PrettyFakes

One of the oft-sounded notes in the deafening din of complaint about Civil War was the arbitrary characterization of Marvel Universe mainstays like Reed Richards, Hank Pym, She-Hulk et al. There may be a good case for why Yellowjacket would side with Tony Stark, but no one ever made it between the pages of a comic. For the series to work on even a minimal level, you had to ignore decades of stories about nearly every pro-registration hero. And for the ridiculous conclusion – when Captain America surrenders when he sees the damage their battle is causing to Manhattan – you would have to ignore, let’s see, every Marvel comic ever published.

The attitude on the part of Mark Millar and Marvel editorial seemed to be that those stories didn’t matter because they weren’t as Important as Civil War, that it was a story so philosophically significant and so emotionally involving that for it to acknowledge stories that had come before – some of which involved the Impossible Man, for pete’s sake, or Fabian Stankowicz or the She-Thing—would be to taint and sully it.

As we know by now, Civil War didn’t reach those exalted peaks of Serious Greatness, mighty though it strove. The whole thing was just bad,and the folks from Marvel who have been online defending it sound as distressingly detached from reality as Dick Cheney insisting that the insurgency is in its “last throes,” that the Iraqis love us, and that he has the constitutional authority to install as many toilet-cams as he likes.

I’ve griped about egos clashing with character history before, and Civil War has confirmed my affection for those writers – typically not the biggest names working on the biggest books – who tell engaging, accessible, often downright beautiful stories because they realize the immense opportunities of a shared-universe setting whose history includes literally thousands of individual stories.

Which brings me to writer Dwayne McDuffie’s latest issue of Fantastic Four (544) – his third, after a valiant attempt to retrofit a reasonable motivation for Reed Richard’s behavior during Civil War and a wheel-spinning anniversary issue. Aside from the light comedy of the Thing’s Parisian adventure , this title had been nigh unreadable for a while, but McDuffie brings some esseential skills to bear: a basic understanding of what makes the characters tick and a deft hand with MU history. Most importantly, he understands the fundamentally symbiotic relationship between those two elements and so is able not only to evoke Human Torch’s freewheeling recklessness and the Thing’s irascibility but also to suggest how a lifetime of adventuring has tempered those fundamental character traits. More, McDuffie knows that a trip to the moon to see the insanely powerful, giant-noggined alien voyeur who lives there should be routine for these characters by now, and he wisely plays it for comedy instead of cosmic awe. Plok wrote a great essay a while back about how the Thing should be used to changing back and forth between human and monster by now, and McDuffie seems to be the first writer the FF has had who gets that essential point. Of course, when it comes to the two new additions to the FF – the Black Panther and Storm – McDuffie has to deal with the fact that neither of those characters’ histories has really made sense for the last few years, but he does a fine job of making these latest iterations of the characters likeable and believable.

Speaking of McDuffie, he’s taken over the reins of DC’s Firestorm as well, and although I was bummed about Stuart Moore leaving the title, McDuffie is a perfect replacement. In this issue (#34), which pits Firestorm against the Female Furies and assorted other Apokoliptian baddies, McDuffie perfectly captures the gleeful absurdity that naturally follows (or anyway should) whenever the New Gods bring their large-scale, eons-spanning conflict to the cramped, relatively more mundane confines of planet Earth. McDuffie thankfully ditches the gee-whiz novice hero characterization for Jason Rusch (as Moore was doing as well), writing him instead as an increasingly confident journeyman hero testing out his swagger for the first time. All this plus the Shiloh Norman Mister Miracle, who doesn’t seem to have much in common with Grant Morrison’s depiction of him in Seven Soldiers, but I don’t much think that’s McDuffie’s fault.

Birds of Prey 104. One of the downsides of being one of the lower-profile, continuity-savvy writers that I so admire is that occasionally some new hotshot’s big idea will screw up your book. Gail Simone had a great thing going in Birds of Prey, but when the odious Brad Meltzer wanted Black Canary for his tedious JLA relaunch, she had to give her up. Her solution was to replace the family dynamic that she’d developed amongst her leads with a guns-for-hire rotating membership anchored by Oracle, Huntress, and Lady Blackhawk. Simone’s footing with the new version of the team gets surer with every issue, and bringing in the Secret Six for a good old-fashioned fight-and-reluctantly-team-up-then-betray-each-other story arc makes good thematic sense: they Six are a band of mercenaries, outlaws, and assassins who are nevertheless more tightly bound than the newly ragged BoP. If the last page reveal, a genuine cause for celebration for 1980s JLI/A/E nerds like yours truly, isn’t a fake-out, then I’ll actually be more excited about this title than I have been in a while.

A quibble: Is it just me, or is BoP artist Nicola Scott drawing Big Barda to look less like Lainie Kazan and more like Cher? Her name isn’t “Willowy Barda” after all.

A bit off-topic, but the other release I was excited about this week is the first issue of Mike Allred’s Madman Atomic Comics. I wanted to rave about it, but the jury is still out, perhaps buying sandwiches or maybe playing skee-ball. (For homework, I’d like everyone to write a joke whose punchline is “I’ve heard of hung juries, but this is ridiculous!” No, I don’t want to read it. You’re probably gross.) This issue looks beautiful, but serves mostly as a re-cap of what’s come before in Allred’s epic pop-art retro-futuristic philosophical emo love story. Good for new readers, though the “everything you thought you knew about Madman may be a lie!” thread running through it all irks me. But hey, it’s the first issue, and it’s Madman, and I will not let the internet turn me into one of those guys who complains about a series before the second issue even comes out.

ALSO: HERB TRIMPE IS FREAKING ME OUT!

Marvel Team-Up Annual #6! Power Man and Iron Fist flee from the Macy’s Spider-Man balloon come to terrifying life!

I actually love what Trimpe is doing here, but Spider-Man’s lack of mouth or other facial features make this panel a little unsettling.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Comixx, Professor Fury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.