The Sinestro Corps & Some Reviews

Geoff Johns is great at fanboy moments. There had to be 3 or 4 great moments in the Sinestro Corps Special - the whole thing had me giggling and smiling like a little kid, to be honest. I thought it was great while reading it. It was, like I said, a great fanboy geek comic. The problem with his writing is that a lot of these moments don't hold up well upon reflection.

There's some cool stuff in here that does hold up - I like the idea of one of the Sinestro Corps just using his power ring as a sniper rifle, for example. It's villainous, cowardly, and strikes fear in his targets. Hits all the main points for a fear-based villain, and it's original for a comic book. I liked that this special didn't focus too heavily on Hal Jordan, as I was fearing, but rather on my favorite Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner. Good to see him get some coverage.

Then there's the moments that don't really work. The Sinestro Corps are supposed to be chosen based on their ability to INSTILL fear - so why does Kyle's corruption hinge on his ability to feel fear? Isn't that contrary to their premise, somehow? And why is he still green as Parallax? By now, Parallax's facade as a corrupted Hal Jordan has been exposed, as has his "natural" color of yellow. So why would hebturn out green? (Yes, now I'm just being a picky fanboy dork, but it's my goddamn blog, OK?)

Superboy Prime, Hank Henshaw, and the Anti-monitor as the Sinestro Corps' masterminds? Another hell yeah moment. The image of the Anti-Monitor with a Sinestro Corps logo? Incredibly stupid, when you think about it. Vaguely stupid for Superboy Prime, but I suppose he is supposed to be unbalanced and childish.

It's the Anti-monitor thing that really annoys me - we just did Infinite Crisis, which was supposed to be the sequel to Crisis, and had plenty of Crisis refrences. Is DC so out of ideas that we're mining this history all over again, only a year later? That's kinda sad - IC was a great story, but DC's follow up has been (as I've said many time), piss-poor. CW sucked horribly, but Marvels follow up has been awesome. Marvel's coming out ahead, right now.

Unrelated continuity complaint - where the hell does Silent War fit into Marvel continuity? First issue, the Fantastic Four are together and seem fine, so it can;t be during or immediately post-CW. During the series, Iron Man is in charge of SHIELD, so it must be post-CW. Final issue, Black Bolt is locked in the dungeons, yet in WWH he's wandering free on the moons surface (with Attilan in the background clearly not destroyed as it is here) getting his ass beat by the Hulk. Timeline here makes no sense, which is a shame since this is one of the best minis Marvel's published in ages, with beautiful artwork by Frazer Irving. A for the series, B+ for this issue, F for making sense in continuity.

The Boys 8 & The Boys TPB: The Name of the Game: Teenage Kix are comin' atcha! Laugh out loud funny shit, and for all that this series' has a rep that it's heartless, Ennis' treatment of Tek Knight isn't all that bad. At least he's bothered by his sick urges and trying to get help. Hilarious and great characterization, Ennis at his best. A+

The most symbolic Morrison character, ever.

Dude, this guy is like, super charged with meaning. He's got the color green (so you know he's full of love, emotion, and deep Zen-like understanding). He has one huge eye, implying a higher sense of knowledge and awareness, since that's what Morrison seems to indicate by that particular symbol (once again, go get Tim's book). Plus, it's on a hood, which covers his real eyes - Morrison uses blindness as a symbol for either lack of knowledge or cutting oneself off from the physical world. This guy exists on another plane of reality entirely, and he put himself there on purpose, which explains why he's covered his real eyes and replaced them with one bigger eye. He's sacrificed his earthly connections & understanding for a greater knowledge. And he's full of the green love.

This dude blows my fucking mind.

Grant Morrison and the color Green

I've wondered for a long time why the color green is so prominent in Morrison's work. If you go back to his Doom Patrol run, there was an entire storyline which seemed to practically revolve around Green (Flex Mentallo & the Pentagon Horror). It had green pens, green-stained "Fact" cards, green light all over the Pentagon (emanating from the "Ka-Bala" eye the government used to make decisions), people dying their pubic hair green, etc. His Flex Mentallo series is practically dripping with green, especially the first issue. The character mentions in his Doom Patrol origin issue that many of his adventures seemed to prominently feature this color (this was later revealed to be due to his "creator", Wally Sage, drawing all his adventures with a green pen - more on this in two paragraphs). Their are numerous other examples, but it's definetly a theme in his work.

Morrison's a pretty spiritual guy. The Green Chakra is associated with strong, basic emotions such as love & pain. When the green chakra is activated, the person is capable of reaching a deeper level of emotional understanding of themselves. And in the midst of all his craziness and weird plots, Morrison's talent for putting real, heartfelt emotions into his stories is oft-overlooked. Few writers can move me nearly to tears like he does (We3 is heartbreaking, as are the scenes in the Filth when Greg's cat dies, and the deaths of Buddy Baker's family, etc.)- raw, human emotion is a big part of his work, so the Green Chakra provides a clue as to why he features it so prominently.

More evidence for this is found in particular examples of his usage of the color green. In the final issue of Flex Mentallo, an old "Man in the Moon" nightlight that Wally Sage used to read by when he was little (and given the nature of this story, it is a safe assumption that Wally Sage is a Fiction Suit for Morrison himself - I assume Morrison has fond memories of drawing his own comics when he was little with a green pen) is central to the plot. It is the sign by which the heroes of his youth are drawn back to this reality, a trigger image which essentially keeps them safe & alive. Morrison likes to imbue his childhood memories, and especially his old playthings, with narrative power. The Ka-Bala glowing eye (mentioned earlier as being used in his Doom Patrol run as essential to government decision making) was, as Tim Callahan points out in his book, an actual old toy from Morrison's youth. No wonder both of these items are shown as powerful, and glowing with green (the color of strong emotions) - to Morrison, they invoke powerful, emotional memories.

In case my usage of the Chakras as a key to Morrison's meaning isn't convincing enough, consider this. The Barbelith module, floating in outer space on the dark side of the moon throughout The Invisibles, is bright red. The Red Chakra supprots the body and all of its functions & instincts, including survivial & taking care of our children. (Barbelith is also the name of a sort of "information satellite" in Phillip K. Dick's (an inspiration of Morrison's work) novel Valis). In the comic, Barbelith seems to operate as a sort of "safety net" for the characters, and indeed all of humanity. It often appears to characters folowing a significant emotional trauma, giving them safety, almost paternal in a way. If the Barbelith module is a safety net for our characters when they are most in need, then this paternal instinct makes sense in the context of the Chakra's definition of its color. Of course, Barbelith's dialogue is always printed in Green, because like any good parent, it loves us.

So, Morrison seems to be associating the color green with its Emotional connotations: it appears to signify events & items of significant emotional impact. So why did a character in his Doom Patrol say that he was required by the government conspiracy to die his pubic hair green? I can think of three explanations. In Flex Mentallo, teenaged Wally Sage is shown to be having great difficulty reconciling with his love of comics & other items of his youth with the process of growing up, feeling as if he should "put away childish things". Dying one's pubic hairs (a symbol of physical maturity) could be a way of drawing the two together. Or, alternatively, it could be that Morrison does in fact consider his "boy parts" to have strong emotional value (what man doesn't love his "little buddy"?). Or, third, Morrison's just having fun with the overwhelming Green and making fun of himself.

There's probably many more instances of the color Green in his comics I could bring up, but I think this is about enough to make my point. I'm going to post again soon (hopefully) about Morrison & Quitely's short story "New Toys", because for an 9-page story with sparse dialogue, they squeezed a ton of stuff in, and if you read it considering Tim Callahan's theories on Morrison's themes, it's practically a Reader's Guide to Morrison's work, which I found interesting. Plus, it has the color Green in it!

New Comics

My comic store had a sale today. Got a great haul. Here's what I picked up:

World War Hulk 1: I bought into the hype and broke my Hulk boycott for this (over ten years, going strong till now). This was pretty worth it, though. The Hulk's introductory speech to NYC says it all, really: "I've come to smash". Indeed. Tony Stark finally starts acting like a hero again, and his words here really tie into the bitter regret he's shown to be feeling following the death of Cap. The man is very tormented, and as bad as CW was, he's possibly the most interesting Marvel character as a result of it, which is a pretty good trade-off. A

Ex Machina 29: I'm getting a litte bored by this comic, it's about the time they start giving us some meaningful revelations. They're inching closer to it, but it's getting to be a little bit too much of a tease. Still a good series, but every one of the last 4 issues felt the same to me. B-

The Eternals 1-2: Not the recent miniseries, but the original Jack Kirby issues from 1976. I want to laugh at them, but really, if you gave me these and told me Grant Morrison wrote them, I'd say they were brilliant. So I'm not gonna be a snob about it. Actually, this is really fun stuff, every bit as overwrought as I was expecting but almost self-aware of it. And while I've always hated Kirby's art (blasphemy I know, but c'mon, that early Marvel stuff is like primitive cave drawings compared to a guy like Quitely) it really works for me here. Every character looks like they're either having a manic episode or holding in diarrhea in every panel, sure, but his ludicrous excesses really fit the material and the dialogue is incredible. I had a great time reading this out loud and doing bombastic voices and stuff. Awesome, I wish I had picked up more. Surprisingly entertaining. A

Weird War Tales 3: A mid-90's Vertigo anthology, I got this issue for the Morrison/Quitely short story. It's a really good, creepy story told from the perspective a child's toy soldiers and dolls being replaced by their New Toys. If anything this has more to do with the War in the Invisibles than any "earthly" war, but this is a really effective, creepy story. Awesome. Another A.

Steed and Mrs. Peel 1-2: Now that I've gotten almost all of Morrison's US work, I;m trying to dig for his more obscure UK stuff. This is a 3 issues mini based on The Avengers TV show, which I've never watched but I don't seem to need to know the plot of the show anyway. It's good stuff, similar in tone to the early Invisibles stuff and Sebastion O. Relatively lightweight compared to most of his stuff, but it's Morrison: he can't really be bad, just slightly less interesting than usual. I need the last issue now, though. B

Excalibur 1-8: The first series, by Claremont & Davis. Got these for a buck apiece. Haven't read them yet, but I expect them to be fun. Predicted rating: A-

Godd stuff this week.

The Lightning Saga

Haven't posted any comics reviews in over a month, so here's a general overview of why I hated the Lightning Saga.:

This read like Brad & Geoff were just geeking out on how much they used to enjoy old silver age Legion stories. Great for them, not so much for the rest of us who don't know anything about, let alone care about, The Legion. Aside from the fact that I failed to become emotionally drawn into the story whatsoever, there were tons of storytelling problems here which are inexcusable given the caliber of the two writers.

For one thing, let's discuss accessibility. Exposition is required for a story like this, but when Superman needs to stroll into part 4 (of a 5 part story) to explain the plot to everyone (not just the readers, but the other characters as well), something's gone wrong. If after 70 pages the plot is so incomprehensible you need a character to provide a 4 page speech clarifying things, that's a problem. It isn't fun. A fun way to get the brain working is to provide clues, things hidden in the text to be pieced together. The clues weren't there, unless you're familair with pre-Crisis Legion continuity minutiae.

Red Herrings. These only work if the false lead is something the reader can intuit. It's "obvious" to us; the reason it works so well is because the story had us pointed in another direction managed to turn our eyes away from the true macguffin. This stories Red Herring was that we thought Lightning Lad was coming back, but it turned out to be The Flash. But like I said, I wouldn't have had the first clue that Lightning Lad was the Red Herring if Supes hadn't exlained it to me in painstaking detail in part 4. Before chapter 4 I had no idea what the story was, and as of chapter 4, I pretty much just accepted Superman's explanation. It threw the Red Herring out too late, and then did so ineffectively.

To make my point clearer, part 5 actually used the Red Herring effectively. We all thought Barry Allen was coming back, not because anyone made a 4 page speech about it, but because the story made use of images & plot points that readers automatically associate with him (the ghostly image in Wayne Manor from Crisis, his origin in the police lab, etc). I got to piece it together for myself; it meant more when my expectations were subverted. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm talking about. Explaining the Red Herring to the reader is basically just lying to us; throwing false leads and obscure clues is misdirection.

Another problem: what was up with those three villains who did nothing and dissapeared after part 3? They were built up, they were foreshadowed, they hinted at behind the scenes manipulations.... and then they dissapeared from the story. Was a story like this really the best place to set up future stories, if that's what the intention was? The plot was obscure and difficult as it is; did they really need this nonsense clogging it up further? I don't know what they had to do with this story, so I can only assume they were a setup for later. Annoying.

Only thing I did like: it was Wally West who came back, not Barry Allen. I hate Barry Allen and love Wally, so that's great.

Final Note: Ed Benes' artwork makes my fucking skin crawl. I loathe his art with a passion.

I have returned

I haven't posted here in ages... been busy picking up loads of shifts at work, exercising (lost 25 pounds as of a few days ago), and reading (insert plug for fellow blogger Timothy Callahan's book: Grant Morrison - The Early Years - get it if you want to be cool).

On the positive side of announcements, I got a new job, starting August 6th - and my first post-Master's degree position. That's right, I am a for-real School Counselor now, with an office and caseload and everything. Between actually having a career and my pending nuptials, I have this weird surreal feeling of almost being some sort of adult. Luckily, I've been reading more comics than I have in years to counterbalance that horrible sensation.

On the stressful side, I've been spending days pondering my upcoming wedding - I'm about ready to elope. The only really major concern is that my fiance's maid of honor, sadly, can't fly, due to medical reasons. She risks a variety of complications of she does, which sucks. I'm from NYC, currently in Cali, and I want the wedding in NYC since I will likely have mre guests, and fewer total people needing to travel. Also, my grandmother can;t fly either, for similar (but more age-related) reasons. So I really have to get married in NYC, since my grandma has to be there.

Which basically sucks, and I feel really bad for my fiance. Anyone who's got advice is welcome to contribute. I want to have two small ceremonies (one on each coast), since frankly, neither of us really enjoys huge events or being at the center of all the attention anyway. But that gets costly.