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.

Capsule Review: Fatale #16 (Image)

Write: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Phillips
Colours: Elizabeth Breitweiser

It’s the nineties and Jo has amnesia and has shacked up with a dysfunctional grunge band. Lance, our main protagonist, is robbing banks to fund the making of a video he hopes will help get them back on track. The singer is based, a little too obviously, on Syd Barrett as he starts to lose his mind and talent. There are others, a guitarist who suffers from nightmares, a practicing doctor and the singer’s girlfriend. I think that is what their roles are. The guitarist is a definite as it is shown in this issue, but the other two just are not memorable enough for me to care what relationship they have to the story. Meanwhile a serial killer with a predilection for necrophilia is hunting for Jo, having previously believed that he’d killed her and that her fresh corpse was waiting for him back in his lair.

Jo seems a little more manipulative than we’ve previously seen, and that makes her character somewhat unpleasant and difficult to empathise with. Sean Phillips turns in another excellent issue of art, his tone retaining and emphasising the dread atmosphere, beautifully supported by the palette of Elizabeth Breitweiser. His portrayal of Jo is perfect, keeping her alluring and sensual without showing too much. This is no titillating pornographic comic. Still there is one misstep when the scene switches to Darcy, the singer’s girlfriend, and we see her on the toilet, knickers around her knees. I’m no prude but I’m not sure what purpose this panel serves. Is it just to try to be edgy (which it isn’t)? There are any number of images that could be used so why this one? We’ve not seen anyone else on the loo; it isn’t a slice of life story where the protagonist wants to bare all; there has been no horror or threat focused on the loo (or if there has been I’ve missed it);  Darcy isn’t even a particular focus of the story thus far. It just seems a little gratuitous and lets the whole thing down somewhat.

As accomplished as it is, I have some reservations about Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Fatale at the moment. Originally this was meant to be a twelve issue series, before Ed Brubaker extended it to an ongoing series. Unfortunately it is starting to seem a little stretched, and I’m unsure as to how much life this particular concept has in it. We’re only on chapter two, so things may change, but up to now this seems like, yet again, Jo is going to mesmerise the men around her, and the men will meet a sticky end and likely will never be the same again. I’ve loved this series, but the story needs a resolution unless there is some major development. Otherwise we could be another sixteen issues down the line and reading about some men falling for Jo and coming to a sticky end again, and again, and again….That failure to live up to its original promise would be the real horror.

Fatale (Image)

Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artists: Sean Phillips

There has been a bit of an internet buzz about some mainstream comics since DC launched their New 52 last year, stealing some of Marvel's thunder, for which they only have the rather insipid and frat boy Avengers vs X-Men as an answer (and we're talking comics here, not films so the Avengers movie doesn't count in this context). However not everything notable about the DC relaunch has been for the better. There have been some well executed comics, particularly Action Comics, Animal Man and All Star Western, but there has also been a good deal of concern about sexist attitudes coming through in their depiction of certain female characters. Let us not forget that they have also let Rob Liefeld write one of the regular series who, although he may be a nice enough person who can deliver flashy, if poorly executed artwork, has never learned even the rudiments of how to write, and possibly never thought that it is a skill that you have to learn.

Ironically amongst all this, the comic that has been arguably the runaway success story is from the company Liefeld help set up in direct competition with Marvel and DC. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips seem to have been on a determined mission to show the world that literate, articulate crime stories the equal of books by Hammett, Chandler, Ellroy and Rankin, can be told within the comics medium. In Fatale they have added Lovecraftian horror to these stories to great effect.

When it comes to detective fiction, comics have one great advantage over both films and novels in that it is easy to refer back to earlier parts of the text to understand something brought to light later on, or to clarify something a character said, or to understand some subtle relationship one character may have to another. This means that ultimately, in the hands of skilled creators, these comic stories can be denser and more complex than anything delivered in other media. Four chapters into the story of Fatale and the creators have constructed just that, a piece that takes full advantage of the comics medium, which rewards reading together with the other issues close to hand.

From interviews with Brubaker we know that the story will eventually return to closer to present day, but at the moment it is depicting events from the 1950s, classic noir territory. Corrupt cops, morally dubious protagonists and the titular femme fatale are all present, but this is far from noir by numbers as Brubaker and Phillips weave genuine horror into the proceedings. So well grounded is the reader in the grim world we know from detective fiction that the horrific elements, when they do rear their heads, are much more shocking as we are suddenly reminded that this is a horror comic. There are plenty of developments to keep our interest piqued as the lengths men will go to for Josephine, the fatale of the title, are revealed, and there are hints that it never ends well for any of them, echoed at the end by something uttered to our main lead for this section, the journalist Hank Raines whose life has fallen to pieces since meeting her. In addition we also get more insight to the corrupt cop, Walt Booker, which lends a degree of sympathy to him. That's the thing with this book, the human characters seem neither good nor evil but human, with all the contradictions of character that entails.

This is a wonderful book, and Sean Phillips art just oozes atmosphere. Alan Moore once said in an interview about V For Vendetta that it wasn't "Alan Moore's V For Vendetta" but his and artist David Lloyd's, as the book was very much a collaboration. That is very much the case here, and one cannot imagine Fatale being the comic it is without one or the other of the creators. They work together so well that it has the feel of a comic made by one writer/artist, with writing and art merging so well that it is futile to try to separate the two. As with their comic Criminal, there are articles included in the individual issues which will not be collected in the trade paperbacks, as a reward to readers for supporting the series, and these make these comics well worth buying in the floppy format. Where else would you find informative and interesting articles on the inspirations for Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. The only real problem is Ed Brubaker recommends so many good books, you may well fill your reading list from now until Christmas.