Buffy: Season 8 #11. This issue received some modest mainstream media coverage because it deals with Buffy fooling around with a woman (or the aftermath anyway. And no, it’s not Willow.). The real news is, however, that this is probably the best issue of the series thus far—and no, not because of Buffy fooling around with a woman. I read to the end of the issue thinking “Wow, Whedon is really back on his game here,” only to realize that the tale had been penned by Drew Goddard—the fellow who wrote the Cloverfield movie. My suggestion: hire him on for good. Goddard’s dialogue recaptures the quirky, jokey, self-conscious rhythms familiar from the show without coming across as forced, and he and artist Georges Jeanty beautifully pace an comically escalating, farcical Don’t Dress for Dinner-style reveal of Buffy’s fling. At times Jeanty’s figures seem as strong as they’ve looked so far in the series, and at times they go wobbly, but all in all it’s one of the stronger issues we’ve seen from him yet.
Cable #1. I’ve probably only bought five or six Cable comics in my lifetime, and if you don’t count the ones also featuring Deadpool, then you’re down to one issue I bought for a Black Panther guest appearance. I’ve long considered Cable a character so thoroughly of his moment—and I think we all know what moment I’m talking about—that the Marvel Universe would just be better off without him cluttering up the joint with his shoulder pads and his gritted teeth. My interest in the new series was piqued, however, when I learned that crime writer, booze expert, and Friend of Emerson LaSalle Duane Swierczynski would be handling the writing chores. It’s a solid first issue that inclines me to keep reading: Swierczynski does, in fact, take Cable out of the Marvel Universe, sort of, by casting him and the possible infant messiah he’s protecting into the timestream, and there is good fun and not a little pathos to be had in the contrast between Cable’s world-weary bad-ass demeanor and the paternal role he’s being forced into. My criticisms are only two: First, this issue is a bit leisurely paced for a #1; the payoff for the opening sequence is a delight, but that sequence seems to go on for a page or two longer than it absolutely has to, especially given that we don’t know much about the particular era that Cable finds himself in. And second, artist Ariel Olivetti needs to lay off whatever digital effects he’s using that occasionally make his art look like stills from a video game preview. In any case, Swierczynksi definitely has my attention, and I’ll be sticking around for a while to see where he’s headed.
Casanova #12. One of the perils of doing an super-dense sci-fi action-adventure pulp mash-up is that it can start to feel like an exercise in style and surfaces—a pastiche in the Jamesonian sense. The last couple issues of Casanova, focusing on Zephyr Quinn and Kubark Benday as they sleep and murder their way up a list of shady characters, created an atmosphere of decadent cool that could be a bit numbing at times—not that the issues aren’t good fun, nossir, but they do foster a certain detachment from the goings-on. Even this issue’s title, “Fuck Shit Up,” suggests a certain casual attitude toward mayhem. But of course: now with issue 12 in hand, we can see that this was all part of Matt Fraction’s plan from the start—or at least it looks that way, which is what counts. Suddenly the slick violence of the past issues comes home to the characters we care a whole lot about, and the effect is jarring, breathtaking, and heartbreaking. Fabio Moon’s first panel on page one features floating bodies blown into the vacuum of space, and it’s the perfect transition between the last issue and this one: beautiful and static from a distance but increasingly horrific and frenetic the closer you get to the violence at its core.
Oh, but we should have known something horrible was coming: in issue 9, when Ruby Seychelle tells Kaito that all he can do is “Be ready and be brave”? You know bad stuff is coming when a character speaks lines from “Magpie,” by far the creepiest, most ominous song from The Sunset Tree. (Fraction credits Darnielle in the backmatter. The same story page includes a shout-out to “Game Shows Touch Our Lives,” which, when said as it is here in the context of a blossoming romance, should be a big flashing neon DANGER DANGER sign.)
As I was telling gorjus last week when I was up for a visit, reclining on his couch and holding real live original Mike Zeck pages, which were awesome, “Magpie” always makes me think of that sequence in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing where the priests turn Judith into a bird. With the little bird-feet growing out of her neck? Man that scene freaks me out still to this day.
No video for “Magpie” on YouTube, but here’s a good one for “Game Shows Touch Our Lives.”
Wait. You’re buying Buffy? Is this some sort of postmodern thing I don’t get??
I have been re-listening to The Sunset Tree lately, and “Magpie” is what I latched on to . . . “and you will go down on all fours . . . ” And the way the ending moves towards a terrible climax. A horror story in ten lines.
Wow, I just started reading Casanova, and maybe because you mentioned it and maybe not, but I’ve noticed that this story arc is already full of Mountain Goats lyrics! I mean, Fraction is great at just writing a spy story, but it delights me in ways I never thought possible when I read “it’s gonna take all you people years to recover from all of the damage” in a comic!
ha! Oh crap I missed that one—also in #9, I see now. That’s what I get for not reading the backmatter closely enough. Well spotted sir.
Oooh, another one in #9: Sasa Lisi: “I come from tomorrow, so all your threats are empty.” [In the original context, the MG song “Pigs Who Ran Straightaway into the Water,” it’s “Chino” instead of “tomorrow.”]