POBB January 24, 2018

Pick of the Brown Bag

January 24, 2018

by

Ray Tate

This small week of comic book reviews includes Backways, Batgirl, The Doomsday Clock, The Flash, Scooby-Doo Team-Up and Simpsons Comics.  You can also check out the tiny Tweets of reviews on Twitter: #PickoftheBrownBag.  

First, a shout out to Jade Hameister the amazing Australian girl teen whose positivity and feminism in a TED Talk led to being trolled by stupid lazy fat ass men

One told her to “get in the kitchen and make me sandwich.”  So, after she skied to the South Pole with her photographer Dad for National Geographic, she decided to pop on over to the North Pole as well, becoming the youngest person to do so, male or female.  She complied with orders.

There’s your sandwich, which of you wastes of flesh will go and fetch it?  As the Klingons say, "Revenge is a dish best served cold."

I picked up the second issue of Backways, and it answered some questions.  Anna, the protagonist, is in love with Sylvia, the missing girl.  So, there’s romance.  

Sylvia’s mom’s disdain for Anna therefore probably seethes from two different sources of hate.  However, Anna is just like the good-looking, nice guy in a 1940s horror movie.  Totally overshadowed by the monster.  Boring in contrast to Coyote Bones.

Coyote Bones is a human trickster with magical trinkets, and Backways is a kind of magic bazaar like the one in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  

I’m just not interested.  I think part of my problem lies with the magic being set against magic.  The magic isn’t strange.  It’s just part of the scene.  If you took Coyote Bones out of this environment, placed her in a city and made her a kind of superhero or private eye, I’d probably be more invested.  

The Comedian was a government-run assassin that looked like a debauched Hal Linden.  

His death kicks off Watchmen.  Er, the Comedian’s.  Hal Linden is alive and kicking. 

Good on him.  The Comedian’s escape from certain doom kicks off the latest issue of The Doomsday Clock, and I’m impressed.  Not by the entirety, but certainly by the execution and explanation of the Comedian save.  In the context of comic books, it makes perfect sense.

I also liked the Batman/Rorschach confrontation, and Batman’s solution to this new problem.  I immediately felt pity for the new Rorschach just through Gary Frank’s artwork.

He looks troubled.  Possibly from the burden of the mask.  The mask is somehow sentient or parasitic.  I didn’t however need the overplay in the shower to know that Rorschach is disturbed.  He may not be crazy, but definitely unbalanced.

The rest of the book is a flatline for me.  The source of Rorschach’s broken watch, broached in the text piece, intrigues me far more than the life and death struggle of Ozymandias against the Comedian, the stupid, stupid, stupid Superman Theory artificially stirring up the DC pot or Mime and Marionette’s assault on the Joker’s bar.

Iris West debuted during the Silver Age as a reporter in Showcase #4.  She later marries the hero of the story Barry Allen and learns his secret identity.   In the Bronze Age, Eobard Thawne The Reverse Flash murders Iris West-Allen. 

Iris’ death catalyzes the darkest period in the Flash’s history.  The Flash never recovers.  Eventually, he finds a modicum of happiness in the arms of Fiona Webb.  However, Thawne comes out of time and tries to kill her.  The Flash in turn justifiably executes Thawne.  Fiona loses her mind.  So, the wedding’s off, and to compound the universe’s joke, The Flash must face a stacked jury in a trial for Thawne’s murder.

In the final issue of the first Flash volume, we learn that denizens of the future, Iris’ parents used advanced tech to snatch Iris’ soul and infuse it into a cloned body.  Of course, Barry and Iris’ happiness is short-lived due to a little ol’ thing called The Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The post-Crisis elevated Iris’ importance.  She became the chronicler of all speedsters and sometimes would reappear in the past.  Despite Barry still being dead.  

I never cared about Iris West.  I never wished her harm.  She just seemed like a boring version of Lois Lane, with brown hair.

Josh Williamson’s latest issue of The Flash centers on Iris West.  So, I should hate this, yet Williamson creates the impression that all that went before no longer exists.  That’s how it should be.  The New 52 is a clean break from post-Crisis nonsense.

I didn’t purchase the issue where Iris finds out about Barry Allen’s secret identity.  However, Williamson emphasizes that Iris didn’t know before.  Originally, Iris discovered Barry’s secret because he guiltily talked in his sleep.  This modern twist is much better.  Iris did not know who, but the moment she sees Barry’s face, she knows how.  That evinces her intelligence and powers of observation.  The ken grants her some pleasure, but she’s not letting Barry off the hook.

I like the friction between Iris and Barry because there wasn’t any in their relationship in any other era of comic books.  Yeah, she’d complain that he was late all the time, but that’s about it.  She was literally made for Barry.  When her parents saved her life, Iris was perfectly okay knowing that Barry canoodled Fiona Webb.  I can just about believe that Barry was too square to actually sleep with Fiona before the wedding.  However, Iris didn’t really seem the type that would tolerate an open marriage or have the wherewithal to readjust to the vagaries of time travel.  River Song is okay with the Doctor also being married to Marilyn Monroe.  That makes sense.  River and Marilyn are alive and dead simultaneously to time travelers.  Iris condoning Fiona.  Nah.

In addition to the new focus on Iris’ and Barry’s relationship, or lack thereof, Williamson turns his attention to the much healthier friendship, possibly romance, of Kid Flash and Avery Ho, the Chinese Flash.  Another character from New Superman, which is lasting longer and becoming more integrated than I ever imagined.  As for the monkey on the cover, I really wish the Powers That Be had kept his appearance secret.  I already intended to buy this issue of The Flash.  So, Gorilla Grodd’s role in the book didn’t influence me either way, and Williamson builds to a reveal that could have struck with more impact had Grodd's guesting been guarded.

It’s been up and down with Hope Larson’s Batgirl.  This issue is an up.  Can this be a trend? I certainly hope so.  The story begins with dopey bandits attempting to extort a going out of business party for the local doughnut shop.

The perps are frightened of Batgirl, just like their ilk were in the Bronze Age.  Unlike Batman, Batgirl rarely terrorized criminals.  They feared her because she habitually beat the crap out of them.  

After Batgirl puts the kibosh on these low-level crooks, Larson's story segues to a brief moment when the writer amusingly examines the repercussions of a normal person fighting crime; crusading at night, then getting up in the morning.  Fun fact.  Certain mutants among us can get by with only six hours of sleep.  Batman must be one of them.  Babs is not.  After the sequence, Larson gets to the gist.  A freak snowstorm that brings out the Penguins.

Batgirl already crossed swords with the Penguin, and she immediately suspects him of…something.  Batgirl’s investigation takes her to the Federal Building and a hipster doofus that almost makes it out of the minute without embarrassing himself further.

Larson is in full Wheaties mode.  Batgirl’s tough.  She’s skillful.  She’s hyper-intelligent.  Can this get any better? Can the plot actually make sense?

Why, yes.  Yes, it can.  The snowstorm is natural and inevitable.  Somebody uploaded a virus to hide it.  That’s elegantly brilliant.  That doesn't sound like the Penguin's craft.  

Larson throws a spur into the works that leads Batgirl to an old-new nemesis.  The physical evidence gibes with the miscreant’s rational.  The confrontation against he and his cronies is filled with lovely, violent athletics.  Kudos to artists Chris Wildgoose, Jose Marzan and Mat Lopes.  I also love Batgirl’s new wheels.  Skis.

Scooby-Doo flies with the Birds of Prey.  Sholly Fisch writes the Birds with remarkable distinction.  First, there’s Batgirl.  Ratiocinator extraordinary.

Oh my goodness! She has blue eyes! That’s how she’s supposed to be!  Next, Black Canary.  Snarky, fierce and feminist.

I love that she refers to Batgirl as her best friend.  Finally, the Huntress.  I have no idea if Fisch is writing Helena Wayne, but it certainly sounds like it.  Surly and suffering no fools.

Let’s just get the job done and get onto the next.  She does have a Bat Symbol on her bike.

Anyhow, Batgirl calls in Velma and Daphne while Shaggy and Fred deal with a hilarious and most unexpected cameo.  Once again exemplifying Fisch’s astounding knowledge of the DCU.  

Fred suggests Scooby tag along with the girls, who discover that Batgirl seeks to tap their knowledge of cryptids.  Every character is a detective in this story, and Fisch demonstrates each character’s strength while Dario Brizuela coups the honor of illustrating these classic characters beautifully.

Ian Boothby’s Simpsons Comics parodies three different detective series including Scooby-Doo.  

Cartoonist Mike Kazaleh fuses Hanna-Barbera with Matt Groening to metamorphose something bizarre.  This odd art design fits with an even odder sendup.  

Boothby’s story first explains the way the meddling kids obtain their dog.  He next turns Nelson the bully into Shaggy the coward.  There’s probably a deep philosophical answer in this, but I was just too busy laughing at the antic.  As to the face behind the sheet, that’s yet again a stroke of creative genius.

Speaking of masterful detectives, Boothby and artist Nina Matsumoto turn Homer Simpson—crayon disabled slow thinker—into Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.  I have no idea if the transformation doubles as a critical commentary on Kenneth Branagh’s performance, but it certainly seems that way.  Anybody can pose as Hercule Poirot, and he doesn’t need to physically resemble the part.  It's not like Poirot is a short, finicky man with an egg-shaped head and tight little mustache.  Wait a minute.  Boothby's takeoff cleverly involves all the usual suspects and adheres to the red herrings of Murder on the Orient Express to find its set of killers.

Last no trilogy of tecs would be complete without a Sherlock Holmes goof.  Bart takes stupidity and mischief to a high art thanks to Skinner’s even greater gullibility as Lisa desperately seeks attention from the slightly sexist men surrounding her, finally getting a reward I've discussed in the end.