The Secret Service #5

Written by Mark Millar with Matthew Vaughn
Art by Dave Gibbons

I've found Millar's Secret Service to be a much more thoughtful and balanced comic than I'm used to reading from him these days.  Often in his Millarworld titles, he aims for a level of over-the-topness that puts him in league with contemporary Frank Miller or indie Garth Ennis, and that kind of turns me off.  I've stopped reading Kick-Ass or its spin-offs, and had no plans of picking up Nemesis 2 whenever it came out.

This book, though, is great.  Miller took a long time establishing the world in which young Gary, a London street thug, lives in, and as Gary is brought into a top-secret spy organization, we saw Gary's growth as a character.  With this issue, Gary reaches his final graduation, not so far as his training is concerned, but in his quest to become his own, better, man.  He finally confronts his step-father and his friends, and he also finally looks after his mother, who has been trapped in an abusive relationship for some time.

With all the character stuff taken care of, Millar returns to the plotline about the big bad rich guy who has been kidnapping directors, actors, and animators since the first issue of this series.  We learn what this guy's big plan is, and Gary and his Uncle Jack split up to handle things.

The end of this book did surprise me, as I thought that Millar was giving in to his more romantic urges, looking to write a book with a nice happy ending.  Dave Gibbons is always wonderful, and he does not disappoint with the art in this issue.  I believe that there is only one issue left in this series, and I expect it shall be quite good.

The Originals

by Dave Gibbons

I only saw Quadrophenia once, years ago, and so can't remember to what degree Dave Gibbons's graphic novel The Originals matches the story note for note, but the homage does run pretty deep.

Lel and Bok, two British teens, dream of becoming Originals. They already dress the part, with jackets that go down to their ankles, but they haven't been able to get together enough money for hovers, the Originals version of the scooters the Mods rode.  After meeting some Originals, and helping them in a fight with some Dirt, the boys get invited in to the gang.

The story moves along pretty predictable lines.  The presence of a girl strains the boys' friendship, and conflicts with the Dirt escalate after Warren, a wannabe, takes things too far one day.

Still, as much as I knew how this would end before I'd read five pages, I enjoyed the way that Gibbons drew and told the story.  The gleaming and very complicated hovers were the only real futuristic element to this book - everything else looked much as it would have back in the late 60s and early 70s, aside from the clothing, where Gibbons really let himself go nuts.

Gibbons has always been a wonderful character artist, and that continues to be the case here.  This is an entertaining book.

The Secret Service #3

Written by Mark Millar with Matthew Vaughn
Art by Dave Gibbons and Andy Lanning

I'm used to Mark Millar books being filled to the brim with excesses - ridiculous amounts of violence, brutality, and a sort of one-ups-man-ship to surpass the level of nastiness he reached in the previous issue.  It's nice to see that Millar can still pull off a story that is compelling, but also has a touch of relevance to it.

Gary, nephew to Britain's greatest secret agent, is continuing his training in this issue.  Gary is a rough council estates kind of bloke, but his uncle saw his potential, and pulled some strings to get him into the training program.  Now, Gary is showing true promise, outclassing all of his peers in things like observation and grand theft auto (which is an example of Millaresque excesses done right).

The problem is that Gary doesn't exactly fit well with the social class that fills spy school.  He mistakes Barack Obama for Osama bin Laden, and lacks the refinement necessary to become the next James Bond.  The club scene, where the students are sent to infiltrate and score with women for points, is really pretty funny.

I wonder to what extent Dave Gibbons is reigning in Millar's sensibilities.  I can't imagine Gibbons drawing the splatter-porn that Kick-Ass 2 became, for example.  Gibbons's art is fantastic, and the sub-plot about terrorists continuing to kidnap actors, writers, and now environmental scientists from around the globe is interesting.  This is easily my favourite Millar book since he left The Authority.

The Secret Service #2

Written by Mark Millar
Art by Dave Gibbons

Mark Millar's newest Millarworld title is holding up surprisingly well.  In this second issue, super spy Jack London has decided to recruit his screw-up of a nephew Gary into the British Secret Service.  The moments between these two family members are handled remarkably well, as Millar explores the class conflict that has always existed in English society, and how it rears its head whenever someone tries to better themselves.

This all happens against the backdrop of a growing, if vague, threat.  Someone is still kidnapping science fiction movie and TV stars (last issue had a cameo by Mark Hamil), and in this issue, they use some kind of mind control device on a mass wedding, turning it into a massacre.

There are few Millar-ian flourishes in this book, except for the graphic nature of the wedding scene, and the description of the sexual training that young Gary will experience in spy school.  I think that perhaps working with Dave Gibbons is causing Millar to rein it in a little, as he crafts a story that fits Gibbons's strengths perfectly.

The Secret Service #1

Written by Mark Millar
Art by Dave Gibbons

I wasn't too sure what to expect when starting The Secret Service.  Mark Millar can't always be trusted as a writer - he often panders to the lowest element in comics fans, providing stories that are ultra-violent, puerile, or just kind of gross, but he can also bring out some thoughtful and original comics.

This issue opens with a group of terrorists holding Star Wars star Mark Hamill prisoner in a chalet in Switzerland.  We don't really know why they have him, but there are a lot of them, and they are well-armed.  Hamill is quickly rescued by a British Secret Service agent, whose lengthy escape sequence echoes the beginning of many a James Bond movie, although it ends in a very funny moment.

After that, the story shifts to a Council Estate in South London, where we meet a typical trashy British family.  The mother is getting grief from her new husband for flirting with his brother, and he then goes and gets his youngest child to roll a joint for him.  The woman's oldest son causes a bit of a scene before storming out and going for a joyride with his friends, which lands him in jail later.

The woman calls on her brother, who she believes is working in the Fraud Squad, but whom we learn is a Secret Service Agent, working this string of science fiction celebrity kidnappings (it's not just Hamill).  He takes some time off from his investigation to have a row with his sister at the police station, before deciding that perhaps he needs a larger role in his wayward nephew's life.

Millar fills this book with some strong character work, and resists the urge to portray the family as caricatures, providing the woman with some dignity, while still acknowledging the poverty of her situation.  It's clear that he's going to take the nephew under his wing, but how that is going to relate to the kidnappings remains to be seen.

Dave Gibbons's art makes this book.  He's never been a flashy artist, and his pencils look a little dated, but in a very classic way.  Having an artist of his calibre on this comic brings it much more respectability, and is good counter-programming to DC's upcoming Before Watchmen series.  It's hard to imagine this comic working with the types of artists that Millar usually collaborates with, like Leinil Francis Yu or Steve McNiven.  It just wouldn't work so well.

The Unexpected #1

Written by Dave Gibbons, G. Willow Wilson, Alex Grecian, Josh Dysart, Jeffrey Rotter, Mat Johnson, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Brian Wood, and Selwyn Seyfu Hinds
Art by Dave Gibbons, Robbi Rodgriguez, Jill Thompson, Farel Dalrymple, Lelio Bonaccorso, David Lapham, Rahsan Ekedal, Emily Carroll, and Denys Cowan

I really like that Vertigo has started putting out these random, slightly thematically-linked anthology books every few months, even if they are pretty expensive.  Like the last one, Strange Adventures, The Unexpected is a nice mix of stories by established Vertigo stars, and some up-and-comers.  This collection has a supernatural theme, but it's not one that is used in every story.

There is a lot to like in this book, but my favourite story is the one by Joshua Dysart and Farel Dalrymple, which tells the story of a Mexican laborer in 1950s or 60s Texas, who is accused of murdering the grandchild of his employer, although he knows the boy was killed by an ancient Aztec monster.  As with his Unknown Soldier series, Dysart makes good use of a particular culture's fears and legends, and Dalrymple's art is perfect.

I also quite enjoyed Alex Grecian (from Proof fame) and Jill Thompson's story about a female zombie who has retained enough of her faculties to use her feminine wiles as a way of attracting prey.  Dave Gibbons tells a great story of an escape artist who cheats on his wife, and Mat Johnson and David Lapham give us a deliciously twisted tale of a brother and sister trying to survive in post-apocalyptic America.

Joshua Hale Fialkov reunites with his Echoes collaborator Rahsan Ekedal for a story about a man who is recently deceased and finds himself haunting his wife.  Ekedal makes good use of layout in this story, and uses a pixelated approach to imply ghostliness.

Brian Wood and newcomer (to me) artist Emily Carrol contribute a nice short story about a woman who is raised in a post-governmental United States.  It's a similar vision to the one we've seen in Wood's DMZ, but this time he takes a nicer, gentler approach to the disintegration of a country.  It's pretty interesting, even if it ends a little abruptly.

I wanted to like G. Willow Wilson's story about dogs taking over a town, but Robbi Rodriguez's dogs were just a little too creepy and odd-looking for me.  To be fair, I think that dogs are among the hardest things to draw (check out how Dan Jurgens draws them if you need a laugh), which is why I have so much respect for Beasts of Burden.  The story 'A Most Delicate Monster' by Jeffrey Rotter and Lelio Bonaccorso (neither of whom I'm familiar with) was just a little too obvious to be successful.

Finally, Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and Denys Cowan provide a prelude to the upcoming Voodoo Child series, which really didn't work for me.  I'm not sure what it is, but I feel like they were trying to cram too much into too few pages, with the effect that I wasn't drawn into the story at all.  I'll probably give the new series a try still, because I like reading about New Orleans.

Dark Horse Presents #3

Written by Dave Gibbons, Robert Love, David Walker, Carla Speed McNeil, Paul Chadwick, Howard Chaykin, Jim Steranko, Patrick Alexander, Richard Corben, Chuck Brown, David Chelsea, Neal Adams, and Michael T. Gilbert
Art by Dave Gibbons, Robert Love, Carla Speed McNeil, Paul Chadwick, Howard Chaykin, Jim Steranko, Patrick Alexander, Richard Corben, Sanford Greene, David Chelsea, Neal Adams, and Michael T. Gilbert

There are a lot of comics in this book.  This issue of DHP, while keeping it's $7.99 price point, increased its page count to 104 pages, which is appreciated, as that is a nice chunk of comics to digest.  I do wish I liked all of them though...

Dave Gibbons 'Treatment' is not bad.  Really, it's a lot like Archaia's French reprint comic Cyclops, starring a group of SWAT-like police officers who are broadcast live on a mix between a football game and a reality show.  It may be an interesting idea, but it's going to need more developing than we get in this first installment (I assume there will be more).

As always, the two stand outs in this book are Paul Chadwick's Concrete, and Carla Speed McNeil's Finder.  In Concrete, Chadwick addresses the issue of unjustified police tasering.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but the best Concrete comics are the ones that have the stone giant explore a social issue that doesn't often get much play, especially in comics.  Chadwick's environmental stance had a huge influence on me when I was younger, and it's nice to see that he's still using his work as an engine for some kind of social change.  I think this may meander a little too close to being preachy, but I admire Concrete's usual stance that there can be a better way of doing things than what is current practice.

Finder is incredible.  Having read Voice, the most recent graphic novel, I now get a lot more of the context of this DHP strip, and I'm loving it.  In this chapter, Jaeger helps an old lady who has missed her train stop by taking her through a short-cut which crosses the incredible city that McNeil has built.  The story ends on a pretty creepy note that I thought was very effective.

I'm enjoying Love and Walker's Number 13.  There is more happening in this chapter that is getting me interested in this post-apocalyptic story, and I'm curious to read what's going to happen next.  Also, I've been enjoying Richard Corben's pieces, although I found this month's to be a little disjointed.

Beyond that, the book becomes kind of mediocre.  I know this may be sacrilegious to many comics fans, but I didn't feel Steranko's Red Tide excerpt much at all.  For all his bombast about his own ingenuity, he's written a fairly standard and cliche-ridden private detective prose story, which is only marginally assisted by his art.  I don't think I'll be looking for the full book when it comes out.

Howard Chaykin's Marked Man is growing on me a little, but I still don't like his art.  Likewise, Neal Adams's Blood continues to be incomprehensible and way over-written, but pretty.  I find Brown and Greene's Rotten Apple, which debuted last issue, to be pretty incomprehensible too.  Snow Angel, which I found refreshing earlier, doesn't even appear to have a point this month.  It's pretty rambling.  And, after having been burned last time, I didn't even bother to read Michael T. Gilbert's Mr. Monster.

Orion: The Gates of Apokolips

by Walter Simonson, with Jon Bogdanove, Dave Gibbons, Klaus Janson, Frank Miller, and Bill Reinhold

I've never been as big a fan of Jack Kirby's Fourth World characters as most DC comics readers appear to be, but I have heard a lot of good things about Walter Simonson's run on Orion, and have been a fan of his work since his tenure on The Mighty Thor.  When I saw this trade at a very low price a little while back, I decided it was time to give this series a try.

I found I had mixed emotions about this comic.  Simonson's art is as great as it's ever been, and he excels at portraying gigantic super-being conflicts, like the massive fight between Orion and Darkseid that takes up the entire fifth issue collected here, but I found that a lot of the standard silliness that has always marred The Fourth World for me brought the book down.  The inclusion of the Newsboy Legion served no purpose other than to pad out the story, and generally irritate me.

Otherwise, this is pretty standard stuff.  Orion is angry that he might not actually be the son of Darkseid, and decides to defend his mother Tigra's honour by tracking him down and challenging him.  Of course, Darkseid is back on Earth looking for the Anti-Life Equation.  There's lots of fighting, which leads to the aforementioned large confrontation at the end.  I'm not sure how long this series lasted beyond these original five issues, but I would hope that there was a little more substance to them.

I did really enjoy the 'Tales of the New Gods' back-ups, which featured some terrific artists like Miller and Gibbons, although I think that the best one was the Granny Goodness origin story by Simonson and Janson.

DMZ #50

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Rebekah Isaacs, Jim Lee, Fábio Moon, Ryan Kelly, Lee Bermejo, Riccardo Burchielli, Phillip Bond, John Paul Leon, Eduardo Risso, and Dave Gibbons

The last few years have been rough on Vertigo, sales wise, and so when one of their titles reaches the 50th issue milestone, it is cause for some celebration; especially when that book is frequently one of their most original and best.

DMZ has been telling, over the last four years, the story of New York City during the 2nd American civil war. New York is disputed territory between the American Army and the Free States Army. Matty Roth, a young journalist, was accidentally abandoned in the city, and the series has been chronicling his activities and changing personality throughout that time.

This anniversary issue is the perfect jumping on point for new readers, as it is designed as Matty's "Notes From the Underground", small stories, vignettes, and profile of the different people that have had an impact on Matty's life. Wood uses this issue to showcase some of the many different facets of life in the DMZ that the series has become known for. There is a political story, wherein Matty meets the supreme commander of the Free States forces. There is also a story where he meets a man who has painstakingly protected some of the great works of fine art that were in Manhattan at the start of the war. We get a window into some of the relationships that keep the city functioning, such as when Zee helps recover an unexploded ordinance, and when Matty has dinner with Wilson. In short, this issue encapsulates all that is amazing about this series.

And I haven't even talked about the art yet. Wood collaborates here with a number of incredible artists, and they all manage to display the city in its gritty majesty. I would have liked to see a page by Wood himself, as it's been too long since the earlier issues, where he usually drew a single page.

The last arc of DMZ ended with a huge game changer, in terms of the political and environmental situation within the city. This issue feels like a last look back before Matty jumps into something completely new, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. If you are not reading DMZ, you're missing out.

Wednesday Comics

Wednesday Comics was a very interesting experiment, which I found I enjoyed more than I didn't. It was by no means perfect, but I have to give a lot of credit to Mark Chiarello and his creative teams for trying something different in today's market, which has been proven time and again to be afraid of change.

As the purpose of this blog is to write about what I like, I'm only going to comment on the strips that I enjoyed. Overt criticism is evident only in the absence of discourse. So, what I liked, generally in descending order:

Hawkman by Kyle Baker
This is some of the nicest art Baker has ever done, and the story is absolutely ridiculous, in a good way. Somehow, we move from Hawkman fighting alien airplane hijackers to a wingless Hawkman battling a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and being rescued by Aquaman. Only someone like Baker (and perhaps Frank Miller) could pull off such a silly story, and still manage to make it look so good.

Strange Adventures by Paul Pope
This was also absolutely gorgeous. Pope changed Adam Strange and Rann from a nice clean science fiction tale to something more resembling Warlord. It was all barbarian girls, stone ape creatures, and Dr. Seuss-inspired horses. Fantastic stuff. This would make an amazing monthly.

Kamandi by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook
In terms of traditional comic illustration, this was a more conventional tale (but I did really like the way in which Gibbons didn't use any speech bubbles, leaving the narration completely to text boxes, with punctuation - a rarity in comics). Sook's art was perfect.

Metamorpho by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred
This strip was the one that took the most risks with the format. Gaiman and Allred went wild with the larger pages, and showed the most variety. Early on, it was all giant splash pages, but they progressed to a huge Snakes and Ladders game, and then had Metamorpho and the Element Girl dancing across a gigantic periodic table, while their speech reflected the abbreviation of each element. Genius stuff. I don't think they can be blamed for the thin story - it wasn't about that.

Batman by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
There was nothing to the story - I just like Risso's art.

The Flash by Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher
This story started off very cool, with it's splitting of the strip into two: The Flash, and Iris West. I liked how they were riffing on the old romance comics. Thing is, it didn't last, and by the end, I found I was kind of just looking at the pictures.

The other stories were okay (I never got into the Wonder Woman one even once), but the ones above were what made this project memorable for me. I've seen lots of commentary on-line about how a second trip to the well could be improved, and I hope that some changes are made. Personally, I'd like to see some rotating strips, so that each issue holds the promise of something new. Also, I would love to see a more indie-oriented approach, which I guess is obvious from my favourite picks.

Hellblazer #250

Written by Dave Gibbons, Jamie Delano, Brian Azzarello, Peter Milligan, and China Mieville
Art by Sean Phillips, David Lloyd, Rafael Grampa, Eddie Campbell, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Stefano Landini

I'm not usually a fan of the Christmas anthology, but this is how such things should be done. In this extra-sized issue, we get five stories by different creative teams, almost all of which are centred around Christmas. (I think it strange that the book starts off with the New Years story, and then backs up a few days.)

It's a real treat to see artists like Phillips and Lloyd draw Constantine again, and an even bigger treat to see the series' original writer come back for an excellent tale of poker and trafficking. The story by Azzarello and Grampa is beautifully drawn, if a little tenuously linked to the Christmas theme. Milligan's story augers well for his run on the title, which begins next issue. The final story, about a Bhopal-like industrial accident was odd - I couldn't figure out where it was taking place.

This was a very enjoyable book. It didn't have many of the elements I expected - Constantine wasn't haunted (well, at least, not by ghosts of his Christmases past), and there was no mention of his having snorted the ground up bones of St. Nick a few issues back.

All $3.99 comics should have this level of quality.