Showing posts with label Comic reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comic reviews. Show all posts

Review: RASL collected edition by Jeff Smith

"RASL," a sci-fi noir about a military engineer who figures out how to "drift" between parallel realities shows cartoonist Jeff Smith stretching a bit from the kid-friendly, fantasy antics of his very popular "Bone" series. And the result is a mixed success.

Originally published in 12 black-and-white comics released between 2008 and 2012, the collected "RASL" is due out in a full-color hardcover this fall. Only the first 60 or so pages of the review copy I received are in color, but the results are very good, though I enjoy Smith's black and white art, too.

The story is intriguing, mixing factual and speculative details about the work of pioneering scientist Nikola Tesla into a plot that sees the title character go AWOL due to his objections to Tesla's ideas being used to create a terrible weapon.


Using what look like jet turbines strapped to his arms and legs, RASL travels between dimensions, stashing away Tesla's lost journals and hiding out from the dark government forces who want to find him and his secrets. In an element of the story that's not fully developed, RASL ends up making a living by stealing art in one dimension -- works by Picasso and others created in an alternate reality but not in ours -- and selling them in another. He also falls in love with a prostitute and drinks a lot.

These elements seem to be present mainly to create a gritty atmosphere to the tale, but don't tell us much about RASL and what makes him tick. We understand his objection to Tesla's discoveries being used for violence, but why art thievery? Why did he fall so hard for this woman? These ideas aren't developed. Nor is there any explanation for why RASL wears what appears to be a wicker African face mask when he "drifts."


There are plenty of ideas here, many of them compelling and original, but more development is needed to give them full weight.

Smith's art is moody and expressive, and his visuals achieve the noirish tone he's striving for, even while his characters are drawn in the same kewpie doll/manga-style used for the humans in "Bone": Big heads on small bodies, lots of hair.

The structure of "RASL" is complex, shifting between alternate realities and back and forth through time. At times, I wished that Smith had paced the action more linearly instead of using flashbacks. It might have helped him to develop his characters more and to provide better explanations for the relationships between them. But flashbacks seem de rigueur post "Lost" when it comes to genre storytelling. Even so, Smith's visuals tell the story clearly with a nice flow.

Despite it's shortfalls, "RASL" is an interesting work by an accomplished cartoonist. It's good to see Smith branching out and taking risks when he could easily relax and enjoy the success of "Bone" and just do more of the same. I'm looking forward to seeing what he tackles next.


Review: Jack Kirby Omnibus Vol. 1

This new hardcover from DC Comics features Green Arrow on the cover, but that hero's adventures take up only a small fraction of the book, which is an odds end collection of Kirby's 1950s work for the publisher.

In essence, it's everything Kirby did for DC in the 1950s apart from Challengers of the Unknown. His work on that adventure title, which in many ways was a practice run for the early Fantastic Four comics Kirby would create with Stan Lee a few years later, is collected in two of DC's Archives books.

Apart from 10 six-page Green Arrow tales, the book features mainly suspense and sci-fi tales done for anthology titles such as House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected and My Greatest Adventure. There are a lot of those O. Henry-ish, "ironic ending" stories that were popular in this period, some great-looking Kirby aliens and monsters that set the tone for the work he's soon be doing for Marvel, and some creative concepts and plotting.

We know that, at Marvel, Kirby played a major role plotting out and drawing stories that were later dialogued by Stan Lee. There are no writing credits on most of the stories in this DC collection, although Kirby associate Mark Evanier suggests in the introduction that many likely were plotted by Kirby and written/dialogued by writers such as France Herron, Bill Finger, Robert Bernstein and Dave Wood. The book credits Herron and Wood for writing most of the Green Arrow stories.

Credit-wise, the other notable thing about this era's work is the inking, most of which was done by Kirby himself. Early in his career, collaborator Joe Simon did a lot of this part of the work. At Marvel, Kirby was inked, for better or worse, by a number of other artists. His full art work on these stories is great -- finely detailed and more fluid than the "chunkier" Kirby work familiar from his work of the mid 1960s onward. Evanier mentions that Kirby's wife, Roz, may've helped with some of this inking work, but it's mostly just Jack, and it's beautiful work indeed.

Many of the stories display Kirby's fascination with mythology. There are references to Pandora's box, the Sphinx, the all-seeing eye and Aladdin's lamp. We also see a version of Thor that, design-wise has similarities to the Marvel Comics version Kirby would create with Lee. This thunder god's hammer is identical to the Marvel hero's and he has similar "disks" on his tunic. We also get to see a variety of space aliens, a man turned paper thin and Easter Island-style statues that come to life and crawl out of sand that's buried them for centuries up to their necks.

The Green Arrow stories are serviceable enough -- typical superhero stories of the day when a problem is presented and solved via the hero's smart instincts rather than brawn. According to Evanier, Kirby wasn't given much leeway to insert his own ideas into these stories -- featuring characters that were essentially bow-toting versions of Batman and Robin. But he tried.

It's an interesting period in Kirby's history, featuring much enjoyable work. We see an emerging style and conceptual creativity that would fully take flight at Marvel where Kirby was given much more freedom to experiment and assert his full brilliance.

Review: Action Comics #1

Now we're talking: After a fairly lackluster debut with Justice League #1, DC has followed up in week two of it's line-wide reboot with an exciting and thoroughly entertaining fresh start for Superman.

Written by Grant Morrison with art by Rags Morales, the Superman in this Action is in many ways similar to the Superman in the original Action #1: a super-powered guy with a passion for social justice.

The early Superman fought for "truth and justice." The "American way" part of the motto didn't get added until the red scare 1950s. Like that early Superman, this new one is shown exposing political corruption and disrupting the work of greedy businessmen while defending the poor. Dressed in baggy jeans, a S-logoed blue t-shirt and a red cape, he comes on like Woody Guthrie with heat vision.

This Superman is a tad younger than the one we're familiar with, and is just starting out in the superhero game. He hasn't yet met Jimmie Olsen or Lois Lane (let alone married her, as in the most recent, pre-reboot Superman comics). However, those characters and his arch enemy Lex Luthor are introduced in this first outing.

We also meet the new version of Clark Kent, who's still bespectacled and meek-looking, but he's no mild-mannered reporter. It turns out he's a crusading journalist, working the same beat as he does while in costume, by writing newspaper articles that expose corruption and injustice.

Rags Morales' art is strong. His visual storytelling is fluid and clear. His Superman has a strong Neal Adams influence but there's a cartoony caricature to some of the supporting characters that's a nice departure from the generic "hyper realistic" art we too often see in superhero comics these days.

Unlike the first Justice League, this story moves along at a fast clip and does a great job laying down a lot of groundwork for future issues. Like Justice League, it's also a continued story, but well-paced, whereas Justice League seemed padded out and deliberately "written for the trade."

I get the sense that a lot of DC's reboot hasn't been thought out beyond "we're going to publish a bunch of first issues." But Morrison has seized the opportunity provided.

His take on Superman draws much from the past and, for that reason, couldn't really be called original. He understands that Superman is a folk hero (although Morrison might call him a "god") and rather than reinventing the character, he has revitalized him, which it seems is what this new initiative should be all about.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Review: Justice League #1

Justice League #1, with story by Geoff Johns and art by Jim Lee, is the flagship book in DC Comics' "New 52, " a reimaging and rebooting of the DC superhero universe.

The enterprise ostensibly aimed at attracting new readers by offering up series that are easier to hop aboard than the steeped-in-continuity works most modern superhero comics of become. If you didn't know years of history and at least a little bit about all the inhabitants of the DC universe, you were often out of luck when it came to figuring out what was going on in a comic you happened to pick off a stand.

So, DC has stopped the clock and started over again. In this first comic, we see a Batman and Green Lantern who have never met before, who ultimately encounter a Superman that they haven't met, either. These heroes are new in the world -- the public has just become aware of their presence, too.

I'm on board with making comics more accessible to new readers, and if that means starting fresh, I don't have any great problem with that, either.

Continuity offers opportunities in telling stories, but many of today's superhero stories are about nothing but continuity. Too often for today's writers, putting a story together is nothing more than playing with pieces of the past, with very little that's new or original added to the mix.

So, for that reason, I think this new beginning is great. Sure, writers can add in elements of the previous incarnations of these heroes, but they are forced to evaluate and reevaluate those elements and be more creative. The past is a tool instead of a crutch.

So, great. We're starting over and that makes me curious about where we're going -- good reasons to pick up and read new comics. That aspect of the New 52 is certainly a success. But ultimate success will depend on execution.

As a guy who's read comics for more years than I'd like to admit, it's hard for me to gauge what Justice League #1 is like for a reader coming in completely fresh. Jaded as I am, I thought the first issue was a little slow and dull. I've also never been a fan of Jim Lee's over-rendered, over-muscled art, although I know that many comics fans think he's the greatest.

But not much happens in this issue. Batman and Green Lantern meet, spar, realize they need to work together. Then they meet Superman, spar, issue ends. We can see where this is going: They need to meet and spar with a few more heroes and we've got ourselves a Justice League. Wordy as he was, Gardner Fox could've done all that in two or three pages -- the first "chapter" in a single-issue comic.

I think the issue would've been more exciting had the entire League been assembled in the first issue. I've read that DC is reevaluated "writing for the trade," but it seems like that's precisely what Johns is doing here. Things seem padded out. For an issue that's so important to DC's future, I expected a lot more fireworks.



Other lost opportunities in this issue are the lack of any cover copy that says "hey, it all starts here! New readers, this is your chance to get in on the ground floor!" Putting the phrase "New 52" on the cover is a waste of space. The phrase means nothing to people who haven't been reading the "old" DC Comics. A text page inside welcoming new readers and explaining what this is all about would've been smart, too.

That said, the story includes some nice interchanges between Batman and Green Lantern that reveal their personalities. And, despite being a continued story and somewhat slow, it hits some good marks dramatically and ends with a good cliffhanger. I'll certainly give it a chance, at least for this introductory arc, to see where it all goes.