Comics From The 5th Dimension

The Adventures of JELL-O Man and Wobbly

by Gavin Jasper of 4thletter!

While you’ve been reading your Watchmens and your Sandmans and your 58 different monthly Bendis titles, I’ve been hard at work walking a different path. It’s all David Brothers, this site’s new senior comics editor’s fault. You see, he’s always been helpful in giving me good comic reading advice. He told me to read Kingdom Come years ago. It was he who got me to read Flex Mentallo, We3 and that issue of Deadpool where he Shoryukens Kitty Pryde.

Unfortunately, it’s a one-sided discussion with him. He reads faster than me and has a huge head start. I can rarely suggest a good series for him to read because he’s already there. Taunting me. Bastard. I decided to go into a different direction. If I couldn’t inform him of good comics, I’d inform him of really bad comics. So I started hunting down every obscure piece of weirdness I could get, assuming they would all be bad.

Sometimes I’m right. I am the proud owner of a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of Street Fighter: The Movie and I can assure you that it’s plenty bad. On the other hand, some comics can surprise you. The Double Dragon comic should by all means be horrible, especially since it has little to do with the actual game, but Dwayne McDuffie and Tom Brevoort made it into a surprisingly awesome 6-issue series. Either way, I usually have my fun reading these.

That’s why I’m here today. I’m here to show you into my world. Welcome to the first installment of Comics from the 5th Dimension!

What better place to start than what may be the first comic I ever owned? I’m not certain if I owned this before or after I was given a copy of that Luke Cage anti-smoking comic in health class. In fact, I’m really not certain why or how I had this in the first place. All I recall is one day owning a copy of The Adventures of JELL-O Man and Wobbly.

Nobody else seems to remember JELL-O Man, I’m afraid. He was a brief JELL-O mascot during the introduction of their Jigglers. As you can see from that cover, JELL-O Man’s dog Wobbly was created by the J, as JELL-O Man himself was the E, L, L and O mixed together to create some kind of horrid demon freak never meant to walk God’s green Earth. I also notice that they each have a dash for a nose. Where’d that extra dash come from?! It’s questions like this that answer why there was never a second issue. Brevoort would’ve been all over that shit.

Other than a kid’s cookbook, JELL-O Man and Wobbly were featured in a couple animated commercials that I seem to recall as being pretty sweet. I can’t know for sure until somebody puts them on YouTube.

This comic has three stories, a rather huge insert that I’ll get to in a bit, a couple pages of games and seven different JELL-O advertisements. Our first story, The Outrageous Origin of JELL-O Man and Wobbly is written by Michael J. Pellowski, a current regular on Archie Comics and its spin-offs. Richard Howell does all the art here, except for Ken Steacy, who does the cover and advertisements.

Most superheroes have their own arch-villain that ties into their origins. Xavier has Magneto. Kyle Rayner has Parallax. Cable has Apocalypse. JELL-O Man has Grabby, the robot creation of Dr. Goodtaste and his assistant Snackens. I’m naming my first son Snackens.

The two scientists are way too obsessed with JELL-O and somehow get billions of dollars in funding to make sure that stores across the world are constantly stocked with pudding. They prepare to test out their S.L.A.H.P. contraption, which stands for Secret Laser-Activated Hologram Printer. For the sake of advertising, they’re going to make 3D JELL-O logos for each package. I’d like to think that Goodtaste has already cured cancer decades ago, or else he really has his priorities mixed up.

As the laser fires at a JELL-O logo, Grabby switches the wires around and hooks it up to himself, thereby powering himself up and somehow tapping into the master computer. The laser explodes, as those things tend to do in these situations, and Grabby runs off while closing and locking every door with his mind. He’s going to have all those desserts delivered straight to him. That sounds like the sort of plan that would lead to a lynch mob at your doorstep, but what do I know?

Well, you know what that robot doesn’t know? He doesn’t know that exploding S.L.A.H.P. devices can cause letters to magically come to life with a full grasp of the English language! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

As confused as Dr. Goodtaste is, he follows the mutant abomination around as he comes up with the simple plan of climbing out the window. Outside, they find a conveniently-placed box of springs just lying around, which JELL-O Man and Wobbly use to hop into the air duct and ambush Grabby. By removing his O-shaped head and tossing it like a bowling ball, JELL-O Man’s rubbery skull bashes into Grabby and reduces him to scrap. He murdered his own brother! That sick monster!

Our heroes chill out with the scientists and enjoy some pudding as Goodtaste decides he’s going to rebuild Grabby as a videogame. We never will get the follow-up where the Grabby videogame inspires school shootings in his latest scheme to eat free gelatin.

Next up is The Natural History Mystery written by, of all people, Kurt Busiek. Man… Busiek. You dropped the ball by never adding JELL-O Man to the Avengers and in turn never having him fight Plastic Man in JLA/Avengers. You dropped the ball down hard.

Miss Sherman and her fourth-grade class go to the Natural History Museum to learn about cavemen and all that crap, but the real story is in the kitchen. A stereotypical French chef is freaking out because almost all the desserts have been stolen.

“Zut alors! Zee JELL-O pudding snacks I put out for dessert – it is gone! All except one serving! And it’s almost – how you say – lunchtime!”

This one panel convinced somebody at Marvel that this is the guy they needed to write Batroc the Leaper stories.

The obligatory “too cool for school” kid Jeff takes care of things by calling up JELL-O Man and telling them about their problem. JELL-O Man and Wobbly parachute nearby the museum and get the lowdown.

Wow. How sad is it that JELL-O Man has a bigger and better rogues gallery than Booster Gold?

Our hero stumbles upon the dinosaur exhibit and comes up with the idea of using his x-ray glasses on the statues. As he acts horrified in his realization, we’re given a cliffhanger. We’ll get back to the mystery later. Now it’s time for the insert. I don’t know what Kraft and Sega have in common, but I won’t let that get in the way of reviewing Sonic the Hedgehog, written and drawn by Francis Mao!

This mini-comic sets up the backstory of the first Genesis game as Sonic escapes the wrath of Dr. Robotnik and rescues his animal friends from being controlled as cyborgs. When the animals suggest getting the beloved Dr. Kintobor (get it?) to help, Sonic gives them the bad news: Robotnik IS Kintobor!

He flashes back to the time he accidentally burrowed into Kintobor’s lab. Kintobor had just created a device that absorbed all the evil on the planet Mobius and transformed it into Chaos Emeralds. All he’d need to do is destroy the Emeralds and the world would be totally peaceful.

He let Sonic try out his sonic treadmill, which he overloaded with his speed and accidentally blew up. Much like JELL-O Man, exploding experiments = superhero. The incident had turned Sonic’s fur blue and Kintobor fitted him with some new red shoes.

How many planets must suffer that which is Gerardo?

Later, while Sonic was laying back and reading a Toejam and Earl comic book (I’d love to give that a read), Kintobor asked for a soda. Shortly after receiving it, Kintobor accidentally let it slip out of his hands and it poured all over his machinery. Electricity filled with pure evil zapped him and transformed him into the sinister Dr. Robotnik. Also, the machine blew up and caused rings to fly all over the place.

With his flashback done, Sonic tells his friends that he’s going to take Robotnik down before he can get the last Chaos Emerald. Plus he needs to get all those rings for whatever reason. After a lot of chasing and showing off the different stages from the game, Sonic is faced with retaining his one last Chaos Emerald or letting his pig friend die. The pig’s name?

HA! Aw, man. That’s so horrible and dated, I love it. Does he also have a friend named Kubiek Bear? There are teenagers reading this that have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.

Robotnik gets away and Sonic insists that he’s really, really going to beat him next time. To be continued on your Genesis. Really not that bad.

Now back to Busiek’s JELL-O Man thing.

Of course! A talking dinosaur that’s obsessed with eating desserts! How did I not see that coming?

JELL-O Man tosses the one remaining snack pack into the dinosaur’s arms, which is one pudding too many. Snackosaurus starts juggling and panicking, allowing JELL-O Man to roll his own head over and trip him. The kids are excited to have their desserts back. JELL-O Man asks for a ride back to town, but the teacher says that their bus is too full, leading to a joke about how there’s always room for JELL-O. In actuality, there were about six kids on that field trip and the bus looked big enough to seat at least twelve. That lady is just racist against red letter men.

Our final story is The Outer Space Case, written by Peter David (uncredited) and his daughter Shana David. Awww… But really, how is it that The Adventures of JELL-O Man has better star power than Countdown?

Like missionaries in a third-world country, JELL-O Man and Wobbly venture onto the planet Gumongo to spread the gospel of gelatin. In the background is the Shoveler, a spade-handed villain who appeared in the actual commercials. He figures that this pilgrimage means that there is a new place to steal desserts. What a moron. If Batman’s visiting Metropolis, you don’t go to Metropolis specifically to rob a bank. You rob a Gotham bank, knowing full well that Batman won’t be around to stop you. This guy’s an amateur.

That night, the Gumongian children would go to the kitchen for some late-night binging, only to find their JELL-O missing and a huge hole in the floor. JELL-O Man hears about this on the news and figures that this has to be the Shoveler’s doing. Not only is Shoveler greedy in not paying for his own JELL-O, but he’s lazy too. He’s only stolen the JELL-O that’s been made and not the stuff still in boxes. Though I suppose I should cut him some slack, since the dude has no hands. This all gives JELL-O Man an idea.

The following night, Shoveler laughs over how they’ve left out more JELL-O for him to steal. On a nearby box, the JELL-O logo comes alive, showing that it was all a big trap. Wobbly chases Shoveler out the door, where the villain is met with a giant JELL-O Jiggler, shaped like a B. He bounces off of it and onto a Jiggler shaped like a square. Then one shaped like an L. And so on as JELL-O’s man detached head goes for the kill.

I don’t know. If I was buried under a pile of smiling, living heads, I’d be freaking out at least a little bit.

And that’s the end of our comic. JELL-O Man and Wobbly disappeared soon after, never to be seen again. Probably blackmailed by a jealous Bill Cosby.

Before I go, there’s a page called What’s Shakin’! that features, “Seven cool things you can do while you make JELL-O Instant Pudding.” They are:

1) Hop like a bunny and scrunch up your nose. Try to wiggle your ears, too.

2) Put on your dancin’ shoes and boogie all around the kitchen.

3) Pretend your container is a musical instrument. Keeping your hands waist-high, shake the container from side to side to the beat.

4) Make a fish-face by sucking your cheeks in and opening and closing your mouth.

5) Say “Peter proudly prepares perfect pudding” ten times fast.

6) Try to touch your nose with your tongue.

7) Imagine how yummy your JELL-O Instant Pudding will taste when you eat it!

What a pack of lies. None of those are cool. Well, maybe boogying around the kitchen, but that depends.

What If? Why?

Everything You Know Is Wrong

by Gavin Jasper of 4thletter!

I’m new to the PopCultureShock family, so chances are you don’t know me. Those of you who do know me know that I have an unhealthy fixation with Marvel’s What If series. For those of you who don’t know me… well, I have an unhealthy fixation with Marvel’s What If series. Unhealthy to the point that a while back I decided to read every single issue released and write up a list of the top 100 issues.

What’s the appeal? It’s a loaded question, but a lot of it has to do with the ability to play with continuity where you usually can’t in mainstream books, including having writers expand on a character’s depth by showing what it would take to truly change their composition. We can see what it would take to make Frank Castle throw aside his career as the Punisher and act as a wholesome hero. We can see what could make Victor Von Doom refrain from being a tyrant and instead act as a hero, though still a hero full of himself. Or we can see what kind of horrors could finally break Peter Parker to the point that he would actually go through with murder rather than the predictable fake-out we get every year or so. Did anyone really expect him to kill the Kingpin in Back in Black?

Then there’s the outlandish factor. You can see continuity stray in ways that make you want to read the continuations, sometimes to the point that you wish they really happened in regular Marvel continuity. Stuff like Richard Fisk becoming Daredevil or Living Laser becoming Iron Man or having every single superhero on Earth team up in a far more epic Kree-Skrull War than the one we actually got. Even with that, a lot of issues seem to be the inspirations for other Marvel storylines from over the years, such as Infinity Gauntlet, the Clone Saga, Onslaught, Wolverine in Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Punisher’s background and others.

For the past couple years, Marvel has been releasing new sets of What Ifs every December or so. The first set in 2005 was off to a rocky start with Claremont’s rather pointless What If Professor X and Magneto Formed the X-Men Together? and proof that Brian Michael Bendis’ writing style just doesn’t jibe with loaded one-shots. The next year they tried making them less about continuity and just making Elseworlds stories, such as showing Daredevil as a samurai in feudal Japan. That’s not to say that it didn’t have its little gems, such as that Daredevil story and Kirkman’s take on Thor being the herald of Galactus.

The next set went back to its roots, though based on more epic Marvel events. They were a mixed bag. Hine’s alternate aftermath of Deadly Genesis is brilliant stuff and Peter David’s new version of Spider-Man: The Other is enjoyably creepy, if a little too short. It’s just that the Age of Apocalypse issue was hilariously awful and the one based on Avengers: Disassembled was an insulting attempt to retcon mainstream continuity.

Let’s take a good look at the batch of issues that came out over the past winter. First up is What If: Planet Hulk, thankfully written by Greg Pak. Here we are given three stories, though really, the third one barely counts. Come on, Marvel. Don’t solicit what could be a potentially good short story when you’re really just giving us a Fred Hembeck page that’s worth half a laugh.

The first story is about Hulk tossing his queen Caiera to safety when the ship explodes and therefore sacrificing himself. Most Hulk What Ifs are pretty depressing, but when you think about it, this little scene isn’t all that pessimistic. It’s actually the perfect death for the Hulk. He became cursed with his lone wolf situation because he selflessly saved a stranger from an explosion. How fitting that he would die the same way, only after breaking the curse. Not only that, but his legacy lives on with his son.

As optimistic as that may sound, it’s lost on Caiera, who absorbs the energies of the planet Sakaar and makes a beeline for Earth. From there, it’s just like the cover suggests. Caiera easily kills off Black Bolt, Dr. Strange, Sentry, Iron Man and Reed Richards in the time it takes to tie a shoe. Black Bolt talking shouldn’t exactly kill the Sentry, but don’t let that get in the way of a simple 90’s-style killfest. It is Hiroim the Shamed whose actions make the story end on a slightly less dire note.

It’s really not all that good. The art is nice, but it reads like a Sparknotes version of World War Hulk as read by Johnny 5. It may have worked better if it had taken a full issue to tell, but I’m glad it didn’t, since it would have cheated us out of the second story.

Something interesting about this story is that it’s the first appearance of Skaar, who will soon be starring in his own miniseries. I don’t think I’d give a single damn about that miniseries if it wasn’t for Pak giving me blue-balls via his minor appearance here. Well played. He looks a lot like Nathan Explosion from Dethklok here. Is it just me?

The following story is loads better, based on Hulk landing on the planet the Illuminati intended for him. The irony is that while the Illuminati figured that Banner would be for this and Hulk would be against it, once they get on the planet, it’s the opposite that’s true. Hulk loves the creatures on that planet and plays protector. Banner wants off and only works for survival. The two personalities argue as they always do, leading to an adorable ending and an even more heartwarming aftermath. In the end, we get a glimpse at what I can only describe as the Anti-Maestro. I had no idea this piece of the issue was going to be as great as it turned out to be.

The next one to come out was What If: Annihilation. Despite the kick-ass cover, the concept seemed too good to be true, so I was cautiously optimistic. A lot of seemingly awesome What If concepts from the past couple years have ended up being lukewarm in action. Luckily, this exceeded expectations. The change in continuity has to do with Drax attempting to free Galactus instead of Silver Surfer. That one decision leads to all their deaths and the inability to stop Annihilus’ reign of galactic terror. On Earth, Captain America is hesitating on whether or not he should take out his former best friend Iron Man as part of the Civil War climax. A taste of the Annihilation Wave comes to Earth, much like some fans expected to happen during the actual Civil War miniseries.

Nova does the impossible by joining together nearly every pro-registration hero, anti-registration hero, Inhuman and a whole bunch of supervillains for the sake of fending off against eradication on a cosmic scale. This gets the full attention of the Annihilation Wave, which makes a run for our planet. Uatu the Watcher steps in with his own little device to destroy the alien threat and as you can figure, Earth ultimately wins. That’s all well and good, but it’s just a bit lacking as a story of this scale. It just feels pointless and hollow.

Thankfully, that isn’t the end of things. There are still six pages left. The rest of the issue and the reason why I love it so much, tie into Uatu. While Uatu is a good enough character, there is only so much that he actually does. He can narrate, tell everyone that he can only watch but not interfere or interfere by giving the heroes information and/or a weapon. Though in one What If he did interfere by physically fighting Galactus. Still, all those examples of his interference are based entirely on him trying to save mankind – or the universe – from complete destruction. This story is very different.

Usually the Uatu we see in What If is the Watcher from the mainstream Marvel Earth, showing us other realities. Not this time. It becomes more apparent that this Watcher narrating is the one from this comic’s reality. During the final pages, he isn’t breaking his oath to ensure our survival so that he has something to watch. He’s doing it for the sake of making us feel better about who we are. This cold being is trying to give us hope when he doesn’t even need to. That’s inspired.

All the dialogue and moments in those last pages make What If: Annihilation one of my favorite comic issues of 2007. Even with its small size, it manages to remain epic and pleasing.

The best of the batch is then followed by what I’d consider the worst. What If: Rise of the Shi’arr Empire is based on Vulcan getting knocked into the M’Kraan Crystal and absorbing the energies of the Phoenix. Personally, I love Vulcan. In fact, it was What If: Deadly Genesis from a year prior that convinced me to read the character’s stories. The idea of Vulcan being the Phoenix is full of potential.

The story isn’t horrible, but it’s just very… easy and plain. Vulcan with the Phoenix powers leads to him fighting every living Summers character on Krakoa for the final battle. The solution is what you’d expect and the whole thing just comes across as paint-by-numbers. Though I’m still not sure I get Vulcan’s physical transformation towards the end.

What really makes this one hard to read is the art by Larry Stroman. It’s a very EXTREME! 80’s style with lots of instances of bad facial anatomy, characters hunched over like zombies and other deformities. Don’t take my word for it. Take Rachel Summers’.

Don’t get too distracted by her face or you’ll miss whatever the hell is going on with her hand.

After that Vulcan mess, we move onto the well-hyped What If: Civil War. I have very mixed feelings about this one. We are given two different stories and a framing device. The first story, written by Kevin Grevioux, is based on the idea of Tony Stark dying from injecting himself with the Extremis tech. Captain America leads the other heroes towards taking down Mallon, the super-criminal from the Extremis storyline. The prelude to Civil War goes as scheduled, though this time it is Captain America running against the government unopposed. He’s able to convince every single superhero to follow his lead.

What happens is exactly what Tony Stark feared would happen if he didn’t take his stand: the war between heroes and the government still takes place, only more extreme and violent. If you look at it, all the players in the story (Captain America, Jim Rhodes, Gyrich, Maria Hill and I suppose Reed Richards) are all little pieces of Tony Stark’s place in Civil War, only warring against each other in chaos instead of working together as one man. As expected, the ending is a big downer, lending itself to a world that’s more than likely about to get worse.

Two things about the story get an unintentional chuckle out of me. For one, the art tries to be very McNiven, but sometimes characters have overly animated facial features. This is fine for rubbery Reed Richards, but Thing’s face shouldn’t look like it’s melting off when he’s all sad like that. The other thing is how at one point Captain America breaks out the old Iron Captain America armor in honor of how he feels Iron Man would have backed him up on this. Not only does he forget about it completely by the next scene, but it looks nothing like his old armor. It’s just Greviox trying to tie the story in with the cover image.

Christos Gage takes up the next story, taking off from the incident where Captain America zapped Iron Man during their handshake when Iron Man just wanted to talk things over. Iron Man chooses to admit that although he’s sure he’s doing the right thing, he needs Cap to make sure he’s doing it the right way. With this honesty, Cap turns off his device and legitimately shakes his hand. Due to a misunderstanding, the Thor clone is released and hell begins to break loose.

No doubt about it, the image of Captain America holding his shield in defense of an ailing Iron Man and telling the Thor clone, “You want him? You’ll have to go through me,” is a feel good moment. Though I suppose that’s the problem here. This isn’t much of a story. It’s just a series of feel good moments, showing how awesome things could have been. It’s like the Marvel Adventures version of the story.

It wouldn’t have been very effective if it wasn’t for Ed Brubaker and Marko Djurdjevic’s framing scenes that portray the Watcher visiting Tony Stark at Steve Rogers’ grave, showing him these stories to prove his own little point. This whole bit is an homage to Frank Miller’s What If Elektra Had Lived?, a story that I STILL don’t understand its popularity. By putting this and the two stories together, you get a reasonable showing of one of Civil War’s main themes: Tony Stark may have been right, but he certainly wasn’t right enough. Now the world is suffering for it.

The final recent What If is What If: Spider-Man vs. Wolverine. That title isn’t very literal, as the two don’t exactly fight each other here. It’s based on a one-shot from 20 years ago where Spider-Man’s hero-vs.-villain mentality got mixed in with Wolverine’s shades-of-gray lifestyle while in Europe. Wolverine hoped to protect a former KGB agent and love interest Charlie (it’s a female, I swear) from being captured by the Russians and enduring a slow and painful death. His solution was to kill her first. Spider-Man tried to stop this, but in all the confusion, he accidentally punched Charlie in the head so hard that he killed her. The two heroes went their separate ways and Peter sulked over having taken a life.

This story, written by everybody’s friend Jeff Parker and illustrated by Clayton Henry, deals with Logan making the decision to help Peter redeem himself before he can return to America. Charlie has a sister, a captured CIA agent named Alex, and they need Spider-Man’s help. He makes the decision to stick around and his whole life changes. The more he’s trapped in this world, the darker he gets. It all begins with accidentally killing the latest Crimson Dynamo and gets worse from there. Once he has Alex freed, he latches onto her and they become inseparable. It’s figured that by keeping her alive, he validates all the killing, plus she has a noticeable resemblance to a certain blond bridge victim from the old days.

In fact, I think I can sum up Spider-Man’s change with this image.

Notice that his black ops costume is based on Alex Ross’ concept sketch for the first Spider-Man movie.

Through the teachings of operative genius Nebo, Spider-Man enhances his skills and powers to the point that his little family is nearly unstoppable. And they are something of a family. Wolverine doesn’t do all that much in the story other than supply dialogue and play off Peter, but the two develop an almost brotherly relationship.

The real reason I enjoy this issue is because for once, the other shoe doesn’t drop. In all the other What Ifs, Spider-Man is never allowed to stray away from type. If he goes for the kill, it destroys him. If he shirks off responsibility, his existence becomes even more of a nightmare. So to see him become a killer, you expect a whiny ending about Spider-Man crying over all the mistakes he made. Thankfully, we don’t get that.

The ending we do get shows that the kind wise-cracker we all know and love is gone, but maybe it’s for the better? Everyone who matters is happy, the world may possibly be better off and maybe, just maybe, the ends have justified the means.

Again, it was a really good batch this year. Makes me wish they’d just make the series monthly again. I’m just kidding. I’ve been wanting a new monthly What If series for years. This just pumps up my morale.

Next month Marvel will be releasing all five issues under the trade What If: Civil War. You should pick it up.

Alternate Current is a series of weekly posts on thought-provoking, or simply fun, topics from bright minds all throughout the blogosphere. We take submissions and responses, so if you’d like to get into the mix, send an email to David Brothers. This week comes courtesy of Gavin from 4thletter!. Check back tomorrow morning for the first of Gavin’s regular columns in Comics From The 5th Dimension!

Whoops! We’re running a little behind schedule today, mostly because I got the great idea to try a new P&P design. It lists more info, but it’s also a little longer. Give us some feedback on it! Does it look good? Awful? Too much, too little, too late? Let us know.
However, our Picks & Pans gang is in full effect, with Samantha of Neither Doormat Nor Prostitute, Jason Michelitch, David Uzumeri of Funnybook Babylon, Ernie Estrella, and Gavin Jasper of 4thletter! talking about this past week’s comics. There were a number of big winners– Captain America #36 and Incredible Hercules #115 being particularly well-reviewed. Ernie even managed to say everything I wanted to say about 100 Bullets, too. Jason’s got a full review of War Is Hell #1 up here, if’n you’re interested.

Hanging on The Wire

Everything is Connected

by David Uzumeri of Funnybook Babylon

HBO’s The Wire, co-created by David Simon and Ed Burns, finishes up its five-season run on Sunday. For its small but incredibly devoted viewership, this provides closure to over five years’ worth of emotional investment in an intricate serialized story about countless people from all walks of society and how they mingle, relate, love and kill. Propelled by a single artistic vision, five seasons, each with their own theme, build on each other to form a single complex and unified tale, manipulating existing genre conventions to create something wholly new and different.

Sound familiar?

It’s no surprise that television and comics have become kissing cousins over the past few years, sharing talent, ideas, and sometimes whole properties – they’re both serialized visual media that extend a story over a long period of time, creating a natural back-and-forth between the creators and the fanbase/viewership. They can be open-ended or finite, deliberately paced or created one at a time, episodically self-contained or continuity-laden.

So what makes The Wire unique? Largely its ambition. Meticulously plotted and incredibly complex, The Wire engages the viewer eloquently, trusting him/her to stay alert, put together the pieces and follow the narrative without the consistent recapping and handholding that often permeates network television. Each season introduces a new cast of characters that supplements rather than replaces what was already there and exposes a new layer of the interrelated machinery that runs the city of Baltimore.

So what does any of this have to do with comics? To look forward, we must first look back. In 1993, David Simon’s book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets was published, leading to both considerable acclaim and the seven-season NBC police drama Homicide: Life on the Street, which Simon left journalism to work on himself.

In the late ’90s and early ’00s, a few hotshot young turks entered the comic industry with backgrounds in crime fiction: namely Brian Michael Bendis, Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker. They didn’t all come in at the same time, or at the same place, but they fairly quickly found each other and started to collaborate. Their writing was detail-oriented, their dialogue as realistic as possible considering the context of the standard superhero comic, and their plots were always planned out far in advance. All of them, in terms of influence, were disciples of Simon.

In the Powers v2 #12 50th-issue blowout interview, Bendis states that “HOMICIDE: A YEAR OF KILLING on the Streets by David Simon … started my absolute love affair for the idea of a homicide detective and his life.” Brubaker and Rucka have both cited Homicide as a major influence on the dynamic and structure of the Eisner award-winning Gotham Central. These three would later go on to work on a variety of projects, both somewhat related to crime fiction (Daredevil, Crime Bible, Detective Comics) and not (Wonder Woman, Uncanny X-Men, Mighty Avengers). Wherever they went, however, the humanistic perspective and attempt at verisimilitude fostered by their crime work would go with them, no matter how bizarre or alien the project.

Additionally, particularly Bendis is often tagged with the reputation of being responsible for what’s known as “decompression”: which is seen as either dragging out scenes or giving them room to breathe, depending on your perspective and the quality of the work. Where before a particular story or conflict would tend to take up one or two issues, with plot threads leading from and to the next issue separate from the particular episodic story, runs would be built as successive arcs, usually four to six issues, which tell a single story, with plot threads running between them. Any attempt at making each issue immediately accessible was abandoned, a necessary sacrifice in the name of verisimilitude and narrative complexity.

This approach, rather than alienating readers, combined with the newfound proliferation of trade paperback collections to shoot Bendis, and later Brubaker, up to the top of the sales charts. These extended stories, heavy on realistic dialogue and character interaction, were hugely popular in collected form and drew tons of new readers in. Which brings us back to The Wire.

It’s interesting to note that, unlike comics, television hadn’t really – and still hasn’t – made that switch completely yet. DVD box sets are replacing trade paperbacks in the metaphor, and certainly shows like Lost or Arrested Development are far more enjoyable when watched in order, but they still make an attempt for each episode to tell its own story. They still act on the unspoken assumption that every episode could be someone’s first, and that as writers they have an obligation to hook them. This is an attitude very much encouraged by the networks. As a result, many shows get bogged down in episode-specific details to maintain the fractal nature of their storytelling – to serve the needs of that single episode’s story, the stories of the multi-episode arcs around it, and on top of that the main driving throughline of the show. This nearly crippled Battlestar Galactica during the back half of season three, as all momentum from the midseason climax was lost in a sea of forgettable one-episode stories with no impact slotted into the story just to fill out a schedule.

The Wire, despite being ostensibly an ongoing television drama (well, ongoing to five seasons, the same way you could consider Y or Ex Machina an ongoing comic) never went with that route. Each season had its own arc, but even though each episode had a different writer and director, they would flow together to create one cohesive story – no episode-specific crises, no tangents slotted in to make the series more “accessible.” It was full speed ahead from the word go, and to say it was critically lauded would be a fair understatement. Unfortunately, unlike Bendis – who got to prop his experiments with comic pacing on the marketing giant known as Spider-Man – David Simon had an HBO show with unknown actors and unknown characters, so that commercial success largely eluded him.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this relationship continues to develop. It’s easy to say that Simon, his writing partner Ed Burns and their staff are unaware of this connection, but considering the Ultimate Spider-Man shout-out in season two I’m not wholly convinced. People always accuse the comics market of being infantile and underdeveloped, but the aspects that made The Wire so unpopular with the general audience have been hugely successful in the comic industry, both inside and out of the corporate-owned superhero market. Does this speak just to the talent of the creators involved? Increased marketplace awareness within comics fandom? Or simply luck? I have no idea.

But I do know I’d kill to see Simon and Burns do a comic.

Alternate Current is a series of weekly posts on thought-provoking, or simply fun, topics from bright minds all throughout the blogosphere. We take submissions and responses, so if you’d like to get into the mix, send an email to David Brothers. This week comes courtesy of David from Funnybook Babylon.

Let’s get right into it! We’ve got, in no particular order, Jumpin’ Jason Michelitch, Amazing AHR of Geekanerd, Snazzy Samantha of Neither Doormat Nor Prostitute, Groovy Gavin Jasper of 4thletter!, and, as always, Evergreen Ernie Estrella hitting you with Picks and Pans… check below for a few Scans, too.

PICK: Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #12

Buffites or Scoobie Snacks of whatever they’re called need no recommendation to buy this book, but for those like myself who have only a passing acquaintance with the Buffyverse, this much talked-about issue represents a tempting chance to get on board. Spoiler alert if you don’t read the internet, but this of course is the issue where Buffy hooks up with one of the slayers, and by hooks up I mean lesbian sex, which, as a lesbian, I’m a fan of. But this shocking turn of events aside, writer Drew Goddard starts his run on this series by slipping into the ping-pong ball dialogue with ease and a light touch where relationship talk is involved. The nuts and bolts of the story’s exposition will be a little hard to grasp for the uninitiated, but that’s what Wikipedia is for. once the madcap comedy revs up, the grand design of the plot takes a backseat and the LOLs come free of context. It’s the funniest comic I’ve read in several months, bolstered by crisp artwork rich with personality. All this and some casual ruminations on the fluid nature of sexuality – book of the week, for sure. SHOCK VALUE: A+ -AHR

PAN: Countdown to Final Crisis #8

You know what would have made this storyline 500 times better? If the characterization was remotely consistent from week to week. Case in point, Jason has managed to go the entire trip and has only killed the Joker during that time. All of the sudden, now he’s back to being the blood thirsty psycho who kills first and asks questions later? Also, why are all these newbies acting like Ray Palmer has never been a hero (I mean, I know he was cowering and whining for the past two issues, but again, lousy and inconsistent characterization) when he’s been a member of the League? The best I can say about this story is that at least Kyle wasn’t a jerk this time around. SHOCK VALUE: D -Samantha

PICK: Detective Comics #842

When fighting alongside the other superheroes against their supervillain opponents on the Beyonder’s planet, Bruce Wayne tore up his Batman costume to the point that he needed to replace it with a living suit of armor that gave him extra strength and abilities at the cost of making him hunger for brains. Well, maybe not, but that’s what the story feels like. It feels like what the whole Venom symbiote story would have been like if the host wasn’t a humongous spaz like Spider-Man. I make fun, but it was quite good and one of the better things I can remember from Peter Milligan in a while.
SHOCK VALUE: B -Gavin

DOUBLE PICK: Echo #1

Excerpted from Jason’s full review… I was able to look at [Echo] on its own merits, and it’s pretty good. Not amazing, but solid work with an intriguing premise, sort of reminiscent of the kind of fun, smart adventure movie Hollywood used to produce when it remembered how. There’s a shadowy military project with a slightly crazy and ruthless leader, the female innocent bystander drawn into the mix by accident, and a charming park ranger who’s no doubt destined to become a helping hand or even a love interest (the female bystander/main character is shown to have something of a void in her romantic life). None of the characters really hint at any depth yet, but they seem perfectly likable in the ways their respective roles demand. … SHOCK VALUE: B+ -Jason

Woman on the cover pelted by silver rain? I’m game. It can’t be that deep. I think I can walk across. Woman in hypersonic flying suit… and jet behind her pointing missiles at her… Things go boom. That’s not rain… Yeah. I got sucked back in that easy, Terry, hope you enjoyed your break. SHOCK VALUE: A- -Ernie

SPLIT VERDICT: Justice League: The New Frontier Special

I consider New Frontier to be perhaps the best comic I have ever read, so I was fully prepared to enjoy this comic. But no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t because the complexity and characterizations that made New Frontier such a joy to read were completely missing this time around. There are three stories: Batman versus Superman, Kid Flash and Robin team up, and a completely bizarre and offensive Wonder Woman and Black Canary take on feminism story. The first story makes me wonder how Batman and Superman ever developed the deep friendship they supposedly had in New Frontier, the second story is being better
told in Teen Titans Year One, and the last one features Diana protesting against Playboy by stripping her top (because not wearing a bra and going topless are the same thing…I guess?) and calling men pigs every other panel, something she managed not to do during the original New Frontier storyline. In sum, the entire exercise felt like an insane and unfortunate parody in which the only thing that matched standard of quality set by New Frontier was the art. SHOCK VALUE: C- -Samantha

Yes! More tricks in Darwyn Cooke’s bag! He just couldn’t stay away and thankfully so, we get three short team-ups featuring the World’s Finest, Diana and Black Canary, and the beginning of a TITAN-ic friendship, get it? *ahem* Cooke, J. Bone, and David Bullock (storyboard artist for the New Frontier animated movie) pump out a nostalgic reminder of the great maxi-series that preceded it. There’s a lot of tongue and cheek–Cooke style–and just great chemistry on panel and behind. This is hot off the heels of the fantastic release (get the 2-disc DVD) of the animated film. A perfectly timed one-shot that will have you heading back to your Absolute New Frontier collection or single floppies. Cooke’s vision of the last heroic age are timeless and definitive imaginations that sometimes the modern age versions fail to recall. Supplements in the back show the storyboards which Cooke raves about in the audio-commentary that he and Bullock do for the film and a breakdown of the Saul Bass-inspired opening credits. SHOCK VALUE: A+ -Ernie

PICK: Justice League Unlimited #43

As much as the cartoon ruled, due to legal mumbo jumbo, we were cheated out of getting any appearances out of Blue Beetle and therefore no Blue & Gold episodes. Even though Beetle and Booster got to show up here and there in the JLU comic, they did very little in terms of interaction. Now with the current reunion going on in Johns’ Booster Gold series, they’ve allowed Keith Giffen to finally write the JLU Blue & Gold story some of us have been waiting for. Taking place before the team become “Unlimited”, our two superheroes attempt to wow the Justice League by helping stop the Demolition Team. This leads to wackiness and a nice little story, but certainly not one worth the wait. As funny as their banter was at times, Giffen’s story still pales in comparison to the excellent Beetle-centric issue in JLU #5. SHOCK VALUE: B -Gavin

PICK: Logan #1

Take the man out of the costume and place him in his element: Japan. That’s what Brian K. Vaughan and Eduardo Risso did in Logan before he became an X-Man. Just a mutant and just a Canuck soldier. Moderately standard action affair compared to Vaughan’s more complex and creative-owned work. No, folks this is all about seeing Risso’s draw Logan, soldiers, and sexy Japanese women, and does so in delicious fashion. Dean White’s the colorist for the series and while there’s a beautiful water-colored look, the mood’s not established as well as Patricia Mulvihill’s work over his 100 Bullets art. He adds texture but no soundtrack to the panels. Besides the last four pages, there’s a rather pedestrian paint-by-color feel, in fact, you’re lucky enough, stab the black and white variant with no ads. SHOCK VALUE: B- -Ernie

PICK: Nightwing #142

This issue continued the standard set by Tomasi in his previous issues in making Nightwing the well adjusted, sane, and fun hero he always should have been. We see him working with the JSA, looking out for his little brother, and joking with Bruce about Jimmy Olsen. We also see him moving forward into the romance department, signaling a welcome growing up and beyond his teenage crushes, finally. But most telling of all are the panels working in Bones Gym and his disgust at digging up graves, where he makes it very clear that while he may be an adopted Bat, he’s still a Flying Grayson at heart, something his previous writers tended to miss completely. It gives the title a sense of fun and enjoyment that it should have had from the very beginning, and it brings me great joy to see Nightwing getting the treatment he deserves.

Also, that he can converse with Mid-Nite scientifically is proof that Tomasi remembers that Bruce’s training had to include more than just strapping him into some green panties and throwing the kid in harm’s way. SHOCK VALUE: A+ -Samantha

PICK: Northlanders #4

His irrational impulses, brass decisions and natural instinct as a warrior have kept him alive, but he’s plotting and scheming. Something’s about to break the damn and flood the Orkney Islands. Sven’s crusade against his uncle’s men has gone into the winter. The temperature dips below freezing in this issue and the heat needs to be turned up, way up. This series is turning out to be like a savage cross between Rambo, Conan, and Die Hard but at a satisfying slow crawl. I’m intrigued at Brian Wood’s pacing and patience in Northlanders compared to the frenetic, almost rhythmic ride that dominates his much recommended body of work. He’s making us wait and get inside Sven’s head and the few emotions he chooses to show, and that uncertainty keeps me waiting in line for more. SHOCK VALUE: B+ -Ernie

PICK: Punisher: War Journal #17

The last couple issues of War Journal have shown us the real difference between Matt Fraction’s “gun that shoots swords” superhero world take on Frank Castle and Garth Ennis’ “once upon a time there was a bunch of evil fucks” down-to-earth take. Fraction is willing to – at least for the moment – develop Frank Castle. Ennis’ run on the MAX series is fantastic and all, but his Frank is a hollow robot. Put some kind of potential character development in that version of Frank’s way and it’s the same as suggesting he might get killed in the next issue: nothing will ultimately happen to him and he’ll just keep on keeping on. Fraction, on the other hand, treats Frank as a character.

Only Frank isn’t the central character here. Instead, it’s Stuart Clarke, formerly the supervillain Rampage. For most of the series, Stuart has been shown as a likeable sidekick and decent enough guy. Even as the successor of Microchip, Stuart’s history adds a very interesting wrinkle to Frank Castle’s being. Micro and Frank were friends, only for Micro to turn on him and die soon after. With Stuart, it’s in reverse. He and Frank are buddies, but Stuart’s done things in the past that will likely make Frank end his life when he feels the time is right. Except Frank’s also the one hiding his secrets, as by killing Stuart’s innocent girlfriend several issues back, he’s tossed a wrench into his own moral code and it’s straining his relationship with Stuart from another direction. It’s great stuff. SHOCK VALUE: A -Gavin

DOUBLE PAN: Raven #1

The cover to this comic claims, “Finally in her own emo series!” Man, why did I agree to read and review this? Goddamn it… So Raven lives in this world where everyone is made of shiny rubber and everything is so blindingly colorful that it makes you feel ill. At least it’s written by creator Marv Wolfman, so it can’t be too bad.

The story has to do with Raven seeing a vision of a school shooting several days before it’s set to happen. She somewhat casually deals with that while spending more of her time whining about how she’s too weird around boys, how she doesn’t know what a Nintendo Wii is and how she’s possibly losing control of her powers and making other students crazy. This ties into a sympathetic scientist and potential villain who prepares to experiment on something that’s reveal would have made for a good cliffhanger if the cover hadn’t already spoiled it. I feel almost guilty for panning this, but I do like Raven enough to have given this a chance. It’s just not going to work for me. (And in case you were wondering, New Earth apparently uncreated Raven’s tramp stamp). SHOCK VALUE: C- -Gavin

To put it simply, this storyline seems a desperate attempt to merge the best of the Wolfman Raven with the Geoff Johns Raven, and instead winds up missing both by miles. This Raven has all the memories and psychoses of the original Raven, but none of her charm so that when she complains about not being able to love, I have no compassion for her. This Raven also comes full of all the annoying teenager melodrama that seems to be the rage over at DC these days so that when she complains about day to day high school problems, I roll my eyes and wonder why in the world she’s in high school in the first place. This comic manages to combine the worst of both worlds of a character that deserves better.

But it’s worth the buy just so that in ten years, you can open it up, point to all the out of date pop culture references, and laugh.
So…in ten years, it might be worthy of a “C+?” SHOCK VALUE: F -Samantha

PICK: Scalped #15

Dead Mothers continues and now there are fifteen reasons to buy this comic. Bad Horse Dashiell starts to shed some of that leather-tough skin in this issue, and just may have a heart as helps a young boy deal with his dead mother, or is it the other way around? Other characters start to unfold and if you’ve been around from the start, thinking you had characters pegged just get you in trouble because Jason Aaron is proving every month that he steers characters filled with the real complexities right to home. Even though these flawed characters reside in a South Dakota Indian Reservation, readers will be familiar with them. There’s always a bit of vulnerability in the thickest of walls, you just have to find the weak spot. It’s a joy to try and find out where we think that weakness is and where it’s going. But seriously, we all know who’s behind the wheel. Scalped is a ballet of cold-hearted stabs and jabs of heavyweights, Aaron and artist, R.M. Guera. I’ve got the bruises and the wounds to show for it. Step in the ring already. SHOCK VALUE: A+ -Ernie

PICK: Supergirl #27

I appreciated the way that this story tried to give a Kryptonian influence on Earth that went beyond just hitting things. I think that it’s a very realistic problem for Kara to face. My only real complaint was that the storyline seemed pretty rushed, and would have benefited to stay in the future for at least one more issue. The story also does a great job in highlighting the differences between Kara and Superman, while still trying to give them a family bond, which is a nice combination. SHOCK VALUE: B -Samantha

PICK: Teen Titans: Year One #3

Honestly, it’s possible that 1/2 of my love for this storyline may be the art. I continue to be in love with it, even though poor Garth is stuck looking like a zombie. He’s an adorable zombie, though. But the other half of my love comes from the team dynamics portrayed here. These five team members form an instant bond with one another that is obvious. Also, Robin is portrayed as a natural leader, despite Kid Flash’s comments to the contrary. Even the flirting with Donna and Roy is handled well, and considering the disaster that they go on to become romance wise, that’s saying a lot.

It’s not perfect and does have a few flaws. Noticeably, this version of Batman needs to be smacked a lot, if he’s not still under the influence of Antithesis at the end of the story. Donna is a little too stereotypical at times, as well. But it still comes highly, highly recommended. SHOCK VALUE: A- -Samantha

DOUBLE PICK! Young Liars #1

David Lapham’s return to comic long form is a refreshing one in a new ongoing, color-rich, and offbeat series that should congregate the Stray Bullets fans to their local comic shop. Unfortunately like some debuts, this falls into the trap of numerous character introductions. Comparisons to SB are inevitable where each issue was a sprint you were trying to catch up and get your bearings straight before getting tangled in the downward spiral of violence. We meet five people brought together by Sadie Dawkins, all of whom have their own selfish reasons to be connected to her but Sadie’s a wild cannon and there’s no telling what she’ll do. Sadie’s the classic Lapham character that does as much revolving as the world around her and before you know it, you’re sucked up in the twister’s pull. Now that introductions are out of the way, I can’t wait for this train to leave the station. There’s even a suggested soundtrack, this is going to be a cool. Though this is a slightly different approach–linear, for one thing–the wacky, ink-black world of Lapham’s head is worth a lifetime membership of head-trips, devilish grins, mistrust, and oh shit moments served on a dish called violence. One ticket please. SHOCK VALUE: A- -Ernie

Excerpted from Jason’s full review… I’ve been a fan of David Lapham’s self-published comic series Stray Bullets for a very long time now, and the goodwill engendered by that series has carried me into any other project of his that comes down the pike. The latest of these is Young Liars, published by DC/Vertigo, released this week. Unlike his previous Vertigo release, Silverfish, which looks and reads much the same as his self-published work, Young Liars more closely resembles other Vertigo books than it does other David Lapham books. The story and characters are intriguing enough but the style and storytelling are more than a little bland…. …All in all, the story is interesting enough that I’ll be buying the second issue to see what happens. But there’s no guarantee that the formal and aesthetic problems won’t drive me away in the long run. SHOCK VALUE: B+ for story, but a C for execution -Jason

PICK: Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons #3

The Chris Ryall/Ashley Wood project Zombies vs. Robots can best be described as a story thought up by a hyper 8-year-old who happens to have a really rad imagination. That being said, it was still an action-packed and entertaining downer that didn’t seem to have much point to it. That pretend storytelling child from two sentences back has just grown old enough to hit puberty and came up with this sequel miniseries. In this, the final issue, the Warbot and a handful of surviving amazons decide to enter a cave and have a final showdown with the zombie horde.

It’s ridiculous and again action-packed, but doesn’t feel quite as pointless as the end of the first series. Maybe because we’ve actually gotten to see Warbot used as a protagonist for more than several pages and play off of human characters. Or maybe it’s because we actually have a feeling of an overarching storyline now, including the predictable, yet unexpected final page. Either way, at least it’s a far better way to end a zombie sequel than whatever the hell Kirkman was thinking with Marvel Zombies 2.

Ashley Wood’s sloppy art fits the bill so well here, always giving that look where it appears like he scribbled it with his left hand while righty, yet somehow you can easily tell what’s going on. It’s a strange kind of talent where a comic filled with naked amazon ladies doesn’t feel so gratuitous and cheesecakian (I just made the word up and it looks like I spelled it wrong), allowing us to instead focus on the craziness of a large robot and a little girl with a slingshot fighting off a horde of battle-skilled zombies. SHOCK VALUE: A- -Gavin

Don’t Pump Your Brakes Yet, Marvel

by David Brothers

Michael San Giacomo’s latest column on Newsarama, Journey Into Comics: I Have A Dream, is an interesting one. He posits the idea that what Marvel really needs right now is a story to “pull together all its disparate, raggedy-edged storylines into a whole, complete, satisfying finale.” Go and give it a read. I may not agree with his point, but it is an interesting read.

I really don’t agree, though. The beauty of the Marvel universe is its disparate threads. It has been for years. It’s even one of the big differences between Marvel’s way of doing things and DC’s. Where DC Comics has Crises and “narrative spines,” Marvel is perfectly content to let their stories flow freely and separately. They may cross over occasionally, but not quite to the same extent that DC’s stories do.

There are a few separate narrative threads running through the Marvel Universe now. There is the chaos in outer space due to Annihilation, civil unrest in Captain America, current event analogues due to Civil War, the wreckage in NYC due to Planet Hulk, and Red Scare-style mistrust due to the oncoming Secret Invasion. These are just the major stories– I’m leaving out the dissolution of the X-Men, kung fu kickery in Iron Fist, or the shenanigans in Amazing Spider-Man.

This is a huge part of why I love Marvel’s comics. Their motto just seems to be throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks, and then throwing even more stuff at the wall. It gives the feel of a fast-paced, hectic universe, and also one where you can always find the cure for what ails ya. If you don’t want to read about Skrulls invading, pop on over to The Order for some post-Civil War intrigue. Are you still mad about the death of Cap? Well, the X-Men just went through a big upheaval, maybe there’s something there for you. Don’t dig on outer space epics? Amazing Spider-Man is about as street level and old school as it gets.

I’d hate to see Marvel tie all this together. With DC, at least, the stories are planned to coincide at certain points. With Marvel, it’d be a disaster. It’d be continuity pandering in the worst way. It doesn’t matter that Nova is off doing outer space things while Spider-Man is busy resetting his life– they’re separate stories by separate teams. They are both fulfilling a different need.

Yes, Mephisto rewrote the universe, or at least the past. But– why should that impact Wolverine? Why should the problems be solved by a team of heroes? There are continuity questions involved in Brand New Day, but those should be able to be handled in Brand New Day. Magneto destroyed a bit of Manhattan back during New X-Men, but that’s no big deal. It’s contained continuity at work. Each book exists in its own sub-continuity, giving it its own shape, feel, and form.

We don’t necessarily need Marvel Secret Crisis to wrap up these loose ends, in large part because they aren’t loose ends. They are plot points. We are going to find out what’s happened to the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Skrulls in due time. However, it should happen in their own books. We don’t neccessarily need to see Hulk popping up in New Warriors, asking what’s up with registration and explaining the whole red thing. It’d be weird and disorienting.

Tying everything together makes for an interesting experiment. The Superman books did it for years, for example, and DC has kind of made a big deal out of interconnecting their storylines, as we can see with the coming of Final Crisis. I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing at all– DC has had a nicely cohesive universe ever since Infinite Crisis. However, that isn’t Marvel’s thing. Marvel provides a different experience. Their universe is crowded, hectic, over the top, and fast-moving, which gives you a chance to dip your toes into a bunch of different stories at once.

Let’s keep Marvel’s plate full to overflowing. Why clear the plate when you can sit down at a buffet and stuff your face like it was ancient Rome?

Alternate Current is a series of weekly posts on thought-provoking, or simply fun, topics from bright minds all throughout the blogosphere. We take submissions, so if you’d like to get into the mix, send an email to David Brothers. This week comes courtesy of David Brothers, the Senior Comics Editor for PCS.

All-Star Batman and Robin Is Amazing.

(no, i am not trolling you)

by Jon Bernhardt of Funnybook Babylon

The ninth issue of Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin came out this Wednesday, and finally, at long last, it looks like we’ve got enough material here to accurately gauge it. Its release schedule is still highly irregular — though it’s been rapidly getting less so — and sure, it’s taken us over two years to get to this point. But here we are, and from all appearances, Miller and Lee have handed us something a hell of a lot more complex than most people thought they’d get when they picked up the first couple issues. Really, though, this is Frank Miller we’re talking about. You should have known by now there’d be something lurking there underneath all that sex and violence.

After the first couple issues of ASBAR (God I love that acronym) hit, the conventional wisdom stated that Frank Miller had, quite frankly, gone insane. That’s fine. That was more or less the conventional wisdom that followed The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Not so much following Batman: Year One, but there was still some kvetching about how Miller portrayed Catwoman. What people seemed to miss about Miller’s latter day Batman work — especially the oft-maligned DKSA, which is right now competing against itself and only itself for “Most Disappointing Comic” in some silly poll Wizard Online is running — is that Miller is doing something most comic writers seem incapable of doing: he is reacting. DKSA is a reaction to DKR and its rather blind, unconsidered acceptance by both creative forces at DC Comics and the comic community at large; the book is a mockery through absurdity. Not a lot of people got this message, and many of the ones who did still disliked it, because they found the writing or art off-putting. And to be fair, Miller’s exaggerated “ugly” style that he pulls out these days is something that takes a little getting used to.

But a lot of people — including, I’m assuming, the bright minds and hearty souls over at Wizard — disliked Dark Knight Strikes Again because they came into it expecting something they were never going to get, based, perhaps, on their misunderstanding of what Miller actually did with the character in Dark Knight Returns. The absolute worst way to engage with the text of DKR is to read it like Miller is saying that Batman’s a cool dude, totally ripping around town and kicking all sorts of asses, thinking that it’s a war and his kids in it are soldiers and that this is how things should be, thinking that creepy memorials are the way to go when a child in his care dies. DKR is not an endorsement. DKR is a cautionary tale.

So when the main line DC Comics version of Batman got his sidekick killed, it must have been bizarre for Miller to see that memorial show up, because that memorial was not a good thing for the character. What happened when that memorial went up in Dark Knight Returns was that Bruce Wayne stopped being Batman. So when DC killed Jason Todd off on their main line, and someone realized this would be a great opportunity to do a throwback to that wildly successful miniseries that Frank Miller did — which, along with Alan Moore’s Watchmen, comprised a late-eighties sea change in comics, for better or for worse — they essentially betrayed the memorial’s symbolism. Sure, they kept the inscription, the glass case, the creepy costume, all that physical stuff, but they botched the context. In DKR, that event makes Batman hang up the mask. In the main DCU, that event makes him…try to kill Joker, but get stopped by Superman because Joker is part of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations (or the one from Qurac, or Khandaq, or whatever made-up fake Arabic state is standing in for Iran these days). Then he continues soldiering on, getting kind of nutty until Tim Drake saves his soul. And there the memorial stays.

The memorial looms, now; it’s pretty much replaced the T-Rex and the giant penny as the standard stage prop you see when any DC artist does an interior of the Batcave. That’s a powerful message, and one that doesn’t seem to be that considered. And in the late nineties, dreck like Bruce Wayne: Murderer? and Batman: Fugitive cemented the bizarre, one foot in the room, one foot out the door approach Batman’s editorial handlers, Batman’s writers, and a large group of Batman’s fans took towards the character, perhaps best summed up in what was maybe the most misguided, character damaging single issue of Batman ever penned — Batman #600, the climax of Bruce Wayne: Murderer?, written by none other than Ed Brubaker. Let’s be clear: “Bruce Wayne is the mask” is perhaps the most tedious, surface-level, purely lazy interpretation of Frank Miller’s legacy with this character that you can make.

I think that is why after Dark Knight Strikes Again failed, Miller felt the need to come back and try it again, in a way that would appeal to the baser natures of some the people that gave DKSA the heave-ho. It’s slick and beautiful; Jim Lee at his finest, most insane, and fundamentally sound. Miller has Lee doing things that Jeph Loeb wishes he had the imagination to ask for in Hush. And Lee’s style fits the new approach Miller is taking to the material perfectly. Instead of using intentionally ugly art to contrast with the sickly-sweet over-pop portrayals of superheroes in DKSA (and anyone who thinks that art wasn’t intentional should reread not just his first run on Daredevil, but the issues immediately preceding it, when he was the book’s penciller; every choice Miller makes is a matter of style and is done by a man with a very, very solid grounding in his craft), Miller and Lee are using the art to emphasize the slick, fuel-injected, ultra-violent, over-the-top creature Batman has become. Everything about this book, from Batman’s ridiculous inner monologue to the 12 year old boy who’s the closest thing we have to a character we can identify with, to a six-page fold out of the Batcave, indicates that there’s something behind all this sound and fury, and that it’s something important.

The Batman of All-Star Batman and Robin is not just a dude who can bust some heads. He’s not one-dimensional. And like most characters that are not one-dimensional, he should not always be taken at his word. As we’ve seen so far, this Batman is a troubled individual in an utterly insane world — an updated analogue of the Silver Age, where the whimsy that characterized that era’s climate has been replaced by the exaggerated faux-maturity that characterizes ours. This character has built a reactive persona that he hides behind, and in Issue #9, for the first time in the run, it comes down, and we see Bruce Wayne. Issue #9 is also the first time we see a recognition that violence has consequences, which starkly contrasts with the extremely funny, over-the-top scene that comes before it. Basically, Issue #9 is the turn that the first eight issues were building to, where Miller pulls back the curtain and makes how he sees these characters explicit. Seriously. Go back and read Issues #1-9 in one sitting, and see how he does it. Miller is a master — he’s crafted a ludicrous comic that’s not only viscerally entertaining and amazingly funny, but carries on the tradition of the old DC Universe, translated into the modern era, while also giving a spin on the character that has as much weight and consideration as his work in Dark Knight Returns. Probably not as much impact, but that’s a good thing. Let’s be honest — just like with its contemporary, Watchmen, fans are a bit too blindly rabid when it comes to DKR.

It’s a good time to be a Batman fan. Grant Morrison and Frank Miller, with generally solid work by Paul Dini on the side? Yes please. It’s taken way too long, but Miller and Morrison, who are far and away the best two minds currently working on superheroes for DC, are taking a character that has honestly been doing nothing of note for almost fifteen years and breathing major life back into him (with assists by guys like Darwyn Cooke and David Lapham, of course — Batman: Ego and Batman: City of Crime complete the essential post-Knightfall Batman). This should have sea-changing effects on the Batman franchise — complete with people trying to drag it kicking and screaming back to the way he was in the nineties. But that’s cool. We won’t see the real way Morrison and Miller are changing how people view these characters until a new crop of writers gets in and starts wrecking shop. And that’s the way it should be.

Alternate Current is a series of weekly posts on thought-provoking, or simply fun, topics from bright minds all throughout the blogosphere. We take submissions, so if you’d like to get into the mix, send an email to David Brothers. This week comes courtesy of Jon from Funnybook Babylon.

A quick look at the best and worst new comics. Our taste makers this week include David Brothers (4thletter.net), Jason Michelitch and Erin F.

PAN: Countdown #27

We’re nearly halfway done with this series, and very little of note has happened so far. Trickster and Piper? Still on the run. Holly and Harley? Inexplicably still hanging around the Amazons. All those important teasers DC released back during convention season? Dealt with in other books, rarely mentioned in Countdown. As a lead-in to DC’s next big event, Countdown is doing a wonderful job of trying to dampen my enthusiasm for Grant Morrison and JG Jones on Final Crisis. Hook us up with some plot development or something, at least! Grade: D - David

PICK: Cromartie High School, Vol. 12

I haven’t read Cromartie since volume four, but I plan on purchasing the entire series… eventually. At first the all the monkeys and robots and the Freddie Mercury character riding a horse were mind-blowingly hilarious, but after a few books, it’s impossible to keep upping the ante on weird crap. It looks like Cromartie ends with volume 16, and you know what? Maybe the world is better off. If the series kept getting weirder on an exponential scale readers’ brains would literally explode. - Erin

PICK: Justice League Elite, Volume 2

Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke’s run on JLA is pretty much the best run since Grant Morrison left the book. I loved it without reservation, and Justice League Elite was their swan song. Kelly took the basic conceit of your generic edgy super-teams, defined here as “heroes who are willing to cross lines other heroes won’t,” and flipped it around. Instead of heroes who are willing to drop down into the much, we get heroes who are pulled down into it by circumstances. Do they give up and give in, or do they stand tall and stay strong? Justice League Elite examines that with a cast of true-blue heroes, reformed villains, and entirely new characters. Mahnke’s art is expressive, his action scenes suitably busy, and his characters attractive. Daredevil, Casanova, Black Panther, Moon Knight, and Flash all came out this week, but Justice League Elite volume 2 is still my pick of the week. Grade: A+ - David

PICK: Moon Knight #13

This is Charlie Huston’s last issue as a solo writer, and it is a doozy. This done-in-one tale shows exactly what happens when Marc Spector goes to try and register for the SHRA, but also gives us glimpses into the wreckage that he’s made of his life and those around him. We get to see a couple of old, old friends make a return appearance, and to great effect, to boot. Even better is the fact that Huston, despite leaving the book, is still building the myth. A fistful of new questions arise during the course of the book, leaving his new co-writer with plenty to follow-up on and readers with plenty to argue about. Plus, we get an appearance from The Profile, one of the most interesting Marvel characters to pop up recently. Tom Coker’s art fits the mood of the story perfectly, and he sells everything from interrogation to assault in the streets perfectly. This issue is easily the best of the run, eclipsing even the first issue, and well worth a try. Shock Value: A+ - David

PICK: Powr Masters, Vol. 1

In many ways, POWR MASTRS is just the first chapter of another straight fantasy-adventure story. Giant talking cats get shot by arrows, people change their shape on a moment’s notice, and a warlock prowls in the background (and the backstory). But anyone even casually flipping through this first volume would recognize that Powr Mastrs is anything but average or normal. The thin-lined art shifts its form (much like a number of the protagonists) from purposefully crude, almost child-like pictures to beautiful, detailed depictions of monster faces and exotic forests. While occaisonally making for momentary confusion in the storytelling, the uncertain nature of the art is the perfect compliment to the story’s bent whimsy, putting the reader into unfamiliar visual territory and creating a sense of the absurd and the fantastic that would be impossible with “realistic” art.

The story rests on classic archetypes: young masked man Subra Ptareo embarks on a wandering quest, and finds himself in a strange land populated with people of a fantastic nature. Not much is explained in the book, but it is satisfyingly tantalizing – we know that people change shape and that there is a ceremony called “transmutation night”, but we know no details; we see menacing shadowy figures and hear about a strange robotic threat called the Mechlin Men, but we are unclear as to what might pass for “good” or “evil” in this world; and in a scene that might double as a subversion of the oft-discussed “tentacle sex” cliche, we get a fascinating glimpse at the rituals of this weird society paraded before us. The plot is much more concerned with introduction of characters and themes than with any overall advancement of events, but since this is the first of (presumably) many chapters, that’s more than appropriate.

There are moments of odd humor, and an “anything goes” feeling inspired both by the sketchbook energy of the art and the stream-of-consciousness feel of some of the storytelling choices. Do not be fooled by appearances, though – this is a finely crafted work of fantasy, which deals in surreal moments and big ideas in a way that i suspect will reward multiple readings, and which promises even more fuel to ignite the sense of wonder in following volumes.

Shock Value: B+

- Jason

PAN: Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman Prime

A continuity refresher with a big fight in the middle of it. Nice flashback art by Jerry Ordway is the only legitimate positive quality I could find, although I had a lot of fun watching the tortured lengths to which the writing went to avoid the name “Superboy”. For those who don’t know, the family of Jerry Siegel recently had a court rule in favor of their owning the copyright to the character of Superboy, so DC can’t use the name anymore. Which is the main reason for this book’s existence, it seems – to rebrand the character as having never been called “Superboy”, but just being someone who always referred to himself as “going to be Superman someday”, which is a heckuva logo to have to fit on a magazine.Though not any more so than the one already on this comic, I guess.

I really can’t rag too hard on this book – it’s just not for me. I don’t give one hoot about Infinite Crises or Sinestro Corps-es-es, and clearly this book is doing something for somebody. It’s probably a very successful example of the kind of book that it is trying to be, but it’s a prime example of exactly the kind of superhero comics I hate with a passion.

There is one phenomenal scene, though, in which Superb-…sorry, SuperMAN Prime sits on the ground and bursts into tears, and then defends his wussy ways by yelling “What? Boy’s can’t cry?”. That’s pure gold, baby.

The back-up story looked like it was about a demon squishing the head of a baby, but even though it was drawn entirely by Jerry Ordway I didn’t have the energy to read it.

Shock Value: D Unintentional comedy saves it from flunking.

- Jason

What can we say? Here at Indie Comics Roundup there is nothing we love as much as hate, but sometimes, no matter how hard you seek that which is hatable, all you find are good comics. We really tried, we even read an Image book. Perhaps later we can find something from Avatar to make our bile rise…

Superspy

Matt Kindt/Top Shelf

I don’t know how many people habitually peruse the copyright page before plunging into a book, but if you do you’ll find, right above the copyright information in Superspy, the explanation: “A Note on the Book: The chapters are arranged in a nonlinear format in the order that the author intended that they be read. However, it is possible to read the chapters in the order that events actually took place by using the dossier numbers as a guide.” This is incredibly cool, and, sure enough, each chapter comes with a seven-digit number paperclipped on…

Read the complete review

I Killed Adolf Hitler

Jason/Fantagraphics

Jason is that rarest of birds, an artist with bona fide indie “cred” (for God’s sake, he’s even European) who also has a mainstream-friendly esthetic. His stories revolve around gunfights and zombies and love, which is pretty much what I assume primetime TV looks like nowadays. I Killed Adolf Hitler is about a contract killer who goes back in time to kill the Fuhrer, and if that’s not a zillion-dollar movie idea, I don’t know what is…

Read the complete review

Robot Dreams

Sara Varon/First Second

Robot Dreams appears at first to be an example of Kochalkaesque whimsy, but, fortunately, it also possesses a deep undercurrent of cynicism that saves it from being cloying. It’s the story of an anthropomorphic dog who builds a robot and then abandons him at the first opportunity. The robot dreams of his lost dog friend…

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Where’s Dennis?

Hank Ketchum/Fantagraphics

There are plenty of gag panels that garner critical acclaim, and there are plenty of comic strips with recurring characters that are similarly respected, but the combination of the two–a gag panel with recurring characters–is generally the bottom of the barrel of the comics page. This is where Family Circus, Marmaduke, and Ziggy, the three horsemen of crap, reside; the mediocrity of Heathcliff looks like quality by contrast, but that’s really damning with faint praise. I suppose it’s a problem of dissonance between medium and content: strips lend themselves to character-driven humor, while panels lend themselves to the pure gags of Arno or Addams, and trying to shoehorn characters into one panel a day is comic poison. The prime exception is Hank Ketchum’s Dennis the Menace…

Read the complete review

Age of Bronze #26

Eric Shanower/Image Comics

Age of Bronze, which retells the story of the Trojan War from start to finish, is shaping up to be one of the two or three best comics of the decade, but it’s also a recurring warning of one of the weaknesses of the comic book “pamphlet” form. In this issue, the penultimate installment of the “Betrayal” story arc, the Achaean envoys to Troy seek a peaceful settlement, get rebuffed, and slip away from Troy with an angry mob at their heels, after a Trojan woman secretly seduces one of the envoys…

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Miriam #1

Rich Tommaso/Alternative Comics

Standing on its own, Miriam is a nicely designed, engaging comic. But Miriam does not stand on its own. It is a look-and-feel lawsuit waiting to happen. Miriam is what you would produce if you came from a culture that had the last few issues of Eightball and no other comics. It’s not a swipe, and it’s not plagiarism; but it’s probably the most blatant comics homage since Top Notch Comics appropriated Chris Ware’s esthetic in 1998…

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Lucky #1

Gabrielle Bell/Drawn & Quarterly

Lucky #1 is a neat little comic with a unique premise. The first half of the book is a straight autobiographical account of author Gabrielle Bell’s experiences giving slideshow readings of one of her dream comics. The second half is the dream comic. It’s a little like Chester Brown’s “Helder”/”Showing ‘Helder’” from Yummy Fur #19 and 20 in reverse…

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Shitty Art Book

Nicolas Mahler/La Pastèque

An art book is not really what you want from Nicolas Mahler. You don’t want it because you know it will be shitty…

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The Annotated Pilgrim

Brian Lee O’Malley/self-published (presumably)

This is not a comic, per se, but a series of notes about Scott Pilgrim, the widely revered but chronically late Oni Press series. References explained, “how I came up with this,” what’s based on reality, etc.: trivia, essentially. Whether you want to read this or not depends on how obsessed you are with Scott Pilgrim. You’ll either be delighted or bored, and you know who you are…

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Manga: The Complete Guide

By Jason Thompson
Del Rey, 592 pp.

Jason Thompson claims to have read every manga title available in the English language. Thompson, a former editor of Shonen Jump magazine, is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide, a definitive Leonard-Maltin-style book. Every manga title published up through early 2007 is included in the book, complete with publication information, an age rating, a plot summary, a brief review, and a star rating. The book is also stuffed with essays about every manga genre (including “Cooking” and “Phantom Thieves”), a brief history of manga, a brief history of Japan (with manga examples from each time period) and a briefing on the Japanese language complete with a kana guide. The book also includes a section of mini-essays on manga-related issues that may concern parents, such as “Racism” and “Occult and Religion”.

Thompson set out to write a book for everyone, from fans of obscure manga to total n00b-Narutards, and from screaming yaoi fangirls to concerned members of the P.T.A. Yaoi and hentai (ero-manga) sections are regulated to the back of the book–Thompson suggested at MangaNext, “If you’re concerned about giving the book to your kid cousin you can just rip out the sections in the back.”

Some of the reviews and essays are not written by Thompson himself, but by industry professionals and trusted friends. Otaku USA magazine editor Patrick Macias contributes gekiga reviews; Overlooked Manga Festival’s Shaenon Garrity reviews the magical girl titles, and Carl Gustav Horn contributes to the book (look for his review of Gainax’s “Mega Comics”). Thompson claims that although he farmed out some of the reviews in order to be less biased (he just doesn’t like Saint Tail), he still read the series and edited or rewrote any reviews he felt were too far off the mark.

The star system was not Thompson’s idea, but suggested by Del Rey. Every manga series in the book is given a rating between zero and four stars. I found the star system to be extremely useful; it’s a quick way to avoid bottom-of-the-barrel manga junk and an easy way to pick out good titles. But are Thompson’s rating accurate? As soon as I picked up the book I started looking up my favorite and least favorite titles to see how my person rating system compares to Thompson’s:

I’m disappointed that Genshiken only receives three stars, but but I can live with that. How do Thompson’s rating compared to some of PopCultureShock’s reviews?

I also had to know what ratings Thompson gave to some of my least favorite titles:

Katherine wanted to know why Innocent W only got 3 stars. My podcast co-host Noah and I had our own conflicts with some of Thompson’s ratings: Both Happy Mania and Akira get four stars–does that mean Happy Mania is the Akira of josei? Thompson clarified with us in his interview that his ratings are accurate to within a half-star. He began writing the book with a five star system but cut back when he discovered he was giving five stars to classical manga such as Osama Tezuka’s works. Four stars evened the playing field for more recent titles.

Noah and I scoured the book for the lowest rated titles, some of which have been featured a two part series over at the Overlooked Manga Festival recently. There are only six titles given the lowest possible rating of zero stars:

Zero Star Manga
Eiken
Central City
Dark Angel
High School Agent
Night Warriors Dark Stalkers Revenge
New Vampire Miyu

Fourteen titles receive only a half-star rating, among them: Girls Bravo, Onegai Twins, Junk Force, and Kage Tora, the last of these featuring “…badly drawn cleavage.”

Many titles receive the prestigious four-star rating, among them:

Four Star Manga
Banana Fish
Berserk
Cromartie High School
Crying Freeman
Cyborg 009
Death Note
Eyeshield 21
From Eroica with Love
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Phoenix
Wounded Man

The difference between four and three stars is the quality jump between the original Battle Angle Alita (four strars) and Battle Angel Alita Last Order (three stars). The anthology Japan by 17 Creators receives four stars, but Secret Comics Japan receives only three stars (I think these two ratings should be flipped). I’m annoyed that Tekkon Kinkreet (listed as Black & White in the guide) receives 3.5 stars and is good throughout, while Death Note gets four stars but it turns into a river of vomit sometime around volume seven.

Within five minutes of opening Manga The Complete Guide I began a list of obscure, bizarre, and more often than not out-of-print titles I would like to read:

Erin’s Wish List
A,A¹ – by Moto Hagio, early shojo artist and author of They Were Eleven
Bass Master Ranmaru – a fishing manga e-book
Bow Wow Watta – veterinary manga by a prolific veterinarian
Bride of Deimos – by the artist of swan
Comics Underground Japan – 4 stars, contains “Cat Soup” short story
Dame Dame Saito Nikki – the author explains American culture in vignettes
Division Chief Kosaku Shima – salaryman manga
The Four Immigrants Manga – oldest title available in translation

This is just the A through F section of my general list. I also quickly wrote down all the four star erotic titles and four star yaoi titles, such as:

Four Star Ero-Manga and Yaoi Titles
Co-Ed Sexxtasy
Domin-8 Me
Embracing Love
Gerard and Jacques
Japanese Eroticism: A Language Guide to Current Comics
Pink Snipper
Shout Out Loud
Wild Rock

I’m not going to tell you which ones are yaoi.

Manga: The Complete Guide is an indispensable resource for aspiring and established manga fans. It’s an obvious purchase for librarians, a great resource for parents, and a great gift for the manga fan in your life. At only $20, it’s incredibly affordable. You can’t get two volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub (four stars) for $20!

I would like to see future editions of Manga: The Complete Guide, and maybe a hard cover collector’s edition of the book. Look for my interview with Jason Thompson and his MangaNext panel audio on this site and on ninjaconsultant.com in the near future.