This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up discussing what we picked up. This week, Douglas Wolk, Evan Narcisse and Graeme McMillan talk about the Captain America and Batroc one-shot, FF #1 and the first collection of Stumptown.
DOUGLAS: Captain America and Batroc the Leaper #1 was the surprise treat of this week for me–a surprise because a) it’s another one in the endless parade of one-shots Marvel puts together to generate content that ties in with upcoming movies, and b) it stars Batroc, one of the silliest villains in the entire Stan Lee/Jack Kirby catalogue. I mean, this is a menace who’s Paste-Pot Pete levels of menacing at most. He even thinks in a bad French accent.
But what happens here is what happens when certain kinds of writers, in this case Kieron Gillen, are making their bones: they take on a lame character of one kind or another and figure out what’s interesting about them. Batroc inevitably gets his ass kicked by Captain America (or anyone else he fights); Gillen’s primary insight is that maybe Batroc is actually okay with that–that he’s at least trying to be more interested in testing his own capacities than in winning. (That’s actually supported a bit by the ’60s-era Lee/Kirby reprint in the backup. Nice to see relevant old stories being recycled, especially to fill out something with a four-dollar cover price.) His secondary insight is that ze outrrrrrageous accent is a deliberate put-on–that Batroc is very interested in a certain kind of self-presentation, but that it doesn’t necessarily match what’s going on inside his head. And connecting Batroc to Parkour is a clever touch.
(More on TIME.com: Treason! Captain America Movie Ditches America)
Interesting thing about Renato Arlem’s artwork here: it reminds me a lot of Butch/Jackson Guice–one of the regular artists on Captain America proper in the last few years–but it actually looks more like Guice’s ’80s-’90s work than what
EVAN: In pro wrestling, there are people called mid-carders. Guys who aren’t A-list but engage and entertain. They perform with excellence–hi, Shelton Benjamin!–even if their job is simply to make others look better.
That’s the sensibility Gillen injects into Batroc, and it fits. Like pro wrestling’s writers, Gillen blurs the line between what the character knows to be real and fake. And Batroc himself recognizes the showmanship of what he does, finding a deeper level of meaning beneath. Gillen admirably avoids “lovable loser” cliches, too.
Arlem’s art didn’t do much for me here. It seems like everything in the foreground and background was drawn with different goals in mind. The storytelling moves along well enough, but there’s not much in the way of stylistic flourish, which is especially sad, since this story could’ve used some punch.
GRAEME: Arlem’s art really surprised me here, in part because it DOES look so much like Guice’s work – I don’t know why, but I expected it to look very different, although I couldn’t necessarily tell you in what way. It wasn’t particularly ugly, but it wasn’t particularly attractive, either; I felt like there was an aping of Guice’s aping of Kirby, which almost makes sense considering the characters, but… eh. Too many wide mouths for me, I guess.
(More on TIME.com: The Comic Book Club: Steel and Ultimate Comics Captain America)
Storywise, this was nice enough–I, too, felt like the parkour connection made sense, but at the same time, feel like I’ve seen parkour referenced a lot in Marvel books over the last few months. It’s as if someone in the Marvel offices has set an unofficial challenge to all the writers or something–but felt incredibly light for a one-shot, and amazingly light for a one-shot that cost $3.99. Does anyone else remember the 1990s annuals where there was a lead strip and about three or four back-up stories? This felt like one of those back-ups. It was fun, but it wasn’t worth its own book. There wasn’t anything new enough in it to make it worth the price.
DOUGLAS: FF #1 is such a carefully conceived, nicely designed, attractively executed book in so many ways that it pains me a little that I’m totally not down with it at all. I mean, I admire the fact that Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting are trying to dropkick what was formerly (and what I’m sure will soon again be) Fantastic Four into the 21st century; I like the graphic-design sensibility Hickman’s introduced to it. But “putting Spider-Man on the team” is still the same thing as grafting him into a family, and that makes no kind of sense. And the final-page twist is beyond ridiculous, the sort of thing that starts as “wouldn’t it be rad if…” and ends up feeling awkwardly sticky-taped onto a story.
EVAN: Before I even opened this issue, a whole bunch of questions popped into my head. This title is destined to be a weird little offshoot of the Fantastic Four’s publishing history until, as Douglas has said, the FF goes back to the mainline version in some anniversary issue or another. So, how different can it be from the World’s Greatest Comics Magazine? How different do readers want it to be?
When we talked about Fantastic Four #587 before, I’d mentioned how Hickman plots like someone with a design background. Every character beat is well-considered and gels with the others. The plot movements fit nicely together, even if the energy’s sometimes lacking. He engineered himself a unique opportunity here, so it’s a shame that this entry into the brave new world is so flat.
(More on TIME.com: The Comic Book Club: Fantastic Four’s Finale)
DOUGLAS: Mostly what it’s missing for me is what Tharg the Mighty used to call “thrill-power”: the wow-cool factor whose presence or absence is often the difference between good Fantastic Four stories and bad Fantastic Four stories. Epting’s good at character acting, at domestic scenes, at people sitting around and chatting–which this issue has a whole lot of for the first issue of what used to be Marvel’s flagship superhero series. (A four-page scene of the team sitting around eating dinner? In a 24-page story?) That makes sense in a kind of ground-level espionage/suspense story like Epting’s work on Captain America, and I can understand why he and Hickman would’ve gone for the least Jack Kirby-like approach to storytelling they could devise; the problem is that the low-key route they’ve taken is kind of dull. The one big action scene in here is so pro forma that after reading the issue for the first time I couldn’t remember if there’d been one, and for all the characters’ talk about building the future, there’s nothing particularly futuristic about what’s happening on the page.
EVAN: See, the thing that rankles me is that Hickman won me back with the ‘last’ issue of Fantastic Four. The emotions in that issue made me really curious as to how he’d create a new springboard for the post-Johnny continuity. But, really, FF #1 doesn’t pick up from the issue preceding it. Oh, we’re told that the characters are hurting but something about it doesn’t ring true. They’re in new suits, they’re talking fancy projects, they’re giving Spidey a tour. Yet we’re not given a sense of how Reed, Ben and Sue have bridged the gap; we’re just plunked down into the new space.
And, yeah, the Crazy Idea Big Science stuff was sorely lacking in this issue. You don’t start with AIM–terrorist scientists, mind you–and not give the reader some big idea to gnaw on. Too much teasing went on here, all of it about stuff we don’t know that we’re supposed to care about. Compare this to Xombi last week, where ideas came at your eyeballs hot and heavy. FF–no matter what it stands for–needs that OMGWTF plot beat (as in, that guy eats planets) to really make it sing.
And that really atonal cliffhanger is not the kind of OMGWTF I’m talking about, either.
(More on TIME.com: The Comic Book Club: Xombi and Fear Itself: Book of the Skull)
GRAEME: Again, FF #1 just felt really light to me – It felt like a collections of scene-setting bits that should appear in between the actual meat of various stories, instead of a full issue in-and-of itself. It didn’t help that there was a lot of exposition (Hey, Reed’s dad showed up! We set up the Future Foundation and redesigned our costumes and everything in between issues! AND THIS IS HOW WE ARE FEELING) instead of the readers actually getting to see those things happening… I can imagine that Hickman probably wanted a new status quo for his new series, but the way it was introduced, with Sue telling us via Spider-Man, was just weak, as if Hickman lost his nerve while writing the book and wanted to explain everything.
You’re both right that there’s nothing particularly futuristic about this book, for all its posturing – we’ve seen all of these tropes before, from the “death” of a member, to a replacement coming from another franchise, to Reed’s dad being a time traveler, to Doom joining the team, in earlier runs on Fantastic Four. And the sheer genericism of the jailbreak sequence (seriously, the villain essentially says “You’ll be sorry! Bwah-ha-ha!” and then escapes) just underscores the idea that this is, instead, an exercise in nostalgia and revisiting old tropes instead of doing anything new. It’s especially unfortunate that it comes out on the same day as this week’s Ultimate Spider-Man, which also centers around a jailbreak and, even though it too is generic and familiar, does so, so much better with the idea.
Douglas is entirely correct: There’s no thrill-power to this book. The problem is, this book should be ALL ABOUT the thrill-power.
EVAN: As the only member of Techland’s Comic Book Club who doesn’t live in Portland, mine is the only opinion that can be trusted about Stumptown vol. 1.
So, basically, it rocks.
Something about the magic that Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth work in this Oni Press collection creates such a strong sense of place that it manages to feel “right” even to the eyes of a born-and-bred New Yorker like me. There’s a laconic vibe to the proceedings that evokes the setting. Down-on-her-luck PI Dex Parios is investigating a possible kidnapping, but nothing ever feels frantic. The story works at its own pace, and you get to soak up all these beautiful elements about what Portland must be like. Stumptown percolates with an outdoorsy sensibility that makes the criminal activity feel more sinister. That first sequence where a goose bears witness to Dex getting shot makes a great juxtaposition that just pulls you in. Southworth gets a lot of mileage out of that kind of transposition, and it takes the reader to some gorgeous places.
DOUGLAS: It’s true. (And obviously I love this series–I named it as one of the best serial comic books of last year.) Portland’s not just the comics creator capital of America: there’s a sense of civic pride here that’s different from anywhere else I’ve ever lived, and Rucka and Southworth (who doesn’t actually live here!) totally get the Portland vibe. Detail after detail grounds the story in an actual place, from Voodoo Doughnut to the architecture of Dex’s home. (It’s also worth mentioning that “Stumptown” is a nickname for the city, the name of a locally popular coffee joint–which puts in an appearance within the story!–and the name of our excellent local comics festival.) Just showing a bunch of bridges doesn’t make a comic book Portland-y; Stumptown actually gets how the weather works, how the light works, what kind of buildings are in what part of town. It’s a story about Portland in the same sense that The Wire is a story about Baltimore.
(More on TIME.com: The Ten Best Comic Books of 2010)
But yes: the pacing does a lot here. This book seems like a laid-back story, until you pull back from it and realize just how much plot is going on. It’s just that Southworth knows how to let a page breathe.
EVAN: I love that the criminal enterprise in this volume is driven by family dysfunction. It’s not a new take on fictional malevolence but Rucka adds in a sprinkling of immigrant aspiration to make the thing hum a bit more believably.
Much has been said about Greg Rucka and the way he writes women, which is to say he writes them excellently. But here’s his big secret: he writes women like men, like fully realized humans. Rucka’s women get horny, make bad decisions, burn with incandescent inner furies like leading characters are supposed to. They’re self-aware of their places in their stories, not just lust objects with g-strings that peek over waistbands. Dex isn’t written as a corrective. She just exists, in a wonderful stream of snappy, surprising dialogue and gritty linework that makes her just real enough to want to know more about.
DOUGLAS: Dex is a terrific character, but what I like even more is the way Rucka’s handling the slow revelation of everything that’s so interesting about her–I think at least a couple times a chapter we get some piece of information about her that throws what’s come before it into a slightly different light. We know she’s burned a lot of bridges, but I imagine we don’t even know the beginning of the details, and I’m sure Rucka does know.
GRAEME: That’s something that Rucka continually does with all of his characters, I think; he knows all the important things that drives them, but he withholds them from the reader until it comes out organically, as opposed to exposition or awkward conversation. But, yeah, Dex is an amazing character, fully formed from the first page and charismatic as hell even with (especially because of?) her flaws, which are many and varied. She works both as a classic PI and an update of, and commentary on, the classic PI stereotype, the same way that the story in the Stumptown hardcover is both a classic detective story and a commentary on one.
There’s a lot that’s familiar here, but made to seem fresh through the execution. Taken as plot points only, the story should feel tired and generic, but Rucka and Southworth – whose work here is just great, tighter and more natural than his work has been elsewhere – give it such heart and such smarts that it becomes compelling, moving quickly enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, but slowly enough not to throw you off the edge with a “shocking revelation” at the end of each chapter. I’m a big fan of Rucka, and this feels like the best thing he’s written in years, harking back to his earliest Kodiak novels. Really, really recommended.
EVAN: I know we’re done here, but I just want to say: Goddamn was Batman Inc. #4 good! Just when you think Grant Morrison’s going for camp and laughs, he brings in that creepy, psycho-macabre shit. So awesome.
(More on TIME.com: The Comic Book Club: Night Animals and Batman Inc.)
DOUGLAS: With you there. And I really love that he’s looping back around to the Kathy Kane stuff we saw glimpses of in that two-part post-R.I.P. story. I’m wondering if this is a story Morrison wrote for Chris Burnham or for Yanick Paquette to draw; in any case, Burnham kicked ass, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s doing on #6 and 7.