Please forgive me, Kurt Busiek

I went to Manitoba Comic Con this weekend, and I had a good time.

The highlight, for me, was meeting the person who is fast becoming my favourite comic book writer--Kurt Busiek. I tried to think of intelligent things to ask him, but I fear most of my questions were more along the lines of: "Did you know that you're Kurt Busiek?" or "What's it like to be so awesome?"

I see Busiek in many ways as an anti-Stan Lee; where Lee is responsible for humanizing and psychologizing super heroes, Busiek seems to be always working with Ironic heroes, and writing about them mythologically and even theologically. When asked, he said that what he wanted to do with Superman was to "do Superman right". He didn't want to do a twist on Superman--Superman the journalist or Superman the alien. He felt that those twists only work if you have a strong center to draw your tangents from. If the center isn't strong enough--if people aren't familiar with the iconic Superman, then none of the twists work either.

And I couldn't agree more. I love Kurt Busiek's writing, and my secret hope going to Manitoba Comic Con was to persuade him to become my best friend.

And then I told him that he wrote my favourite Superman comic--Superman Redemption. Except for three little details. Kurt Busiek didn't write "Redemption", I haven't read it, and I believe Gabriel McKee's review here when he says that it wasn't good.

What I have read, and Kurt Busiek did write, and I did actually like is Superman "Angel", which Gabriel McKee reviewed here, and which review I completely agree with.

Now I'm sure that Busiek isn't sitting around all tortured that some random fan in Winnipeg thinks he wrote an issue that he didn't. It's even possible that he liked Fabian Nicieza's "Redemption" comic, and that he's flattered that someone thought he wrote it. But even so. I feel the need to apologize.

So, Kurt Busiek, if you happen to be googling yourself and you happen upon this blog, I'm sorry. I actually liked the comic you wrote, not the one you didn't. Sorry. Please forgive me.

And be my best friend?

Camassia on The Dark Knight

Check out these two posts:

The Dark Knight

The dream of completion

In which Camassia muses insightfully about idealism, superheroic transfiguration, and the sex appeal (or not) of the Joker.

Superman, Christ and Morrison

Superman’s job is to fight for and inspire those who cannot fight for themselves. His job is to make this world a better place and to help all men realize their potential as supermen. Further to this, it’s important to keep in mind the Superman/Christ parallels WITHOUT being obvious and heavy-handed about them. Superman has to think differently from us, and when we see into his head, we should be shocked by the clarity and simplicity of his brilliance and compassion. This is a god sent to Earth not to suffer and die but to live and inspire and change the face of the galaxy by his deeds and reputation.

More on what Timothy Callahan, writer of "Grant Morrison: The Early Years", calls "the essence of Morrison's Superman" and how the recently completed All-Star Superman fits in with Morrison's attempts to reboot Superman in 2000 at Comic Book Resources.

Review: Mecha Manga Bible Heroes #1: David vs. Goliath

I don't get it.

Mecha Manga Bible Heroes #1: "David vs. Goliath," written by Tom Hall and Joey Endres. Illustrated by Thom Pratt and Daniel Bradford. Backup stories by Dean Rankine. JMG Comics (Flanders, New Jersey): Summer 2008. $2.25.

Some time ago, I posted the press release for this. Because I refuse to be a mere advertiser for anything simultaneously Christian and sf-related, I followed that up in private with some (negative) predictions about the series that somehow ended up getting posted at The Sci Fi Catholic. Now the first issue is out and its creators, in thanks for the earlier postings, have generously sent me a copy for review.

First of all, it's only fair to point out that the target audience for this is clearly very young, as indicated by the general tone. The series retells stories from the Old Testament with almost no alteration besides a dumbing-down of the dialogue and the addition of a few sf flourishes, especially walking robots and powered armor suits, apparently for the purpose of convincing young males to read the Bible.

Ten bucks say Goliath gets p0wned.

After reading this first issue, I'm still asking the same question I was asking when I first heard of this project: "Why?" This issue, "David vs. Goliath," follows 1 Samuel 17.1-58 faithfully except for the additions of the aforementioned sf flourishes, which as a result look like intrusions. Truth be told, I don't get it; it would make better sense to me to create a comic that not only tells the Bible stories faithfully but also attempts to faithfully depict the world in which those stories took place, or else to create sf stories that use the Bible as starting points but take greater liberties with the text.

Because the sf elements are decoration and and not an inherent part of the story, I find them jarring and confusing. For example, when young David relates how he has saved sheep from bears and lions, the illustrations depict him tending robot sheep and fighting robot bears and lions. While reading this, I find myself asking, "What is the purpose of a robotic sheep? Where do robotic lions come from?" In a fully developed sf world, I would expect these questions to be answered sooner or later, but in Mecha Manga Bible Heroes, I'm almost certain they never will be, which again leads me to ask what the point is of putting them in at all.

The only answer I can come up with is gimmick. It's a gimmick designed to coax youngsters to read their Bibles. While I'm certainly in favor of encouraging children and youths to read the Bible, I suspect most of them could detect the gimmick of this comic and would take it as an insult. I also suspect it would give them the wrong idea, suggesting as it unintentionally does that the Bible is too dull or unpalatable to read without a few artistic touch-ups.

The artwork, though not great, is good. The writing is competent enough, but the flow of the comic seems to be off; a few inserted jokes are poorly timed, and I found myself having to stare at some pages for quite a while in order to figure out what's going on. On the whole, the quality is good, but this first issue contains nothing memorable. The two backup features by Dean Rankine, "Bee-Attitudes" and "Green with Envy," are nuisances.

Although this first issue of Mecha Manga Bible Heroes is worth a few minutes' entertainment, it contains nothing compelling and nothing to make me want to continue reading the series. I'd rather go read my Bible instead.

Three funerals

My friends, on this mournful occasion, let us begin with a spoiler warning. This post contains spoilers regarding DC's Final Crisis (August 2008), Top Ten, JLA: American Dreams, and the film Stranger Than Fiction.

Still here? All right, Final Crisis: the Martian Manhunter is dead, and issue two gives us this glimpse of his funeral on Mars:

A solemn scene from Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones. Superman says: "J'onn J'onzz was my friend. Always there, always strong, always reliable... He was someone I could confide in. Someone who understood what it was like to lose a world and find another. We'll all miss him. And pray for a resurrection."

"Pray for a resurrection" is strikingly traditional (though Superman was raised by Methodists, after all), but there's a touch of humor about it. It acknowledges that we the readers know that superheroes, like soap opera characters, frequently die, but rarely stay dead for long - Superman being the most prominent example. The implication here is that the superheroes know it, too, adding an odd twist of realism and gravity to the proceedings.

In Top Ten, Alan Moore put a more openly humourous spin on the idea (art by Gene Ha):

The late superhero in this case is Girl One, an android. The Top Ten multiverse is one where pretty much everyone is a superhero and Moore gets a lot of mileage from subtle and not-too-subtle twists on the concept. (Like the exterminator who unwittingly provokes a cosmic continuity-altering Infinite Crisis crossover war between mice and cats... But I digress.) In this context the characters are even more aware of the superhero tropes they live by.

Grant Morrison's run on the Justice League of America predated both of these stories. Here's Superman (during his ill-advised electrical phase) at the funeral of Metamorpho the Element Man:

This is the most frank expression of the theme and includes an interesting twist at the end. Does Superman (and Morrison?) wish that fallen superheroes really could rest in peace? Do they always have to be recycled to drive up nostalgia-induced sales? Witness the current hype surrounding the return of Barry Allen, who's been mostly dead since 1985.

A less cynical interpretation of superhero resurections might go something like this. The eulogy for Girl One also included mention of her "giving of her life so that others might live." Superman says of Metamorpho, "In the end, he gave his life to save his friends." The film Stranger Than Fiction involves a doomed fictional character who gets a second chance at life. His creator muses: "But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway, dies willingly, knowing he could stop it, then, I mean, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?" Over at SF Gospel, Gabriel's commentary on the movie read, in part:

It's unsurprising for a movie about the ways in which authors manipulate their character's lives to compare the writer to God. What's more interesting here is the messianic tone that this approach then lends to the character in question. Here God, the third person omniscient narrator, can't see the point in needlessly killing his favorite character, so he gives him a second chance. It's an aesthetic theology of the resurrection—Jesus as the character who was too darned nice to have a sad ending. It's also a critique of Vonnegutian authorial cruelty in which the author toys with fictional lives simply because he can. The characters, fictional or otherwise, are in some way alive and worthy of respect—and of a happy ending.

The same might be said of most noble, self-sacrificing superheroes. Of course, maybe the world can do without Metamorpho the Element Man. But once an artist has put enough work into a character, and fans have grown sufficiently attached to him, death becomes just a temporary trauma.

And I do hope the Martian Manhunter returns to us someday.

Review: Girl Genius

Gush warning.

Girl Genius, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Illustrated by Phil Foglio. Vol. 1 inked by Brian Snoddy. Vols. 2-3 colored by Mark McNabb. Vol. 4 colored by Laurie E. Smith. Vols. 5-7 colored by Cheyenne Wright. 7 vols. Studio Foglio: 2002-2008. Full color. Approx. 120 pages each.

Available online as a web comic.

Everybody knows negative reviews are the most entertaining to read. Positive reviews are much less so. Gushing reviews can be downright disgusting, so I must warn you, I'm about to gush. When it comes to reviewing comics, I've built my reputation, if I have one, on criticizing comic book creators for the way they dress their women: I have always shown disdain for scantily clad cartoon characters, but maybe that's just because I hadn't met the right scantily clad cartoon character. Today, I'm going to ruin my cred.

Click to enlarge.
The Girl Genius in all her glory.

We've all seen stories that imagine not just superheroes, but worlds positively overrun with superheroes. Shows like The Tick, or some episodes of Darkwing Duck, poke fun at DC and Marvel's overstuffed comic book universes. In Kingdom Come, Mark Waid and Alex Ross treat the idea of heroic overcrowding more seriously. Girl Genius works on a similar idea, but instead of imagining a world overrun with supermen, it imagines one overrun with mad scientists.

Girl Genius is set in a steampunkish nineteenth (?) century in which high-tech devices can only be created by a chosen few, those who have an innate quality known as the "Spark," which enables them, even compels them, to understand and construct death rays, airships, killer robots (called "clanks"), and Frankensteinian monsters (called "constructs"). In addition to making them geniuses, the Spark apparently grants charisma and fighting prowess, but it also drives them bonkers: they can only create in a fit of amoral madness, and sooner or later most go over the edge completely.

Twenty years or so before the story begins, the Industrial Revolution embroiled Europe (inconsistently called Europa in the comic) in a massive war between various mad scientists competing for power. Peace finally came, temporarily, when the two Heterodyne brothers--mad scientists themselves--trotted around Europa defeating evil overlords. It didn't last, however, as a new, mysterious, and especially powerful mad scientist, known simply as the Other, began transforming entire towns full of people into zombie-like Revenants. The Heterodynes set forth to stop the Other and disappeared in the process. But peace came again when yet another mad scientist, Baron Wulfenbach, built a massive fleet of airships, gained the allegiance of an army of humanoid creatures called Jägermonsters, and took over the continent. With his mobile fleet, superior firepower, and a policy of hostage-taking, he lives as a troubled overlord but keeps the mad scientists and royal families in check.

The first volume, appropriately labeled the "Prologue," opens in black-and-white, introducing eighteen-year-old Agatha Clay, a bumbling student at Transylvania Polygnostic University. Wearing gigantic glasses and built like an especially robust barmaid, Agatha spends most of her time tripping over things, getting yelled at, and building devices that don't work. But all of that changes (of course) when a couple of rowdy soldiers steal her locket, setting in motion a series of events that will prove Agatha to be not only a great mad scientist, but in some way connected to the Heterodyne legacy. After Agatha is abducted by Baron Wulfenbach, then, like Dorothy stepping into Oz, the comic moves into full-color and the plot really gets going. Agatha will have to maneuver through a lengthy series of harrowing adventures, make friends and enemies, and hone both her inventing and fighting skills in order to claim her birthright, uncover the identity of the Other, become a major player in European politics, and maybe save the world. She does it all, and she has a curious habit of doing a fair amount of it in her underwear (it is still a comic book). In sum, Girl Genius is probably the world's most elaborate and best-written indulgence of a meganekko fetish.

Click to enlarge.
Big girl with big gun.

Conventional though the story arc may sound at first, this is easily one of the best comics I have ever read, and depending on how it goes from here, it may very well be the best. It has a gigantic cast of intriguing characters, a complex plot, a fascinating backstory meted out at exactly the right pace, innumerable twists and turns, and exciting action sequences. It's also gut-bustingly funny. Some of the subplots are quite complex; in particular, volumes 5 and 6 together are easily the strongest part of the series so far, giving numerous revelations while Agatha tries to deal with separate sides in a mad science-enhanced political power play.

Drawing its inspiration from comic book villains, Victorian fiction, and B movies, Girl Genius subverts all the familiar tropes, usually by giving its characters unexpected qualities. For example, Baron Wulfenbach, expected to be a cackling evil overlord, is actually a thoughtful man with a number of redeeming traits, though he also has a bad habit of performing hideous experiments on people's brains. Wulfenbach's son Gilgamesh, a humorously genre-savvy character, knows that people expect him to be a sniveling weakling of a villain, but being compassionate, intelligent, and physically tough, he's consistently peeved at the fact. A minor character, Othar Tryggvassen, talks like an especially bombastic comic book hero and tries to stop Wulfenbach's nefarious schemes--but it soon turns out his own motives are less than pure. Then there's Lars, a typical rough-edged, lovable scallywag--who gets panic attacks. As for Agatha herself, she perhaps follows more conventional lines, transitioning smoothly from downtrodden loser to tough and independent heroine with a moral center, but as a mad scientist, she's also capable of totally flipping out, sometimes violently. All of this has served so far to give the comic a complex yet palatable moral universe.

Click to enlarge.
Agatha and Lars re-enact a steamy scene from a Heterodyne legend.

The artwork in this series is fantastic and keeps getting better. The black-and white first volume looks great, with the complex machines walking down the crowded streets as the big highlights. Things only improve when the series moves to color, and the work of the latest colorist, Cheyenne Wright, is especially good. Complementing the complex, outsized machinery that fills the backgrounds are the highly expressive characters. One of the greatest joys of reading Girl Genius is simply watching the various contortions that the protagonist's face can go through.

If the comic can be said to have a flaw, it would probably be a case of character glut. The cast is so huge, even major players can disappear for hundreds of pages. Although the story never really veers off target, the staccato disappearance and reappearance of a few characters can be confusing, and has done damage to the romantic subplot promised in the tagline. The romance itself is perhaps too conventional when compared to the innovations the story shows elsewhere, and too predictable.

Because the series is both complex and unfinished, it has innumerable loose plot threads. It's unclear when, if ever, it's all going to wrap up. Presumably, Agatha is eventually going to save the day and get the guy, but since she's clearly not going to save the day any time soon, the authors have probably played their hand too early in revealing which guy she's going to get, though it's possible that yet another plot twist or the reappearance of a rival may change that.

To our readers here, the most interesting aspect of the comic may be the messianic theme that's always lurking in the background. After the disappearance of the Heterodyne brothers, their exploits were quickly exaggerated and expanded into a cycle of adventure stories, many of which made it into penny dreadfuls, and many of which made it into cheap theatrical shows. Many in Europa, and especially in the Heterodynes' hometown of Mechanicsburg, are awaiting either their return or the appearance of their heir. This messianic furor builds through the comic until it takes on definite religious tones. To spice things up, it is eventually revealed that the Heterodyne brothers, heroes though they were, descended from a long line of brigands and murderers, a legacy the family has never completely escaped. At the present point in the story (the web comic is now in the midst of volume 8), it remains to be seen whether this messianism will ultimately prove a destructive force, a beneficial one, or as is likely considering what has happened in the story already, something in between.

In addition to the occasional underwear, the comic contains a sizable helping of risqué humor (including some joke about a tea cozy that I really don't get) and, to date, two implied premarital sexual relationships and one "naughty flashback scene." It also has some of the expected action violence and occasional torture, some of which is serious but a large amount of which is played for laughs, sort of like the violence in Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. As in Twain's novel, the humor works consistently well, but the effect is more uneven when things turn serious. There is some blood, but the imagery is never particularly graphic. The creators deserve credit for giving a content advisory on their FAQ page, which recommends Girl Genius for "teens and up" (a group equivalent to adults in my vocabulary).

So that's it. I recommend it. Now can someone explain the tea cozy?

All-Star Superman #10: Kal-El so loved the world...

Superman has always been like a Greek god, and a big part of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman has been an exploration of his role as a deified hero. In the sixth issue (reviewed by me here), visitors from the future described Superman's "Legendary Twelve Labors"—an obvious analog of Hercules' 12 labors. That superhero comics are modern myths is a fast-aging cliché, but Morrison has done an excellent job of reminding us of its truth.

With All-Star Superman #10, he throws us for an interesting loop. We all know that Superman is a Greek god—but now it's beginning to look like he's the Judeo-Christian God, too. As one of his labors, Superman has created a microverse in which he does not exist—a "World Without Superman"—and it looks suspiciously like ours. In fact, it contains the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, an unnamed Greek philosopher (possibly Plato?), and Joe Shuster—all exemplars of the human drive for divinity. In a world without Superman, we aspire to become him—in other words, if Superman didn't exist, we would have to invent him (and we did).

Some reviewers have complained that Morrison is treading ground he's already covered (particularly in Animal Man), but I don't think that's the case. In that story, the real-world creator meets his invented creation; here, the fictional creation actually inhabits a higher level of reality than our supposed real universe. The game is played with the same pieces, but the configuration is different enough to be truly new. Until now I've been thinking of All-Star Superman as an amusing but ultimately scattered series of one-off stories; now it's beginning to look like a major work in Morrison's oeuvre. His run is set to last only two more issues—here's hoping it ends with a cosmic bang rather than a New X-Men-style fizzle.

Also posted at SF Gospel.