Post Awesome Things Month: Comic Reviews!
Aug. 1st, 2011 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoria*crosses fingers this will post*
I had a couple of noncomics related things I was gonna post, but then LJ was broken and then I forgot them, and then suddenly it was the end of July and I was like, crap! I wanted to post something else! And then last night I couldn't connect to the internet at ALL because I thought my wifi card in my laptop was broken. Except now it's working again, so who knows. But I have a USB wifi adapter in case it's on the fritz so whatever, I CLAIM THAT THIS WAS POSTED AT THE END OF JULY BECAUSE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
I also genuinely apologise to those of you who don't read comics or don't want to know what I think about them, but I fail at fighting it, so, you know, as always, please feel free to scroll on past and wait for the next vid/restart of the television season! I get that I'm posting stuff most of you are not interested in! :)
But! I have genuinely enjoyed Post Awesome Things Month as it's inspired me to use my LJ when otherwise I wouldn't have and I've enjoyed the other posts from other people doing it too, and yay for fighting summer LJ depression. So, since I enjoyed writing up my thoughts on Supergirl and Infinite Crisis the other week, so I figured I'd do it again for the comics I've been reading recently. (The astute among you may have noticed I haven't written anything up about Secret Six yes - that's because the final issue is coming out in a few days and I want to write something up about it when I have the whole series to consider).
Without futher ado: ILLUSTRATED REVIEWS!
Batgirl [Vol 3]
This comic runs about twenty-five issues and follows Stephanie Brown as she takes over the Batgirl role from the much better qualified and respected Cassandra Cain. The thing I like about this comic is its wild optimism. And it's not naivety. You can't have optimism, really, without being in a situation that requires it. I'm only tangentially aware of Stephanie's life story before this comics - that she was a third-rate self-created superhero trying to fix the mess her criminal dad was making; that she was always almost good enough, and that eventually, it almost killed her. And the start of her story in this series is about how no one thinks she can do this, how everyone wants her to go home before she winds up dead. It'd be really easy for this to turn into something bitter, or dark, or angsty, but it doesn't. The focus is on how she keeps getting up, never on how she gets knocked down. She has a light touch that adds a sense of poignancy rather than tragedy to the fact Gotham doesn't treat anyone kindly.
Steph's character is the best example of this, but it spreads out into the rest of the comic too. One of my favourite arcs is fairly early on in the series, when Dick Grayson!Batman and Damian Wayne!Robin show up and there's this really great sequence where Steph and Damian have been sent for a "time out" for squabbling like kids, and Dick's screaming at Babs about how it's irresponsible for her to be training Steph while Babs is yelling that he should take a look at Damian and there's this faux-family set up with Dick and Babs as the parents, except in the middle of it, there's this beat where one of them brings up Bruce Wayne (who is currently dead; and while I know the point of that arc was always that he'd come back, I really wish he'd stayed dead longer - the interactions of everyone around that fact were so interesting). Anyway, suddenly it's Dick and Babs who are the squabbling kids, orphaned, and trying to set an example, and not knowing how to fill the space their (metaphorical) father left behind. And it's funny, and it's also sad, and it's...hopeful because Dick and Babs are trying, and Stephanie and Damian are there to learn.
Plus at times it's hilarious:
And at times it's plain adorable:
ETA: I did also mean to mention that while I really think it's important to have more representation of people with disabilities in comics (in particular, I think that the effects of removing Oracle's physical disability in the reboot could be viewed more in the context of the poor representational issues that were involved in the original choice to have the Joker shoot her in the spine, were she not, basically, the only physically disabled person in DC comics and therefore in the position of being all things to all people), I was not 100% sold on the storyline with Proxy. While my gut reaction was to miss Oracle like crazy, I get wanting to give Batgirl her own Ops person back at base. I also get the idea of Barbara helping another character go through something similar to her own experiences, there was just something too on the nose about the way Proxy is in such an identical situation; it feels contrived. If she'd been a boy, or become physically disabled in some different way that nonetheless rendered her unable to pursue a career as a superhero, I think I'd've been more comfortable with it? As it was, it sort of felt a bit like, "Well, you're in a wheelchair now; you have absolutely no signs of any particular aptitude with technology, but um, here, be Oracle II cus that's what you're good for."
It's basically my only criticism of this book, and I don't hate it or anything, I just think it would have been an interesting chance to either introduce a character with a different disability/demographic OR to show someone in a very similar situation to Oracle dealing with it differently and continuing to be a different type of hero. Anyway, there's that. /ETA.
Batwoman [Detective Comics]
So, first off, this book is gorgeous, I mean, just look at that art. It's one of the most beautiful comics I've seen - but I'll get to the art in a moment. First off, I'll talk about the character and the storylines. I had this book really highly recommended to me by numerous people, and I wasn't disappointed, though that said, I don't think I love it as much as many do. That's partially a comment on my personal tastes in story, though.
What I think is brilliant about it is Kate's character and origin story and the relationship she has with her father. Firstly, I really like that she has, to be honest, a really sympathetic an solid reason to be out and about in a cape. She tried to serve and was prevented (she was discharged from the army under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" because she wouldn't lie to save her career) and found herself adrift. And I like that she has a really strong, positive relationship with her military father, which is so often shorthand for a poor father. And I really believed that he - on finding out that Kate was out being a vigilante at night - would be furious with her, but would respond when she points out that he has his uniform, he can act on his sense of duty; what is there for her? With that, it's really touching to watch him help her, call in his old contacts to get her gear and training, help out with intel, make sure if she's doing this, it's safe and right, and Kate interacts with her costume much more as a uniform, which isn't a new notion, but is very well executed here.
So I really appreciate that aspect of the character, and just generally she's compelling and interesting, and hey, as icing on the cake she has a fucking practical costume and isn't fighting crime in a swimsuit or a cheerleading outfit.
The actual story she's in is probably where I part company with common wisdom, in that I really liked it, but I wasn't head over heels in love with it. It was strong, and I think it sowed the seeds of storylines that in future could pack real emotional punch. But there was something faintly...unoriginal about Alice, to be honest. I understand the desire to give Batwoman a powerful adversary; to build up a Joker to her Batman, and I applaud that. But we've been inventing (or merely revisiting) "dark" versions of Alice in Wonderland for so long it's almost cliche, and this is well-executed but not groundbreaking. The same as the ultimate revelation of Alice's true identity. It has a lot of promise. But I cared more about it in terms of how it rebounded on Kate's relationships to other characters than the ongoing plot. I was impressed that Alice only speaks in lines from the book, and yet manages to carry a conversation; that's something that elevated the idea above simple cliche, sure, but ultimately, I'm left saying, "Yes, that was good," but not, "Holy fuck, that was amazing."
THE ART, however, is a whole 'nother story. There just aren't enough good things in the world I can say about the art in this comic. I'd be interested enough in the story without the awesome art that I'd be happy to give it a go in the relaunch in September (and I will be getting it), but with art like this I could bloody hate it, and I'd still pick it up just to look at the gorgeous imagery.
The picture I posted above is a good example of the general style when she's out and Batwomanning about. The focus on the bright red of her costume and hair - and of blood - is consistent throughout and it's just so striking. It's a real unifying factor throughout the comic, but the colouring and the style shifts depending on what's going on. So, for instance in this sequence - you can see the bottom panels are Kate during the day, when the colouring is much warmer; it shifts more towards orange-yellow-red rather than blacks and blues with angry red splashes. Then the upper part is a less common, though the watercolour style does make several appearances for memory and hallucination, plus it's pretty:
Then, the parts of the story that take place in the past adopt this kind of oldskool pencil style with very sparse colouring - though again with the red as a recurring theme:
There's a lot of really interesting panel design in this too. I mean, I'm hardly a comics expert, and also it's kind of hard to show a lot of the more interesting panelwork because they're big whole-page spreads, but here's an example of what I'm talking about -
So here we have Alice slipping a poisoned razor out of her own mouth and slicing up Kate's cheek, at which point she begins tripping balls. And like, the actual panels start deteriorating at the corners there, and then in the following pages they deform further and start falling horizontally down the page over larger background splash pages of you know, tripping balls.
So yes. ART. FANTABULOUS.
Batgirl: Year One
This is a graphic novel featuring Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. At first I wasn't sure of the art style but I ended up really digging it. It's a good story and sets up Babs' character really well. There are a lot of great touches, like how she originally dresses in the bat costume at a fancy dress party to wind up her father who finds the Batman frustrating, as a sort of in-joke to no one but herself, not out of hero worship. I like that her original plan was to get in touch with Black Canary, who of course she'd respect more. Killer Moth was a good mix of sinister and ridiculous as a villain and the above picture is one of my favourite parts - when Batman challenges her to justify her desire to be a superhero and at first she can't answer. But I love how she denies that's a reason to dismiss her. Most of the batfamily heroes have fairly personally tragic backstories that propel them into this life, but Babs really doesn't - she does it because she's smart and capable, because she can and so it would be irresponsible of her not to. It's interesting in that her reasons for being a hero are far closer to Clark Kent than Bruce Wayne.
Power Girl
I read Power Girl because K picked up the two first graphic novels for cheaps and told me they were hilarious and really sweet so I read them and he was SO RIGHT. I liked them so much I tried reading the stuff that came after (another twelve issues or so), but the writer/artist team had changed and the tone was really different and like, it didn't wreck the character or anything, but it was clear they were trying to move in a different direction and it just took everything that was unique and awesome about the book and turned it into yet another superhero comic with some quipping.
So, reviewing strictly the first twelve issues, it's great to see Power Girl getting her own series, and I really love the approach the writers took. This is basically a cracked out sitcom where the villains have sidekicks that are actual badgers, crazy space princesses accidentally invade New York, and Power Girl has to save her best friend's brain from being put into the body of an Albino Gorilla. It's pulpy, it's ridiculous and it has real heart.
Amanda Connor's art is cartoony but extremely expressive - her facial expressions and body language are brilliant - and hits just the right tone for the series. I think the lighter aspect of it was the right decision for the character too, because, let's face it, this is the character who ended up with enormous tits because years ago an artist decided to draw them bigger every issue and see if anyone noticed, taking on a legacy like that with a certain amount of self-referential sarcasm and irony is apt. My brief experiences with Power Girl are that her most consistent characterisation is that she's pretty damn practical but whether this comes with lighthearded humour or more stoic sternness is the bigger question, and honestly, it's more unusual to go with the first type and more fun. It's kind of why I disliked the change after the creative team shifted. The humour was still there - hence my statement that it didn't wreck anything - but they were trying to make it a bit more serious and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that except...it makes it less different, less interesting, less unique, and frankly makes her a bit more like an older Supergirl than herself - and making sure Power Girl and Supergirl are different characters is always a thing to bear in mind.
Anyway, back to the early part of the run that I loved. Power Girl has this sidekick named Terra (another casualty of the creative team change - she doesn't die or anything she just stops showing up; which makes me sad because I suspect it means that most of the comic buying public didn't want to buy a happy, cracky comic about Girls who are Friends). Anyway, Terra is from some subterranean city and has only just joined the modern world, so there are several sequences when Karen (Power Girl) is taking Atlee (Terra) round and about and like, just...showing her around the world and hanging out with her and it's adorable. Like when she takes her to a teen slasher movie!
And then later, they end up getting high on emotion bikinis (it's a long story) talking about how much they like each other:
I AM CHARMED.
Detective Comics - James Gordon Jr storyline
I've also been reading the very recent Scott Snyder-penned Detective Comics run. Specifically here I want to talk about the storyline about Commissioner Gordon's son, James Jr.
I have really conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand, it's chillingly written - really atmospheric, and challenging in ways that stories ought to be challenging. Batman is a character who fights the mentally ill, overwhelmingly. I think it wouldn't be stretching it to suggest that the real horror of Gotham is that it drives people into mental illness. But the ideas around that - whether the villains Batman is putting away are going to Blackgate Prison or Arkham Asylum - are (in my limited experience) fairly rarely explored.
The question of James Jr, a psychopath by virtue of brain chemistry, is an inherently uncomfortable one. His inability to connect to the moral framework of the world is a disability as real as Barbara's inability to walk, but his choices are still his own; he is still responsible.
There's also just the fact that it's freaky as hell and the Batverse is something I enjoy best when it's creepy detective horror and dark legends rather than beating up criminals and busting gangs. It's a terrible and interesting thing to throw at Barbara Gordon and her father, James Sr, and I enjoy the way it highlights their relationship, which is understated but powerful and sometimes tense. It's interesting the way it brings out The Joker as the villain of the Gordon family in many ways much more than he has ever been a villain for Batman, on a personal level.
On the other side of that, I'm...not entirely convinced of the worth of giving Commissioner Gordon a psychopathic villain for a son. I'm not totally convinced that Barbara wouldn't have found him in the intervening years if it was the case. Though, if she hadn't, then her wariness and quiet refusal to be fooled is perfect. But, as I said, there's a point at which we get back to the reasons I am wary of soaps (and comics are soaps, just soaps I'm less wary of because there is SPACE involved) - eventually everything turns to ash.
I want to say, we don't need this character to be James Gordon's son, but of course we do. With no one else is it as uncomfortable and real, and if it's not those things, it's another story about a psychopath and it's easy.
Which brings me to the part where it turns out he's working against his own interests - he's lying when he says he wants to be cured, he doesn't, he's a monster. And that's where I lose the thread of complexity and am not sure what the story is saying, if anything. It's easy, and maybe correct, to argue that this makes it easy. We lock him in Arkham. He is a monster. We ignore the difficult questions we had to confront earlier when the possibility that he was a law-abiding psychopath was still plausible and all we had to do was live with the uncertainty of what he'd done before. He's a bad apple, rotten to the core, has been since he was a kid.
But equally, the biological nature of his condition has been carefully highlighted by the writer. That he connects to the world in a profoundly wrong way is still shown to be a failure of his brain chemistry not necessarily his upbringing and that doesn't disappear just because he's not fighting it the way we wish he would. So, really, is this easier?
Which is where the part where he's James Gordon's son comes in; if he wasn't, we wouldn't trust that he'd had a childhood that was, if not amazing, at least solid and secure and nonabusive. Certainly if Snyder is going to play the, "he's a villain afterall!" card, we need that more personal connection to make us care, via the Commissioner, via Babs, about what's going on. To have the time and inclination to ask the nature/nurture/responsibility questions. Would we, if it was just some murderer Nightwing caught on a Tuesday in October?
I don't know. I'm not convinced it's a thoughtful treatment of mental health in a franchise that is begging for one, both because it would be socially responsible and because the setting is so rich, it's narratively perfect to do so. But I'm also not convinced it's a tone-deaf offensive rendering. I'm not sure that I think it's worth giving Jim Gordon a psychotic son, but I also don't think the story would work if it was anyone else. And...I do think writing-wise, and tone-wise, it's a very good story; I can't fault it on that level.
A brief note on the art - it was hard to find stuff that would make a good illustration, so I've just gone with the cover, but most of it's told in this simple, almost retro style which is a little unusual and also works well given the way it ties back to childhood and the past of the characters, and also given that it's a brutally grounded story in an otherwise fantastical world. It's the mild-mannered psychopath of art? ;) It's got strong colouring too, though. The way the sickly greens mix with the streetlamp yellows and oranges makes it feel like a late-night city in the rain.
REVIEWS CONCLUDED!
I had a couple of noncomics related things I was gonna post, but then LJ was broken and then I forgot them, and then suddenly it was the end of July and I was like, crap! I wanted to post something else! And then last night I couldn't connect to the internet at ALL because I thought my wifi card in my laptop was broken. Except now it's working again, so who knows. But I have a USB wifi adapter in case it's on the fritz so whatever, I CLAIM THAT THIS WAS POSTED AT THE END OF JULY BECAUSE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
I also genuinely apologise to those of you who don't read comics or don't want to know what I think about them, but I fail at fighting it, so, you know, as always, please feel free to scroll on past and wait for the next vid/restart of the television season! I get that I'm posting stuff most of you are not interested in! :)
But! I have genuinely enjoyed Post Awesome Things Month as it's inspired me to use my LJ when otherwise I wouldn't have and I've enjoyed the other posts from other people doing it too, and yay for fighting summer LJ depression. So, since I enjoyed writing up my thoughts on Supergirl and Infinite Crisis the other week, so I figured I'd do it again for the comics I've been reading recently. (The astute among you may have noticed I haven't written anything up about Secret Six yes - that's because the final issue is coming out in a few days and I want to write something up about it when I have the whole series to consider).
Without futher ado: ILLUSTRATED REVIEWS!
Batgirl [Vol 3]
This comic runs about twenty-five issues and follows Stephanie Brown as she takes over the Batgirl role from the much better qualified and respected Cassandra Cain. The thing I like about this comic is its wild optimism. And it's not naivety. You can't have optimism, really, without being in a situation that requires it. I'm only tangentially aware of Stephanie's life story before this comics - that she was a third-rate self-created superhero trying to fix the mess her criminal dad was making; that she was always almost good enough, and that eventually, it almost killed her. And the start of her story in this series is about how no one thinks she can do this, how everyone wants her to go home before she winds up dead. It'd be really easy for this to turn into something bitter, or dark, or angsty, but it doesn't. The focus is on how she keeps getting up, never on how she gets knocked down. She has a light touch that adds a sense of poignancy rather than tragedy to the fact Gotham doesn't treat anyone kindly.
Steph's character is the best example of this, but it spreads out into the rest of the comic too. One of my favourite arcs is fairly early on in the series, when Dick Grayson!Batman and Damian Wayne!Robin show up and there's this really great sequence where Steph and Damian have been sent for a "time out" for squabbling like kids, and Dick's screaming at Babs about how it's irresponsible for her to be training Steph while Babs is yelling that he should take a look at Damian and there's this faux-family set up with Dick and Babs as the parents, except in the middle of it, there's this beat where one of them brings up Bruce Wayne (who is currently dead; and while I know the point of that arc was always that he'd come back, I really wish he'd stayed dead longer - the interactions of everyone around that fact were so interesting). Anyway, suddenly it's Dick and Babs who are the squabbling kids, orphaned, and trying to set an example, and not knowing how to fill the space their (metaphorical) father left behind. And it's funny, and it's also sad, and it's...hopeful because Dick and Babs are trying, and Stephanie and Damian are there to learn.
Plus at times it's hilarious:
And at times it's plain adorable:
ETA: I did also mean to mention that while I really think it's important to have more representation of people with disabilities in comics (in particular, I think that the effects of removing Oracle's physical disability in the reboot could be viewed more in the context of the poor representational issues that were involved in the original choice to have the Joker shoot her in the spine, were she not, basically, the only physically disabled person in DC comics and therefore in the position of being all things to all people), I was not 100% sold on the storyline with Proxy. While my gut reaction was to miss Oracle like crazy, I get wanting to give Batgirl her own Ops person back at base. I also get the idea of Barbara helping another character go through something similar to her own experiences, there was just something too on the nose about the way Proxy is in such an identical situation; it feels contrived. If she'd been a boy, or become physically disabled in some different way that nonetheless rendered her unable to pursue a career as a superhero, I think I'd've been more comfortable with it? As it was, it sort of felt a bit like, "Well, you're in a wheelchair now; you have absolutely no signs of any particular aptitude with technology, but um, here, be Oracle II cus that's what you're good for."
It's basically my only criticism of this book, and I don't hate it or anything, I just think it would have been an interesting chance to either introduce a character with a different disability/demographic OR to show someone in a very similar situation to Oracle dealing with it differently and continuing to be a different type of hero. Anyway, there's that. /ETA.
Batwoman [Detective Comics]
So, first off, this book is gorgeous, I mean, just look at that art. It's one of the most beautiful comics I've seen - but I'll get to the art in a moment. First off, I'll talk about the character and the storylines. I had this book really highly recommended to me by numerous people, and I wasn't disappointed, though that said, I don't think I love it as much as many do. That's partially a comment on my personal tastes in story, though.
What I think is brilliant about it is Kate's character and origin story and the relationship she has with her father. Firstly, I really like that she has, to be honest, a really sympathetic an solid reason to be out and about in a cape. She tried to serve and was prevented (she was discharged from the army under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" because she wouldn't lie to save her career) and found herself adrift. And I like that she has a really strong, positive relationship with her military father, which is so often shorthand for a poor father. And I really believed that he - on finding out that Kate was out being a vigilante at night - would be furious with her, but would respond when she points out that he has his uniform, he can act on his sense of duty; what is there for her? With that, it's really touching to watch him help her, call in his old contacts to get her gear and training, help out with intel, make sure if she's doing this, it's safe and right, and Kate interacts with her costume much more as a uniform, which isn't a new notion, but is very well executed here.
So I really appreciate that aspect of the character, and just generally she's compelling and interesting, and hey, as icing on the cake she has a fucking practical costume and isn't fighting crime in a swimsuit or a cheerleading outfit.
The actual story she's in is probably where I part company with common wisdom, in that I really liked it, but I wasn't head over heels in love with it. It was strong, and I think it sowed the seeds of storylines that in future could pack real emotional punch. But there was something faintly...unoriginal about Alice, to be honest. I understand the desire to give Batwoman a powerful adversary; to build up a Joker to her Batman, and I applaud that. But we've been inventing (or merely revisiting) "dark" versions of Alice in Wonderland for so long it's almost cliche, and this is well-executed but not groundbreaking. The same as the ultimate revelation of Alice's true identity. It has a lot of promise. But I cared more about it in terms of how it rebounded on Kate's relationships to other characters than the ongoing plot. I was impressed that Alice only speaks in lines from the book, and yet manages to carry a conversation; that's something that elevated the idea above simple cliche, sure, but ultimately, I'm left saying, "Yes, that was good," but not, "Holy fuck, that was amazing."
THE ART, however, is a whole 'nother story. There just aren't enough good things in the world I can say about the art in this comic. I'd be interested enough in the story without the awesome art that I'd be happy to give it a go in the relaunch in September (and I will be getting it), but with art like this I could bloody hate it, and I'd still pick it up just to look at the gorgeous imagery.
The picture I posted above is a good example of the general style when she's out and Batwomanning about. The focus on the bright red of her costume and hair - and of blood - is consistent throughout and it's just so striking. It's a real unifying factor throughout the comic, but the colouring and the style shifts depending on what's going on. So, for instance in this sequence - you can see the bottom panels are Kate during the day, when the colouring is much warmer; it shifts more towards orange-yellow-red rather than blacks and blues with angry red splashes. Then the upper part is a less common, though the watercolour style does make several appearances for memory and hallucination, plus it's pretty:
Then, the parts of the story that take place in the past adopt this kind of oldskool pencil style with very sparse colouring - though again with the red as a recurring theme:
There's a lot of really interesting panel design in this too. I mean, I'm hardly a comics expert, and also it's kind of hard to show a lot of the more interesting panelwork because they're big whole-page spreads, but here's an example of what I'm talking about -
So here we have Alice slipping a poisoned razor out of her own mouth and slicing up Kate's cheek, at which point she begins tripping balls. And like, the actual panels start deteriorating at the corners there, and then in the following pages they deform further and start falling horizontally down the page over larger background splash pages of you know, tripping balls.
So yes. ART. FANTABULOUS.
Batgirl: Year One
This is a graphic novel featuring Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. At first I wasn't sure of the art style but I ended up really digging it. It's a good story and sets up Babs' character really well. There are a lot of great touches, like how she originally dresses in the bat costume at a fancy dress party to wind up her father who finds the Batman frustrating, as a sort of in-joke to no one but herself, not out of hero worship. I like that her original plan was to get in touch with Black Canary, who of course she'd respect more. Killer Moth was a good mix of sinister and ridiculous as a villain and the above picture is one of my favourite parts - when Batman challenges her to justify her desire to be a superhero and at first she can't answer. But I love how she denies that's a reason to dismiss her. Most of the batfamily heroes have fairly personally tragic backstories that propel them into this life, but Babs really doesn't - she does it because she's smart and capable, because she can and so it would be irresponsible of her not to. It's interesting in that her reasons for being a hero are far closer to Clark Kent than Bruce Wayne.
Power Girl
I read Power Girl because K picked up the two first graphic novels for cheaps and told me they were hilarious and really sweet so I read them and he was SO RIGHT. I liked them so much I tried reading the stuff that came after (another twelve issues or so), but the writer/artist team had changed and the tone was really different and like, it didn't wreck the character or anything, but it was clear they were trying to move in a different direction and it just took everything that was unique and awesome about the book and turned it into yet another superhero comic with some quipping.
So, reviewing strictly the first twelve issues, it's great to see Power Girl getting her own series, and I really love the approach the writers took. This is basically a cracked out sitcom where the villains have sidekicks that are actual badgers, crazy space princesses accidentally invade New York, and Power Girl has to save her best friend's brain from being put into the body of an Albino Gorilla. It's pulpy, it's ridiculous and it has real heart.
Amanda Connor's art is cartoony but extremely expressive - her facial expressions and body language are brilliant - and hits just the right tone for the series. I think the lighter aspect of it was the right decision for the character too, because, let's face it, this is the character who ended up with enormous tits because years ago an artist decided to draw them bigger every issue and see if anyone noticed, taking on a legacy like that with a certain amount of self-referential sarcasm and irony is apt. My brief experiences with Power Girl are that her most consistent characterisation is that she's pretty damn practical but whether this comes with lighthearded humour or more stoic sternness is the bigger question, and honestly, it's more unusual to go with the first type and more fun. It's kind of why I disliked the change after the creative team shifted. The humour was still there - hence my statement that it didn't wreck anything - but they were trying to make it a bit more serious and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that except...it makes it less different, less interesting, less unique, and frankly makes her a bit more like an older Supergirl than herself - and making sure Power Girl and Supergirl are different characters is always a thing to bear in mind.
Anyway, back to the early part of the run that I loved. Power Girl has this sidekick named Terra (another casualty of the creative team change - she doesn't die or anything she just stops showing up; which makes me sad because I suspect it means that most of the comic buying public didn't want to buy a happy, cracky comic about Girls who are Friends). Anyway, Terra is from some subterranean city and has only just joined the modern world, so there are several sequences when Karen (Power Girl) is taking Atlee (Terra) round and about and like, just...showing her around the world and hanging out with her and it's adorable. Like when she takes her to a teen slasher movie!
And then later, they end up getting high on emotion bikinis (it's a long story) talking about how much they like each other:
I AM CHARMED.
Detective Comics - James Gordon Jr storyline
I've also been reading the very recent Scott Snyder-penned Detective Comics run. Specifically here I want to talk about the storyline about Commissioner Gordon's son, James Jr.
I have really conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand, it's chillingly written - really atmospheric, and challenging in ways that stories ought to be challenging. Batman is a character who fights the mentally ill, overwhelmingly. I think it wouldn't be stretching it to suggest that the real horror of Gotham is that it drives people into mental illness. But the ideas around that - whether the villains Batman is putting away are going to Blackgate Prison or Arkham Asylum - are (in my limited experience) fairly rarely explored.
The question of James Jr, a psychopath by virtue of brain chemistry, is an inherently uncomfortable one. His inability to connect to the moral framework of the world is a disability as real as Barbara's inability to walk, but his choices are still his own; he is still responsible.
There's also just the fact that it's freaky as hell and the Batverse is something I enjoy best when it's creepy detective horror and dark legends rather than beating up criminals and busting gangs. It's a terrible and interesting thing to throw at Barbara Gordon and her father, James Sr, and I enjoy the way it highlights their relationship, which is understated but powerful and sometimes tense. It's interesting the way it brings out The Joker as the villain of the Gordon family in many ways much more than he has ever been a villain for Batman, on a personal level.
On the other side of that, I'm...not entirely convinced of the worth of giving Commissioner Gordon a psychopathic villain for a son. I'm not totally convinced that Barbara wouldn't have found him in the intervening years if it was the case. Though, if she hadn't, then her wariness and quiet refusal to be fooled is perfect. But, as I said, there's a point at which we get back to the reasons I am wary of soaps (and comics are soaps, just soaps I'm less wary of because there is SPACE involved) - eventually everything turns to ash.
I want to say, we don't need this character to be James Gordon's son, but of course we do. With no one else is it as uncomfortable and real, and if it's not those things, it's another story about a psychopath and it's easy.
Which brings me to the part where it turns out he's working against his own interests - he's lying when he says he wants to be cured, he doesn't, he's a monster. And that's where I lose the thread of complexity and am not sure what the story is saying, if anything. It's easy, and maybe correct, to argue that this makes it easy. We lock him in Arkham. He is a monster. We ignore the difficult questions we had to confront earlier when the possibility that he was a law-abiding psychopath was still plausible and all we had to do was live with the uncertainty of what he'd done before. He's a bad apple, rotten to the core, has been since he was a kid.
But equally, the biological nature of his condition has been carefully highlighted by the writer. That he connects to the world in a profoundly wrong way is still shown to be a failure of his brain chemistry not necessarily his upbringing and that doesn't disappear just because he's not fighting it the way we wish he would. So, really, is this easier?
Which is where the part where he's James Gordon's son comes in; if he wasn't, we wouldn't trust that he'd had a childhood that was, if not amazing, at least solid and secure and nonabusive. Certainly if Snyder is going to play the, "he's a villain afterall!" card, we need that more personal connection to make us care, via the Commissioner, via Babs, about what's going on. To have the time and inclination to ask the nature/nurture/responsibility questions. Would we, if it was just some murderer Nightwing caught on a Tuesday in October?
I don't know. I'm not convinced it's a thoughtful treatment of mental health in a franchise that is begging for one, both because it would be socially responsible and because the setting is so rich, it's narratively perfect to do so. But I'm also not convinced it's a tone-deaf offensive rendering. I'm not sure that I think it's worth giving Jim Gordon a psychotic son, but I also don't think the story would work if it was anyone else. And...I do think writing-wise, and tone-wise, it's a very good story; I can't fault it on that level.
A brief note on the art - it was hard to find stuff that would make a good illustration, so I've just gone with the cover, but most of it's told in this simple, almost retro style which is a little unusual and also works well given the way it ties back to childhood and the past of the characters, and also given that it's a brutally grounded story in an otherwise fantastical world. It's the mild-mannered psychopath of art? ;) It's got strong colouring too, though. The way the sickly greens mix with the streetlamp yellows and oranges makes it feel like a late-night city in the rain.
REVIEWS CONCLUDED!
