Hopeful Realism and The Trick Ending

Hopeful Realism and The Trick Ending

by Duy

This column has spoilers for last Wednesday's Daredevil #10. If you haven't read the issue and don't want to know what happens, go buy it, read it, and then come back here.

Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's Daredevil is so good that I end up forgetting about it every month. I know that doesn't make any sense, but it just means I kind of take it for granted. It's like how I never go out of my way to watch a San Antonio Spurs game, then I catch one on TV and I'm just amazed by the ball movement and their execution each time. This past week's issue of Daredevil tackled the issue of depression, always a tough nut to crack because mental illness is difficult to understand, and in the eyes of some people, tough to even accept it exists. But Waid does a good job of explaining it in the first few pages, explaining that it's a physical illness that prevents sufferers from reaching back out to people, despite the fact that they desperately want to.

At the end of the issue, Matt puts on a happy face, sends his girlfriend Kristen McDuffie away, and then curls up in his bed.

And that's it. A powerful, true-to-life, realistic ending.  After that, the letters page is run.

I was going to put the book down after that, then decided to see if there was an interesting ad left on the final page, and like a post-credits scene, Matt picks up his phone, reaches out to Kristen, who turns out to have stayed behind, waiting for Matt to let her in.

That's a beautiful ending, and it wouldn't have worked so well as it did if they didn't pretend that the second-to-last page was the actual ending. It works because the heavy subject matter validates the heavy ending. Like I said, it's realistic. It's hard for people with depression to reach back out to the people who reach out to them. But the real ending is realistic too, and hopeful — the ones who understand won't leave.

The only time I've ever seen a similar trick ending is with Scott McCloud's Zot! in an issue entitled "Normal." In it, supporting cast member Terry is confronting the fact that she may be a lesbian.

This particular scene between her and Zot really gets to me.

Anyway, at the very end there, Terry runs into Pammy, the girl she has a crush on. Pammy says hi, and Terry just walks away.

After that, McCloud ran the letters page. He actually got readers coming up to him years later complaining about the ending. Apparently, those readers never turned to the final page, which involved Terry turning around.

Again, the "misdirection" is a realistic enough ending as it is. Many people hide who they are, especially in high school. But the actual ending is realistic, too, because, well, some people do take that first step to self-acceptance.

What's more, both true endings are appropriate to the superhero genre, as they highlight hope and show that there is light even in dark moments.

Still, it's probably telling that the trick ending works so well when it comes to issues based in reality, such as depression or coming out, Are we so conditioned to think that the bad stuff is what's real that ending at the down notes is what's expected? Probably so. And that in itself is a sad commentary on how we view reality.

Techniques and Tricks: Fantastic Four #352

I was fortunate enough to get the third volume of Walter Simonson's run on Fantastic Four lately, which seems to be the segment with the most memorable portions, just based on what I've read. For one thing, it featured the New Fantastic Four.

It also featured this Spider-Man pinup by Art Adams, which has been the logo of one of my comics shops for as long as I've been buying comics.

It's got some meta-criticism of DC's approach to the multiverse.

It's got Justice Peace, making his second appearance since Walt used him in Thor.

Okay, fine, that last one isn't memorable. What is memorable is issue #352, where Reed Richards fights Dr. Doom, with both of them jumping around time. So there are two storylines running at the same time: Reed and Doom's fight, jumping around in time, and the rest of the Fantastic Four making their way through Doom's castle. So each page would have a "real time stamp" and a time stamp for Reed and Doom, indicating where they're going.

So, you could read it in the order of the timestamps, following the Thing and the Invisible Woman and the Human Torch, but with Reed and Doom jumping around (Click to enlarge):

Or you could use the timestamps to flip back and forth and read the Reed/Doom fight in the order in which it happens (these are the same three pages, but in the order of the Reed/Doom fight):

If you're so inclined, you end up doing both. You could try this on the screen, but you wouldn't be able to jump around without doing recuts. You could try it with the written word, but because it's not visual, you won't be able to take it in all at once. It's one of those fun things the medium excels in.

Does it have much practical application beyond time travel stories? Probably not, but that's why the issue still stands out 23 years later.

The Zen of Comics: Brooke McEldowney

Brooke McEldowney and the Zen of Comics

by Duy

A few months back, I asked on the Cube's Facebook page, just exactly what was the deal with newspaper action strips? With the increasingly smaller space allocated to newspaper strips, there just wasn't enough room anymore to build any momentum to really feel like there are any real stakes. In fact, a lot of newspaper strips (I'm looking at you, Spider-Man) will sometimes end with a cliffhanger, indicating a fight is about to take place, only to pick up again the next day with the fight already over. Then Travis introduced me to 9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney.

This was easy enough for me to give a fair shot to, since 9 Chickweed Lane is on GoComics, to which I have a subscription. The strip encompasses three generations of a family, and when I started reading it, the strip took place in World War II where Martine, a french spy, meets with an American soldier named Bill, and they have to fight their way through a bunch of Nazis.

Actually, that's still what's going on. 9 Chickweed Lane runs with storylines for a long time, and a lot of that is because McEldowney actually slows down the action, making moments linger for longer than they have to. The result is a daily strip that lingers on the page even after you've moved on to the next one. It makes you want to stay on the strip. It's almost Zen. (Hah! You were wondering how I was gonna work that title in, weren't you?)

It also doesn't hurt that McEldowney's fluid style lends a sense of ephemera to the whole strip. There's a dreamlike quality to it regardless of the subject matter.

McEldowney draws a lot of sexy women, and uses it to different effects, from the comedic...

...to what I think, anyway, is legitimately beautiful:

McEldowney's also responsible for Pibgorn, which is also on GoComics, and is about a fairy named Pibgorn and her friends. Until a few days ago, the cast of Pibgorn was re-enacting William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and much like 9 Chickweed Lane, Pibgorn just zooms in on particular moment when necessary, and makes you linger on it. Here's the three-page (and hence, three-day) sequence from Romeo and Juliet's wedding night.That second day/page is sublime.

Here's when Juliet poisons herself to fake her own death.

And here's when she finds Romeo dead.

McEldowney's work lingers on the page and stays with you even after you've scrolled past it or turned the page. To be honest, I'm not sure how I would receive it if I tried reading it in one big go. So much of his work is about the moment, and it just may be too decompressed en masse. Still, when GoComics sends me that daily email, I always know that right after Pickles and Pearls Before Swine, I'm going straight to McEldowney's two features. And they'll stay with me even as I read through the rest of it.

The Blindfold Challenge

Recently, Bored Panda posted this article about how some cartoonists, as a challenge, drew their characters blindfolded.

It made its way around Facebook, and some artists couldn't resist the challenge.

Here's Bill Sienkiewicz with Elektra, Batman, John Garrett, and Superman:

Larry Hama with Snake-Eyes:

And Walt Simonson with Thor:

Looking Back at Crimson Plague

Looking Back at Crimson Plague

With George Perez’s Sirens coming out next week, I thought I’d take a look at the last time George Perez launched a creator-owned comic that used real people as models for the characters.

Crimson Plague’s first issue was published in 1997 by Event Comics, a company that wouldn’t stick around for much longer, mainly because the guy heading it was only a few years away from taking over Marvel Comics. At the time, Perez, only one of the rare artists who had been a superstar in each decade he worked in (his third, at that point), was experiencing a slump in his productivity. Ending the 80s on a high note with Crisis on Infinite Earths and a very successful Wonder Woman relaunch, Perez didn’t do so well in the 90s up to that point. He was getting out some successes like Future Imperfect and his creator-owned Sachs and Violens (both with Peter David), but he was also late with the latter. His event at DC, War of the Gods, wasn’t even marketed as an event by DC Editorial (DC Editorial: Screwing Things Up Since Even Before 1991) and was pretty much overshadowed by Armageddon 2001, a truly atrocious “event” even if your comparison was strictly atrocious events. Meanwhile, at Marvel, Perez was working on Infinity Gauntlet, a true comic book phenomenon, and he couldn’t even finish past midway through the fourth issue of six.

Crimson Plague was Perez’s last project before he returned full time to Marvel with Avengers. The concept was that DiNA: Simmons, whose origin is unknown, has a plague carried by her bloodstream, and anyone who comes into contact with her blood instantly dies. The setting is futuristic, and there’s an entire crew who’s after her, led by a military woman named Shannon Lower.

It’s actually difficult to summarize the story because, to be honest, the first issue was a little confusing. I’m a big proponent of the idea that artists are co-authors, since they are responsible for so many storytelling decisions, such as pacing and expressions — regardless of how tight or not the script is, the final execution is always in the hands of the guy holding the pencil. But one thing that’s definitely the provenance of the scriptwriter is the overall structure of the story, and in Crimson Plague, Perez decided to use a nonlinear framework, putting flashbacks within flashbacks. The first narrative captions of the story read, “Her name is DiNA: And, contrary to what she said, this is not the end of the story. This was but one random chapter in the history of Crimson Plague. What follows is another. The setting is approximately one year ago on a faraway moon, where, five years ago, DiNA: Simmons was born.”

So in case you missed that, the next scene took place one year ago. DiNA: was born there five years before that. But the scene, containing Shannon Lower’s fleet on their way to a mission, was only a year ago. Until at some point in the scene they get briefed, so we have another flashback.

Structurally it’s a bit of a mess. The comic under Event folded, Perez went to do Avengers, and then in 2000, he re-issued the series under Gorilla Comics. I understand the re-issue of the first issue had additional material, but the second issue’s letters page has someone criticizing the structure and Perez copping to it not being as clear as he’d have liked, in hindsight, so I guess the issues weren’t resolved.

Crimson Plague’s also a bit unwieldy because there are so many characters introduced pretty much all at once, and they all seem significant. This isn’t really a problem, given that it’s a comic and you can just go back and forth to figure out who’s who. It’s also helped that it’s Perez drawing it, and he’s one of the best ever when it comes to drawing distinctive faces (Shannon Lower is distinctly Shannon Lower, whether her hair is down and she’s in her underwear or her hair is tied up and she’s in full military gear, for example). But because it’s full blast and the juggling of the characters isn’t really done as deftly as someone like, say, Kurt Busiek would do it, it does prevent a reader from getting immersed in the story.

This sounds like I’m saying Perez is a bad writer, but I’m not. I hold his Wonder Woman run in high regard, and he did pretty much all the writing for that (he had assistance with the dialogue), and Marv Wolfman never fails to call him a co-plotter for New Teen Titans. Kurt Busiek has mentioned before that Perez would take liberties with his plot-first scripts on Avengers, because Perez would just make storytelling decisions like “Hey, this page where Kurt describes four things would need 16 panels.” But I think in Crimson Plague, Perez tried too much. The one time he was fully responsible for handling structure was on Wonder Woman, still focused on one main protagonist and thus giving him a focus. Crimson Plague is ostensibly about DiNA: Simmons, but it’s mainly about Shannon Lower and her fleet. It’s really a case of Perez flexing writing muscles that he wasn’t used to flexing.

I think one of the reasons he tried introducing as many characters as he possibly could right away was the whole idea of the series basing its characters on real people. Shannon Lower actually is based on a real woman named Shannon Lower, a friend of Perez’s wife, and so the fictional Shannon Lower has a tiger tattoo on her leg just like (presumably) the real Shannon Lower. DiNA: Simmons actually is based on Dina Simmons (pictured here from George Perez: Storyteller). So it did seem that he was shoehorning everyone in right away so … people would be happy? I don’t know.

Crimson Plague ended at two issues because Perez didn’t make enough money to cover the costs of production, including the costs of paying Dina for public appearances. He estimated he’d lost $5,000 per issue, which makes me wonder how Sirens is going to work, since it’s based on nine different cosplayers.

He’s mentioned that royalties from his old work will keep it afloat, but I also worry about how he will juggle nine different protagonists since he seemed to have a hard time with it the last time he tried doing it on his own. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to Sirens, because whatever criticisms I may have about Crimson Plague, it was an interesting concept, the leads were gripping, it was well drawn, and it was nice to see Perez really reach for something different. If Sirens can be nine times as interesting, gripping, well drawn, and intriguing, then I think we’re in for a treat… as long as the whole problems of juggling the characters and structuring the story don’t stick out nine times as obviously either.

I’ll be reviewing Sirens #1 next week! Come back then!

On The Punisher Meets Archie

On The Punisher Meets Archie

Stan Goldberg died earlier this week. He was highly accomplished in the comics industry, having had stints at Marvel twice, picking Spider-Man’s colors, and, most notably, being one of the main artists of Archie Comics. He was the main Archie artist of my generation, and for that reason, I placed him fifth on the list of the most important Archie artists ever, kind of sad that I couldn’t rank him any higher and also kind of surprised that I got comments telling me he was too high. (I will grant that there is an argument between him and Bob Bolling, but no one else right now would outrank Goldberg.) Goldberg didn’t really get all the appreciation he deserved, though he was well-respected, and even I, who had him pegged as my favorite Archie artist when I was young, eschewed him later on in favor of my older self’s tastes, gravitating as I did to the crispness of Dan DeCarlo, the motion of Harry Lucey, and the sight gags of Samm Schwartz. Goldberg’s forte was action, and he handled the two-part strips in the Archie Comics where Archie furrowed his brow a lot, played detective, and tackled a bad guy. He was the best at it, but I don’t think I can really be questioned for saying that I didn’t really read Archie in the hopes of seeing fights in them.

Which is why it may be odd that my favorite Archie comic ever was drawn by Stan G. Or half-drawn, anyway. The Punisher Meets Archie, published in 1994 and written by Batton Lash, was Marvel’s first intercompany crossover in a very long while, and was, as you may have guessed from the title, an extremely risky venture in a creative sense. There’s no reason it should have worked! The quintessential symbol of any grim and gritty movement meeting the quintessential humor strip character makes it the most disparate pairing possible without going into funny animal territory. But work it did. The Punisher came into Riverdale looking for a criminal named Melvin Jay (this book is full of Easter eggs), who looks like Archie, and hijinks ensue.

One reason it worked was because it didn’t take itself so seriously, as writer Batton Lash carefully plotted out everything so that nothing seemed out of place. Even Punisher throwing a pie at a gunman doesn’t come off as contrived.

But another reason it worked was because of the artists. John Buscema drew the Punisher parts, and (possible controversial opinion ahead) he was a significantly better storyteller in the latter half of his career than in the first, getting a much better grasp of body language and subtle facial expressions without losing the action instead of trying to mold his style into the Jack Kirby mold as he did in the 60s (it doesn’t work; it’s like Tim Duncan deciding he wanted to play like Dennis Rodman). Stan Goldberg drew the Archie parts, and this is where Goldberg is crucial — his style was always the most “Marvel” of the Archie guys, and because of that, he was able to bridge the Archie house style with Buscema’s style (which has a strong case for being the Marvel house style). Goldberg drew a lot of Archie action strips, so he was the only choice, really, to make this work.I really can’t imagine anyone else from the Archie bullpen being able to make these panels work.

Here’s how good the combination of Buscema and Goldberg was: I have no idea who drew Mel Jay. If I had to guess, I’d say they took turns, based on the situation. If I had to pick just one, I’d say Buscema, but it’s a close call.

I wish Marvel and Archie would get together and reprint this comic, in a nice oversized edition just like IDW’s been doing with the Archie artist spotlights. Stan Goldberg’s only got one “Best of” volume right now (Schwartz and Lucey each have two, while DeCarlo deservedly has four), and Stan deserves some more lasting exposure in the book market. What’s more, since The Punisher Meets Archie has been out of print for 20 years, a lot of people haven’t been exposed to it, and that’s a shame.

It’s a little heady to me that this comic, out 20 years ago, may be my second-favorite intercompany of all time (this is the first), and it’s even weirder to me that the artists have passed on. I never really appreciated either of them enough when they were active, but we fortunately live in a golden age of comics and reprints, where I can seek out their work pretty easily.

Hopefully one day we’ll get a deluxe reprint of it, to be put on a bookshelf so we can easily pull it out for the entertainment value of America’s Teen Supreme contrasting with the Quintessential Grim and Gritty Vigilante. And besides, they still owe us a sequel.

Why Not Sif? A Look at Immonen, Schiti, and Bellaire's Run on Asgard's Shieldmaiden

Why Not Sif?

From the new Captain Marvel to the always entertaining She-Hulk to the new and exciting Angela, we have more female-centric Marvel books at this point than I can remember ever having in my comics-reading lifetime, which is almost as long as my actual lifetime. With this increased focus on female-led series, though, there is one character for whom I have to wonder why Marvel isn’t pushing as much as they could.

That’s right, that’s Lady Sif, one of Asgard’s greatest warriors and certified true badass. Created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee (at this point, someone will want to comment with “Stan and Jack didn’t create Sif; the Vikings did,” which, congratulations, you people have mastered the nuance of semantics) to be Thor’s traveling companion and second girlfriend, after Jane Foster, Sif has a pretty strong central concept: she is the fiercest female warrior in all of Asgard, and next to Thor, the best warrior who doesn’t run in a pack. She’s also had a fairly simple history despite being around since the 60s. Ignoring an unfortunate stretch of time when she and Jane Foster shared a body (we will never speak of this again, ever), Sif’s just a warrior. Sometimes she dates Thor, sometimes she doesn’t, but her priority is the safety of Asgard.

There hasn’t been much effort in the way of solo Sif stories, which is surprising to me because she seems to be a character rife with possibility. (To be fair, we could say this about Thor’s entire supporting cast, which is arguably the richest supporting cast next to Batman, in terms of being able to stand on their own without the lead character. Not much effort has been made to do much with them.) But last year, Kathryn Immonen, Valerio Schiti, and Jordi Bellaire used her for a short run to end the Journey Into Mystery series. And they knocked it out of the park.

Starting with the premise that Sif wants to be a better warrior, we follow Asgard’s premiere fighter as she gets cursed with a spell that triggers her berserker rage. Hooking up with a bunch of other warriors who all fell for the same curse millennia ago, Sif has to save the Earth from a bunch of monsters. Along the way, she gets to show off her fighting skills.

She also gets hit on by the Superior Spider-Man, which is how I realized how buried in Marvel’s lineup this run was. I was buying Superior Spider-Man at the time and still wasn’t aware of this appearance until almost a year after it happened.

Here’s a cute Easter egg. Spot the South Park residents!

Schiti really took it to a whole new level in the next storyline, “Seeds of Destruction,” in which Sif teams up with Beta Ray Bill to save Gaea and Bill’s girlfriend, Ti Asha Ra. He pulls off a neat trick here with polyptychs that give a sense of movement throughout the page while being able to zoom in on Sif’s expressions.

Schiti’s just a master of expressions in general. He’s like this generation’s Kevin Maguire, only without the inexplicable need to have everyone mug for the camera all the time.

And look at that color palette too. Just vibrant and bold color choices by Jordie Bellaire throughout the entire run.

Kathryn Immonen’s dialogue brought out an innocence in Sif that balanced out her aggressive personality, and a kind of naivete about human dynamics and the way things work. At the end of the day, Sif’s as simple as her concept. She wants to fight to protect Asgard, and she’ll… fight to… keep fighting, I guess.

This run was cancelled after “Seeds of Destruction,” and giving Sif more chances seems to be an issue of marketability. It’s not really a cool name. I know “Thor” is just a name, but there’s an oomph factor to it that “Sif” doesn’t have. It’s kind of like how in basketball, the best guys always have cool names. The number 1 pick in the 1996 NBA draft was Allen Iverson, a guy who had many shoes, a rap album, and changed NBA culture as we know it. The number pick in the 1995 NBA draft was a dude named Joe Smith. Names have power.

But wait, you say. Loki has his own series, and Angela will soon as well. They both have subtitles: “Agent of Asgard” and “Asgard’s Assassin,” respectively. Why not give Sif a new title? I don’t know what it would be, but now would be the time to do it. We’ve got an actress in Jaimie Alexander that loves playing the character (her guest shot on Agents of SHIELD was the best part of an otherwise mediocre season). The multimedia profile of the character will likely never be higher than this. So as a company overall, why not push Sif along with everyone else?

Is money really a reason? Can we really say Angela is going to absolutely make more money as a lead? Maybe before the movies, sure, but now I don’t think you can make that claim. The Immonen/Schiti/Bellaire Sif comics were as good as any superhero comics in existence, and proves that the character is rife with possibility. In Marvel’s entire catalogue, it seems like a shame to overlook her.

You can get the complete collection (very affordable) here: