Supergods

In the collective opinion, people who read comic books are geeks, and the lowest of the comic book geeks are those who read superhero comics. The general idea is, if you are going to read funny books at least read gritty realistic ones, refer to them as graphic novels, and salvage at least a little of your dignity. Books that feature guys (and gals) flying around in long underwear with magic powers are embarrassing according to general belief.

Grant Morrison, one of the more prominent comic writers of the modern era, disagrees with this. In his new book Supergods (not a comic book, for the record), he argues that the traditional superheroes like Superman, Batman, The Flash, etc., are important to us for their totemic power, and their sometime unrealistic devotion to a higher moral code is necessary to inspire us. We want to see our heroes soaring through the heavens above us, not wallowing in the muck like an ordinary being.

Supergods is both a memoir of Morrison and a history of the superhero genre, going back to the inception of superhero comics in the 1930s with early versions of Superman and Batman, kicking off the Golden Age, the revitalization of the form in the late 1950s in the Silver Age, and where our heroes stand now in the modern age. Along the way, he discusses his first exposure to American comics, brought to his native Scotland by American sailors, and his personal journey from novice to one of the more acclaimed writers in the field today. Along the way, he does an excellent job in explaining the subtext of most of the major comic storylines, divergent philosophies in writing the characters, and interestingly, the influence of mind-expanding chemicals on the superhero art form. (I got an unintentional laugh when Morrison explained the epiphanic vision he had in Thailand could not be explained by the relatively small amount of hashish he had ingested.)

Morrison discusses past legends of the genre like Bob Kane, Siegel and Schuster, Jack Kirby, and John Broome, as well as the work (and his personal relationships) with creators such as Alan Moore, Mark Waid, and Mark Millar. He is very blunt in his assessment of these writers and artists, even those who are his contemporaries. There is at least a hint of some minor feuds with other writers, particularly Alan Moore, and I do wish he had delved a little deeper into what seems a disapproving attitude toward his former protégée Millar. The book also deals with Morrison’s personal spiritual journey – he is a practioner of a shamanic form of personal religion.
Morrison is best known for his work re-inventing the previously minor DC character Animal Man, his own The Invisibles (which was an inspiration for The Matrix), the re-invention of the Justice League of America in JLA, and an interesting and controversial stint writing X-Men. I think his re-imagining of the moribund Justice League from what had become mostly a joke into a re-telling of ancient myths to be one of the better feats in comic book history. I also enjoyed his take on the X-Men, although the purists were up in arms at the time. (X-fans can be passionate and a little crazy. The other X-writer during Morrison's tenure was Chuck Austen, who was basically hounded out of comics by zealots angry at his take on the X-Men. I thought Austen did a good job, too.)

This is probably a book only for comic book fans, but if you are an aficionado of the gents in long underwear, you shouldn’t miss Supergods.
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Soon I Will Be Invincible

Some time ago, a friend recommended I read Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible, which is both homage to and a send-up of the conventions of super-hero stories from the comics. Typically, it took me three years to get around to it, but I’ve been trying to whittle down the mounds of unread books and unwatched movies recently, so I finally got around to it.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is set in a world where superheroes and super villains exist, just like in the comics. It is told in alternating voices, with chapters presented from the point of view of Doctor Impossible, who is suffering from Malign Hypercognition Disorder (he is an evil genius) and Fatale, a cyborg who is the newest hero. Doctor Impossible sees himself as misunderstood, and is unable to control his own impulses (whenever he is confronted by a hero, he starts spouting clichéd dialogue. Fatale acts as a fresh observer of the group dynamics of the team of superheroes she joins; all the while wondering about her own past (the operations that made her a cyborg removed the part of her brain that stored memories).

The book is wildly funny, especially if you grew up with – and who didn’t – the whole comic book hero thing. Doctor Impossible pauses in the dispassionate recital of the failures of his world-domination schemes to mutter “Henchmen. Don’t get me started on henchmen.” Fatale talks to Regina, a retired hero, and can’t decide if she truly had super powers, now faded, or was just mentally ill. The New Champions, the organization of superheroes that represents the JLA or Avengers from comics, seethes with resentment and jealousy.

For those who don’t like comics, Soon I Will Be Invincible will probably work well as a send-up of the genre. Those who do like them will be entertained by the all-too familiar antics of Good Guys and Bad Guys, shown in a slightly more realistic light.

Recommended.
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The End of Zombies

Well, not completely. Brian Keene has announced a new project, an epic comic book series through Antarctic Press called The Last Zombie. Keene, who is largely responsible for kick-starting the current zombie craze with his books The Rising and City of the Dead, says this is his last word on zombies, and the title seems to indicate this is true. You can read more of the details at Keene's website. Keene's previous comics work was Marvel's Dead of Night: Devil Slayer.
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Locke & Key

There has always been a strong connection between horror and comic books. Many of today’s writers were strongly influenced by horror comics, particularly the EC line which was popular in the 1950s, before being shut down by Congressional investigation and public outcry over alleged damage being done to children by its subject matter`. In recent times, though, horror comics have been somewhat listless, partly due to writers who understand comics better than how a horror story works.

That is not the case with the first collection of the series Locke & Key, titled Welcome to Lovecraft. The author is Joe Hill, writer of the excellent first novel Heart-Shaped Box and the great short story collection 20th Century Ghosts, and he has a good grasp on the subject matter.

The story opens with violence, when the Locke family is attacked by a pair of hooligans who murder the patriarch of the family, attack the mother, and traumatize the three children. In the aftermath of the incident, the family moves from California to live with the father’s brother in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, in the old family home, called Key House.

There, they begin to learn of the strange properties of the house, the doorway which turns you into a (temporary) ghost when you walk through it, the well which holds a strange entity calling herself echo, and others. There are also clues that the death of Mr. Locke may not have been as random as previously thought…

I am normally annoyed by stories with children as central characters, as this usually injects a saccharine sweetness to the story, but the Locke children seem to be well-drawn enough characters that this isn’t a problem, although the youngest child does something that is completely stupid during the story. I recommend this to any fans of horror or comics. Lock & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft will serve as a prologue to a planned thee act story, which will be told through four limited series. The next arc, Locke & Key: Head Games, has just been released in collected form.
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Comic Book Movies

Empire Online has news that a couple of the Marvel characters are returning. Nicholas Cage will apparently be back in Ghost Rider 2, while Daredevil will get a complete re-boot. Daredevil was always one of my favorite comic book characters, so I'll be in for that one, and I think the Director's Cut version of the first Daredevil is severely underrated (the studio basically raped the first one in its theatrical version). The first Ghost Rider, meanwhile, reminded me of the comic: great visuals with a weak story. We'll see how it plays out.
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Dead of Night: Devil Slayer (TPB)

Devil Slayer is a Marvel Comics (soon to be run into the ground by Disney) character that appeared (and mostly disappeared) during a period in which I wasn’t paying any attention to comics, so I had no preconceived notions about the character. So this won’t be one of those “Noooooooooo how could you change the cape” sort of reviews.

Danny Sylva is a soldier returning to Iraq after a period out of the Army. He was a good soldier, but is struggling with several personal flaws. He isn’t in Iraq long enough to adjust to the heat when he and his men are sent on a hostage rescue mission. They go straight into a trap set by Bloodstone, a group of civilian “contractors” (mercenaries) working for the U.S. government in country. All of the soldiers but Sylva are killed. Bloodstone is more or less an analog for the real-life questionable contractor Blackwater, right down to being demonic agents trying to start a war between heaven and hell so that demons can rule the earth. I figure that’s what Blackwater is up to.

Sylva escapes from the ambush, but finds himself pursued both by Bloodstone and the U.S. Army, since he has been blamed for the killings of his men. Bloodstone is led by what is apparently to be his arch-enemy, a demon named Belathauzer. (Sometimes comic book lettering bleeds together, and I spent the first part of the story convinced the demon’s name was Breathalyzer, which seemed odd.) Fortunately for him, he runs into a “journalist” and his assistant who informs him he is the latest in a long line of Devil-Slayers (his uncle was apparently one, too) and fighting them is his destiny. Not the best destiny to have, but what are you gonna do? They also tell him where he can get a very useful weapon to fight his enemies, and only he can stop the upcoming Armageddon.

Written by Brian Keene (Darkness on the Edge of Town, Castaways, Ghost Walk), the story is fast paced, and there is even a scene of the Devil-Slayer fighting more-or-less zombies. Like most comics starting out or re-launching, it seems a little slow to get a feel for the character. As enjoyable as it was, it really needs a longer story arc to develop its own mythology, although at present there are no known plans for the character beyond the four issue miniseries. The art is by Chris Samnee, who also does a good job.
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Dig Me No Grave

Reading Steven Shrewsbury’s book Tormentor naturally got me to thinking about Robert E. Howard. My first exposure to Howard was not through his Conan stories, but rather through a comic book adaptation of his horror story “Dig Me No Grave” (I was creepy as a child, too), in the relaunched book Journey Into Mystery. I was delighted to find the story, adapted by Roy Thomas, Gil Kane and Tom Palmer, can be read online at the website The Horrors of It All. Click here to read it, and imagine yourself reading it as a pre-teen on a dark, rainy night and you’ll get my experience. I don’t recall anything about the two other stories in that comic book, but “Dig Me No Grave” has stuck with me ever since. Check out the rest of the website while you’re there, there’s lots of cool stuff.
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The Incredible Hulk

After the amazing success of Iron Man, Marvel is back, with a re-boot of The Incredible Hulk. Although Ang Lee’s movie Hulk was profitable, the general feeling was that it underperformed. So the new movie does not pick up where the last ended and features an all-new cast.

After a flashback sequence that explains the Hulk’s origin runs behind the credits, we see Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) in Brazil, where he is on the run from General “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt), banner’s nemesis and the father of his true love, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler). Banner has been over six months without a Hulk “incident”, thanks to practicing meditation techniques. An accident in the bottling plant where Banner works reveals his existence to Ross, and a military team is sent to capture him, with the predictable result of being destroyed by the Hulk. The leader of the military team is a British marine (Tim Roth) who becomes obsessed with gaining the power of the Hulk.

Although the movie isn’t as good as Iron Man, it is a lot of fun, and there’s a lot to like. Although the CGI isn’t perfect, the look is much better than the first movie, where the Hulk looked like an angry Shrek. The director makes a wise decision to keep the Hulk in the shadows for most of the first part of the movie, teasing the audience, and building up to the full reveal. The cast is also much better. Roth and Hurt are always great, and Edward Norton captures the angst of the frail-seeming Banner than Eric Bana, who came of as somewhat bland in the first one.

All in all, a great popcorn movie, and a good addition to the comic book movie canon.

Fall Of Cthulhu: The Fugue

Here’s a first (for me): a look at a graphic novel, although its theme fits in well with this site.

Fall of Cthulhu: The Fugue collects the first six issues of the ongoing comic series Fall of Cthulhu. Set in the present day, it uses concepts developed in the writing of H. P. Lovecraft.

As the story opens, a young man meets with an eccentric uncle who has obviously gone around the bend. After a bit of babbling, the uncle commits suicide. When his nephew investigates, he learns that his uncle was involved with summoning Cthulhu, the demi-god from Lovecraft’s tales, and had tried and failed to stop it. It now falls to the nephew to take on the task.

The story is witty and sharp, and a good addition to the Cthulhu Mythos. It benefits from using two artists with distinctively different styles, dark and ominous for the real world, bright and abstract for when the protagonist enters the dream world.

I’ll be on the lookout for further volumes in the series.