Yearly Archive: 2015

Back in 1989 Neil Gaiman breathed new life into some old characters that had been gathering dust on the DC shelves.  All that was required was a reimagining of the character Destiny, a nudging of the Sandman character into universal, cosmic status as Dream, and the rounding out the 5 other ‘Ds’ (Delirium/Delight, Despair, Death, Destruction, and Desire) to form the 7 Endless.  Each of the Endless were portrayed as anthropomorphizations – human-looking embodiments of the elemental forces of the same name.

Gaiman’s tale starts with the imprisonment of a punk-rock looking Dream by an Allister Crowley knockoff and his coven of demon worshipers in 1916.  The subsequent humiliation/education that Dream endures and the changes that it engenders in him forms the central tragedy of the bulk of the series.  A tragedy presented on human terms.

Initially,  the stories had an intimate feel;  a feel reminiscent of the classic British Cozy made so popular in mystery stories of the first half of the twentieth century.  Action was confined to small venues with real human issues.  The horror of John Constantine’s former lover who abused Dream’s pouch of sand, the twisted events that Doctor Dee brings to life in that lonely dinner, and the convocation of serial killers headlined by one of Dream’s own nightmares were excellent examples of what could be done within a small scope.

Unfortunately Gaiman couldn’t stay small and he tried to grow Dream to something more cosmic and universal.  The beginnings of this were evident when the Sandman paid a visit to J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter in Sandman #5.

Dream was perceived as the Martian dream god Lord L’Zoril by J’onn.  On one hand that makes perfect sense as Dream is a universal concept and how should an universal concept be apprehended by a Martian except in Martian terms.  But on the other hand it is clearly untenable.  How can Dream be in on specific place let alone be captured and imprisoned for over 70 years.  After all, Dream is an Endless – he is an incarnation of a universal concept.  If he were an agent or an avatar it might make sense but not as an incarnation.

As the series progressed, Gaiman swerved from the intimate to the large but never to the truly universal.  All of his concepts were firmly rooted in the kind of classics education one might get at Oxford or Cambridge.  Even Dream’s undoing comes at the hands of the Furies; embodiments of the spirits of familial vengeance from ancient Greece.

So it was with ever diminishing interest that the series wound on until its end in 1996 with the death of Dream and the subsequent installment of a new Dream.

Little of note occurred over the better part of two decades until Gaiman decided to revisit the Sandman with his prelude entitled Sandman: Overture.  In this limited series, he seemed to want to really ‘fix’ all that ailed the original run; addressing both the universality of Dream and how he came to be captured.  In order to do this, he puts Dream into a cosmic quandary, where the fate of the entire universe hangs in the balance.  And while the artwork is beautiful and the craftsmanship inspired, what actually resulted is a confused story that causes more confusion than it addresses.

This time it all starts with the death of Dream in 1915 – well at least an aspect of Dream and that is one of the problems.  This death triggers a gather of Dreams, each representing a sliver of the totality of Dream, one for each type of being in existence.

Each aspect trying desperately to understand what has caused this train of events, to understand who killed them.

Fortunately for the exposition, an particular aspect of Dream with a strong elder-gods motif, acts as the hermetic monks of old stories did, and steps in to fill in the gaps.

This aspect explains, in pure vagueness, that the universe is coming to an end.  However, before he can speak with more clarity he vanishes.  This is not an unusual occurrence, and as time moves on, the Dream population mysteriously begins to thin as each aspect disappears from the perspective of the others

After consulting with himself/herself/itself, Dream explains that the disappearances are only a matter of a different point-of-view.

Our Dream, being proud and haughty (aren’t they all?) takes it upon himself to seek a higher authority

and off he goes to consult with a level of authority above the Endless.  Here finally all is revealed.  This uber-entity informs Dream that the cause of the death of one of his aspects is due to a cancer eating away at the heart of the universe.  A star – stars are sentient in this telling – has become mad and is driving existence to Armageddon.

And it turns out that one need look no further than Dream to find the cause of this disaster.  By failing to totally obliterate a ‘vortex’ from existence, Dream’s inaction has led to this sorry state of affairs.

And so begins a quest in which Dream looks for a way to correct his mistake, fulfill his duty, and save the universe.  Along the way, he encounters his father, Time, and his mother, Night; he’s cast into a black hole; and rearranges the entire spacetime continuum as he literally erases his error from history.  The action leaves him so drained that capture shortly after is all but inevitable.

I suppose that Gaiman thinks he’s done something remarkable here by ‘tidying up’ all the loose ends but that’s not how I see it.  Splitting Dream into multiple aspects waters down the original run, making our emotional investment in the original insignificant.  Philosophically, the whole concept of a multitude of aspects of universal concept is also dodgy.  If they are the same but different, why should any care if one is annihilated, and which one was captured, and so what if he was?  Why couldn’t a new aspect take over in his place?  And if he was the aspect peculiar to the Earth, then why did a Martian see him as a Martian dream god?  Too many questions with too few answers.

Gaiman is also open to criticism on his physical cosmology.   The work is not strictly a work of fantasy since he uses the trappings of science to make his story have a veneer of credibility.  He even went so far as to have pictures of bubble chamber tracks superimposed on Hubble-like pictures of stellar nebulae on the insides of the front and back covers.

How can it be 1915 everywhere in the universe?  What about relativity and the finite speed of light.  I guess getting the science right doesn’t matter as long as it sells.

Many months ago I talked about the three most foolproof ways to screw up a comic.  Here Gaiman indulges in all three.  He’s got illogical magic, a multiplicity of doppelgangers, and time travel with a universal reboot.

I’m not saying that the whole thing is a waste.  Certainly as a flight of fancy it’s worth taking a look and the art is gorgeous.

But as a story, it comes up quite short of the mark.  Gaiman’s Sandman was always much better when it was confined to the small and when it embraced its classical, Western roots rather than trying to be universal.

Well I must admit that the directors, managers, and caretakers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) really have their act together.  I’m not speaking about their dominance in the movie theaters, as unprecedented and impressive as that may be.  Nor am I speaking about their ability to spin-off successful Netflix series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones.  I am speaking about the adroit way that they are weaving a compelling storyline into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. while simultaneously dealing with a business decision that had the potential to sour the whole fan-boy experience they’ve built.

The business decision that I am discussing is the licensing of the X-Men franchise to Twentieth Century Fox lo’ those many years ago.

At the dawn of the 21^st century, Marvel had essentially ceded the title of king-of-comic-book-movies to DC comics.  The handful of made-for-TV films and unreleased projects served only to emphasize the inability of Marvel to bring its brand to the big screen.  Even the hottest commodity of the 1990s, all things X-Men, didn’t get more than a couple of animated series during that same time frame.

That was all to change with the release of X-Men in 2000.  Suddenly there was proof that the Marvel brand could make it big on the screen and the Twentieth Century Fox hold on the Children of the Atom was cemented.  This hold was reinforced was by the success of X-Men 2 (2003) and became so steadfast that it was able weather the disastrous storm that was X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).

Perhaps Fox would have given up on the X-Men, but the continuing success that they were having with the Fantastic Four and success of the Columbia Pictures Spider-Man and Ghost Rider movies most likely made them sit tight until the best way to mend the fence could be seen.

In the meantime, Marvel launched Iron Man in 2008 and the MCU was born.  Profits flowed in, legends were born, and grand plans evolved.  Suddenly Marvel had money and Fox had a commodity that would either earn money for them directly through film or indirectly if Marvel Studios would purchase the rights back.

Whether Fox decided to keep the X-Men franchise or Marvel refused to but is unknown to me.  What is clear is that Fox had another go everyone’s favorite mutants and has had good successes (X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), X-Men: First Class (2011), The Wolverine (2013), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)) with the fan-favorite Wolverine being an instrumental character in the recovery and reboot.

And so it looked like the MCU would just have to do without misunderstood, genetically modified, misfits in trendy and flashy costumes.  Where would the MCU go to reach out to the young adult audience?

And here is where my admiration for the MCU architects comes in.  They realized that the Inhumans could be repurposed to functionally fit the hole left by the absence of the X-Men.  How did they do this, you ask?  They’ve done it through a slow-and-steady retconning of the Inhumans within the structure of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Perhaps the single largest aspect of the Inhumans that had to be restructured was the whole concept of the isolated and insular nature of the original society as conceived by Lee and Kirby.  When the Human Torch first meets Crystal, he has no idea that she is part of the royal family and is cousin to Black Bolt, who is the king in exile.

As the Inhuman mythology evolved, their separateness from the human race became more pronounced.  They weren’t like us; they were aloof, and apart, and distinct.  Being genetically modified by the Kree, they weren’t alienated from mankind they were alien.  While gaudy in garb and awesome in power, the Inhumans just weren’t relatable as human beings – they were more like forces of nature.

Part of the appeal that the X-Men during the decades leading up to the first Fox movie, was this idea that mutants were born of human parents and either were gifted with their powers from the get go or had them thrust upon them at puberty.  They were easily identifiable with teenage rebellion and feelings of awkwardness.  Most of the stories centered around ‘normal’ kids coming to grips with their abnormal gifts and being mentored by like-gifted grown-ups who offered a safe ear for the secrets and changes that they were going through when their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t. Clearly the classics Inhumans didn’t fit this bill.

This is exactly where the MCU architects hit their master stroke.  What if anyone could be an Inhuman? Sure there could still be a hidden refuge or two and a ruling class, but the average Inhuman looks like us, fits in with us, even thinks that they are us until exposure to the Terrigen mists.  Then all manner of changes occur – changes with which they need help and guidance.   They live among us in plain sight but they hide their gifts when able.  They feel that marginalized and alienated and… suddenly the Inhuman dynamic looks and feels just like the mutant dynamic.  The only difference being the trigger not the response.

They also came up with an excellent way to push that trigger out to the entire world.  In the old Fantastic Four days, the Inhumans zealously guarded the Terrigen mists.  In this new regime, the Inhumans want to expose as many of us as possible to the mists.  Just like the randomness associated with the accident of birth so too is the exposure to the mists.

And so we see how adroit the MCU architects are.  They managed to circumvent a potentially harmful business decision by creating a compelling substitute for one of the most sought after franchises and all that was required was some modest retooling.

Inhuman versus Mutants?  Doesn’t seem like there is much difference now.

I suppose that this week’s column can be easily interpreted as the rantings of an older reader wishing, nostalgically, for the good old days while simultaneously contemplating how to tell the youngsters of the neighborhood to get off my lawn.  But that is just a chance I’ll have to take.

In a nutshell, I long for the days when exposition was a lot clearer.  I don’t mean that it has to be pedantic or employ a captain obvious character.  But even in the good ole days where the art was high caliber and the visual layout very well done, sometime a few words was worth a hundred pictures.

For example, take this action shot from the Spider-Man newspaper column.

It would not be at all clear what Spider-Man was trying to do without the thought bubbles that shared his inner narrative with the audience.

I appreciate that thought bubbles are considered old school now but is the story really enhanced by eliminating them?  Also, I reject the contention that thought captions are actually new school as well.  Consider the following two panels from Marvel Chillers #6 (1976)

These captions with a narration voice over are used consistently by Tony Isabella and John Byrne throughout the entire issue.  Not one thought bubble to be found.  While visually less jarring and cluttered – the captions being filled with color as opposed to bright white like the thought bubbles – the exposition is not significantly enhanced.  Compared to the Spider-Man two-panel excerpt above, the Marvel Chillers piece contains essentially the same amount of inner dialog.  Of course, the captions allow Byrne to zoom-in on the action but both sets are visually appealing and one might argue that which is used is a matter of taste.  Has anyone mixed thought bubbles and captions?  I don’t know.

Regardless of the answer, in both cases the writer had enough space to keep the reader comfortably current with the action.  Unfortunately, that is not consistent with the current trends in comics.  Too often, a minimalist approach is taken to the exposition which leaves me scratching my head as to how to interpret what I am seeing.

Consider the fairly recent attempts to knit together multiversal stories at Marvel. Certainly everyone is familiar with The Secret Wars event running through Marvel, but the original foray into that realm seems to have been the 12-issue run on The Defenders by Matt Fraction, Jamie McKelvie, and Mike Norton.  I know that the Defenders had been cut loose from their mooring lines and cast adrift into the multiverse and I know that the experience is supposed to be disorienting to them.  But it need not be disorienting to the reader.  In issue #10, the reader is dropped into a scene of utter devastation

and left to fend for himself. Sure the art is striking and some bits of exposition are given later but it really ends up being too little to really shed light on what’s happening.  Okay, real life is like that but so what?  I don’t read comics to get real life – no one does.  This problem is amplified by the Jonathan Hickman run on The Avengers and The New Avengers which culminated with The Secret Wars event that recently ended.  I challenge anyone (even Hickman) to really make heads or tails of what Hickman was trying to say – to really make it make sense.  Builders, and Beyonders, and Black Swans, and Molecule Men, oh my!  To paraphrase Chesterton, the writer is under a contract to explain the events to the reader.  The reader takes delight not in the mystery but in the explanation that makes it clear.

Couple minimalist story with bad art and the situation gets even worse.  The art on Roche Limit was so minimalist that I often had a hard time telling one character from another.

All of them had distinguishing characteristics so that when viewed side-by-side they were distinguishable but none were memorable enough to jump off the page and stick in my thought until the next issue came out.  Could it have hurt the writer to remind me that this simple line drawing above represents Sonya’s sister Bekkah. There’s plenty of space in the speech balloon to both add that information and improve the exposition with dialog more like ‘Have you ever seen this girl?  Never?  Didn’t she ever stay here or visit?  Her name’s Bekkah… she’s my sister.’  Five extra words but a world’s worth of difference.  Without it I am stuck having to reread the series each time a new issue is added to the fold.

I miss the days when master artists made each character distinct.

Today, even in reasonably well-crafted books like The Sixth Gun, there are still scenes like

where I wonder if I am reading a comic or playing the old children’s game Guess Who (does your cowboy have hair?  Does he have a hat?  Mustache of full beard?  Don’t tell me – they have the same nose!).

So if any creators actually stumble on this post, please do your readers a favor, do your sales figures a favor, and do yourself a favor, work on the exposition.

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Grant Morrison.  I generally like his trippy, out-there concepts and the way he links and connects symbolism from various sources.  I suppose I get this latter tendency from my interest in semiotics.  On the other hand, he tends to confuse profundity with complexity; his verisimilitude is disjointed and unreal; and he has an axe to grind politically and religiously that often leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  My reaction to him is similar to my feelings towards Beavis and Butthead; I like to watch their antics and listen to them babble but I but don’t heed a word they say.

So it was with some trepidation that I signed onto another Morrison (perhaps he thinks he’s Jim Morrison – hmmm) excursion into the unknown called Nameless.

Nameless is both the series title and the ‘name’ of the lead character in this ongoing series Illustrated by Chris Burnham and published by Image Comics.  To call Morrison’s storytelling non-linear doesn’t do justice to the dream-within-a-dream method by which he stiches a large array of Jungian archetypes together.  I suppose I could warn of spoilers to follow but I doubt it.  His basic method is to lay it all out there and let suspense be the guiding principle rather than surprise.

The basic motifs employed are ones of horror, ancient ruins and elder gods, philosophical revulsion, and the kind of righteous indignation only an alienated, existentialist can exhibit.  I get the notion that Morrison sees himself in the role of the nameless protagonist.

Issue #1 open with a connection of world-wide violence to sinister other-worldly forces reminiscent of Lovecraft’s mass hysteria episode in The Call of Cthulhu.  Particularly graphic is the scene with the father who has brutally slain his family before ending his own life just after he posted to Facebook.

The phrase ‘Zirom Triam Ipam Ipamis’ is one of these common motifs that links the visual story telling together – much like a hidden object game.  The language in which this phrase is expressed is Enochian, the language of angels.  The source of the otherworldly and sinister influence is Xibalba, the Mayan home of fear wherein exists there underworld.  In Morrison’s telling, Xibalba is a large asteroid heading for a collision course that will wipe out all life on Earth.

Of course, the asteroid bears a sigil warning of the evil inside.

Nameless finds all this out (maybe) as he finishes a job retrieving a Dream Key from the Veiled Lady.

What exactly is a Dream Key and why the Veiled Lady has it is not very clear at this point.  What is clear is that the theft commissioned by a billionaire by the name of Paul Darius, who then offers a position in his save-the-world mission to Nameless since the latter has now proved his ‘cred’ to the former.

Nameless is soon whisked off to Darius’s moon base, which will serve as a staging area before they journey to intercept and divert Xibalba.  Upon his arrival, Nameless learns why he was summoned –his predecessor has been murder at the hands of another uber-genius in the employ of Darius.

Again the Enochian phrase ‘Zirom Triam Ipam Ipamis’ is present at a scene of horrific violence (Cthulhu F’htagn).  During some subsequent briefing, all is revealed

and we find that the Dream Key opens a box that contains a splinter from our solar system’s lost 5^th world of Marduk, which was destroyed in an epic conflict between angels and demons dating back into time immemorial.

Undaunted by all these revelations that team readies their plan (some absolute nonsense in the way of science fiction here) to use a conventional bomb to slow the asteroid and then their anti-gravity tractors to move it away from Earth.  So they have anti-gravity tractors, implying that they’ve harnessed quantum gravity, but they can’t obliterate the asteroid outright.

As the team gathers for their journey to Xibalba.  Each, horronaut (my phrasing) is outfitted with occult protection in the way of symbols and signs on their suits

and off to the asteroid they go.  Here the story slows down and the pacing becomes overbearing.  We are treated to frame after frame of ominous warnings with nothing more than ‘happy drugs’ administered by the suit to explain how the crew continues to stay calm and ignore their senses.  How they can’t get the clear warning from the asteroid’s landscape is beyond me.

Even when they figure out that Xibalba is a prison where the angels bound the worst demons and that the Threescore Stone they possess is a key to open the locks and let the evil out they continue their mission.

Lots of gruesome corruption of mind, body, and soul ensues and then the really trippy part begins.  Nameless begins dreaming dreams, within dreams, within dreams, and so on.  He’s suddenly in a doctor’s office being treated for some type of post-traumatic stress.

Note the Sephiroth in the background compose of organs (perhaps hearts) – yet more visual semiotics in play.  The stress that Nameless is trying to forget is a botched séance years before in which he and twelve others tried to make contact with the entity found within Xibalba using the Threescore Stone.

It is during this long-winded diatribe that Nameless realizes, with complete philosophical revulsion, that the lifeform that the head researcher is taking is God.  And here Morrison jumps the tracks and let’s his hostility to religion get the better of him.  God in the Western Tradition is too large to fit within the Universe as a whole let alone be imprisoned on an asteroid.  Each of the séance participants is from the Western tradition and yet none objects or points out Aquinas’s statement that God is not in a genus. This doesn’t require that any of the participants believe in God but simply that they actually showed up in college when they taught college.

Anyway, shots of the doctor dream and the séance dream are interspersed with Nameless’s suffering within Xibalba (whether this is also a dream is unknown)

Sure looks like Mickey Mouse as the top of that torture pillar with a grinning Donald Duck below.  Perhaps Morrison was scared by the Matterhorn or Space Mountain on a visit to Disney Land as a kid, perhaps he hates Disney Corporation for its success, who knows or cares.

As Issue #5 closes, we once more see the Veiled Lady playing a role in Nameless’s physical, mental, and psychological suffering.

Where the story goes from here I’m sure I don’t know.  All I do know is that a set of interesting premises, intriguing symbols, and inspired visuals are aimlessly flopping around under the creative direction of Grant Morrison.

The Sixth Gun is an ongoing series from the creative team of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt which is published mostly monthly by Oni Press.

The Sixth Gun falls firmly into the Wild, Weird West genre that I’ve spoken about it the past with my reviews of The Deadlands, East of West, and the ‘weird’ offerings in the Jonah Hex limited series from Vertigo.

Somehow, this series escaped my notice for quite a while until I stumbled across an entry in Previews and the light bulb finally went off.  I’ve spent some time getting caught up on the initial set of issues which are conveniently collected in nicely produced and affordable trade paperbacks.

Having sampled about 20 issues, I can say that I am definitely puzzled by my reaction to the series – in short I am conflicted.  There are many things that the series does right; the art is fine, the narrative is reasonably well-paced and intelligent, and the characters are interesting albeit they are presented a bit more like caricatures rather than real persons.  If I had to put a finger on it, I would say that the series is neither cozy & creepy enough nor is it epic enough.

In a nutshell, The Sixth Gun is formed around the premise of 6 weapons from perdition whose influence on man has existed since time immemorial.

Their introduction into the old West is affected through the workings of a Confederacy general by the name of

General Hume apparently has made a deal with the incarnation of the evil behind these weapons –

which appeared to him in the form of the demonic ‘Goat’ bearing the 6 guns about its neck.  What the general got was incredible power but why the Goat was willing to grant this power to him remains unclear to me.

In any event, once the 6 guns were in his possession, General Hume forms a merry little band of psychopaths as his core team, each member wielding one of the guns.  Each gun grants its possessor physical toughness and a unique special ability at the cost of their bodies, minds and souls.

Of course, the general reserved the sixth gun, perhaps the Devil’s own, as his.

The story starts well after the defeat and subsequent death of the general at the hands of a group of men who ambushed him and managed to separate him from the infernal firearm.  One of those men, Drake Sinclair, becomes a leading protagonist in the series, although it is perhaps better to view him as an anti-hero who begrudgingly does what is right – while he is far more handsome that Jonah Hex in looks (who isn’t) his morals and personal conduct are similar.  Opposite to Drake is Beck Moncrief.  A daughter of one of Drake’s fellow conspirators, Becky accidentally takes possession of the sixth gun when her father is killed by agents sent by the general’s widow to find and restore the revolver from hell to her husband who, despite the fact that he was ‘murdered’, looks pretty spry for a corpse

And so the mayhem begins.  Along the way, the reader is treated a variety of spooky images, including: a gallows tree, where the ghosts of hanging victims can be consulted as an oracle; Louisiana voodoo monsters and shape changers; a vault holding riches or perhaps a portal to hell; and so on.

The mechanics are good, the production value high and yet the series lacks something.  One on hand, it seems to want to be character-driven with stories of revenge, love, lust, and hate being the central lynch pin.  On the other, it seems to want to be a grand epic about the coming apocalypse brought about by these six guns.

A very skilled writer can make the immense questions about life and death quite cozy and creepy.  The best example of this is The Waiting Room, a short film from the old Night Gallery television show in which a gun-fighter finds out the ultimate cost of his violent ways (and his ultimate fate) during a brief visit to a saloon.  Shot entirely within this ‘cozy’ waiting room, the dialog and mood do more to deal with the grand questions of heaven, hell, redemption, and damnation than many stories set in larger landscapes.  Likewise, a very skilled writer can marry character to immenseness within the context of an epic.  The small personal scene’s found scattered throughout The Lord of the Rings (book only) are masterpieces that bridge the gap between the large and universal and the small and personal.

The Sixth Gun, at least the portions I’ve read so far, seems to be unsure where it belongs and so suffers in its presentation.  Nonetheless, I’m going to continue to read the series hopefully expectant that Bunn and Hurtt will manage to produce memorable stories in one of the best genres out there.

I suppose that this post could be considered as an entry in the ‘back in my day’ category but I’ll take my chances because my aim is to celebrate progress rather than decry the easy time people have now.  Front-and-center in my celebration is the annual Halloween ComicFest (HCF) taking place tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing parents take their kids to HCF tomorrow.  Things have changed substantially since I was a kid begging my mom to take me in search of comics.  Back in that day comic books were considered the fare for the young, the weak-minded, and the emotionally stunted.  All the cool kids played football and found a way to get beers for a night of underage drinking.  Reading comics was more of an underground activity that one hid, or at least down-played, if one knew what was good for one.  The idea of things fantastic as a reasonable pursuit either as a hobby or as a vocation was frowned upon.

Somehow Halloween broke this otherwise inflexible rule.  One day a year where the all things fantastic were in bounds and people indulged in dress-up fantasies.  This was allowed but not much more.

Over the years, I’ve seen comics wax and wane but little had prepared me for the growth of the Free Comic Book Day in the spring that started in 2002.  Suddenly, not only were comics tolerated or acceptable, they were main stream.  Parents, people my age, were raising their kids on comics as accepted art form and not as a poor substitute for adult fare.

The pinnacle of this total transformation was reached in 2012 when comics came full circle with the creation of Halloween ComicFest by Diamond Distributors.  Comics had somehow grown, matured, and returned to its ‘roots’ in a respectable fashion.  Quite a story.

Negative Space is a new limited series from Dark Horse comics and the creative team of Ryan K. Lindsay, the writer, and Owen GieniI, the illustrator.

Issue #1’s cover bears a Lovecraftian-type monster in the classic, menacing pose – open mouth equipped with rows of razor-sharp teeth; tentacles thrown akimbo and writhing to and fro; an unnatural, sicken hue to its hide – lurking in the ruins of a vast, ancient, and abandoned city.

Dark Horse’s billing is no less striking. Bearing the melodramatic lead-in “They feed on your fear”, the rest of the teaser reads:

And just who is this one man whose writer’s block interferes with his goal of self-destruction?  Our hero is a dumpy writer who is about as depressed as depressed can be.  Down on his luck, Guy (yes, that’s his name) would end it all if only he could get past the ironic obstacle that prevents him from completing what should have been the easiest set of words he ever put down on paper.  One wonders whether his already deep despair can fall even deeper as he realizes how impotent he is.

True to the advertising copy, Guy’s situation takes a turn into the bizarre when his walk brings him into direct contact with a resistance group seeking to free mankind from the forces that feed on human misery.

As the tale unfolds, Guy learns that the Lovecraftian monster emblazoned on the cover is a representative of a race of extraterrestrial beings who apparently feed off of human emotions.  These ‘Evorah’ had invaded the Earth centuries (perhaps millennia) earlier and, after some period of time, had developed a working relationship with some of us to exploit all the others.

As Guy learns this dark history he also learns that he has some role to play in the quest to liberate mankind from the scourge of emotional slavery.  After falling into orbit of resistance, this down-on-his-luck hero soon finds himself in the position to strike a blow for freedom.

My enthusiasm for this book was quite high when it was solicited but after reading the first two issues I was mildly disappointed.  The writing was adequate but somewhat incoherent in places and the art was reasonably well-conceived and possessed a style that meshed well with the nature of the story.  But what bothered me was that I couldn’t quite shake the feeling of been-there-done-that.

It took a while to pinpoint the origin of this feeling but when it finally clicked it was clear that despite superficial changes Negative Space is fundamentally a retelling of the classic 1988 John Carpenter film They Live.

They Live, which is set in Los Angeles, follows the down-on-his-luck character Nada played by Roddy Piper of pro wrestling fame.  Nada has come to L.A. after having lost his job in a city in the interior of the country (possibly Detroit) and subsequently being abandoned, in short order, by his wife, his children, and society in general.

Nada manages to convince a construction foreman to let him work as a day laborer on a new building project.  The work is hard and the foreman demanding but Nada holds out hope that he may be able to get on his feet again. Since the pay is meager, he stays in a transient community near the work site – a set of shacks, shanties, and hovels centered on a missionary church, which tries to feed and care for the hundreds of homeless who find themselves on the fringes of society, both geographically and politically.

After an arduous week of work, Nada finally has a day off and he begins to explore the church.  Once he’s inside, he begins to get his first hint that the church may be more than a place of worship.  His discoveries are cut short when the scores of police, sporting body armor and tear gas, move in on the settlement. During all the din and confusion, Nada slips through their fingers taking with him nothing more than an ordinary-looking pair of sunglasses from a supply that the church’s leaders were desperate to protect.

Wandering into the heart of the city, Nada soon discovers that the sunglasses reveal an inner-world of messages designed to keep the human cattle in line

Continuing to scratch beneath the surface, he soon discovers the truth – aliens have infiltrated society and subverted it to their goals.  They and their human allies have the positions of power and luxury while the majority are kept in line with subliminal messages, economic manipulation, and, when necessary, naked force.

Nada soon goes from a down-on-his-luck loser to freedom fighter leading the resistance in throwing off the alien invaders and beating back their human collaborators. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And so there you have it – Negative Space is They Live, with minor changes to disguise the obvious influence that the latter has on the former.  Even the They Live ‘subliminal messages’ are evident in the front cover of Negative Space #2 where strategically darkened and illuminated letters from many signs spell out a sinister message for Guy.

Whether the subsequent execution of Negative Space will be strong enough to allow the series to stand on its own remains to be seen.  I doubt it but I wish them luck.

One the most interesting things about the recent reboot the Big Two have just completed is the reestablishment of their premiere magicians in new, ongoing monthly series.  More interesting is how the ad copy reads when the books are solicited in Previews.  The description of each rebooted title included a common theme, expressed in almost the exact same words – the idea that the use of magic comes with a cost.

The quote that Marvel offers in their online description of the new Doctor Strange series

Similar phrasing was used in the solicitation for the New 52 reboot of Constantine the Hellblazer and that sentiment has been at least spoken of in the new book.  Below is a single panel from issue #4, in which a drunken Constantine, haunted by both ghosts of his memory and real ghosts from his past, reflects on a time as a young man where he had a special relationship with a young girl who he had pulled into his magical lifestyle.

The interesting question to consider is why should the relaunches of both of these titles go out of their way to emphasize that magic has a cost?  The answer lies in the observation that magic as a storytelling device is a disaster waiting to happen.  All too often, the use of magic, unless used sparingly, becomes an unworkable deus ex machina.  Since neither of these series can ‘use magic sparingly’,  another mechanism must be sought in the form of a ‘cost’ or ‘price’ that limits magic use and codifies its rules.

One need only look at the turbulent publication history of these two characters to see the pattern that indicates that portraying them as unfettered users of magic causes problems and that they work better as characters the less that they actually appear.

Consider first the twisted publication history of Stephen Strange.  In the roughly 50 years since his introduction in Strange Tales as a main character, no less than seven separate titles have been devoted to him as the lead (Strange Tales (1951), Doctor Strange (1968), Marvel Premiere (1972), Doctor Strange (1974), Strange Tales (1987), Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme (1988), Doctor Strange (1999)).  In each of these short-lived runs, he’s been redesigned and rebooted.  He’s been portrayed variously as a reserved and aloof conjurer with the self-control of a Tibetan monk, a masked-crusader complete with super-hero poses and accompanying melodrama, an emotionally conflicted soul with a gnawing darkness at its root, and an aimless womanizer with insecurities a mile long.  His most memorable stories have more to do with him as a bystander, witnessing the grandeur of the universe (e.g. Eternity & the Living Tribunal from Strange Tales (1951), the Sise-Neg story from Marvel Premiere, or the psychedelic brush with Death in the Doctor Strange (1973)) than they do with him as the lead.

The publication history of John Constantine has done better, at least in terms of the number of books.  His tally is only three (Hellblazer (1988), Constantine (2013), and Constantine: The Hellblazer (2015)), although he’s actually on pace to have as many restarts when adjusting for the fact that he’s only been around since 1985.  In addition, the recent television series Constantine, failed to find an audience and was cancelled after 13 episodes.

What makes magic appealing in small doses but unappealing as the main course centers on what magic actually represents.  While there is no exact, universal characterization, magic, as used in literature, tends to embody the certain vaguely facets in the human existence:

• Undefined faculties of the human being (e.g. insight and intuition)
• Non-rational mode of human existence (e.g. feeling and emotions)
• Wish fulfillment
• Mysticism and the desire for spiritual connection with something bigger

The much larger success of John Constantine as a magician compared with Stephen Strange is attributable to the fact that the Vertigo imprint, as a whole, tends to emphasize emotions and feelings over logic and reason. But emotion and feelings can only take a story so far, there still needs to be a consistent and logical progression of events precisely because the world in which we live is subjected to those very constraints.  We may indulge in a fantasy about wish fulfillment but we must still eat.  We may have insight into a particular situation but we still express it using logic.  We might explore our spirituality but we still need to go to work, pay the bills, and all the other things living in a material world with well-defined rules forces us into.

So this time around, the creative teams are trying to address these issues by placing limitations on the magic.  In effect, they are trying to turn magic use into a different type of science, complete with a new set of rules that are consistent even if they are initially unknown to the reader.  I suspect the creative teams and the powers-that-be at the big two have paid attention to and have been influenced by the success of the anime and manga entitled Full Metal Alchemist (FMA).  FMA uses a rule-based magic as a vehicle to explore questions about war, love, and ethics in a way that has engaged audiences.  The magic is merely the vehicle it uses as a means to ask deep and philosophical questions.   Whether these two reboots can succeed remains to be seen.

This week’s column is a departure from the ordinary thread on comics creation that had been the focus for the last few months and, instead, deals with that once-a-year happening of attending the Baltimore Comic Con.

Last weekend, I headed north to the Baltimore Comic-Con with three friends to check out the lay of the land.  Despite the fact that the usual state of the average Maryland driver sits somewhere between distracted and negligent, the trip on the highways and byways of the Free State was accomplished without incident or even a close call.  Parking was also fairly easily settled at the lot just behind the Days Inn.  A short walk later found our party just outside the Convention Center.

Surprisingly, there really wasn’t anything in the way of lines and it was only a matter of few minutes before we received our wrist bands and were heading in.  The majority of the action at Comic Con happens in the lower level of the convention center where the vendors, comic creators, and independent artists, creators, and associated personnel have their tables set up.  The upper levels are setup for panels.

In the course of wandering through the crowd that showed up I came away with a variety of impressions; most good, a few bad.

First off, the overall state of the con had a real family feel.  The number of small children present was amazing to me after the usual state of affairs at Anime conventions, where the target demographic is more focused on the slice of our population from older high-school students, to college-age attendees, and the proverbial young adults.  It was a common sight to see parents and children cosplaying together and that was also stood in sharp contrast with the usual Anime program.   There were several Raven cosplayers who were in their earlier teens at about the time many kids get shy these girls felt that they could express themselves.  In addition, there was a kid’s area in the lower level where the attendees could do some arts and crafts led by a comics creator.  I didn’t really see much of this but I sat in on Andy Runton’s drawing lesson and it was nice to see his interaction with the kids and his encouragement and coaching about drawing.

Another really nice observation was that the quality of the cosplay was quite splendid.  I didn’t take many photos but there was a nice couple who came dressed as Hawkeye and Black Widow

They were really friendly and chatted with my wife and me for a while about how they assembled their costumes, where they found their props, and how long it took for them to get it all together.  The repurposing of common household items that ‘Hawkeye’ did to make his quiver was impressive.

Equally impressive was the fellow who came dressed as the Man of Steel version of Superman.

It was uncanny how well he ‘nailed it’ in costume, look, and overall how he carried himself.  He was also very friendly.

In the vendor’s area, there were the typical wheely-toting fanboys carrying their latest prized-find in large suitcases from setup to setup.  Despite the lack of social graces, generally they were well-behaved and tried to avoid running you over with their rolling treasure chests.  The vendors were engaging and quite a few went out of the way to find or search for things.  So overall, a real plus there.

The most unusual table was manned by a guy who works full time at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia.  His table, which boasted screen snaps from his 3-dimensional renderings of some of NASA’s most experimental aircraft, was actually devoted to his doctoral research.  I’m not sure what degree he was pursuing but it clearly was in one of the psychology-related fields based on the questionnaire that he asked con-goers to fill out.  The subject of the questions was the responder’s attitude to the mental state of Bruce Wayne versus Batman.  Is Batman the dominant role and Bruce Wayne a mask?  Is it the other way around? Is Bruce crazy?  Things like that.

This guy wasn’t the only NASA presence at the convention.  Numerous people had NASA paraphernalia on – NASA tee-shirts, NASA pins, etc.  I wonder if the agency knows its reach?

Only one thing rubbed me the wrong way the whole day.  Unfortunately, it came at the end of the con and there really wasn’t enough time to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.  My wife and I intended to go to the last panel of the day and, being a bit tired, decided to stop in at the end of the panel prior to it and grab a seat.  This was a mistake.  A group of creators, mostly from DC comics I believe, were indulging a raunch-fest.  The program clearly said the panel was 16+ so that fact that there was adult material wasn’t so disturbing.  Rather it was the mean way that most of the panelists interacted with each other and with the audience.  It was akin to watching Don Rickles in his old Las Vegas shtick without any of the cleverness and charm – just the vulgarities.  I wasn’t so much offended and embarrassed.  Not for myself but for the creative guys who formed the panel.  These guys hold dream jobs, getting paid to create art in a fashion that makes them admired by others and only bitterness seemed to come forth.  True each line had a laugh surrounding it but still there seemed to be no graciousness from most of them (the one panelist who tried to be gracious was roundly mocked…sigh).

Overall, it was a good experience but I should have stayed in the kid’s area surrounded by people who still see the charm and wonder of the medium and stayed away from the older ones who hang onto the edginess of teenage rebellion and corresponding shock value that just never quits.

This week’s column completes a two-part study of the work Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels by Peter David.

David defines the plot as having two aspects.  The first is the development of the hero as an individual.  The second is the events that serve as a vehicle for that development.  This later piece is called the plot.

According to David, the plot doesn’t necessarily require choice from the character.  For this he cites the movie The Terminator which forces Sarah Connor to grow up.  I find this somewhat hard to swallow, as Connor always had the choice to just lay down and die rather than stiffen and fight back.  I interpret that he is trying to say that whether the character is predestined to be subjected to a set of events or that the character’s choices shape those events is not important. What is central is that the character evolves inside as the events evolve outside and that it is this internal evolution that readers find compelling.

On plot pacing, David suggests that all scenes be trimmed down to the essential information.  To this end, he advises, like O’Neal, to start and end on the action, whether that action is physical (i.e. a slug fest) or mental (i.e. a test of wills) or emotional (i.e. a fight between husband and wife).

Like Moore, David also advocates for connectors (as he puts it) between scenes have a thematic overlap, like using the same words, albeit in different contexts, to end one scene and begin the subsequent one.  Another feature that David advocates in common with Moore, is to end a scene at the end of a page where possible.

At its most basic level, the story structure that David recommends is one that is a combination of ups and downs (roller coaster) superimposed on an overall rising action to the climax with a small release at the end for the denouement.

To this end, he offers the three-act structure is a good model.  Unfortunately, he defines the essential pieces of the three-act structure using the movie the Karate Kid, which makes it a bit difficult to understand the theory as a whole (unless you know the movie exceedingly well or are willing to watch and rewatch as you read his books).  As near as I can render it, David defines these essential pieces as:

• First act used to introduce the setting and cast
• First-act turning point where the essential problem is introduced
• Second act used to define the stakes of the problem and intensify the tension
• Second-act turning point where some complication arise or where the hero gets some insight into what lays before him
• Third act where the problem resolution crystalizes into a simple choice
• Climax where the here chooses and the problem is resolved one way or another

As a textbook example of the three-act visual storytelling, David proffers issue #51 of the Fantastic Four.  Since it was a standalone issue, it was easy enough to dissect, and David includes many of the pages from that issue to illustrate the main points.  I’ll try to summarize them verbally and visually, although it should be noted that I draw the line between the second act turning point and the third act differently than David.

Act 1 establishes the situation. We start with the Thing standing in the rain and feeling sorry for himself.  He eventually meets a mysterious man who invites him in out of the rain and who, through some heavily drugged coffee manages to get the Thing to fall asleep.

As we near the end of Act 1, the turning point is reached where we now see that the mysterious man (called the Changling) is going to steal the Thing’s powers in order to exact revenge on the Reed Richards

Act 2 deals with the consequences of this switch. Being able to pass himself off as the Thing, the Changling infiltrates the Fantastic Four and suspense builds as his plans for revenge go unnoticed by everyone but a now all-to-human Ben Grimm.

Act 2’s turning point comes, when the Changling finds himself able to affect his revenge simply by inaction. Reed Richards, having invaded sub-space, approaches a region where all the negative matter, including him, is being annihilated with positive matter.  Reed will be destroyed if the Changling doesn’t reel him back in with the tether, one end of which is attached to Reed’s suit and the other is in the Changling’s hands.

Act 3 plays out when Reed’s tether breaks and the Changling and a horrified Sue watch as Reed plummets towards certain doom (that is actually an oxymoron in comics but never mind that now). The Changling has s single choice to make.  Do nothing and reap his reward as Reed dies or make an effort to save the man he has hated for years.  Here the thought balloons scripted by Stan Lee show the Changling’s internal conflict.

The Climax comes when the Changling decides to save Reed’s life at the expense of his own.

The clean-up and denouement of the story re-establishes the status quo until the next issue where it is disrupted all over again.

As a side note, it is interesting that David mocks the standard plot construction put forward by Jim Shooter (although he doesn’t cite him by name) that the poem Little Miss Muffet was a perfect form of storytelling as it has all the needed elements:

• The set-up or the establishment of the status quo (“Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey)
• The action motion (“Along came a spider and sat down beside her”)
• The reaction and resolution (“And frightened Miss Muffet away”)

David also discusses at some length the idea of having intersecting story lines that rise and fall independently when they are not overlapping each other.  I found this discussion a bit hard to understand in practical terms but I suppose that it comes with practice.

Finally, David has a detailed section on the mechanics of the script writing.  Here he is also not markedly different from the earlier works examined.  He cites the two conventional approaches: Marvel Style and Full Script.  However, his coverage of these two approaches is far more detailed than either O’Neal’s or Moore’s work.  In addition, he offers a comparison and contrast between the two methods using his Spy Boy comic.

Marvel Style

Full Script

Finally, and a bit surprisingly, David discusses the stylings and placement of word balloons.  Most of what he says here is not found in any other work and it was refreshing to see this point dealt with in such detail.  Once again, he provides practical examples explaining the how-tos including this presentation from The Incredible Hulk #424.

Overall, I’ve found David’s book to be the best of its kind so far reviewed.  It is a good read, fun and easy to get through and filled with information unavailable in either scope or detail in any of the other works I’ve reviewed so far.