2002-09-12 - 11:23 p.m.

New Comics

Uh oh. I forgot to talk about new comics yesterday. Well, I'll talk about them today!

I knew that it would happen eventually, but I'm starting to run out of comics to talk about. This is not to say that there weren't some good comics that came in this week, it's just that I'm trying to talk about DIFFERENT books every week, and it's eventually going to get to the point where I've reviewed almost everything. Of course, long before I'll run out of comics to review I'll run out of titles for these reviews. In fact, I think I already have.

But I've only been doing this for a month! I can't stop now!

Earlier in the week there was a rumor floating around that we were going to get our comics one day early this week because Diamond Comic Distributors wanted to avoid September 11 being a shipping day. This rumor turned out to be utterly false, and the comics showed up yesterday, just like any other Wednesday. Hah! The terrorists lose AGAIN!

Fables #5

I mentioned this book last month, but this month I'm officially reviewing it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

What would happen if all the creatures and characters that inhabit our fairy tales and folklore were forced to live in the real world? That, in a nutshell, is the "high concept" of Fables. Some two hundred years ago the myth-creatures were driven from their homes and forced to come to our world. Most of them live in New York City, and call their part of it Fabletown. Fabletown exists unknown to the public at large has its own government of sorts. Old King Cole is the mayor, but a divorced-and-bitter Snow White does his dirty work for him.

This issue, the last of the first story arc, we find out the answer to the question: "Who killed Rose Red?" The answer: nobody did. She faked her death to get out of paying a debt. All of this was figured out by Fabletown's only policeman, Bigby Wolf. Yes, that's right. The Big Bad Wolf, in human form.

All of this is kind of a jaded, cynical look at the world of fairytales, but that sort of thing is right up the alley of writer Bill Willingham. In fact, exploring the dark side of fantasy is practically the theme of everything he's written. He started out as the artist and co-creator of The Elementals which was about as dark as a superhero book gets. Ever since then he's been inserting dark reality into fantasy concepts, or vice versa.

This book is entertaining, well written and well drawn. It's selling quite well for us, but that's because we've been pushing it. However, if the quality wasn't there, people wouldn't be buying it.

Green Lantern #154

This superhero book from DC is written by Judd Winick, who was a member of the cast of MTV's Real World some years ago. Winick is not a bad writer, but in this issue he tackles an issue that might be a little over his head, perhaps because it hits too close to home for him.

The topic of this issue is gay-bashing. A teenage cast member who happens to be gay is waylaid on his way home from a club by three men and beaten nearly to death. Green Lantern, who is a friend of the boy, finds out that one of the three muggers has been caught and is being held by the police. Green Lantern visits the suspect in his jail cell, and tortures him until he admits where the other two gay-bashers are. Green Lantern then finds the two accomplices and gives them a serious beat-down, then turns them over to the police.

Gay bashing is a scummy crime, and the people who do it certainly deserve everything that happens to them in this comic, and more. Winick, because of his experiences on The Real World, has a lot of sympathy for gay people being mistreated by society, but here I think he goes too far. By letting his righteous anger get the better of him, Winick has told a story that has absolutely nothing to do with reality, and makes Green Lantern seem as big a bully as those he's chasing. By torturing a confession out of the first guy, and then beating the crap out of the other two, Green Lantern has made the case of his friend's beating something that would probably be thrown out of court immediately. Obtaining information by torture? That doesn't sound very heroic. In fact, in the real world Green Lantern probably would be tossed in jail himself, and then be sued into the poorhouse as well.

Now the fact that this comic deals with a controversial subject might have made it the subject of a news story, and that would have caused a flood of demand for the book, like what happened here. At the comic store we like to call this "the Curse of the Slow News Day." However, this book came out on September 11 and as everyone and their hamster knows, that was anything but a slow news day. The media was totally pre-occupied with the anniversary of the terrorist attacks so this book got no publicity, and will therefore sell about the same as the previous issue. C'est la vie.

Iron Man #59

This book has me scratching my head. I'm really having a hard time believing that Marvel is actually letting Mike Grell write and draw one of their mainline superhero books.

Okay, this is going to need some explanation.

In the late 1970s, when I was just starting to get interested in selling comics, I was told that there was only one comic being published by DC that was interesting. It wasn't Superman or Batman, it was a comic called Warlord, written and drawn by a guy named Mile Grell. It told the story of Travis Morgan, an air force pilot, tapped in a fantastic world underneath our own. Apparently the world is hollow, and there is a sun inside it. Hey, it sounds dumb, but it's no more silly than believing John Carter is running around half-naked on Mars.

In the mid-1980s Grell did a book called Sable about a former soldier of fortune who was a freelance bounty hunter/bodyguard for hire. It was decent crime adventure fiction with some witty repartee.

However, after Sable, Grell's star plummeted, and he was involved in some dreadful creator-owned properties for Image Comics and Malibu Comics in the early to mid 1990s.

I kind of assumed that Grell was pretty thoroughly washed-up. As far as comic writers and artists go he's so Old School you might say that he was from "Ye Olde Skoole." So now he's the regular writer and artist on Iron Man, which is generally a book for cutting age technology and special effects? Talk about casting against type!

All that being said, this story isn't bad. Millionaire inventor and industrialist Tony Stark has a designed a super-powered and super-light suit of armor that is worn by his bodyguard, Iron Man. However, what only a couple people in the world know is that Tony Stark IS Iron Man. In this issue an Iron Man helmet is discovered in an archeological dig, and is estimated to be a thousand years old. How did it get there? Stark, who has recently built a time machine, goes back into the past to find out why, only to discover that he may be leaving something more important than his helmet back in the past - like his head.

I haven't been following Iron Man for a while, so I found the story amusing, but I wonder how Iron Man's regular readers are going to find Grell's creaky old art. I was also amused that Iron Man's cast seems to be "Old School" as well. Back when Iron Man was first created in the early 1960s the main supporting characters were Stark's chauffeur, a morose ex-boxer named "Happy" Hogan, and Stark's freckle faced, red headed secretary, "Pepper" Potts. Yes, that Stan Lee could really pick character names! Well, Pepper and Happy seem to be the main supporting cast again, although things are being handled a little differently than they would be in the 1960s. To wit: Pepper and Happy are married, but it's obvious that Pepper is still carrying a torch for Tony Stark. Comic book love triangles! Gotta love them!