The Doomino Effect for the week of Apr 18, 2007
Hello, my sexy dalmatian feminine Cable sidekicks, and welcome to this week’s Doomino Effect.
This week’s line-up will be free of any thoughts on World War III, because that’s what our Saturday roundtable was for. So let’s get started on the rest of the week that was…last week.
First up is Mighty Avengers #2. I seriously wonder if Frank Cho had it in his contract that he’d work on Mighty Avengers as long as he got to draw a naked woman all the time. What a comic geek’s dream! Fighting, explosions, and a naked upgrade from Janet Van Dyne! The big shock here was that Cho got to continue his career as professional 12-year-old-with-no-internet masturbatory resource supplier but he photoshop-copied some panels! Come on Frank! If you’re a red-blooded lady-loving man and you get paid to draw the boobies, draw the boobies! Don’t copy panels! You never know when people will stop paying you to draw the boobies! Someday you’re going to be like “Nobody pays me to draw the boobies anymore. Now I just have to draw them for myself. If only I had drawn all the boobies in Mighty Avengers #2, rather than copying panels. If I had a nipple – I mean, nickel – for every time…”
And Janet should take some fashion tips from this robot. Beyond walking around naked, the robot displays a much better hairstyle. Janet’s closely-cropped locks make her appear much older than she should. When Janet asks the team “Does anyone think that looks exactly like me with worse hair?” nobody answers her because they’re all thinking, “Not really, Janet. That robot is way hotter than you, and not just because she’s naked. And if a hot robot doesn’t convince you to do something with that hair, I don’t know what will. Your hairdo is so bland and conservative that you bring new meaning to the codename WASP.”
But enough with the talk about naked robots and Janet Van Dyne. I’m getting a big kick out of this book. Bendis claimed he was going to try a different style with it, and I’m not really sure what the difference is (other than thought-balloons). It’s a fast-paced, action-oriented, well-written team book. Kind of what an Avengers comic should be.
And speaking of fast-paced, action-oriented, well-written team books, that reminds me of everything that Justice League of America isn’t! Granted, issue #8 was a huge step up from that centerfolded turd called issue #7, but I still just can’t believe I’m reading JLA! I feel like we’re still just in setup mode. And were issues #1-6 so dull that I have no recollection of where this Trident guy (a.k.a. “Karate Kid”) came from? Or did he just show up on Batman’s dinner table?
As much as I just feel like I’m being hazed before getting to a good story (it’s coming, right?) I actually am excited about this crossover between the JLA, the JSA, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. It’s fitting and exciting to my geekiness that the JLA / JSA team-up has to do with crossing dimensions, recalling the earliest days of those teams crossing paths.
And speaking of people crossing paths and teaming up, that brings me to The Brave and the Bold #3. I expected this series to be fun but I did not expect it to be the festival of awesomeness that it has turned out to be. The characterization of the Blue Beetle managed to capture the anxiety and inexperience of youth without being the ridiculous teenager cliche we always see in “the next generation” of JSA members. And Lobo was written as a tough-talking badass without insulting the intelligence of every comics reader who wishes to suspend their disbelief. Solid superhero action that is fun to read without having to rely on gimmicks or huge events.
But speaking of teenagers who hang out with Batman, that brings me to Nightwing Annual #2. I don’t want to say too much about this at risk of repeating what Doom DeLuise and I already covered in our most recent podcast. Doom DeLuise didn’t like it nearly as much as I did, but I think we can probably all agree that it’s nice to see a writer actually put some thought into the treatment of Dick Grayson. We may disagree on the outcome, but the character earned some creative respect after Infinite Crisis and he sure wasn’t getting it One Year Later. It would have been nice if DC would have just thrown up their hands and hit the reset button and pretended the OYL story didn’t exist, but it does, and this issue does a great job of tying together the events of the last year in Dick Grayson’s life, regardless of how much you approve of those events.
And speaking of lovebirds, that brings me to The Spirit #5. I’ve enjoyed this book for the most part, but I think I’ve finally figured out what it is that has kept me from loving it to the point where I could be enthusiastically raving about it. That is, I’m not sure this book really knows what it’s trying to be. It’s not an all-ages book, due to the sexual themes and the languages. Yet its “Saturday morning cartoon” presentation keeps it from being a gritty crime book. As a reader, you make the unconscious (or conscious) decision to give certain things the benefit of the doubt based upon what a book is trying to be. And with The Spirit, those permissions sometimes conflict with each other, resulting in a book that is a good read, yet neither a great all-ages book nor a great superhero / crime drama.
This is an admittedly unfair comparison, but it’s the best analogy I can draw, so work with me for a minute, but The Spirit kind of reminds me of a bad dark comedy. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about – the type of movie commonly produced by college film students that too unsure of its jokes to be an all-out comedy and too unsure of its meaning to be an all-out drama, so instead, it calls itself a “dark comedy.” So if you don’t laugh at the humor or you don’t get sucked into the story, the creators can say “Well that’s okay, because it’s a dark comedy.”
And speaking of dark comedies, that leads me to X-Factor #18. I would actually, conveniently enough, refer to this book as darkly comedic, but it also succeeds very well on its storytelling merits. I’m sure the “X-Factor is awesome” drum has been beaten enough on this site, but it’s with good reason. This is a book whose success has been built from the ground up solely based on its consistency. There was no big marketing and advertising campaign to trumpet its arrival. It features no big-name characters. In fact, it’s actually a celebration of the ability to successfully use the Z-listers in the Marvel universe and still be a compelling book. And just when I thought “Okay, I’ve finally had enough of Layla Miller,” Peter David manages to both redeem the character, set up some more team-interaction exposition, and put the plot back in motion. Fantastic.
With the Spirit, you mean the art style doesn’t fit the tone of the book, right? Because I would definitely concur with that. Some issues aren’t as much that way, but a lot of the time it does look an awful lot like a kiddie toon.
And the Karate Kid, if I’m not mistaken, was one of the people who’d been infected by Starro and were attacking the JLA. But yeah, maybe not. I don’t really remember.
The art doesn’t even bother me – Powers is a great example of a serious book that uses cartoony art to help make the point.
I’m more talking about things like the goofy baked beans sponsorship angle and the silly love affair between a man and his bird. The bird love was simultaneously ridiculous and uncomfortably adult, but it was a contrast that didn’t betray any sophistication.
When talking about dissonance, there’s a difference between a good jazz band and some kids who can’t play their instruments. I feel like the contrasts in this book are closer to the teenagers in the garage.
I guess I assumed the man-bird love angle was something Will Eisner gave to the character, so I didn’t think about it much. It was kind of weird, and I certainly could have done without the goo-goo eyes.
I’m not going to compare Darwyn Cooke to a garage band, given his past work. One thing with The Spirit is that it’s also trying to be set both in Eisner’s era and the contemporary era (the new age-y beans logo set against the old-school noir backdrop). The issues that have worked the most for me are ones with a firm sense of setting. The issue in the desert with the FBI agent is a good example of that. Probably not a coincidence that it also didn’t have any of the cutesy little kiddy elements.
But the Spirit in Eisner’s era didn’t have cute stuff for the sake of having cute stuff. Unless you’ve read some Spirit I haven’t. Eisner may have been working in the 40s but to him, putting a mask on the Spirit was already a huge sell-out for the kids.
I won’t compare Darwyn Cooke to a garage band either. But I will compare Spirit #5 to one.
I got you. And I wasn’t saying Eisner was cutesy back in the day. I was just raising another weird balance that the new series is trying to manage.
Gotcha. I thought you were trying to connect the cutesy stuff to the 40s, because there was a lot of weird stuff in superhero comics back then. It would have been a reasonable case to make for pretty much any 1940s superhero comic other than the Spirit.