POBB September 21, 2020

Pick of the Brown Bag

September 21, 2020

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag, I'm Ray Tate, and I review comic books.  The COVID-19 epidemic has seriously curtailed the frequency of this blog, but I'm still here.  The comic books keep on coming, and maybe in a year, I'll reach homeostasis.  This week another in depth look at a new title with one of the oldest characters in the genre.  Today I review Batman Three Jokers.  

Through a series of subtly connected set pieces Geoff Johns uses the promised freedom of the Black Label brand to emphasize the historical damage the Joker wrought on Batman, Batgirl and Jason Todd, the second Robin now operating under the alias of the Red Hood. 

A flip-through at The Phantom of the Attic sold me on the art.  Jason Fabok impressed on Detective Comics and Batman.  He's a no-nonsense type of illustrator, suffusing his work in anatomical dynamics, traditional design and detail that relies on cross-hatching and old-school mechanics.  

Batgirl's heavy involvement in the story factored into my purchase.  Due to the atrocious writing of Cecil Castellucci, I dropped Batgirl from my subscription list.  

I miss reading about this hero.  

Batgirl became my favorite DC icon after I tirelessly fought for twenty-five years for her restored mobility.  That's two years in New 52 time.  Add ten real time for the frustration of seeing men in comics consistently chucking their wheelchairs and tap dancing.

They're Blue, Baby.  Blue

In Three Jokers, Batgirl, properly expresses Brad Anderson blue eyes, rather than why are they suddenly green.  She also throws the Joker through plate glass.  

That was all I needed to take the first issue of Three Jokers home.  I should point out that Anderson's hues really appealed to me since they meshed with Fabok's paradigm.  A lot of comic book colors if not done correctly look over-rendered, but Anderson's highlight, and entrench the book in the realism necessary for the story's efficacy.

The tale begins in a cliche fashion.  Alfred patches up Batman.  Batman remembers the source of each of his scars.  

Along with the murder of his parents.  

I could harp on this, but it's a Batman book, and a moody one at that.  Nine times out of ten, you're going to watch a replay of the Waynes being murdered.  

I'm just not sure any of this--the scars, the trip down memory lane--is necessary to establish Batman and the setting.  Two pages, maybe three, sure.  Seven? That's a bit much.  

The scene segues through a television broadcast watched by Batman in the cave and Barbara Gordon in the gym.

Here we discover how Barbara regained the use of her legs.  It's a little different than continuity proper implied. 

Clearly, Johns like myself wondered why DC never gifted Barbara a pair of cybernetic legs, available to DC Comics since 1980.  

Even earlier in general science fiction.

In fighting for Barbara's regeneration, I encountered people who wanted to keep her in a wheelchair.  I get why people who are actually in wheelchairs looked to Barbara Gordon for representation.  I get why people with working legs wanted that representation for those without.  However, and many of those folks understood my argument, wheelchairs do not make sense in the context of an alien and magical universe.  

Then, there was the majority, persuaded in part by DC's glamorization of Barbara's crippling.  Suggesting that this was just a minor change.  I mean it's not like she can't have sex with Nightwing, the first Robin all grown up for those not in the know.  

DC even rejuvenated her so that there's no icky May-December Thing with Nightwing.  Besides, Barbara's A-OK with not having the use of her legs, cause she can still have sex with Nightwing.  She's actually happy in the wheelchair, because she can have sex with Nightwing.  Not that she had sex with Nightwing, but the potential for sex with Nightwing is always there.  That's what's really important.

Hey, baby, right back at you.   

Here's what happened to Barbara Gordon.

The Joker shot Barbara.  A bullet tore through her abdomen, ripped through her spine and exited out her back.  Then just for laughs the Joker stripped Barbara and photographed her bleeding and naked.  

That's what happened to Batgirl in The Killing Joke.  It's utterly ghoulish.  DC did not need to incorporate that in their shiny new post-Crisis but they did.  They stained their cosmos from the very beginning with a very real thing in a very unreal shared universe.

So, I applaud Johns and Fabok for showing this ugly scar on a beautiful woman because it's nothing that the wheelchair-chic think about or want to think about.  It's nothing that the writers or Powers That Be at DC thought about.  For Barbara though that scar is a constant.  The memory of that night doesn't go away.

Next in Three Jokers we get to see a replay of the Jason Todd telethon.  The one where people phoned in to vote to kill or save Jason Todd, one of the most unlikeable characters ever reinvented.  

Jason actually debuted harmlessly in the pre-Crisis with a vastly different origin.  Alan Moore author of The Killing Joke in the Superman tale "For the Man Who Has Everything" ironically gave Jason his best moment.  A springboard for anybody paying attention.  Nobody did.

Jason really didn't come into his own until Scott Lobdell adopted him.  He imbued him with a sense of humor, built on Jason's history with Batman and turned him into a kind of low-rent private eye who just happens to be a superhero and trained by the World's Greatest Detective.  

Jason's solution to crime is simple.  Eradicate it.  Jason is a murderer.  Batman however cannot bring himself to arrest Jason.  In truth, most of Jason's killings can be defended as self-defense.  Not all of them, but the lion's share.

That's a lot of review, but this is what happens within the first act which basically introduces our main heroes.  It takes about sixteen pages before we get to the first event.  Batman and Batgirl investigate the murders of three individuals at Ace Chemicals.  This scene also presents a puzzle.

I imagine Geoff Johns writing a Batman book threw a lot of people.  Johns however began writing Batman since the New 52 began.  He wrote Batman for at least three years.  Readers tend to forget.   Batman is a founding member of the Justice League.  As such, Johns' Batman plays well with others.  Especially his own family and despite Three Jokers running under the flag of the ultra mature Black Label.  Anybody thinking that the Black Label excuses Batman being horrid to his proteges can breathe a sigh of relief.

A plot twist changes the venue from Ace Chemicals to an ambulance ride.  This moment is novel.  I can't say I've ever seen anything like it before.  It draws Jason Todd into the picture, starkly distinguishes him from Batman and Batgirl and presents his unusual method for crime-solving.

Now, we get to the title of the book.  The Three Jokers.  

Perhaps, the most surprising thing about Three Jokers is that Johns answers a question posed in Rebirth, a mainstream one-shot reinforcing shared universe continuity, within an off tangent mature Black Label book that's ambivalent toward universal continuity.  The maturity of the story incidentally lies not in nudity or sex but in the exploration of violence.

The Batman Family think the Joker isn't working alone, and Johns doesn't resolve that question until the end.  Before that, we get a very curious scene reintroducing three familiar Jokers.

I say its curious because this scene lacks a reliable witness.  The scenario could simply be a hallucinatory episode from one Joker's fractured mind.  It also explains why each Joker seems to be like a Sunnydale vampire.  

Preserved in a moment of time, we have the Killing Joke Joker, the classic Joker and the "lead" Joker.  I'm about ninety-five percent certain this act occurs in the Joker's head.  Johns however throws in a good plot twist at the very end that makes the five percent of uncertainty loom large.

The Joker having departed from Ace Chemicals and colluding with his other selves returns to Gotham Aquarium to revisit a Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams seventies battle.  Johns incorporates a number of Joker motifs in this final act of Batman Three Jokers, but he and Fabok give the entirety a different spin from the Batman Animated Series episode that did the same.  And yes, this is the moment where Batgirl throws the Joker into plate glass.  Let's see that again.

Geoff Johns relates an interesting story and superbly characterizes the Batman Family in an easy to understand internal consistency.  The puzzlement over Three Jokers being the understandable exception.  

Batman Three Jokers is furthermore a surprising development from the Black Label brand.  Not only does the Three Jokers present the consequences of the Joker's actions in uncensored detail.  Jason Fabok pulls no punches with his realistic depiction of the Batman Family's countermeasures against crime.  

You get to see the unvarnished damage that the Batman Family dishes out.  The execution is rather exhilarating, and quite frankly, this is the book that should have debuted DC's Black Label line, not the remarkably awful Damned.

POBB September 14, 2020

Pick of the Brown Bag

September 14, 2020

by

Ray Tate

Dan Membiela's online comic The Good Agent debuted as a straightforward tale centered around a non-powered superhero in the key of Daredevil or Nightwing.  

That unlucky fellow gets bopped by the Good Agent often, one of the book's running gags.  

The Good Agent becomes rapidly more complex as its four issues develop.  The anti-racist undercurrent, however explicit, swells to prominence.  Membiela also takes advantage of the headlines and patterns the Agent's enemies on modern fascists.

Remember how the Tiki Torch people grew horrified when pudgy, angry white guys started using their fine products during their Nazi/Klan rallies?  I do.  

Membiela's story evolves fast, but at a natural rate.  He starts to diversify the cast early.

He also increases the threat level.  The Good Agent in issue two battles a werewolf.

In the third, the Good Agent trades blows with a Berserker.  

Membiela knits these menaces together under the villainy of the White Mother.  At first the White Mother just seemed like a pulpy skull-masked bitch who spouted racist garbage.  

She's that, but she's also got some powerful supernatural backing.

One derivation of the days of the week arises from Norse mythology.  Thursday, easily translates to Thor's day.  Wednesday though derives from Wotan, an old Germanic name for Odin.  

Membiela's Wotan is a little bit squishier than expected.  You may ask and quite rightly how does this...

...transform into this.  

Modern racists at heart believe themselves as pure as the Nazis felt they were.  Both groups are hopelessly wrong.  Our ancestors embraced love over hate early on and interbred with a different species.  We Homo sapiens are twenty percent Neanderthal.  The "extinct" Neanderthal survive in us.

The Nazis always tried to add gravitas to their belief system by rooting it in superstition.   Modern fascists attempt the same.  As such, Membiela decided to use the pantheon's public domain status in an inventive and original way.  Because there's nothing more frightening in literature than Cthulhu and his ilk, Wotan gets an H.P. Lovecraft styled makeover.  

So, what does slithery, slippery Odin get out of all this?  He's not gifting psychos power for giggles.  Look closer at the depiction.

Last issue the Good Agent, with the help of Officer Chamber and police dog Lincoln, thwarted White Mother's occult bomb.  Thereby scotching her sacrifice to her tentacled speculator.  That's going to cost her.  

The Good Agent has been an exciting, timely ride, but Membiela purposely left a dangling question.

Just who is the Good Agent?

Knowing that he's some guy named Manny doesn't actually help matters.  This issue Membiela provides an origin for the Good Agent.

The who isn't important without context.  The why and the how are.  

The events surrounding the birth of the Good Agent echo the Lone Ranger's beginnings.  The narration alludes to Jerry Siegel's and Joe Schuster's original intent for the Superman/Lois Lane relationship.  So, Membiela a student of comic book and pulp lore puts together a satisfying blend.

Most importantly, he answers the question why now.  Why now is the Good Agent plying his trade?  Why has he just started to defend his city against a racist gang that snowballed to a spectral level of destruction? These answers also satisfy.  

The Good Agent's origin like the four past issues make use of the schism between authoritarian ideals and progressive action.  Were the Good Agent a real person, you can imagine him becoming a spokesman against power abuse and fascism.  Perhaps consolidating his life and ideas in a bestselling book, becoming a global figure of respect.  The Good Agent however is a comic book character.  Thus, he becomes a superhero, or adventurer if you prefer, since his level of superpowers is left debatable.  He chooses a more hands on approach to combat the parasites that feed on a wounded society.  At the same time, Membiela is entirely fair to each side.  

POBB September 1, 2020

Pick of the Brown Bag

September 1, 2020

by

Ray Tate

Created in 1932 by Robert E. Howard for the quintessential pulp anthology Weird Tales, Conan the Barbarian became one of the most influential characters of the modern era.  Without Conan, the genre of sword and sorcery would not exist.  He is the inspiration for every bare chested dude wielding a blade, fighting in magical realms.  Usually, with a nubile woman clutching his leg.

Conan eventually became the subject of movies, animation and a television series.  In 1970, Roy Thomas brought Conan to Marvel Comics where he stayed until the millennium.  Marvel recently reacquired the rights to publish Conan, and the Powers That Be perhaps inspired by a classic issue of What If? transported Conan to the now.  

Conan first arrived scowling in Vegas and cursing the wizard Kulan Gath for the unexpected teleportation.  I don't know if his old enemy Gath is the culprit.  It certainly fits his m.o.  However, there's more at work here than mere hocus-pocus.

Conan in the Savage Avengers annual, fought alongside  Damien Hellstrom, who usurped Mephisto's rule of Hell.  I doubt it's a coincidence that Mephisto inveigles himself in Conan's life.

Back in Vegas, Conan meets Nyla, a thief.  Together they set up the heist of the Inferno Hotel.  Unexpectedly, they cross paths with the Black Cat.  Hijinks ensue, and the duo end up with a magical ring that transports them to Wakanda.  All part of the plan.

The fellow wearing Tron is Imus Champion, an obscure Avengers villain.  Don't worry about him.  He's not important.  Mephisto promised Champion that he would be "the most powerful man in the world," which means he's soon to be dog meat.  The ring is the thing that demands attention.

Gosh, that was neat, and it's the kind of event you frequently come to be surprised by in Weird Tales.  The twist allows artists Luke Ross and Nolan Woodward the chance to strut their stuff.

To be fair, you may be asking where's the Serpent Crown.  You're getting a ring.  The story winds you to the discovery of a scepter.  You were promised a Serpent Crown.  I'm sure the 1970s object of power is around here somewhere, but for right now, you just need to sit back and relax for a backdoor Marvel Team-Up book.  In this issue, Conan meets the Black Panther.

This encounter is so entertaining.  On a gut level, it pits possibly the finest natural warrior in the history of literature against a unique royal super-hero who combines fighting prowess with technological savvy.  On another level, the pithy dialogue suits the combatants.  On a third level, Black Panther and Conan exist within the same context.  They are not of modern civilization.  They understand each other instinctually.

I can almost believe that writer Saladin Ahmed imagined this scene first and then built a story around it.  One helluva a story.