Last Words (and Pictures)

Hey, I'm back. Miss me?

I want to talk about last pages. It's really the advantage of the singles over the trade. The shocking reveal. The nail-biting cliffhanger. The joke and freeze. Even the summation, moral, and coda. The great last page confirms "Yeah, you just read A Story, a real story, and don't it suck for you that you have to wait a whole 'nother month for what else we got in store." You lose that in the trade. Golden moments, like Superman and Lex Luthor plummeting to Earth in Up, Up, and Away, are frozen in time as you wait weeks for the next issue. In the trade, it's just another page in the middle of the book.

Yeah, it's arbitrary, a product of the medium rather than a creative choice, but good creators can make the boundaries work for them. I bought six comics last week* and all but one had BRILLIANT last pages. (The outlier was Boys #4, which is probably my new definition of "wait for the trade.")

Secret Six #5 employed the classic, reveal and cliffhanger one-two: forgotten character reappears, then immediately puts our heroes in mortal jeopardy. Now you have to read issue #6, the conclusion, to see how our "heroes" get out of this one. If they get out of this one.

52 #25 does the classic with a double twist. Not only does the mysterious mastermind behind the Island of Mad Scientists step forward to imperil Black Adam and Isis, his identity turns out to be a new twist on an old, buried character, and his particular threat references earlier clues in the series itself, drawing the disparate plots together.

Action Comics #844 has a reveal, but really the last page serves as a summation and conclusion. It ends the chapter being told. The story could conceivably just end on that last page, since it establishes a new but relatively stable status quo. Not that it will, because there's a "to be continued" hiding in the bottom right corner and the new status quo is too big a change to be confined to just one book.

Nextwave #9, plotwise, doesn't have that great a last page. Nothing's revealed. The heroes are in no more or less danger on the last page then they were six pages earlier. It certainly isn't the end of the story, or even the beginning of a new one. But it was a PERFECT last page. Because it contained a joke--a joke so powerful that I could not continue reading. That's right, Ellis and Immonen knew that anything read after that page would be lost in its massive wake, so they moved it to the end where it could do no harm to the rest of the story, while at the same time positioning the joke for maximum focus, making it more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

But of course, the comic of the week, my HANDS DOWN pick, is Seven Soldiers of Victory #1. And it had THREE great last pages. Sure it could have ended on page 37. With its narration directed at the reader and image and panels that recall the first page of the first issue of Seven Soldiers, it would have been a nice bookend. Or it could have ended with page 38, the twist ending. But like Nextwave before it, Seven Soldiers had a moment, an image so powerful that it FORCED itself to the last page. The moment certainly isn't the end of the story. It's not even a very important moment to the main plot.

But the image IS the story of Seven Soldiers. It's a monument to unending nature of comics, that every last page is an advertisement for the next issue, that every death and birth is there for later writers to undo and redo. It's an image that mixes the macabre with the sacred, the simple with the mysterious, the absolute mundane with the beyond fantastic. It's an image that says superheroes can do impossible things, and that's why we love them. It's a moment so great that there just can't be another page, even though it's a last page that SCREAMS "TO BE CONTINUED!!!" without saying a word. It has to be the last page, because after seeing that page, there's nothing left to say...

until next month...



*yeah, vacation doesn't stop the habit. Once, when traveling through Alaska, I made a stop at the world's most Northern Comic Book store to pick up Zero Hour #0, which was out that week.

THE RETURN

I know I said I was going on vacation, and I swear it's this last post then I'm gone, but how could a pass up the opportunity mention the Earth-New return of...

GO GO CHECKS!

What Else You Need to Know About Lois Lane

Lois Lane doesn't take shit from nobody.

Ragnell has a post about power fantasies for women, specifically inspired by a scene where a guy's a jerk to Witchblade in her civilian persona, and instead of slugging the guy, she demures while her male companion does the hitting for her. Ragnell felt the scene was terribly unsatisfying, and was angered by the implication that it was inappropriate for a woman to lash out in violence, but okay for her man to protect her, even if she didn't need it.

To see if I agreed with her, I tried to imagine a gender reversed scenario, where the male hero demures from defending himself so his female companion slugs the guy for him. And then I realized I didn't have to imagine it, that story already exists...

... in Action Comics #1.

That's right, Lois Lane does not hesitate to smack a guy who needs hittin'. It's not always the smartest move (i.e. her opponent in this case is a gangster who tracks her down and kidnaps her, prompting the most iconic image in superhero comics), but foresight has never really been Lois's strong suit. She's more of a "leap off the building, trust someone will catch me" type. For a character whose motivation and personality has shifted a lot over her nearly 70 year existence, hard-driving ball buster has been pretty consistent.

Even at her weakest, the "If I prove Clark Kent is Superman, he'll have to marry me" Silver Age crazy period, Lois doesn't let a simple thing like constantly and publicly being proved wrong deter her from her strongly held conviction that Superman and Clark Kent are in fact the same person.

(Especially because she's, y'know, absolutely right, and if Superman didn't have a large supply of Superman robots and time travel technology, she'd have proved it years ago. I'm guessing there's an Elseworlds or Astro City type story yet to be written where Lois is the only intelligent person on Earth who can see though Clark's flimsy disguise, and is desperate to prove it to the rest of the world, but Clark, through a series of increasingly improbable feats, keeps everyone else fooled in a sadistic campaign to gaslight Lois.)

Anyway, my POINT is that Lois always acts out, never compromises, NEVER demures. Boundaries are for other people. In fact, one could say, Lois always acts the way Clark only acts when he's in costume. That is, LOIS is the hero Clark wants to be.

And that's pretty damn cool.

(Hey When Fangirls Attack! and Meanwhile! Thanks for the link!)

Roar, Roar

Three day weekend, no posts. That's kind of how it works.

Back now, will explain how last Thursday's post was an unusual departure for me, but first...

a MEME!

Courtesy of your favorite little stuffed blogger and mine, Bully, comes something actually useful. I declared Action Comics my HANDS DOWN pick for last week, and 52 my pick for the week before. NOW, I have something to honor them with!



From now on, the best comic of the week (that I bought and read) will be given this SEAL OF APPROVAL, my promise to you that this is a book that will entertain and amaze you, touch you and teach you, but mostly be three bucks well spend, money back guaranteed!* Look for this seal wherever fine comics are reviewed!

Oh, and make with the clicky on the picture to make a seal of your own.


*Offer not valid outside the continental United States, in Nevada and New Jersey, inside city limits, states that prohibit gambling, or on days of the week ending in the letter "y". Terms and conditions apply. See stores for details.

My Action Reaction!

My "Why I Hate the Mutant Gene" post will have to wait until tomorrow, because tonight I just want to tell you about the greatest issue of Justice League I've read since 2001. No, not JLA Classified (though it was fun seeing what I guess is now the "Watchtower" League back in action.)

Nope, it was in Action Comics #842, which I'm declaring my new HANDS DOWN pick as best comic of the week! (Take that, All Star Superman!)

I mean, first look at that LINE-UP: Superman (of course), Nightwing (who comes across as brave, smart, experienced, funny, and the tightness of his ass is a plot point), Aquaman (the new one), Mr. Terrific (who's more than earned his place on the team), Firestorm (again, the new one, who learns that when his powers go down, his hair goes out), as well as the roguish woman of mystery Live Wire, newly introduced veteran solider The Veteran, Busiek's ego pick Skyrocket, and a character so obscure I have no idea who he is but his adventures sound damn exciting, Blue Jay.* That's a great mix of personalities, powers, icons and old favorites and new faces, enough variety to remind the reader that the DCU is big big place.

Secondly, there's the plot: ALIENS ARE STEALING OUR STUFF! Simple, direct, worldwide, panic inducing, black and white morality. Superhero gold.

Third, there's the pace, which is FAST! If your biggest complaint about Justice League of America #1 was that no one hit anyone, have I got the book for you. Superman fights a giant, almost every superhero in the world is captured, Nightwing and Firestorm fly to the rescue, and Live Wire makes an explosive escape from their plastic wrap like prison. And that's THE FIRST HALF!

Fourth, there's the dialogue. Nightwing's years of crawling through ducts and dating an alien come into play, the new Aquaman goes all fanboy, Blue Jay wants some respect, dammit. And in any other issue, Superman's final words before he leaps off the balcony, about his faith in his new, untested team, would have been the line of the week...

if there wasn't that line about how many Kryptonians there are on Earth.

GO. BUY. NOW.

It's great!


*Seriously, can someone help me out? Who IS Blue Jay?

Ooh, a Happy Little Superman Fan Am I

I don't talk about him nearly enough, but it should be stated that my favorite superhero is Superman. I love that guy.

I was a superhero fan LONG before I was a comics fan. I VIVIDLY remember seeing Superman III in the theater, having no idea why or how Superman was fighting Clark Kent, but loving every minute of it. That may in fact be my first memory (I know I just made half of you feel really old, and the other half sort of young). I loved The Super-Friends, and the late '80s Superboy show. I waited forever for Superman IV to come out ("Superman was going to fight for peace! Hooray"). Looking back, I know all of that was terrible, but when you're young...

Anyway, it didn't matter, because it had Clark Kent, who's just great. To watch Christopher Reeves, particularly in the first movie, play it, was to instantly get it. Here was a schlub, the last nice guy in a town where nice gets eaten for breakfast, in painful love with the girl who wouldn't give him the time of day. Basically, he's you, he's me. It doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl. We all know what it's like to be ignored.

But Clark has a secret! He jumps into a broom closet, puts on the bright blue and red costume, fixes his hair, and does amazing things! All eyes on him, everybody loves him, or envies him. He's free! Free from his job, free from the law, heck, he's free from the laws of physics! He can do whatever he wants... and all he wants to do is help. And he doesn't WANT to be loved for helping... he wants to be loved for being the last nice guy. He wants to be loved for being Clark. How can you NOT love that guy? How can you not want to be that guy?

But... though I followed him from lousy movie through lousy TV show and back, I wasn't reading the comics. I kind of knew they were still publishing comics, and I know I had an issue or two growing up, and even though I loved comic strips in the newspaper, I just wasn't walking into a comic book store to pick up the latest heroic tale about my favorite Kryptonian.

Until one day when I was thirteen my dad handed me this comic as a spur of the moment gift; he had no idea what he was unleashing on the world: (after the jump!)


Yeah, that's right. I became a comics fan because of The Death of Superman. So you can all just shut up about media friendly stunt storylines because they can Goddamn get new readers into the store.

You can also shut up about making comics more "new reader friendly" by simplifying continuity. Have you read this issue lately? It's got Matrix Supergirl, Chief Henderson, Cat Grant, Kismet, Blaze, Byrne's Kryptonian imagery, Gangbuster, NONE of which I had ever seen before, and it ends with the introduction of FOUR completely new characters. Was I scared off by entering in the middle of a story? Confused and discouraged by all the characters I didn't know and plots circling around?

HECK NO! I was hooked! I wanted to know more about these characters. Who they were. How they related to Clark and what it meant about his return. I made my parents take me to the local comic book shop (a now-defunct branch of Golden Apple, if you live in the LA area), and we picked up the readily available Death of Superman and Funeral for a Friend trades (also Panic in the Sky, because our local comic book dealer flat out lied to my parents, but that's okay, because Panic is a better intro to most of the DCU anyway, and the store's out of business now anyway). And I was definitely in until at least the end of The Reign of the Supermen, and the moment Superman shatters the genocidal Cyborg, looking bad-ass and strong, in retrospect my first F*$% Yeah moment, that was it. I was in.


Because the Superman books acted as a pseudo-weekly, I quickly developed the habit of going to the store every week. Because I'm borderline obsessive compulsive, I learned to go every Thursday morning (it was the summer) then every Wednesday afternoon. (I'm better now, I can usually hold out until Friday, sometimes even Saturday. Guess I'm an adult.) And while I was in the store there was this big Batman storyline going on too, so I started picking up that, and it spread from there...

But I always read the Superman titles. (Well, almost always, the Dominus storyline drove me away, but Luthor trading his baby to Brainiac 13 for power brought me right back.) So why am I NOW such a happy Superman fan? Because for the first time, in a long time, the Superman titles are actually GREAT. I mean, in the thirteen years I've been reading comics, they've usually been good, or good enough. Even when the storylines seemed more designed to get attention than tell a good story (the engagement, the death, the return, the break-up, the wedding, blue, blue and red) there was some really good writers and artists turning out decent work. Writers like Karl Kessel and artists like Stuart Immonen and others. And it was fun... but it was never really GREAT. I'd pick it up because it was available at the store and I'd be amused for 15 minutes, but I realized I wasn't dying to read it anymore. I mean, before November 16th, 2005, who was really LOOKING FORWARD to the next issue of ANY Superman comic?

Guess what comes out tomorrow?

No, no, not that. Or rather, not JUST that. Action Comics #842 is coming out, the second part of adventure where, well, Aliens Steal Our Stuff. Seriously, I've been looking forward to this issue since just seeing the cover by Dave. Freaking. Gibbons. And Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods are knocking out of the park an old school crazy-ass Silver Age Superman adventure. It's funny to think this is from the same writer who wrote the last issue of Superman, which mostly had him sitting on a plane, reading a book and thinking about a conversation he had with Lana the other day, which was ALSO a great issue.

Three FANTASTIC ongoing comics starring my favorite, favorite, favorite character. Some of my favorite writers, great artists I'm only now beginning to appreciate, and an editorial staff devoted to making Superman, above and beyond anything else, FUN!

I'm just waiting for the wink.

ATTENTION BLOGOSPHERE

I AM NOW FREAKING OUT!