The Plurality of Monthly Comics...

"Anyway, I think my point was I want there to be good books one shelves every month.
There are so many amazing creators just making graphic novels now and yeah sales and shit
but I want some fucking comics. And the idea that people wait for the trade to come out is
crazy to me. If there's a book I'm really hyped about there is no waiting you want it so bad you can taste it like acid in your mouth.

It's important to note that I don't think most creators should be making comics monthly.
Just drawing them slow and steady far ahead of time and then getting them out close together.
That's the theory anyway, I'll see how well it works for me in practice."

So, I left the comics shop today, with three things in-hand: Strange Tales #1, Starr the Slayer #1, and Sweet Tooth #1. The point is, LOOK AT THESE THREE, TOTALLY WEIRD, AND AWESOME BOOKS THAT DROPPED THIS WEEK. If I had a friend who only read trades or flat-out, didn't read comics at all, I'd hand them the tiny stack of Strange Tales, Starr the Slayer, and Sweet Tooth and hope they'll at least consider monthlies. Actually, it's inarguable proof of the plurality of monthly comics--something totally lost when it becomes a trade on a shelf of your Barnes & Noble.

Both of the major companies are represented in my purchases, though certainly in less conventional ways, but that sorta proves my point too. The savvy of even the big dogs can't be ignored, even when they soak you for crossover titles and raised price points.

Let's begin with Strange Tales, a mini-series where Marvel hands over any and all their characters to a bunch of "indie"--mind the quotes--big shots who do whatever they hell they want with them. For the record, it's what Wednesday Comics should've been (FUN)--it's also a sign of the savvy and fun Marvel forgets. I mean really, this comic would blow minds! Paradoxically, it has a great deal more weight than the "comix" all these dudes are (rightfully) celebrated for and it ends up really subversive, more so because it's put out by the very dudes it's kinda sorta parodying. And Marvel knew that going in. Strange Tales makes obsolete those unofficial, pamphlet comics in which some snarky art-school comics dude shows Wolverine smoking crack. It also acknowledges the big reality of comics, especially in the 2000s: Everyone's reading everything, no reason why Dash Shaw can't do a Dr. Strange story.

Then, there's Starr the Slayer put out by Marvel's "for adults" imprint MAX Comics and drawn by comics legend Richard Corben. The idea that a dude like Corben's given this kind of fun and freedom is itself exciting and the series is a clever re-up of an old-ish sword and sorcery character and essentially about how so many of those old-school comics dudes got pretty fucked. Again, Marvel with the savvy and disinterest in strictly upholding their image.

And lastly, there's Sweet Tooth, an auteur series put out by DC's "place for weird comics" imprint, VERTIGO and brilliantly priced at $1.00. Really, think about that! There's plenty of reasons to hate on the hustle that monthly comics can be, but let's not forget details like this. One could be cynical and call it a marketing gimmick and it is, but it's one that's kind to the buyer too and basically, exposes the comic to plenty of people that'd never touch it at a normal price.

As trades, which is unfortunately, how more and more supposed "comics fans" are reading stuff, a lot of this context and the minor nerd joys of leaving a store with three books this weird and only ten dollars (which is still a lot, yeah) less in my wallet, is completely lost. Just sayin' guys...

Some Notes on Wednesday Comics

Maybe you noticed Jesse stopped doing his weekly Wednesday Comics write-ups. I think it's safe to say nearly everyone's interest in the series has waned and although Jesse is the only one of the crew still buying it, it's essentially found its groove as to where the not-so-good ones, you just don't read and the good ones are good enough that how the strips build upon one another week-to-week's become more interesting.

That said, the general response from most of us here has been that Wednesday Comics took a lot of missteps--and they were there from the start. To call it a failure would be harsh, the thing's still so damned cool, but there's a lot of bullshit to wade through to make it worthwhile. The price point really is pretty obnoxious because the cost to print this thing is no doubt cheaper than a sorta glossy, 32-page typical comic book and it almost feels like DC expects readers to buy it out of "support". Kinda like when you go to SPX and some dick has these stupid cartoony drawings with like a pig farting and it's $5.99 or something, only here it's not so much "support a starving artist" as it is, "support a cool, slightly weird idea"--but well, fuck that.

Sammy made an interesting point about the writer/artists chosen and it's one of the few complaints about the series that I've not read anywhere else: Why isn't it more writer/artists? Besides the fact that on, what I'll call "boutique" comics projects like this, the writer/artist almost always fairs better, the comic-strip format is almost always rooted in a single creative mind. And indeed, save for the Risso/Azzarello Batman strip, the single-creator works, namely Kyle Baker and Paul Pope are the most engaging. A few of the other strips would gain a lot from lopping off the writer and letting the artist do it all: Joe Kubert should just write Sgt. Rock, Mike Allred should write Metamorpho. You get the point. And really, this would work because there's no one reading this thing for Teen Titans or Catwoman & the Demon. So in short, you're paying too much for not enough.

That said, I'm not exactly waiting for the trade of this either because it'll still be full of too many strip-series that just don't matter. There would be no reason to do this and most comics people would percieve as it soaking them twice-over, but it would be great if there were these like, Tin-Tin-sized editions of each strip individually--16 big, awesome, glossy pages by Paul Pope or Eduardo Risso. I actually would pay way too much for that.

Peter Milligan's "The Bat and the Beast"

Peter Milligan occupies a really strange place in smart-dumb comics: Neither as out-there crazy as say, Grant Morrison or as mannered, intellectual (and boring) as Alan Moore. Milligan's strange position leads to comics that are rarely terrible and sometimes great (Submariner: The Depths being a recent example) but rarely totally work--they're always held back slightly by their over-arching conceit and formalism. Milligan's work is nearly always about something.

Not that all good comics aren't "about something", but that reading Milligan's work is more an adventure in how his plot/thesis will play-out, what scenarios and examples he'll develop to prove his point, than a kind of rolling, slowly working-itself-out, temporal sequence of events. The big, heavy ideas land with a thud by at least the end of issue one, and they get really fucking nuts and awesome, but what's being said, though leaning toward the empathetic and ambiguous, ain't all that surprising.

In Milligan's story arc, "The Bat and the Beast", currently running in Batman Confidential, the "about" is post-Cold War Russia, the ugliness and corruption that's spawned from the U.S.S.R dissolving. How this manifests itself though, is through the story of a Russian, bear-mutant--an updated, less retarded version of The KGBeast--and his connections to a Russian Mafia head who wants to hold Gotham for ransom by threatening to nuke the shit out of Batman's city. Maybe the best part of the comic so far is when Batman wonders to Gordon whether saving Gotham from an attack really matters because some other city will suffer Gotham’s near-fate. This concern sends Batman to Moscow.

The plot is Milligan in a nutshell: A quiet interaction with real history and comics history, some hint of political and social commentary, and a super-simple comic book story.

So yeah, let’s talk about the stuff floating in the background of this “Villain threatens to blow something up if he’s not paid a lot of money”. Namely, it’s but one more piece of pop-art that dares to make the point that maybe America isn’t the be-all and end-all of the world. Batman’s running around Gothan and eventually, Moscow trying to get info on “the Tsar” (the Mafia head and a simple but clever conflation of legal and illegal politricks) and quickly realizes he’s maybe out of his depth.

“Part Two” begins with Batman asking a thug about the Tsar and rather than answer, the thug puts a gun under his chin and pulls the trigger. And “Part Two” ends with a fight scene between Batman and the Bear. The most notable line of dialogue is the the Bear asking, “Why have you come here to hurt us?”—pretty much the question any and all governments, armies, and citizens asked when confronted with America’s funny form of diplomacy and prevention. Wisely though, there remains a distinction between the Bear and the heartless crime syndicate that raised him or carts him around—or something, it isn’t totally clear—and so, we’re working in a series of greys and not just…now here’s a comic deconstructing heroes and sympathizing/complicating the roles of “villains”.

This is an engaging comic and it’s smarter than most of the stuff coming out and it’s one of the few arcs in Confidential that feels on-par with the series’ obvious predecessor, Legends of the Dark Knight, particularly the slightly off-kilter art via Andy Clarke’s stringy illustrations—imagine Frank Quitely’s work, only every third page isn’t awful, but that’s all it is? You decide whether that’s “enough” or not.

Batman In Barcelona: Dragon's Knight

In short, the comic is Bruce Wayne checks out some awesome Gaudi architecture and sorta tries to bang some Spanish chick and by night, as Batman tries to stop the Killer Croc’s serial killing of women—Croc’s attempt to reflect the dragon St. George slew for doing the same thing hundreds of years ago.

Like most Batman plots, it stumbles trying to wrap itself up, but this is a sort of inherent problem in detective stories and even seems like a prerequisite, because ultimately, it’s the journey to the “solution” that matters. And here, it really is something of a journey, not only because Batman travels to Barcelona, Spain, but because Waid actually uses the city and some aspects of its history in the comic.

The Gaudi architecture—a notable presence in Grant Morrisons’ Doom Patrol, which writer Mark Waid edited—is in there because it’s the sort o thing Wayne the aesthete would be into, but also because it connects to the dragon/St. George stuff (Gaudi’s work is windy and scaly, like a dragon or Killer Croc) and because it parallels the Modern Gothic style that’s always defined Gotham City--Gaudi’s work is a less “savage”, slightly smoother variation on Gothic architecture.

None of this though, despite the attention I’ve afforded it, bleeds into the comic unnecessarily, we only hear of Gaudi when Wayne’s on a tour and it’s sort of tossed-in there, and left up the reader to figure out or go and research. The subtle parallels between Barcelona and Gotham though are also fun because most of the comic’s taken up with the always fascinating issue of how differently Batman is treated in another city. For example, in a fight with Killer Croc, the police fire on him with the same degree of force as Killer Croc—both are weirdos are far as the Barcelona police departmen’s concerned.

This is a smarter way of highlighting Batman’s absurdity—out of his element, he’s seen as only an insane vigilante—that doesn’t go to Alan Moore (or now, Chris Nolan) extremes (has it struck anybody else as absurd that Alan Moore, who dresses like a medieval peasant and wears retarded-ass rings on all his fingers loves to make fun of “grown men in costumes”? Just saying…). Not that Waid’s use of “Batman out of his element” is brilliant or innovative, but it’s really well-done and cleverly spun.

That’s the thing about a character like Batman, reinventing him isn’t exactly hard, working with the well-worn clichés of the character and demeanor and flipping them is way harder.

Rather than finding one more new way to show how emotionally confused the Batman character makes Bruce Wayne, Waid returns to the conflicts that arise out of lying to his current beau, in this case an especially bright and awesomely aggressive women named Cristina Llanero.

Llanero alternately accuses Wayne of being a liar, a playboy, and a rich fuck-around and Wayne’s just kinda gotta take it because he is lying and from any conventional perspective, the assumption wouldn’t be “Well maybe he’s stalking around the city at night fighting crime and that’s why he sometimes forget to call.” That Llanero’s drained of any of the whiny girlfriend stuff that even smart Batman stories stumble into, makes this seen-it-before sub-drama work and a line like “What will the history books say about Bruce Wayne” actually stings instead of being uh, sorta cunty.

And visually, artist Diego Olmos similarly balances traditionalist approaches to the character with occasional, pitch-perfect changes. The art reminds me of the animation art for Batman: Gotham Knight (which along with the “Batgirl” story arc in Batman Confidential is the only good Batman thing in a long time)--lots of thick lines, minimal detail but a core, hard-to-explain kinetic energy, even in the down-time.

Especially notable is Olmos’ use of action panels with no dialogue or sound effects. It gives you time to take-in the panel or page-spread, but it also just sort if hits you viscerally, like you’re in the action sequence, because you don’t get pulled out of it by in-fight quips or extraneous sound effects.

Surely, partial credit for this should go to Waid, but it’s Olmos that pulls it off, because he doesn’t employ some basic comic book grammar but doesn’t let his page look bare or incomplete. This terse rejection of comic art expectations, this comfort with not always following the formula, results in some really invigorating art.

There’s a panel where everyone’s running from Killer Croc and Olmos draws a screaming woman’s face a little too big and kinda distorted and it adds some inexplicable horror to the scene.

An image of Batman standing alone, oddly posed in a fighter’s stance, in full costume but missing his gloves (his hands wrapped in boxer’s tape), right before he’s about to fight Killer Croc—a strange moment of nervous calm before the fight begins.

It’s not ten steps removed from say, Tony Daniel’s work, but it’s got an alternative, lived-in, lumpy feeling that’s preferable to perfection or “grittiness” pretty much every time.

Contrary to popular belief, it's been a real bad year for the "Batman" franchise. Monetarily sure, The Dark Knight broke box office records but it's pop nihilism is well, the kind that breaks box office records and nothing more.

And the mess that is/was "R.I.P" and "Battle for the Cowl" too, undermines the core of the character without doing much else. As of late, Batman's been thoroughly deconstructed, a whole bunch of bets-hedging "This ain't your granddaddy's Batman!" type junk to really no end, and so, Batman in Barcelona, a back to basics, feels-like-a-classic-Legends of the Dark Knight story, from Mark Waid is refreshing in its traditionalism.

DC Steps Its Game Up With Wednesday Comics

So, today DC Comics confirmed they are putting out a 12-part weekly series reminiscent of the one-page Sunday comics section. The comics will be over-sized and fold down into a traditional comics form. The most exciting news about this is that great creators like Mike Allred, Paul Pope, Joe Kubert, and Kyle Baker have been attached.

This seems like a great move for DC and the sort of thing they need to do more often. DC has always seemed like the Pepsi of the big two, always sort of aping their more daring competitor's style. They seem locked into a super crossover event war that Marvel has consistently won. The entire Marvel Universe seems meticulously planned with each book standing on its own but somehow still managing to compliment the others. DC's have the feeling of stand alones trying hard to lock into each other.

DC is at its best when it focuses on its characters, and it does this best when in an "Elseworlds" format. Their characters have always been more archetypal and suffered from the character drain that is continuity. Something like "Elseworlds" gives creators the chance to focus on what makes the characters essential and still relevant.

The format itself is exciting because in a time when the trend seems to be heading towards digital and trade paperbacks (see comments) DC steps forward and reminds us why reading comics every week cane still be exciting. It gives you something to look forward to every week and that’s something that can’t be duplicated in any another format.

Comics Art vs. Fancy-pants, capital-"a" Art

I've been moving through the DC/Vertigo trade Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis, which collects all ten of the issues drawn by Bernie Wrightson and written by Len Wein, along with the first appearance of Swamp Thing from House of Mystery, and it's obviously a classic.

Frankly, before reading some Swamp Thing, I wasn't exactly sure what the fuss was about. Wrightson's work seemed really cool and impressive, but had always had this background as like one of the guys and in terms of comics history, comics discussion, etc. This had the odd effect of distancing his work from its context and focusing not on his comics drawing or his pencils but his illustration.

I had the fortune to see him speak as a guest of honor at the Baltimore Comic-Con this past fall, along with Jose Villarubia, and he came off as this incredibly modest, hard-working, auto-didact guy who more than once was basically like, "Hey, I just like to draw scary monsters and gore." It seemed an odd contrast to his reputation, work like his serious critic-bait Frankenstein book (that just got a nice re-release), and especially a slide-show to Wrightson's right isolating particularly Wow!-ish panels and trying to turn them into conventional visual art.

Like people who say rap or Bob Dylan lyrics are poetry, trying to frame Wrightson's work as Art is a disservice to his work and comics art in general. It simply is what it is and does certain things better and more effectively than say, Goya or whoever else you want to name could ever do it. One imagined those that put that slide-show together or the next author to write a "take comics serious" book scouring the Swamp Thing trade for particularly beautiful or compositionally brilliant pieces, when it's better and probably even necessary to scan the whole page or the whole damn book.

Pragmatically, choosing an illustration to represent the work just makes sense, but there's something that even us obsessive comic readers do with our eyes when we look and judge comics art. Our eyes shift away from the progression of panels, the visual narrative and try to spot that single, awesome or beautiful or just plain cool composition and it's something of a problem, I think.

Final Crisis #4 is Scary!

I’ve always had this feeling that the world is going to end. Maybe it’s from reading too many books like The Road or watching too many movies like A Boy and His Dog, or maybe it’s from 9/11 or the crazy stuff that’s happened since (like this financial crisis), but the feeling that anarchy is just around the corner has always been with me. The big thing about apocalyptic stories is that they usually take place after the apocalypse, but in Final Crisis the story is about how the end of the world happens and specifically in issue four how one individual is forced to lose his mind.

It’s not without its problems though. The structure is partly purposeful and partly meaningful but also just a pain in the ass to read. It jumps from scene to scene, which purposefully leaves you exasperated but also has this terrible fanboy appeal. There are so many crossovers and tie-ins that only the truly hardcore DC fan could possibly hope to follow it all. This is the appeal of super crossover events because they are almost like fan fiction, meshing all the heroes together into one big slugfest. Most crossover events don't have Grant Morrison though. The series overall has a feeling of a blockbuster that you kind of let wash over you. But sometimes blockbusters, while still keeping that washed over feeling, have flashes of brilliance and that’s what Morrison brings to the table.

One of the threads of Final Crisis has been of a detective searching for missing super kids. In this issue we finally find out that his role is to be the new body for Darkseid. For this to happen though, he has to go through a sort of 1984-like breaking of his spirit. In a particularly scary moment he thinks, “But wrestling with Darkseid, well…it’s like trying to beat the ocean unconscious.” The heroes are all isolated in different watchtowers because they’ve been taken off guard by Apokolips’ armies. There are glimmers of hope like the original Green Lantern’s speech or just the Flash being pretty awesome in general, but the issue’s real theme is death and to a lesser extent, suicide.

The anti-life equation has been pretty central to the plot and one of its scarier applications is that it can change the will of people to fight for Darkseid. Seeing heroes die is one thing but to see them turn evil and essentially crazy is a frightening thought. This isn’t anything new, but Morrison is able to take the tired super hero plot of a hero being mind controlled and turn it on its head. It’s mostly due to the personal apocalyptic nature of a random human’s turn into Darkseid.

What’s so scary is that the anti-life equation is presented as some sort of choice and the issue ends with, “The choice is simple. Because, here, at the end, there’s no choice at all. Only Apokolips and Darkseid. Forever. Give up.” Put in the context of an actual apocalypse happening on Earth, it makes you think of a possible situation where there is nothing to do but give up. Yeah, this is just a super hero comic, but it sure as hell scared the bejesus out of me yesterday.

Do Miracles in Nikes Like Jesus Did In Sandals...

-MF Grimm "Take Em' to War" off Scars & Memories

Percy Carey, aka MF Grimm's pretty devastating graphic novel Sentences comes out in paperback today. Carey was a kid actor on Sesame Street, a part of early 90s Underground rap, a drug dealer that survived a murder attempt but ended up paralyzed, a friend and then enemy of MF Doom, and other crazy stuff. I'm still really down on the artwork in this book by Ronald Wimberly--some pseudo graf meets The Boondocks bullshit--but Carey's smart about his story and I really like how much of it is just narration and images and like, barely even a typical comic book or anything.

The Negative Zone: Comics Readers Need to Grow Up

Over at Comics Should Be Good!, the Curious Cat question for Sunday was:

When was the last time that a creator’s take on an established comic book character has made you like that established character when you did not like the character before said creator began working with that character?

There's a ton of comments and some interesting ones, a lot of love for Fraction's Iron Fist and plenty of examples of a popular or auteur-like creator working on a lame character (say, John Byrne on She Hulk) but as I went to comment, I realized I couldn't really answer this question because a) I don't read comics specifically connected to certain characters and b) I'm not an idiot so I don't have a silly knee-jerk dislike of certain characters.

Certainly, there've been times when I picked up a book because an artist or writer made it look more interesting, but say, the recent Marvel Comics Presents story about Machine Man just sort of nailed the character perfectly, it wasn't like before that I was thinking "Ugh...Machine Man?", if anything I was waiting for someone to do an awesome Machine Man story.

Or you know, Spiderman's sort of a fag but there's a ton of Tangled Web issues in my collection and Spiderman: Reign pretty much owns. I'm more apt to scan the week's new issues and trade re-releases and everything else and if a title seems really interesting or a writer or artist whose work I've enjoyed is writing the series, I'm apt to pick it up, not simply because it's a comic starring a hero I actively like.

For example, this week in addition to the monthlies I'm usually reading, I'll pick up the re-issue of Grant Morrison's Doctor Who, not because I'm this big fan of Doctor Who (again, because I have taste, even if I was this Doctor Who fan, it wouldn't mean I like every single incarnation of the character) but because Grant Morrison's a fascinating dude and his early work's pretty much all excellent. The other thing grabbing my eye is Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves not because I'm a huge fan of either hero but because the whole thing seems absurd and has the potential to be really weird and interesting or really terrible, and that's exciting. Apparently, this isn't how most comics readers read comics.

In many ways, the "character" is more like the genre because the character confines what and how something can happen in the comic. Disliking a character is the same willful ignorance found on Match.com profiles that say they listen to "everything but rap" or the same goons who refuse to read any Manga or "film buffs" that don't like Science-Fiction.

Marvel-only readers and DC-only readers boggle the mind--although a dislike of DC is more justified as pretty much any fan could feel burned by their shenanigans--as do readers over the age of say 12, that are not only partial to certain heroes, but actively dislike others. I mean, every hero's origin is interesting--this is why we end up with so many origin issues, they're almost always fascinating--and every single comic has potential. That so many comic readers flout their closed minds and silly biases is depressing.

There's also a self-defeating masochism to conventional comics readers as they slog through the latest story arc they hate just because they've been reading Batman for fucking ever. Comics fans love to complain way more than they love to celebrate comics. Seriously, when's the last time you heard a conversation less than surly going on in a comics shop? Think a little harder everybody. Pick up a book you might not read and actually try to dig it, don't pick it up to crap on just so you can say, "And I tried to read "Silver Surfer" dude, it sucks." Grow up comics readers.

I Don't Need The Movie, Give Me The Game.

After the success of Lego Star Wars, the dudes at Traveller's Tales were given the oppurtunity to make Lego Batman which comes out Sept. 23rd for almost every currently available console. The Lego Star Wars game was something I bought randomly and became obsessed with. On it's surface, it's a simple platformer with an easy combat system that anyone can pick up, but it's difficult enough for the hardcore nerd in me who needs to collect every last thing. The more I played, I realized that I could be any character from any Star Wars movie, from Luke to JarJar, each person (or Droid or Wookie) has it's own special action that you need to get 100% completion. You can earn points to buy more characters and bonuses, and get to go through every moment of the movies.

The Lego Batman website alone is great to play around and see the different characters, especially Mr. Freeze and Clayface. A large amount of Batman's Rogue's Gallery is sure to make it into this game, and with Killer Moth featured on the site, I can't imagine who else they're going to bring in.


AND McDonald's even has Lego Batman Happy Meal Toys!


And if you're too scared of awesome all-ages stuff and need to look tough, Batman: Arkham Asylum is scheduled for sometime in 2009 and will be coming out for X-Box 360 and PS3. Most licensed games are so awful now it's not even worth getting excited about any of them, but holy shit, Killer Croc???


With Marvel putting out games like Spider-Man 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance, for DC to have been allowing the Batman Begins tie-in game, and the sad, terrible one we won't talk about, it's good to see two games I actually want to play. Lego Batman is going to be something I obsess over for the rest of the year, and Batman: Arkham Asylum will be the reason I buy an X-Box. I mean, that Killer Croc looks awesome.

and The Joker???


That's all I need, I'm sold.

All-Star Superman #12

All-Star Superman #12 is a fascinating contrast to "Batman RIP" and Final Crisis, the two other Morrison series going on, because both of those stories totally lost their footing last issue and even at their best, you came out of them thinking, "I appreciate what he's doing" while All-Star Superman bypasses intellectualizing and just feels perfect.

As expected, everything sort of comes together in the final issue of All-Star Superman, but it's not in a back-story/continuity obsessed way nor is it a kind of stand-alone, super satisfying way either. The whole issue's like the rest of the series--and like the best Morrison writing--a wobbly, non-narrative, but forward moving nonetheless, trip through lots of ideas both heady and silly, with the right amount of sincerity and emotion, and a scene or two that totally understands the mythology and iconography that make comics goofy kids stuff and the shit that makes grown-ass men like myself tear-up.

The opening scene, a dream-but-not-dream sequence between Superman and his father, ends with Superman getting a choice between occupying the place "individual awareness builds for itself", either heaven ("thought-palaces") or hell, or "to turn and face down evil one last time." The Morrison-ian touch there is that we decide upon death, whether to occupy heaven or hell, and that returning to Earth to live a little while longer, isn't any kind or relief or pardon, but Superman takes it anyway because he's that dude.

The entire series has been about death and Superman dying but it's been a given since issue one, sucking out the silly "we're killing a hero" crap companies do to get more readers and just sort of moving ever closer to that inevitability. The fact that it was announced in issue #1 and that it was known the series had twelve issues, made the death of Superman a reality, but a reality like the weird/sad understanding that your parents or pet will die. You know it's coming and you have some sense of when, but it's still pretty heavy.

It's Morrison bringing palpable mortality to comic books. He did the same thing in issue #1 of Final Crisis when he killed-off Martian Manhunter like it was nothing, joked about it ("let's pray for a resurrection" said Superman), and totally didn't dwell on it all; it was like a real death, quick and unexpected and meaningless. Here, it's less cynical--I assume because Morrison cares a little more about this series--but the effect is the same.

Quitely's art too, seems concerned with the flesh, as Superman and Luthor look particularly lumpy in this issue. He's been slowly making them skinnier and the entire look of the series, while still relatively bright and rotund, is getting more lines and wrinkles but here, it's almost too much. Too much in the sense that this final issue isn't as fun to look at, but that's a good thing.

It's telling that some of the most well-wrought imagery, that which doesn't have this almost Leinil Yu-esque line scratchiness to it, is of destruction--a crumbling Krypton space-station, debris on the floor of the Daily Planet, and the brilliant page where Lex is struck by a car--which makes sense in a comic that ultimately, finds significance and beauty in things coming apart and not working out perfectly. Superman defeats Luthor, but you almost feel fucked up about it. Luthor's no longer any kind of threat and he pathetically doesn't realize it, and Quitely illustrates each glob of blood that flies off his face from Superman's punches as ugly as possible. Even the final Superman/Lois embrace is a little off because Superman's not wearing his cape, Superman's cells are slowly deteriorating, and Lois is crying (the tears too are ugly, like Luthor's blood). Of course, this all makes it more affecting.

Batman Confidential #21

The main attraction of "The Bat & The Cat" has been Kevin Maguire's art, but Fabian Nicieza's writing on this story's been sadly over-looked. The missing notebook plot was never a concern--we knew she'd get it back--but the picaresque nature of the story gave Kevin Maguire a ton to draw, and as the story's finally wrapped up, it's become clear that the story was about Barbara Gordon's sense of self, specifically as a female.

It's basically a smart "chick lit" style story, stuffed inside the Batman universe; Sex & The (Gotham) City. Gordon slowly comes to terms or at least wrestles with her own growing independence and the overt differences between herself and the more assertive and sexual Catwoman.

Issue 18 famously begins with a chase through an orgy, which forces Batgirl to expose and confront issues about her body and sex, while issues 19 and 20 have her fighting men who won't pull their punches because she's woman and also, witnessing the messed-up realities of sex slavery. This final issue is her endurance test, a video game-like dash through Arkham Asylum, fighting villains popular (Joker, Two-Face, Clayface, Scarecrow) and obscure (Catman, Cavalier, The Signalman, and Blockbuster) and trying to decipher the Riddler's games. And she succeeds. In the final pages, she even gets the respect of Catwoman, but not without some continued digs at her body image: "Robin has better legs", Catwoman quips.


Barbara, happy to have the approval of her enemy and to some extent, role model, bounds off the building and Macguire's complements the emotional peak of Nicieza's writing by finally drawing a conventionally heroic-looking frame of Batgirl. It's maybe the only conventional-looking image in the entire series and it's well-chosen.

The next page shows her flying, repeating Batman's words for her ("Smart. Resourceful. Tenacious.") and connecting her confidence to body-image ("But I've got better legs than Robin") but still being realistic, too ("Although, admittedly he's got a tighter butt" continues her thought from the previous page). She puts dad's notebook back and prepares for a much-deserved sleep, which Macguire illustrates with a bold and jarring, quasi-Manga style frame of Barbara, mask off, beady-eyed, hearts floating around her head: "BED!". The same girl who was just beating the shit out out of super villains, now excited to take a nap in her parents' house.