I also find the politics of Bendis’s story kind of irritating on an aesthetic level, and I say this as somebody whose personal politics are pretty far left (and who was friends-of-friends with a guy who was posthumously turned into a “druglord” in the press). Scarlet, per the story, is entirely good and justified in her actions; the Evil System is all bad. (Although, of course, we’re getting everything from her POV.) In the text piece reprinted in the back, Bendis talks about “people’s inability to hear other views, to agree to disagree. Certainly the media’s quest to not allow that to happen, to feed on that aspect, certainly convinced me that this book was absolutely worth doing.” “The media”? Bendis is “the media.” (And so are we.)
One thing I’d really hope to see at some point in the future of the series is more of a sense of the ideological plurality Bendis suggests: something that presents a conception of the world entirely different from Scarlet’s–and presents it as totally legitimate, too. (Comics examples that come to mind: the Invisibles story “Best Man Fall,” the Judge Dredd “America” sequence, the third volume of Halo Jones…) We’re only one issue into it so far, but if Bendis can convince us that maybe Norman Osborn actually is kind of sympathetic, he might have some interesting twists on the ethics of violence brewing. Yes, I want a comic book version of William Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down, is that so wrong?
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EVAN: So, this is all about Bendis having a daughter, right? (He does have a little girl, right?) And I don’t mean that in a flip way. I mean that in the parent-needing-to-fix-the-world kind of way. Because the singularity of Scarlet’s passion seems to come from that kind of elemental feeling. Sure, Bendis folded it into a loss-of-loved-one superhero origin, but it seems to me to have the fingerprints of new parenthood all over it.
Douglas, I was having the same thoughts as you with regard to the idealogical equal time issue. If this is going to rise above Bendis’ superhero work (not that it necessarily has to), then he’s going to have to ramp the complexity and points-of-view up. Because, not to keep comparing it to superhero work, Scarlet’s got the singlemindness of a supervillain, sympathetic trauma aside.
I had a problem with the fourth-wall breakage. It wasn’t so much the romance Bendis is clearly having with this technique. I’ve always read Bendis as someone who doesn’t moderate his own voice when he’s writing dialogue. That made his early work and makes his “smaller” work speak to me. But, when the ensembles get bigger and huge swaths of a shared universe start sounding Bendis-y, the unique-ness washes away. And the fourth-wall thing here seems even more unfiltered than in his other work. If I read Steve Rogers sounding all Bendis-y, there’s still a part of my brain that can call on previous creators’ work on the character. There’s no filter like that here.
The other structual tricks that Bendis uses– the “moments” montage, the in medias res–really didn’t bother me that much. They felt like shortcuts, though, but I kinda understand why he used them.
Good god, people, Maleev’s art has never looked better. His control of line weight just feels so precise: things in the panel foregrounds pop and the backgrounds look dreamy yet realistic. The character of Scarlet herself emotes beautifully and, no matter what’s coming out of her mouth, you’re predisposed to sympathizing with her.
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Overall, it’s a promising start. I wanna know where this young lady learned how to use a sniper rifle, though.
GRAEME: Like you both, I liked Maleev’s art pretty much – I think he really can’t do movement well at all, but that’s perhaps to be expected – but had problems with the story. It’s interesting that you mentioned “Best Man Fall” from The Invisibles, Douglas, because my first thought on finishing the issue was, “So this is for people who haven’t read The Invisibles, but wouldn’t be opposed to it, I guess.” It just felt… I don’t know… juvenile, if that’s the right word? Like, so convinced by its own righteous indignation about the way the world is and SOMEONE SHOULD FIX IT, but without either the humor or the perspective that Morrison brought to this kind of story more than a decade ago. It was… okay, I guess? I ended up feeling very disappointed in it, if only because I wanted to believe that Bendis could come up with more – I’ll probably pick up the next couple of issues to see if there’s something more to it, something deeper, but this first issue is the comic version of that bit in “Killing In The Name Of” that goes “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” over and over again to the point of petulance.
DOUGLAS: A friend of mine once told me that he thought he’d be interested in The Invisibles, but put it down after he saw the protagonist beating up his schoolteacher in the first issue; he figured that was a signal it wouldn’t be for him. Of course, by the end of the series Dane McGowan has become a schoolteacher himself. I wonder if Scarlet will be a cop by the time this series ends?
MIKE: I think I agree with everyone about the story of Scarlet being a bit too one-sided. This seems especially timely after the G20 Summit that just went down and all the arrests that went along with it. It’s just that I’ve read this story before, many times. There are two versions of this that spring to mind right away. The first is that Civic Virtue story from the first volume of Batman: Black and White. That character had the same mantra: everyone is broken. The second was the film Se7en. The similarities between Civic, John Doe, and our redhead, to me, are fairly obvious: they are all goddamn lunatics. What really made the connection to me was when she assaulted the bike thief. I thought for sure she was going to cut off his hands.
I also like Maleev’s art. Calling it the Maleevotron 3000 is great. I noticed it specifically on the pages with the bridge during the “firsts” and again in the bookstore where her boyfriend is shot. Incredibly detailed photos that are washed over in watercolors. I find it distracting. Still, I find the visual style very appealing, especially on this kind of book. When he would do it with Daredevil it looked great, until some of the more colorful Marvel characters started showing up. Then it was jarring but here, in the non-super world of Scarlet, I think it works very well.
GRAEME: Am I the only person who, as much as I like Maleev’s art, is reminded of John Van Fleet? He was doing this more than a decade ago, without the same acclaim. Guess he should’ve worked on Daredevil or something.
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