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The Sixteen Comics Series' That Made Unca Cheeks Smile and Smile Most During the Last Twelve Months (Give or Take) Pt. 2
Picking right up where we left off a moment ago, then
#10 The darker side of medieval literacy Paul Chadwick's GIFTS OF THE NIGHT
It was the class act of DC's "Vertigo" line, this last year...
... and it sold eight, maybe ten copies nationwide, I betcha.
Authored by the gentleman who gave us '80s "cult character" CONCRETE -- and, boyoboyoboy, do I ever miss the holy heck outta that unfailingly intelligent and idiosyncratic series, by the by -- GIFTS OF THE NIGHT explores the increasingly bloody and harrowing chain of events progressing from two (seemingly) innocent enough occurrences the colorful, allegory-laden bedtime tales told to a pre-adolescent prince by his royal tutor; and said tutor's smoldering, all-consuming desire for the establishment of a royal library.
Capitalizing upon his young charge's naiveté (to say nothing of the lad's all-too-ready willingness to interpret his tutor's fabulous nighttime imaginings as God-inspired visions) in order to con the king into believing that the whey-faced little prince can peer into the future, Reyes (the tutor) sets to re-fashioning the tiny kingdom into something more to his bookish, slightly self-centered (and blindly opportunistic) liking...
... and then -- just that simply; just like that -- EVERYthing
promptly goes spiraling down Ye Olde Royal Crapper.
GIFTS OF THE NIGHT is as delicate and lyrical a morality fable as your long-lived Unca Cheeks has ever seen, presented in traditional mainstream comics form.
You will almost certainly find all four issues presently gathering dust, in one of your local comics retailer's "back issue" boxes.
Go.
NOW.
Go. Go. Go. Now. Now. Now.
#9 [TIE] John Arcudi's JLA SUPERPOWER and Len Kaminski's JLA FOREIGN BODIES
Between these two terrific offerings, and Grant Morrison's never-less-
than-phenomenal monthly JLA series it's been a Justice League kinda year,
all the way 'round.
FOREIGN BODIES is the more straightforward and traditional of the two...
if (in fact) one elected to term as "traditional" any JLA tale wherein
a grousing and embittered Aquaman ends
up attempting to navigate from within Wonder
Woman's pneumatic body; the vengeance-propelled Batman
discovers what it's like to leap over tall buildings in a single bound;
and the perpetually boneheaded Kyle Rayner finally finds out what
the phrase "it's a black thing; you wouldn't understand" really
means, that is.
Kaminski's opus also includes the single finest, most blood-chilling interpretation of one-time Major DC Comics Baddie Kobra since those long-ago, misty-veiled days of the original Martin Pasko-penned series, of the same name; and a final, nigh-apocalyptic showdown between Superman and the villain in question -- the latter gadding about in the Batman's body, no less -- that should easily satisfy even the most finicky and demanding of super-hero fans.
So it's a good, solid read, then.
SUPERPOWERS is the more nakedly ambitious of the two books; setting its own storytelling sights a wee bit higher, by way of comparison...
... and (by and large) whacks its intended target, smack-dab dead center.
The story is as savage and crushing a smackdown of the whole sorry, misbegotten
1980s-style "grim'n'gritty is good" approach to mainstream super-hero
storytelling as it has ever been Unca Cheeks' much-jaded pleasure to chortle
his way through.
Tyro JLAer Mark Antaeus -- grotesquely mesomorphic; ludicrously over-armored; and toting enough "kewl" high-caliber weaponry to satisfy the doughy wet dreams of an entire football stadium full of Image Comics-weaned fanboys -- cold-bloodedly assassinates the despotic leader of a foreign nation; leading the rest of the League, in turn, no viable option but to bring the silly, self-aggrandizing goober down.
HARD.
The story also boasts as cheerily an anti-Kyle Rayner bias as any Silver Age GREEN LANTERN fan could conceivably hope for, incidentally; with the Batman casually reaming him A New One, in the course of one particularly heated debate, and Superman [!!] contemptuously asking the little cloth-head, at story's end "... what the hell are you doing here?"
God bless and keep John Arcudi.
#8 the extraordinary Alan Moore's LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
The first of our returning nominees from the previous year's list...
and every last little bit as bloody dynamite as it was last
time out, to boot, thankyouverymuch.
For those scant, luckless few of you who've yet to hop aboard the lead car on The Alan Moore Express, as of yet a mysterious "Mister M." gathers together some of the most fabulous freaks and adventurers of the late 1890s -- Captain Nemo; The Invisible Man; Dr. Henry Jekyll; and assorted others -- to investigate strange and awful goings-on in turn-of-
the-century London Town.
Said "goings-on" involve (among other things) a certain Oriental "devil doctor"; a weightless man-made substance known as "Cavorite"; a chillingly amoral former mathematics tutor; and (ultimately) the fourth planet in this solar system.
All of the Sax Rohmer, H. G. Wells and Arthur
Conan Doyle buffs out there in the audience just fell out of their
seats, howling.
Calling any series with a premise as bug-eyed and audacious as this
one's -- courtesy of (deservedly) legendary Alan freakin' MOORE,
mind, now -- "brilliant" seems almost beside the point, ultimately.
The only reason -- the ONLY reason -- this series doesn't rate among the top two or three on this year's list is Mister Moore's wholly regrettable tendency to allow five or six months to elapse between the release of successive issues; which (given a plotline as mind-bogglingly weighty and complex as the one this baby's hauling) very definitely falls in the category of Major Pains In the Hinder. (One wonders if the fact that GENTLEMEN was recently optioned for the big screen by none other than Steven Spielberg has anything to do with the pronounced "lag," in this regard.)
Still and all this series is proving to be one of the most breathtaking and remarkable achievements of Alan Moore's fabled career, story-wise; kicking WATCHMEN's butt up the street and back down again, and even (perhaps) dwarfing the man's groundbreaking and definitive SWAMP THING run.
Unca Cheeks isn't going to mince words on this'un, people.
You aren't picking up THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN...
... and you're a sap; plain and simple.
#7 Giving Englehart, Thomas and Buscema a Run For Their Money Kurt Busiek's and George Perez's THE AVENGERS
Is this series absolutely Stone Perfect, as presently explicated by Kurt [MARVELS] Busiek and George [Every Damned Comics Series Ever Printed] Perez...?
No.
Kurt Please, please, pretty please give us a scene in which a had-it-
all-the-way-up-to-here Captain America uses the sharp edge of
his indestructible shield to saw off whiny junior member Justice's
head. Slowly. Thank you.
George The last time I saw a woman tricked out in anything
even remotely resembling the Scarlet Witch's current "costume,"
she was being arrested in the company of a shame-faced and mortified Hugh
Grant, with paparazzi clustered all about. Please fix this.
Thank you.
There.
That's it.
Those are the only two things NOT Absolutely Stone Perfect about
the Busiek/Perez AVENGERS, as presently constituted.
This has been the year where pretty much everything these two guys have done has just "clicked," AVENGERS-wise.
The whole Triathlon/"Triune Understanding" thing, thus far...? Masterful..
The long-anticipated "Ultimate Ultron" story arc...? Superb.
That "bit" where Justice is palsied with a gruesome and mysterious ailment;
and the only way to save him is by burning every last known copy of the
Scarlet Witch's current costume; and so his fellow Avengers do
it; and he dies, anyway...? My fantasy.
Seriously, though, people this is the only Marvel Comic to make our list, this year.
There's a damned good reason for that.
Actually make that TWO damned good reasons, come to think.
#6 The Bestest JUSTICE LEAGUE Spin-Off Ever Ever EVER Tom Peyer's and Rags Morales' HOURMAN
There's this story making the rounds, online -- and your Unca Cheeks harbors no absolutely doubts whatsoever that it's a true one -- to the effect that Mark Waid has taken to passing out hundreds of free copies of HOURMAN, at various and sundry comics conventions; referring to it enthusiastically as "the best comic book being published today."
He might just have something, there.
Teaming up the morose and introspective "intelligent machine colony from
the Year 85,271" with disgraced (and infinitely sarcastic) former
JLA mascot-in-residence "Snapper" Carr, Peyer has made the
former's relentless search for the secret behind What It Means To Be Truly
"Human" the axle on which every other storytelling tire rotates; a conceptual
masterstroke, lending (as it does) a nicely grounded "feel" to what would
otherwise qualify as some of the most maddeningly labyrinthine and headache-y
time travel corkscrewings and conundrums since David Gerrold's
classic THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF.
Rags Morales' artwork has proven no less revelatory, so far as that goes; demonstrating a breathtaking gift for the subtleties of facial expression, and polished to a high, glossy sheen powerfully evocative of the John Buscema/Tom Palmer art team of the 1970s.
There's yet another "Mark Waid Story" Unca Cheeks heard, a while back; one where a certain editor for one of The Big Two publishers informed the incredulous scribe that -- insofar as his company was concerned, at any rate -- "writer-driven comics are an experiment which has been proven a failure."
Obviously said ninnyhammer has never read an issue of Tom Peyer's HOURMAN.
... and then there were five.
C'mon and take a long, fascinated gander at the best of the best, on Page Three of our Required Reading retrospective.
These are the books Santa's gonna be toting if you were all good
little boys and girls, this past year.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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