Elizabeth Sandifer

Deathstroke #2

Man, you’ve really gotta take the good with the bad when it comes to Priest, don’t you? So much of this is clever – his transitions among sections, his pacing of reveals, a fair amount of his character work… but there’s just a fundamental messiness to the structure – his time jumping too often makes it so the issue lacks a clear structure or sense of what it’s actually about. The stuff about Slade’s son getting kidnapped at the start is the biggest offender – a plot thread that doesn’t visibly connect with anything else in the issue and, worse, has an unclear temporal relationship with it. The frustrations here are rapidly overwhelming the pleasure – not sure if I’m going to keep on with this.

Doom Patrol #1 (Not purchsed by me)

Tricky. It’s doing that big, ostentatiously messy Grant Morrison thing, which is an entirely appropriate thing for a Doom Patrol book to be doing. But it’s sometimes hard enough believing that there’s actually a coherent train of thought knitting everything together when it’s Morrison, and seeing these tricks used by someone else is worrisome in the extreme. That said, this book has a hell of a lot of spark, and while I’m far from confident that it’s going anywhere good (in fact I suspect it’s going to be a bit of a trainwreck), I’m kind of inclined to give it another issue or two. I worry that it’s going to end up being all setup and no payoff, though. Certainly there’s nothing like a clear sign that this isn’t just unfocused weirdness yet. But I’m willing to entertain style over substance for a bit.

Black Panther #6

Many of the same problems as Deathstroke, which is perhaps appropriate for a book so openly indebted to Priest’s work, but Coates is at least sticking in one timeframe. All the same, this isn’t really an issue – it’s a series of short scenes that incrementally advance their own plots without giving any real sense of how they interlock and what the whole is doing. Individual scenes make interesting and often compellingly-written points, but they’re just that – individual scenes that don’t feel like part of a larger issue, little yet like part of a larger story that we’re ostensibly on the sixth part of. 

Cinema Purgatorio #5

Code Pru’s brilliant this month, and Modded’s thoroughly hilarious. Cinema Purgatorio itself’s a bit weak – it tips its hand early in the strip and then doesn’t really go anywhere until the last page, at which point it has some clever again. The remaining two strips continue to suck. All in all, this isn’t actually worth its cover price, but what are you going to do, not buy an anthology with Moore, Ennis, and Gillen in it?

Spider-Man #8

Style is famously the stuff you never stop doing wrong, and so in “classic” Bendis style this is two separate and completely unrelated comics awkwardly bolted together at the middle. The first is an absolutely brilliant scene of Miles talking to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones and is a perfect example of why this is a compelling book.…

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It’s easy, with something like this, for the weight of expectations to become crippling. The stakes are such that anything short of it self-evidently joining Watchmen and From Hell on the list of Major Alan Moore Works would seem like something of a failure, and one can almost imagine reviews that sadly say “it’s not one of the top twenty works of the entire history of English literature – merely one of the top fifty.” At this point in Moore’s career the arrival of a would-be major work is as much an occasion for critical knife-sharpening as anything – there’s a grim and awful sense of critics realizing that there aren’t going to be that many more opportunities to declare that the great man has made a real and proper misstep. A preposterously long and ambitious novel named in part for William Blake’s legendarily quasi-coherent last prophetic work really does seem like a prime opportunity for anyone desperate to make the case that Moore’s finally had one spliff too many, and there’s no shortage of those.

I say all of this mainly to stress what it in practice means that Jerusalem has largely gotten positive reviews, including a good writeup in Entertainment Weekly, which endearingly called Moore “an angry old man who writes like an angry young man.” Because not only is Jerusalem self-evidently good, and moreover good in a really calm, untroubled way that’s utterly unconcerned with the question, it’s enjoyable. It demands attention, but it is not a difficult novel. Certainly it is unlike Voice of the Fire, whose deliberately obtuse first chapter went out of its way to winnow the readership down to its most sympathetic core. There is a famously difficult chapter about Lucia Joyce that Moore’s been talking up in interviews, but it’s much of the way through the book and can be skimmed and revisited later in a way that “Hob’s Hog” cannot. It’s in no way an “easy” book, but it’s equally absurd to call it a difficult one. Whatever the book’s literary merit – and I’m about to argue that it’s significant – it’s also just a tremendously well-done piece of writing by one of the great storytellers of our age. I loved reading it. You should clear some time in your schedule and have a go at it.

At the heart of the novel is Northampton. Moore has been deftly mythologizing the place for a while now, but this is clearly the weightiest attempt. Within this mythology, it is the center of the world, which makes sense because its Guildhall has a statue of an angel on it with a sword that actually looks kind of like a snooker cue, and so obviously it’s where the four archangels play their eternal game of snooker that decides the fate of all things within the four-dimensional block universe we inhabit by endlessly cycling through our illusions of consciousness. Plus Alan Moore lives there, or at least Alma Warren, the middle-aged artist producing a career-defining thirty-five work exhibit as an act of magic to try to save the working class neighborhood of the Boroughs and obvious genderswapped authorial insert.…

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A guest post by David Gerard.

Every field has its standard ways to fuck up. Experienced artists never do these in public, but you’ll see the lesser lights fall for them if you go looking. Someone gets a rush of blood and is struck by aninspiration to do something different, something the big guys aren’t doing, for a new take on things! Not realising that the experienced artists don’t do these things because they don’t work.

Like writing a novel about the pop industry. No, better: a political allegory in the form of a novel about the pop industry. No, better still: a right-wing fever dream political allegory in the form of a novel about the pop industry. Yep, that’ll show ’em all!

Phil Sandifer tweeted a “hey, look what I just stepped in”:

As a connoiseur of the worst of popular culture — and novels about the music industry are definitely the worst of popular culture — I foolishly looked. (Doing a great swan dive naked into the abyss and wallowing while sending back reports probably involves staring at some point.)

The least-unreadable examples of this species of folly, that don’t make you shout “WRONG! WRONG! BULLSHIT!” twice a page, tend to be thin fictionalisations of real events; plenty of fucked-up shit happens in the music industry that makes people go “someone should write a book about this.” Platinum Logic by Tony Parsons fails as an even slightly coherent novel, but every lurid and tawdry incident in that book is a version of something that happened, and spotting the players is the fun part.

There are genuinely good novels that have the music industry as a theme — Pratchett’s Soul Music, Banks’ Espedair Street — but these tend not to be about the music or the industry as such, and avoid going into too much detail even as they slip in the in-jokes. Even The Commitments, which is literally about a band. They resist the urge to be didactic. It’s a trepidatious endeavour, though: get the details even slightly wrong and you look like a fool.

Fenris Wulf gets the details mostly right. The problem is everything else. 

“Hi, I’m Fenris. I’ve considered myself to be a LaVeyan Satanist for about 10 years, and I also embrace a Lokian version of Asatru, as my name indicates.”

Loki’s Child is published by Castalia House, i.e. Vox Day, the abovementioned human dumpster fire, who is now most famous for doing his damnedest to fuck up the Hugo Awards with the Rabid Puppies.

I thought Day was the author of this thing — “Fenris Wolf” was the name of his 1990s video game studio, and he was once in a band with minor hit records so he’s brushed up against the business. But Vox is not known for either patience or attention to detail, and this is a work the author’s been polishing and polishing for years — he put the first version up as Record Producer from Dimension X in 2005, then publicised the rewrite as Loki’s Child in this 2011 post to a fan board for Ayn Rand’s right-wing political philosophy Objectivism:

The novel gets progressively more ingenious, and it exposes the disgusting evil of the nihilist Left in a way that hasn’t been done before.

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Glitterbomb #1

Kieron Gillen was on Twitter yesterday making a very good point about a standard first issue structure where you open by showing the interesting thing then cut back and recap how you got there, which is that it’s a weak structure. I pointed out, in particular, that it’s a TV structure based on fear that someone will change the channel at the first commercial break, as opposed to a comics structure where the concern is that they won’t come back next month. Gillen wasn’t talking about Glitterbomb, as it only came out today, but it’s a case in point – on page 2 I was 100% in for what the book was doing. By the issue’s end, I was bored and wishing we could get back to that bit where it was interesting. It wouldn’t quite be as simple as not doing the flash forward structure – if you did the issue in chronological order Farrah’s first kill would defang the end. But still, it’s a lackluster approach that puts the moment of big emphasis in the wrong part of the issue. 

Eclipse #1

Competent but unexceptional sci-fi mystery. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing that immediately announces itself as transcendently brilliant and must-read either. Some good images, but could probably have used to do a little more character work and a little less worldbuilding. 

Mercury Heat #11

Good stuff – this arc slowed down rather a lot in the middle, but it gets off to a proper roar again here, and you start to see how it’s possible that we could be leading to a semi-satisfying book ending with the next issue. (Although I wish it had gotten one more arc – this is good stuff and I trust Gillen that it’ll come to a conclusion, but it’s also clearly not the plot he’d have picked to go out on.) The first ten issues of this are available as part of the currently running Uber Kickstarter, and if you like 2000 AD-flavored hard SF, it’s definitely one you wish you’d checked out.

Kill or Be Killed #1-2

Not sure how I missed the first one of this. The Brubaker/Phillips noir stuff has historically left me a bit cold, but this has a wicked sense of humor and a really compelling narrative voice that makes it feel vigorous and fun and daring in exactly the way previous Brubaker/Phillips things have not. It’s notable that this has much of the same premise as that ghastly Demonic comic that came out a few weeks ago – reading them side by side would be an excellent demonstration of good vs trite and mediocre writing. Also interesting to compare is Scarlet – there’s a similar case of “let’s take vigilante justice as a morally serious concept.” I hope it doesn’t end up going too blandly noir as a result – I don’t demand that our protagonist “get away with it” by any stretch of the imagination, and the book’s discussion of that notion pretty firmly mitigates against the idea that it could end that way, but straightforward “no murder really is wrong” will be tremendously unsatisfying.…

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Me. Jack. The Paul McGann movie. The amount of profanity you’d expect given that.

Listen here. (Direct link to a 62 MB mp3, FYI.)…

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In a smidge of a hurry today, so I haven’t had time to look at what’s out next week yet.

Ms. Marvel #10

The bits that work are typically brilliant – the “nine years earlier” intro in particular is charming. But Wilson can tend towards a somewhat subtlety-free didacticism on its own, which works fine when she’s picking interesting topics like gentrification, but is a rough mix with the already crass didacticism of Civil War II. Add in yet another “Captain Marvel shows up to be blatantly and transparently wrong” scene and a desperately unsubtle bit with Becky and you get an issue that’s just not very good. Also, opening with four pages of Adrian Alphona art serves to make the rest look lackluster, which is terribly unfair to the quite talented Takeshi Miyazawa, whose only flaw is to not be flattered by the comparison. 

Avatarex #2

One strongly suspects Grant Morrison is writing the scripts for these in an afternoon and then collecting the paycheck. I’m sure it’s a very nice paycheck, and I don’t begrudge him this one bit, but it’s still Grant Morrison at his most “here are the standard issue Grant Morrison tropes put in an equally standard issue order.” If it were the mid-90s this would be refreshing. Instead it’s just got some pretty art in places.

Spider-Man #7

A solid issue. The Bombshell conversation in the middle is grotesquely contrived in that way that talking about the plot of Civil War II almost has to be, but the narrow focus on Miles and Miles trying to figure out what being a hero means to him along with the basic satisfaction of the Jessica Jones plot keeps this one in the “Bendis showing why he’s actually good” category instead of the “for fuck’s sake Bendis I know they say style is the stuff you keep doing wrong, but could you have a little less of it” category. 

Lazarus #24

An above-average issue that maintains a simmering tension throughout. There’s a lot to wonder what’s going to happen about, which is always a good place for a book like this to be. There’s still an entire plotline I couldn’t tell you what the hell was going on in, which is a frustration (the recap page for this book never comes close to doing enough). But it’s good, compelling sci-fi espionage, which is what i look for out of this book, and the “Forever finally learns the truth but from Johanna of all people” twist is a smart one.

4 Kids Walk Into a Bank #1-2

Couple weeks old, but came recommended. If Stranger Things were a heist film, basically. There’s a sort of willful sloppiness in places, which is kind of a thing with Black Mask, I find, but the entire premise of “four kids get themselves involved in a bank robbery” is sufficiently ludicrous that the moments of “what are you actually trying to do here” seem more like charming embellishments than carelessness. I’m not as in love with it as some are – I think there’s a real failure to develop a lot of the main cast adequately – but it’s smart and funny and trying interesting things, and I’m probably in for the back three issues of it to see if it pays off cleverly. …

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Chew #57

Three to go.

Deathstroke #1

Good, competent stuff. I’m still not sure the non-chronological storytelling has a point as opposed to just being a thing Priest likes to do, but it’s at least a better way to introduce an important “old friend” character than many approaches in comics. Unless Wintergreen’s a longstanding supporting character; it’s not like I know Deathstroke’s supporting cast well. But still, Priest is working to introduce him, and the non-chronological story helps with that, even as it leaves the actual status quo of this book a bit muddy. This hasn’t grabbed me yet as such, but I’ll persist for an arc or so.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #10

A frustratingly unfocused issue that sutures two half-issues together without much in the way of payoff or connection. Still good, as this book always is, but an obviously lesser issue that ends up feeling like it’s wasting a Ms. Marvel guest-slot, which, as I think about it, is probably the thing that’s most knocking this down towards the bottom of the list this week. 

Snotgirl #2

Has the typical second issue problems of a modern comic, which is to say that it’s mainly tasked with fixing the problems that crafting a coherent and catchy first issue has created for the overall arc, which typically means going “right, so instead of paying off that cliffhanger we’re going to take a step back and fill in details.” And complaints that the book is mean-spirited about fashion blogging have a few more teeth after this one than they did after the first, although I still have a good amount of faith in O’Malley such that I’m willing to assume loving satire. Still, this is good, interesting stuff that I’m going to at least read a full arc of. 

New Avengers #15

Al Ewing in his finest form, paying off scads of earlier stuff in inventive and unexpected ways while remaining funny and full of good character moments in the present. This is the sort of book that makes sure if it’s going to randomly bring in Warlock for a guest spot then Warlock is going to get to appear in a heartbreaking scene and also get to do a Warlockified “do you feel lucky punk” at the book’s opener. This is not a book invested in offering particularly deep pleasures, but it remains the book that most feels like my idea of what reading Marvel comics is meant to feel like, and that’s always welcome.

Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat #9

There’s a delightful slowness to the structure of this book – a willingness to spend time on the human moments just being goofy before getting to the nominal plot. So much of this consists of the characters converging at a karaoke night, and it’s scintillating. Eventually the plot shows up and is also good, in part because Leth is focused enough to make sure that the long setup actually feeds into the plot and keeps all her plates spinning, avoiding a Bendis-esque “and now for the one panel in which the thing we put on the cover shows up” bit of bullshit.…

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