Review - Plastic Man

Plastic Man
by Kyle Baker
2004 Eisner Winner for Best New Series
2004, 2005, and 2006 Eisner Winner for Best Writer/Artist - Humor
2005 Eisner Winner for Best Title for a Younger Audience

Plastic Man is one of those instances where my preference for getting comics as trade paper backs has worked against me. I don't buy a lot of comics in the monthly magazine form since the collected editions are generally a better match for me. Every so often though I find a series where I'd like to get more of and there just isn't any. Even though there were twenty issues of Plastic Man released and the entire run earned Baker awards only two collections have ever been published. It's been almost four years since the last one so it is very unlikely that they'll ever be bound together. So I have to consider Plastic Man based on those first twelve issues. Those two books have left me wanting to read the rest of it.

The first book, On the Lam, is easy enough to describe. Plastic Man's secret identity, who happens to be a reformed mobster, is framed for a murder. When his secret identity is uncovered he has to look for the real killer while running from his partner in the FBI, his sidekick, and the law.

That's about as straightforward superhero story you're going to find. If I stripped out the part about the FBI and the sidekick it could describe every single character published in the last fifty years. The difference here is that Plastic Man is a slapstick, loony series about a guy who changes into the craziest things possible (in fact the On the Lam book is bound in plastic with a cover that looks like Plastic Man disguised as the book). This is a cartoony book and the story exists only to give a structure to the gags.

The second volume, Rubber Bandits, is less universal in structure than the first as it opens with a story about comic book continuity and the trend of making characters unpleasant under the guise of being "realistic". Fortunately it immediately links this back to a time traveling Abraham Lincoln. Most of the rest of the book is more friendly to new readers with shorter stories.

There's a fine line in humor between "zany" and "random". When something is suppose to be funny just because it's out of place I tend to get bored because when you could have anything then nothing is effective. Plastic Man does not stray over that line even though Baker could have easily filled the pages with pop culture references and Plastic Man mugging for the reader. Instead Baker establishes his insane situation and drops his insane characters into it which prevents the plotting from degrading to a series of panel gags about what Plastic Man turns into next. He did not forget the jokes as he wrote these stories.

The artwork is for Plastic Man is absolutely stunning. It is very firmly on the cartoony side of the realism scale which lets Baker take advantage of his hero's malleable form. Plastic Man tends to have huge reactions that tie him in knots (sometimes literally). The animation influence is given a real showcase at the end of Rubber Bandits where the last story is a Tom and Jerry homage.

The animation metaphor extends to the lack of panel borders throughout the series. He also often uses sequences where it was paced in like animation where Baker has just drawn the key frames over the course of the page. Even the backgrounds seem to be on a separate floating layer from the foregrounds due to the coloring and style differences. This book looks like a cartoon and it's an effect that is pulled off well.

After reading Baker's Plastic Man there's no one alive who I'd want to see handling the character ever again. There's little else I can add to that since it is a series where the humor will work for you or it won't. It's charmingly goofy and made me smile.

Review - Tender Morsels

Tender Morsels
by Margo Lanagan
Tied for 2009 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

There were several times while reading Tender Morsels that I had to stop and double check the dust jacket and the publisher's page. I had to make sure I wasn't mistaken when I saw that the jacket identified it "a junior library guild selection" and it was published by Random House Children's Books. I kept checking because I could not conceive how Tender Morsels could have been published as a YA book; it's far more mature in every sense of the word than a vast majority of novels I have read targeted for adults. It's also an exceptional book partially for that reason.

A young girl who has been raped retreats into a dream world made physical in order to raise her daughters. They have an idyllic existence there until the bubble of their reality is punctured by a a man seeking wealth. After that things leak into their world from outside and they have to start dealing with the less than perfect nature of the real world.

The first thing that I have to mention, and the thing that kept driving me to check that it was in fact a YA book, is that this book features a lot of sex. None of it is explicit but there's around a dozen rapes in the first fifty pages. Lanagan may not go into detail on the physical acts she does not shy away from the emotions. If that wasn't enough the book takes some fairly deep steps into bestiality as the blossoming girls become interested in animal companions. Lanagan is more cautious on side stepping this (laughably so at one point not involving any female characters that read more as an editor forcing a statement on the issue given the context of the rest of the scene) but the concept is just about impossible to avoid.

Sex is a huge theme of Tender Morsels and as you may guess it tends to be neither romantic or erotic. Men are bestial, women are naive, and the two often conflict violently. It makes the few times in the novel where there is a healthy relationship between a man and a woman the odd one out. (Strangely enough there's little in the way of homosexuality but then given the themes tied to sex in the novel it might be better off that way.)

It takes more than just people having (or avoiding) a lot of sex to make a book "mature". Tender Morsels is also about the raising of children and what effect a sheltering environment can have. It's about the changes that a person undergoes throughout their life and the need for companionship. Modern attitudes are crushed hard in this psuedo-medieval land and there is no comforting moral to make up for that. There's a lot of themes to the book that I think would only strongly connect with an adult making this the most adult YA book I've ever read.

I was extremely impressed at the way Lanagan has the story unfold. The book abruptly shifts focus multiple times and every time I thought I had worked out where things were heading Lanagan derailed my preconceptions and threw it into a completely different direction. And every time she did this she made me more interested in what was going to happen next.

The book is not completely without faults. The characters are a bit shallow. While I'm certain that is intentional given the themes of the book I don't like being able to wrap up someone in a few words. There is exactly one positive depiction of a man in the entire book; anyone else who is an adult with a Y chromosome is a monster.

The recent rise of YA books as a publishing phenomenon has been a problem for me with some of the recent Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award Winners. Books intended for a target audience of twelve year olds typically are disconnected from me as an adult reader no matter how well done they are (see The Graveyard Book for an example of that). That is not the case with Tender Morsels. This is a rich novel that I'd recommend to anyone. It's a light-hearted dark-fantasy; a Grimm fairy tale in a modern fantasy style. It is a gripping book and I'm glad I read it.

Review - Criminal

Criminal
Written by Ed Brubaker; Art by Sean Phillips
2007 Eisner Winner for Best New Series
2007, 2008 Eisner Winner for Best Writer

Noir is the new black. It seems like everyone is going for noir these days (at least the ones who aren't going for zombies). You put some detectives in a gritty urban setting with a depressing narrative and you've got it made. Comics in particular have started producing a lot of noir in the past few years and the best of these that I've found is Criminal.

There have been three complete story arcs for Criminal so far and all of them are contained in Criminal: The Deluxe Edition. The first one is titled "Coward" and is about a thief who survives by planning every detail and following a strict set of rules. Those rules make other people think of him as a coward, especially since he fled the scene of the last big job while the rest of the crew were gunned down. He is driven to break his own rules as part of a new job that's bigger than anything before and it has some troubling consequences.

The second story is "Lawless" where a man trained as the army's perfect killer goes AWOL to seek his own brother's murderer. His brother was a criminal and the signs point to the murderer being part of his own crew. So this man infiltrates the gang by cutting a bloody swath through the underground.

Finally there is "The Dead and the Dying" which is three interlocking stories of a former boxer, a soldier just returned from Viet Nam, and a woman who loved the wrong man. Their lives collide as the woman seeks revenge on her former lover, the soldier attempts to find a place for his violent nature, and the boxer attempts to protect the woman he accidentally hurt.

These could have been simple stories about bad people doing bad things but Brubaker creates some compelling personalities to center the story on. These stories are from the school of writing where you throw together a bunch of strong-willed people together, put them at cross-purposes, and see what happens. These stories aren't about the big heist, they're about what happens after the heist.

One aspect of that is that these are bad people doing bad things and Brubaker does present them as heroes. It is appropriate to a noir story that the characters given heroic development but it can be a bit off putting when the guy you're supposed to be cheering is murdering people in cold blood.

Sean Phillips impressed me with his ability to carry these stories. These days it's more popular with artists to create large designs but he has created pages that are dense. He's fitting in seven or eight panels per page and while he stays locked on a three tier format he does not limit himself to variations on the nine panel grid. He enjoys the tight, inset reaction shot and uses it well. This wouldn't have worked if Phillips wasn't able to do a terrific job with the characters' faces.

I don't usually single out the colorists like this but Val Staples does a standout job with Criminal. It would have been easy to do a traditional coloring job with this book and it would have been fine like that. Staples on the other hand rarely uses more than two hues in any given panel which gives the book a washed out feeling that's appropriate to its style.

Even though I wouldn't call Criminal a perfect book I'm unable to come up with any specific flaws. Everything is good, I'm just left with a nagging feeling that it could have been better. However if you like noir at all then I can think of no reason to not read this book. The Deluxe Edition is well worth it too as a terrific looking hardcover that collects everything current and a whole lot of extra material. On the other hand if you don't care for noir then I doubt that Criminal is going to change your mind.

Nerding Out on the Long Weekend - My Waiting Pile

I finished my Christmas shopping last month so with five full days off from work I've begun a nerd binge the likes of which are unheard of since... well, any time nerds have free time really. A very busy work schedule for the past two months drained the majority of my spare time while simultaneously the way I budget my entertainment purchases has created a massive to read/watch/play backlog.

My theory has generally been set aside a certain amount of money each paycheck for it and seize upon bargains when you get them. The number of bargains lately between retailers trying to undercut each other for the holiday season and a local video game store going out of business has contributed to my pile. The stack of games waiting for me to dedicate more than an hour or so to them it especially bad. Someday I'll learn to walk away when someone dangles baubles in front of me but that'll be a while.

Prose books make up the smallest stack at the moment since I'm working to collect the Eisner winning comics and I have even less time for reading than I usually do. Tender Morsels is sitting on my desk at work so I won't be finishing it this weekend (quick preview of my review based on the first two hundred pages: incredibly bleak opening but surprisingly intriguing once it starts moving). I've got Tacitus's Histories and Seutonious's The Twelve Caesars that are scratching my ancient history itch at the moment.

(On that subject I had been looking forward to seeing John Woo's Red Cliffs on the big screen this weekend since, as I've mentioned here before, I'm enjoy that period of Chinese history. Then I learned that two hours had been cut out of the film for it's American release. No thanks guys, I'll just watch that episode of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms again for that itch and wait for the uncut DVD release.)

Comics are either relatively light or soul crushingly heavy depending on how you look at it. If I just consider the simple things then there's the Criminal Omnibus, the Rocketeer Complete Collection, Neil Gaiman's Signal to Noise, and Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde. I could read any of those in an hour or so but then there are the things that get eternally pushed back like Essential and Showcase volumes. There's five of those in a half read state and another half dozen that I haven't even cracked yet. Compile that with some of the DVD collections where I've only read a a handful of key runs and issues from each series and that winds up with enough unread comics to stock my own theoretical store.

The games, as I mentioned, are easily the worst offenders. New Super Mario Wii has barely been touched as I wait for co-op parters to find some time. An unopened copy of the new Prince of Persia is awaiting a new motherboard before I can even play it. When that motherboard does get here and I somehow find time to install it then it'll have to duel with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, Mercenaries 2, and Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer for time on my gaming system. My lap top on the other hand can play King of Dragon Pass just fine (an obscure storytelling strategy game based on the Runequest RPG that I had no idea could still be acquired until a few weeks ago). I like to play Nintendo DS games on the movie but something like Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney requires more focus than I have time for. I have a small stack of tactical games for the DS including one of the Fire Emblem games and Knights in the Nightmare. And that takes me to the Shin Megami Tensei games where I wound up buying the entire series after playing the Persona games mainly because I was scared that all of the copies would vanish again and the prices would go back up to over a hundred dollars for each of them (I've got the strategy game Devil Summoner on the DS in progress, completed Nocturne a while ago, and recently finished Digital Devil Saga 1 which leaves me with three more 60 hour games in that series to play).

Review - The Shadow Year

The Shadow Year
by Jeffry Ford
Tied for 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel

When I read Boy's Life I found that despite the fact that the concepts were overused the quality of writing made up for it. The Shadow Year is almost identical to Boy's Life except this time it lacks the interesting characterization and sense of wonder that elevated the previous World Fantasy Award winner above it's source.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. There was a small town in America where a boy on the verge of adolescence is experiencing a strange year. His family is going through hard times and he's observing the quirky neighbors around him. There's a supernaturally effective killer lurking somewhere in the town and he has knowledge of it that he is unable to share. So he along with some other children work quietly to unravel the mysteries of their town.

Well that was awfully generic so let me narrow this down more. There's a character with mental problems who is prone to strange pronouncements which appear nonsensical at first but prove to be accurate. A school yard bully whose menace is ignored by the faculty at the school is a reoccurring threat. There's a sadistic gym teacher who torments weaker children with dodgeball. And the protagonist has aspirations of being a writer.

I guess that hasn't really narrowed it down at all and that does sum up The Shadow Year well. There's no distinguishing marks, nothing that stands out. It's a bland, flavorless mush of a novel that succeeds only in being completely inoffensive. I finished reading it only a few days ago and I can barely remember it. If you were to ask me a year from now to describe the novel I'm reasonably sure I couldn't.

Part of that is the protagonist isn't interesting. He floats through the book never taking action on his own. Typically it is someone else who pulls him into the next zany scheme that will become a childhood anecdote and the rest of the time he's just running in fear from a not particularly threatening or ominous man. That's not the kind of behavior that results in a protagonist you can care about.

That's a major failing since The Shadow Year is, as I implied, just some childhood anecdotes strung together and they're not very interesting ones. It's almost all completely mundane average things. The experiences may be universal but if they're not told in an engrossing way then I could get the same experience sitting around the dinner table with family at Thanksgiving.

While I prefer to avoid spoilers I also have to add that Ford created one of the most abrupt and pointless denounments I've encountered outside of Neil Stephenson. What little life the plot has is undercut by a conclusion that just falls flat.

The Shadow Year has a plot that's identical to dozens of other books and while Ford doesn't manage to make an awful book he goes one worse and makes a boring one. It's competently done but when you're telling the same story as a dozen other people then competent doesn't cut it.

The Ring of the Nibelung

The Ring of the Nibelung
by P. Craig Russell
2001 Eisner Winner for Best Limited Series

I love going to the opera. Seeing the performance on stage is a much more engaging experience than simply listening to the music alone. About a year before I began this blog I moved from a major city to a remote location and the thing I miss the most about the city is going to the opera. There is something that the locals call an opera company in the area: they put on two performances a year and sing in English. I'm far from a purist (I prefer to have the subtitles projected above the stage, for example) but changing the lyrics is over the line for me. So when I say that Russell's adaptation of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung is exactly like a great performance in comic book form that is the highest compliment that I can give the book.

Even with all of my affection for opera I have not had a chance to watch Wagner's Ring cycle though I know the story from other references. For those completely unfamiliar with then Der Ring des Nibelungen (to use the German name) they are a set of four operas which make up a mythic cycle. Each opera can stand on its own but together they form a saga. It's a story of gods, heroes, monsters, love, and betrayal.

To keep the synopsis simple, an evil dwarf creates a ring whose wearer can control the world. The ring is a corruptive force in the hands of anyone other than its master. Wotan as the king of gods finds himself repeatedly trapped between his promises and desires. Everyone attempts to manipulate heroes in order to obtain the ring.

Something needs to be made clear right from the start with Russell's adaptation: it is an adaptation of the opera and not the story. The difference between the two is that an opera is formatted for a stage performance while a story can be free to drift about where ever it is necessary. An opera has to feature long sections of people singing the plot, the story can use narration. The pacing is radically different between the two. So Russell's The Ring of the Nibelung carries over that structure and the results may put off someone expecting something traditional it captures the flavor of a stage performance wonderfully.

Each issue of the comic corresponds to an act of the opera. That isolates the action to effectively one set for that issue and the narrative has to flow smoothly around that location. The dialog is structured so that the solos in the opera connect to the monologues in the comic. Russell also maintains a lyrical form for much of the dialog which helps keep the feeling of an opera in his work.

Similar to the narrative structure Russell's art also reflects his focus on making The Ring of the Nibelung as close to a stage performance as possible. The focus for most of the scenes is how the characters act together; facial expressions and posing them so that they help convey the story. When it comes time to switch to action things become very theatrical and simple. Russell's dragon, for example, could be a man in a costume.

If you do read The Ring of the Nibelung then I recommend treating it as a companion piece to Wagner's music. The pacing of the comic pages won't allow you to listen to a complete act while following along with the comic (especially during the forth opera Götterdämmerung). Still you'll find the connection between the music and how Russell builds the comic if you do this and that is something worth seeing.

Taken in isolation Russell's The Ring of the Nibelung is a clumsy, unwieldy thing. However with the context of the original opera then it is an astounding work. In terms of visually presenting the story it is the next best thing to seeing the opera performed and for that reason I recommend it. This is not the only operatic adaptation that Russell has created and I plan on getting the rest of them.

Review - Maus

Maus II
by Art Spiegelman
1992 Eisner Winner for Best Graphic Album: Reprint

Here's the other event from recent history that has been over used for cheap, emotionally manipulative tripe. And just like the previous review Maus is one of those times where the story is told well. Unlike Stuck Rubber Baby though Maus is first and foremost the story of that history even with

While technically the Eisner was awarded to just the second of the two volumes I find it impossible to separate the two since they are one story. That story is the life of Spiegelman's father starting from his life a young Jewish man in Poland. He is in the army when Germany invades and spends years dealing with the occupation of Poland before finally winding up in Auschwitz. Forty years later he's become an overbearing, bitter old man and Spiegelman talks with him and writes Maus in order to come to grips with him.

I think Maus suffers from something that is not it's fault: it is the story of the Holocaust and that story has been repeated so many times that it has lost its impact. If you've read any survivor's account then you know the emotional beats that Maus is going to hit and that drains the power out of the narrative. On the other hand there are few times where the account has been as well done as it is here and I cannot think of another comic that approaches the subject on this level.

Maus also has the complication of not being particularly subtle. Right from the start there's the central image of the Jewish people as mice and Nazis as cats. Speigelman does this a lot; when the metaphors aren't being hammered home his writing tends to bluntly state the obvious. This is one of those rare cases where I think it works. Since this is a book about one of the greatest evils in history there isn't much room for dealing with subtleties.

That is not to say that the technique did not backfire as well. I found that the scope and horror of the Holocaust combined with Speigelman's simplistic storytelling methods made the story of his father after the war much less interesting. A bitter old man being unpleasant to everyone around him inherently doesn't carry the same weight and spelling out in meticulous detail the characters' feelings for the readers drags the narrative down in those sections.

Spiegelman's art uses some thick, scratchy lines that help convey the raw emotion. His choice of character designs for Jewish faces on the other hand tends to not be very expressive unless he is going for an extreme reaction. More often it's page after page of blank expressions due to the simple points for eyes and lack of mouths on the figures. He does capture some some stark scenes but they tend to be stand alone images.

Maus is often hailed as one of the great graphic novels and I think it's reputation is overblown a bit by people's visceral reaction to a comic about the Holocaust. Even so it is still a very good book about that period and if you have even the slightest interest in it then I'd recommend it. It's not brilliant and it won't add much if you're already familiar with the mountain of other Holocaust stories out there but it is very well done.