Dr Mike's Birthday Bonanza Extravaganza Reviews

[DrMike2000]

I turned 40 yesterday, and did what any sensible 40 year old would do: blew lots of money down my local graphic novel emporium and read comics till I was sick!

I'd come to realise I'd got into a bit of a rut with my reading habits - all the writers I followed were Brits whose surname began with an M and had been writing for over 20 years. (Moore, Morrison, Millar and Milligan). Here was the antidote:

Captain Britain and MI:13
Paul Cornell, the writer here, wrote the two part Human Nature/Family of Blood Dr. Who episodes, possibly the best Dr. Who story ever told. Who better to kick off a new distinctly British feeling superhero comic?
This book has an authentically British feel in the same way Dr. Who or Torchwood do, rather than the Claremont school of writing British characters, where they all talk like Dick van [expletive deleted]. Cap himself is rather underplayed, but the supporting cast really come to life - the stand outs to me are the Black Knight acting like a cheeky chappy at all times to keep his Ebony Blade at bay, newcomer and point of view character Faiza who owes more than a little to Martha from Dr. Who and John the Skrull, a skrull who's been in character as John Lennon since the 60s.
The action is handled well, theres the right sense of desperation and drama. The iconic moments with Captain Britain himself work without feeling corny. The superhero science is great - background skrull enemies appear to be alternate super-skrulls composed of say, the original Avengers or heralds of Galactus. Its one of those comics that just seems to get it all right.
The trade also features a reprint of a Claremont/Byrne Marvel Team Up between Spidey and Captain Britain, featuring I think the first appearance of Arcade. This was one of the first comics I read, so it was kind of nice to see again, even if just to see how far Captain Britain has come.

Secret Six
Bought the first 7 single issues of these. Gail Simone is famous for Birds of Prey, an excellent series well worth picking up if you havent read it. Gen 13 was also pretty good, and proved she had a knack for twisting plots, humour and a great touch with characterisation. She's also currently writing Wonder Woman, which is limping along a bit.
Secret Six, however, is her best work yet. It depicts the day-to-day struggles of six low rent supervillains who work together. The plot twists and turns, and is very clever in places. It revolves around a special card that the Six have been commissioned to steal, and a few issues in it is revealed that the card

Spoiler

was made by Neron, bearing the words "Get out of Hell Free". Like Tolkiens ring, this is just the thing to divide any fellowship with stains on their conscience.

The plot is secondary though to the characters - they are downright hilarious, and cause me to laugh out loud any number of times. Each member of this dysfunctional family is a work of genius in ther own right. Simone has made Bane funny. Bane - the two dimensional villain who's sole raison d'etre was to break Batman's back. If that isnt genius I dont know what is.
We also find out what Batman had for lunch - a lovely piece of undercutting and humanising this iconic character.
Its not all laughs though, where needed to be Simone can be downright creepy and disturbing too. "Junior" - the main villain of the piece, who directs its minions from inside a sealed wooden box is one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a long time in a comic.
You wont get high concept superhero action here, but you will get a very human touch applied to the world of the lesser villain.


So, if like me, you've been bored and looking for some new comics thrills, try these two out. Birds of Prey too if you're new to Gail Simone. I doubt you'll be dissapointed.

EDIT: I am most amused by how Dick Van [expletive deleted]'s name is modified by these boards. It should a standard part of nay swearword filter now I think about it

[Silver Shocker]

Agree with you about Secret Six. I love that book. I highly recommend you pick up it's predecessors, Villains United and the Secret Six mini. The new series plays off plot elements and characterization from both of them, and if you enjoyed the new series you'll almost certainly enjoy them, though the art in the Secret Six mini is kind of poor.

[Previsionary]

Dr. Mike, I have been saying for 12 straight issues that Paul Cornell's Captain Britain run is something more people should be checking out over in the marvel thread (and the predecessor--The X-thread), so I'm glad you're enjoying it. Considering what Captain Britain and Wisdom were in before (New Excalibur/Die by the sword), the new series is a definite step up. If you liked John the Skrull, you should probably check out Paul Cornell's "Wisdom" series as well.

[DrMike2000]

I reckon I'll track down Wisdom next, Prev.

And its your recommendations, and those at Millarworld that made me pick up the book, so a big thank you for that.

[Epimethee]

Happy birthday, Doc!

[cmdrkoenig67]

I'm late (as usual), but happy birthday, Dr Mike.

Dana

[DrMike2000]

Thanks, Dana and Epimithee!

In addition to my impulse buys, I'd sent off for a bunch of trades from Amazon, whihc have now arrived. I've been going through them in order to report back here...

Legion of Superheroes Showcase 11 & 12

A brief history of the Legion: They started out in the 60s as a group of preppy teenagers from the future backing up Superboy. In the 70's they became a bit racier and more contemporary, in the 80's they were up there with the Teen Titans and X-Men as one of the best team books around, much of this due to the creative volcano known as Keith Giffen. I belive they got wiped out in the first Crisis, but have been rebooted several times since then with varying degrees of success. Giffen's darker "5 years later", Waid and Kitson's excellent clean reboot, and more recently Geoff John's revival in multiple titles. The constant element was that of a large 30th century teen superteam.

Legion analogues are numerous - the Imperial Guard of the Shi'ar from the pages of the XMen. A group in Mark Millar's Authority. The Legion of legions in Morrison's "Flex Mentallo" owes a little to them in size and name at elast. And lets not forget the H.I.V.E. in my own Tales of the Navigator mod. So they've definitely left a long shadow over the superhero landscape.

These two trades covered the "Disco Legion" era from the 1970s. I'd started reading in the late 70's, with Paul Levitz writing. These were generally pretty good superhero fiction with a sci-fi twist. I'd also been exposed to some of the earlier stuff from the 60's via a series of pocket sized digests that came out in the late 70's, which in contrast were terrible stories, with poor characterisation and plots that barely made sense. I bought these trades because I needed to know what happened in between.

Under artist Mike Grell, I knew they became famous for slightly long hair, sideburns, bellbottoms and skimpier costumes, both for male and female members. The earlier preppy look was replaced with something designed to appeal to Starsky and Hutch or Kung Fu fans at the time. Grell was part of the Neal Adams school of photorealistic illustration style art prevalent at the time, before John Byrne took the crown. It all sounded promising.

Once I started reading, I have to say I was dissappointed. The writing is just plain bad, and a reminder of how far comics have come. I'd say half of the stories at least dont make proper narrative sense.

For example, Princess Projectra crashes her spaceship at HQ obviously under the influence of something bad. She has the Pain Plague, a disease that kills its victim in six hours by subjecting them to excrutiating pain! The only way the Legion can save her is for some members to absorb the pain for an hour each using some machine. The pain causes them to flip out and attack anyone nearby, and they have to be subdued. And thats it. Everyone including Jeckie survives. The end. And didn't the story two issues ago revolve around Projectra having some space disease? Why, yes it did!

The characterisation is bizarre. Legionnaires regularly fly into a rage for no good reason. It's the anniversary of Lightning Lad's parent's death. He deals with it by punching Element Lad and nicking a spaceship. In one story, six Legionnaires meet their counterparts at a tryout, and get quite pissy with Superboy for trying to help them subdue the angry rejects.

And I expected the series to be a bit dated, but got more than I bargained for here. The token black member Tyroc is a well known anachronism, but the random sexist comments throughout had me laughing out loud. In the aforementioned story when Jeckie crashes her spaceship, Timber Wolf has an unabashed go at women drivers. Cosmic Boy's attitude to Night Girl because she wants to fight crime instead of, I dunno, staying at home and doing his ironing? would have him tarred and feathered today.

I checked the writing credits, maybe it would lift when Jim Shooter took over from Cary Bates? Unfortunately not, this was also Shooter's first assignment, he was all of sixteen when he wrote these I think?

Finally, the artwork wasn't what I'd been lead to believe either. This was Grell's first professional assignment, and it shows. Sometimes he achieves a Adams-esque finish, but he often appears to be struggling with basic figure and face drawing or at least in a bit of a hurry. Its not terrible, but its a lot cruder than what I'd expected.

I've been brutally honest here, but it wasnt a complete wash. It was a trip down memory lane I needed to take, a little itch I'd been meaning to scratch for some time now. Some of it wasn't too bad, if I suspended my disbelief a little harder than usual I could get into it.
But be warned. Do not approach unless you're an old-time Legion completist who can afford to treat yourself a little for a special occasion.

Can dated ever work? Check back here later when I finish Jack Kirby's OMAC!

[marhawkman]

another interesting thing is the distinction between L.E.G.I.O.N. and Legion of Superheroes. Interaction between the two happens with amazing scarcity, but it's great when it does.

[JKCarrier]

Well, Mike, I grew up on the Grell-era Legion, so I think of them more fondly than you. But I will admit there are aspects of it that haven't aged well. It's sort of the Legion's awkward adolescence -- you can tell the writers are trying to make the stories a little more grown up and hip, but they haven't quite got it down yet. There's a certain charm to them nonetheless.

Shooter did break into comics as a teenager, but that was in the 1960s. The '70s run you have is actually his second stint on the Legion.

Can dated ever work? Check back here later when I finish Jack Kirby's OMAC!

I think OMAC is the exact opposite of "dated" -- the future world he envisioned is looking more and more familiar all the time! 

[DrMike2000]

I agree JK. There is a certain charm to the Grell Legion. But I'd hesitate to recommend them to anyone but hardcore Legion fans or those looking for hsitorical curios. I wouldn't lend them to a friend who'd neevr read a comic, thats for sure.


So better late than never. Lets talk about OMAC, and Kirby.

Kirby, if anyone doesnt know, is the Godfather of Western superhero comics. With Stan Lee he co-created Thor, Hulk, The X-Men and Fantastic Four. On his own he created the New Gods amongst other things. And he's the reason the Freedom Force artwork looks like it does, his raw chunky energetic artwork has achieved an iconic status.

So, I'd read a lot of the early Marvel stuff that he drew, I'd read a fair amount of New Gods as filtered through Grant Morrison. I'd read G0dland by Casey and Scioli (a modern Kirby pastiche) and didnt like it. But, I'd never gone to the actual source and read any of Kirby's writer/artist work for DC. OMAC seemed liek a good jumping on point because its a self contained story I knew little about, and had a wild sounding premise. Corporate nobody Buddy Blank gets chosen to join with a sattelite called Brother Eye that turns him into a superhero in a sort of near future world.

Its not subtle. Everyone shouts all the time, even the narrator. This is bright bold and fast storytelling, but has some pretty complex ideas behind it. In "the world that is to come", which sounds a lot cooler than "the near future" weapons will be so advanced that conventional military are too dangerous to contemplate, hence the need for a One Man Army Corps. The Global Peace Keeping Agency he works for all wear masks so that no-one knows their ethnic background. And yet, the ideas dont quite converge. Its like one of those Da Vinci's where the perspective lines all converge askew on the central character to give the viewer a sense of unease - nothing in OMAC's world quite makes sense.
OMAC fights a Castro look-a-like in his giant tank. The distressed dictator then releases his ultimate weapon - a giant plastic shelled insect?
OMAC's first fight is with a crime boss who has rented an entire city to hold a party in! (impressive, but odd) and the main threat are a couple of thugs in clown costumes.
The ideas are absolute gold, and come thick and fast, but never quite seem to gel together or achieve full coherence. Some are thrown away and never dealt with, like OMAC's surrogate parents. To be fair, the series does get cut abruptly short, since it was cancelled after a mere ten issues or so, and Kirby had to wrap up in a hurry.

The art is definitely worth mentioning. I'm not a fan of Kirby's, but it is eye-popping in places. His characters verge on the abstract at times. For example, the crime boss I mentioned has a head shaped like a parking meter and giant bags under his eyes. But it really works here, the whole thing has a sort of raw primitive energy. Bearing in mind also that Kirby would have been producing this and other comics monthly, and it makes total sense.

So, was it worth it? Definitely, yeah. The hokey story elements, the primitive art, all come together because Kirby believes in what he's doing. You really get the idea that this story was just bursting out of his head, needing to be told. It came out a little rough around the edges, but it remains vibrant despite its age. It lacks the sophistication of modern comics, but thats very quickly overlooked as it dragged me in.

[stumpy]

I have to agree on the Grell-era LSH. The actual comics came out a little before my time, but I used to rifle through the bargain bin at the local comic shops as a youngster. The hard-earned dollars of many a mowed lawn went toward the Legion books and I probably picked up most of that period, eventually. (And I remember those "Blue Ribbon Digest" mini-compilations, too. )

And, I am a semi Legion nut. On top of growing up as a Superboy fan (and that's when some of those stories were just godawful), I would say without a second's hesitation that Brainiac 5 is my favorite comics character. I thought I would literally be ill from grief when Laurel Gand... well, you know how things turned out for her in the Renegade Legion arc. And, that 80s/90s era had some great stories, but - hello! - can't anyone be happy?

But, the Grell era didn't quite have the classic feel to it that the old Curt Swan stuff did and it wasn't yet up to the modern era stuff either. I can't really complain about his art (I mean, I honestly don't think much of the art of that era, but I can't say that Grell is a less impressive Legion artist than, say, Joe Staton), although it was very hippie chique.

(BTW, I picked up The Legion Companion a few years back at the same comics convention where a bunch of FR folk met up. It is sort of an interesting collection of interviews with Legion writers, artists, and editors through the years. One of the consistent themes is that LSH is a tough book for an artist because there are so doggone many characters to put on the page. The artists just wear out.)

And, though I like much of Paul Levitz' (nigh eternal) run, it really does seem like the best stuff didn't emerge until around the time Kieth Giffen showed up.

But, even some of the silly Shooter / Grell era was okay. The story where the Fatal Five are seemingly on a crime spree, but really just indulging their personal whims (and neuroses) had sort of a "modern" feel to the story, where the baddies weren't out trying to steal the treasure, or kill the heroes, or take over the world. They just wanted what someone might want if that someone had been a bored princess, or a disfigured cyborg, or a fifteen-foot-tall superpowered child.

Anyway, I don't know that I really had anything to say, but I saw a post about some old-school Legion stuff and it got me caught up in a little nostalgia (by Veidt ).

[DrMike2000]

Yeah, I kind of liked that story too.

The Persuader just wants a planet where he can go fishing for wierd space-sea-monsters, so the Fatal Five steal half of someone's moon to build it

[yell0w_lantern]

Joe Staton? Did someone say, "Joe Staton"? I love that guy's stuff! He did the best art on Guy Gardner's solo book. What is Staton doing now, LEGION?

[stumpy]

Yeah, I kind of liked that story too.

The Persuader just wants a planet where he can go fishing for wierd space-sea-monsters, so the Fatal Five steal half of someone's moon to build it

Yup. Just doing what anyone would do. That's why that story sticks with me - it's so relatable. They're just people, after all. I mean, who can honestly say they haven't stolen a moon at some point? Or at least gone fishing on a friend's stolen moon?

I don't know about Joe Staton's other work. On SLSH, his characters struck me as sort of blocky, 2-D faces, and full of people standing at slightly odd angles. E.g. this example from SLSH #248. Maybe it was Abel's heavy inking...? Maybe it's just that he didn't bring the style that Mike Grell and Jim Starlin lent to those old Legion books (when they worked on them).

[DrMike2000]

I never knew Staton worked on the Legion. I remember his work on E-Man! and yeah, he had a very cartoony style, and his people did indeed stand at odd angles. A page by Staton often looks like everyone's doing that 60's dance where you jerk your head to one side repeatedly, like Phantom Girl is obviously doing on the cover you posted.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Speaking of all things Legion, have you seen mightygodking's blog about the Legion? I found it an interesting read - cant say I agree with everything there, but there were more than a few good bits.

http://mightygodking.com/index.php/i-should-write-the-legion/

[stumpy]

What? No Dark Circle?!

Kidding!

That. Was. Awesome. Full stop.

Thanks for that link; I am still laughing. Can someone glue a stamp on that guy and send him to DC? There were some very cool ideas in that rant. So many that I might actually get off my bum and catch up on the years' worth of unread LSH comics sitting in the den. Plus, I am regretting, for the first time, not naming my avatar Professor Zobar Zodiak, now that I realize there is someone else in the universe who might recognize the name. 

BTW, maybe not the favorite story idea, but my favorite "dialog" from the illustrations was from the "Superboy defeated by the Brains In Jars" bit:

Ha! Puny Kryptonian! You have been defeated by the most powerful beings in all space and time - we, the Disembodied-Brains-Who-Float-In-Jars! Our amazing mental brain powers have crippled you and your puny planet-smashing physique!

As a kid, I can't even remember how many moments there were like that, where Kal was reduced to helplessness by some generic threat-of-the-month and I was shaking my head and mumbling, "But only three pages ago, he PUSHED THE ENTIRE EARTH OUT OF ITS ORBIT AND BACK JUST TO KEEP IT FROM BEING HIT BY A COMET!"