Tag: comics

Anything is a weapon if you’re in deep enough trouble

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Hawkeye Volume 1
by Matt Fraction

Hawkeye cover by David Aja

I think Tim is slowly but surely turning me into a Marvel fan. It began with the X-Men films, then the Avengers films, then the TV shows (Ultimate Spider-Man is really very good, and not just “for a cartoon”) and now finally he’s got me reading the comics. Although, thinking about it, I first heard the new Hawkeye comics recommended by Michael Kindness on the Books on the Nightstand podcast and passed that on to Tim, who read the first few and in turn told me I’d like them too. It’s all got a bit meta.

Anyway, the point is that I am writing this review as someone who has never read traditional superhero comics. I’ve read some of the alternative self-contained ones – Watchmen, Saga, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – but never braved the whole mega universe of dozens or even hundreds of characters interacting over several decades that you are faced with when you pick up a mainstream Marvel or DC comic. Until now. I feel that I’m on the brink of a vortex of thousands of stories and I can’t decide if that’s daunting or exciting!

Of course, Hawkeye isn’t strictly a superhero. He’s a really really good archer. But he is part of the Marvel universe and interacts with proper job superheroes (Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk) and they all have their own storylines that weave in and out of each other’s. What’s nice about this latest series about Hawkeye is that its emphasis is on the time when Hawkeye isn’t working with the Avengers, so it can be read in isolation perhaps more easily and it has a look and feel that aren’t, to me, very “superhero”.

“You cowboy around with the Avengers some. Guys got, what? Armor. Magic. Super-powers. Super-strength. Shrink-dust. Grow-rays. Magic. Healing factors. I’m an orphan raised by carnies. Fighting with a stick and a string from the Paleolithic era. So when I say this looks ‘bad’? I promise you it feels worse.”

In fact, my initial attraction to these comics, and still one of my favourite aspects, is the extremely stylish design. The artwork is simple and stylised with a limited colour palette. This hardback volume includes one crossover comic from the series Young Avengers Presents and the difference in appearance really stands out. So I have nothing but praise for the whole art team.

But I think I wouldn’t have lasted 11 issues if the stories weren’t as good as the art. The basic thesis is that Hawkeye/Clint Barton is a good but flawed man with plenty of secrets and not the best history with women. He lives in New York City in an apartment building with a pretty varied bunch of ne’er-do-wells and tries to fend off the local branch of Russian mafia.

It’s not the first attempt to humanise a hero or to get under the skin of a man who’s afraid of commitment, but that doesn’t stop it from being an interesting combination with action adventure and daily life in a grimier corner of the city. There’s also the quite lovely relationship that Clint has with the Young Avengers Hawkeye, a teenager called Kate whose archery skills can match his but who needs advice on some other aspects of working seedy underworld jobs one day, and then for SHIELD the next day.

“Anything is a weapon if you’re in deep enough trouble. There’s no special training. No special skill. Just the belief that at any time you might have to hurt someone to stay alive. What kind of animal walks into a room and figures out what they can use to hurt people if they have to hurt? What kind…”

Another thing that makes this series stand out is the complicated timeline. It really isn’t always clear what order some events occur in. It’s certainly not linear, even within one issue. And some of the other information supplied can tend to the oblique, rather than spelling it all out for you. It’s genuinely complex writing that both draws you in and slows you down, which is good, as I’ve found that sometimes I tend to race through comics and almost skip the artwork. Here, so much is unsaid that I find myself “reading” the pictures carefully to find any clues not provided in words.

So was I won over because the first comic in this series is about Hawkeye meeting Pizza Dog? Possibly. I am a sucker for a dog lover. But I have stayed interested and am looking forward to volume 2 already. Yay, Hawkguy!

This collection published 2013 by Marvel.

Source: Excelsior! comic-book shop, Bristol.

Conflict has consequences, always

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Saga

Saga volume 1
by Brian K Vaughan (story) and Fiona Staples (artwork)

This was a bit of an impulse buy on a recent trip to the comic shop and I am so glad I grabbed it. Vaughan completely lives up to the promise of Y: the Last Man and I’m both annoyed and excited that I am in on the new series from the start, as it will probably go on for years.

From science fiction and gender politics, Vaughan has moved into fantasy and racial politics, though there’s still some SF in there for good measure. The story opens with a baby being born to a mother with wings (Alana) and a father with horns and some magical ability (Marko). Almost immediately, soldiers burst in and the new family narrowly escapes with their lives. Why are they on the run? And can they possibly keep their newborn child safe?

Well, it appears that an age-old war between a planet and its moon has spread across the whole star system. Various other races have been drawn into the fight, being forced to take sides, while some individuals work as freelancers for the highest bidder. Alana and Marko were both soldiers who fell in love and vowed to give up fighting – which makes them deserters and, as far as most people are concerned, freaks.

There are some fantastic secondary characters, including the baby, who narrates the whole thing from some future point. There’s also freelancer The Will and his sidekick Lying Cat, which is a giant fearsome cat that can detect whether someone is lying. The Will appears to be a nasty piece of work at first but then a visit to Sextillion – a crazy giant brothel that caters to every desire – introduces an intriguing twist. I loved the detail that Prince Robot IV just wants to stay home and start a family with his wife after a gruelling two-year tour of duty, but his dad insists he go out and personally handle the Alana problem. And this book has the most crazy-ass ghosts I’ve ever come across in fiction.

The artwork is excellent, if a little graphic in places (no pun intended). But most importantly (to me) it’s well written. I’m not a great fan of war as a setting but this book looks past the big battles at some of the individuals involved, and does it with humour and pathos.

“They weren’t my men, Marko, they were trigger-happy assholes who got what was coming to them. Besides, I stepped in before you could do anything you’d regret.”
“Then how come it feels like I’ve just gotten us cursed?”
“Why, because you violated some personal pledge against hurting awful people?”
“My reluctance to use force isn’t ideological, it’s practical. Violence is stupid. Even as a last resort, it only ever begets more of the same. Conflict has consequences, always. Sooner or later, our family will pay for what happened today.”
“Ehn, so the guy whose hand you lopped off comes after us with a hook in 20 years. Add him to the list.”

I’m not sure I can place my finger on exactly what I loved about this book. If I described the plot in more detail it would sound ridiculous. But maybe that’s exactly it. Or maybe it’s the good old combination of well drawn characters, setting, plot and sub-plots with just the right level of pace and potential. Whatever, I’m in.

Published 2013 by Image Comics.

Source: I bought it for myself at our local comic shop.

Holiday reading

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And I’m back from two weeks in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I visited some new places to me, remembered how similar but different our cultures can be, and helped my sister to get married (I was maid of honor, I’d say “honour” but we call it chief bridesmaid on this side of the pond). But more of all that later (there’s a lot of pictures to go through). For now, let’s talk holiday reading.

I took six books with me, of which I had already started one – Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns – which I suspected my Mum would like more than me so I took it partly to pass on to her. I finished that and another book – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark – on the journey out, then spent two weeks reading at the slowest pace imaginable so that I am still barely three-quarters of my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I’m not sure if it’s his writing style or my mood but I just can’t get absorbed.

I am always torn, when picking holiday reading, between light easy reads and big chunky literary works that I have been putting off. This time I tried to pick some of both but the literary monopolised my time somewhat. Which way does your holiday reading lean?

New books

Despite my reading slowness, I still took advantage of our “buy whatever you like while you’re on holiday” rule to buy some new books for my shelves. Well why not? Perhaps surprisingly, half of my new buys came from the excellent (and well named) comic shop Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find. From there I picked up:

Palestine by Joe Sacco, a journalistic account of Palestine in 1991–1992 in graphic novel format.
War is Boring by David Axe, a war correspondent’s memoirs in graphic novel format.
Dollhouse: Epitaphs by Joss Whedon, which I’m saving up until I’ve finished watching the DVD boxset.

In addition, we found a huge secondhand bookstore, Book Buyers, from which my brother dragged me when I had picked up three books from one bookcase alone. I could have spent a fortune in there easily, it was a great place. What I did spend my pennies on was:

Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1993 (I loved her second novel, The Temporary).
Disgrace by J M Coetzee, winner of the Booker Prize 1999 (gotta continue my attempt to read all the prizewinners).
The Romance Readers’ Book Club by Julie L Cannon, a lighter sounding read set in Georgia, which I thought was appropriate while I was in the vicinity.

On an aside, I should mention that by searching out these shops, plus the equally great record shop Lunchbox Records, we ended up exploring parts of the city we wouldn’t otherwise have gone near (not exactly tourist traps) that turned out to be very cool areas full of arty/indie shops and bars.

Back to sifting through those photos…

Super extra bonus review

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Scott Pilgrim books 1–6
by Bryan Lee O’Malley

So these books are a lot of fun. Considering it’s mostly boy geeks who are obsessed with them I was surprised to discover that they’re all about relationships. With a bunch of kick-ass fighting and geeky extras thrown in, that is.

Volume 1 opens with Scott Pilgrim aged 23, unemployed, living with (by which I mean scrounging off) his gay best friend Wallace in a one-bed apartment (that’s literally one bed, which they share, not that it’s awkward or anything) and playing bass in a band called Sex Bob-omb that may or may not suck. Scott plays videogames all day and is still mooning over some girl he broke up with a year ago but somehow he’s like catnip to the ladies and we gradually meet a whole string of his exes.

Then, like some great karmic revenge, he meets smart, pretty, funny, mysterious Ramona Flowers. Or strictly, she starts appearing in his head and he’s already obsessed before he meets her in real life and asks her out. She says yes, with one condition: he has to fight – and defeat – her seven evil exes.

Scott seems sweet and unassuming, and also pretty gormless and very forgetful, but it turns out that fighting is the one thing he got good at in high school. Plus he’s been training hard on the videogames, so how could he not kick ass? In fact it turns out he’s better at doing that than growing up.

These books are funny, addictive and well drawn. There’s a whole array of secondary characters, most of whom are thoroughly fleshed out, believable people. Obviously some of them are just bad guys Scott has to fight.

There are some brilliant comic touches that may actually be entirely in Scott’s mind, warped as it is from playing videogames more than real life. When he defeats a bad guy – or evil ex – their body disappears and a pile of coins appears, like in an old platform game. And when he learns something valuable he gets experience points. Genius.

There’s a lot of meta referencing, which I liked, with characters saying things like “I’ll tell you in book 3”. And there’s a subspace highway that runs through Scott’s head, which is convenient.

The dialogue is at once realistic and very, very funny and, like all the best comics, background detail is used to great effect, usually comedic. The books are chock-full of quotable comedy and, despite a few big reveals, completely re-readable.

It goes without saying (almost) that I think the film of this by Edgar Wright will be brilliant and I can’t wait to see it. From the trailers it looks like the tone has been captured exactly. And it would be hard to dislike anything starring Michael Cera.

First published 2004–2010 by Oni Press in the US.
Published 2010 by Fourth Estate in the UK.

Book 1 ISBN 978-0-0073-4047-7

Absorbing the pain

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon

This is a big book and, like all the best chunky tomes, it’s a little bit heartbreaking when you get to the end to leave that world and all of its characters behind. Which is a long way of saying that I liked it.

Like Chabon’s previous books, this is a historical novel with a strong Jewish slant and a great deal of research has clearly gone into creating a believable setting for the action. Many’s the time I reached for my laptop to look up details mentioned, famous people or events named in passing, but I invariably changed my mind because I was too eager to carry on reading to pause, even briefly.

The story is that of two Jewish men, cousins Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, during and after World War II. Joe escapes Nazi-occupied Prague and goes to live with Sam and his mother in Brooklyn, NYC. Sam’s mother has somewhat exaggerated his career and influence in her letters to Joe’s family but the appearance of this strange foreign cousin – and Joe’s astonishing skill as an artist – spark an idea in Sam that shapes the rest of their lives, and proves his mother’s faith worthy. Sam and Joe create a series of comic books that take America by storm, their greatest character being The Escapist, a superhero with Houdini’s escapism skills and a particular hatred for Nazis.

The book follows Joe and Sam’s changing fortunes over a couple of decades, but it also tells the larger story of comic books in America, as well as, on a much smaller scale, looking at changing attitudes toward Jews, Germans and homosexuals in the US.

With such huge events and themes, it is inevitable that some things will be dwelt on while others are skipped past quickly. The examples that stood out for me were the excellent long passage covering a brief section of Joe’s military service – a brilliant study of loneliness and self-evaluation – and the woefully short description at the start of Joe’s escape from Prague. Joe trains, as a boy, in escapology and it is his escapology teacher who plans his escape in a coffin. The origins of the plan, based around the smuggling out of German territory of a golem, precious to Jewish clerics, are detailed over several chapters but when it comes to the actual escape, a brief paragraph summarises Joe’s route before his arrival on Sam’s doorstep. This seemed to me to be a shame but it certainly added to the mysterious silence that Joe maintains regarding his past and his violent anger toward Nazis and Germans. Having left his family and friends behind in Europe the origin of his anger is obvious and his helplessness whenever he hears more bad news is devastating to follow.

I know very little about Jewish culture or escapology and, while I’ve read a handful of graphic novels, my knowledge of the history of comic books is almost non-existent, but I don’t think any of that matters. I loved this book. The tone and subject matter could veer from light comedy to the darkest exploration of humanity’s guilt and yet it never stopped being readable. The characters and story were absorbing, the writing style a good balance between faux memoir and adventure novel, and there were some descriptions of brief moments that were astonishingly vivid. This is definitely a book to lose yourself in.

Published 2001 by Fourth Estate
ISBN: 978-1-8411-5493-0