Comic Bytes

Some little bite-size reviews/comments. So with a little nod to the Fast Show, this week I have mostly been reading:

Loki Agent of Asgard #16

Writer: Al Ewing

Artist: Lee Garbett

Colour Artist: Atonio Fabela

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

 This carries on in the same light-hearted, fun fashion already established, as the battle between the forces of Asgard and the old Loki and his allies comes to a conclusion of sorts, in which the new Loki has a decisive part to play. It's not often a super-hero comic makes me smile when I'm reading it nowadays (they all seem so serious, po-faced and grim) but Loki, together with Ms Marvel, has me grinning from ear to ear. Take this from Sigurd the First Hero to Queen Freyja and the other deceased Asgardian gods:

Sigurd: We also bring tokens of our fealty from our long sojourn on Midgard.

Sigurd: The mortals believe these, when worn, confer the heroic magic know as...”cool.”

Queen Freyja (donning sunglasses): I see. Well then heroes...let us ride.

If that doesn't at least raise a little smirk then you officially have no sense of humour.

Beneath all this there seems to be a serious comment on the modern day insistence on binary stances which allow for no shades of grey, no overlapping on any Venn diagrams (e.g. you're either Tory or Labour, football managers are either great, when they're winning, or awful, when they lose, etc.) Loki is neither for one side nor the other. There's also appears to be some meta-textual theme being played with here with Loki as the god of stories. We'll see how that develops but it is being handled with a delightful lightness of touch, which is something Ales Kot needs to develop. This leads nicely into the other comic I've been reading this week.

Zero Volume 4: Who By Fire

Writer: Ales Kot

Artists: Ian Bertram

      Stathis Tsemberlidis

      Robert Sammelin

      Tula Lotay

Colours: Jordie Bellaire

Letters: Clayton Cowles

This has been a good series, and this is an interesting conclusion. What it all means I have no idea and will spend some time mulling it over. This started out as a science fiction war/black ops book rooted in the international political situation of current times. The use of different artists throughout has been well handled and added to the overall effect the book had on the reader. This final collection changes none of that but adds a strange meta-textual twist to it as it intertwines the tale with William Burroughs, who appears to be writing the tale, or some of the tale, or commenting on the tale with Allen Ginsberg. All the while there is a metaphor for the violence inherent in man, and whether this can be removed or is something we need to learn to accept and learn to live with and limit. The shift is slightly jarring but one has to believe that the writer had it in mind from the beginning.

There is little doubt that Ales Kot is an ambitious writer, striving to move the comics form on, and Zero has been largely a successful series. The main fault I find with this concluding volume is that it reads less like moving the form forward, and more like moving it back to ape the worst of Grant Morrison's excesses. There is also a fault with the series overall in that humour is definitely lacking. Even in the heaviest tale, in fact especially in the heaviest, darkest stories, you need that humour to help lighten things. It gives the reader a sense of relief and, more importantly, it serves to emphasise the darkness, to make it more effective, by acting as a contrast. It's an old trick (Shakespeare used it in every tragedy he wrote) but it works and works well. Without it a book can start to feel dragged down by the weight of it's own portentousness.

All this is not to say that Zero is a bad book. It is well worth picking up and has some fine moments, but don't expect too much from the whole package. Definitely a case of the parts outweighing the while, but having said that most of the parts are damn good.