Elliot's Favourites in 2008

Out of the forty-odd graphic novels I read in 2008, these ten were my favourite. Note that they weren't necessarily published in 2008; I just happened to get around to them in that year. I tried not to pick two volumes from the same series (if the other volumes are good I mention it.) Okay, counting down:

10. DC: The New Frontier, volume 1, by Darwyn Cooke. 2004. 208 p.

Cooke re-imagines the origins of the Silver Age DC universe in the Cold War Space Race. Fighter pilots-turned-astronauts jostle with G-men in the shadow of the Korean War and McCarthyism, and everyone's got that hard-drinking Rat Pack style. The art is striking - retro yet not outdated. Some of the storylines are brilliant: Steel, survivor of a lynching, stalks the Jim Crow South slaying members of the Klan; Hal Jordan (later to be Green Lantern) is a hot-shot pilot who refuses to kill ; the Martian Manhunter is endearingly humorous and idealistic. Unfortunately Cooke tries to include just about everyone from the Silver Age. All the old WW2 soldiers, fighter pilots, science-action characters, and murderously ruthless (but basically good at heart!) FBI and CIA agents blur together into one big puddle of square-jawed, buzz-cut testosterone-soaked chest-thumping All-American blah-blah-blah-who-gives-a-crap? This problem becomes unavoidable in the second volume; and the Big Threat revealed therein is kind of lame. So maybe just read the first one.

9. X-Men: Divided We Stand, by Mike Carey, et al. 2008. 136 p.

Ten short stories about individual X-Men, by a variety of authors and artists. The quality varies, but overall it's pretty entertaining. There are some real gems, including a theological-philosophical tale in which Scalphunter is visited by Nightcrawler in both his priestly and demonic guises. I posted a little about the book here and here.

8. The Frank Book, by Jim Woodring. 2003. 351 p.

Plenty of writers and artists try to be surreal. Jim Woodring accomplishes it, maybe because he's not trying so hard. The younger Woodring experienced highly convincing hallucinations, and that's what Frank reads like: a kind of fevered dream that you can't shake off. Frank and his friends and enemies wordlessly wander through a mystical, wondrous and sometimes deeply disturbing (this book is not for kids) dimension that's part Krazy Kat, part early Disney and part oblique parable.

7. Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, by Joss Whedon. 2004. 152 p.

He's not Grant Morrison, but he is Joss Whedon, so he'll do. He picks up the New X-Men where Morrison left them, adds a character, and flings them into one exciting adventure after another. It's typical Whedon, so we get heaps of deadpan, witty repartee, some tough-as-nails women, plenty of relationship issues, lots of violence, and wouldn't you know it - dramatic twists and cliff-hangers! I quite liked the art. All four volumes are good. The drawback is that it's typical Whedon, and if you've seen enough of his TV work this will all start to seem kind of familiar. But enjoyable.

6. Supreme: The Story of the Year, by Alan Moore. 2002. 332 p.

With Alan Moore, the expectations are high. Supreme doesn't disappoint. Having started his career by deconstructing superheroes, Moore has more lately moved on to reconstructing them, to seeing how they work and celebrating what's great about them. With Supreme, Moore revamps a lousy Rob Liefield character (or is that adjective redundant when talking about Liefield's work?) and uses him to do a lengthy and insightful meditation on all things Superman. He plays with the changing nature of superhero stories (all those retcons!) and casts an affectionate eye on the DC Golden and Silver Ages. The style and quality of art varies quite a bit throughout the volume (in part intentionally, to evoke different eras) but the writing is consistently good. (The second volume, Supreme: The Return, is also pretty good and features a wonderful homage to Jack Kirby.)

5. Superman: Birthright, by Mark Waid. 2005. 314 p.

A clever yet sincere up-dating or reboot of the origins of the Man of Steel. It never became canonical but it's still a great new window on the character of Superman, on his compassion and moral power. And it's got a cool vision of the Kryptonians. Click here for the brief review from Say It Backwards that prompted me to read it.

4. The Invisibles, volume 2: Apocalipstick, by Grant Morrison. 2001. 208 p.

The Invisibles is not for those with weak stomachs, and it's bound to offend just about everyone at some point or another. And Morrison admits freely that he was experimenting with drugs while working on the series. He also says that it was designed to be grasped on the second or third read, rather than the first. My first-read impression is that it's a massive sprawling haphazard thing with one big-clever-Morrison-idea piled atop another. They don't always fit together all that well. And I think he's used some of those ideas more effectively elsewhere. But there's plenty of brilliance: from Barbelith to Totep to Triple-U! It's challenging, mystical, cryptical, bad-ass, anarchistic and strange. I think this volume was the most consistently excellent, with a few powerful one-shot tales and with a story arc focusing on transvestite shaman Lord Fanny.

3. Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, volume 1, by Jack Kirby. 2007. 396 p.

It's King Kirby. Of course it's awesome. It's larger-than-life, exploding-off-the-page, primary-colour awesome. You can actually use this book as a sacred relic to destroy vampires, zombies, bankers and other evil creatures. Just hold it up and shout "TAARU!!!" A blinding light, the Astro Force, will come forth, striking the evildoer and blasting it to oblivion with a mighty Kirby Crackle!! BAZOOM!!

Ahem. The other volumes (which I've been reading this year) are even better (if I were reviewing all four, they'd be at number one on this list.) Grant Morrison provides an almost-embarrassingly gushing introduction to this volume, in which he compares the Fourth World saga to the Bible, like, three or four times. I'm not sure I would have at first understood the awesome nature of the original New Gods if I hadn't been primed for it by Morrison's mythic interpretations of them. I might've been a noob and said: "Why is Jimmy Olsen trading quips with Don Rickles? Who are these newsboys? What the- death on skis??" But, really, you'd have to be blind to miss the raw primal creativity, the sheer cosmic wonder of it all: the flaming disembodied hand writing the commandments of the Source, the divine Mother Box, furious tormented Orion, forbidding majestic Darkseid, "TAARU!" and the Mountain of Judgment and... and... GEE WHIZ! Any children I have will grow up in a nursery that has big, brightly-coloured Jack Kirby characters stenciled on the walls. They'll grow up to be hero-artists, awesome, mighty, and strange.

2. Astro City: Confession, by Kurt Busiek. 1997. 208 p.

This book was electrifying. It knocked my socks off. The Confessor! The Cross-breed! The cover! I... wait, just read Paul's review here.

You should also read the first book, Astro City: Life in the Big City, which is very good. And the rest of the series. But Confession was my favourite. And it's got oodles of religious references. One of the most intriguing takes on religion that I've ever seen in a superhero comic.

1. Top Ten, book 1 by Alan Moore. 2001. 208 p.

Ok, I know I'll get flak for rating this above The Fourth World, The Invisibles, and Astro City. Those are classic works. But for humour and deft, quick character development, Top Ten was the most fun I had with a comic book in 2008. It's part of Moore's reconstruction effort which I mentioned above. In a city where everyone has superpowers, who watches the watchmen? The job falls to a motley group of officers at the 10th Precinct Police Station. Moore has a lot of fun with the backdrop, but it's the interactions amongst the police, and between them and "ordinary" citizens that make the book work. It feels like we're catching a glimpse of the diverse lives of some real people. Moore includes some fascinating religious characters, whom he treats with respect.

You should read Moore's second volume, as well as his prequel, Top Ten: The Forty-Niners (from 2006.) Don't bother reading Paul Di Filippo's contribution to the series, Beyond the Farthest Precinct. It's not the worse comic ever, but after seeing what Moore can do with these characters, it's disappointing to have them reduced to idiotic two-dimensional caricatures - the religious ones most of all. And the plot is largely lifted from PKD's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. You may also want to skip Smax, Moore's fantasy spin-off of Top Ten. It's got some good moments, but don't spend any money on it.

Confession: A review and analysis (with spoilers)--Part One

Kurt Busiek's Astro City is unfailingly excellent. The series tells stories about a city densely populated with superheroes, many of whom are analogues of iconic superheroes in other comics. In Astro City, Busiek creates characters who occupy a familiar iconic space, without necessarily reproducing the powers or character traits of existing heroes. Samaritan, for example, is the analogue for Superman. He is the apex hero, supremely powerful, and unfailingly benevolent and noble. Jack-in-the-Box is a colourful, wisecracking hero, a stand-in for Spiderman. Winged Victory is a Greco-inspired feminist heroine and stand-in for Wonder Woman.

Astro City: Confession is a story about the Astro City analogue of Batman, told by the equivalent of Robin. Brian Kinney moves to Astro City with the hope of making something of himself and ends up as the apprentice and sidekick of the dark, intimidating, "Confessor".

There is a lot to like about Confession. It's clever, and thoughtful, and it's full of insight about the nature of heroism--treading some of the ground later covered in Marvel's Civil War. And because of the way Astro City's characters are mirrors of DC and Marvel characters, a lot of the insights offered about the Confessor hold true for Batman as well. But some of the most interesting things going on here are about religion. Religion in Confession isn't just a motif, it's a major theme, and Busiek's treatment of that theme is worth paying attention to.

There is an aspect, of course, that all stories about heroes have religious undertones, in that they are about good and evil, they are about salvation, they are often about belief. In Confession, all of these undercurrents are present, as are some more obvious and explicit religious concerns. The first heroes Brian meets in Astro City are a hero team called the Crossbreed. They believe that God has given them their power, and that they must respond by doing his service. Secondly and most obviously, religious themes come up the the character of the Confessor--not just because of his name and costume (emblazoned with a glowing cross), or because he makes his headquarters in the abandoned section of an old abbey, but even more because he is a vampire--and vampires always (say it with me now: ALWAYS) carry Christian resonance.

First, though, the Crossbreed. The six member team consists of David, who is a giant, Daniel who is a lion-man, Joshua who has a sonic scream power, Peter who has the power to manipulate rocks, Moses, who can control rain (and possibly weather in general), and Mary who has wings and can fly like an angel. The biblical Daniel, of course, was not a lion, but survived a night with lions. So while a lion named Daniel is an obvious reference to the story of Daniel and the lion's den, it is the antagonist's power and appearance that are manifested in the comic book character. Likewise, the biblical David defeated a giant, but the comic book David is a giant. Biblical Moses built an ark as protection from the rain, but the comic book Moses controls the rain. This suggests something about he character of the God who gave them these powers. Quite apart from the subversion of expectations that allows the most frightening, beastial character (Daniel, the lion) be the group's healer--a trope borrowed from X-Men and Beast--the Crossbreed's explicitly religious context suggests that these characters are about God's redemptive and transformative power. The antagonistic elements from their source stories are re-imagined as heroic. Even more, they are remade in God's service.

Brian's first encounter with the Crossbreed is on the bus into Astro City, as the bus driver expresses both his cynical attitude toward superheroes in general (and this will be an important theme in the comic) and his disdain for the Crossbreed in particular:

"It's the Jesus Freaks. Again. Why can't they pick some other corner, just once? Just once? A different time of day? I am so sick of those jerks..."

We see the Crossbreed evangelising on the street corner, handing out pamphlets and talking about judgment day. Brian is in the process of defending them, in his internal monologue, when Daniel confronts him:

"Have you been saved?
Huh?
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

Brian stammers uneasily, until he is rescued by a passer-by, who tells him:

"Don't worry. The J.F.'s are annoyin', but they're harmless -- 'less you're allergic to Psalms and Preachin'!"

It would seem, on page 18, that we have seen the character of religion in this comic: it is annoying but harmless. Religious people are the people who accost regular people as they're minding their own business. And too often, that would be the final word. But in Busiek's hands the story is not that simple, and it turns out that the friendly passer-by was in fact picking his pocket. The Crossbreed save Brian and return his wallet, sending him off with:

"Welcome to Astro City, young man. God be with you."

So the street evangelists aren't nuisances after all. They are shown here seeking the bodily, as well as spiritual salvation of the people of Astro City. And the man who is so quick to dismiss them as annoying-but-harmless is in fact the predator.

The Crossbreed turn up twice more in this comic. They are seen being harassed by an angry crowd as anti-hero sentiment in Astro City rises. The crowd turning against their saviours would have been heavily resonant with the story of Christ regardless, but this resonance is highlighted by the explicitly Christian status of the Crossbreed. They are called the Jesus Freaks, and they, like Jesus, are rejected by the crowd.

Finally, the Crossbreed turn up at the climax of the story, swooping in to save Altar Boy from the newly revealed alien menace. They are a sort of Deus Ex Machina, coming out of nowhere with no warning or foreshadowing to save Altar Boy after his mentor the Confessor has died. Now, Deus Ex Machina are a trope of superhero comics, and you could argue that that is how superheroes themselves nearly always function. Still, in this case the Deus is a little more explicit than usual. There are any number of superheroes that could have showed up at the last minute to rescue Altar Boy, but the appearance of the Crossbreed signifies the intervention of God in this world. The Crossbreed, remember, believe that their power is a gift from God. So they are, at the least, a manifestation in this world of a certain kind of religiosity, and possibly even God's agents in the world. As Altar Boy is carried away by Mary, he muses: "I was saved by an angel".

Busiek presents here in minuscule an idea more fully articulated in his Superman story "Superman: Angels", where the suggestion is that God sends his gifts to protect us, and to inspire us: that since Superman does both, he is an angel--the agent of God on earth.

Whew. This is getting a little long. I think that for the sake of readability I'll leave it here and continue with an examination of the character of the Confessor in my next post, later this week.