DOUGLAS: A miniseries starring Taskmaster–a third-tier Marvel villain with a skull for a face–sounds like the province of people who care a lot more about the minutiae of Marvel continuity than I do (and I care kind of a lot already). But a bunch of people kept telling me “you know, that Taskmaster miniseries is really surprisingly good.” And so I picked it up this week–collected as Taskmaster: Unthinkable–and guess what: it really is surprisingly good. I’m not gonna try to make a case for it as Great Art, but it’s a really solidly constructed, attractively drawn, incredibly well-plotted superhero espionage thriller, Memento by way of the Brubaker/Phillips Sleeper series. Graeme, you asked on Twitter a week or so ago why people read superhero comics; my response was “Thrill-power. World-building. Vacationing in a fantastically cool collectively constructed fantasy.” That’s exactly what I got out of Taskmaster.
(More on TIME.com: The Comic Book Club: Nonplayer and Fear Itself)
I like Fred Van Lente’s writing a lot, generally, and this project put him in a position that suits him well: he gets to draw on tons of past continuity (if I had to guess which of the assassin clans in this story he made up for it, I’d have guessed the Cyber Ninjas, and I’d have been wrong; oh, the ’90s), but he doesn’t have to preserve the status quo for his main character. (Really, this story represents a huge change in the way we understand Taskmaster.) He’s also one of the most overtly funny writers in mainstream comics right now–there’s some straight-up Howard the Duck-level goofiness in here–and pretty much pulls it off in the context of a more or less serious, violent thriller. And I don’t think I’d encountered Jefte Palo’s art before, but it suits this story nicely: really solid, lively storytelling that conveys some tricky concepts (action scenes simultaneous with psychological P.O.V.), and a kind of post-Maleev sense of texture. I wish every little miniseries to fill a gap in a mainstream publisher’s schedule were this much fun.
GRAEME: Fred Van Lente is one of those writers who make me convinced that I’m reading them wrong, somehow. It’s like I am somehow reading them from a distance, and can recognize that I should like what I’m reading, but somehow just don’t. It might be a sense of humor thing; for every Don of The Dead, there’s a group with the acronym MILF or a character called Redshirt who, surprise surprise, gets killed at the end – comedy that feels a little TOO obvious, a little TOO eager to please, and I feel the writer’s hand too present in what I’m reading. Does that make sense? I get that he’s funny, and can see why you enjoy it, Douglas, but… I just don’t get it, on some level.
(For some reason, Van Lente’s work constantly makes me think of Jeff Parker, who does exactly the same kind of thing, especially with the juggling of genre and tone within stories, but does it so much better. I can’t explain what really differentiates their work for me, but I can’t escape the feeling that Parker could’ve made exactly the same jokes, and they would have landed better for me, somehow.)
That said, I’m totally with you on Jefte Palo’s art, which feels like Maleev crossed with a Paco Medina or Humberto Ramos influence to me: something gritty yet ultimately superheroic and cartoony, and exactly what a book like this needed. Even as the story lost me as the book continued, it was Palo that kept me turning the pages.
EVAN: I was kind of in the same boat as Graeme with regard to Van Lente. I felt like Marvel was shoving him in my face as an up-and-comer but the mechanics of his work were too naked for me to enjoy. But what sold me on him was the new Power Man and Iron Fist series (which we talked about a while back).
(More on TIME.com: The Comic Book Club: Thor #615)
I always liked Taskmaster growing up. The dramatic costume grabbed me as a kid: a shield, a sword, all those weapons, all that white, a hood and a skull mask! He’s in the classic mold of villains who steal superhero mojo–Amazo, the Mimic, the Super-Adaptoid–with an appealing bit of pseudo-science to explain it all. The way that Van Lente twists that pseudo-science to make it into a burden is inspired. Taskmaster’s brain is essentially a hard drive with a finite amount of space, and on that conceptual hook hangs a surprisingly affecting bit of existential drama. Like Douglas said, it’s a rather radical re-interpretation of the character’s status quo, one that I’m guessing a lot of other writers won’t play with. Still, this story goes to prove the old adage that every superhero character has at least one good story in them.
Graeme, you’re right on the jokes trying too hard in certain instances. But Van Lente doesn’t do much of that in PM/IF, which leads me to hope that it’s just something that he had to get out of his system. Overall, he’s nudged himself into the realm of creators who I’ll check out on the strength of his name alone.