Various comics reviewiness
My Heroes dvds arrived! Together with a copy of Paper Dolls (issues in Brian K Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man), which I’d ordered in September and almost given up hope on. Sufficiently to have bought the two subsequent trades already but I liked this one better than either of them.
Paper Dolls (Y: The Last Man)
So the book is set in the years following a sudden (as in taking less than 30 minutes to sweep the entire planet) man-killing plague has left wannabe escape artist and pop-culture geek extraordinaire Yorrick Brown, the only Y chromosome bearing mammal left alive. Well apart from Ampersand, his pet, shit-eating, monkey.
Yorrick gets taken on a dystopian road trip with agent 355 of the mysterious Culper Ring as a bodyguard and Dr. Alison Mann charged by his Congresswoman (I think now president) mother to find a cure for the plague when all he wants to do is find his girlfriend (sorry, fiancé). Wackiness ensues intercut with educational asides (Vaughan seems to know something about everything other than chromosome-loss in obscure mammals) and character back stories. In Paper Knives it was the turn of 355 and Ampersand. 355 was awesome, the monkey had a cute heroic dream sequence, add in lesbian kite-flying, tabloid journalism, Moscow State Circus tricks and the sum of all the parts is a blast.
The books are very different from any others I’ve been dipping into. they’re about ordinary people albeit in a strange situation, no superheroes, magic or (intentionally) weird science, it’s like genreless genre. Apparently Vaughan deliberately aimed to make them accessible to non-comics readers, the panels are extremely regular, the order clear and the art simple and unobtrusive. Separated from the text you wouldn’t give it a second glance but without it the text, being mostly dialogue, would be quite indigestible. Interestingly, while neither art nor text stands out, together they tell the story with an almost unnatural efficiency.
There’s a Noel Streatfield YA novel (not Ballet Shoes but one of the follow ups) in which the stage school heroine is feeling overshadowed by her movie star-like cousin taking over her part in a production of The Tempest. Her mentor reassures her that although the cousin is more charismatic she’s only able to play herself and our heroine’s Ariel was much closer to the famous director’s vision. Or to use a dance metaphor, musicality can be more important than virtuosity even though it’s difficult to break down for praise or condemnation.
Angel: After the Fall #2
Much showier art for this one but then it’s a showier show and although there are parts I wish they didn’t feel the need to show there was good stuff too.
Good stuff would include the whole LA being sent to hell concept if only for the implication that W&H could have done this any time but thought the normal human run version was worse or at least more suited to their purposes. I also liked the page carrying the serial Lords of Westfield gag, Urru‘s obvious enjoyment in drawing slimy demons leaps off the page. The other entirely good part was Wesley haunting the fort. Since I never was much of a scruffy Wes fan, having the tragic irony and the dry wit without being distracted by hideous stubble was all of the good.
Gunn was also good, great even, right up until the last two lines overegged the whole soul thing and made him look stupid for the sake of a dumb joke about the meaning of life.
Angel straddled the chasm between good and not good, my basic problem is finding Angel interesting mostly for his opacity and finding the whole voiceover thing TMI. Voiceovers may be a noir standard but still work best when they appear to tell you one thing while letting slip another and Angel’s internal monologue was just too self-aware.
Spike’s situation had hints of Calypso’s island but this Spike was no subtle Odysseus, just another snarky anti-hero with big brother issues. Then as the issues cleared they had Illyria rush in all discotastic flares to defend her pet. On the show Illyria asked if Spike could be (effectively) her chew toy and that single offhand remark has launched a thousand fanfics interpreting pet as anything from catamite to beloved companion. I’m not a fan. You could call it a pet hate (but I’d rather I didn’t).
It’s a little premature to judge Illyria’s story and in any case I’m not sure if Ilyria counts as female, but the biggest problem I have with the books so far is the female characters. Wesley, Gunn, Spike and even Connor all come across as distinct personalities but Nina’s become the stereotypical weregirl, defined by her appetites, bent over and pushed up against the wall of Angel’s 6 pack. If she ate a vampire would the flesh turn to dust in her mouth? Gwen shows more promise but still comes across as generic sassy babe.
Some of it’s in the art, not so much the boob jobs but their combination with the wasp waists and porn star hair, obscuring blank faces. The defenses of it on whedonesque and elsewhere range from comics being like that, to LA being like that, to hell being like that.
I’ve never been to LA much less hell and my comics exposure is limited. For what it’s worth the Buffy books are quite cleavage deprived, one shot of Faith looking distinctly uncomfortable pretty much uncovers it all. Astonishing X Men has Emma Frost but also Kitty and Agent Brand and all of them have better, more individual dress sense than any of the women in After the Fall (possibly the most jarring aspect of Spider’s harem were the cheap job-lot bikinis covering their collective modesty).
In Y it would be fair to say that while all of the woman fall into the normal range they occupy roughly the same restricted section of it as Hollywood actresses. It’s subtle enough that I only become aware of the difference after reading more than half the books and interesting in its own way. In an interview Vaughan pointed out that all the (other) men dying was a heterosexual geek fantasy that he’s writing as the dystopia it would actually be but Yorrick does keep falling in with women he might have thought would be his ideal. Babish types who invariably go on to reveal unexpected nerdy depths. In that sense he still is living the fantasy except that it doesn’t seem to be making him happy.
Paper Dolls (Y: The Last Man)
So the book is set in the years following a sudden (as in taking less than 30 minutes to sweep the entire planet) man-killing plague has left wannabe escape artist and pop-culture geek extraordinaire Yorrick Brown, the only Y chromosome bearing mammal left alive. Well apart from Ampersand, his pet, shit-eating, monkey.
Yorrick gets taken on a dystopian road trip with agent 355 of the mysterious Culper Ring as a bodyguard and Dr. Alison Mann charged by his Congresswoman (I think now president) mother to find a cure for the plague when all he wants to do is find his girlfriend (sorry, fiancé). Wackiness ensues intercut with educational asides (Vaughan seems to know something about everything other than chromosome-loss in obscure mammals) and character back stories. In Paper Knives it was the turn of 355 and Ampersand. 355 was awesome, the monkey had a cute heroic dream sequence, add in lesbian kite-flying, tabloid journalism, Moscow State Circus tricks and the sum of all the parts is a blast.
The books are very different from any others I’ve been dipping into. they’re about ordinary people albeit in a strange situation, no superheroes, magic or (intentionally) weird science, it’s like genreless genre. Apparently Vaughan deliberately aimed to make them accessible to non-comics readers, the panels are extremely regular, the order clear and the art simple and unobtrusive. Separated from the text you wouldn’t give it a second glance but without it the text, being mostly dialogue, would be quite indigestible. Interestingly, while neither art nor text stands out, together they tell the story with an almost unnatural efficiency.
There’s a Noel Streatfield YA novel (not Ballet Shoes but one of the follow ups) in which the stage school heroine is feeling overshadowed by her movie star-like cousin taking over her part in a production of The Tempest. Her mentor reassures her that although the cousin is more charismatic she’s only able to play herself and our heroine’s Ariel was much closer to the famous director’s vision. Or to use a dance metaphor, musicality can be more important than virtuosity even though it’s difficult to break down for praise or condemnation.
Angel: After the Fall #2
Much showier art for this one but then it’s a showier show and although there are parts I wish they didn’t feel the need to show there was good stuff too.
Good stuff would include the whole LA being sent to hell concept if only for the implication that W&H could have done this any time but thought the normal human run version was worse or at least more suited to their purposes. I also liked the page carrying the serial Lords of Westfield gag, Urru‘s obvious enjoyment in drawing slimy demons leaps off the page. The other entirely good part was Wesley haunting the fort. Since I never was much of a scruffy Wes fan, having the tragic irony and the dry wit without being distracted by hideous stubble was all of the good.
Gunn was also good, great even, right up until the last two lines overegged the whole soul thing and made him look stupid for the sake of a dumb joke about the meaning of life.
Angel straddled the chasm between good and not good, my basic problem is finding Angel interesting mostly for his opacity and finding the whole voiceover thing TMI. Voiceovers may be a noir standard but still work best when they appear to tell you one thing while letting slip another and Angel’s internal monologue was just too self-aware.
Spike’s situation had hints of Calypso’s island but this Spike was no subtle Odysseus, just another snarky anti-hero with big brother issues. Then as the issues cleared they had Illyria rush in all discotastic flares to defend her pet. On the show Illyria asked if Spike could be (effectively) her chew toy and that single offhand remark has launched a thousand fanfics interpreting pet as anything from catamite to beloved companion. I’m not a fan. You could call it a pet hate (but I’d rather I didn’t).
It’s a little premature to judge Illyria’s story and in any case I’m not sure if Ilyria counts as female, but the biggest problem I have with the books so far is the female characters. Wesley, Gunn, Spike and even Connor all come across as distinct personalities but Nina’s become the stereotypical weregirl, defined by her appetites, bent over and pushed up against the wall of Angel’s 6 pack. If she ate a vampire would the flesh turn to dust in her mouth? Gwen shows more promise but still comes across as generic sassy babe.
Some of it’s in the art, not so much the boob jobs but their combination with the wasp waists and porn star hair, obscuring blank faces. The defenses of it on whedonesque and elsewhere range from comics being like that, to LA being like that, to hell being like that.
I’ve never been to LA much less hell and my comics exposure is limited. For what it’s worth the Buffy books are quite cleavage deprived, one shot of Faith looking distinctly uncomfortable pretty much uncovers it all. Astonishing X Men has Emma Frost but also Kitty and Agent Brand and all of them have better, more individual dress sense than any of the women in After the Fall (possibly the most jarring aspect of Spider’s harem were the cheap job-lot bikinis covering their collective modesty).
In Y it would be fair to say that while all of the woman fall into the normal range they occupy roughly the same restricted section of it as Hollywood actresses. It’s subtle enough that I only become aware of the difference after reading more than half the books and interesting in its own way. In an interview Vaughan pointed out that all the (other) men dying was a heterosexual geek fantasy that he’s writing as the dystopia it would actually be but Yorrick does keep falling in with women he might have thought would be his ideal. Babish types who invariably go on to reveal unexpected nerdy depths. In that sense he still is living the fantasy except that it doesn’t seem to be making him happy.