Hoopla! - Episode 16: Life is good.

Hello and welcome to Hoopla!, the comic-book review column with a song in its heart and a stain on its t-shirt.

This past week has been an extra-especially good one for me... Mie (the woman I recently started dating and about whom I wrote that lovely song many weeks ago) and I are getting along wonderfully and spent last Tuesday strolling around, looking at the Cherry Blossoms.

Sweet, sweet bliss.

Also, a big ol' box of comic-books arrived a few days ago, with some mighty fine new comics in it. And my dissertation is coming along well, and I'm not sick anymore.

Hurray for life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I just placed my order for June and WOW! there are a lot of good comics coming our way. My pull list, by far the longest I've had in years, looks a little something like this:

ALL NEW ATOM #12

ALL STAR SUPERMAN #8

ANNIHILATION CONQUEST PROLOGUE

AVENGERS INITIATIVE #3

BATMAN #667
Batmen of America! See my column from two weeks ago.

BIRDS OF PREY #107
I don't normally buy this, but I'm picking it up for the Secret Six storyline.

BLACK PANTHER #29
Zombies, continued.

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4
Really, really enjoying this series...

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #4

CAPTAIN AMERICA #27

CLUBBING
The Minx title I talked about a couple of weeks ago...

COUNTDOWN #47

I continue my bizarre policy of buying approximately one issue per month. Why does this make sense? It doesn't, unless you're me. Which I am. See, I figure that if I actually picked up every weekly issue, it would quickly bore me. I just don't think it's going to be that good a story.

But, if I just pick up an occasional issue here and there, mostly at random, it will make the story more interesting. I'll have the fun of filling in all the missing pieces in my head.

This is the sort of thing that makes perfect sense to me but that makes my friends scratch their heads in confusion.

Silly friends.

DAREDEVIL #98

DETECTIVE COMICS #833

FABLES #62

GREEN LANTERN SINESTRO CORPS SPECIAL #1
Haven't been enjoying the ongoing series for a while, but I think the idea of a Sinestro Corps. is pretty neat and the art is by Van Sciver. My guess is that this is going to be a LOT of fun!

INCREDIBLE HULK #107

IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #9
Yaaay!

JUSTICE COVER A #12 (Of 12)
Last issue. Sigh.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #10

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #3

MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #14

MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #25

NEW WARRIORS #1
I have no interest at all in this title, but it's one of the featured titles from the company I order my comics from, so it's only 74 cents.

RUNAWAYS #27

SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #4 (Of 4)
Last issue. Double sigh.

SHE-HULK #20

SILENT WAR #6 (Of 6)
Last issue. Why are all my comic-book friends abandoning me?

SPIDER-MAN FANTASTIC FOUR #3 (Of 4)

SPIRIT #7

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #110

WORLD WAR HULK #1 (Of 5)

X-MEN FIRST CLASS HC
Collecting the Jeff Parker limited series. Yes!!!

X-MEN FIRST CLASS Vol. 2 #1
And this starts up that series again as an ongoing. Extra-triple-super-deluxe Yessss!!!

Our LINK OF THE WEEK is a sequel, of sorts. A couple of weeks ago I linked to a review column by Tracy and her two kids, Sarah and Shelby, called All Ages Reads. As you may recall, I lamented at the time that there's no archives for their column, which made me weep uncontrollably.

Well, I just heard back from Tracy and they have now archived their past reviews and so, as promised, here's the link. I really cannot recommend their columns enough. They're funny, clever, and it's the only source of reviews I know of that almost always discusses comics that I'd never heard of before but, after reading what they have to say, I realize that they're exactly the kind of comics I'm looking for.

Hurray for All Ages Reads!!!

Anyway, we've only got time for two comic-book reviews this week (insert usual excuses) so I thought I'd pick one that nobody's really talking much about, that being Silent War #3. Written by David Hine with art by Frazer Irving, Silent War has been consistenly unpredictable since the very first issue. A part of that is because the story features the Inhumans, who are such peripheral characters in the Marvel Universe that Hine is free to do pretty much whatever he wants with them. There's no firmly set status quo that needs to be restored by the end (it's a six issue limited series) so that opens up a lot of possibilities.

As mentioned in a previous column, the opening premise of Silent War is that the Inhumans have declared war with the U.S. government. [Actually, everyone in the comic keeps insisting that they've declared war with Earth, but thus far there's been no mention of any country other than the U.S. and no real reason why the Inhumans would want to pick a fight with, say, Uzbekistan or Somalia.] They want to retrieve the Terrigen Mists, which were stolen by Quicksilver and then taken from him by the U.S. military (hence the conflict).

In issue #3, the Inhumans have tracked down Quicksilver only to discover that he's... um... well, you really need to see what he's done. Suffice it to say, he has a few fragments of the Terrigen Crystals (from which the mists come) and he's sort of... er... well, let's just say that getting them back doesn't seem to be a viable option. And, too, that Quicksilver is perhaps a little bit nuttier in the cabeza than anyone originally suspected.

The Inhumans are rather unhappy about this situation and things only get worse when Madrox and Layla (of Peter David's X-Factor) show up, we get some weird time paradoxes tossed into the mix (courtesy of Pietro's new powers and Layla's manipulations) and meanwhile, from behind the scenes, Black Bolt's creepy brother, Maximus, is mucking around with people's minds.

Despite everything that's going on, the story reads well; I had to go back a second time to fully understand what had happened with Pietro's time-jumping, but it all made perfect sense the second time around. The art, as mentioned in the previous review, is gorgeous. Frazer Irving is not an artist I'd expect to see on a (sort of) mainstream Marvel title like this, but his art really brings it to another level. Pietro looks totally deranged, Black Bolt looks super creepy (especially on the bottom of page six, when seen through Luna's eyes), the Inhumans all look thoroughly pissed off, and that final page of Maximus is phenomenal.

Frazer Irving, I salute you.

The second comic I wanted to talk about is Batman #664, written by Grant Morrison with art by Andy Kubert.

I didn't like it.

The opening seven pages are a quick glimpse of Bruce Wayne skiing and then eating dinner with a beautiful woman named Jezebel. I don't think we've seen her before, so perhaps Morrison is setting her up to be a reoccuring character? Or, then again, perhaps not. It's a cute scene but there's nothing particularly noteworthy about Jezebel or about the scene itself. It's just kind of... there.

From there, the scene shifts abruptly to Gotham City at night. It's raining and Batman is watching some cops argue with a pimp and some prostitutes. It seems that the prostitutes are being killed by some kind of monster. Batman investigates.

I'm not quite sure what Morrison is going for but the whole scene is kind of ugly and not at all entertaining. One of the prostitutes is a young girl who looks to be about 12 years old, with a clown face, who's trembling with fear as she huddles near a garbage dumpster. On the following page, as Batman goes in to find the big bad, we see one prostitute (again with a clown face) lying dead amongst a pile of pizza boxes and another, blood dripping from her many wounds, hanging from a couple of ropes.

Are we having fun yet?

The villain, when we finally do see him, is a cop wearing a Batman mask and who's pumped up on that testosterone-ish drug that Bane uses. There's a brief fight and quasi-Bane stamps his foot down on Batman's back and wanders off.

To be continued, I suppose.

Clearly I'm not the target audience for this, and that's fine, but I'm not quite sure who the target audience actually is? The few reviews I've seen of this particular issue have focused on the humor of the James Bond line from the first half of the issue and the 'wacky' pimp in the second half, but to me the whole thing just doesn't fit together very well. It's not as if the lightness of the first half and the darkness of the second half are being used as a sort of juxtaposition; they're just two unrelated pieces stuck together with some Grant Morrison Crazy Glue. And neither of part is insightful, clever, or fun.

So, I say "Blah" to that.

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Before I go, I want to say a very special Happy Birthday! to my friend Sarah... she's one of the coolest people I know, has almost perfect taste in comics (despite a fatal weakness for Strangers in Paradise) and if the Celestials (from the Marvel universe) ever come down to Earth to judge if our species deserves to continue living or not, Sarah would be my number one argument for why they shouldn't end the experiment just yet.

Happy birthday, Sarah. You rock.

Chompy the Crocodile says, "Happy birthday, Sarah!"

See y'all next week!

Hoopla! - Episode 8: Beware... The Ivy!!!

Hello and welcome to Hoopla!, the comic-book review column that hopes someday to be known as the Fancy-Pants-Dan of comic-book review columns...

This week, we've got something kind of extra special... the debut of Ivy Smith, one of my all-time-favorite people and a very fine artist besides. As regular readers of Hoopla! know, I like to provide my own version of comic-book covers when possible... but the problem is that it takes me forever. In an ideal world, in which I am not wasting valuable time on things like my dissertation and going to conferences, I could really devote myself to the cover illustrations.

Alas, this is not that ideal world.

So, I have enlisted the help of my friend, Ivy, who I'm hoping will become a regular contributer to Hoopla! Later in this column, we'll have a brief interview with Ivy, but for now, here is her first comic-book cover for us...

For those of you who haven't been to a comic-book store lately, that's the cover to issue #3 of Superman Confidential, written by Darwyn Cooke with art by Tim Sale.

Let me tell you a little something about Superman Confidential...

Some of the best writers (and artists too, I suppose) are the ones who make it look the easiest. Think of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm on Batman: The Animated Adventures. What they did certainly wasn't revolutionary. It wasn't, as people are inordinately fond of saying, rocket science.

But, actually, it was.

They managed to distill the very essence of the characters and the stories and to leave out all the unnecessary crap that had latched onto the Batman mythos over the past 70 or so years. They took something that the very best writers/artists struggle with and make it look easy.

And fun.

Cooke and Sale have managed the same thing with their story-arc in Superman Confidential. It's set in the early years of Superman, before he really knew what he was capable of and back when he and Lois Lane were just beginning to get to know each other.

It's the very essence of a great, big, fun Superman story.

It's got big action-packed scenes, romance (with Lois, natch!), tragedy, heart-to-hearts with Ma and Pa Kent, and a sense of wonder and innocence that ought to be a given in any Superman story.

Now, if only we could get the same kind of thing in the regular, monthly titles... sigh.

Silent War
Written by David Hines
Art by Frazer Irving

This book hasn't gotten much reaction online; I suppose it's at least in part because Marvel already has two other, much bigger wars going on (Civil War and the whole Annihilation thing). People can only process so many wars at once and this one has received the least hype. It's too bad, though, because this looks to be a pretty good book...

The premise is pretty simple. The Inhumans are a clan of human-like beings who, at a certain age, expose themselves to the Terrigen Mists, which "releases" their super-powers/mutations. You might come of the Mists with telepathy or super strength or, if you're unlucky, you might come out with three heads and pus spilling out of your pores. There's no way to know before you enter the Mists and how it changes you determines your role in society from that point on.

Oh, and they live on the moon.

Incidentally, if you want to read the best Inhumans story ever, there's a 12-issue series written by Paul Jenkins with phenomenal art by Jae Lee; it's pretty much sheer bliss. It's titled The Inhumans, cleverly enough, and yes, it's available as a TPB.

Anyway, the set-up for Silent War is that in a previous story (Son of M, also written by David Hines) the Terrigen Mists were stolen and brought to Earth. The Inhumans managed to track them down, but the U.S. government had already gotten ahold of the Mists and decided that they wanted to hold on to them. At which point, the Inhumans declared war with the humans.

Which brings us to Silent War.

The first issue of the limited series (six issues) is about Gorgon, one of the Inhumans' warriors, leading a small group on a limited attack. The idea is to attack the public at a performance of The Tempest, put the fear of god into them, announce that they want their frickin' Terrigen Mists back ASAP or else things are going to get a lot worse.

Things quickly go awry.

As the attack is being televised and transmitted all over the country by the Inhumans, things quickly spin out of control and one of the Inhumans ends up 'accidentally' killing several of the audience.

[Great art by Frazer Irving on that part, as people's heads are popped off their bodies. Whoops!]

Gorgon leads the group of Inhumans out of there but they're soon confronted by the Fantastic Four, who are more than a little bit pissed off, and a battle ensues.

A couple of things really stand out about the first issue of this series. One thing is Frazer Irving's art. He's sort of an odd choice for this title but his art is quite lovely. The facial expressions on the audience that's attacked are wonderful and the initial appearance of the Fantastic Four is downright creepy. As a matter of fact, everything is creepy. Irving's art is a bit wasted on the action scenes, though he certainly does those well, but it's the quiet moments that are really most effective.

Another thing that I enjoyed about the book is the way it alludes to and comments on current events (on this world, that is... not in the Marvel Universe). One of the reasons that Gorgon's plan doesn't work is that the audience immediately latches onto the idea that the Inhumans are terrorists and so, rather than sit back meekly and listen to Gorgon's demands, they attack. And the second half of the book, after Gorgon has been captured and is being interrogated by the creepiest looking government official of all time, there are numerous allusions to the way the Bush administration has changed the rules of war.

Example:

Gorgon: I don't believe that your government has sanctioned this. There are rules governing the treatment of prisoners.

Scary Government Guy: You mean the Geneva Conventions? Perhaps you should read what the convention has to say on the subject of slaughtering civilians. Besides, you are illegal combatants. Terrorists.

Or this...

Scary Government Guy: I am sick and tired of being told that I have to respect other cultures while those cultures are doing their level best to destroy my own.

I have very little patience for comics that try to create ridiculous parallels between real world events and super-hero antics (see, for example, those god-awful back-up stories in Civil War: Front Line), but this simply uses the real-world situation as a context in which this story is taking place. Real current events help explain the reactions of the various characters in the story to what the Inhumans are doing.

Finally, I just like that the conflict arises logically from the situation instead of being a contrived "misunderstanding" or "mind-control." Sure, Gorgon didn't intend for things to get out of hand the way they did, but it's not unrealistic that things would play out that way. They were playing a dangerous game, declaring war and trying to frighten the public into acquiesence. Tactics like that were inevitably going to lead to escalation on both parts.

Silent War is a good read. It's a neat conflict and I have no clear idea of where it's going. Because it's a story about the Inhumans, there's really no reason to assume that things will end with a return to the status quo.

And the art...? The art is good stuff. Lacking the technical know-how to actually scan the art for you to see, here's some of Irving's art from other projects. This will at least give you an idea of his style...

See? Creepy...

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And now, as promised, an interview with Ivy...

What's your full name?

Ivy Adele Smith

And what grade are you currently in?

4th grade.

What have been your biggest artistic influences?

I have always loved the art museum, but mostly I copy different art styles from books, cartoons but mostly comics.

What got you interested in art?

I have always loved being creative so I loved art right away but when I found out you could get paid for it I practiced even more.

What comics are you reading? Which is your favorite and why?

I'm reading Teen Titans Go!; Sabrina; Lions, Tigers, and Bears; and Gimmels. Teen Titans is my favorite because I love the characters and the main story ideas and it's not a serial so I don't have to worry about missing one.

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Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more of Ivy's work in the future, even though I find it totally humbling that a 10-year old kid can draw better than I can...

Well, I'm afraid that brings us to the end of another Hoopla! I hope you all survived The Holiday That Dares Not Speak Its Name and will join us next week for some more comic-book reviews and a look at the books being solicited for May 2007.

Until then, I leave you with this important message from Batman...