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Reviews and commentary by Tony Isabella
"America's Most Beloved Comic-Book Writer & Columnist"
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TONY'S ONLINE TIPS
for Wednesday, January 9, 2008
From Comics Buyer's Guide #1638:
"For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out."
- Steven Wright
This opening is for my former boss STAN LEE on the occasion of his 85th birthday, but, being I'm a generous guy and all, you can read it, too...
Dear Stan,
Happy birthday. I was thinking about you and realized that, whether you knew or not, you've been an important part of my life for over four decades. It was one of the comic books you did with Jack Kirby - Fantastic Four Annual #1 - that kept me reading comics past the time when I might otherwise have been done with them. In fact, it was that very issue that made me realize making comics could be a legitimate job and that it was a job I wanted. All those great Marvel comics I read through the rest of elementary school and high school solidified my aspiration.
Besides the comics, I also loved our Bullpen Bulletins chats. When you wrote about Marvel's comics and heroes and creators, your enthusiasm mirrored my own. When you penned your "Stan's Soapbox" pieces, you reminded me there was a real world beyond our beloved Marvel Universe; it's a sensibility that has shaped even my most fanciful writing ever since.
My buddies and I sent you our homemade comic books. You sent us short notes that probably took you a few minutes to write, but which meant the world to me. I scored a copy of your Secrets Behind the Comics at a convention and it instantly became my primer for learning how to write comics scripts.
After high school, I corresponded with editors from a number of comics companies. I worked for a newspaper by night and spent my days writing scripts that only a handful of fans would ever see. I would have been happy making sales to any company, but when Roy Thomas gave me an opportunity to take a staff job at Marvel, it was a dream come true. The dream only got better when I learned that I'd be working with you.
Stan Lee. The Man. Stan "The Man" Lee.
THE Stan "The Man" Lee.
"Call the Valkyries! I'm ready to go to Valhalla!"
I learned so much from you and Roy and the missed-to-this-day Sol Brodsky, even if those lessons didn't always take right away. You all gave me so many incredible opportunities. Being young and cocky, I didn't always take advantage of the opportunities. I made my share of mistakes, maybe even the next guy's share of mistakes, but I think I turned out to be a pretty good writer. A good chunk of that is on you and Roy and Sol.
After a few years, I left New York and moved back to my native Ohio. Working at Marvel Comics wasn't as much fun as it had been when I was working with you, Roy, and Sol. You moved to the West Coast. Our addresses changed, but things that didn't change were my admiration for you and the continuing inspiration your various ventures provided.
Even the least of those ventures was entertaining, exciting, and made me feel like a kid again. Some of them have been as good as anything you've ever done. Every one of them left me eager to see what you would do next. I could no more miss a book, comic, TV show, DVD, movie, or anything else of yours than I could forget the youthful thrill and anticipation of riding my bicycle several miles to get the new Marvels a few days earlier than at my neighborhood store. When it comes to you, I'm always 12.
If I've any regrets about our association, it's that I didn't work with you longer and that I haven't worked with you since. But I treasure the times we did work together and our friendship since. Every kid dreams of meeting his heroes.
I got to work with mine.
Happy birthday, Stan.
And thanks.
Marvel has published several "The End" and "The Last" issues and mini-series featuring their legendary super-heroes. I haven't read them because I feared they would be depressing and sad. But I couldn't pass on THE LAST FANTASTIC FOUR STORY [$4.99]. It was written by Stan Lee.
Brilliantly drawn by John Romita Jr. (pencils) and Scott Hanna (inks), "World's End" deal with the impending end of the human race at the hands of a cosmic tribunal that sees no positive outcome in our continued existence. They have decided our fate and given us a week to come to terms with it.
The Fantastic Four leads the battle against an enemy even more powerful than Galactus. To no avail. But, along the way, we get to see the heroes at their finest and also at their most human. A scene in which the flighty Human Torch realizes that, unlike Reed, Sue, and Ben, he has no one to hold when the world comes to an end is poignant and unforgettable.
Reed Richards and his team, his family, can never surrender. Nor can they be less than heroic, even when the odds are completely and overwhelmingly against them. Lee and company deliver a story that lives up to its "The Last" title and an ending that is wholly, wonderfully satisfying.
The Last Fantastic Four Story also delivers terrific bang for your bucks. Its 48-page story is supplemented by several pages of text allowing readers to read Lee's plot for this final adventure. This is a great comic book and it earns the full five out of five Tonys. Excelsior!
With every Osamu Tezuka release from Vertical, my admiration for "the godfather of Japanese comics" grows. MW ($24.95) is far darker than anything else I've read from Tezuka and so overpowering that it literally haunts me.
A horrible weapon - a poison gas of incredible toxicity - is accidentally unleashed on a remote island, killing all but two of the people on the island. One tries to atone for the crimes of his life by becoming a priest. The other, an innocent young boy at the time of the disaster, becomes a killer without a conscience, a man who delights in most brutal and shocking cruelties and incapable of feeling the slightest remorse. He is one of the most frightening psychopaths ever seen in comics or any other medium.
Intended for readers 16 and older, MW runs nearly 600 pages. Whenever you think its evil protagonist cannot possible commit a more heinous act, he does and the reader must wonder if this monster is beyond the power of man or God to stop. This is one big scary hunk of manga, my friends, and the chills continue even after you read its final page.
MW is a landmark work and, as such, it earns the full five out of five Tonys.
My anticipation/excitement overshadowed my normally well-tuned sense of reality when my library got me THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2007 [Houghton Mifflin; $22]. The 350-page hardcover had a nice heft to it and the word "best" was right there in its title. I had momentarily blocked out how relative "best" can be when folks are talking about comics.
Editor Chris Ware starts with a typical introduction for this type of collection. His words gave me a pretension headache as he touted works awful enough to make one's eyes bleed and, of course, almost completely dismissed adventure comics in favor of page after page of autobiographical or otherwise self-indulgent comics. To be sure, many of the comics in this anthology are exceptional. Just as sure, many fine efforts were omitted, seemingly because they did not fit Ware's and series editor's Anne Elizabeth Moore's clearly limited interests.
Don't mistake these prefatory comments for a commendation of this anthology. Along with the navel-gazing mediocrities, we get first rate material from Ivan Brunetti, Art Spiegelman, the Crumb family, Adrian Tomine, Gilbert Hernandez, and others.
My socks were knocked off by Dan Zettwoch's amazing "Won't Be Licked: The Great '37 Flood in Louisville." Someone should make a movie of this comic because, boy howdy, the characters and the art actually glide past as you read it.
This book was my introduction to C. Tyler and finding her was a more-than-equitable trade-off for slogging through the less-than-enjoyable works. I'll be seeking out her other comics.
When a book like The Best American Comics 2007 comes out, it makes me painfully aware that I walk in at least two comics worlds. I like adventure comics. I like alternative comics. I like manga. There's too much good stuff out there for me to limit myself to one kind of comics and, yet, nary a week goes by where I don't read an article or review by pundits who absolutely glory in their curt dismissals of entire genres or styles of the sequential art form they purport to cherish. The heck with them!
The Best American Comics 2007 does not live up to its title or stated purpose, but does include some outstanding comics. The good stuff, along with its handsome appearance and reasonable price, earns it four Tonys.
When it comes to bang for your bucks, you can't beat Marvel's Essential and DC's Showcase Presents books. Even when the contents aren't classic, the volumes are entertaining and even informative. It'll be years, if ever, before I read all the volumes so lovingly stacked in various corners of Casa Isabella, but hardly a day goes by without me enjoying a story from their bounty.
Randomly chosen, ESSENTIAL DAREDEVIL VOL. 4 [$16.99] was the one I most recently read from cover to cover. It reprints issues #75-101 plus a connected issue of Avengers, most of them written by a young Gerry Conway.
Back in the 1970s, when I was reading these stories a month at a time, I was not a big fan of Conway's run on Daredevil. One of the things I like about these phonebook-size collections is that it gives readers a chance to follow the development of their favorite heroes and sometimes of the creators who brought those adventures to life. Reading two years worth of Gerry Conway's Daredevil gave me a fresh perspective on his run.
Conway's second-person purple narrative could be hard to take; it often got away from him. Daredevil's incessant soul-searching was, to me, an unwelcome shift from the general lightheartedness of the hero as written by co-creator Stan Lee.
Conway's extended storylines also got away from him. Most of the conclusions of these multi-issue tales are abrupt, clumsy, and vague. He did better with his one or two-issue efforts. To his credit, when he set his mind to it, Conway could write solid super-hero stories...and that's far from the only positive he brought to Daredevil or, a little later, Amazing Spider-Man.
Daredevil did a bit of globetrotting during Conway's run and it suited the hero well. Matt Murdock's move to San Francisco with the Black Widow added a new zip to the series, even as the stories attempted to make it painfully clear the two weren't knocking boots in their off-hours. I never did believe that one.
The soap-opera aspects of the title were more complicated than in many super-hero comics of the time. Karen Page flits in and out of the series. Several potential romances for the Widow make their presences felt as well. I never asked Conway about it, but my gut tells me the lad was watching TV's afternoon soaps while pounding out his scripts.
On the visual end of things, the great Gene Colan penciled all but four of the 28 stories reprinted in this volume. Tom Palmer inked most of them, but Syd Shores, Jack Abel, Ernie Chua, and John Tartaglione are also represented. As one might expect from Colan and such collaborators, the art and storytelling is simply wondrous to behold.
Steve Gerber wrote the last few issues included in the book. Though he had yet come into his own - that would come with the Man-Thing, the Defenders, and Howard the Duck - Gerber's introduction of Angar the Screamer hints at the mad genius to come.
Essential Daredevil Vol. 4 isn't a classic collection, but it's certainly an enjoyable tome. It earns a respectable three out of five Tonys.
Just as screenwriters and novelists are writing comic books, some of them are also exploring traditional comics themes on TV and in movies and novels. HERO [Hyperion; $16.99] is the first novel of Perry Moore, best known as the executive producer of the Narnia films. It's a coming-of-age story with several elements drawn from traditional super-hero comics and a protagonist whose like is sadly under-represented in the genre.
Thom Creed is the son of Major Might, a disgraced super-hero blamed for a terrible tragedy, an event which left the elder Creed maimed and friendless. Thom's mother disappeared from their lives when he was young.
Thom struggles with twin secrets. He's gay and he's developed super-powers. Neither is a subject he can discuss with his father. Indeed, though they clearly love one another, the press of school, basketball, and overwork to pay their bills limits their together time. This makes it all the easier for father and son to keep their respective secrets to themselves.
As the novel progresses, Thom enters an apprentice program for a Justice League-style super-team, forms uneasy friendships with a few teammates, and fearfully explores his sexuality. Things start moving very fast when a couple of "A" list heroes are murdered and Thom is outed, both as a gay man and a super-hero. The last third of the novel is a genuine page-turner.
Hero does have weaknesses. Thom's emotional outbursts and soul-searching are played too large for my tastes, bordering on caricature. Convenient revelations and appearances - of people and super-abilities - are frequent.
Tilting the scales in the book's favor is that Thom is a hero readers can cheer for. He's brave, caring, intelligent, and self-sacrificing. Those are real family values in my book and, for that matter, in this one.
Hero is a notable first effort. It earns an impressive four out of five Tonys.
Thanks for spending a part of your day with me. I'll be back tomorrow with more stuff.
Tony Isabella
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THE "TONY" SCALE
ZERO: Burn your money before buying any comic receiving this rating. It doesn't *necessarily* mean there's absolutely nothing of value here - though it *could* - but whatever value it might possess shrinks into insignificance before its overall awfulness.
ONE: Buy something else. Maybe I found something which wasn't completely dreadful in the item, but not enough for me to recommend it when there are better comics available. I only want what's best for you, my children.
TWO: Basic judgment call. I found some value, but not enough to recommend it. My review should give you enough info to decide if you want to take a chance on it. Are you feeling lucky today, punk? Well, are you?
THREE: This denotes something I find perfectly respectable. There are better books out there, but I wouldn't regret buying this item. Based on my review, you should be able to determine if it's of interest to you. Let the Force guide you.
FOUR: I recommend anything earning this rating. Unless you don't like the genre, subject matter, or past work of the creators, I believe you'll enjoy this item. Isn't it uncanny how I can look right into your soul that way?
FIVE: Anything getting this rating is among the best comicdom has to offer. You should buy/read this, even if the genre/subject matter doesn't appeal to you. It's for your own good. Me, I live for comics and books this good...but not in a pathetic "Comic-Book Guy" sort of way.
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