a screwball parody of Agatha Christie’s whodunnits, Tintin and the Picaros is a political thriller.

And yet, the series as a whole feels remarkably consistent. For one thing, this is one of those comics where, even though the world outside changes in real time, the characters’ ages seem perpetually frozen, so they sound comfortingly familiar throughout the decades. Moreover, there are a number of running themes linking even the most disparate tales, such as heroism, compassion, exploration, and geopolitical games (usually run by selfish individuals who don’t care about the masses).

And alcohol.

hergéTintin and the Picaros

(Alcohol is a recurring source of humor, drama, and characterization, culminating in Tintin and the Picaros, where it plays a key role in the plot.)

The consistency is also secured by Hergé’s rock-solid visuals. The well-delineated drawing style he perfected, known as ‘clear line’ (ligne claire), has come to be associared with serious, contemplative comics like Jason Lutes’ Berlin, Rutu Modan’s The Property, or Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina. In Tintin, however, it was commitedly put in the service of full-on comedy and adventure.

tintinExplorers on the Moon

Almost every page finishes on a cliffhanger, pushing you into the next one, and there is zero padding along the way (unless you consider the comedic bits filler, which I don’t). Despite the average of four rows of panels per page, the stories hardly ever slow down, as exposition gets typically intermingled with either breathtaking action or slapstick gags. The Secret of the Unicorn, for instance, features a 13-page tour-de-force that consists of little more than Haddock telling a pirate tale yet nevertheless manages to be visually gripping (the sequel, Red Rackham’s Treasure, then gives us a properly extended seafaring yarn). The result is almost cinematic in the way it creates rhythm through parallel montage and constant movement.

Between this and the fact that the stories often playfully feature doubles, conspiracies, and a wrongfully accused protagonist on the run, the tone seems very close to the films of Alfred Hitchcock (whose career spans pretty much the same decades). Not that Hergé was necessarily following Hitchcock’s work or vice versa, but they probably drew inspiration from the same type of sources, which explains the profusion of similar set pieces in 1930s’ Tintin and in Hitch’s The 39 Steps, Sabotage, Young and Innocent, and, especially, The Lady Vanishes and Foreign Correspondent (except that Hergé was much less interested in romantic subplots… or in gutsy female characters, for that matter). Hell, it’s the same sort of material that would inform Hollywood’s World War II propaganda thrillers just a few years later, although Tintin’s relationship with WWII turned out to be quite different…

On top of the series’ conservative origins and ethnic stereotyping, some critics have charged Hergé with collaborationism due to the fact he continued to work for the establishment throughout the Nazi occupation of Belgium. It’s one of the things that makes Tintin’s 10th book – the apocalyptic The Shooting Star – so fascinating.

hergetintinThe Shooting Star

On the surface, The Shooting Star resembles escapist science fiction, as Tintin goes on a naval expedition to retrieve a fallen meteor (one of several stories that owe a clear debt – direct or indirect – to Jules Verne), culminating in a climax that anticipates the monster movies of the 1950s. However, once you take into account that the tale was first serialized in 1941-1942, you start spotting a more sinister subtext… It’s not just that Tintin’s expedition is made up of scientists from Axis, occupied, and neutral countries – it’s that their evil rivals sound Anglo-Saxon and are led by a large-nosed banker who conspires against them in the name of profit (and apparently there were other antisemitic caricatures in the original, which didn’t make it to the collected edition). Still, it’ s worth noting that if you set aside your outside knowledge about WWII and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (in other words, if you read the book like I first did, as a kid), it does work as a moral fable, one where the heroes are willing to forego victory in order to help a stranger in need and where the villains are the ones prone to cheating and endangering others to get what they want.

All this brings us to the unavoidable subject of Tintin’s racist undertones, which I’ll be discussing next week, when I’ll delve deeper into the series’ politics…

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (24 January 2022)

Posted on January 24, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

A reminder that comics can be awesome, close-up edition…

jack kirbydon heckLou Camerondavid laphamAmy ReederhewletRob Liefeldalex rossJ.G. JonesBrian Bolland

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Gotham crime graphic novels

Posted on January 20, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

The trailer for the upcoming The Batman movie looks pretty darn awful, once again doubling down on the gloom without any hint of what makes the source material so much fun in the first place. That said, I suppose the film can still get some of my goodwill if, instead of just giving us yet another self-serious take on superheroes, it ends up exploring Batman’s umbilical relation with crime fiction.

World's Greatest DetectiveBatman #612

My ideal Dark Knight is the World’s Greatest Detective and I love it when Batman stories amount to eccentric mystery yarns, something that has been largely lost even in the comics, although it still occasionally pops up (like in Becky Cloonan’s and Terry Dodson’s cool short story ‘The Fool’s Journey,’ from the latest Batman: Black and White series). The link to crime fiction – which harkens back to the character’s sadistic origins – was probably taken as far as it can go in 1987’s Batman: Year One, although there are plenty of other hardboiled books that should please fans of the genre, including some of the sequels to Year One (Catwoman: Her Sister’s Keeper, The Long Halloween, hell, even Prey) and a handful of 21st-century entries (Broken City, City of Crime), not to mention Elseworlds’ pastiches (Nine Lives, Gotham Noir).

Once you stretch your definition of Batman comics, there is even more crime-ridden goodness to check out there, likewise geared towards ‘mature’ audiences who enjoy a fair amount of sex and violence (although, for some odd puritan reason, not much swearing) in their cape-adjacent escapades… These books occupy a stimulating place in Batman lore, either contextualizing the Dark Knight’s actions by shedding light on the police authority he replaces – thus questioning if, why, when, and how it needs to be replaced – or humanizing the personal dramas and motivations of the criminal underworld targeted by the Caped Crusader, thus challenging his caricatural worldview. If you want to see this done particularly well, here are five Gotham-set graphic novels collecting tales where the Dark Knight isn’t the main star, but which are nevertheless obligatory readings for those who dig the franchise’s connection to hard-hitting narratives about cops and crooks:

 

GORDON OF GOTHAM (2014)

Gotham City

In order to capitalize on the Gotham TV show, in 2014 DC put out this beauty collecting three badass mini-series from the mid-nineties about Gotham City’s police force (which, as the book reminds us, has more bent cops than a Sidney Lumet film or the average season of Line of Duty). Very gritty – and it looks the part – but pleasingly unpretentious, Gordon of Gotham is a truly compelling crime book…

The first chunk of the collection features Gordon’s Law (by Chuck Dixon and Klaus Janson, with grimy colors by Kevin Somers), a taut yarn about Commissioner James Gordon getting his hands dirty while investigating a violent heist at the Federal Reserve. There is tough-talking dialogue all around, but also a punchy, intricate plot with a twist ending that masterfully mines the medium’s visual tropes, such as atmospheric shadows and hard rain. Another great procedural, G.C.P.D. (by Chuck Dixon, Jim Aparo, and Bill Sienkiewicz) has more of a Hill Street Blues or Chicago P.D. vibe, with different officers crossing paths while working on separate cases… Is it copaganda? I suppose so, in the same way that Batman-centric narratives romanticize vigilantism, but – like those – once you take these tales for the dark fantasy that they undoubtedly are, they can make for a pretty entertaining read. Finally, the titular Gordon of Gotham (by Dennis O’Neil, Dick Giordano, and Klaus Janson) revisits Jim’s past as a lieutenant in Chicago (which seems to be almost as corrupt as Gotham!). It’s a clumsier thriller than the previous ones, but it’s interesting to see the post-hippie Denny O’Neil writing a conservative protagonist while negotiating his ambiguous attitude towards law enforcement (notably, these are all post-Rodney King comics, with two of the stories opening with indictments of police brutality).

This volume also works as a kind of retroactive prequel to the brilliant Gotham Central.

 

CATWOMAN: TRAIL OF THE CATWOMAN (2011)

catwoman

This collection of Catwoman stories from the early 2000s explores the moral ambiguity of cat burglar Selina Kyle, one the most famous (and most captivating) Gotham citizens. There are tense heists, dangerous gangsters, self-destructive private eyes, and dirty cops galore, all rendered in a noirish style akin to Batman: The Animated Series. The tales in this paperback formed a soft reboot of Catwoman, so there isn’t much you really need to know going in other than the fact that Selina, who had recently tried to blackmail Gotham’s mayor, was officially dead at the time (a plot thread that gets wrapped up early on). That said, longtime fans will probably appreciate the nods to Batman: Year One and to Catwoman: Her Sister’s Keeper.

The book opens with ‘Selina’s Big Score,’ a magnificent caper written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke, in which Selina puts together a crew to rob a train full of mob money (did it inspire the last season of Breaking Bad?). It’s one of those nifty thrillers where each chapter follows a different character’s perspective, and of course the twists never stop coming. Cooke also illustrates the titular ‘Trail of the Catwoman,’ written by Ed Brubaker, where the mayor hires tough-as-nails detective Slam Bradley to find our missing protagonist (ideally, this one should be read before ‘Selina’s Big Score,’ but since both stories play around with non-linear chronology it works fine this way as well). It’s only in the third tale, ‘Anodyne,’ that Selina returns to her Catwoman persona, as she finds her place back in Gotham’s East End while tracking down a serial killer of prostitutes. The final stories then go on to deal with the grimmer sides of drug traffic and addiction. (Seriously, don’t be fooled by the cartoony artwork – these comics are emphatically not aimed at kids!)

Underneath it all, you can hear echoes of the voices of Richard Stark, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Elmore Leonard. Cinema is also a clear influence, with characters blatantly inspired by Pam Grier, Lee Marvin, and Chow Yun-Fat, not to mention the Tarantino-esque structure. Regardless, these are pure comics, making the most out of the medium’s possibilities, from the stylized designs to the gripping pace, shaped as much by literary captions as by striking visuals… In particular, the whole thing is brought together by the awesome work of colorists Matt Hollingsworth, Lee Loughridge, and Giulia Brusco, as well as letterers Sean Konot and Willie Schubert, who fully embrace the retro-noir mood.

 

GOTHAM CENTRAL: IN THE LINE OF DUTY (2008)

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Undisputedly one of the greatest comic book series set in Batman’s corner of the DC Universe, Gotham Central was a police procedural about the city’s Major Crimes Unit, adult in content and tone – by which I mean not just occasional references to sexual violence, but also an exceptional degree of storytelling sophistication. The cops are our main POV characters here, although – like in Gordan of Gotham – this is not to say the police is presented in an exclusively positive light. Originally published in 2002-2006, with alternating scripts written – and sometimes co-written – by Greg Rucka and (again) Ed Brubaker, Gotham Central remains well-remembered for its witty dialogue, tight plotting, attention to detail, and realistic world-building, on top of penciller Michael Lark’s enviable sense of physiognomy and geography. Just as Lark obsessively and meticulously rendered each character and setting, so did Rucka and Brubaker invest in fleshing out the cast and institutions… Here were two of the medium’s most accomplished crime writers at the top of their game (Rucka is a pretty good crime novelist as well, having penned the neat series of books about the bodyguard Atticus Kodiack). For instance, consider how, in the excerpt above, the conversation fluidly integrates both real-world, professional slang (‘the vic’) and speculative, Gotham-specific expressions (‘the Bat’).

By imagining how a frustrated police department would cope with the Dark Knight’s vigilantism and his rogues’ gallery, we get a fascinating exploration of the disturbing tension between the realistic and fantastic elements of Batman comics. This theme is powerfully conveyed in the jarring opening sequence, where the shift in perspective is enough to make a scene we’ve seen countless times before now come across as particularly shocking. Sticking to the cops’ street-level POV means that not only do the colorful villains seem scarier (if sometimes pathetic), but so do the occasional cameos by the Caped Crusader, who comes off like a larger-than-life force of nature.

The first edition of Gotham Central: In The Line of Duty, from 2004, only collected the first two arcs (i.e. the first five issues). It was not a bad deal, but you’ll get more bang for your buck if you get the collection that has been coming out since 2008, which also includes the series’ third – and by far most famous – arc, ‘Half a Life,’ which had a dramatic impact on fan-favorite character Renée Montoya.

 

HITMAN: TEN THOUSAND BULLETS (2010)

garth ennisjohn mccrea

If you like your crime fiction with more of a comedic – and action-oriented – edge, then look no further than Hitman (and I don’t mean Hit Man, the blaxploitation remake of Get Carter, although that one is quite cool as well…). This cult series revolved around anti-hero Tommy Monaghan, a Gotham-based killer-for-hire with telepathy and x-ray vision who rarely used either because they made his head hurt… which should give you an idea of the comic’s overall attitude, playfully acknowledging the outlandish reality of its DCU setting but preferring to focus on more human-level crime stories taking place in the working-class periphery of Batman’s world. Creators Garth Ennis and John McCrea jointly crafted quite an idiosyncratic vibe halfway between slapstick caricature and heartfelt characterization, somehow managing to produce genuine pathos along the way.

Hitman’s second trade collection is the one I would recommend to crime fans, since it’s less about superheroes or other supernatural elements and more about people shooting at each other in-between droll conversations (with a couple of war flashbacks thrown in for good measure). The book opens with the titular arc ‘Ten Thousand Bullets,’ in which Tommy gets a contract put on his head by a vengeful gangster who carries around the corpse of his dead Siamese twin (still attached to his body). In the wonderful ‘The Night the Lights Went Out,’ Tommy and his buddies, while waiting for the superheroes to sort out the latest apocalyptic event outside, barricade themselves in a bar and exchange tales about when they came close to death (this taps into the series’ metafictional dimension, as each supporting character reflects a different macho subgenre: classic John Wayne-ish narratives, blaxploitation, Hong Kong gun fu, dumb grindhouse shlock). Finally, ‘A Coffin Full of Dollars’ – drawn by Carlos Ezquerra and Steve Pugh – follows an assignment in Texas that turns into a gonzo spaghetti western homage.

The result is as much about male bonding as it is about crime, violence, and laughs. Yep, it’s like someone let Guy Ritchie into the DC Universe.

 

NIGHTWING: FALSE STARTS (2015)

dick graysonhuntress

The other reliable source of kickass crime and action in the late 90s’ Bat-books was Nightwing, which focused on the vigilante exploits of (former Robin) Dick Grayson. Even before Chuck Dixon turned it into a proper cop series by having Dick join the police force of the neighboring city of Blüdhaven, this comic leaned heavily on genre tropes from early on, especially in the tales collected in False Starts, which are full of mobsters double-crossing each other, undercover operations gone wrong, and further proof that they should definitely defund the GCPD!

In the first story, ‘Cosa Nostra’ (mistitled in the table of contents as ‘Casa Nostra,’ which wouldn’t have been a bad name…), Nightwing runs against another crimefighter – the loose cannon Huntress – when trying to prove that a wiseguy is innocent of killing a sex worker because he was busy committing a whole other felony at the time. Illustrated by Greg Land (whose cheesecake style is suitably roughed up by Bill Sienkiewicz’s inks) and sharply scripted by Devin Grayson, this is an unsung gem, delivering a labyrinthine plot with a fast pace and plenty of nice character beats.

In the rest of the book, we once again get to see Dixon’s talent for penning fun, frantic thrill rides, pitting Dick Grayson against both sides of the law in Blüdhaven, especially in an adrenaline-charged arc involving a copycat vigilante who unintentionally lures in everyone who has a grudge against Nightwing (which, as it turns out, is a lot of people!). There are a number of guest appearances (Barbara ‘Oracle’ Gordon should practically get second billing) and subplots picking up from – or leading into – other books, but these issues belong to that great tradition of comics where you usually get enough context clues and satisfying payoffs to get your money’s worth without having to chase down a dozen other collections (one exception is the chapter ‘Paper Revelations,’ which is part of a convoluted martial arts crossover). In particular, I have a soft spot for the self-contained murder mystery ‘The Forgotten Dead,’ where Dick actually does quite a bit of detective work while investigating a 15-year-old cold case concerning a gang killing.

And, as a bonus, we also get some bombastic artwork by Scott McDaniel and Karl Story, distinctly drenched in Roberta Tewes’ moody colors:

chuck dixondick grayson

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (17 January 2022)

Posted on January 17, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

Your ‘true crime’ reminder that comic book covers can be awesome:

crime comicsjohnny craigtrue crime comicJim McLaughlinMatt BakerCharles Biro Dan ZolnerowichJohn Prenticecrime comicjack kirby

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2021’s book of the year

Posted on January 13, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

First, a disclaimer: Rutu Modan’s latest graphic novel, Tunnels, has been translated to English and published by Drawn & Quarterly last year… and whenever a new Modan book comes out, the chances of it being my favorite comic of that year are pretty high. Alas, I still haven’t managed to get my hands on it, so let’s talk about some of the awesome comics I did read!

As 2021 raced towards the finish line, my choice for Gotham Calling’s book of the year kept switching back and forth. Even though, when push comes to shove, I tend to privilege compelling writing over innovative aesthetics, I was sure the top place was bound to look amazing, since we’ve gotten so many impressive examples of visual prowess throughout the year, from the Hedra-ish science fiction of EPHK’s Mawrth Valliis to the Afrofuturism-by-way-of-Tartakovsky of Juni Ba’s Djeliya, not to mention the ultra-dense tapestry of Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters. For a while, the best candidate was James Harren’s Ultramega: Stand with Humanity, which managed to unironically inject the kaiju genre with renewed vitality through smart, gutsy storytelling whose blood-splattered images are the quintessence of a certain branch of wacko post-apocalyptic/cosmic fantasy comics that flows straight to my pleasure centers…

Looking back, though, despite the resonant subtext (about dealing with a deadly disease that can affect thousands of people around each infected person) and the jaw-dropping artwork (with jaw-dropping colors by Dave Stewart and jaw-dropping lettering by Rus Wooton), Ultramega’s epic romp couldn’t quite match The Department of Truth: The End of the World, which was the one book I ended up compulsively revisiting, recommending, discussing with friends, and mulling over more than any of my other reads.

the end of the world

This paperback, published back in February, collects the first five issues of the ongoing series The Department of Truth, effectively establishing its captivating high concept: it turns out truth is literally a product of hegemonic consensus and it changes – on the material plane – according to what the majority of people believe, so the US government has set up the Department of Truth to prevent the spread of fake news from actually altering reality.

This notion raises so many intriguing questions that I can’t see the series running out of steam any time soon, as there is so much to explore… Before the scientific consensus over the earth’s shape or its position in the solar system, was the planet flat and static? If so, what was the basis to develop the current models of geography and astronomy? And does this mean that collectively denying climate change, rather than an irresponsible attitude with devastating consequences (because nature doesn’t care what you think), would turn out to be a solution to the problem, retroactively making it unreal?

On another level, should the materialization of mass delusions be considered the ultimate embodiment of democracy, a justification for faith-based wars, or an inspirational encouragement to will utopias into existence? And does this premise give the comic carte blanche to develop endless alternate timelines that have been wished out of existence, like a perpetual motion machine of speculative fiction (a subgenre I love so much that I had a blast watching For All Mankind, despite all the corniness)?

In a classic move, the series starts by following a newly recruited agent as he is introduced to this underworld, namely Cole Turner, a former FBI teacher specialized in online communities of right-wing white supremacists who now finds himself in an ironic position: he becomes part of what is essentially a deep state-ish organization secretly fighting a meta-conspiracy – going at least as far back as the Kennedy assassination – aimed at disseminating conspiracy theories. Predictably, it’s a matter of time before Turner starts wondering whether he is truly working for the forces of order and security or just for one of two sides locked in a lasting war for the determination of a dominant truth… After all, if facts are so subjective to the point that they can be radically overturned, that means he isn’t protecting reality itself, only a specific version of it. In other words, defending the established truth is inherently reactionary, since it reifies the status quo (including the existing power structure).

James Tynion IV

The same set-up could’ve led to something playfully surrealist or broadly satirical, but the approach is closer to Vertigo-style horror, which makes sense given where writer James Tynion IV comes from. The horror here is both of the supernatural kind and of a more psychological, paranoid strain, owing a clear debt to The X-Files yet pushing that show’s themes to the next level.

In fact, let’s get the references to other works out of the way. The result is more mind-bending than The Matrix, less absurdist than Men in Black, and more metafictional than JFK, albeit borrowing superficial elements from each of these. So far, it’s not as erudite as Umberto Eco’s dense novels about this sort of conspiratorial rabbit holes (most notably the phenomenal Foucault’s Pendulum, the horrifically gothic The Prague Cemetery, and the comparatively lighter Numero Zero), but its ambition keeps growing with every new issue.

As far as comic books go, naturally I have to point out the Dark Knight’s neat contribution to this subgenre in the form of Conspiracy, written by Doug Moench (who is obsessed with this type of fringe theories and often wove them into his Batman comics). Provocative takes on the Kennedy shooting have quite a rich tradition, with memorable tales by Peter Milligan (in Shade, the Changing Man), Brian Azzarello (in 100 Bullets), Gerard Way (in The Umbrella Academy), John Ostrander (in Blackhawk), and Steven Grant (in Badlands). Although less creatively successful, 9/11 truther fiction has popped up in the medium as well, from Rick Veitch’s one-shot The Big Lie to the final volume of the Franco-Belgian black comedy/cop series Soda. Above all, though, I’d say The Department of Truth follows the path of Grant Morrison’s, Jonathan Hickman’s, and Warren Ellis’ many intricate spy-fi thrillers (picture a less unhinged update of The Filth or The Invisibles), with blatant visual echoes of Bill Sienkiewicz.

best comic 2021james tynion

And yet, The Department of Truth: The End of the World manages to never feel like a mere recycling job, if nothing else because it’s so damn topical, tapping into the subjects of most of my conversations throughout 2021 while also feeding my interest in the complex workings of ideology and imagination. Not only does the book engage with post-truth populism, social media bubbles, coronavirus negationists, and QAnon’s collective text interpretation game, it links these ideas to older threads (like the 1980s’ satanic panic), historicizing them while dissecting their inner logics and perverse appeal. For instance, the third chapter is a twisted spin on Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina: it follows the harassed mother of the victim of a school shooting dealing with accusations that she’s a crisis actor participating in a false flag hoax… and the heartbreaking twist is that she gradually chooses to doubt her own memories because it’s more comforting to believe her son might be alive somehow.

Indeed, more than dramatizing old debates about empiricist positivism versus postmodern relativism, The Department of Truth cleverly works thought-provoking readings of contemporary politics into its narrative. By treating belief as active rather than reactive (i.e. as creating rather than merely apprehending and reflecting an external world), the comic’s starting point appears to validate the crusaders against science (or, rather, against official science) while also presenting them as sinister, since their nightmarish fantasies stem for fear and prejudice. For example, at one point, the head of the Department of Truth insightfully argues that Pizzagate and Trumpism are logical extensions of the Birther Movement – if JFK’s assassination opened the door for skepticism about mainstream accounts of the truth, it was Obama’s election that pushed a vast section of the North-American population over the edge:

Martin Simmonds

Between all these fascinating ideas and the sprawling scope of the story, Tynion’s scripts deserve praise for producing something that generally feels like more than an illustrated chain of exposition (although it does feel like that, at times). He keeps the cast’s dialogues and inner monologues snappy and cool, breaking them down into digestible chunks that generate a consistently gripping pace.

This task is crucially complemented by artist Martin Simmonds and designer Dylan Todd, who give each cover and page a strikingly original look, with collage-like visuals, loose watercolors, and constantly shifting layouts that invite you to get lost in (and later revisit) each scene. The backgrounds are just as likely to be abstract as to be figurative; they can be snapshots of what’s on people’s minds or even purely symbolic (in one of the less inspired choices, a double-spread juxtaposes the US flag with flying bullets and dollar bills, which isn’t exactly subtle!). Thematically, this lack of realism obviously suits the comic… The scratchy drawings and blurred figures literalize the notion of foggy, shadowy forces at play. The ink drips, the irregular coloring, and the imperfectly aligned shape of the word balloons around Aditya Bidikar’s letters all evoke the sense of a destabilized reality where everything is in flux and nothing fits naturally into its place.

I make it sound too conceptual and emotionally removed, but TDoT proves capable of delivering touching moments among all this chaos. Most notably, in the brilliant third issue there are several ‘silent’ passages depicting the loneliness and alienation of the grieving mother. One page just has her entering her home and switching on the light, somehow lending a powerful gravitas to this everyday gesture, as the gradually illuminated page channels the character’s own growing sense of safety from the dark world outside. A few pages later, the contrast between the light inside the house and the threatening silhouettes seen through the window is worked into this haunting sequence:

department of truth

A second volume, titled The City Upon a Hill and collecting issues #8-13, came out in late October. It continued to explore the paradoxes that come from fighting lies through deception, using fiction to make people believe in reality, and protecting the truth by hiding truths. Along with the other independent series James Tynion IV has coming out at the moment (The Nice House on the Lake, Something is Killing the Children, and House of Slaughter), this book confirms he’s becoming one of the great masters of intelligent horror comics, simultaneously scaring readers and urging them to think about how their fears operate (this reflexive attitude towards the genre can also be seen in his Batman work, like the Clayface origin he did for Detective Comics Annual #1).

Indeed, besides giving more weight to cyberwarfare and twisty intrigue, The City Upon a Hill is quite focused on religion and magic (i.e., the art of manipulating ancient symbols) and a bit more prone to lengthy lectures, to the point that one of the chapters closely resembles the most esoteric issues of Promethea (I know I was supposedly done with the references to others works, but this one is pretty hard to dismiss).

the department of truth

What about issues #6-7? Those were a couple of flashbacks set in the Department’s archives, likewise written by Tynion but rendered in more conventional visual styles – despite some nifty pastiches – by the fill-in duos of, first, Elsa Charretier and Matt Hollingsworth (the artistic team behind the cool crime comic November) and, then, Tyler Boss and Roman Titov. These detours from the main narrative can be read out of sequence, so they’re bound to be collected later on.

Besides telling relatively standalone stories that are quite entertaining in their own right, such issues deepen the world-building, gradually filling us in about the weird history of TDoT’s universe. In doing so, they also assuage a complaint I had early on, which was that the series seemed too focused on the USA… After all, in this age of Russian bots and China viruses, I want to see The Department of Truth’s take on international cover-ups!

Elsa Charretier

All in all, The Department of Truth is an imaginative distillation of all the reflections over the past years about how to make sense of the Trump administration’s embrace of alternative facts, the assault on the US Capitol, or the rise of an anti-vaccination movement in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, the series is so anchored in the current zeitgeist that I’m not sure how well it will age when looked at from the vantage point of the upcoming decade or so. Such timely resonance, however, is precisely what makes this Gotham Calling’s 2021 book of the year.

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (10 January 2022)

Posted on January 10, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

A psychedelic reminder that comics can be awesome…

George PérezMike AllredAlex Zirittsteve ditkotradd mooreTom SuttonNorman SaundersLouis ZanskyKalutaDick Giordano

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If you like Blood Simple…

Posted on January 6, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

Earlier in this blog’s life, I did a series of posts recommending comics for fans of specific Batman films and, later, another couple of lists with suggestions for fans of Quentin Tarantino’s work. Over the years, I’ve been getting such a nice response to these lists that I’ve decided to do something similar for the Coen Brothers’ filmography, on a monthly basis. Instead of sticking to comics, however, I’m expanding the format somewhat by suggesting other cool movies as well…

Joel and Ethan Coen are probably my favorite writer-director-producer team of the last decades, leaving their mark across various genres with their dazzling camerawork, offbeat sense of humor, cherished story beats (like their obsession with ransom demands gone awry), and recurring visual motifs (such as placing character actors in the role of powerful figures behind desks, probably because, as argued by Roger Ebert, ‘like all filmmakers, the Coens have spent a lot of time on the carpet, pitching projects to executives’). Since their oeuvre is quite varied, there are plenty of connected works worthy of exploring (some of them inspired by the Coens, others a source of inspiration for the brothers), so this should be a nifty way to highlight a wide variety of films and books I’m fond of!

coen brothers

The Coen Bros kicked things off with Blood Simple (1984), an atmospheric neo-noir thriller about a Texas bar owner who tries to kill his wife and her lover. The plot is noir as hell (virtually everybody wrongfully interprets each other’s motives at some point in the story), but it’s shot almost like a giallo movie. Indeed, despite its stripped-down look, Blood Simple already displays the Coens’ trademark ingenious cinematography and sound design, not to mention their love of double-crosses and ironic plot twists. Moreover, while the dialogue is generally more minimalistic than in the brothers’ later works, you can already hear both their flair for amusing repartee and their concern with giving each character a distinctive speech pattern. Other high points include the slimiest private eye ever (played by M. Emmet Walsh, who viciously nails his closing line) and a nightmarish sequence in which a guy desperately tries to dispose of a dead body (I’ll never forget the sound of that shovel hitting the road…).

neo-noir  blind terror  noir comic

Although Jim Mickle’s Cold in July clearly draws most of its inspiration from the likes of John Carpenter, it also recalls the Coens’ debut effort in several regards. For one thing, they’re both incredibly tense slow-burners set in 1980s’ Texas. And, once again, an idiosyncratic detective steals the show (here wonderfully played by Don Johnson). This synthesizer-scored thriller, based on a Joe R. Lansdale novel, follows a man who accidentally shoots an intruder in his house and gradually sees his life spiral into more and more violent scenarios. Besides being a provocative meditation on issues of masculinity and the relative meaning of violence in different contexts, part of what makes this such an absorbing watch is the fact that the plot and mood keep shifting directions every ten minutes or so – unlike most movie experiences these days, you can never fully tell where Cold in July is heading, but it sure is one heck of a ride.

Then again, perhaps what appeals to you in Blood Simple isn’t its labyrinthine crime story as much as the many touches of psychological horror, ranging from the voyeuristic shots of the leading couple to the super-suspenseful final sequence in Frances McDormand’s apartment. In that case, you may get a kick out of Richard Fleischer’s See No Evil – also known as Blind Terror – in which Mia Farrow plays a blind woman trying to escape a psychotic killer (following the footsteps of the classy suspenser Wait Until Dark and playing almost like the reverse of the sleazy shocker Don’t Breathe). There isn’t much more to the plot than that, as most of the film is an intense cat-and-mouse game between these two characters, but it’s full of cheap thrills and imaginative camera angles. And if you think Blood Simple goes a bit overboard with its cowboy-boots fetishism, you haven’t seen anything yet – in a neat visual choice, See No Evil mostly shows us the killer from the waist down, starting with the memorable opening credits.

As for comic book recommendations, I’m going to go with Eric Skillman’s and Jhomar Soriano’s Liar’s Kiss, a brisky graphic novel about a private detective whose shady professional ethics rival those of M. Emmet Walsh’s character… Sure enough, he too tries to cheat his client and soon ends up embroiled in a sordid web of murder.

eric skillmanJhomar SorianoLiar’s Kiss

Although Liar’s Kiss is more talky than Blood Simple, the dialogue is so snazzy that I can hardly complain. Between a mystery plot where the fedora-wearing PI keeps getting severe beatings and the high-contrast black & white artwork full of stark shadows and venetian blinds, the book has a somewhat ‘classic’ surface, genre-wise, but it boasts more than enough irony, squalor, and cynicism to be of interest to any fan of the Coens’ first feature.

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COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (3 January 2022)

Posted on January 3, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

In 2022, Gotham Calling’s weekly reminders that comics can be awesome are going to spotlight ten incredible covers every Monday, thus once again celebrating different artists’ ability to conjure up maximum excitement and fire up readers’ imagination through a single image.

Behold!

Edvard Moritz

Bill EverettJoe ManeelyBill Molno

KalutaHarry Anderson

Gil KaneBernard Baily

ross andruOgden Whitney

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Have a Gotham 2022

Posted on January 1, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

new year

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Animal war comics – part 2

Posted on December 29, 2021 by I.M. Baytor

If you read last week’s post, you know I’ve been discussing war comics that prominently feature animals.

This week, let’s start by looking at 2004’s science-gone-wrong mini-series We3, about a trio of weaponized animal cyborgs (a dog, a cat, and a rabbit) on the run from their military masters. Here is a project that was clearly written not just as a vehicle to touch upon themes that are close to Grant Morrison’s heart (animal rights, callous capitalism, post-human technology), but also as an experiment in pushing the language of comics… or at least in showcasing the kind of mindboggling stuff Frank Quitely can draw when given enough space and freedom.

grant morrisonWe3 #2

The dialogue is pretty sparse and, although there is a satirical edge to the sci-fi, We3 doesn’t devolve into preaching. Instead, the riveting hyper-violent action is front and center, as Frank Quitely reworks manga techniques to break down time and movement, creating an intense reading experience that still feels fresh after all these years. Along with Quitely, inker/colorist Jamie Grant gives every image an impressive shine (while slickly stressing the contrast between the organic world and the coldness of metal) and Todd Klein once again proves he’s by far one of the best letterers in the business, evoking a range of tones through different fonts. As a result, between the deceptively simple story and the flashy artwork, We3 manages to strike an emotional chord, giving its animals a distinct personality, dignity, and resonant feelings without going the easy route of fully anthropomorphizing them.

We3 became such a modern classic that it was bound to inspire successors. Some of these are quite impressive in their own right…

Brahm Revelvietnam comicsGuerillas #1

Set deep in the Vietnamese bush, in 1970, Guerillas follows Private John Clayton as he runs into a rogue platoon of genetically-enhanced chimpanzees who fight with the same guerrilla tactics as the US enemies. Like in Cat Shit One, there is an alluring strangeness in watching one of the most visualized – and therefore recognizable – wars in modern history being reimagined with uniformed animals… However, rather than merely replacing human soldiers with animal versions in some kind of alternate reality, Guerillas adds its primates to a realistic depiction of the conflict, managing to excel both as a harrowing – if often humorous – indictment of the Vietnam War and as one hell of an adventure yarn. Brahm Revel draws incredibly kinetic combat scenes in a Kurtzman-esque style (albeit progressively scratchier) that anticipate – and rival – much of the imagery of War for the Planet of the Apes while also developing a quirky cast that you actually come to care about. Despite Clayton’s recurring narration, many of the panels are wordless (or merely onomatopoeic), so the visuals do a lot of heavy lifting, which Revel pulls off with aplomb.

Guerillas’ first mini-series, which came out in 2008, already hit the ground running. Although reveling in the pulp appeal of chain-smoking chimps with machine guns kicking ass, the comic was quick to establish in-your-face central metaphors: ‘man must become animal to wage war,’ the vicious conflict in Vietnam made us ‘embrace our primal past’ in the jungle, soldiers were ultimately treated as ‘trained monkeys.’ The subsequent volumes invested more in the characterization of both simians and humans… well, at least of the American soldiers and of a couple of German scientists, since for the most part the Vietnamese remained little more than cannon fodder (in this regard, Guerillas isn’t more egregious than most of its peers in the genre, although it’s disheartening that US creators still find it easier to imagine a baboon’s personality over that of a communist).

As far as recent comics go, though, animals in combat aren’t merely the stuff of science fiction. A couple of graphic novels have addressed the real history of how animals have been used for military purposes. The first of these was 2013’s Dogs of War, which features three separate tales of canine feats in conflicts across the 20th century…

nathan foxDogs of War

On the surface, Dogs of War may seem like a throwback to those Lassie-like strips I mentioned at the beginning of last week’s post, but Nathan Fox’s expressionist artwork pushes the material to a whole other level, creating images that are pure comic book magic (as you can see in the scan above). Crucially, Fox gets to shine because writer Sheila Keenan sets each story in a markedly different landscape, namely the muddy Ypres trenches of World War I, a snowy base in Greenland during World War II, and the humid-looking terrain of 1968 North Carolina and Vietnam.

Although getting mileage out of readers’ presumed sympathy for dogs, curiously the book isn’t as dog-centric as the title suggests. In fact, the whole thing has a committedly humanist sensibility. Take, for instance, the first tale, which nominally stars a Red Cross rescue dog called Boots. That tale does a striking job of rendering the sense of pointlessness, claustrophobia, and overall (physical and psychological) dirt associated with WWI: Keenan’s dialogue is packed with gallows humor and Fox’s splash pages touchingly capture the vastness of the corpse-filled ditches and No Man’s Land. Yet Boots isn’t much of a central piece or a POV character – the book is much more interested in the diverse ways the men deal with the extremely harsh conditions around them. If anything, Boot’s seemingly well-adjusted attitude and moral purity serves as a contrast to the pervasive atmosphere of doom… on top of providing a comic relief:

world war I comicsdog comicsDogs of War

All this brings us to 2021’s Four-Fisted Tales: Animals in Combat, a nifty, fascinating graphic novel written and illustrated by Ben Towle, who truly expanded my understanding of the functions animals have served in war. For one thing, the book doesn’t stick to American armies or to conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Oscillating between descriptive non-fiction and short period pieces (they’re essentially vignettes), Towle goes back to Ancient Rome, to Genghis Khan’s mounted cavalry, and to the Battle of Trafalgar while also engaging with South African, Polish, and Castilian forces, among many, many others. And sure, we get more comics about dog soldiers (in the US Civil War and in WWI), but Four-Fisted Tales is also highly diverse in terms of all the species it covers, ranging from horses and bears to seagulls and slugs…

animals in combat

The book rarely takes an openly moralistic stance on war or on animal abuse, treating most episodes with a certain matter-of-factness that – in theory – leaves it up to readers to judge things for themselves. Because the focus is more on the victors, the result does implicitly justify the use of animals in battle, but the provocative opening quote (and the accompanying image) nudges readers to take into account that these aren’t stories about military courage or sense of duty or any other ideal, since the animals never made a conscious choice to participate in the conflicts anyway.

While this subtext is there if you look for it, on the surface Ben Towle doesn’t seem all that keen to editorialize or directly problematize the implications of enrolling these creatures in the fighting process. Rather, he digs up plenty of curious, lesser-known instances of armed forces deploying animals’ strength, instincts, and/or unquestioning obedience, which you can read either as exposing the sad exploitation of nature in the service of human-driven violence or as an inspiring celebration of animals’ value in people’s lives and of their decisive importance in major historical events (not to mention an ode to the military’s resourcefulness in the field).

Likewise, Towle isn’t interested in allegories or in speculative fiction, but in the fantastic stuff that actually happened. The most obvious comparison in terms of comics, then, would be Dogs of War, although Towle’s writing lacks the dramatic punch and relatively nuanced psychology of Sheila Keenan’s scripts, which are more ambitious on the emotional front, even if they have a much less informative scope (curiously, though, Dogs of War has a useful ‘Further Readings’ section, while Four-Fisted Tales: Animals in Combat lacks any bibliography).

That said, Towle excels not just as a researcher, but also as an artist, using the medium of comics to vividly – and synthetically – communicate the actions and features of creatures in radically different contexts, like in this panel about mine-detecting rats:

four-fisted talesFour-Fisted Tales: Animals in Combat

I love how Ben Towle explores the medium’s possibilities as he keeps trying out new formats throughout the book. Four-Fisted Tales: Animals in Combat opens with straightforward narratives, shifts to text-heavy illustrated entries, and later switches back and forth between variations of these two approaches, including a particularly action-packed WWI story in the middle. Between this and the fact that Towle’s designs owe a clear debt to Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis, the title ends up being more than a playful pun, fully justifying the intertextual nod – the result feels like a modern, animal-themed special issue of EC’s classic anthology Two-Fisted Tales!

High points include a finely-crafted tale that follows parallel storylines set in the Vietnamese jungles of the 1960s and 2010s (drawn with contrasting thickness of line and shade, to great effect) as well as one that is framed by a court trial over military programs involving sea mammals. A tale in Iran is essentially ‘silent.’ A piece about carrier pigeons is told mostly through gloriously detailed splash pages.

At the same time, there is a visual coherence ensured by Towle’s smooth cartooning and by the minimalistic olive green/grey palette, which also help keep the book surprisingly light – and even fun – given the disturbing, depressing, and gory subject matter. Indeed, like Dogs of War, this can be safely shelved in a library’s YA section, confirming once again that many of the most visually engaging comics out there aren’t aimed exclusively at adult audiences, regardless of genre (having recently come across Luke Pearson’s kids-geared comedic fantasy series Hilda, I was likewise blown away by its action scenes).

ben towleFour-Fisted Tales: Animals in Combat

I know what you’re thinking and, yes, I totally agree, the Vietnam War’s swimmer nullification program does help explain Batman’s paranoia about dolphin assassins during this period:

batmanDetective Comics #405
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