Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: I, Vampire #10

June 29, 2012

I, Vampire #10

Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov

Artist: Andrea Sorrentino

DC Comics

 

I, Vampire has been by most accounts the biggest surprise hit of the “New 52.”Other successful books whose futures were thought to be uncertain at the start of this initiative such as Aquaman, or Demon Knights had well established creators and characters with strong legacies, and in retrospect their success hasn’t been such a serious shock. I, Vampire, on the other hand, had a creative team that wasn’t well-known and had done little in the world of mainstream comics; they were dealing with one of the more obscure properties in the DC Universe; and the covers for the first few issues, though attractive, were highly misleading at best, suggesting a twilight style romance aimed at that demographic. I myself was guilty of these assumptions and it wasn’t until around issue #3, after reading the first issue of Fialkov’s excellent Image title, The Last of the Greats, that I decided to give this book a shot. Needless to say I was immediately hooked by the electrifying story and the elegant brutality of Sorrentino’s artwork. I quickly picked up the first two issues and have been reading it regularly ever since.

That being said, the series really hit the ground running with an inevitable, epic vampire war between conscientious vampire Andrew Bennett and his vicious former lover, Mary, Queen of Blood looming around every corner – but it seemed to stall a bit when it stopped over in Gotham to feature a Batman cameo, and then ran a crossover with Justice League Dark. I know that at least part of the reason this was done was to take advantage of the interlocking universe with the goal of increasing readership and, honestly, I can live with that if it helps a good series survive, but I have still been glad to see the series return to its previous glory with a vengeance in issue 9, and now in the tenth issue which I believe is the best yet.

At the end of the end of the “Rise of the Vampires” crossover with Justice League Dark, Andrew Bennett is resurrected from the dead and given the powers that had once belonged to Cain, the first vampire, which essentially amount to arcane magical abilities inconceivable in their scope and their scale. Bennett has sent his human ally, Professor John Troughton, to notify the Van Helsings, an ancient order of vampire slayers, that he would like to speak with them in order to negotiate some sort of peace. Unfortunately for Andrew, the Van Helsings are on their way, but with different intentions, and Mary is willing to fight him to the death in order to reclaim her army.

The “most powerful being in the world” conceit shows up often in comics but usually fails to pack the dramatic punch that one would expect it to. This is because if said being is a hero, then you know the outcome of the story before you’ve read it, and if said being is a villain than the only two options are global annihilation, or the more likely revelation that they weren’t really all they were cracked up to be. It works perfectly, however, with the morally conflicted anti-hero of Andrew Bennett where the drama is all in waiting to see how he will use his power. It’s this moral gray area that Fialkov makes good use of in issue #10. He sets the story up by juxtaposing a philosophical discussion between Troughton and the leader of the Van Helsings about power and moral responsibility with images of the battle that is being waged between Mary and Andrew. As the leader ends the conversation and drops out of his airplane along his platoon of assassins and several tons of napalm on their way to destroy Bennett and 60% of the world’s vampire population, however, Fialkov comments poignantly on the futility of discourse in the face of passion and ideology.

Sorrentino’s artwork is breathtaking, but while reading this issue some of the finer points of that appeal became apparent to me. His contrasting use of heavy spaces of pitch black ink and very fine detailed lines lends a very ephemeral quality to his work which actually serves to imbue each panel with a profound sense of movement and urgency. In addition, his panel layouts are also unique and atypical. He employs two strategies throughout this issue: horizontal panels ranging from 4-7 panels per page and full-page images with smaller panels scattered loosely about. The horizontal panels create a powerful dramatic rhythm that, though I hate to reduce it to a film analogy, is akin to a well-executed shot / reverse shot sequence that builds tension only to cut away to a new scene, leaving the viewer in agonizing anticipation of the ultimate release. This technique was used to great effect in the noir films of the 40s and 50s and is perfectly suited to the dramatic horror of I, Vampire. The full-page images that Sorrentino crafts are largely silent and emphasize setting and scale, much like a traditional splash page, but instead of coming off as static, like splash pages often due, the emphasis of details or the inclusion of scattered panels Sorrentino’s work add a narrative umph! that prevents the rhythm of the drama from being disturbed, playing more like a bridge or a chorus than a rest. One example that was particularly striking actually reverses this concept. It is a two-page spread that presents sixteen panels showing close-ups of Mary and Andrew’s body parts engaged in sensual combat overlaid with a powerful image of Mary in viscous wolf form facing down a comparatively miniscule, but collected Bennett, juxtaposed again with the conversation between Troughton and the leader of the Van Helsings. All of these design techniques allow the creative team to effectively do what can only be done in comics, that is, the representation of static images that manage to move convincingly across time and space.

It can be intimidating to dive into a series like I, Vampire ten issues in when a single narrative strand has been ongoing since its inception, however, I think that new readers would find issue ten an exciting place to jump on board. There will be a few questions and finer points of the plot that won’t be explicitly restated, but the astute reader shouldn’t find it to be to prohibitive to enjoying the story. Despite loads of critical success, I,Vampire is still on the low end of the sales figures for DC’s current line-up so reader support will certainly make a difference, not to mention it will send the message that we would like to see more smart, attractive horror stories in the world of mainstream comics.

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Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: Saga #4

June 25, 2012

Saga #4

Writer: Brian K. Vaughan

Artist: Fiona Staples

Image Comics

 

It is once again the time of month to rave about Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ epic space opera Saga. Without question this is the most enjoyable thing I am currently reading and I find myself barely able to stand the wait between issues. In my earlier reviews I spoke about the way that Vaughan and Staples elegantly use both theme and style to explore archetypal contradictions and their unique ability to use the epic mode to explore the nuances of mundane relationships. These creators continue to build on these concepts with issue #4, which breaks its story into two narrative threads, one that follows Marko, Alana, their newborn daughter Hazel, and the alien ghost Izabel who has hitched a ride with them. With this type of expansive serialized story it is not necessarily important that each issue consists of a self-contained short-story style narrative, but a sensitive and thoughtful writer will still be able to convey a sense of cohesiveness by using the space to thoroughly explore a theme or concept with some sense of closure or revelation. Vaughan and Staples’ ability to do the latter better than almost any creators in the medium makes this series powerful and revelatory at every turn.

This issue employs perhaps the most effective use of Hazel’s future voice as the third person narrative yet in this series. Her third person voice does not overpower or drive the narrative in Saga rather it serves to unify the story stylistically while also providing a hopeful spirit that uplifts the story through its most heinous aspects – and this issue was wanting for hope since it features some of the grimmest and depraved sequences of the series so far.

Before returning us to the main narrative and concluding the cliffhanger from the previous installment, issue #4 opens in the decadent interstellar brothel known as “Sextillion,” and here we follow the ominous descent into depravity of The Will, one of the bounty hunters hired to find and kill Alana and Marko. Distraught after his encounter with The Stalk, another hired assassin sharing the same mission, who happens to be a former lover, The Will seeks to purge his despair in the abyss of licentiousness on offer at Sextillion. Meanwhile, across the galaxy Alana learns of Marko’s previous engagement and the two, now forced to deal with issues of trust and faithfulness that had yet to come up in their relationship and begin to realize, as Hazel so poignantly interjects from the future, “a good partnership takes work.”

It is tempting to outline the sequence of events in this issue in much more detail, but I can’t really go any further without taking the fun out of it for you. However, I will say that at the culmination of the narrative trajectories both Marko and The Will make some revelatory discoveries about their own human nature, the former learning that old habits may not be killed so easily and the latter learning that he is perhaps capable of compassion that he wouldn’t have previously thought possible.

I am constantly captivated by the personal depth of this story. It is rare to see characters, especially amidst such a fantastical landscape, that are so relatable not only in their struggles, but in their personalities, their dialog, their anxieties, and their dreams. These are characters that are not compelling because of wish fulfillment or cultural archetypes, but because they resonate on a deeply personal level. The way that Vaughan handles the challenges of parenting is not merely commendable but downright heroic. Too often parenting in popular media is presented through the glib lens of situational comedy, or the overblown frenzy of modern consumerist parenting trends, or just reduced to insincere idealistic or nightmare versions of what good/bad parenting looks like. Vaughan, on the other hand, presents the picture of parenting that everyone experiences, but no one discusses; it’s exactly this utterly mundane approach that makes the characters impossible not to adore. Alana struggles to learn how to nurse and burp her child, while Marko cringes at his daughter’s soiled cloth diapers. These experiences are real, but frequently left out when the portrayals of natural childbirth often involve the smiling mother slinging a newborn up to her breast to feed right after delivery as if it is second nature, but most who have actually been through the experience know that it is anything but. I can’t help but get excited each month to watch Marko and Alana grow as parents as I make the journey alongside them and get to be thankful that there aren’t any bounty hunters or imperial armies to contend with on my end. At least not yet.

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Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: Saucer Country #4

June 19, 2012

Saucer Country #4

Writer: Paul Cornell

Artist: Ryan Kelly

Vertigo Comics

 

I’m finally excited to put in a good word for this series. I’m generally a Paul Cornell fan and the concept behind this book is hard to resist – I believe the ad copy was saying something along the lines of “X-files meets The West Wing. “ I had also read an interview with Cornell in which he made some big statements about writing an epic for the body of U.F.O. mythology that has become a part of American culture. This all sounds delicious to fans of no frills classic sci-fi, but the only problem is the first three issues limped along and barely elaborated on this inviting premise.

The gist of the story is this: Arcadia Alvarado is a Hispanic governor of New Mexico who, at the beginning of the ongoing narrative, has announced that she will be running for president. At around the same time, unfortunately, she was abducted by aliens. The first few issues pretty much told this story and created a surprising lack of intrigue; it was hardly shaping up to be the ambitious and layered project promised in the promos. Presumably government conspiracies, psychological disorientation, interstellar threats were to come, but the readers were shown none of this until it finally arrived in satisfying, albeit small, doses in issue #4.

The three characters who we have been following separately for the first three issues finally converge in issue #4: Alvarado, her ex-husband, Michael, who was also present at the abduction, and Professor Kidd, a recently discredited Harvard professor with a personal interest in these events who is called in by Alvarado’s campaign as a U.F.O. consultant of sorts. When Kidd sits down with Alvarado and Michael to try to sort out their story the depth of the problem at hand becomes clear; due to the nature of U.F.O. abductions and the cultural lore attached to them it is impossible to differentiate the truth from fiction. This conceit seems to indicate what we can expect from the book in the future: a complex web of unstable perspectives, psychological traps and disinformation that will spin itself across relationships, events, and ideas. This issue signals a type of intelligent, over the top, genre storytelling in which anything can happen and the truth can shift at any time that, for whatever reason, seems to find itself most at home in the comics medium.

I hope that this series is able to continue for a long time. After reading the fourth issue I really do believe that Cornell has worked out a satisfying, long-winded, X-files type story arc that could be the vessel for some really fun and unique ideas. Hopefully the slow pace of the first three issues didn’t shake the chances of that happening. There’s a bit of a catch 22 to working in the ongoing serialized graphic novel format that Vertigo is well-known for:  In order for this type of narrative to really pay off the author needs space to develop characters, explore some of the more nuanced concepts, and build their world effectively, yet if each single issue doesn’t deliver a complete compelling narrative in its own right the sales won’t support the series and the creators will never get the chance to see it to fruition. The first trade paperback comes out in November and readers who are curious but not yet convinced may be tempted to wait until then, but the series will already be nine issues in and if the single issues don’t get the support they need it could already be on the chopping block – so pick up a copy! Honestly, you could start with issue four and be able to dive in without much problem, but I imagine a lot of shops still have, or can get the first three issues.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, I thought I’d leave you with a couple more aspects of this title that I expect will make it a compelling read in the weeks to come. First, there are some interesting real world political subtexts that are surfacing throughout the narrative, most notably the relationship between Alvarado’s alien abduction and her status as a literal alien. In an earlier issue it was suggested that the victims of alien abductions are often from the underprivileged and disenfranchised segments of society and in #4 Cornell uses the following piece of dialog to help characterize a sleazy conspiracy theorist who’s out to make headlines for himself: “The identities of the ones who took him from me check out, and they were kind of, you know – too brown to be men in black.” Second, Ryan Kelly shows some promising flairs in his artwork. His pencils are well done and evocative, if not terribly eye catching. However, he employs disorienting panel arrangements, sharply changing perspectives, and jarring facial expressions at strategic moments in a way that effectively creates a sense of anxiety and discomfort that is appropriate for the content of this narrative.

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Check This Out! – Comics Pick of the Week: Dial H #2

June 10, 2012

Dial H #2

Writer: China Miéville

Artist: Mateus Santolouco

DC Comics

 

For unfamiliar readers, China Miéville, author of this new DC title, is more famous as a fantasy/science fiction novelist who has become fairly prolific in his relatively short career. Known for his use of complex narratives, weird subject matter, and a radical political agenda in books like Perdido Street Station, and The City and the City, fans like myself have been quite curious to see what his take on an ongoing comic may look like. I had very high hopes, yet after last month’s issue #1 I wasn’t entirely satisfied. The concept of Dial H (based on the earlier DC series Dial H for Hero­­) is simple and absurd: an uninteresting, unimpressive, overweight nobody named Nelson discovers that when he dials the number 4376 (yep, that spells HERO) on a mysterious rotary dial pay phone near his apartment he turns into a superhero. Every time he dials the number he becomes a different hero; he doesn’t just get powers, he inherits a full-fledged identity complete with name, costume, and persona. Issue #1 gave us a little characterization, established the concept and called it a day, that’s pretty much what one expects from an issue #1, but still it left the Miéville fan in me wanting more. I knew the story would bust wide open at some point, it was just a matter of how long we would have to wait.

Only until issue #2, as it turns out, because this month things took some hairpin turns into the weird. This time around Miéville the only exposition comes in the first two pages as a means of telling us what Nelse has been up to since we saw him last and what he has learned about the magic phone booth. Miéville seems to be really having fun with creating new heroes for Nelse to inhabit since he jams eight of them into this issue alone with the mention of a ninth. The heroes he shows us are all very different but equally as absurd. Last month we were treated to Boy Chimney and Captain Lachrymose, after this month we can add Human Virus, Shamanticore, Pelican Army, Double Bluff, Hole Punch, Skeet, Rancid Ninja, Control-Alt-Delete, and Tank Snail to the list. But we also get a much more developed story, one that already has multiple plot strands, villains, and mysteries. I won’t bother with a full summary here but I’ll outline some of the key points: a string of unexplainable comas is breaking out across the city, a shadowy group of organized criminals is breaking into the homes of the coma victims, and the supervillain who seems to be pretty much running the show is a hulking Molluscoid monster who excretes poison ink from his tentacled fingers. Additionally, there have been hints that there is some more powerful and more sinister source that is behind both the comas and the pay phone, all of which should get more and more involving as it plays out over the course of a few more issues.

A big question surrounding this book was whether Miéville’s brand of radical social commentary would sneak onto the pages. DC’s mainstream titles generally steer clear of any obvious political bias, but the fact that Karen Berger of the Vertigo imprint would be editing this book seemed to keep the possibility open. In the end it has turned out as everyone probably expected; there is no explicit political agenda in the pages of Dial H, but that doesn’t mean that Miéville isn’t given the opportunity to express his typically dark and socially motivated sensibilities through themes of organized crime, poverty, and violence. In fact I don’t think it’s a stretch to point out the class critique inherent in issue #1’s main hero Boy Chimney, an empowered 19th century chimney sweep who used the soot and smoke of the city to fight against corruption.

Santolouco’s rough and gritty pencils also help to create the dirty urban underbelly that fans have come to expect from Miéville’s novels. At first I wasn’t sure how well suited Santolouco’s slightly exaggerated, scratchy style was to Miéville’s generally serious oeuvre, but it does work. With issue #2 I realized that Santolouco is more nuanced than I had originally thought, able to subtly switch styles to deal with a hyperbolically disheveled Nelson, a grotesquely detailed close-up, and an over the top action sequence depending on the desired effect of the scene. I also realized that this would be a different kind of Miéville than I was used to, many of the familiar elements are here, but it also has an absurdist tongue-in-cheek send up quality that I wasn’t used to. If you told me Miéville was going to be intentionally ironic in this book I wouldn’t have believed you, or I would have been disappointed, but he manages to do it without showing any disrespect to the genre – its more in tune with the unadulterated fun we are used to seeing from Grant Morrison. That’s right – those Brian Bolland covers aren’t the only similarity to Morrison’s work that this title can claim. Dial H shares much of the same good-natured fearlessness and creative risk-taking that has come to be expected from Morrison recently and that’s a big compliment to bestow upon a first foray into the comics world.

 

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