Bif! Bam! Pow!

Long overdue.

Since moving to Austria I've started reading comic books again. I am trying to learn some German by reading comics, it's much easier to follow a story with text and visual narrative. But slowly I've been picking up a few new superhero comics. Yes, superhero comics. Why? I picked up a copy of Seth's "It's a good life, if you don't weaken." And was bored silly. The protagonist (the Author) was so self-absorbed, uptight, and unlikable, I sort of gave up on "indie" comics right then and there. And the last issue of Eightball was a superhero comic, which leads me to believe that most of the people doing "indies" grew up on a steady diet of Marvel and DC.

I recently picked up DC's Jonah Hex Showcase, which reprints a bazillion stories from the 70's. There is some fantastic artwork and some great stories with a weird and almost supernatural twist. Jonah Hex is pretty closely based on the Clint Eastwood character from the Sergio Leone "Man with no name" trilogy. But Jonax Hex is mean, I mean, he's really nasty and mean. I think the basic definition of an Anti-hero is a character who's both bad and good, but the good they do outweighs the bad. (Usually the Anti hero tries to do good but has some serious personality flaws) Jonah Hex's good deeds barely overtake his bad, by a very slim margin. D.C. has recently relaunched a new Jonah Hex series that is every bit as weird and crazy as the original, from reading the first issue, it looks like a winner.

The 80's Justice League was my favorite comic book of all time. The writers turned second stringers into some really strong and compelling characters, and the artwork was always top-notch. They managed to blend humor with action, and always had smart and witty dialogue that would put Quentin Tarantino to shame. I still find myself using some of their lines in my own conversations. Recently the creative team (Keith Giffen, J.M. Dematties, and Kevin Mcguire) reunited and brought back some members of the team and made two brilliant books, "Formerly Known as the Justice League," and "I Can't Believe Its Not the Justice League." I like the fact that the characters acknowledge the fact that time has passed since their tenure in the Justice League International, and their new team (The Super-Buddies) isn't anywhere near as grand as the Justice League.
The same creative team have recently done a few other projects, a "Defenders" mini-series for Marvel, and although I am less familiar with Marvel Comics, I have to say it's pretty darn good. I was laughing out-loud reading the first issue. And they have creayed the highly-acclaimed Hero-Squared, which looks pretty interesting: a superhero meets his secret indentity in a parallel universe, a parallel universe without superheroes (I can't find this in Europe, so I'm gonna have to get in in the USA.) Bwwahahahahaha!

Of course, after the two reunion books, D.C. would then take three of the main J.L.I. characters and kill them off. First, Sue Dibney (the wife of longtime Justice second-stringer Elongated Man) was killed off in the almost-great "Identity Crisis." (Written by mystery novelist Brad Meltzer) and Blue Beetle and Max Lord both have been killed off in D.C.'s newest crossover fiasco, "Infinite Crisis."
To be fair, Infinite Crisis has started out pretty well, it's a sequel to "Crisis on Infinite Earths," and it reads like a meta-narrative about what has happened to the D.C. universe and comics in general since the mid 80's. It mentions how "dark" everything has become in comics, and how the characters have lost a lot of their heroic appeal. There is a great line; Batman tells Superman, "The last time you inspired anyone, was when you were dead!"
Which, at least to me, seems to acknowledge the way in which a lot of readers feel about how the characters have been treated (and how bad a lot of comics had gotten in the 90's.) It will be interesting to see how this plays out. And I like a lot of the dark comics that have come out since then, like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman:Year One, and Kingdom Come. And it was sad to see the Blue Beetle get killed, sure, he was a second stringer, but if you ever read the JLI you know he was the heart of the team. At least the character went out in a blaze of glory, and his last story was one of the best he ever had.

And I'm not just reading D.C. One of my new favorites is Alan Moore's TOM STRONG. Alan Moore is considered one of the best comics writers around, and he certainly has done some great work in the past. Tom Strong is Alan Moore's idea of what an archetypical superhero should be. Alan Moore borrows heavily from the very first Superman comics, and early heroes like Doc Savage to come up with an interesting and compelling hero. Tom Strong does have super-strength and some high-tech gadgetry, but (and this is what's great about Alan Moore) Tom Strong's real superpower is his incredible intellect, he usually manages to get out of a situation by using his brain but usually not before a few punches are thrown. Alan Moore has envisioned a utopian world which is filled with what he calls "Science Heroes" (and of course you would have evil geniuses which are the science-villains) and Tom Strong happens to be Millenium City's number one hero. Alan Moore uses a lot of references to comics history (who else would have a story featuring a life size Sea Monkey?), bizarre cutting edge science, and some really clever narrative techniques to keep the readers interested and on their toes.

There are many more discoveries I have made, and some new comics that I still want to read, and I wanted to talk about the mythological aspects of a lot of characters, but for now that's enough! Excelsior!