The Stylistic Possibilities of the New MCU

One of the criticisms about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that aside from a handful of films such as the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Thor: Ragnarok, there isn't much in the way of individual styles. I think it's a bit of an unfair criticism, as I think each film is distinct, but I suppose it may also be seen along the lines of visually distinguishing between the works of John Byrne and George Perez, or Carl Barks and Don Rosa, or Dan DeCarlo and Harry Lucey. The new MCU has the ability to change that perception, as some of them draw from the most stylistically visually distinct comics of all time.

What follows is a photo dump of images from some comics that Phase 4, including some of the new TV shows announced at D23 this weekend, will be based on. If the Marvel movies and Disney+ shows are able to incorporate some of this distinct visual flair, I'd be a happy fan.

This post is also entitled, "I didn't have time to come up with an in-depth article today, so please enjoy these pretty pictures."

Let's start with Hawkeye, whose David Aja–drawn run was one of the most acclaimed superhero comics in recent memory. It's got a great design sense...

...as well as some pretty cool storytelling techniques. Take note of Kate going "Well, that's cool" really slowly, to emphasize how quickly Clint goes through his process when drawing a bowstring.

Then there are the Eternals, created by the most revered superhero comic creator ever, Jack Kirby, back in 1976. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Eternals feels like an offshoot of his unfinished New Gods over at DC, but they're obscure even for superhero fans. The movie's been described as going full-on Kirby, and I hope that means whacked-out grandiose designs...

...and grand imagery, such as this shot of a Celestial, a race of beings who are so old that they've helped shape the universe.

Ms. Marvel would stand out just because of who she is — there aren't many teenage Pakistani-American Muslim female superheroes, and while her series isn't exactly what I'd call visually distinct in comparison to some of the rest of these, she's got a superpower that is ripe for visual opportunity: size-changing. At the very least, her powers are going to look distinct.

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, was based on Bruce Lee, and as such many of his seminal comics have tried getting that kind of atmosphere. Here's a sequence by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy:

And here's one drawn by Gene Day:

Pretty cool.

One of my problems with the first Dr. Strange movie was I felt that it had a ceiling that it wasn't even really trying to reach, with most of the psychedelic effects being stuff we've seen before, notably from Inception. I'm hoping that Multiverse of Madness goes full-on psychedelic and experimental. Here's Dr. Strange dealing with his old foe Dormammu and Eternity, the embodiment of the universe.

Seriously, can you imagine seeing a properly done Eternity on screen? What a trip that'd be.

Moon Knight has long been a cult favorite among comic fans, and one reason is because he had who was probably the most technically proficient comics artist who ever lived work on him. That would be Bill Sienkiewicz, and Moon Knight can really be a horror crime noir hybrid that is missing in the MCU.

Check out this sequence when he realizes the man he's talking to is a child abuse victim.

And I just have to plug this one, because screw Batman.

Let's close off with She-Hulk, a character created by Stan Lee and John Buscema in 1979. Jennifer Walters is Bruce Banner's cousin, though to differentiate the two of them, for a majority of her lifespan, Jennifer could willingly turn into She-Hulk. There are exceptions, such as the beginning of her career when she was known as the Savage She-Hulk, and the present incarnation, when she's just known as the Hulk and she has more of the classic Hulk dynamic where the Hulk form is more mindless and savage, but for the most part, Jennifer Walters willingly transformed into She-Hulk to be one of the two best lawyers Marvel had to offer.

I'm hoping this series takes more from Dan Slott's run than anyone else's, since in that run you get to see both She-Hulk and Jennifer a lot (and would give me an excuse to fancast Alison Brie as shy and intelligent Jennifer Walters), but chances are it'd cover the whole gamut from Savage to Sensational. What I'm wondering about though, is if they'd take from the John Byrne run, in which She-Hulk predated Deadpool by a significant amount of time in terms of breaking the fourth wall and being the ultimate humor character.

Personally, I'm unsure if this would work on Disney+, but hey, it's distinct.

I didn't even get to What If...?, Falcon and Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Thor: Love and Thunder, and a bunch of others. BUt I think I've shown here that Phase 4 of the MCU has an opportunity to really have a smorgasbord of styles, and I'm excited to see it.

Which one are you most excited for, Cubers?

P.S., #SaveDaredevil and #SaveSpiderMan

Revisiting Vertigo: Neil Young's Greendale and the Relevance of Activism

Just a little over a month ago, DC Comics announced their decision to shut down Vertigo, their "alternative" imprint that was a true game-changer for the comics industry. Quite frankly, I thought of it as a mercy killing, as Vertigo had long been only a shell of what it was at its peak, hindered by, it seems, an increasingly tighter corporate structure and contracts that paled in comparison to other publishers when it came to things like ownership rights and creative freedom. Still, Vertigo remains relevant, and will always remain relevant, because it opened the door for comics to explore a wider variety of genres and tones.

One of my absolute favorite Vertigo books is Neil Young's Greendale. In 2003, legendary rock musician Neil Young released an album called Greendale, which Wikipedia describes as a "10-song rock opera." It focuses on the story of the Green family, but especially Sun Green, a young student who feels very passionate about the illegal drilling for oil in Alaska. The story is about her political awakening.

Greendale was made into a stage play and a movie. In 2006, a comic book adaptation was pitched to Joshua Dysart, and in 2010 it was released. It is one of the most beautiful comics I've ever read, and was one of the first comics I ever reviewed on this website. But even back then, I asked myself the question, "Is this relevant?"

Sun Green has preternatural powers that enables her to climb any surface, to herd any group of animals to go where she goes, and to have some semblance of power over nature. It sounds like the plot of a superhero story if you just describe it like that, but the way it's executed is more in line with magical realism than myth. What it does have in line with superhero stories, however, is that once her powers start having negative effects — including, it seems, producing an arch-nemesis that ends up causing the deaths of multiple people in her life — she starts questioning herself, doubting her purpose, and fearing for the future. And it's only when she heeds the advice of her grandmother that everything falls into place.

"Fight the way you always dreamed of fighting. Be the rain."

So Sun does decide to fight in the way she dreams — she becomes an activist, and becomes a face for the fight against major corporations and drilling for oil.

Is it relevant?

The album was released in 2003. The book came out in 2010. It's now 2019. The very specific cause that Sun Green fought for was a hot button topic in the early to mid-2000s. Writer Joshua Dysart has even said, on record, "I thought about that the whole time I wrote this book; is this an irrelevant book? Is this a book out of time? I don’t know.  I can’t answer your question.  It’s something I wrestled with; I constantly was altering the language in the book throughout the writing in the hope of making it timeless. I just don’t know."

"Hope has always been the tone of youth."

I would argue that it is still relevant, and more, it will always be relevant. The causes people fight for may change. We may be more passionate about equal rights, female rights, and LGBT causes now than we are about environmentalism, but the passion remains true, and the message of Neil Young's Greendale will always connect to a young reader struggling to find their place in the world. Be the rain. Fight the way you've always dreamed of fighting.

Vertigo may be over, but its place in comics history is etched in stone. Stories like Neil Young's Greendale may seem less relevant on the surface, but the importance of its theme is likewise etched in stone. We need to find the ideals we're passionate about, and we need to fight to make that a reality.

Plus, the art is by Cliff Chiang with colors by Dave Stewart, and it's just really pretty.

The Five Most Horrific Scenes from Art Spiegelman's Maus

Art Spiegelman's Maus is legendary. Originally published in the magazine Raw between 1980 to 1991, its first volume came out in 1986 and is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns as part of a triumvirate that changed comics. In 1992, Maus won the Pulitzer Prize.

Maus is an biographical comic. It tells the story of Art Spiegelman's dad, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor, and weaves in and out of the present and the past. Each chapter starts with Art visiting his father, and then goes into his father recounting his experience in the Holocaust. It's what's called a "frame tale," or a story within a story.

Spiegelman is, in his other works, incredibly experimental, playing with symbols, panels, and other constraints of the comic page to see what the medium can do. But in Maus, he uses exactly one conceit: each race is represented by a different animal (the main one: Jews are mice and Germans are cats). Other than that, the art style is straightforward and even quite crude, and it works perfectly. The diagrammatic, minimal lines really force you to focus on the content, so without further ado, here are, for me, the five most horrific scenes in Art Spiegelman's Maus.

5. Just bodies lying around

There's a scene towards the end of the war where the Jewish prisoners get taken on a train, and then the train just... stops. They start eating snow from the window just to stay hydrated, and if you fell, the prisoners would just step on you.

In the concentration camps, the Nazis wouldn't clear the place of dead bodies, so those who stayed alive just had to walk over corpses.

4. Every man for himself

If that sounded like compassion and empathy were in short supply in the camps, it was. Vladek Spiegelman mentions you'd even have to bribe family members just so they could help you out of a jam. The scene that struck me the most in this regard is this one, in which the camp guards wanted soup transported, knowing full well that a beating awaited any prisoner who would drop the soup and spill it. Spiegelman immediately found the strongest other prisoner he could get his hands on so that they wouldn't spill anything, leaving the weaker prisoners to be paired up with each other. And if they dropped the soup? Too bad.

3. They built their own gas chambers

And yes, the Nazis had the Jewish prisoners working on building the gas chambers that would be used to kill them.

It seems difficult to believe, as we're raised on a diet of fiction in which the underdog can overcome, but Vladek explains to Art, amidst Art's utter confusion, that there were many reasons the Jews didn't fight back:

• There was a general state of disbelief at everything that was happening, and the Jews were too beaten and tired to fight.
• The Jews lived in hope that someone would come to save them.
• The Nazis had the weapons, so whether you fought them or not, you end up dead regardless.

I can't imagine living under such conditions. And neither should anyone reading this in 2019 be able to.

2. The callous killing of children

"Some kids were screaming and screaming, and they couldn't stop. So the Germans swinged them by the legs against a wall... and they never anymore screamed."

Jews were dehumanized so much that the callous murder of a child was not uncommon. And, horrifically, they were beaten down so much that the governess of Vladek's first child, thought it was okay to kill them, because at least this way they wouldn't be killed by Nazis.

Dehumanization and oppression bring out the worst in everyone, and this should not ever be a thing humanity should have to return to.

1. These three scenes in the present day

After a long day of hearing his dad talk about the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman finds out that his dad threw out his coat. He becomes fixated on this.

After hearing about the horrors his dad went through, all he can focus on is how his coat is gone.

I am not judging. I would react exactly the same way. But it does make me think about whether or not that reaction is appropriate in that context.

Worse, when Art and his wife, legendary comix editor Francoise Mouly, pick up a black hitchhiker, Vladek reveals himself to be a flat-out racist.




Francoise snaps, "How can you, of all people, be such a racist! You talk about blacks the way the Nazis talked about the Jews!", to which Vladek responds with "I thought really you are more smart than this, Francoise. It's not even to compare the shvartsers and the Jews!"

Despite everything that's happened to him as a result of bigotry and prejudice, Vladek gives in to the same thoughts, perhaps not to the same degree that he's calling for their deaths, but certainly in the same vein in that he wants nothing to do with them.

And that's scary. If someone who lived through something like the Holocaust still harbors basic prejudices, what hope does the rest of humanity have?

The third scene takes place when Art is talking to his therapist, also a Holocaust survivor.



"...Look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed... maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust."

I dunno about you guys, but that disturbs me. And it's scary. And compared to when I first read this book in 2002, it feels all the more resonant.

Maus is a groundbreaking book and I would recommend that you all read it, because we should all be able to learn from history.

If only it were so.

Hey Archie, How About a Complete Works of Harry Lucey?

A while back on Facebook, Mark Waid said "You could argue with me all week that Harry Lucey wasn't the best Archie artist ever, but you'd be wasting your time." Even further than a while back, I called Harry Lucey the third most influential Archie artist in the company's history. And yes, I stick by that. But he is my favorite, and in this column, I'll show you why.

Reclaiming History: Harry Lucey

by Duy

After a stint in the war, Harry Lucey joined Archie Comics (or rejoined MLJ Comics, which was now going by Archie Comics) in 1948, regularly started drawing the Archie characters in 1956, and did so for 20 years. For those 20 years, he was one of two main Archie artists, the other one being Dan DeCarlo. For the sake of reference and comparison, here are the two of them drawing the classic Archie image, "Three on a Soda." That's Lucey on the left, DeCarlo on the right.

Who the better draftsman is is subjective, but I think we can safely say that Lucey's style is a bit more unique than DeCarlo's, whose clean, crisp style is the platonic ideal for anyone working at Archie. So I'm willing to give this one to DeCarlo since it's his style that everyone's based theirs off since.

But when it comes to comics, draftsmanship is only a part of it. There's a whole range of skills needed to succeed in the business. Some guys are great draftsmen but can't really convey motion and "acting." Some guys don't draw the best figures, but are great cartoonists and storytellers. I would call Harry Lucey a good artist, and I would call him a great storyteller.

Any look at Harry Lucey has to start with his mastery of gesture. In drawing, there's something called "The Action Line," which is a single stroke that defines where a body is going to go and the shape it's going to take. Here's a comparison from Stan Lee and John Buscema's How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way that shows how a more dynamic action line can affect how a picture is going to look.

With Harry Lucey, the action lines are always clear. This is true regardless of if someone is actually in action:

If someone's getting hit:

If the action line has to encompass a distance between two people:

And if someone is falling (Lucey's staple):

The key to this mastery of gesture? Take up space. Take up all the space.

If he needs to have someone stand perfectly still for contrast, he will:

No analysis of old-school Archie would be complete without us talking about the cheesecake factor. There's a whole conversation to be had about whether or not it's appropriate for such depictions in popular culture, especially since these characters are high school students, but for better or for worse, sex appeal and Good Girl Art was a backbone of Archie Comics, something that the Riverdale TV series perfectly understood and executed (albeit in a completely different way). Here is what I think is a drawing fairly representative of the skills and artistic process by Dan DeCarlo, feature Josie and Melody of the Pussycats, and Pepper.

And here is what I believe is a fairly representative drawing of Betty and Veronica that is fairly representative of the skills and artistic process of Harry Lucey.

DeCarlo's drawing certainly seems more realistic and anatomically correct and idealized — and that's what he was hired for, having worked in pin-up art prior to Archie — but in my opinion, Lucey's characters speak more. There's just more character, more life, and not just with the girls, but also with Archie. I'm not knocking on DeCarlo at all. I do think he's the better draftsman. It's just that Lucey is the better cartoonist.

For completion and reference, here's Stan Goldberg's take on the exact same scene:

Lucey is also a master of facial expressions, and a part of that is exactly because his style gives more creative freedom to interpretations. In classic Archie, most girls look the same — they'll just have different hair, and Sabrina will have freckles. In Lucey's world, Sabrina looks off-kilter. She's a witch, and you won't forget she's different.

Big Moose, likewise, isn't just one of the guys scaled up and bulked up. Under Lucey, he loses his neck and gets more rectangular, fortifying his position as the big guy.

Here's a sequence starring Fred Andrews, Archie's dad, whom the gang comes to when a book is banned from them. Look at the variety of facial expressions he goes through in only five panels.

Let's look at Fred again, trying to troll his wife Mary.

It's this simultaneous mastery of facial expressions and gesture that make Lucey so suited to silent stories, or stories with limited dialogue. Check out this sequence where you can absolutely tell what's going on, and there are only two repeating lines of dialogue throughout. (This is true of the entire story.)

Lucey also played around quite a bit with panels. Other Archie artists, most notably Samm Schwartz, did it too, mostly as a joke, but with Lucey it was almost always a problem solver. How can you emphasize that Archie's butt is getting pulled off a wall?

Or maybe Betty is on a table but you want to save some space?

Or how about Archie hitting the floor?

There's also this cutaway, which isn't really something I see Archie Comics do:

And while we're at it, this isn't from Archie Comics but is from Archie the publisher, can we just mention his wide range? He drew a series called Sam Hill, Private Eye, as gritty and moody as they come:

Harry Lucey was a very good artist. But he was a great cartoonist. I hope I've convinced you of the greatness of Harry Lucey. He's my favorite of all the Archie artists, and I find myself more and more just gravitating towards his stuff when I read Archies. I would want a whole collection of his works, digest-sized or in hardback, but for now these volumes will have to do. In the meantime, let me leave you with what may be my favorite Harry Lucey story, "Sssh!", which shows up in the Best of Archie Comics Book 4.

So how about it. Archie Comics? The Complete Works of Harry Lucey. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?