Reviews: Faker, The Highwaymen, Welcome to Tranquility

Faker issue 1 by Mike Carey (writer), Jock (artist), Clem Robins (letterer), Lee Loughridge (colourist) and Shelly Bond (editor), 24 pages of strip, DC Comics/Vertigo, September 2007, US$2.99

A group of students at Minnesota University get drunk in a cybernetics-cum-biological laboratory and wake up with identity problems.

Oh dear, this is a mess. It’s most obvious problem is that all the characters are deeply unpleasant, most notably the narrator, who has seduced her professor with the intention of blackmailing him. This nastiness is not offset by any wit or compelling characterisation. The storytelling is confusing. Without the blurb, I wouldn’t really have known what was going on – not in the sense that there’s a mystery, but in the sense that the narrative is badly constructed. There are pages of decompressed pacing used for no readily apparent reason. Key transitions are missed: how did they get into that laboratory, for example?

Jock is usually a reliable artist with a good sense of composition and mood, but his ragged, jagged artwork makes all the characters look to be in their thirties at least.


“Everyone has something to hide,” reads the cover blurb. Well, don’t worry. I won’t come looking.


The Highwaymen issue 1 “Sick & Retired” by Marc Bernadin and Adam Freeman (writers), Lee Garbett (penciller), Jonny Rench (colourist), Rob Leigh (letterer) and Scott Peterson (editor), cover by Brian Stelfreeze, 22 pages of strip, DC Comics/Wildstorm, August 2007, US$2.99

In 2021, two elderly ex-secret agents are called out of retirement by a message from the late President Bill Clinton, and find themselves in opposition to the current CIA.

This reads so much like an illustrated pitch for a summer action blockbuster buddy-movie that I was surprised to find that it was published by Wildstorm rather than by Boom! Studios. The big action sequence this issue has our heroes on a bus full of old folks being chased by several car loads of CIA agents. It’s well enough done, with some amusing dialogue from the elderly passengers in particular, but I don’t think comics is a medium as well suited to this sort of thing as film is.


Artists Garbett and Rench have a strong Frank Quitely influence, which is surprisingly rare, when you consider how long Quitely has been a critics’ favourite.

Worth a look if you’re on a Live Free or Die Hard kick and want something similar in comics form, but not compelling.


Welcome to Tranquility issue 8, written by Gail Simone, colours by Carrie Strachan, letters by Lanham and Pat Brosseau, edited by Abernathy and Quinn, cover by Neil Googe, 22 pages of strip, DC Comics/Wildstorm, September 2007, US$2.99
features: introductory page with art by Neil Googe
The Ferocious Lindo Sisters “What You Really Want!”, art by Jason Pearson
Zombie Zeke “Dead End Highway”, art by Chriscross
The Emoticon “Not My Type”, art by Georges Jeanty (penciller) and Peter Guzman (inker)

Presumably an interlude between story arcs to allow Neil Googe to keep up with his schedule, this issue is drawn by a fine assortment of artists with an approach sympathetic to his. We get the origin stories of Zombie Zeke, the Crypt-Keeper type who looks after the Tranquility cemetery, and of small-time super-villain the Emoticon, as well as some formative events in the youth of Sheriff Thomasina Lindo. Each story is a neat little vignette in its own right, and each links with the others in minor but effective ways.


This is a fill-in issue in more ways than one: it gives the regular artist a break, but allows Simone to fill in more of Tranquility’s background, adding depth to her fictional setting. It’s an interesting, and, I think, more successful, contrast to the recent issue of The Spirit which also featured three stories by guest artists (and writers), but which seemed entirely separate from the ongoing series.

Reviews: Atom, Detective Comics, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, 2000AD

The All-New Atom issue 12 “Hunt for Ray Palmer” Part One “Never Too Small To Hit The Big Time” by Gail Simone (writer), Mike Norton (penciller), Dan Green (inker), Alex Breyaert, Travis Lanham and Mike Carlin (editor), cover by Ladrönn, DC Comics, August 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Ryan Choi returns to Ivy Town from Hong Kong, to find traffic problems, a welcome home party, and an ambush.

Now, this is how superhero comics should be: revelling in the absurdity of the DC universe, Gail Simone throws in shapeshifting dummy taxidrivers, a disembodied alien head playing the sort of techno that only miniature invaders that live on the backs of dogs know how to do well, half-naked maths groupies, and a six-page demolition of the old Atom’s rogues gallery. There’s what appears to be real optical science applied to an impossible situation. The whole thing is punctuated by pages from the Ivy Town Chamber of Commerce’s “Welcome to Ivy Town!” (sample quotation: “Newly lowered radiation levels mean it’s probably okay to reproduce again!”), in a gambit reminiscent of Simone’s storytelling from Welcome to Tranquility.

Norton and Green produce some smoothly flowing and competent art (which sounds like a poor complement, but is a major improvement over some past episodes).


Only two debit points: it’s a shame that Simone has reversed her earlier stance that Dr Choi should not be a martial artist just because he’s Asian; and it’s worrying that next issue is a Countdown tie-in. If this comic turns all grim and driven by botched continuity, I shall not be happy.

Oh, and this panel is an obvious cry for attention from Chris Sims, which he has cruelly spurned.



Detective Comics issue 833 “Trust” by Paul Dini (writer), Don Kramer (penciller), Wayne Faucher (inker), Travis Lanham (letterer), John Kalisz (colourist) and Peter Tomasi (editor), cover by Simone Bianchi, DC Comics, August 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

A magician’s assistant, murdered on stage, turns out to be an old friend of Zatanna, so Batman calls her in as he tracks down the killer. (Of course, that’s “old friend” in the Murder, She Wrote sense of the term: someone we’ve never heard of before, and never will again.)

The previous issue of Detective by Dini and Kramer that I looked at seemed distinctly ordinary. But there was good reason to expect that this issue might have a bit more spark, given that Dini is himself married to a top-hatted magician, Misty Lee. (The image below is taken from her web-site.)


But this is still meat-and-potatoes stuff. Pacing, dialogue and art are all competent enough, but a bit stolid. There’s a badly staged sequence in which Batman stands right next to the killer and does nothing to stop him as he pulls a gun from the back of his waistband and shoots someone; and I disliked on principle the flashback sequence of Zatanna and Bruce Wayne meeting as children. So Zatanna is the same age as Bruce Wayne is the same age as Clark Kent is the same age as Lex Luthor … it has a flattening effect on the richness and texture of the world they inhabit.


On the other hand, Dini scores credit for an interesting murder method, and for a genuinely unexpected last-page twist – though if you look back over the previous few pages, he and the art team have led up to it with a nice precision.


Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane issue 19 “The Thoughtful Thing” by Sean McKeever (writer), David Hahn (art), Christina Strain (colours), Dave Sharpe (letters) and Mark Paniccia (editor), plus The Mini Marvels “Hulk Date” by Chris Giarrusso, cover by Miyazawa and Strain, Marvel Comics, August 2007, 26 pages of strip, US$2.99

I had heard lots of good things about this comic, so I decided to sample an issue while there were still separate issues to sample. Sean McKeever leaves after number 20, and Marvel has yet to solicit orders for any later issues.

The story: Flash Thompson is secretly working in a diner because his father is out of work. Mary Jane persuades his friends to support him in non-intrusive ways. Spider-Man asks Mary Jane’s advice about whether to agree to his girlfriend, Firestar’s, suggestion that they share secret identities. And yes, that is a metaphor.


Story and art alike are gently paced to the point of placidity, and avoid melodrama. The characters are nicely set out, and – with the obvious exception that one of them has super-powers – plausible. It’s likeable rather than fun – characters do not have the preternatural wit that we are used to in teen movies like Heathers, Clueless or Mean Girls. Generally, it would seem like a nice change of style from the over-emphatic bombast of superhero comics, except that there’s a superhero in it. Spider-Man fits into the high school relationship drama well in some ways. It was an important part of the character’s conception. But so too was an energetic physicality that is wholly missing here, as Spidey spends several pages sitting still and talking. The full-face mask also makes him unsuited to the nuances of facial expression Hahn is able to use to good effect elsewhere.

“Hulk Date” is cute and funny. Perhaps not so cute and funny that it needed to appear in at least three different Marvel Comics this week, but we’ll let that ride.



2000AD Prog 1540, cover by Jock, published by Rebellion, 6 June 2007, 29 pages of strip, £1.75
Features: Greysuit “Project Monarch” part 1 by Pat Mills (script), John Higgins (art and colours), S J Hurst (colours) and Ellie De Ville (letters)
Nikolai Dante “Thieves’ World” part 3 by Robbie Morrison (script), Simon Fraser (art), Gary Caldwell (colours) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Judge Dredd “Tartan Terrors” by Gordon Rennie (script), Jock (art), Chris Blythe (colours) and Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Detonator X part 7 by Ian Edginton (script), Steve Yeowell (art), Chris Blythe (colours) and Simon Bowland (letters)
Defoe “1666” part 1 by Pat Mills (script), Leigh Gallagher (art) and Ellie de Ville (letters)

This Prog launches two new series, both written by 2000AD’s creator, Pat Mills. I am always in two minds about Mills’s writing. On the one hand, it is hugely energetic – something 2000AD desperately needs right now – and Mills has the ability to create instantly iconic concepts and characters. On the other hand, he is wedded to repetitively hard-boiled hard men heroes, and writes with a sledgehammer lack of subtlety. There is none of the ambiguity that his old colleague John Wagner uses to leaven his scripts. Especially when touching on modern politics, Mills tends to be overbearingly preachy rather than slyly funny.

Of the two new series, Greysuit seems most likely to fall foul of this, as it deals with a super-powered British agent involved in Middle East politics (as the story opens, he is selling tanks to the Iranian government), but who is recovering his conscience, much to the alarm of his bosses. But it’s a well structured opening episode, and John Higgins is an ideal choice for the artwork, lending everything a convincing solidity. The fight scene is remarkably brutal.


Long-term 2000AD fans will recall that one of the series with which Mills began the comic was MACH 1, about a super-powered British agent. At first, it was a straightforward rip-off of The Six Million Dollar Man, but in time it became focused on the way in which its hero was manipulated and abused by his cynical secret service bosses. Greysuit seems to be leaping to that point from the start.

Defoe is about a zombie hunter in a version of seventeenth-century England where the Great Plague of 1666 created an infestation of the undead. In his brief appearance, our hero, Titus Defoe (presumably named after Daniel Defoe, author of The Journal of the Great Plague Year) comes across as a seventeenth century Judge Dredd – appropriately enough, as Mills originally had that name earmarked for a witch-hunter in the same period, before Wagner borrowed it for his futuristic lawman. Alhough I’m not sure that the world needs another zombie story, this is again an efficient scene setter, with a lot of violence.

Leigh Gallagher’s art spills hatching and ink splatters over solid compositions to create a highly energetic effect that makes good use of the decision to run this strip in black and white.


Elsewhere, Nikolai Dante and Detonator X continue as usual. Judge Dredd has a stand-alone encounter with a festival full of Cal-Hab residents – the Dredd version of Scotsmen, all ginger-haired, mean, drunken, kilted and fed on deep-fried food. It’s done with bounce, and both Rennie and Jock are Scots themselves, but I can’t help but wonder whether an equivalent US comic portraying African-Americans as eye-rolling cowards singing spirituals and eating watermelon might not raise an eyebrow or two, even if produced by, say, Dwayne McDuffie and Trevor Von Eeden. Oh, hold on, wasn’t that a Spike Lee movie?

Update: Very Welcome to Tranquility

Despite my fears that there might not be a collected edition of the first Welcome to Tranquility story (see my review here), DC has listed a trade paperback for December. The Beat has the full list of DC collected books for the month, which contains too many hardbacks for my taste – or, more accurately, for my wallet.

Panel
Welcome to Tranquility issue 2, “Snake in the Grass” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, March 2007

Review: Welcome to Tranquility

Welcome to Tranquility issue 1, “Fade to Grey” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, February 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 2, “Snake in the Grass” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, March 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 3, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, April 2007, 23 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 4, (untitled) by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 5, “Too Much for the Man” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, June 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 6, “Fade to Grey, Finale” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe and Billy Dallas Patton (pencils), Neil Googe (inks), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, July 2007, 21 pages of strip, US$2.99


Welcome to Tranquility provides a new wrinkle on the superhero genre. Or rather, lots of wrinkles, because the town of Tranquility contains a large retirement community of superheroes (or “maxis” as they are called here), among whom the story is set.

That presents writer Gail Simone with a challenge, because these old characters are also new ones, with no actual backstory to draw upon. She largely avoids the lazy route of making her characters avatars of well-known originals (apart from the Captain-Marvellous Maximum Man and the one-eyed war hero Colonel Cragg). Instead, their past is established right here in the series, with pages of pastiche golden-age comics, along with other ephemera – “trading stamps”, TV listings magazine articles and the like – interleaved into the present-day narrative.

Simone and Googe also use similarly digressive panels to establish elements of their scene. The first issue builds towards the murder of Mr Articulate, who always wears a blue rose in his lapel, at the “Chick ‘n’ Go” restaurant. Before we get there, panels have incongruously featured the Chick ‘n’ Go logo and even one of its menus, while blue roses have spread through the panel gutters, prefiguring the end of the chapter. There is rather less of this in later issues, either because the creators felt that familiarity with the locale had already been established, or because they were unhappy with the effect.

Simone uses her reliance on supposed third-hand accounts for another purpose too. Because, initial appearances to the contrary, this is no fairplay whodunnit. Mr Articulate, himself a hero of fairplay mysteries, leaves behind a traditional cryptic clue. But the only person who understands it is the murderer. And Mr Articulate’s own cases were less clearcut than we might suppose, as the out-of-town thug the Emoticon points out.

The Emoticon’s mask reveals his true feelings at all times, making it almost impossible for him to lie. In Tranquility, only the baddies tell the whole truth. “Comics lie,” says one of the villains, admitting it only after being unmasked. And that includes the very comics we are reading. The heroes are living a lie, or at least hiding a truth. Even the sheriff, not a maxi herself, and for the most part a straightforward and honest type, ends the story by concealing another character’s part in it.

This theme of untrustworthiness permeates the comic. When maxi-heroine Pink Bunny suddenly takes sides against her husband, Mayor Fury, it seems inadequately explained by the events and words we have seen. The insinuation is that the apparently happy marriage presented earlier is another of Tranquility’s deceptions – but that insinuation emerges only from the atmosphere and context of the story.

There are some mis-steps. Five panels showing ants fighting while characters discuss the idyllic nature of Tranquility is four panels more than needed to establish that there are conflicts beneath the surface. Simone and Googe sometimes take their misleads a little too far. In this panel, for example, we see aviatrix Minxy Millions wreathed in Mr Articulate’s blue roses (a symbolic appearance – they are not literally there at the scene). But there is no relationship between the two characters at all in the rest of the series.

Neil Googe’s art is not really to my tastes, but is well-suited to the story. His combination of big-foot character design with comics-realist detail and shading works to animate the most physically aged of the elderly maxi population. It may also be useful if later story arcs bring in characters from other types of comic, as it could accommodate anything up to and including funny animals. In that respect it has much in common with Shane Oakley’s style on Albion. The pastiche pages are not greatly different in basic drawing, but are differentiated by simpler layouts and the use of flat, faded colour with benday dots.

Ordinarily, I would have picked up an issue of this series, seen that I liked it and then waited for the trade paperback collection. But as yet, no such collection has been solicited, and with sales figures very low, I was worried that it might never appear. That would be a shame. The first six issues of Welcome to Tranquility form an interesting and entertaining story that reads best as a single piece. Read this series while you can.

Update, 1 June 2007 DC has now announced a trade paperback collection, due in December.

Reviews: Atom, Simonson’s Fantastic Four, JLU, Superman

The All-New Atom, Volume 1: My Life In Miniature by Gail Simone (writer), John Byrne and Eddy Barrows (pencillers), Trevor Scott (inks), Travis Lanham (letters), Alex Bleyaert (colours), Ariel Olivetti (cover and original issue covers) and Mike Carlin (editor), DC Comics, 2007 (originally published 2006-2007), 143 pages of strip, US$14.99

This collection of the first 6 issues of the new Atom, plus the teaser story from Brave New World is almost as much fun as I’d heard.

Gail Simone throws in one splendidly mad idea after another: an invasion by a microscopic alien race living on the hero’s dog, a Cthuloid monster being worshipped by film-fan puritans, the Atom being swallowed by a naked giantess, foul-smelling ants and chemically-dependent scientists. She holds this all together using some off-beat narrative devices, and deftly sketches in our new hero, Dr Ryan Choi, and his supporting cast at the same time.



So why “almost”? Well, there’s a knife-wielding psycho with a taste for dismemberment who seems to have wandered in from a different story (possibly by Geoff Johns) and doesn’t fit the wacky tone here at all, despite his fondness for poetry. And then there’s the art problem.

Byrne’s stuff is fine: characterful, energetic, action-packed and humorous by turns, and with a fuller finish than I remember from the last comics of his that I read about a decade ago. But half way through, he hands over to Barrows, who provides another argument for DC establishing remedial art classes for its pencillers. He lacks most basic skills, but in particular his perspective drawing is appalling. In the panel below, for example, Choi is supposed to be full sized and sitting on a chair which is level with the feet of Dean Mayland (the character in the foreground). Instead, Choi appears to be minute and Mayland must be on a raised platform. The walls don't match the floor, either. (Amplification added later: The floor tiles appear to be converging on a vanishing point to the left, but the bookshelves and horizontal window frames run parallel to each other.)



There is still enough enjoyable material here for the book to be worth buying, but if Barrows is still the artist on the second volume, and hasn’t managed to learn some draughtsmanship from his assignment pencilling over Keith Giffen’s layouts on 52, I won’t be bothering with the next one.


Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walter Simonson Volume 1 Fantastic Four by Walter Simonson (writer and artist), Rich Buckler and Ron Lim (pencillers on opening stories), Romeo Tanghal and Mike DeCarlo (inkers on opening stories), Bill Oakley and Todd Klein (letterers), George Roussos and Max Scheele (colourists), Ralph Macchio (editor), Marvel Comics, 2007 (originally published 1989-1990), 182 pages of strip, US$19.99

A quick tip: skip the first 73 pages of this book. The first three issues of Fantastic Four that Walt Simonson wrote were part of a long-forgotten, dreary corporate cross-over called “Acts of Vengeance”. In them, the FF go to Washington to testify against a proposed Super-Human Registration Act (yes, yes, how ironic), and are attacked by various C- and D-list villains. Simonson seems bored, and the art is by other hands.

Then, with his fourth issue, everything changed. Simonson took over the art and went cosmic. The FF, augmented by She-Thing, Iron Man and Thor, travel into a future that seems to be vanishing, and encounter a plethora of Kangs the Conquerors, a galaxy-sized Galactus who is devouring the whole Universe, the gigantic armouries of the Shi'ar Empire, guarded by Superman-alike Gladiator, and the ancient implacable menace of the Black Celestial. Wild ideas, artwork so energetic you could plug it into the National Grid and some remarkably daft double-talk from Reed Richards – it's everything you want from the Fantastic Four, really.




Justice League Unlimited issue 33, “Everything Old Is New Again” by Jason Hall (writer), Carlo Barberi (penciller), Bob Petrecca (inker), Robert Clark Jr (letterer), Heroic Age (colourists) and Rachel Gluckstein (editor), DC Comics, July 2007, 20 pages of strip, US$2.25

In this issue of JLU, the League’s oldest member, the Crimson Avenger, and its youngest, Stargirl, find themselves in body-swap comedy territory after they try to stop Morgaine Le Fey from stealing the London Stone and using it to de-age her son Mordred. As is often the case with JLU, our heroes learn a life lesson along the way: constantly sniping at each other for being too old and too young respectively, by the end each has come to respect the other’s viewpoint.

This air of lecturing prevents Hall’s otherwise zippy and well-constructed story from being as enjoyable as it might be. Of course, it is aimed at children, but children can recognise adult propaganda when they see it.

Barberi and Petrecca’s art is efficient and attractive in the animated DC style. The thick outlines they use to delineate characters actually provide something of the feel of a previous generation of animation, when characters stood out more from static backgrounds.




Superman issue 662, “The Weight of the World” by Kurt Busiek (writer), Carlos Pacheco (penciller), Jesús Merino (inker), Sinclair & Loughridge (colours), Comicraft (letters) and Matt Idelson (editor), DC Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

I haven’t followed Superman regularly since the days of Byrne, Wolfman and Ordway, but I normally like the work of both Busiek and Pacheco, so I thought I’d see what they are making of it.

Unfortunately, this issue seems to fall in the middle of a longer story arc. Superman is trying to establish the truth of a prediction by the magician Arion that his interventions will eventually lead to the death of humanity, while also investigating the claim by an alien called the Auctioneer that there is another Kryptonian on Earth besides himself and Supergirl.

On the plus side, I could easily work out what was happening, despite not having read the earlier issues. On the minus, Superman doesn’t find the answers to his questions, and nothing much else happens. The artwork is as nice as expected – detailed but clear, fluid and expressive – but otherwise the main thing I found to enjoy was the delightful new style of lettering used for Zatanna’s backward magic spells, which is as stark a case of damning with faint praise as I can think of.



This issue also features a new superhero called Sirocco. He is active in Iran, but had planned to call himself by an Arabic, not Persian, name, before adopting the one suggested by Superman: an Italian (and English) word for a wind that blows in North Africa. His main personal characteristic is that he is easily offended if he thinks his integrity is being impugned. Really, he just needs a scimitar and a camel to hit all the orientalist buttons. It’s good that DC Comics have decided to create a hero from the Islamic world, but it’s a shame that they seem to think that Berbers, Iranians and Arabs are all the same thing.




Not reviewed this time
Also out this last week were Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil issue 3, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 3 and Welcome to Tranquility issue 6. All are running serial stories which I plan to review when they are complete (and since issue 6 did end the current Tranquility story, I’ll have a review of that for you in a few days’ time).



In the meantime, I should advise fellow drooling fanboys (and fangirls) that Willow does not wear that outfit on the inside pages. Is there no truth in advertising?