Justice League 12 (Johns/ Lee), for those whose attention was caught by all the media hype surrounding it, features the first in-continuity kiss between Superman and Wonder Woman. It’s not a rumor, this isn’t a fake-out to draw in readers. They smooch.
All cards on the table: when I heard this might be happening, I didn’t care. If anything, I was slightly against it. Part of what made Superman and Lois Lane interesting to me, along with Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, is that they were paired with such stark opposites on a lot of levels. Clark Kent goes by the book, Lois Lane likes to step on the book as she jumps fences. Diana is direct and holds nothing back, while Steve Trevor relies on stealth and timing to get things done. Watching such couples interact and reach out to each other was intriguing. It also got a lot of comic readers’ hopes up that they might attract someone way above their league. (As in Justice League?! Get it!?!) (CC Note: Calm down, Ryan.)
Superman and Wonder Woman was a pair much talked about in fan groups and movies going back for decades, but never explored in continuity. From a narrative perspective, it’s too perfect. They’re both blue-eyed brunettes, they have similar power sets, they both have exile in their origin stories, their costumes both rely on blue, red, and yellow… they seem too similar to be interesting. That’s the mindset I had going in.
What happened is I underestimated Geoff Johns. He told a wrap-up to his main story that showed the Justice League’s strengths and weaknesses, gave them places to go in the future, and drew the reader in with dramatic tension. And in this, he created a setting in which a couple of powerhouses can find comfort with each other in a natural, mostly believable way. I was impressed.
Jim Lee does what Jim Lee does, and there’s not much more I can say about that.
A v X 5 (Aaron/ Raney and Fraction/ Yu) actually deals with two different couples. A couple of couples, yes, very punny, now that that’s out of the way…
Not everyone may know this, but in current continuity, the Black Panther and Storm are married. One born and raised into royalty, the other grew from a street urchin into a creature of worship. One controls the most advanced civilization on the planet, the other controls the weather itself. One is human, one is mutant. When they work together, it’s beautiful. When they fight, it’s spectacular. It’s also very depressing, because when you get right down to it, they’re fighting for the exact same thing: the preservation of their people.
This brings us to another theme I found repeated through a few of the comics I’m reviewing this week: the leader’s sacrifice. Storm and Black Panther are intelligent people. They know how to assess a situation and plan around it. They also care for one another. With half an hour of deep conversation, they probably could’ve agreed to stay neutral and thus stay together. Instead they jumped in front of their populations to protect them in a time of crisis, and were a bit surprised to find they’d jumped to different sides. It’s VERY possible this happened because rational discourse doesn’t belong in an action comic, but a good job is done to suggest that they’re fighting because they know people are depending on them. Both are very aware of what it does to troops when the commanders sit a fight out, and neither can let that happen.
The other couple is Hawkeye and Angel. The stakes aren’t as personal for them, so they don't hold back. The results are... piercing.
American Vampire 30 (Snyder/ Albuquerque) features another odd couple, this one an immortal vampire and a mediocre musician. Somehow they made it work for something like eight decades. When things got rough one day, they started drifting apart. She ran into an old friend, they went on a couple of business meetings, one thing lead to another… It’s a tale as old as the horseless carriage, only with a lot more blood, claws, and fangs involved.
I’m coming into this series cold, but I don’t feel like I was hindered for that. There’s an immediate sense of what these characters want and what they’ll do to get it, which is a sign of good writing and, in this case, an endearing introduction to the story. The mythology is very different and few details explained, and again I don’t think it’s a big deal. Vampire mythology is so convoluted at this point that every author gets away with doing something different. There’s also a line that suggests the characters themselves may not have as many details on their own condition as they’d like either, which is a fun touch.
Artwise, Albuquerque’s style makes me think of a blend between Sean Murphy and Bill Sienkiewicz – sharp linework that doesn’t always connect smoothly gives the page definition without neatness, a style that works great with a trying to be just askew of what we expect.
FF 21 (Hickman/ Dragotta) is supposed to be the lighter of the books coming from 4 Freedoms Plaza, with more focus on the fun that family can have. Instead, by the end of this issue, I just wanted someone to hug me and tell me things don’t really work like that.
If I discuss what happens in the comic, I’m going to spoil more things than I normally allow myself to do. I will say that Spider-Man makes a brief but embarrassingly memorable cameo, which brings me to something I CAN write about that addresses this comic.
A few years ago, PeterParker made a deal to “fix” the world around him at a great personal cost. A lot of readers didn’t like this. To them it felt like the story they’d bought, read, and enjoyed for years was being invalidated, and to a degree, they were right. On the other hand, because of the way the deal was made, all the characters involved were more or less okay with things, and as such they could move on fast. The stories that came out afterward rolled with it, and now it’s one of the more popular titles on the shelf, but some readers still feel burned.
That is NOT what happens in this comic.
When it comes to comics, particularly action comics, there really is no such thing as a clean break-up.
To add some much-needed counter-angst, I give you Wolverine and the X-Men 15 (Aaron/ Molina). (Sorry, but I can’t actually GIVE you this book. It costs money, which is something I don’t have a lot of right now, but if I did I would use it to give you things like this issue, but I digress.) (CC Note: You? Digress?) After so many books that could’ve held the subtitle “Love Hurts”, this was a very refreshing change of narrative pace.
A lot of that may be due to the fact that all of the romances featured (and there are many) are only beginning, and may stop before they get a chance to go anywhere. The couple going on the longest is Kitty Pride and Bobby Drake, and in fifteen issues they’re talking about maybe planning a first date. There’s a couple that has a picnic in a cave. A malevolent pig tries to ask three girls out at once, but only if shouting double entendres counts as asking someone out, and if the Stepford Cuckoos count as girls. There’s also a lovely panel where desert people and island people might just get along fine.
There’s a LOT of set-up in this issue. Resolution addicts should look elsewhere for their fix. By the end of this issue, there’s more tension than anything – everyone knows that big changes are coming very soon and that they very well may hurt. That goes for the upcoming conclusion to Avengers Vs. X-Men (October’s not that far away!) just as much as for the burgeoning relationships teased at here.
In summary: a very very cute issue.
There’s no easy way to say this so I’m just gonna say it. I’m going to go see other web sites. It’s not you, I just have nothing left to give right now. But maybe we can get together some time next week to talk about comics? I’d like that.
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