Kirby Kategory: "Other!"

Here's an odd Jack Kirby-related couple of books that I found in discount bins:



These were apparently part of an attempt by Topps Comics to establish a "Kirbyverse" in 1993, featuring various oddball characters created by Kirby, and also planning to incorporate his Captain Victory and Silver Star characters, because why not? Unfortunately, judging by this sample anyway, they function about as well as most Kirby Koncepts do when other creators attempt to take them on. Bombast #1 is written by Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich, doing more of an impression of Stan Lee than Kirby, and also throwing in Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon as a guest star. It starts with an earthquake in Chicago, which causes a fissure to open in "Grant's Park", and when a "young black junkie" falls in, he discovers what turns out to be a 15,000 year old guy just as he awakes from stasis, then stumbles around the city getting into awkward situations and random scuffles with people because he doesn't speak the language and can't understand the cold, lifeless machinery that everyone uses. Savage Dragon (who is a Chicago cop, I guess?) shows up to fight him for a while, but he runs away because he doesn't want to fight, even though he has super powers and his name is Bombast. He eventually meets up with some other refugees from the past, and maybe they team up to fight bad guys or something in future issues. Whatever.

The art is by Dick Ayers, but it's inked by John Severin, making for an interesting match, all gritty realism on top of Kirby-ish poses. It doesn't really work, but it does yield occasional bits of oddness, like the way images of which figures are floating in blank space are suddenly interrupted by a detailed panel of a guy lying in the street:



I do like this panel, which seems kind of Golden Age with its small figures:



But surely somebody must have realized how awkward this panel looks, as if Savage Dragon suddenly grew ten stories and grabbed Bombast by the ankles:

The art doesn't really matter when the writing is this embarrassing though. I would blame Roy Thomas for the ridiculous, silly dialogue, but Friedrich is credited for the script, so I guess he's responsible for terrible attempts at slang like: "Yo' momma! Who's that? Sure ain't no extra from a Spike Lee movie!", "Jump back, Jim! ...This dude's fast...and strong...and definitely baaad!", "We ain't exactly bro's, Moe! So I'm splittin', see?!",

It's really just a silly trifle though, with the cover being the best thing about it.

More interesting, however, is Satan's Six #1, probably just because it features eight pages of actual Kirby art (which were probably produced years earlier, maybe even back in the 70s), inked by a variety of comics people, including Kirby mainstay Mike Royer, Terry Austin, Steve Ditko, and, on the cover, Todd McFarlane. It seems like it was supposed to be a humorous series, about a team of souls from throughout history resurrected from limbo and sent to do Satan's bidding on earth, but they keep screwing up and accidentally doing good. That might have been the intent, anyway, but the comic that gets built around those pages is just horrible, with disgustingly ugly 90s art by John Cleary that looks like exaggerated Todd McFarlane proportions and expressions wedded to the elongated figures that Adam Kubert might use when depicting a psychedelic freakout:



It's also very obnoxiously written by Tony Isabella, with a "sexy" angel narrator speaking directly to the reader and making comments about the comic itself, along with lots of supposedly humorous dialogue screamed at each other by leering characters in every panel. Ugly, awful comics.

But the Kirby pages themselves are worth a look, especially to see the differences between the inkers' interpretations. Terry Austin, Mike Royer, and Joe Sinnott provide a classic Kirby look, and Steve Ditko works in some of his billowing clouds:



But most fascinating is this page by Frank Miller, which somehow meets Kirby halfway between their two styles, softening the edges of the lines and deepening the shadows:



I also like this Sinnott-inked page, but mostly because the "Hellicopter" depicted makes me think of a Kirby version of the Bullet Bills from Super Mario Bros.:



It might have been interesting to see where Kirby was planning on going with these characters, but being the 90s, it's even more awful than usual to see somebody else try to pick up where he left off. But was it worth 50 cents? Sure. You can't have too much Kirby art cluttering up the longboxes.

Holy Terror: In which comic books do not reflect reality

Holy Terror
By Frank Miller
Published by Legendary Comics

The general consensus in the past few years seems to be that Frank Miller has lost his mind, and this book could be seen as evidence in support of that notion, if one is so inclined, what with its apparent view of Al-Qaeda as a highly-organized terrorist network capable of mounting assaults on American cities with missiles, fighter jets, and nuclear bombs constructed in bizarre underground catacombs. It's pretty hard to take it seriously though, even as the propaganda Miller has described it as; he might have opinions about the "war on terror", but if his concept of the terrorist threat is anything like he presents it here, he may well be as crazy as everyone says he is. As a reworked Batman comic in which stand-ins for the Dark Knight and Catwoman fight a convoluted Islamic terrorist plot  (bombs filled with nails and razor blades, followed by jets shooting down a stand-in for the Statue of Liberty, and finally a nuclear bomb that would seemingly render all the other attacks moot) that all takes place over one night, it's certainly an over-the-top spectacle, full of sex and violence, hard-boiled, Miller-style narration, and increasingly messy artwork that speaks of either a dedication to an aesthetic of purposeful ugliness or just plain laziness.

Whatever the case, it's a weird-ass comic, lurching from a protracted scene in which The Fixer (not-Batman) chases Natalie Stack (not-Catwoman) across some rooftops, with the pair fighting violently and then making out for several pages, to a series of explosions that are hard to make out, to scene after scene of the pair attacking and brutally killing the resourceful bad guys and torturing the survivors for information, and then rushing to a finale in which they have to stop a nuclear bomb from being detonated, all set to a badass tone, exactly the tough-guy, "not in my city" swagger one would expect from Miller, yet occasionally interrupted for mourning of the dead and half-hearted political commentary. As propaganda, who knows if it's effective, since anyone with a grasp on reality will roll their eyes at the idea that this is meant to be a reflection of real life. It could be seen as an attack on the entire religion of Islam, rather than the actions of some fringe extremists, but aside from the opening quote of "If you meet the infidel, kill the infidel" attributed to Mohammed, these terrorists are mostly from Central Casting, bearded Middle Eastern types with either anger or terror on their faces, generic bad guys of the type that have started to be pointed out as offensive as Americans expand their horizons to realize that not all Arabs/Muslims/brown-skinned people are the religious fanatics seen in entertainments like this.

The one exception to this standard terrorist portrayal is a young woman who, in an odd scene, hangs out on the roof of a club in the rain, flirts with a young man, takes what she says is her first drink of beer, then proceeds inside to the dance floor and blows herself up. The purpose of this scene is unclear; perhaps it's a statement about the way terrorists rob young people of their futures through their religious fanaticism? It's a bit of a departure from the propagandistic attitude of the rest of the book's terrorists, and it seems like a poorly-realized attempt to add some depth to the story's purposely dimensionless conflict. It does give Miller a chance to draw the girl's ass in a tight skirt though, and he uses some interestingly gestural art to depict her scene of rainy reflection, ink smeared into the shape of a figure that almost has to be unconsciously discerned:

That sort of thing is probably the main appeal of this book; Miller does some pretty amazingly expressive stuff here, including setting that opening chase in a rainstorm that is depicted on the page as slashing lines of ink that seem gouged into the pages, or using groups of clumped-together fingerprints to depict explosions. It's often quite gorgeous, with hard-hitting violence and nice, noirish shadows, but then it will be followed by oddly shaky figurework, pages full of faces that look like they were scrawled on napkins, and some really awkward images of the main characters swinging through the air and contorting themselves into odd positions:



Miller also takes pains to point out the human cost of the terrorist attacks, filling several pages with grids of people's faces, presumably meant to be portraits of the victims, and then gradually fading them out until reaching a striking two-page spread consisting entirely of blank panels. That works well enough as a way to emphasize the death toll of the imaginary bombing spree, but the odd thing is that it is repeated when our heroes tear through a group of terrorists, the bad guys' faces all joining their targets in little inset panels surrounding the action:

What could be the purpose of this? If this is a work of propaganda, why emphasize that this enemy is just as human as the "good guys"? It seems to counteract Miller's purpose of portraying them as faceless, evil monsters, but maybe he's trying to emphasize that they are defeatable, and in the end, just as dead as those they chose to terrorize. It weakens the popcorn aspect of the book, and raises the ugly possibility that Miller doesn't care how human the enemy is, he still considers them worthy of torture and murder. Like much of the rest of the book, it's a weird choice.

And what of the political caricature which pops up on occasion? Several pages consist of panels depicting political figures (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and plenty others) making speeches (or just making faces), interspersed with either scenes of terrorists preparing for battle or Arabic leaders similarly shouting into microphones. What is the purpose of these scenes? Is Miller trying to point out the uselessness of politics when facing a real (imaginary) threat? He might be trying to emphasize the heroism of the soldiers, the people on the ground doing the actual fighting, but that's kind of undermined by having them be pretty useless here, the evil plot only able to be countered by a lawless vigilante.



In the end, this book is kind of a mess, more of a statement on the state of Miller's mind than anything else, and said portrait is neither consistent nor flattering. Tellingly, the final page sees a police official (the Commissioner Gordon stand-in) sitting in his home, irrevocably changed by the events of the story, terrified for life by the violent actions of the enemy (and probably the good guys too, really). Is this Miller's thesis statement, his cry for help to a world that he no longer recognizes? If that's the real propaganda, that everyone should be forever afraid of a shapeless, faceless, all-powerful enemy that can never be defeated, or even comprehended, it's a pretty sad one, for anyone who chooses to believe it, but especially for its creator.

Hero Tomorrow: Why not today?

Elsewhere: I reviewed the Jonathan Hickman-written SHIELD #1 for Comics Bulletin.  Pretty interesting. Also, I tried (and failed) to understand the psychotic Lars Von Trier movie Antichrist at The Factual Opinion. Cinematic!

Here's something I never knew existed: Tim Callahan posted a Frank Miller-illustrated New Gods story from Walt Simonson's run on Orion.  I'm rarely all that interested in follow-ups to that milieu by people other than Jack Kirby, but this is pretty cool, combining Kirby's bombast with the clipped, hard-boiled Miller style.  Maybe I should give Simonson's stuff a try sometime...

Webcomics links: John Kerschbaum has a new comic on Act-I-Vate called Cartoon Boy.  Sure to be funny.

Gabrielle Bell has been posting her autobiographical Lucky strips online for a while, but I wanted to point out the story that she is currently serializing which started out with her talking about attempting to adapt Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto to comics but has led to a story from her mom about how her friendship with Solanas led to a bizarre pot-selling incident in Japan.  It's pretty crazy and fascinating; check it out.

Hero Tomorrow
2007, directed by Ted Sikora

Apparently, the superhero has penetrated the modern psyche to the point that even indie movies about supposedly lovable losers can be all about the costumed freaks who wander around beating people up.  This particular example is an especially acerbic take on the genre, the Watchmen (in terms of cynicism towards the genre, if not innovative structure, compelling characters, or impressive visuals) of low-budget superhero movies.  It seems pointedly self-aware, with its main character being a wannabe comics artist named David with a girlfriend who works in a comics shop.  In a non-shocking twist, he starts dressing up as his own character, Apama (a terribly-designed mystery man supposedly derived from Native American mythology, although his creator states that he doesn't really care about specific tribes or anything), and fighting the lamest of crimes (pumpkin-smashing, candy-stealing teens, those dastards!), when he's not just wandering around the woods striking poses or hiding in bushes and peeping at women in their underwear.  And he's not any more inspiring out of his costume either, sleepwalking his way through a landscaping job for a friend and crashing in that same friend's basement, then mooching their food and spending all his money on comics.  He's a total loser, and not one of the lovable variety; it's hard to see what his girlfriend sees in him, although a late-film twist might reveal something along those lines.  It seems like pretty misanthropic stuff, although it's hard to tell if this is the filmmakers' intent, since everything is filmed with a light enough touch that it might all be intended as comedy and goofy fun-times.

To make matters worse, that intent toward comedy doesn't often pay off; while the situations seem as though they should be amusing in their pathetic-ness, there aren't many laughs to be had.  It's mostly a wallow in ugliness, from the horrific gray-brown, mohawked costume, to David's ridiculous dreadlocks, to his fairly poor, unfinished artwork.  Luckily, there are flashes of brilliance here and there, as in a dinnertime conversation between David and his girlfriend's mom, who asks reasonable questions about the origins of his poorly-defined character and gets screamed at by her daughter for caring.  And the highlight is probably a lengthy dream sequence in which David imagines attending some sort of play in which a squid leaves the ocean, begins living life in the city, and promptly gets beat up by Apama for no reason.  It's weird and surreal, with some impressively expressive puppeteering on the squid and rhyming narration intoned by a Christopher Lee lookalike in a wig.  Definitely the highlight of the film.

A certain degree of latitude must be given to low-budget productions like this; on some level, it's impressive just that they got made and are at all watchable.  In that respect, this film certainly succeeds, and even manages to shine here and there, but compared to the kind of storytelling available in many other mediums, especially the comics from which it seems to take inspiration, it comes up short.  Interestingly, while several scenes take place in a comics shop, the only actual comics mentioned (apart from David trying to pitch Apama to a publisher as "the next Wolverine") are Frankenstein Mobster and Astro City, and an on-screen appearance by Hip Flask.  Not exactly the cream of the superhero crop there, or even titles or characters which most people will recognize.  If the filmmakers were aware of much beyond the most basic of superhero tropes, they don't really make that apparent in the film itself.  They might have come up with a somewhat interesting take on the dysfunction necessary to dress up in a costume and thwart evil, but they didn't really succeed at crafting an especially good film around the idea.  Maybe next time.
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If you're still interested in the film (and considering that it has received acclaim at various film festivals, you probably shouldn't take my word for it), the official site can be found here.