Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #131 by Drew Barth

Which Witch

The idea of the witch has changed greatly in comic fiction over the past fifty years. From the wart-nosed villains in any adventure and horror comic to a contemporary symbol of magic that can sidle more on the chaotic neutral side of things than the evil ones. As a result of this shift, it feels like witchy-ness and witch-hood have become newer modes for telling stories about magic. And one of the better stories to come out about witches in the past decade just had its first issue release last week: Mamo by Sas Milledge.

Mamo, at its core, is a story about history and the small coastal town of Haresden. This town and history are filtered through Jo Manalo and her own perceptions of what has been happening to the town and her family for the past few years. We get these bits and pieces as she walks with Orla O’Reilly—the grandchild of Haesden’s late town witch—and learn how much has changed. Or, in some cases, how much things have been forgotten. Routine traps by the fae are almost Jo’s own downfall, despite the fact that recognizing those traps is common knowledge in this world. And while we don’t know the full extent of things just yet, we can feel that the curse on Jo’s mother could be affecting her in ways she doesn’t realize just yet.

What is most striking throughout this first issue is the way in which Milledge is able to maintain this quiet energy in every page. If this had a soundtrack, you could almost hear the single, sustained cello note being continuously. This isn’t a negative energy being shown, but something bordering on intrigue and about to teeter over into peril. Even though there is a curse being referred to throughout this issue, that isn’t the source of this sense of unease. Every motion from Jo and Orla plays on this idea as they’re both constantly unsure of what to make of the other. And the panels they interact in only get smaller and smaller as the first issues progresses—going from these sweeping splash pages in the beginning and ending with cramp quarters at the issue’s climax. It is one of the most inventive uses of the medium I’ve seen in a while.

There is a singular vision in Mamo that Milledge captures perfectly throughout this first issue—appropriate as Milledge is the sole creator credited on this series. And that vision is trying to show us so much in our relationships with magic, history, nature, and just people at large. But the story does all of these with such a deft hand that you never once feel like you’re being pulled out of the story to be told about these themes, but they flow into you just as easily as reading.

Get excited. Get witchy.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #130 by Drew Barth

A Question With No Name

Last week, I talked about Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, DC’s large-scale Black Label books, and the impact those books have had on DC’s new label so far. But Dead Earth was only one piece of the broader series of books. What launched just a couple weeks before was an examination of another character and the different facades they have been given over the decades. The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage by Jeff Lemire, Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Chris Sotomayor takes the titular Question and begins to play with his history—from his start in Hub City to the evil that has been lurking somewhere behind him for decades.

The Question as a character has always lent itself well to the odder mysteries—the hard boiled with a tinge of the supernatural and super heroic. And this tradition continues with The Deaths of Vic Sageas we have the man with no face going against the Beast with One Thousand Faces across history. Things start relatively simple: busting a corrupt police chief in an underage brothel and broadcasting that to the entirety of Hub City. But then Vic Sage starts seeing things. Single panels that hint at something else buzzing just beyond his memory. His oldest friend, Aristotle, knows nothing. But his former master, Richard Dragon, is able to push Sage into former lives that open up his perception of both himself as The Question and the evil that has been percolating throughout Hub City since its inception.

What really makes The Deaths of Vic Sage all the more fascinating is the fact that it feels as though it picks up right from the ending of the Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan The Question series in the late 80s. And, as this series was completed when it was announced that Denny O’Neil himself had died, it acts as a fitting tribute to the late creator as well. There is much in The Deaths of Vic Sage that continues that tradition of classic DC storytelling—the revitalization of older characters, the creation of new villains, and a commitment to pushing forward how one could see comics storytelling. What Lemire, Cowan, Sienkiewicz, and Sotomayor have created here, then, is a story that exists both in the past and present. A character like Vic Sage and The Question can exist at any point in time, as the story proves, but it’s that unceasing quest for the truth that makes him all the more relevant now.

Much like Dead Earth, The Deaths of Vic Sage is reminiscent of classic DC blue-sky thinking. This is the same kind of thinking that brought us series like Solo, Wednesday Comics, and the original Batman: Black and White. It’s hard to overstate how something as simple as changing the dimensions of a comic can lend itself to be read with a different kind of reverence—the stories feel like something special as a result. And there’s an Other Story as well that feels just as special.

Get excited. Get questioning.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #129 by Drew Barth

Large Scale

A couple years ago, DC dissolved their Vertigo imprint and started a series of replacements. Half a dozen pop-up imprints came and went with each maintaining that independent spirit Vertigo espoused.

There was also the Black Label. This was another branch of what Vertigo used to be: more adult-oriented superhero stories. Black Label comics were more distinct as they were physically larger than regular issues—DC would call these “prestige plus” comics. Three years later after the first Black Label book came out, how was this experiment? Besides the pile of Batman or Batman-adjacent books, quite good. One of which that stood out more than any other, however, was Daniel Warren Johnson and Mike Spicer’s Wonder Woman: Dead Earth.

Dead Earth sees Wonder Woman waking up in the Batcave with no memory of why she was there and on an Earth completely changed and ravaged by what survivors have called the Great Fire. Already thrust into battle with the newest scourge of the planet, the Haedra, Diana does what she can to help the survivors of this wasteland. But surviving isn’t merely enough anymore as she convinces those left to join her on the island of Themyscira, convinced that it has been untouched by whatever Great Fire had scorched the rest of the Earth. Her memory, however, is brought back and she begins to remember what had happened: the war, the nukes, and the fight with Superman that ended in his death. All this and the revelation that the Haedra are much more familiar to her than she first knew causes her to reevaluate what she had known about the world of man.

With Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, Daniel Warren Johnson is now one of the best action illustrators in comics. With series like Extremity and Murder Falcon, his lines pulse with a frenetic energy that feels barely controlled. This ominous style is used to great effect with Dead Earth‘s larger formatting. A couple extra inches of page allows for widescreen comics.

It’s hard to find a take on a long-running character like Wonder Woman that feels simultaneously familiar and wholly different. Johnson’s lines are the main attraction for a book like Dead Earth, but no one can discount his understanding of Diana’s character. Compassionate to a fault, but still human at her core, Johnson is able to bring out a side of Wonder Woman that isn’t always fully explored. As a result, Dead Earth is one of the crowning jewels of the Black Label line. But is there anything else just as good? Well, that’s The Question, isn’t it?

Get excited. Get big.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.