Gotham Calling | I’ve read too many comics and watched too many movies. This is my way of giving something back to society.

Gotham books for the current times

Posted on March 12, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread, I keep hearing people claiming that this all feels like a movie. They’re probably thinking of medical disaster dramas like 1995’s Outbreak or 2011’s Contagion (Jason Read wrote a few insightful remarks about the latter here). Or, if they’re cinephiles concerned with the virus’ link to xenophobic paranoia, perhaps they’re thinking of the powerful film noir Panic in the Streets…

Such comparisons may sound heartless and naïve, but I’m the last person who can deny pop culture’s appeal as a mediator for our perceptions and as a source of provocative imagery to discuss what’s going on in the world around us. Hell, the first thing that came to *my* mind was Batman comics’ own take on this subgenre, namely 1996’s crossover Contagion, in which the Dynamic Duo struggled to contain the spread of the seemingly unstoppable Apocalypse filovirus (also known as ‘The Clench’) in Gotham City.

In turn, that got me thinking about Batman-related books that would make for an ideal reading experience at the moment, especially for those interested in the franchise’s quirky history of mixing all-out action, dark comedy, and social commentary.

CONTAGION

Like I said in the intro, the reason for picking this book, which collects an arc about an epidemic, should be pretty obvious for anyone who has been watching the news. Still, some readers may be skeptical of a storyline where the Dark Knight ends up fighting a disease, that is to say, a villain without motivation that cannot technically be outsmarted and certainly cannot be punched or kicked in the head. In part, the whole thing worked at the time because, under the remarkable editorship of Dennis O’Neill, writers Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, and Doug Moench had been fleshing out Gotham’s population and institutions for a while, so it was fun to see all these familiar characters deal with the challenge at various levels. It’s one of those tales in which the city itself is the protagonist!

Although this means that new readers may occasionally find themselves a bit lost among the expansive cast, the overall plot is still quite easy – and gripping – to follow, even if you miss some of the background about the bumbling new police commissioner, Andrew Howe, or Azrael’s complicated history with the sinister Order of St. Dumas… (The 2016 collected edition features a handful of extra stories set after Contagion‘s events, but it probably would’ve made more sense to include a few comics that preceded them.) It helps that all the creators involved knew how to spin a damn entertaining yarn: not only do the heroes go on a globetrotting quest to find survivors whose immune system can provide a cure, but they also have to compete with mercenaries hired by the city’s elite, who are trying to save their own skin after having accidentally sealed themselves in with the Clench in a luxury complex called Babylon Towers. The latter subplot provides both an original setting *and* an effective vehicle for Land of the Dead-style satire.

As usual with this sort of crossovers involving multiple series by different creative teams, the artwork is all over place (Tommy Lee Edwards’ angular pencils are a world apart from Kelley Jones’ round, caricatural style, as are Robin‘s bubblegum colors from the oversaturated shadows on the pages of the Batman issues), but at least the writing is generally pretty tight and consistent. I am also a big fan of Contagion’s sequel, Legacy, which was itself collected into a couple of graphic novels not that long ago.

BIRDS OF PREY: VOL.1 (2015 edition)

Whether you’re a fan or a detractor of DC’s latest movie flop, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), you could do worse than to track down the original source of the material, by which I mean the mid-to-late 1990s’ Birds of Prey comics, way before Harley Quinn joined the team and stole the spotlight. Collecting the first batch of butt-kicking team-ups between Oracle (Barbara Gordon) and Black Canary (Dinah Lance), Birds of Prey: volume 1 is thrilling high adventure at its finest, with a fair amount of humor, a dash of politics, and the added bonus of focusing mostly on female heroes and villains (including cool guest appearances by Lois Lane, Catwoman, and the Huntress).

Writers Chuck Dixon and Jordan B. Gorfinkel do an especially good job with the characterization of the spunky Black Canary, who finds herself seemingly in way over her head time and time again. We also get a sense of the shifting geopolitics of an increasingly globalized world, as she investigates terrorists in Africa, fights mobsters in the former Soviet Union, and faces a revolution in the Caribbean. The art – by Gary Frank, Jennifer Graves, Matt Haley, Steffano Raffaele, Dick Giordano, and, in the last chapter, Greg Land – is as slick and punchy as required from such an action-heavy comic.

ARKHAM ASYLUM: LIVING HELL

One of the leitmotifs of the ongoing campaign for the Democratic nomination has been the indignation over the prepotent attitude of billionaires, from the ones trying to buy their election to the one who already sits at the top of the political chain, not to mention all the other ones who exploit the current system with little consequence for themselves. It can therefore be quite cathartic to go back to the saga of Warren White, a rich bastard who pretended to be insane in order to dodge jail, only to find himself sentenced to the gothic mental institution where Batman’s rogues are kept between stories, in 2003’s mini-series Arkham Asylum: Living Hell.

Many great creators have sought to imagine everyday life in Arkham, but nothing beats this hilariously pitch-black prison yarn by Dan Slott and Ryan Sook, with moody colors by Lee Loughridge. With a mosaic structure that keeps shifting perspectives, Living Hell populates the titular madhouse with a host of fascinating new characters (like the traumatized security guard who lost a hand to Killer Croc) while also providing amusing takes on classic rogues (Two-Face cuts his hands, so he has to find someone to flip a coin for him; the Joker decides to kill everybody whose name is a palindrome, just for the sake of it…). In addition to crafting a number of witty set pieces, Slott’s clockwork-like script manages to bring it all together into an apocalyptic ending, with a smooth leap into horror fantasy (including a visit from the demon Etrigan) that gives the book’s title a surprisingly literal meaning.

Posted in BATMAN COMICS FOR BEGINNERS | Tagged Alan Grant, Arkham Asylum, Chuck Dixon, Dan Slott, Denny O'Neil, Dick Giordano, Doug Moench, espionage, Gary Frank, Gotham City, Greg Land, horror, Jennifer Graves, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Kelley Jones, Lee Loughridge, Matt Haley, politics, Ryan Sook, Steffano Raffaele, Tommy Lee Edwards | Leave a comment

10 Alan Moore short stories in others’ sandboxes

Posted on March 6, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

The conversation in the comments section of The Tempest’s post back in January got me thinking about how much of Alan Moore’s career was spent playing with other creators’ toys, providing some of the greatest gun-for-hire work in the medium… This involved relatively lengthy runs that comprehensively expanded a pre-existing mythos (Captain Britain, Marvelman, Swamp Thing, Supreme, WildC.A.T.S.), but he also wrote several hit-and-run shorts that succinctly developed small corners of large universes or even lastingly retconned bits of a series’ continuity. These are often neat comics, working as punchy short stories (Moore is a master of the format) while also drawing on our knowledge of the wider narratives in which they fit.

A few years ago, I praised Moore’s story ‘Last Night I Dreamed of Dr. Cobra,’ which brilliantly imagined a future for Will Eisner’s The Spirit. Here are another ten gems:

‘Rust Never Sleeps’ (originally published in The Empire Strikes Back Monthly #156, cover-dated May 1982), with Alan Davis (art) and Jenny O’Connor (letters)

One of Alan Moore’s earliest gigs involved writing shorts for Marvel UK’s Star Wars comics, of all places. While they’re generally readable-yet-forgettable, what makes these comics interesting is that they explore a side of the franchise that is not the one George Lucas (and his successors) ended up developing. Instead of dynastic soap opera and galactic politics, most stories revolve around different forms of fantasy beyond the Jedi mythology, positing a universe with a wider array of godlike entities and physics-defying phenomena than what we’ve seen in the Skywalker saga, which makes them pretty off-kilter from today’s vantage point. I have a fondness for ‘Rust Never Sleeps,’ in which C-3P0 and R2-D2 come across a kind of droid religion at a planet-sized junkyard. It’s an amusing tale that not only fleshes out Star Wars’ world a bit more, but which works precisely because we know about the larger conflict out there, so we realize what’s at stake better than some of the characters involved.

(The notion of exploring the outer corners of this galaxy far, far away appeals much more to me than endless retreads of world-shattering confrontations between chosen Jedis and Sith emperors, which is why I found greater satisfaction in Jon Favreau’s scaled-backed space western The Mandalorian than in the bloated, unimaginative Rise of Skywalker.)

‘Protected Species’ (originally published in The Super Heroes Annual 1984, cover-dated 1984), with Bryan Talbot (art)

Besides Marvel UK, Alan Moore also did some early work for DC UK, a British publisher that mostly put out reprints of DC’s American material, plus the occasional original story. One of those originals was Moore’s Batman tale ‘The Gun,’ which I’ve discussed before. Another one was the illustrated text piece ‘Protected Species,’ written as a resignation letter from an alien hunter assigned with capturing one of the last Kryptonians alive.

It’s a pretty funny story and well worth tracking down, as Moore indulges in his underrated flair for whimsical comedy (coupled with a surprising amount of world-building): ‘Last season you sent me after those Lesser Iridescent Snicker-Fish that live out on the frozen Methane-Flats of Snorky’s Planet. Yeah, I know there’s only five of the things left in the whole Universe, but that’s not the point. The point is that I had to spend three weeks wading thorax-deep in frozen, stinking methane, looking for some ugly, radioactive-looking little squirm-ball that just giggled at me when I finally found it.’

Needless to say, the main joke is that, unlike the narrator, DC fans know exactly what he’s up against. It’s a simple two-page story, but the shift in perspective is enough to earn some solid chuckles.

‘Red Planet Blues’ (originally published in 2000 AD Annual 1985, cover-dated 1985), with Steve Dillon (pencils), John Higgins (inks), and Steve Potter (letters)

The British cyberpunk magazine 2000 AD made a name for itself with a distinctly grungy sci-fi/horror vibe, geared towards teenage boys through a misanthropic, working class attitude (you can see how the comic went on to inspire stuff like Attack the Block and Love, Death & Robots). Alan Moore fit right in, honing his craft by penning several short stories – mostly standalone ‘Future Shocks’ – as well as a few multi-part sagas. He also contributed with quick instalments for the strips Rogue Warrior, Ro-Busters, and The A.B.C. Warriors.

One of the latter, ‘Red Planet Blues,’ is a concise yet poignant tale about the human colonization of Mars. Neither the use of space as a parable about colonialism nor the move of gradually looking at the monsters as victims are exactly groundbreaking approaches (surely not on the pages of 2000 AD). However, the whole thing works because it’s told through Hammerstein’s supposedly dispassionate point of view, which ironically captures the very injustice he claims not to feel. It also helps that Steve Dillon draws him as one of the saddest-looking robots to ever grace a comic.

‘Brief Lives’ (originally published in The Omega Men #26, cover-dated May 1985), with Kevin O’Neill (art), Carl Gafford (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

This one was made for DC’s The Omega Men (a series that unfortunately had no relation to the psychedelic futuristic thriller starring Charlton Heston), more specifically for the ‘Vega’ backups set around the titular planetary system. Although it features the Spider Guild (a coalition of imperialist alien arachnoids created in Green Lantern), ‘Brief Lives’ could’ve been a 2000 AD ‘Future Shock’ or ‘Time Twister’ quickie – a genuinely great one, by the way. It even includes artwork by 2000 AD alumnus Kevin O’Neill!

The premise is that this tiny spider-like species is trying to take over a planet inhabited by giants who operate in a whole different time frame, where the mere blinking of an eye lasts for ten of the invaders’ years. Their vantage point is so far apart that the Spider Guild’s challenge becomes to make the giants actually aware that they have been conquered. The result is a fun little sci-fi mind-bender that – in just four pages – amusingly tackles the relativity of time and perception (and the futility of war, from a long-term perspective). I keep waiting for people to bring it up in discussions of the Anthropocene.

‘In Blackest Night’ (originally published in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #3, cover-dated 1987), with Bill Willingham (pencils), Terry Austin (inks), Gene D’Angelo (colors), and John Costanza (letters)

A beautiful example of Alan Moore’s knack for taking an existing concept and considering its implications in novel and clever ways. In this case, he wonders how the intergalactic space force Green Lantern Corps could possibly go about it if they wanted to recruit a member from an area of the lightless, starless cosmos, where there would be no concept of color or light – and so, by definition, where even the Green Lanterns’ name (not to mention their oath) would be untranslatable. The result is both playful (especially the final punchline) and possibly allegorical in its respectful treatment of cultural barriers.

Yes, it’s another tale about subjectivity – a recurring motif that matches Moore’s continued efforts to push readers’ perceptions (of comics, genre, and the world beyond them) in new directions.

‘Footsteps’ (originally published in Secret Origins (v2) #10, cover-dated January 1987), with Joe Orlando (art), Carl Gafford (colors), and Bob Lappan (letters)

The Phantom Stranger is one of DC’s most mysterious characters and that mystery is part of his appeal, so when editor Bob Greenberger decided to devote an issue of Secret Origins to the Phantom Stranger he wisely chose to retain some of the ambiguity by providing, not one, but four possible origin stories (by four different creative teams). Alan Moore wrote ‘Footsteps,’ which presents the Stranger – as well the demon Etrigan – as an angel caught in the War in Heaven.

There isn’t much meat on the bone, but once again it’s all in the execution. ‘Footsteps’ keeps shifting from the Phantom Stranger’s recollections of the time of Satan’s fall to a current day story about a guy torn between the NYC subway Guardian Angels and a gang of sewer survivalists. The parallels between the two tales – highlighted by Joe Orlando’s symmetrical layouts – follow the kind of symbol-laden formal exercises characteristic of Moore’s style at the time (most notably in Watchmen, The Killing Joke, and Superman’s ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’), as do the poetic narration, the tight scene transitions, and the multilayered dialogue.

(The other writers went with biblical origins as well, except for Dan Mishkin, who counterbalanced this theological slant by linking the Phantom Stranger to the Big Bang!)

‘Act of Faith…’ (originally published in The Puma Blues #20, cover-dated 1988), with Stephen Bissette (pencils) and Michael Zulli (inks)

Given Alan Moore’s reputation, some of you may be surprised that we’ve made it so far with practically no sexual content. That’s about to change!

Through the eyes of a masturbating narrator, ‘Act of Faith…’ imagines, in rich detail, the mating habits of flying manta rays in a post-nuclear-incident year 2000. Somehow, though, this comes across as profoundly melancholic (aided by the gorgeous art!), culminating in a lovely meditation about the sense of risk and hope inherent to human reproduction at a time of deadly STDs and climate change.

I don’t know if Moore ended up writing this 4-page story because he was an avowed fan of Stephen Murphy’s and Michael Zulli’s ambitious, experimental indie comic The Puma Blues or just because he wanted to make a statement in his crusade for creators’ rights by giving the series a commercial push after Diamond Comics Distributors had refused to distribute it. In any case, the result feels deeply personal and nothing short of wonderful, creating a powerful reading experience that lines up perfectly with the humanist and environmentalist themes of this cult comic.

‘The Mirror’ (originally published in Taboo #5, cover-dated 1991), with Melinda Gebbie (art, colors) and C.D. Alexandar (letters)

Lost Girls was also a case of Alan Moore playing with other people’s toys, albeit this time around without any official authorization and not as part of anyone else’s ongoing franchise. Still, the comic does star (public domain) characters that he did not create, taken from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. In fact, Lost Girls can even be read as a proper sequel to those works, set in their future 1914 (even if it retcons bits of their continuity). That said, while those are classics of children literature, Moore’s comic is, in turn, a very adult-oriented piece of hardcore pornography.

Lost Girls started out in the indie anthology Taboo back in the early ‘90s and, after a long hiatus, was finally completed and published as a massive graphic novel in 2006. It tells a full, cohesive story, but some of its sub-chapters are so neatly self-contained that they do work as autonomous tales as well. For instance, the very first one, the 8-page ‘The Mirror,’ can be read by itself as a bittersweet (if naughty) take on an older Alice, with an ambiguous magical twist at the end.

Moreover, unlike the rest of the book, this section is still a relatively restrained slice of erotica rather than a full-blown display of depraved sex and filth, so it may even appeal to people who aren’t that keen on reading the rest. As you can see above, it’s all framed by Alice’s mirror (a nod to Through the Looking-Glass) and tastefully illustrated by Melinda Gebbie, who elegantly sets up the comic’s precise mise en scène and fauvist tones.

‘The Crazy Wide Forever’ (originally published in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, cover-dated 2008), with Kevin O’Neill (art), Ben Dimagmaliw (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen took the idea behind Lost Girls all the way by stealing hundreds of characters from all sorts of creators and building on their established history, making it the ultimate example of Moore playing in other people’s sandboxes (or, if you prefer, ransacking those sandboxes and then bringing other people’s toys into his own sandbox). Notably, he didn’t just use pre-existing concepts and characters, but also mimicked formal styles, especially in Black Dossier, which was essentially a loosely connected anthology of pastiches merging different intellectual properties. This included an excerpt of ‘The Crazy Wide Forever,’ a book-within-a-book written by Sal Paradyse (Jack Kerouac’s fictional stand-in from On the Road) in a beatnik style reminiscent of Kerouac’s and William S. Burroughs’ prose (Burroughs, in particular, being a major influence on Moore).

This 5-page short story (plus the mock cover you see above, by Moore’s regular partner in crime, Kevin O’Neill) is kind of an epilogue to LOEG’s first volume, in which Professor Moriarty tried to blow up Fu Manchu, but was prevented by Dracula’s Mina Murray and King Solomon’s Mines’ Allan Quatermain. In ‘The Crazy Wide Forever,’ the titular lead of Kerouac’s Doctor Sax (here called Dr. Sachs), who turns out to be Fu Manchu’s grandson, goes after Moriarty and ends up almost unleashing H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.

If you think this already sounds delirious, wait until you get a load of Moore’s version of beatnik spontaneous prose: ‘…Dr. Sachs flaps back above the chimney stacks and sacks the railroad tracks what run like suicide into the weeds he feeds on needs an greeds bleeds into telegraph transmissions scrambles messages to random voodoo poetry he is the scrawled phone number what makes lovers fight and I will tell you this of infamy he is Mahatma in the Mission district’s tinders he makes winos dream that there’s no cigarette alight between their fingers uz they slobber down to sleep…’

‘Grandeur and Monstrosity’ (originally published in God Is Dead: The Book of Acts #Alpha, cover-dated July 2014), with Facundo Percio (art), Hernan Cabrera (colors), and Kurt Hathaway (letters)

One of Moore’s last safe havens of indie publishing was Avatar Press, which specializes in a particularly extreme brand of taboo-breaking horror, packed with no-holds-barred nudity, swearing, graphic violence, and gleeful blasphemy (notably, the publisher’s catalogue includes Über, Crossed, Strange Kiss, and Chronicles of Wormwood). A few years ago, one of my guilty pleasures from Avatar was God Is Dead, in which all sorts of gods came to life. Created by Jonathan Hickman and Mike Costa, the series was basically a religious crossover pitting the pantheons of various mythologies against each other… Like in your average large-scale multi-company event, most characters weren’t particularly well-developed, so your enjoyment relied on the geeky pleasure of recognition and the shock value of seeing familiar figures mercilessly slaughter each other (look, the Valkyries are slaying Atlas!). I appreciated God Is Dead’s iconoclastic exuberance for a while, but eventually dropped out because it amounted to so very little more than the occasional puerile thrill.

Along with the regular series, though, Avatar published a couple of specials in which guest creators contributed with side stories. Alan Moore, who has famously proclaimed himself the High Priest of a one-person cult to the Roman snake god Glycon, went with a surprisingly personal, metafictional approach: in the story, Moore’s fans, still confused about how literally to take his odd religion, ask him whether his god, too, has come to life. In response, Moore gives a performance at the O2 Arena which consists of him holding a puppet of Glycon that lectures the crowd about Neo-Platonism (which saw gods as conceptual essences without material form). The whole thing is crammed with inside jokes and absurdist wit, like when the narration tells us that ‘the show started slightly later than advertised. Long enough, in fact, for some audience members to write lengthy dissertations on the empty stage as a conceptual art statement.’

Of course, if gods are ultimately ideas expressed through representation, then the fact that Glycon is admittedly a puppet doesn’t make it less of a god (only a more honest, revealing one). Yet that also means that the notion of gods coming to life in the flesh makes little sense, since, according to this interpretation, their godliness is defined precisely by the fact that they can only manifest themselves through the works they inspire. In other words, ‘Grandeur and Monstrosity’ both mocks God Is Dead and nicely delves into the series’ themes. Thus, in a pleasing balancing act, Moore manages to do a humorous short story set (and published) in the periphery of a trashy comic that also cogently conveys one of his oeuvre’s major running philosophical motifs: ‘Are gods unreal, then? Not at all. As ideas, we have changed your world beyond all recognition. We have brought enlightenment and slaughter. Do not doubt our power. Just try not to be so literal.’

Posted in FANTASTIC ADVENTURES | Tagged 2000 AD, Alan Davis, Alan Moore, Ben Dimagmaliw, Bill Willingham, Bob Lappan, Bryan Talbot, C.D. Alexandar, Carl Gafford, Dan Mishkin, Facundo Percio, Gene D'Angelo, God Is Dead, Hernan Cabrera, Jenny O'Connor, Joe Orlando, John Costanza, John Higgins, Jonathan Hickman, Kevin O'Neill, Kurt Hathaway, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Melinda Gebbie, Michael Zulli, Mike Costa, science fiction, Star Wars, Stephen Bissette, Stephen Murphy, Steve Dillon, Steve Potter, Terry Austin, Todd Klein | 1 Comment

COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (March 2020)

Posted on March 3, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

Your noirish reminder that comics can be awesome…

Posted in AWESOME COVERS | Tagged Charles Biro, Clue Comics, covers, Crime Does Not Pay, Darwyn Cooke, Dave Stewart, Francesco Francavilla, J. Bone, noir, Steve Ditko, Strange Suspense Stories, The Shadow, The Spirit | Leave a comment

Spotlight on Imperium

Posted on February 26, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

A while ago, I did a post about violent superhero movies that explore how scary it would be if there were actual super-beings around, especially ones less bound by old-fashioned morals than your regular mainstream heroes… This line of speculation has a long tradition in comics, from the brutal classic Miracleman #15 to the unsettling graphic novel A god Somewhere, not to mention the entertaining Superman-gone-bad series Irredeemable. It’s not just the odd comic, either: there are entire shared superhero universes – like WildStorm and Valiant – where morality is practically a secondary thing, as most protagonists will nonchalantly slaughter anyone who gets in the way and many are part of shady teams run by ultra-cynical bastards.

The greatest example in recent times is, by far, Joshua Dysart’s epic, Imperium.

Imperium is the culmination of a certain subgenre of morally ambiguous superhero fiction whose lineage goes back to the 1980s’ deconstructionist movement (spearheaded by Alan Moore) and the 1990s’ Image explosion (where nihilism was part of the whole edgy, ‘extreme’ attitude), but which reached a peak in the early 2000s, most notably with WildStorm’s revolutionary ‘widescreen blockbuster’ extravaganza The Authority. Following that comic’s lead, the rest of WildStorm’s output sought fresh and thought-provoking ways of reimagining the superhero genre, resulting in some of the most experimental works in the field, both as part of The Authority’s universe (Planetary, The Intimates, Wildcats version 3.0, Sleeper, The Establishment…) and beyond it (The Winter Men, Ex Machina, and Automatic Kafka, among others).

Overall, the emphasis was really more on the ‘super’ part of ‘superhero,’ with the main appeal being the catharsis of watching incredible powers unleashed in inventive ways, as well as of thinking through the widespread sociopolitical implications that could come out of such supernatural phenomena (thus breaking long-established taboos in the genre). What made WildStorm so special was also the audacity of engaging with long-term global transformation at the level of an expanded universe with dozens of series, upstaging the short-lived ‘events’ of DC’s and Marvel’s core continuities.

After that version of the WildStorm Universe was brought to a close (in part collapsing under the weight of all the massive destruction it had accumulated), its spirit of cleverly blending the excitement of superhero fantasy with more mature sensibilities was kept alive in 2012’s reboot of the Valiant Universe. Many of the books to come out of that reboot presented super-powers in a terrifying way, avoiding the genre’s more simplistic morality plays. For instance, despite the title, in the early stages of Matt Kindt’s Unity – one of Valiant’s core team books – there was hardly an issue in which one of the stars of the series wasn’t trying (or plotting) to kill at least one other major property (they finally settled into a more cohesive group later on, with the ‘Homefront’ story-arc doing a particularly neat job of conveying their increasing sense of belonging to a team).

Among Valiant’s catalogue, however, I would say that 2015’s limited series Imperium – including the 2019 sequel The Life and Death of Toyo Harada, which was basically the second part of the story – manages to stand out as the most sophisticated corollary to The Authority’s push to move superheroes into a more politically conscious, morally uncertain mold of storytelling while at the same time preserving (or even escalating) the spectacle that defines the genre.

Imperium #2

The series’ premise is that, after his decades-long cover as a philanthropic businessman is compromised, Toyo Harada, the most powerful super-being (aka ‘psiot’) in the Valiant Universe, decides to bend the world’s will by force in order to usher in his vision of post-scarcity utopia. For that, he gathers a host of followers with psionic abilities and declares an all-out war on all sorts of fronts, from messy African politics to the shadowy world of military contractors like the sinister Rising Spirit corporation. Along the way, we get a maximalist barrage of mind-blowing sci-fi concepts, hyperbolic dialogue, and sheer carnage.

You’ll find no decompressed storytelling here: each issue is filled to the brim, as Imperium relentlessly pits telepathy against telekinesis, out-of-this-world brilliance against ruthless cunning, and futuristic technology against unbelievable brute force. The conflict keeps moving and escalating, as double-crosses pile up and key characters are removed from the picture. It makes sense to think of Imperium as a smart superhero version of Game of Thrones – for one thing, Joshua Dysart (one of the most interesting writers working in the medium at the moment) makes sure there are always a few redeeming motivations and likable (or at least charismatic) characters on each side, so that your allegiances are likely to shift as we change perspective, even within a single issue. If there is such a thing as ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ they are all over the place – rather than root for them, you just sit back and dread as you watch them destroy each other.

Indeed, as with those WildStorm comics from the turn-of-the-millennium, a big part of Imperium’s appeal is to watch large-scale exhibitions of devastating power, be they in the form of over-the-top industrial espionage, international politics, psychological mind games, cyber-warfare, or time-manipulation… It’s all robustly rendered by Valiant’s regular artists: Doug Braithwaite, Scot Eaton, CAFU, Juan José Ryp, and Khari Evans. As for Brian Reber’s and Ulises Arreola’s dreamy, blinding colors and Dave Sharpe’s versatile lettering, not only do they secure the series’ visual coherence, but they also enhance its bombastic vibe.

The dialogue is in tune with the comic’s go-for-broke tone. At one point, when a character is about to shoot another, he yells: ‘Time for some high-velocity, transcortical lead therapy!’ Even better: during a particularly thrilling submarine heist (in which Toyo Harada tries to steal a psiot’s brain), the director of Rising Spirit utters these immortal lines to the crew: ‘Every single one of us has to be willing to die to keep that brain in our possession!! The world and the stock value of our company is at stake here, people!’

Joshua Dysart wastes no words, with every line seemingly designed to convey as much information, characterization, and exhilaration as possible. Taking a page from the Warren Ellis/Jonathan Hickman playbook, there is barely a balloon or caption that doesn’t elicit some kind of amazement or amusement in the readers…

Imperium #4

Perhaps I make it sound shallower than it is. Toyo Harada is presented as an authoritarian, megalomaniac superhero/villain, but also as a tragic figure who is resorting to extreme methods in a laudable fight against global injustice and poverty (gathering support from India, Brazil, Indonesia, Iraq, Ukraine, Mexico, Kiribati, Cuba, and the Democratic Republic of Congo along the way). Questioning whether ends can ever justify the means, Imperium shows us both the benefits and the sacrifices inherent to Harada’s proto-socialist crusade, as well as a host of unintended consequences, with the series repeatedly commenting on the link between conflict and economics.

Moreover, like all the best fantasy and science fiction, not only does Imperium conjure up imaginative scenarios, but it then gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of the complicated feelings they would generate. It can be truly absorbing just to watch characters engage with utterly original situations and, in the process, develop original emotions. Just like in the brilliant TV show Counterpart you get a whole range of reactions to the existence of doppelgängers (starting from scientific curiosity, identity crisis, theological interrogation, anthropological distrust, political pragmatism, and existentialist revelation – and then building up from there in increasingly nuanced and personal ways), in Imperium there is a remarkable plurality of ways in which people – and aliens and forms of artificial intelligence – relate to the (super)power struggle taking place around them.

In fact, amidst all the kickass action and geopolitics, the series actually has plenty of moments of tenderness and comedy, usually involving Harada’s medical robot Mech Major, whose A.I. has developed consciousness and insists on being called ‘Sunlight on Snow.’ My favorite scene involves Sunlight on Snow talking to a plant (later revealed to be the seed of a sadistic alien monster):

Imperium #3

Besides setting up a later plot point, the scene manages to be both melancholic and funny. The fact that Doug Braithwaite, Brian Reber, Ulises Arreola, and Dave Sharpe play it completely straight lends even more humor to the abrupt contrast between the sensitive robot and the cold-hearted, logical human. (The tension between Toyo Harada’s humanitarian ideals and his ultra-pragmatic mind is, of course, a key running motif in the whole series.)

Indeed, a major reason for Imperium’s creative success has to do with the fact that Dysart’s scripts are so sharply illustrated. Even when dealing with the most inconceivable creatures and powers, the artwork remains somewhat naturalistic, albeit not meticulously detailed (except for the bits by Juan José Ryp, whose style comes the closest to the Chris Weston/Geoff Darrow school of drawing). For all the sci-fi elements, the comic is certainly set in a recognizable version of our world, with Khari Evans actually working several photographic samples into his backgrounds.

The artists switch dynamically from ‘talking head’ close-ups to splashes and heady sequences, including a dazzling flashback about an exploration mission to a higher dimension (again, by Braithwaite), a cosmic clash between Harada and a godlike Soviet cosmonaut (by Scot Eaton), and a memorable scene inside Albert Einstein’s dying mind (by guest-artist Adam Pollina). The ensuing look cements the idea that, as far as superhero comics go, we couldn’t be farther from Kirbyesque bluntness – instead of stylized blocky figures and stark colors histrionically expressing clear, melodramatic conflicts, every element of Imperium speaks to a slipperier and more elaborate worldview.

See how CAFU – here working with colorist Andrew Dalhouse – practically depicts this siege as a color-coded infographic:

The Life and Death of Toyo Harada #1

As if all this wasn’t enough, Imperium’s fourth arc prominently features Livewire, one of my favorite characters in the Valiant Universe. Much like The Authority’s Engineer, Livewire is a psiot who can control machines with her mind, which means that we keep getting quasi-poetic slices of technobabble like this one:

Imperium #15

Valiant fans, in particular, are bound to have a field day with Imperium and The Life and Death of Toyo Harada, since they tie into various corners of the company’s shared universe, including a major plotline about the alien Vine (from X-O Manowar) and even a nifty sort of crossover with the first Divinity mini-series. That said, these comics aren’t hard to follow on their own, even if you’ll get much more out of them if you’ve at least flipped through the pages of Dysart’s earlier runs on Harbinger and Bloodshot.

Posted in SUPER POWERS | Tagged Adam Pollina, Andrew Dalhouse, Brian Reber, CAFU, Dave Sharpe, Doug Braithwaite, Imperium, Joshua Dysart, Juan Jose Ryp, Khari Evans, Matt Kindt, politics, science fiction, Scot Eaton, Ulises Arreola | Leave a comment

Batman comics and gun control

Posted on February 20, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

The Batman Adventures #28

While gun control has certainly been a running theme in Batman comics throughout the ages, their relationship with this issue is not as straightforward as some seem to think. I don’t mean Batman’s relationship with gun control in the comics, which is actually relatively clear: he’s an adamant advocate that civilians’ access to firearms should be, at the very least, seriously restricted.

Yes, the Dark Knight – initially a rip-off of the Shadow – carried and used guns in a few of his very early stories, before he got his traumatic origin. Yet I think it’s fair to disregard those as out-of-continuity missteps from a time when the character was still taking shape. (In one of the many intertextual in-jokes of the Brave and the Bold animated show, the magnificent episode ‘Game Over for Owlman!’ recontextualized the image of the Golden Age Dark Knight holding a gun by making him an evil Batman from a parallel Earth.)

As far as the archetypical incarnation of the Caped Crusader goes, it has been firmly set that he hates guns:

Batman #489

Detective Comics #748

Indeed, busting up gunrunners is – together with beating up drug dealers, muggers, and rapists – a pretty central chunk of Batman’s average nightly activities. In part, this has got to be a calculated move: the Dark Knight knows that, although you can have violent crime and even murder without firepower, access to guns massively amplifies the scale of violence and likelihood of casualties.

Additionally, you can tell the fact that Bruce Wayne saw his own parents gunned down in front of him as a child is always in the back of his mind when he goes after these guys!

Catwoman: Trail of the Gun #1

The anti-gun feeling is up there with ‘no killing’ and the fact that Bruce Wayne is a socially conscious philanthropist (and not just a brutal vigilante) as one of Batman’s most defining character traits.

It’s a trait that, as I’ve argued before, both suits his personality and can serve as a nifty storytelling device, depriving Batman of quick, easy solutions when he’s apparently outmatched in a fight and forcing him to think on his feet. It also plays well with the notion that he’s an outlaw hero: because the Caped Crusader doesn’t carry guns or deploy lethal force, he can come across as an imaginary alternative to the police rather than as an extreme type of cop, terrifying and unbound. Sure, many people consider guns important crimefighting tools, but the whole point of the Batman fantasy is that he’s operating on a whole other level – this is a guy who uses smoke bombs and grappling hooks and batarangs!

That said, there’s still some room for manoeuvre in terms of the Dark Knight’s attitude towards fire weapons. For one thing, even though he despises them, he has made sure he knows how to use them if necessary, as established in ‘The Death Lottery’ (Detective Comics #708-710). And, in particular circumstances, he has been known to exploit guns’ threatening power:

Batman and the Outsiders #28

Batman’s attitude is not the reason I say his comics don’t always put forth an unambiguous anti-gun message, though. It’s also not because of the fact that, in the 1970s, it was fairly common for those comics to feature ads for toy guns. The main point I want to make is that the Caped Crusader isn’t necessarily the only character in the stories to elicit readers’ sympathies.

Batman’s stance sometimes feels like little more than the idiosyncratic option of one character, which can be counterbalanced by that of others, including that of fan-favorite cops like James Gordon and Renee Montoya, who often save the day by shooting people. Yes, they’re trained officers, but they nevertheless play into the ‘good guy with a gun’ trope – and they generally do it with the Dark Knight’s acquiescence.

Batman #259

The same goes for Detective Harvey Bullock, although he is typically more of an offbeat cast member – a sort of crummy remnant from an old-school strand of hardboiled fiction, cutting corners and not always on the right side, so not exactly a shiny example of a heroic cop.

Bear in mind, by the way, that this didn’t prevent Doug Moench (who created Bullock back in the 1980s) from giving him a couple of stringent anti-gun lines when trying to convince a robber to drop his weapon:

Batman #547

Other sympathetic characters who have prominently displayed very different attitudes towards the gun issue are Barbara Gordon, Sasha Bordeaux, and Alfred Pennyworth. The latter, for example, has been repeatedly shown to own a shotgun and to rely on it for protection whenever he feels particularly threatened…

Batman vs Predator III #4

The fact that Alfred Pennyworth uses a shotgun to protect himself and Wayne Manor has been a staple feature of the character at least since the 1990s. It was taken to the extreme in Batman: Earth One (leave it to Geoff Johns to take everything to the extreme), but Chuck Dixon in particular has often reminded readers of this little bit of continuity.

While it is tempting to see in this merely an expression of Chuck Dixon’s famously conservative, gun-totting views, I suspect it comes from another place altogether. After all, if there is one thing Dixon generally excels at, it’s writing characterization, so it’s not too much of a stretch to see this as a character-based decision. It highlights Alfred’s autonomy – not just in the sense of wanting to take care of himself (instead of merely relying on Batman), but also in the sense of displaying a different ethics code than the one from his ‘Master Bruce.’ Moreover, it suggests there is more to Alfred’s background than being a servant (in pre-Crisis continuity, Alfred had been to war, which is something that still pops up in the recent iterations every now and then).

Plus, the contrast between Alfred’s and Bruce’s attitudes can be a recipe for a fun character dynamic…

Legends of the Dark Knight #145

Going in a whole other direction, Chuck Dixon was behind the creation of a couple of villains whose whole gimmick revolved around their infatuation with firearms: Gunhawk and Gunbunny. Mocking gun culture, he introduced these two deranged snipers in ‘Outgunned’ (Detective Comics #674), which featured a tongue-in-cheek scene at a military expo:

Detective Comics #674

(I’m pretty sure that’s Dixon himself in the top panel…)

Chuck Dixon, in fact, has populated his comics with a number of diverging perspectives, cleverly exploring the cast’s diversity. When writing Robin (Tim Drake), whose crimefighting stems for an admiration for Batman, from a constant desire to do what’s right, and from a general empathy with those around him, Dixon kept the intrinsic reluctance to resort to firearms:

Robin (v4) #14

Dixon’s excellent run on Robin actually includes one of the most striking tales about this topic. In issue #25 (‘Sophomore Lethal’), Karl Ranck, a jock from Tim Drake’s school, starts packing a handgun to Gotham Heights Highschool because he’s worried about street gangs (to be fair, nobody can deny that Gotham City does have a deeply entrenched, interminable gang problem, what with the Street Demonz, the Wardogs, the Gangstas Nine, the Anti-Batz, the Molehill Mob, and countless others…). That gun gives Karl the misplaced confidence to face a local gangbanger and, sure enough, he ends up getting shot, culminating in a heartbreaking final splash page.

The result is more nuanced than a mere indictment of firearms. At the heart of Dixon’s story appears to be something more specific, namely a concern with school violence and the notion that, no matter how you feel about adults carrying weapons, teenagers certainly lack the necessary maturity. This last point is addressed in a subplot where Tim’s dad confronts Karl’s father, who gave him the gun (for Christmas?) in the first place.

Robin (v4) #25

I remember reading that Dixon was one of the writers approached by DC to do a gun-control benefit one-shot in the early 1990s, so I’ve always suspected ‘Sophomore Lethal’ was a recycled story idea from that project.

The comic that did come out of that, titled Seduction of the Gun, ended up being written by John Ostrander and illustrated by Vince Giarrano, with a tone that – contrary to what you might expect – is more gritty than sentimental. I won’t pretend like it has the sophistication and poignancy of HBO shows like The Wire or Our Boys, but it’s still a hard-hitting crime yarn, even as it makes a point of discussing various aspects related to firearms in America, such as the implications for the police, for manufacturers, or for teens attending schools where guns are commonplace. There is even a bit about the glorification of guns in mainstream culture that includes jabs at Lethal Weapon and The Punisher:

Seduction of the Gun

In a way, John Ostrander had already approached the issue of gun violence a couple of years before, albeit with quite a different focus. Working with Kim Yale, he had introduced into the pages of Suicide Squad a post-Batgirl Barbara Gordon who had recently lost the use of her legs after getting shot by the Joker in The Killing Joke. Although Barbara was clearly traumatized by those events, she was nevertheless also defined by her pragmatism and rejection of victimization. One issue even had her go on a shooting range in preparation for facing a telepathic psychopath, whom she was thinking about killing – thus turning gunfire from a symbol of her victimhood into a tool of empowerment. She ended up not pulling the trigger on the guy, but the point of the story still stood: Barbara Gordon would take control of her own narrative, refusing the trope of the passive female whose brutalization only serves to advance the male hero’s journey.

Norm Breyfogle’s cover for that issue effectively illustrated this perspective by sort of reversing the POV of Brian Bolland’s classic cover for The Killing Joke:

This strong – if sometimes conflicted – characterization of Barbara Gordon was later picked up by writers Chuck Dixon and Devin K. Grayson. For instance, when her dad was shot, Barbara kept her cool while handling the investigation. Grayson made a point of showing readers that Babs knew her stuff when it came to firearms, which she didn’t treat as a taboo:

Nightwing #53

Curiously, around that time, in the alternative continuity of Gotham Adventures, Ty Templeton also went to Barbara Gordon in order to briefly tackle the misleading sense of power and safety that weapons can provide. That version of the character hadn’t been shot, so she was still Batgirl and she tagged along with the Dark Knight when he went to Tibet in search of the hidden headquarters of the League of Assassins. Because it was such a dangerous mission, however, Barbara decided to arm herself, leading to a few tense exchanges with Batman along the way.

Gotham Adventures #9

Spoilers: in the end, Batman was proven right. Relying on a gun meant that Barbara put herself in a position where, once disarmed, she basically gave her adversary access to a fire weapon, which he could then turn against her (fortunately for her, he was a martial artist who preferred to fight with his fists anyway!). The comic didn’t come across as too preachy, though, because the discussion was neatly integrated into the story and, more importantly, into believable character dynamics.

Likewise, it made perfect sense that Batman would discuss the issue with Sasha Bordeaux, Bruce Wayne’s short-lived bodyguard from the early 2000s. Those conversations had a whole other slant, however. Writer Ed Brubaker used them to criticize facile gun control rhetoric as well as to point out the childlike logic of Batman’s general worldview…

Batman #595

This story, ‘Out of the Past,’ is consistent with Ed Brubaker’s overall comics-writing agenda, which has typically targeted a relatively mature readership, imbuing even superhero books with a pseudo-realistic sensibility (even if, in his Batman run, Brubaker’s style was uncomfortably at odds with the exaggerated, lighter art of Scott McDaniel). Thus, while Bruce Wayne did get the final word, he didn’t change Sasha Bordeaux’s mind. In the end, the comic still seemed to stress that there was something grown-up about her position.

Batman #595

I don’t know if they were originally designed to play off each other, but this issue ended up tying in with ‘The Devil You Know’ (Gotham Knights #24), which was published a few months after ‘Out of the Past’ (yet set only a week later). Using a device similar to the one in Darwyn Cooke’s then-recent Ego one-shot, Devin Grayson built ‘The Devil You Know’ around a conversation between Bruce Wayne and a psychological projection of Batman, who taunted him about his phobia of firearms. In line with the turn-of-the-millennium’s typical characterization of the Dark Knight as mentally unstable and stuck in a narcissistic state of arrested development, the comic suggested not only that Bruce had a split personality, but also that his relationship with guns stemmed as much from an unhealthy, irrational fear as from more practical and/or ideological arguments.

‘The Devil You Know’ was an introspective tale with some nice visual storytelling (Roger Robinson and John Floyd made for a fine art team, even if their work paled in comparison to Cooke’s approach to this kind of narrative in Ego), which also fitted in terms of the grander Batman narrative: on the one hand, Bruce’s self-doubt could be read as a fallout from his argument with Sasha Bordeaux in ‘Out of the Past;’ on the other hand, Bruce’s decision to purchase a weapon served to set up a plot point for the upcoming Bruce Wayne: Murderer? crossover (and to reinforce the shocking dimension of Bruce’s accusation in that storyline). While I’m not in love with either of these tales, I appreciate that Brubaker and Grayson sought to work in a discussion of the gun issue in ways that felt interesting and organic to the Batman franchise.

By contrast, 2004’s Catwoman: Trail of the Gun mostly addressed the topic by having Catwoman watch television:

Catwoman: Trail of the Gun #1

Sure, there is also a convoluted story about Catwoman searching for a one-of-a-kind ‘smart gun’ that can revolutionize fire weapons. Seriously, though, a huge chunk of this prestige two-parter is little more than a comic about Selina Kyle watching TV. It’s almost postmodern, in a way, eschewing the plot for pages in a row while trying to mimic the experience of following televised debates about gun control.

At least in The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller’s use of talking heads on TV screens had a playfulness and a sense of crescendo, moving the story forward in an original (at the time) and entertaining way. Trail of the Gun, however, seems so devoid of irony that it actually makes you feel like you’re just watching mainstream television. And not even watching engaging contributions like the Bowling for Columbine documentary, but the blandest, most generic news programs that happen to be on:

Catwoman: Trail of the Gun #1

Generally, I’m quite the fan of Ann Nocenti’s sensationalistic writing style (especially in her Daredevil run), but Trail of the Gun is a surprisingly painful slog. Despite the liberal slant, it’s one of those comics that tries to ‘show both sides’ of the argument, so the dialogues are full of hamfisted statements about the central topic – one character will say that ‘guns are for jerks and cowards,’ the other will explain that in his milieu ‘guns are the great equalizer,’ eventually someone will conclude that ‘guns empower people that have no power,’ etc. Practically every exchange is an explicit comment about some aspect of gun control, from the argument that manufacturers should be accountable to the charge that references to the 2^nd Amendment are ultimately disingenuous and unproductive.

Mind you, I largely agree with many of the points made in Trail of the Gun (a few of them are even quite thought-provoking). I just wish Nocenti could’ve found a more appealing way to put them across than to just have characters spout them at each other all the time…

Catwoman: Trail of the Gun #2

(Trail of the Gun is also a waste of Ethan van Sciver’s talent as an artist… Given his over-the-top reactionary politics, however, I do find it amusing to see him try to visually salvage such a liberal project.)

I’m not saying you cannot directly thematize the issue of gun control in mainstream comics. For instance, Saga of the Swamp Thing #45 (‘Ghost Dance’), with its EC-style haunted house tale based on the Winchester Mansion, remains a powerful and original visualization of the weight of firearms in American history. Hell, even ‘Forgotten Paths,’ a comic in which Green Arrow travelled to Gotham City and met a bunch of victims of gun violence, isn’t all that bad, although perhaps I just feel this way because I have a soft spot for Anarky…

Green Arrow #89

Posted in POLITICS OF BATMAN COMICS | Tagged Ann Nocenti, Batman's personality, Brian Bolland, Chuck Dixon, Darwyn Cooke, Devin Grayson, Doug Moench, Ed Brubaker, Ethan van Sciver, Frank Miller, Geoff Johns, guns, John Floyd, John Ostrander, Kim Yale, Norm Breyfogle, politics, Roger Robinson, Scott McDaniel, Ty Templeton, Vince Giarrano | Leave a comment

Trashy, thrilling sci-fi war comics

Posted on February 13, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

Last month, I wrote about the remarkable ending of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that was not the only cool sci-fi/fantasy series to wrap up in 2019. Rick Remender’s and Matteo Scalera’s Black Science finished its blustery, dreamlike barrage of alternate dimensions (in which each individual panel seems ripped from one of those old illustrated mags full of surreal creatures and ray guns, like Tales of Wonder, Future Fiction, and Astounding Stories of Super-Science) with a denouement that lived up to its core theme of an ageing punk dealing with family responsibility. Likewise, Brian K. Vaughan’s and Cliff Chiang’s Paper Girls, one of the best things to come out of the ‘80s revival craze (alongside the awesome Netflix series GLOW), brought its coming-of-age adventure yarn about time-travelling teenagers to a bittersweet end.

Neither of these comics is as brilliant as LOEG, yet they’re both super-stylish, not least because of the spectacular work of colorists Dean White, Moreno Dinisio, Matt Wilson, and Dee Cunniffe. While also drawing on a number of intertextual references (like Paper Girls’ fun letter pages, framed as a publication from The American Newspaper Delivery Guild), the emphasis is on more mainstream entertainment – these are serpentine, adrenaline-charged page-turners that capture a more immediate sense of thrill, dynamically pushing readers along with non-stop cliffhangers, plot twists, and stunning splash pages.

This got me thinking about thrillers that take this approach even further… And since it has become a winter tradition here at Gotham Calling to do a yearly post about sci-fi war comics, I figured this time around I’d focus specifically on books that feel like trashy science fiction! Here are three series that, although derivative and problematic on many levels, do reflect an appealing sort of gusto, unashamedly reveling in ultra-violence and poor taste. They’re worth checking out if you’re looking for a quick shot of exploitation that turns the darkest corners of our world into grist for visceral excitement:

ANT WARS

This comic probably delivers everything you can expect from a science-gone-wrong story about mutated ants going on a killing spree in the Brazilian jungle. The giant insects are seemingly unstoppable, a bunch of people get eviscerated, and the stakes keep escalating. There are various artists (José Luis Ferrer, Alfonso Azpiri, Luis Bermejo, Lozano, and Peña), but they all stick to a consistent approach of depicting the ants in a realistic style, with predictably creepy results.

Even though the series was originally published in 1978 (in 2000 AD #71-85), its themes fit quite comfortably in this Jair Bolsonaro era of assault on the Amazon rainforest and on Brazil’s indigenous communities. On top of the obvious nature-fights-back-against-humanity motif, there is a riotously heavy-handed commentary on colonialism: while one of the protagonists – an arrogant officer called Captain Lobos Villa – often refers to a young native as a savage Indian who doesn’t understand civilization, the kid’s cultural background keeps saving his life. (Now that every comic seems to be on the way to the screen, I expect a film adaptation by the people who made Bacurau at any moment.)

That said, Ant Wars is still very much a product of its day. It feels cut straight from the cloth of the huge-animals-on-a-rampage horror subgenre trending in British pop culture at the time, not just in the form of novels like James Herbert’s The Rats and Guy N. Smith’s Night of the Crabs, but – above all – in the form of the outrageous environmentalist comics created by Pat Mills in retaliation against Jaws’ man-versus-nature theme (Hook Jaw, Shako, Flesh).

It’s also a clear throwback to American 1950s’ ‘killer bug’ movies like Them! and Tarantula. Villa sometimes resembles Charlton Heston, who played a similar racist character in 1954’s eerie gothic drama The Naked Jungle (whose climax involves an ant attack on a Brazilian plantation). Those films reflected early Cold War paranoia, including a deep-rooted fear of uncontrollable nuclear power and of an enemy that could not be reasoned with. Yet Ant Wars reflects a different context: published at a time when the Cold War had become much more global, it sets its sights on US imperialism in the Third World while also poking fun at anti-imperialism – once the story moves to Argentina (starting with the gratuitous slaughter of a couple of Scottish soccer fans who were there for the World Cup), the protagonists cross paths with a surprising caricature of Che Guevara:

Hell, you can read the whole ‘giant ant army’ thing as a chaotic allegory about the murderous, ruthless dictatorships cynically empowered by the United States in Latin America! (The bleak final pages, at least, lend themselves to this reading…)

Don’t get me wrong: I won’t pretend like Ant Wars was conceived as anything more than an unpretentious pulp adventure strip aimed at young boys or that writer Gerry Finley-Day was necessarily sensitive about some of his un-PC word choices (his narration uses the same terms as Captain Villa, which is not to say they aren’t soaked in venomous irony). Still, there is something anarchic about this comic that remains captivating – like much of early 2000 AD, it’s vicious, unsentimental, and even funny in a grotesque sort of way, brutally pitting unlikable characters against unspeakable threats and letting god sort them out.

BLOODY MARY

A couple of 2000 AD alumni were behind this nasty four-issue mini-series about a mission to find the ultimate weapon during World War III, headed by the weary American Corporal ‘Bloody Mary’ Malone and an overenthusiastic amnesiac British officer who just goes by the name of Major.

Originally published in 1996 as part of DC’s short-lived sci-fi imprint Helix, Bloody Mary’s imagined future feels both outdated (war started in 1999 and lasted until 2012) and like a topical parody of current trends, as a Franco-German-dominated European Union (true enough), whose leader had been ‘swept to power on a wave of racial hate and reactionary paranoia’ geared against immigrants (an increasingly believable scenario), fought against a Britain who refused to join the rest of the continent (which gels with Brexit, even if it doesn’t take into account Brexit’s own links to the rise of the far-right).

Like with Ant Wars, however, scrutinizing Bloody Mary’s politics and futurology too deeply risks missing the point. They’re just the framework for a gory action yarn done by a Garth Ennis who was still figuring out how to write war stories and a Carlos Ezquerra who had already made a healthy career out of drawing them. While there is plenty of grit and pathos along the way, the creators clearly didn’t take anything very seriously as they indulged in cartoony stereotypes like the brazenly jingoistic (and xenophobic) Major or a wine-obsessed French assassin whose final dying gesture is to pour the nearest bottle. And even though the comic, echoing previous conflicts, pits the UK and the US against European authoritarianism, it makes a point of clarifying that their main motivation is to regain control of the trade that Europe dominates.

The sequel, Lady Liberty, published the following year, is even more tongue-in-cheek, as New York City gets taken over by a horny cult leader:

It’s a 1990s’ Garth Ennis comic, which means it’s still a bit rough around the edges, but also stirringly full of piss and vinegar (and occasional jokes about Kurt Cobain). Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra make quite a team (no wonder they collaborated on so many comics…), especially as Ezquerra can pull off an appealing sort of ugliness that suits both the despicable characters (all of them bastards, to some degree) and the ensuing carnage. Ezquerra also expressively brings to life several lengthy conversations, helped by Ennis’ amusing way with words and by Annie Parkhouse’s vivid letters.

The fact that Mary keeps dressing up like a nun and shooting people brings to mind the ‘nuns with guns’ subgenre, which matches the overall grindhouse tone of the comic. Yet the main influences are indisputably the pulse-pounding movies of James Cameron and John Carpenter, with their badass leads and cyberpunk attitude.

ROBOCOP VERSUS THE TERMINATOR

Speaking of James Cameron: merging the RoboCop and Terminator franchises may seem like a no-brainer. The two film series share a flair for hypercharged violence as well as human-versus-technology themes. The premise that Alex Murphy’s RoboCop prototype kickstarted the chain that led to the Skynet machine rebellion creates a logical link that doesn’t require much retconning. Still, you could’ve ended up with little more than serviceable fanfic were it not for the fact that the team behind this crossover was made up of two giants of the medium near the peak of their careers. As a result, 1992’s mini-series RoboCop Versus the Terminator turned out to be worthy of both properties!

Just as Terminator fans will get a kick out of the relentless momentum and time-travelling paradoxes, the RoboCop crowd should appreciate Murphy’s characterization and the series’ signature black comedy (stay away if you can’t stand the sight of violence against children or dogs!), even if the tone comes across as more earnest than in Paul Verhoeven’s over-the-top satire. As fond as I am of those vicious Alan Grant comics in which RoboCop goes to war in Algeria, this is probably the greatest take on the material outside of the first couple of movies.

As for the title of greatest Terminator comic, it’s arguably a tie between this one and The Terminator: One Shot by James Robinson and Matt Wagner. Not that we really needed more than what we got with the first film sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. By undoing the apocalyptic fatalism of its Reagan-era predecessor (‘There’s a storm coming.’) and – through the story of a woman who stops dreaming about nuclear holocaust – replacing it with a post-Cold War sense of open future (‘no fate but what we make’), T2 provided perfect closure to the saga, so anything after it just feels like gluttony.

Sure, the original Planet of the Apes also had a perfect ending, but at least there the sequels were genuinely weird and original… whereas with the Terminator franchise – from the campy Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (which brought back paranoid pessimism in line with the War on Terror zeitgeist) to the most recent installment, the woke Dark Fate – we mostly got rehashed plotlines and a remix of the earlier movies’ greatest moments and lines (yes, this even goes for Terminator Salvation, which at least tried out a relatively different approach). In turn, RoboCop Versus the Terminator boldly expands the scope of both series while taking the narrative in unexpected directions.

More than the RoboCop/Terminator crossover, though, the comic is worth it for the Frank Miller/Walter Simonson team-up.

Frank Miller penned RoboCop Versus the Terminator with the kind of unbridled excess he brought to other Dark Horse comics at the time, like Give Me Liberty, Hard Boiled, and The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot. He also nailed the various voices, clearly having a blast writing from the machines’ perspective. In particular, having already worked on the botched RoboCop 2 screenplay, Miller had a knack for the humorous potential of Alex Murphy’s no-frills approach to problem-solving (I love the gag with the suicide bomber).

Meanwhile, Walt Simonson took the chance to go wild as he piled up panels upon panels of robots mercilessly fighting each other, with the ensuing shrapnel and John Workman’s sound effects getting all over the place. Although Steve Oliff’s bright, clean computer coloring in 2014’s collected edition (as opposed to Rachelle Menashe’s more subdued colors in the original) doesn’t do justice to Simonson’s gritty artwork, the result is still a fever dream of sci-fi action. Recommended for anyone in the mood for some pure, unabashed schlock.

Posted in FANTASTIC ADVENTURES | Tagged 2000 AD, Alan Grant, Alfonso Azpiri, Annie Parkhouse, Ant Wars, Black Science, Bloody Mary, Brian K. Vaughan, Carlos Ezquerra, Cliff Chiang, Cold War, Dean White, Dee Cunniffe, Frank Miller, Garth Ennis, Gerry Finley-Day, horror, James Robinson, John Workman, José Luis Ferrer, Lozano, Luis Bermejo, Matt Wagner, Matt Wilson, Matteo Scalera, Moreno Dinisio, Paper Girls, Peña, politics, Rachelle Menashe, Rick Remender, Robocop, science fiction, Steve Oliff, Terminator, Walt Simonson | Leave a comment

3 symbolic backgrounds by Graham Nolan

Posted on February 6, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

When I wrote about Chuck Dixon’s grounded, no-frills approach to storytelling a while back, I briefly mentioned his productive collaborations with a couple of artists whose style also fits this description: Tom Lyle (who died shortly after that post) and Graham Nolan. Rereading material for that write-up, however, it struck me how Nolan – for all his deceptively simple, naturalistic pencils – repeatedly resorted to a decidedly unrealistic effect. Every once in a while, he would fill the background with non-diegetic symbols that illustrated what was on a character’s mind…

The Joker: Devil’s Advocate

It’s not exactly a groundbreaking, experimental trick. Scott McCloud, who devotes a couple of pages of Understanding Comics to the tradition of using expressionistic backgrounds as a tool for indicating ‘invisible ideas’ and emotions (allowing us to read characters’ ‘inner states’), points out that this technique is fairly common, for example, in Japanese romance comics. Yet it’s interesting to see Nolan kept returning to this quasi-Brechtian effect, since it seems so much at odds with his typically straightforward, figurative choices. (I always figured him for a crafstman who shared Howard Hawks’ belief that in the best storytelling you don’t notice the storyteller.)

To be fair, he did it very sporadically and without calling too much attention to himself. Indeed, despite the contrast with the rest of his comics, these panels never take me out of the narrative, as Graham Nolan works them in with a minimum amount of fuss, keeping the symbols to an efficient minimalism. For example, here is Arthur Brown (aka Cluemaster) running around while scared out of his mind about the possibility that the Riddler will blow him up:

Detective Comics #706

The panel comes from the very cool three-parter ‘Badd Girls/Lethal Pursuits/Riddled’ (Detective Comics #705-707, cover-dated January-March 1997), in which the Riddler goes after Arthur Brown, whom he accuses of having degraded his gimmick. The Riddler then puts his own spin on Die Hard with a Vengeance, except that instead of Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis, you get Batman and Cluemaster!

The whole thing is super fun, especially this moment when a pissed off Arthur Brown faces a bunch of gangsters while Graham Nolan’s background assures us that he means business:

Detective Comics #707

Posted in ART OF BATMAN COMICS | Tagged Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, Scott McCloud | Leave a comment

COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (February 2020)

Posted on February 3, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

Lowering the level again, here is another monthly reminder that comics can be awesome…

Posted in GLIMPSES INTO THE PAST | Tagged Carl Burgos, Carmine Infantino, covers, Dick Dillin, From Beyond the Unknown, Gaspar Saladino, George Roussos, House of Mystery, Ira Schnapp, Joe Kubert, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Sheldon Moldoff, Sol Brodsky, Stan Goldberg, Strange Adventures, Weird War Tales | Leave a comment

On John le Carré’s Circus novels

Posted on January 29, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

I won’t drift too far away and too often, but this year I want to widen the blog’s scope every once in a while. With that in mind, let’s shift gears for a bit and talk about John le Carré’s series of spy novels featuring the fictitious British counter-intelligence department known as the Circus.

When I say ‘shift gears,’ I mean it: not only are these not comic books, they are deliberately removed from the kind of pulp adventure sensibilities that inform most of the material I usually cover on this blog. John le Carré (who was himself an MI6 operative in the early 1960s’ West Germany [edit: In the previous decade, he had also worked for MI5.]) specializes in consciously anti-James Bond narratives, deglamorizing the UK’s secret services and complexifying the Cold War’s murky morality while privileging descriptions and long dialogues over violence, gadgets, and babes. It’s all perfectly personified by the recurring character of George Smiley, a middle-aged, overweight, cerebral agent, cuckolded by his wife.

Part of the reason I love these books so deeply is precisely the satisfaction of reading a sophisticated, revisionist take on the adolescent fantasies I grew up with (similar to what it felt like to first read Watchmen having grown up on much more naïve superheroes, or what it must feel like to read Criminal after a steady diet of Sin City). Another part has to do with the fact that, as a fan of superhero comics, I’m a sucker for sprawling, intertextual world-building. It’s not just that the Circus novels share characters – it’s that the focus keeps shifting in interesting ways, with one book’s lead sometimes turning up as a supporting player in another book, or a plot turn shedding new light on a previous story, or George Smiley’s evolution throughout the decades (including the weight of his marriage, always looming in the background) becoming increasingly symbolic of changing geopolitics…

George Smiley is a major player in John le Carré’s first couple of novels, 1961’s Call for the Dead and 1962’s A Murder of Quality. The earlier one – in which Smiley looks into the suicide of a Foreign Office civil servant whom he had recently interviewed for a routine security check – introduces a handful of recurring characters, including Smiley’s wife Ann Sercombe, his right-hand man Peter Guillam, Inspector Mendel, and the concept of the Circus department (so-called because it operates out of Cambridge Circus, in London).

Le Carré was still finding his voice, though, and these efforts are still a far cry from later outings. He clearly already knew that he wanted to take a very different path from Ian Fleming’s power fantasies. Lacking Bond’s virile demeanor and glamour, George Smiley is first introduced with this merciless description: ‘Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad.’ Yet le Carré wasn’t yet sure what to do with his creation… At this stage, he was heading more in the direction of detective fiction: as the titles suggest, both books involve murder investigations and seem to be setting up Smiley as another quirky sleuth in the long tradition of British mystery literature, his counter-intelligence background serving as a new spin on the Sherlock Holmes/Hercules Poirot type of lead.

A Murder of Quality doesn’t even have much to do with espionage – it’s just an amusing little Agatha Christie-like whodunit set around an English boarding school in the small town of Carne, which serves as a springboard for some pointed social commentary about the British class system (without ever becoming a full-on trenchant satire of the UK’s elite education, a la Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue). Readable yet forgettable, the book is certainly not mandatory except for die-hard le Carré completists, even if the writing can be quite witty at times:

“Fielding began talking, pontificating rather, with an air of friendly objectivity which he knew Hecht would resent.

‘When I look back on my thirty years at Carne, I realize I have achieved rather less than a road sweeper.’ They were watching him now – ‘I used to regard a road sweeper as a person inferior to myself. Now, I rather doubt it. Something is dirty, he makes it clean, and the state of the world is advanced. But I – what have I done? Entrenched a ruling class which is distinguished by neither talent, culture, nor wit; kept alive for one more generation the distinctions of a dead age.’

Charles Hecht, who had never perfected the art of not listening to Fielding, grew red and fussed at the other end of the table.”

Fortunately, John le Carré soon came into his own with a couple of thrillers that turned the spy genre on its head, 1963’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and 1965’s The Looking Glass War. They were set in the same world – George Smiley played small (if crucial) roles in both of them – but operated on a whole other field by providing a bleak yet human glimpse into Cold War intelligence operations. The prose style was also different, with The Spy Who Came In from the Cold written in a much sharper, hardboiled tone, perfectly suited to its gripping, tightly plotted, twist-filled tale of double-crosses revolving around a divided Germany (where the Berlin Wall had recently gone up).

It was a huge leap: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold isn’t just John le Carré’s breakthrough novel, it’s an absolute classic. In turn, The Looking Glass War was an unpopular follow-up, probably because le Carré pushed realism and cynicism to a new level by focusing on an obsolete military intelligence department struggling to remain relevant in the latest political context. Everything about it was imbued with a devastating sense of doom, including descriptions such as this one:

“There are houses which have got the better of their occupants, whom they change at will, and do not change themselves. Furniture vans glide respectfully among them like hearses, discreetly removing the dead and introducing the living. Now and then some tenant will raise his hand, expending pots of paint on the woodwork or labor on the garden, but his efforts no more alter the house than flowers a hospital ward, and the grass will grow its own way, like grass on a grave.”

The Looking Glass War ultimately boils down to an ill-conceived mission carried out by a bunch of pathetic, petty, fallible men driven by misplaced nostalgia in a world that doesn’t really care about them. Me, I love it: this was John le Carré taking genre deconstruction to the extreme, before turning towards reconstruction in the following Smiley novels.

After moving away from the Circus for a couple of books, le Carré came back with a vengeance in 1974’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, his most acclaimed masterpiece. Even though the novel brought George Smiley back to the forefront and it was structured like a mystery, this was no mere throwback: in fact, it told a whole other kind of whodunit, with Smiley hunting a mole at the Circus, clearly inspired by Kim Philby (the real-life double agent who had betrayed John le Carré’s MI6 cover). Above all, le Carré’s writing had matured substantially by then – rather than pushing readers along, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy expects them to attentively and laboriously engage with each character and process (like a true operative would). The book takes a lot of seemingly boring situations, jargon-heavy conversations, and a super-complex plot, told at a glacial pace, and somehow manages to be incredibly absorbing and touching, beautifully merging global and personal stakes.

This book inaugurated a new phase in John le Carré’s body of work, his novels growing in terms of cast, scope, literary ambition, and word count. It was followed by two page-heavy sequels done in the same style – 1977’s The Honorable Schoolboy and 1979’s Smiley’s People – forming the ‘Karla trilogy,’ which revolved around George Smiley’s geopolitical chess games with his Soviet counterpart, Karla. Rather than a one-man show, the series was packed with well-developed figures that often took the spotlight. Notably, self-destructive journalist Jerry Westerby, who had been a supporting character in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, went on to become the protagonist of The Honourable Schoolboy (which was largely set in Hong Kong and war-torn Vietnam). Like the best examples of continuity, these links expand rather than limit readers’ enjoyment… Ultimately, most Circus books can work for themselves, it’s just that they work even better if you read them in order: the twist in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is even more powerful if you’ve read Call for the Dead beforehand; the revelation of the mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is addressed in the books that followed; Smiley’s People’s moving dénouement feels like a kind of inversion of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, once again set at the Berlin Wall.

The best work I’ve read about John le Carré, Michael Denning’s Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller, points out that reading the Circus novels as a whole one can discern not just an interesting narrative, but also a fascinating ideological development, as the series keeps recontextualizing George Smiley’s position in the grand scheme of things: ‘So behind the similar narrative structures of each book is a kind of narrative across the books, a narrative of ever larger Russian dolls, and of ever smaller and less powerful roles for Smiley. Smiley descends the hierarchy of information from the cold executioner of the Circus, the shadowy figure at the end of the tale who epitomizes absolute bureaucratic knowledge, to the middle-ground hero of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy who embodies a unified knowledge of the fragmented puppets against that of the total organization, and finally, in The Honourable Schoolboy, to a puppet himself.’

Alec Guinness in Smiley’s People

On the big screen, Martin Ritt turned The Spy Who Came In From the Cold into a stylish, suitably downbeat slice of noir in 1965. The following year, Sidney Lumet was less successful with The Deadly Affair – an adaptation of Call for the Dead – which cheapened the source material with more violence and a less subtle approach to George Smiley’s and Ann Sercombe’s couple dynamics (although I’m pretty sure the film inspired a key twist in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, where le Carré took an idea from that adaptation and handled it more elegantly).

On television, the Circus novels’ heavily bureaucratic, politically savvy, counter-Bond take on spy fiction was an obvious inspiration for the awesome show The Sandbaggers. Even the original Mission: Impossible TV series, which – with its fictitious countries, outlandish plots, and minimalistic characterization – sounds like it would fall on the opposite end of the genre’s spectrum, showed a possible influence from le Carré in a few grounded, somber episodes (‘The Reluctant Dragon,’ ‘The Diplomat,’ ‘Nicole’). Another high point was the BBC’s low-key adaptations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982), starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

At their best, these films and shows captured the Circus series’ cold, dour mood, yet I still miss the richness of John le Carré’s prose. The truth is that, besides the refreshing pleasure of revisionism and the geeky appeal of intricate continuity, the other reason I enjoy the hell out of these books has to do with the writing. Le Carré is a master of nailing melancholic characterization, fleshing out each cast member into a well-rounded individual. He also has a knack for dialogue, knowing when to play it cool with functional, insinuating exchanges and when to hit you with a powerful line. (‘Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.’)

That said, from the point of view of identity politics, I should point out that the cast is not very diverse, even if the series came to include increasingly nuanced portrayals of homosexuality over the years. Among the few female characters who stand out, my favorites are the recurring alcoholic Russian analyst Connie Sachs, A Murder of Quality’s Ailsa Brimley (who has a touch of Miss Marple), and Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova, the Soviet émigré in Paris who kickstarts the events of Smiley’s People.

As the Cold War drew to an end, John le Carré did a trio of novels that further expanded his universe while also playing around with form, continuously stretching his writing muscles. 1989’s The Russia House was the first book of the lot with a first-person narrator, namely Harry Palfrey, a legal adviser to the British secret services. It’s a wonderful read, with a fact-checking operation serving as a pretext to engage with the Perestroika-era USSR in a tale that is at once political and romantic. Initially, it may not seem like it belongs in the Circus series, but one of the supporting characters, Ned, then shows up as the narrator of 1990’s The Secret Pilgrim, which resembles an essay anthology framed around a set of lectures by George Smiley. In turn, Palfrey reappears (in a secondary role) in 1993’s The Night Manager, le Carré’s first proper post-Cold War entry and the closest he has come to a ‘boys’ own’ adventure yarn.

While I’m not a big fan of the clichéd The Night Manager, I can’t sing enough praise about The Secret Pilgrim, which could’ve been a perfect coda to the Circus series (and to the Cold War itself). It is also the main exception to what I said about the books mostly working as self-contained works – The Secret Pilgrim is certainly not the best place to start right away, as it’s full of spoilers about the other Circus installments (as well as Russia House) and it hits you harder the more familiar you are with George Smiley. That said, it’s a brilliant book with some of the best spy short stories ever written this side of Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Garden of Forking Paths.’ It’s certainly worth reading after you’ve checked out at least a couple of le Carré’s previous novels.

As for John le Carré’s subsequent output, it belongs to a whole new phase, consisting of unrelated standalone thrillers that tend to be less ideologically complex, denouncing imperialism in a (comparatively) more straightforward way. They’re not bad, but they do pack less of a punch than the Circus novels. For one thing, the characters (even the most psychologically rich ones) are not as memorable, except perhaps for the charismatic protagonists of The Tailor of Panama and The Mission Song.

Meanwhile, most adaptations have been instantly forgettable, with the honorable exception of Tomas Alfredson’s film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), which edited down John le Carré’s story into a visual puzzle that works as quite an eccentric piece in its own right. (Honestly, despite focusing on American gangsters rather than British spies, the closest thing to a screen version of le Carré’s signature blend of high politics and intimate drama, with an intricate, languidly told tale full of seasoned professionals talking in tradecraft-informed shorthand, was last year’s The Irishman, by Martin Scorsese.)

Finally, in 2017 John le Carré delivered a 21^st century epilogue to the Circus series with A Legacy of Spies, his best novel in over a decade. If le Carré’s Cold War phase was mostly about the ambiguity of the oppressors and the later stuff about empathy with the oppressed, A Legacy of Spies intelligently combined the two perspectives in the form of a parliamentary enquiry into the sacrificed pawns of the Cold War… And not just any pawns: precisely the ones le Carré had written about early on, as the current-day investigation allowed us to visit the background of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, thus making the book simultaneously a sequel and a prequel to those novels (even if the guilt-ridden Peter Guillam makes for an unreliable narrator).

Unlike most prequels, which basically fill in unnecessary backstory and often cheapen the original work, A Legacy of Spies actually illuminates and interrogates the other stories. It’s not a shameless nostalgia trip – in fact, the book manages to be quite topical, dealing with our collective memory of the Cold War against the background of the War on Terror, not to mention the Brexit zeitgeist. It’s also one hell of a read: it includes one of the tensest escape sequences from the GDR I’ve ever come across and, because a lot of it is told through official reports, you have to keep reading between the lines and decipher what is not being said.

In comics, nothing quite compares to the dense texture of John le Carré’s work. Nevertheless, some creators have pleasingly sought to emulate his grounded approach to the genre, most notably Antony Johnston in the Coldest City/Coldest Winter graphic novels (whose tone has absolutely nothing to do with the campy film adaptation, Atomic Blonde) and Greg Rucka in the Queen & Country series, which even includes a three-issue spin-off set during the Cold War:

Queen & Country: Declassified #2

So, assuming I’ve convinced you to give the Circus series a try, what are the obligatory reads? The first novel, Call for the Dead, is the obvious starting point for completists, but if you just want a quick sample of John le Carré’s talent, then I recommend going with The Spy Who Came In From the Cold: it’s one of the most influential books in the whole genre and it works really well on its own (in other words, the plot doesn’t require you to be familiar with Smiley’s previous adventures, it’s just that those who’ve read Call for the Dead will get a special kick out of what happens to a certain supporting character). Or you can jump straight into le Carré’s magnum opus: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which is more demanding (yet rewarding) than its predecessors, but it doesn’t expect you to have read what came before. Choose any of these and let yourself get lost in the meanders of British espionage. Spy yarns will never feel the same again.

Posted in SPYCRAFT & WARFARE | Tagged books without pictures, Cold War, espionage, John le Carré, noir, politics | Leave a comment

On the periphery of Batman’s rogues’ gallery

Posted on January 23, 2020 by I.M. Baytor

This is Gotham Calling’s 300^th post!

I usually take these occasions to celebrate the richness and weirdness of Batman’s extensive rogues’ gallery, which includes all sorts of odd criminals, ranging from iconic characters like the Joker and the Penguin all the way down to this guy obsessed with eggs:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #16

Flamboyant villains play a particular role in the Batman franchise. As Geoff Klock notes in How to Read Superhero Comics and Why, they tend to operate as a kind of reflection of some aspect of the Caped Crusader’s personality: ‘The Penguin reflects the dark side of Bruce Wayne’s millionaire capitalist playboy routine. Mr. Freeze points out the dark side of Bruce Wayne’s utter lack of emotion as Batman. The shape-shifter, Clayface, suggests the anti-essential nature of the Batman/Bruce Wayne relationship, both of which are seen as persona (Batman to scare criminals, Wayne to cover up Batman under the role of a disaffected rich fop). Poison Ivy uses criminal activity (and Batman’s vigilante status is, of course, illegal) for a good cause, ecology. The Scarecrow, whose entire existence is devoted to fear, recalls that the intention of the Batman persona is the edge provided by terror. The Mad Hatter’s mind control reflects the extremities of Batman’s methods of coercion. The Riddler parodies Batman’s role as the great detective.’

I’d say this goes even for many of the minor villains, including a few I find especially charming and underused. Let’s start with the most underused of the lot – Mr. Baffle, whose only appearance took place in ‘A Gentleman in Gotham!’ (Detective Comics #63, cover-dated May 1942), by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, and George Roussos. This foe’s high concept was that he was an extravagantly suave jewel thief (or, as the introductory text put it, ‘clever as a fox’ and ‘romantic as some buccaneer of old’) who came to Gotham City after barely escaping from fascist Europe, where he had been sentenced to death by firing squad…

His escape is a delightful screwball sequence that tells you all you need to know about Baffle’s debonair coolness, snobbery, and cunningness:

Detective Comics #63

Sure, there is something derivative about an ultra-refined criminal who feels at home in high society (it brings to mind the witty 1932 film comedies Jewel Robbery and Trouble in Paradise) and I’m certainly not saying Mr. Baffle should be amongst the Dark Knight’s greatest rogues (the ones that other creators shamelessly imitate). Still, Bill Finger does such a fine job of establishing Baffle’s gallant persona that it’s hard not feel a bit seduced by his cheerful charisma…

Detective Comics #63

Even Batman succumbs to his charm: when Mr. Baffle first outmaneuvers him, the Caped Crusader’s reaction is, uncharacteristically, to laugh about it (in fact, they both laugh, sharing a sense of humor and fair play). There seems to be an implication that there’s a kind of class solidarity operating here, as Batman has more of a blast going up against this ‘chivalrous scoundrel’ than against the lowlifes he usually beats up. The growing mutual respect pays off at the climax, a sword duel in the aptly named Random Castle (‘transplanted from Scotland stone by stone’) where both hero and villain make a point of giving each other a sporting chance. In fact, this is a fun story all around, including a rollicking chase scene halfway through. Even Bruce Wayne’s socialite girlfriend at the time, Linda Page, has a role to play.

It’s a shame we never got to see Mr. Baffle again, especially as he played really well against Bruce’s own wealthy origins. The ending was clearly meant to set up Baffle as a recurring foe, but I guess we just have to accept that, for once, the villain didn’t make it after falling hundreds of feet into the water:

Detective Comics #63

By contrast, one C-lister who came back a number of times is Crazy-Quilt, a Jack Kirby creation from way back in 1946 that has become a recurring butt of jokes about the lamest/goofiest side of Batman’s rogues’ gallery. A famed painter-turned-gang-chief, Quilt was shot by a rival gangster, which damaged his eyesight. After an unsuccessful medical operation, he became unable to see anything but bright colors – and, this being Gotham City, he devoted the rest of his life to committing color-based crimes!

To be fair, Crazy-Quilt didn’t originally start out in Gotham, but in Paris, France, where he faced the Boy Commandos – the heroes of DC’s timeless series about an international team of children who somehow got together to fight Nazis during World War II.

Crazy-Quilt (aka ‘Madman of the Spectrum!’) showed up in a bunch of the Boy Commandos’ adventures in the mid-to-late forties, with cartoony plots – drawn ‘from his palette of plunder!’ – such as robbing the sarcophagus of an ancient pharaoh known for his love of vivid colors (including brilliant jewelry) and camouflaging a road in order in order to cause the crash of a truck full of payrolls (Wile E. Coyote would be proud). My favorite of the lot is a delirious tale in which Quilt colors the sky with a thousand giant rainbows in order to temporarily blind – and then raid – the city!

The transition to Batman’s corner of the DC Universe took place in Star Spangled Comics #123 (December 1951), where he fought Robin in what is still Crazy-Quilt’s best story. He would only come across the Dark Knight himself almost thirty years later, though, in Batman #316 (October 1979), and even then Quilt remained more of a Robin villain than a Batman one – which makes sense, since the Boy Wonder is obviously the most colorful of the two (in both senses of the word).

That first comic hits the ground running, as Crazy-Quilt (‘this Renegade of the Rainbow’) breaks out of prison by discreetly smearing bits of paint on the blades of a ventilating fan throughout the winter, so that by summer, when the fan is activated, its spin creates a hypnotic combination of colors that allows him to escape. Quilt then tries to steal all the color in Gotham City, something he seeks to achieve by spraying bleach on colored pennants, cutting the circuits of color television sets, and destroying a bunch of Paul Gauguin paintings.

Above all, the creative team of France Herron and Jim Mooney have a field day with the fact that Crazy-Quilt is still an artist at heart:

Star Spangled Comics #123

This is the most underused aspect of Crazy-Quilt: he isn’t just a campy criminal with a ridiculous look, he’s a character perfectly suited for tales featuring art-based clues and art-based capers (it should come as no surprise that one of the few stories to take advantage of this in a really neat way was an episode of the animated show Batman: The Brave and the Bold, namely ‘The Color of Revenge’).

Crazy-Quilt is also an ideal vehicle for dazzling visual experimentation, as both his costume (including a bizarre headpiece that projects red, yellow, and blue lights in order for him to see) and his crime sprees lend themselves to psychedelic depictions, which can work quite well in the hands of inventive artists and colorists.

Boy Commandos #33

Indeed, contrary to popular opinion, I don’t actually regard Crazy-Quilt as necessarily lame – he’s just a zany embodiment of an era of surreal, imaginative villains who looks particularly out-of-place in a modern age with a more predominantly gritty, pseudo-realistic sensibility. (This was also Kevin Smith’s approach to the character in The Widening Gyre #4.)

The problem with pitching Crazy-Quilt as a pathetic loser, of course, is that it makes Batman and Robin come across like cruel bullies… especially when the Dynamic Duo full-on blinds him for good:

Batman #316

(This isn’t a pretty moment… In fact, it should belong to the pantheon of things DC wants you to forget about Batman.)

Well, Crazy-Quilt didn’t exactly stay blind forever… He was eventually able to force a mercenary doctor to hook him up with three colored lenses that fed image signals through implant cables directly into the brain’s sight-centers, bypassing his eyes. Quilt then sought vengeance against Robin, unaware that Dick Grayson had by then passed the sidekick mantle on to an unexperienced Jason Todd.

This happened in the two-parter ‘A Revenge of Rainbows/One Hole in a Quilt of Madness’ (Batman #368 and Detective Comics #535, both cover-dated February 1984), which, like much of Doug Moench’s excellent eighties’ run, took the silliest concepts from Batman’s back catalogue and played them with a straight face. Fortunately, colorist Adrienne Roy was more than up to the challenge of selling bright colors as something sinister, eerily blending vivid hues with menacing shadows, especially when working over Gene Colan’s fluid pencils:

Detective Comics #535

(Naturally, a major part of the palette consists of Moench’s own deep purple prose.)

Thinking back to the Geoff Klock interpretation I mentioned earlier in the post, the fact that crooks like Crazy-Quilt embrace crime in Gotham City as a sort of performance art ends up neatly reflecting Batman’s own performative approach to crime-fighting. With that in mind, I have always admired Calendar Man’s emphasis on aesthetics as expressed through his various fashion statements.

Batman’s rogues tend to have outrageous costumes, with slight variations throughout their careers. When he first started, however, Calendar Man actually got a completely new costume for each crime, the campier the better. A proud product of the Silver Age (he made his debut in in Detective Comics #259, September 1958), Calendar Man’s gimmick was that each of his robberies was related to the date in which it was committed – and so were his outfits, which reflected, for example, the time of the year (as designed by Sheldon Moldoff)…

Detective Comics #259

…or the day of the week (by Walt Simonson)…

Batman #312

…or just significant dates of the American calendar, like Valentine’s Day and the Fourth of July (by Pat Broderick and Rick Hoberg ):

Detective Comics #551

Batman #385

(That underwear is quite something, isn’t it?)

You can just imagine him at home, in his calendar robe (Hoberg again), pondering what to wear for his next artistic crime (or criminal work of art?):

Batman #384

Seriously, here is a guy who truly puts a lot of effort and creativity into his heists’ sartorial dimension. In fact, since Calendar Man lacks a fully fleshed origin – apart from the fact that his name is Julian Gregory Day and in Gotham City your name predetermines your psychosis – his main motivation appears to be the very desire to dress up.

Hey, as explanations go, it’s both less depressing than the mini-origin we got in ‘Every Day Counts’ (Batman 80-Page Giant (v2) #1, February 2011) and a lot more convincing than the bullshit his lawyer came up with:

Batman 80-Page Giant #3

Indeed, once you take into account the fact that Julian Day used to be a stage magician, I don’t think it’s too farfetched to suggest that at the core of Calendar Man’s heart is a sense of spectacle and pageantry, with robberies being more of a pretext to perform than anything else.

Batman #312

In the broader history of Batman comics, Calendar Man’s overall arc is actually similar to Crazy-Quilt’s. Having been abandoned for decades as ill-suited to the Dark Knight’s hip credentials, they were both recovered by the great Len Wein in the late ‘70s and subsequently picked up for a multi-parter in Doug Moench’s abovementioned mid-80s run, which treated them with relative dignity.

In ‘Broken Dates/The First Day of Spring/Day of Doom’ (Batman #384-385 and Detective Comics #551, cover-dated June and July 1985), Moench started by addressing head-on the obvious tension in Calendar Man’s characterization between his alleged financial motivation and his apparent infatuation with the artistic gamesmanship of crime. When the Monitor (in a brief tie-in to the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, at the time being set up across the various DCU titles) offered Julian Day a fortune to kill Batman, we got a glimpse of Calendar Man’s inner conflict:

Batman #384

Understandably, Calendar Man didn’t have much of a presence in the grimmer, post-Dark Knight Returns era. When Alan Grant briefly brought him back in ‘The Misfits’ (Shadow of the Bat #7-9, December 1992-February 1993), alongside Killer Moth and Catman, the joke was precisely that these were losers among the villain community, aware that their reputation paled in comparison to that of the Joker and of the other big shots. In a desperate stab at relevance, they got together with a new player in town, Chancer (whose schtick was that he was quite lucky), and orchestrated the kidnapping of Commissioner Gordon, Mayor Armand Krol, and millionaire Bruce Wayne (thus frustrating my hopes, based on the arc’s title, that they would turn to music and form a Misfits cover band…).

Grant used Calendar Man to represent a more whimsical, gentler type of rogue, who at one point turned on Killer Moth because the latter tried to murder their victims instead of merely exchanging them for the ransom. That said, he was quite fed up with being made fun of:

Shadow of the Bat #7

I don’t have a problem with a more openly comedic take on Calendar Man, like the one we got in Shadow of the Bat or in his team-ups with other time-themed villains – Chronos and Clock King – in Team Titans #13-15 (October-December 1993) and Showcase ’94 #10 (September 1994). But I am sorry he eventually got stuck with the same costume, dropping one of his most amusing and distinctive attributes.

One major exception to the nineties’ lighthearted approach to the character came with 1997’s limited series The Long Halloween, which reinvented Julian Day as a Hannibal Lecter-type figure:

The Long Halloween #3

When revisiting this version of Calendar Man three years later, Tim Sale added a head tattoo:

Dark Victory #7

The tattoo really stuck, showing up in most subsequent comics, including in the futuristic Batman Beyond, where Ryan Benjamin depicted an old, retired Julian Day (he also made sure to add a nod to Rick Hoberg’s calendar robe!). Even in Batman: Rebirth, where Scott Snyder and Tom King fully rebooted the whole concept of Calendar Man (he is now a serial killer with some kind of supernatural physiognomy, ageing in winter and then shedding his skin before being rejuvenated in spring), artist Mikel Janín kept a version of the head tattoo. That’s all fine, but I still miss the constant costume changes…

My favorite Calendar Man yarn in the past decades remains ‘All the Deadly Days’ (Batman 80-Page Giant #3, July 2000), in which Chuck Dixon had him go on a rampage over the fact that he had missed the turn of the millennium while in prison (I’ve written about it before). Dixon is a master at writing tales that capture the best of the past while also seemingly moving the characters forward… And like all the niftiest sequels (The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2, The Revenge of Frankenstein), his story here strikes a balance between the familiar beats that made the original so enjoyable and the boldness of taking the material in a new direction. And, sure enough, it features a new outfit, clearly designed by Mike Deodato to evoke the type of clothing style trending in post-‘Image explosion’ mainstream superhero comics at the time, complete with broad metallic shoulder pads, a humongous cloak, and the obligatory pouch:

Batman 80-Page Giant #3

Another noteworthy set of fashion-conscious criminals are the trio of Dragon Fly, Silken Spider, and Tiger Moth, whose connections to the arts were prominent from early on. Created by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff in Batman #181 (June 1966), the first time we saw these three was actually as provocative posters in a pop art exhibition:

Batman #181

Although Moldoff – inked by Joe Giella – did a wonderful job of coming up with distinctive designs that worked the motifs in their names into sexy outfits, Dragon Fly, Silken Spider, and Tiger Moth weren’t meant to stick around. Instead, the whole point of the issue was to set them up as major public enemies only for them to be rapidly overshadowed by a debuting Poison Ivy. I always felt like there was an untapped story there, though: how did these three make it to the top?

Using them merely to establish Poison Ivy’s ‘ultimate femme fatale’ status wasn’t just an efficient storytelling device, but also a fairly misogynous one, preying on the trope of petty female competition while characterizing all the women in the comic as divas driven by vanity. Wisely, when Alan Grant reworked Ivy’s first encounter with the Caped Crusader, in Shadow of the Bat Annual #3 (January 1995), he completely abandoned this plotline. Grant nevertheless made a point of including a nod to the original tale in the form a small cameo, turning the trio into rock singers:

Shadow of the Bat Annual #3

In turn, Grant Morrison – the other Scottish Grant who left an indelible mark on Batman comics – took a different route in 2008’s crossover The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul, where Dragon Fly, Silken Spider, and Tiger Moth were recruited for the League of Assassins by Talia al Ghul. They got slightly more developed traits this time around: Silken Spider was now able to perform mass hypnotism (through an intoxicating nerve agent) and Tiger Moth came across as an all-American gun nut.

In a typical Morrison move, the comic fuzzily blended past continuity, alluding both to the trio’s original story (Dragon Fly complained that she used to be Public Enemy Number One, at least ‘on a series of campy pop art posters’) and to their musical career (Talia told them they weren’t ‘backstage in Vegas’ anymore). It also did that postmodernist thing of reproducing old tropes under an ironic guise that is probably not to everyone’s liking, as the three ladies all sounded hilariously bitchy.

Tony Daniel’s redesign of their costumes wasn’t as keen as Sheldon Moldoff’s (they now had more of a Vampirella sexploitation vibe), but at least they looked more ethnically diverse. I quite like this panel giving us a glimpse of their pre-act stance:

Batman #670

Like in their debut tale, Dragon Fly, Silken Spider, and Tiger Moth played a pretty marginal role in the overall plot of The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul, their main function being essentially that of a cheeky Morrisonian throwback to the franchise’s convoluted history. In his contribution to the crossover, Paul Dini had them committed to Arkham Asylum after getting poisoned, with a close-up of a doctor (sort of looking at the readers) declaring: ‘I don’t know if they’ll ever be fully functional again.’

I don’t know either. Perhaps there is no hope for those three, although I wouldn’t mind a musical team-up between them and the aforementioned Misfits cover band, with a choreography by the Death Dancer:

Azrael: Agent of the Bat #54

Posted in GOTHAM CITIZENS | Tagged Adrienne Roy, Alan Grant, Batman's personality, Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Calendar Man, Chuck Dixon, Crazy-Quilt, Doug Moench, France Herron, Gene Colan, George Roussos, Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, Jerry Robinson, Jim Mooney, Joe Giella, Kevin Smith, Len Wein, Mike Deodato, Mikel Janín, Pat Broderick, Paul Dini, Rick Hoberg, Robert Kanigher, Ryan Benjamin, Scott Snyder, Sheldon Moldoff, Silver Age, Tim Sale, Tom King, Tony Daniel, villains, Walt Simonson | 2 Comments

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