Comments on: Good Comics

By: I hope this means I am a Super-Friend and not a Wonder Twin « PurpleSlog

I hope this means I am a Super-Friend and not a Wonder Twin « PurpleSlog — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:33:26 +0000

[...] by purpleslog on June 6th, 2007 I posted at Dreaming 5GW, a reference to a comment at Crooked Timber: Amusingly, the superhero with his “sixth column” is pretty much what [...]

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:56:02 +0000

Why Emerson? Plus superhero comics? I guess I’m putting serious strain on the ‘power within’ plus Woodsman Pete panel.

By: BillCinSD

BillCinSD — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 01:24:24 +0000

Old School gotta go with the Flaming Carrot and Reid Fleming, The World’s Toughest Milkman.

New school—Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner is one of my faves

By: Tracy W

Tracy W — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:21:19 +0000

Stupid question time – what does that quote from Emerson have to do with the rest of your post?

And why is envy ignorance?

By: richard

richard — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:36:43 +0000

the Stardust link reminds me strongly of the parody of 50’s-era cheap animation bundled in the 2 DVD set of The Incredibles, which you can play with original soundtrack (errily like the Stardust thing, really) or with hilariously pissed off commentary by Mr. Incredible and Frozone. Worth a view.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:34:36 +0000

So this Emerson guy, not only does he play football for Real Madrid and Brazil, he also sounds like could be something of a philosopher after he retires.

By: Wax Banks

Wax Banks — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:14:11 +0000

Powers is almost without peer in the superhero stable, not least because Bendis knows his cop procedurals, no question. That's something about comix that kinda bugs me - superhero writers who know nothing but the classic-superhero purely generic showdown-with-powers tend to write shitty superhero books (as the work tends to converge in intention with cape-n-cowl fanfic). Not unrelatedly, part of the reason I hate Stan Lee and his generation of comics storytellers is that so many early comic writers just didn't seem to have chops - no skill, only a knack. The revolution in comics in the 80's, near as I can tell, was the advent of comics writing that treated comics as the subset of a wider literary universe. (Or rather: the spreading of this belief to mainstream superhero comics.) Bendis is interesting in part because he just nails the cops-n-robbers argot and the conventions of the detective-procedural mystery; he'd write a blistering Batman, I imagine. Unfortunately he's also really good at Spidey, so he spends his time on that sort of book. But I prefer his more Adult stuff by a healthy margin. OK but while we're on the BKV subject we gotta give it up for Ex Machina, right? Vaughan is a savant and I resent his storytelling facility (pity he's slumming on Lost). But his strength is something else entirely from Bendis's; like you said, there's a lot of the natural-feeling blend of fantasy and generic form and teen/YA/idealistic-grownup angst in his work that makes it hard to categorize. Ex Machina is certainly a 'powers' book but it sure doesn't feel like a superhero comic (at least the stories I've read). It has in common with Veronica Mars that genre-blending habit that somehow doesn't seem forced, though Mars cut a hell of a lot of corners to clear up its weekly mysteries in 42 minutes (and by midway through S2 they seemed superfluous). Whedon is hard to classify in part because he's such an empathetic storyteller; part of his cult is that the strength of his writing seems to be his personal strength (true of BKV and Morrissey, not true of Bendis, massively not true of Alan Moore, Frank Miller, etc.). Buffy suited him in a way that X-Men doesn't, exactly, because straight-up genre play seems like a waste of his time. It redounds to his credit that he doesn't condescend to the genres he works in, but for instance in his introduction to the Identity Crisis mini, he praises the story in terms way out of proportion with what it deserves, and it almost feels like he's doing the reqwyrt or lending his name. That miniseries has a bit of a boilerplate feel to it, a nothing-new-but-still-decent feel, and you get the sense that it's just a good example of the shit Whedon grew up reading rather than the sort of text he'd actually ever, ever produce. (Then again who am I to say.) To me, Astro City is just Great Superhero Stuff, the way Rendezvous With Rama is Great [insert type here] SF. The Authority, under Warren Ellis anyhow, was something else (and I'd add it without hesitation to any mandatory powers-related reading list). Went downhill when the overpraised Millar got his hands on it.

By: gmoke

gmoke — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:06:38 +0000

There’s an interesting development in non-superpowered comics with GWOT as the theme in Vertigo’s DMZ (a journalist in a dystopian, break-away NYC) and Army@Love (a satire on the future of the permanent war in Afbaghistan). These comic books are commenting on the present circumstances with more reality than you see on the nightly news.

And dont forget the wonders of Astrocity, a great but infrequent gloss on superpowers.

By: J. Ellenberg

J. Ellenberg — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:32:04 +0000

And if you like books about superheroes without pictures, Austin Grossman's novel Soon I Will Be Invincible is out today. I've read the first 50 pages and it's fantastic -- funny and knowing without being snarky and obvious. I fully expect to spend the rest of the day finishing this and blow off the rather boring 2-adic computation I ought to be doing.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:45:09 +0000

Amusingly, the superhero with his “sixth column” is pretty much what “Tdaxp” and “Dreaming 5GW” think they are doing to fight 4th Generation Warfare.

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:26:35 +0000

Are we only talking current comics? Because if not The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is an obvious choice, even if only some of the characters have “powers”.

Otherwise, Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men is superb.