The Doomino Effect for the week of Mar 21, 2007
Don’t go falling all over yourselves, because it’s time for this week’s Doomino Effect. Actually that’s a lie, because normally Tuesday is time for the Doomino Effect. But Fin Fang Doom didn’t buy enough comics last week to justify his weekly “Meaningless Awards” and Jean-Claude Van Doom hasn’t swung by yet with his “Worst to First,” and Doom DeLuise’s last words to me today were “post a new blog,” so here we go.
Now let it be said, you may have thought to yoursef that I tend to only give somewhat favorable reviews. While I have known to dislike comics now and then, I do what is rather unique and groundbreaking in the world of comic blogs, and that is I buy comics that I like. So the odds of having anything resembling a 50/50 split on good and bad are unlikely, and quite possibly devastating to my comics habit.
I’m going to try something different this week. Usually I carefully arrange the order of these books so that I might seamlessly segue from one to another, hence the implied domino effect. This week, I’m going to push myself to the limit and just go in the order that they’re currently stacked and just make the magic happen.
First up is Amazing Spider-Man #539. I don’t normally read ASM, but I picked it up last issue because it was supposed to be a big deal and I wanted to read the big deal as it happened. Well, I thought it was a stapled pile of crap folded in half. This issue at least was a big improvement on that. So now it’s a stapled mediocre blah folded in half. It’s really unfortunate that Kingpin is the bad guy, since that means Daredevil apparently takes place in the future. Too bad there couldn’t have been more communication there. But to me, this issue reads like a comics from the 70s or the 80s where the people don’t have real emotions or take real actions – they have COMIC BOOK emotions and take COMIC BOOK actions.
I’ll do my best to illustrate what is essentially a gut reaction, but Kingpin is such a “bwahahaha” villain in this, quoting Euripides and just talking like a caricature of a villain rather than the cocky stud he is. Sure Peter might be losing Aunt May, and yeah, people are going to react to that very harshly, but he goes immediately to the vengeance stage with lines like “I don’t knock – I’m not in the mood,” which just seem like they should be in Lone Wolf McQuade and not a 2007 comic book. Well, at least now he’s in a black costume, so marketing is probably happy.
Ron Garney’s art is solid, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s contributing to my instinctive reaction that I accidentally picked up an issue of ASM from the 70s.
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The Professor’s Daughter is a much more adult-oriented book, but it continues with publisher First Second’s theme of printing books that are shining examples of what all-ages books should be, mixing humor and excitement for everyone while not making dramatic concessions to coddle youngsters. It also boasts one of those classic premises that guarantees a solid work: A mummy has come alive (no explanation needed or given) and is traipsing across London with the daughter of the Egyptologist who located him. They come to be quite close when an unfortunate (and grim) turn of events starts them hurtling along in an adventure that seems somewhere between Jules Verne and Shakespeare (speaking to the tone, not literary quality).
[SFX: Podcast of Doom theme music]
Rick Veitch: Like just about everything I’ve done, I’m coming at ARMY@LOVE from a couple different directions. The obvious one is the socio-political situation we find ourselves struggling with these days. That’s something you’ll see that in the plot set-up of this series, which satirically imagines what the current war will look like five years in the future. Along with that there is the human dimension; the psycho-sexual-spiritual qualities of modern life that the characters hopefully come to embody. 
RV: The characters always have to be out in front, with the “message” (if that’s what we must call it) serving as a motivational and defining backdrop. In this case, I’m looking at the situation we’ve got ourselves into in Iraq and imagining what comes next. Everyone seems to be thinking we are going to pull out in a year or two, but as sad as I am to say it, I don’t believe that is going to be the case. I suspect we are in for a decades-long conflict all across the middle east and southern Asia. ARMY@LOVE imagines how the powers that be might have to rebrand such an unpopular war, in much the same way consumer products are routinely rebranded, to keep it going. The second issue explains this in a lot more depth, introducing the idea of the “corporate draft”, while the whole satirical approach to marketing and funding war expands over the length and breadth of the series.
Instead of worrying too much about making commentary and establishing his message, Veitch focuses much of the issue on getting into the characters. Most of the story features a female soldier, Switzer, as she’s jumping into combat duty, and her fellow soldier’s pants. Veitch twists the current war debate by having Switzer actually eager to see some action (in the violent sense). Switzer becomes almost a Lynndie England analog, though not so mentally challenged. Moreso, she’s an energetic type (and a pastor’s daughter) who’s reveling in the chance to experience the ultimate excitement, but has given over her moral judgment in the pursuit.
It’s hard to tell from the first issue if it’ll be the main plot or the secondary one, but another running thread that picks up at the end of the issue is a look inside the Motivation and Morale effort, which is expectedly coercive and corrupt, but unexpectedly diverse. Across the board, it’s a much different treatment of the military than the Marine goons from Can’t Get No. The book is also unique in its handling of the current wars, not seeking to serve as an allegorical tale or a direct condemnation, but instead a deeper psychological look into the soldiers, and those back home. For that and many other reasons, Army@Love stands up as another worthy addition to the ranks at Vertigo.