Ed Brubaker may be one of the finest comic writers working in mainstream super hero comics. For sure, the artists whom he chooses to work with contribute quite a bit, whether it be Sean Phillips, David Aja, or Michael Lark. However, Ed Brubaker is one of the finest comic writers today because he is, first & foremost, a writer's writer.

One of the biggest assumptions that people have when considering writers, is that they assume all writers work in the medium of text - that it is really the artist/director that directs the visual impact of any given work, whether it be film, television, or comics, while the writer mostly deals with the words we read. I don't find this to be true. Any true creator needs to be aware of all facets of the medium in which s/he chooses to express themselves, and thinking about a comic book or a television show in terms of the words used is simply not enough because it's not the words telling the story.

The illusions that Brubaker creates in his comic (if you prescribe the Wellseian concept that all fiction/stories are part magic-trick, part con) are virtually seamless. Unless you're like me and spend far too much time dissecting all the tiny little facets of every story you read, it's hard to really explain what makes Brubaker's storytelling consistently work as well as it does. I mean, Deadly Genesis aside, I don't think I've read a Brubaker story, post-Dead Enders, that can be misconstrued as being indulgent on any level. Brubaker's story-telling style is so lean that it almost hurts, and in a genre where most people seem content to write "for the trade" or whatever, that is more than a breath of fresh air. It's a godsend.

Sure, Brubaker knows his way around a sentence. He knows how to deliver a piece of dialog with enough that Chandleresque punch, where every word is like a jab to the gut, and he knows what kind of language is not only appropriate for his characters/world, but what language is best (possibly the only issue I ever have with Brubaker's Iron Fist writing partner, Matt Fraction, is that the language of the franchise characters he writes always sound like Matt Fraction, and not Danny Rand or whoever). But even beyond that, beyond the words, the man knows how to write comics - he knows how to layout a page; he knows how to angle his characters; he knows when to pull out the view and when to close it in. The man knows how to tell a story with pictures & panels.

I'm sure being a cartoonist himself certainly helps Brubaker get a feel for what sorts of visual requirements any particular scene needs in order to work best, but it doesn't stop it from being impressive every time I read it. I briefly mentioned in an older post that I was wowed by Daredevil's conversation with Vanessa Fisk in issue #92, which is entirely made up of super-tight panel grids. These sections perfectly convey the emotional claustrophobia of the situation, only increasing with each turn of the page as the panels get smaller and the grid gets tighter.

I remember thinking to myself as I read it, "This is possibly a perfect comic book. It reads like Phillip Roth paragraph."

I had a conversation with Eli last night regarding Brubaker's run on Daredevil, versus his last story in Criminal. Clearly, they are two very different animals, but Brubaker handles both so flawlessly. Much of this conversation was centered around the "Our Love Story" issue (#94), which got a lot of flak from readers for being "boring" or "unnecessary". I disagree strongly with this sentiment. Aside from the fact that Daredevil is a superhero book, and Criminal is obviously not, the formatting of the series also comes into play. Criminal all takes place in a single world, but jumps from story to story, connected only by the social context of the fictional environment. Daredevil is an ongoing serial set in somebody else's universe. When dealing with stories in a longer form (i.e. story starts before you get there, and ends well after you leave), it is necessary to provide breathing room. It's the sort of situation where filler is necessary, in order to give the world a more organic feel. If every single issue of Daredevil was comprised of fight scenes and high drama, the illusion that Brubaker is creating would loose it's effect. It would become glaringly obvious that these are not actual people, dealing with actual emotions. Obviously, it's still fantastic fiction, but it's important to consider whether a story can be considered believable given the context in which it's presented in. In order for that, we need a bit of padding here and there.

Brubaker does this well, without the padding/filler ever being irrelevant. He understands the importance of pacing within a story-arc and in between story-arcs.

One other point of contention between Eli and I, is that when Brubaker deals with superhero properties, I don't get the feeling that he is dealing with them as superheroes. He deals with them as characters. The "The Devil Takes a Ride" story-arc was just barely a superhero story. If you notice, none of the characters, besides Daredevil himself, ever appear in a gawdy costume, and all of the fight/action scenes are comparatively small on scale - they are not battles, they are brawls.

Contrast this with something like Captain America #25, where Brubaker is dealing with a truly momentous event/idea. I mean, for a series so aware of it's own history and gravitas, the first few pages are surprisingly small in scale. Rather than start the story off with a flashback, or the tail end of action scene, Brubaker gives us a crowd scene. Any flashbacks that occur are told from the perspective of characters in the crowd. This tells us, from the beginning, that this is not Captain America's story. It is the Marvel Universe's story. Even more surprising, for me, is that this actually meant something when I was first reading it. Having grown up a life-long DC fan, Marvel was always the publisher I turned to for creators, not characters. At this point, I could give a crap what the climate of the Marvel U is like, but Brubaker made me care and even believe that something like this could work.

My primary reading interests, even in comics, rarely focuses on superheroes anymore. The resurgence of continuity-porn/crossover fever, has embittered me to the genre. I still believe that there are quite a few really excellent comic creators working within the genre, even for the two big publishers, still worth reading on a regular basis, but I always say that these people should not be writing/drawing superhero books anymore because it's like they're cheating their fans (Greg Rucka is a perfect example of this, because I absolutely love Queen & Country, but have trouble caring about Checkmate in spite of knowing that it's a good comic book). Ed Brubaker, on the other hand, is one of those writers working in the ghetto of the superhero genre, obviously capable of more, but actually makes the genre interesting again. Rather than stoop down to the level of the superhero genre, he elevates it.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Ok, so following up Eli's post about Marvel's new pro-tentacle porn stance, here are three quick thoughts on Marvel's solicitations (I'm not even touching the Captain America cover, because I still maintain that Brubaker is the Jay-Z of the spandex set, right now).

Ok, is it me or do all the covers for World War Hulk make the "event" just look flat-out retarded. Be that as it may, these covers look more intriguing than any cover that's come out from Marvel in the past year or so. I mean, the Hulk can take down Blackbolt? What the hell is that about?

New Fucking Thor!

This new book by David Lapham, Terror, Inc., looks as equally as "innovative" as World War Hulk, but, judging from this cover, will be worth it because it appeals to my worst childhood obsessions - futuristic weaponry, rotting corpse as anti-hero. Plus, David Lapham, not writing an continuity heavy, tie-in book? Sign me the fuck up!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Since Eli has already covered last week's Mighty Avengers, I thought I'd take a stab at the newest issue of Brian Bendis' New Avengers or "(Secret) Avengers" as I like to refer to them.



Let me start off by saying that Brian Bendis is the writer that made the Avengers make sense to me. As a primarily DC oriented super hero fan, and havin been burned by the quality of books Marvel had been putting out by the mid-to-late 90s, I really didn't care to give most of Bendis' work a try. However, books like Ultimate Spiderman and Daredevil were among some of the few Marvel books I would pull regularly. Anyway, it was when I read Bendis' opus (IMO) Alias that I began to change my mind about the current state of the Marvel Universe. Bendis brought decades worth of forgotten history to the foreground with this book, and made it all fresh and exciting (even if I was reading it several years after the fact). That being said, I still thought the first few issues of his New Avengers book were a bit hit or miss for me.



Enter Civil War. I think of all the writers working on big titles at Marvel, Bendis was the one who took their flagship title to the next level, and thus handled the whole event in the best manner possible.



Most of my criticism of Bendis' New Avengers seemed to be centered around the usual troubles that many writers have dealing with a larger cast. Unlike books like Alias or Daredevil, or even The Pulse, which all handled the large cast of the entire Marvel Universe quite well, Bendis didn't have a titular or protagonist character to constantly fall back on. With New Avengers, Bendis was given the tough task of having to make b-list characters like Luke Cage and Spiderwoman seem as important and irreplaceable as Iron Man or Captain America. It wasn't until the Civil tie-in arc that Bendis was able to give each character at least an issue of face time, thus letting us get to know the characters on a more intimate and relateable level.



Anyway, I liked this issue of New Avengers, which focused on the Avengers who chose to not register with the American government. Unlike, Mighty Avengers, the line-up for this team seems so much more organic than the tactically chosen line-up for Iron Man's government sanctioned Avengers. This generally yields better chemistry than on either Mighty Avengers or even the previous line-up featured on the pre-Civil War New Avengers title.



Unlike before, this line-up features all heavy hitters, but no "icons" (I've already discussed how I feel that "iconic" super heroes seem antithetical to me in the context of the Marvel Universe) like Cap or Iron Man, who always gave the generally buoyant nature of the teams chemistry an added weight. In the post-Civil War Marvel Universe, the weight is already out there. It is nice to see a group of super heroes acting less like a military unit, and more like a band of brothers.



I was originally a bit wary of the book originally, given that I have absolutely loved Lenil Yu's artwork in the past (especially his collaborations with Gerry Alanguilan), but was still on the fence about the new non-inked method utilized in this book. While the intense clarity of Yu's previous work seems gone, it is replaced by a certain ethereal quality that works well with the lighter dynamic of this team.



And that seems to be the big thing. This book, and even Mighty Avengers to a certain extent, seem far more fun than prior to Civil War. It's as if the dire grimness that has characterized so much of Bendis' major Marvel works (Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, Daredevil) has finally given to the latent humor constantly peaking behind the corner. The Mammet-esque "Wait...What?" moments have now formally been replaced by actual punchlines, and referential continuity jokes have been replaced by visual gags (which Yu helps pull off quite well).



With Captain America "dying" in his own book, and Ellis' constant need to exploit the criminal nature of his characters in Thunderbolts, it seems that Brian Bendis' new Avengers titles, as well as Matt Fraction's Punisher War Journal title seem to be picking up the slack of the now finished Nextwave book, by shining some light on the supposedly dark Marvel Universe post-Civil War. New Avengers is everything that I expect from an in-continuity super hero book - fun, fun, fun.



* * * * * * * * *



NOTE: I haven't finished reading all the books that came out this previous week, but there are few worth talking about. Unfortunately, this week seems to be the best week during BAM's month long Shohei Immamur retrospective. So that being said, I probably won't be touching reviews until this Saturday, while my girlfriend is off doing a Manhattan-wide "pub crawl" in celebration of St. Patrick.

powered by performancing firefox

And this points out how powerful and beloved these characters have become as cultural icons, the main ones at least. And no matter what else you think, Cap’s death has mobilized an entire strata of the public to take a second look at our field, much as the DARK TOWER comic book did, much as Spider-Man’s unmasking did. It’s been a good year for raising awareness of our medium and the different kinds of stories you can tell in comic book form. It’s certainly driven a lot more people into comic shops and bookstores looking for the stuff, and that gives us all an excellent opportunity to hook at least some of them, and turn them into regular readers of one variety or another.

Seriously?

Seriously?


"It’s been a good year for raising awareness of our medium and the different kinds of stories you can tell in comic book form," because Alison Blechdel and Chris Ware have already tried that with such tawdry publications as Time Magazine (2006's Book of the Year) and The New York Times (regular cartooning gig for Sunday's magazine). No, Marvel Entertainment (in conjunction with Stephen King) did that with the page one of the friggin' Daily News.

Seriously.

Seriously.

You know, in my attempt to be ever-positive about the comics medium I was trying to not touch this Captain America story. I mean, we all know he's going to come back (I'm actually hoping against it), and it's going to turn into a show-down of ideals when Steve Rogers has to face off against either Frank Castle (the usurper) or the recently RESSURECTED Bucky Barnes (the inheritor), because what Captain America stands of is supposed to be timeless, not topical.

That is why Captain America has never truly fit into the Marvel Universe to the degree that a hero like Spiderman or even Wolverine does. Because Marvel, from day one, has been all about being "topical" as opposed to simply iconic. And that's fine. That's what they do. They remain topical (with scenes of Doctor Doom crying - who, by the way, likes to start zombie wars even more than Robert Kirkman does). Sure, Spiderman is iconic at this point, but his icon status has only arisen out of his topical character.

But Captain America is not topical. He's iconic. He's a walking flag! Since Stan Lee first brought him BACK FROM THE DEAD in the Avengers, Marvel has never ceased to continue trying to diminish the icon status of Captain America, in an effort to make him more topical. At its best it made the character even more iconic, and at its worst just seems cheap (to be fair, the storyline leading up to that "worst" link should also be included in the "best" pile).

So it irks me when people like CNN try to make this "event" into something that its no: an event! It's a comic book character splayed out on the page! Have we not scene that before? It's a marketing ploy! Sure, in the hands of a capable and writer, it could generate a really really good story, and I'm sure Brubaker will definitely deliver. But don't try to say that this is symbolism or that this is somehow bigger than the four colored world it inhabits.

Fiction is one of the most powerful tools in any artists' arsenal. Stunts like this are almost an abuse of power.

So, if you really care about the medium of comics, if you really care about the art form of comics and the integrity of fiction, please, please, please, don't listen to Tom Breevort or Joe Quesada about how important this "event" is. Their job is to get you to buy comics, and they're great at it.

Just know that they are not enriching your lives with this junk.

Just know that they are not making you a better person in any way.

They are teaching you nothing.

They are giving you nothing.

Their main concern is drive a lot more people into comic shops and bookstores so they can sell more of their maudlin spandex-fixated soap opera tales.

NOTE: I AM A FAN OF SUPERHERO COMICS. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH READING SUPER HERO COMICS, AS LONG AS YOU ARE AWARE OF WHAT THEY TRULY ARE, AND DON'T PRETEND THAT THEY ARE SOMETHING MORE, LIKE MR. BREEVORT HAS INSISTED ON DOING.

P.S. I'm a bit pissed off...

powered by performancing firefox