Some recent reads
HELLBLAZER 230/231 -
At least I think that's the numbers. Who really pays attention to the numbers, anyways? Anyway, if Andy Diggle were here, I'd plant a wet one right on his kisser. Or at the least buy him a drink. Why? Because Diggle has given us back our dear old Constantine. Instead of being miserable and wallowing in his being miserable and having potentially no end to the miserableness in which he's wallowing, Diggle has made a U-turn with the character. This isn't gonna be shabby John bumming a fag from you because he's so down and out that down looks up to him. I'm figuring that we've seen an end to aimless wandering the occult slums of the UK, and instead see Constantine with something like...wait for it...purpose driving him. Sure, it might be a superficial purpose that'll blow up in his face, but it's PURPOSE all the same. Purpose drives character. Aimless characters that never change might be fun for awhile, but it does get old.
Seriously. I haven't felt this engaged by the book since Jamie Delano started out the run some...wait for it...TWENTY years ago or so. Yeah, roll that one around on your tongue for a while. Twenty years of the trenchcoat brigade. Twenty years of JC who's more or less the same character since Delano wrapped up his "Magus" storyline (with some really beautiful Dave McKean artwork) and actually explained why John was the way he was and gave him some sense of closure, having gotten past the things that fucked him up. Of course, that's no fun, so we've gotta just leave Constantine in neutral and have him parade through and endless menagerie of spectres and boogeymen. Sometimes entertaining, but I'd had other things to do with my time.
See, though, Diggle gets it. He knows why you can't get anywhere with the car left in neutral. I mean, that's fine if you enjoy the scenery right then, but if you want to move along, well, you gotta put things in gear. And he does so quite well in this two-part story. I'd had these on the read pile for some time now, and hadn't gotten to them, but you can be sure I'll make it my business to catch up and keep up as long as Diggle is on the case.
GUTSVILLE 1
I love Frazier Irving's artwork. Craftsmanship, whimsy, darkness, and a keen sense of design are all on display there. His art on KLARION was one of the high points of the SEVEN SOLDIERS series(es), and the work showed in GUTSVILLE is no different. The setting (inside the belly of a Leviathan, where Puritanical survivors have set up some semblance of a normal life, building a town with all the fixings including ratcatchers and darkie fortunetellers) very much comes to life, and very much plays to Irving's strengths as an artist. Selective color palettes change the mood from scene to scene, and there's a very real sense of claustrophobia, of tightness (both literally and figuratively in the moral strictures of the town).
I'm certainly interested in what's going on here, but I'm a little uneasy at what seems like a great deal of pretty standard storytelling/character motivations/types going on. Religious intolerance is bad, I understand that. Persecution of artists, bad. Rich people taking your childhood sweetheart and trying to marry her up, bad. In terms of story (aside from the imaginative setting) there's not a lot new going on here. Of course, there doesn't *have* to be, but it certainly makes things a little more interesting when you do. At any rate, I'm still on board with GUTSVILLE; let's see where this fish is going.
SPIDER MAN/FANTASTIC FOUR 1-3
Dude. This is what superhero comics oughta be more like. No breast-beating, no crying supermen, no continuity navel-gazing. This is comedy, whereas most capes books seem to want to be tragic. The only difference between the two is how they turn out. An alien presence takes over the world thousands of humans at a time? Wow, sounds like a great start for a horror story, but the way that Parker and 'Ringo are handling things, we all know that things are going to be (mostly) okay. Which is ironic, considering the drubbing that I gave of John Constantine's status quo above.
But in this case, I don't mind it. Because it's fun. Sometimes you just want to have some fun. COUNTDOWN is not going to be (intentional) fun. We all know this. Sometimes you want to see Spidey quipping with the Impossible Man. Sometimes you want to see Dr. Doom single-handedly running the aliens out of Latveria (and siding with the FF for reasons that are character and not plot-based.) This isn't brain surgery. This isn't going to win the Nobel Prize (or even an Eisner, sadly), but it's an entertaining antidote to summer megacrossover follies. Looking forward to the fourth issue once it rolls around.
SLOTH OGN
Boy, that Hernandez guy can draw. And boy, the first half of the book is awesome. But once that switch is made, and those of you who read it will know what I'm talking about, then it stopped being the awesome coming-of-age tale and became kinda...disappointing. Still, some excellent cartooning, but I'm coming away from it feeling like there was a missed opportunity there (though it does make me want to pull out my copy of LOCAS again, which is...somewhere....somewhere in the garage.)
ARMY OF LOVE 1-2
Just wow. Some really good stuff going on here. I find it amusing that the violence has almost been entirely substituted with sex and drugs and rock and roll (Ian Dury would be proud). I'm not sure that there's any really empathetic characters (other than the burnout guitarist). There's plenty of sympathetic ones, I suppose, or at least understandable, even if you wouldn't want to stand in the same room with them for any length of time.
The satire is pretty over-the-top, but why do things halfway? Why explain that the Pentagon has an accepted interface for a Stratocaster to orchestrate the actions of a weapons-encrusted stealth drone? Just ride with it. (But please, in the trade, spell Link Wray's name right.) This is a smart, funny and sad book. I'd wait for the trade, but I'm not that patient.