In-between bouts of sugar shock thanks to early Halloween binges, publishers managed to ship comics to us this week. Despite my own blood threatening to vibrate out of my body (damn you, delicious Charleston Chews!), I’ve managed to read and review a few of them. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Bad Houses GN (Ryan/ McNeil): We who work with and enjoy comics have gotten used to the idea that comics aren’t as… classy… as other media. It’s an idea that’s slowly but surely being corrected, but it’s also been earned. For every piece of sequential art that truly puts the medium to work and tells something complex and wonderful, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of pieces that would get laughed out of the library. The comic medium has one more piece of high literature under its belt - Bad Houses.
Anne and Lewis find themselves in similar situations. They’re both under the thumbs of their mothers, living in ways they wouldn’t want for anyone. Neither can think of a way out of Failin, their tiny home town. Neither has a father figure in their lives. When they connect, they get under each other’s skin, find they both like things better that way, and start a relationship that brings out more revelations than most of the people in Failin can handle.
Anne and Lewis find themselves in similar situations. They’re both under the thumbs of their mothers, living in ways they wouldn’t want for anyone. Neither can think of a way out of Failin, their tiny home town. Neither has a father figure in their lives. When they connect, they get under each other’s skin, find they both like things better that way, and start a relationship that brings out more revelations than most of the people in Failin can handle.
The above is probably as simple an explanation for what this story entails as anyone could manage. Anne’s mother is a professional caregiver suffering from a compulsive disorder. Lewis’s mother is a control freak that makes a living selling off what the dead couldn’t take with them. Their histories impact their children so hard that insurance premiums go up. History is forgotten, repeated, avoided. Some come out of their shells, others start building their own.
This isn’t a long book, it’s just shy of two hundred pages. In that time, the reader gets to know, really know, perhaps a dozen different people in ways most people only know longtime friends. These characters interact, grow together and apart, surprise and disappoint, in ways that will take the reader by surprise not because they’re shocking, but because as comic readers we’re just not used to this level of connection with characters. I predict you’ll feel more for Anne sitting at the bedside than you did when Peter Parker passed away, and we’ve followed him for decades.
This is not for every reader. It’s complex, demands careful reading, and it’s not action-oriented. Years from now, though, when comics share space with Chaucer in college classrooms, this will be one of the texts professors teach courses around.
X-Men Battle of the Atom 2 (Aaron et al): The battle is over. Those who walk away carry those who can’t. Lines once crossed are redrawn. And a kitty plays with its new pet baby.
The Brotherhood of Future Mutants’ final gambit is to reveal to the X-Men that S.H.I.E.L.D. has its own stockpile of Sentinels, complete with upgrades, ballistic deployment capabilities, and badges. Yep, badges. What mutants survive don’t stick around long enough to hear Director Maria Hill threaten them over the sound of post-explosive ringing. Those who were hoping for closure are going to be pleased - this thing has four epilogues. I don’t think Return of the King had that many endings.
The Brotherhood of Future Mutants’ final gambit is to reveal to the X-Men that S.H.I.E.L.D. has its own stockpile of Sentinels, complete with upgrades, ballistic deployment capabilities, and badges. Yep, badges. What mutants survive don’t stick around long enough to hear Director Maria Hill threaten them over the sound of post-explosive ringing. Those who were hoping for closure are going to be pleased - this thing has four epilogues. I don’t think Return of the King had that many endings.
As jaded as I am about crossovers, I do have to give this one credit. It’s disrupted the status quo into something new, and despite all the time travel pratfalls this issue indulges in, the changes come pretty naturally. I’m even going to break character and claim that this used time travel well… in very tiny bits. The bits where characters meet themselves or their relatives take the opportunity to explore relationships in unusual-yet-revealing ways, ways that I have to admit couldn’t happen without time travel. Well played, horrible narrative device.
S.H.I.E.L.D., the nicest Big Brother Orwell might’ve imagined, developing anti-mutant giant robots isn’t something that should be a one-off threat, and from the promos for upcoming issues, it won’t be. So not only are rosters changing, but now they have something else to do, and that’s what you’re supposed to expect from these kinds of crossovers.
The last issue of Battle of the Atom succeeds in tying up the series, setting the stage for the future of its companion titles, and not ignoring what the characters were doing and feeling throughout. It works.
Damian Son of Batman 1 (Andy Kubert): By now just about everyone interested knows that Damian, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al’Ghul, is dead, and that death came at a time when a lot of the audience had started to like the Dark Jerkwad. It naturally got people asking what it would’ve been like if he hadn’t died. Andy Kubert is here to answer your questions.
Damian is well into his teens, and the Joker’s escapades have escalated a few steps. His latest installation piece at the docks involves fish and sailors, all dead and deformed. During their standard investigation, a bomb goes off that Batman takes the worst of. Suddenly lacking a father figure, he turns to his only remaining family, the League of Assassins, who give him the kind of support we’d expect: they cut him off and tell him to take his father’s legacy if he misses him so much. Before doing that, he decides he’s going to avenge his dad’s murder in a way his mom would be proud of.
Damian is well into his teens, and the Joker’s escapades have escalated a few steps. His latest installation piece at the docks involves fish and sailors, all dead and deformed. During their standard investigation, a bomb goes off that Batman takes the worst of. Suddenly lacking a father figure, he turns to his only remaining family, the League of Assassins, who give him the kind of support we’d expect: they cut him off and tell him to take his father’s legacy if he misses him so much. Before doing that, he decides he’s going to avenge his dad’s murder in a way his mom would be proud of.
I wasn’t the biggest Damian fan while he lived, but I understood why other people were. Surrounded by characters defined by tragedy and an insatiable need for revenge, Damian gave Bruce and the other Robins a way to express familial affection without threatening their tough-guy acts. Damian beat up Jason Todd and used his mask as a hood ornament, put Tim Drake down constantly, and made endless fun of Dick Grayson’s costume. They all got him back in their own ways, and as a result they connected. It was far from what we’d call healthy, but it brought them out of their shells, something few other characters can claim to have done. Very little of that comes through here.
Instead, we get some explosions, a montage of fights, and a series of people answering Damian’s questions, but because he doesn’t like any of the answers, he ignores everyone. So far, Kubert has highlighted all of Damian’s worst qualities very accurately. If he can make time for the better ones, I’ll get interested.
The Son of Batman has a way to go before he’s ready for the big boy cowl, in many respects.
The Sandman Overture 1 (Gaiman/ Williams III): We’ll end this week reviewing another title many consider literature. For 75 issues and a few spin-off series, the story of Morpheus the Endless unfolded before our eyes and opened new facets of readers’ minds in the process. The trades have been kept in print constantly these past 25 years (if you want to feel old), and we all got sort of used to the idea that we had whole story. While it ended most definitively, there’s part of the story’s beginning that we've apparently missed.
The story opens with Dream administrating the subconscious of an alien race of carnivorous plants. He’s about to deal with an delinquent subordinate when he’s called away by an outside force. This isn’t normal - he’s one of the Endless, gods pray to the Endless - and it takes all his efforts to gear up before he’s pulled into an arena where he’s confronted by… himselves. It doesn’t make much sense to him, either.
The story opens with Dream administrating the subconscious of an alien race of carnivorous plants. He’s about to deal with an delinquent subordinate when he’s called away by an outside force. This isn’t normal - he’s one of the Endless, gods pray to the Endless - and it takes all his efforts to gear up before he’s pulled into an arena where he’s confronted by… himselves. It doesn’t make much sense to him, either.
I haven’t read Sandman in years, but in picking this up I got brought back up to speed right away. The issue reintroduces the characters, themes, and a number of plot threads without clunky exposition or a recap page. It starts right in and carries the reader from world to world easily, and that’s thanks to Neil Gaiman being one of the best writers working today. Those worlds are so different yet so plausible, and Morpheus is recognizable in all his various forms despite so many transitions, because J.H. Williams III is one of the best artists working today.
What I’m saying is that for once, the creator of a widely popular franchise has made a prequel, and it DOESN’T threaten to ruin said franchise yet. Jaded as that sounds, I’m very pleased by it. I think you’ll be too.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
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