With university and work in full swing these days I've had to cut back on my prose reading these past few weeks and I've picked up more on the easily digestible comics reading.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz [Faber First Press] $25
Diaz crafts an inter-generational story about fukus and zafas and the general fucked up nature of life without being hopelessly depressing and morose or retreating back to a generic Dominican Republic character voice. That's quite a feat in a book where a prominent character attempts to commit suicide but he does it with pomp.
Although the opening pages had me a bit worried about its general level of appeal - it begins with a quote from Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's Fantastic Four epic, the Galactus trilogy - I think its pretty safe to say that anyone not obsessed with comics going in will do fine and actually enjoy the references.
At the end of the day this is one of the first 'new' prose novels since The Life of Pi I've loved.
Killer in the Rain by Raymond Chandler & The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [Penguin Australia] $A 20 & $A10
Jesse Nevins wrote two essays in the back of the first couple of issues of
Incognito about the original pulp heroes, Doc Savage and the Shadow. Doc Savage was the Optimum Man, the man who could do everything and had everything. He was a radiant god living in the Empire State Building. The Shadow, on the other hand, is a brutal, transient madman with ill-defined psychic powers lurking in the dark and grit asking, "Who knows what evil lies in the heart of men!" They're the two basic colours on paper - white and black - and they eventually evolved into their most popular incarnations, Superman and Batman.
Doyle's Holmes is basically the British Doc Savage. Since he's British he's not quite perfect. The man has a pretty bad opium habit, is a dick to his best friend/lover Watson and not afraid to show others how he's better than them. Sure, he may not be Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes but Downey was pretty darn close. In the end though, this collection of Doyle's best/most famous short stories is like a box of chocolates. When its done its done.
Chandler writes many different PIs in his pulps, collected here, but they're all unmistakeably Marlowe. Chandler's PI is as American as Doyle's Holmes is British and the result is a set of characters and situations drawn as black as a Mignola funnybook. Whilst Holmes is gripping, its never thrilling because you know he'll figure it out and explain it to you at the end. Carmady/Marlowe gets it wrong his first time round. If Holmes is a box of chocolates this is a pack of cigarettes, grimy and smoky and lingering.
I always was more of a Batman guy.
Northlanders: Sven the Returned written by Brian Wood and illustrated by Davide Gianfelice [DC Comics] $US10
Vertigo Comics stalwart Brian Wood kicks off a new ongoing series based around the premise of vikings killing each other while talking like they belong in an early Scorcese film and fucking hot chicks in the intermission. And if that's what you want that's what you get, you undemanding son of a bitch.
Although the narrative attempts to explore Nordic politics and the idea of inheritance as the son of a murdered Viking warlord returns home to claim his land, carnage takes precedence over any substance. And what glorious carnage it is, with Gianfelice illustrating forbidding tundras and burly Viking men and a couple of ladies here and there.
It's only $US 9.99 so get it if well-drawn violence floats your longship.
The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross [DC Comics] $US10
Vertigo Comics old-timers Carey and Gross begin a new ongoing series that is meta, meta, meta. The series centres around Tommy Taylor, a man whose father wrote a series of novels reaching Harry Potter levels of popularity with the protagonist named Tommy Taylor and then promptly disappeared. As is the Vertigo formula by now, Taylor happens to discover that all is not as it seems and that fiction, perhaps (although we know it certainly) isn't just fiction.
Although gorgeously drawn by Gross the writing never seems to find its mark as the characters border on generic-ness at times. The pictures are pretty though, drawn with a soft line and clarity missing in modern comics. And, there is a stand-alone chapter (The Unwritten #5) about Rudyard Kipling which is one of the better single chapter stories I've read lately. If you're into your literature you'd be better off with Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series but pick up the Kipling chapter for a great story for only $US 2.99.
Marvel Boy written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by JG Jones [Marvel Comics] $US25
Back in the early Aughts Marvel Comics President Bill Jemas came up with an idea, how about we re-imagine our heroes, and shared universe by extension, as having been created now rather than by Stan, Jack and Steve in the Sixties. The result was the Brian Michael Bendis penned Ultimate Spider-Man which was followed by Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates penned by Mark Millar. All of those books were enormously successful and influential on the core Marvel shared universe and later the films but ultimately (heh) they were just the same stories warmed over.
Just before them came Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy, an odd little tale out of the main universe about a teenaged alien , Noh-Varr, crashed on Earth who embarks on a mission of social change to avenge his murdered beloved. It sold poorly, as expected, mainly because it had a weirdo Scottish man writing it and because it featured original characters. As it turns out, Marvel Comics Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada has long hinted that this may have been the first Ultimate book - a re-imagining of the core universe in the 00s.
And it makes perfect sense because this book IS the Marvel Universe. Comics blogger Chad Nevett has carefully
examined the series and how its settings and characters all comment on Marvel Comics and its history.
So, instead of this:
Marvel Comics went with this:
Fuck you comics. I hope you continue dying a slow, long and painful death.
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