Heroes Never Rust #65: Feed the Beast

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust, War

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Born #4, Darick Robertson, Frank Castle, Garth Ennis, sean ironman, The Punisher, Tom Palmer

Heroes Never Rust #65 by Sean Ironman

Feed the Beast: What a Man Must Become to Survive Vietnam

Many of the Marvel Comics characters created in the 1960s have their origin tied to war. The Fantastic Four tried to beat the Russians to Mars during the Cold War. The Incredible Hulk was born during a gamma bomb test. The Punisher didn’t make his first appearance until 1974, but maybe he’s lasted so long because his origin is tied to war, like the others. Characters like the Fantastic Four and the Hulk were created, were scarred, because of some deeply human trait. They are parables to show us mankind’s flaws. They are comics that want peace, not warmongering—no matter how many battles those heroes find themselves in. The Punisher fits into that idea. Some readers prefer stories where the protagonist is a good person. I am not one of those readers. I don’t have to agree with the protagonist’s actions. I don’t agree with what the Punisher does, but I can understand it. That’s enough for me. In the final issue of Born, Frank Castle gets the closest he will get to becoming the Punisher until his family dies. And it’s in the midst of battle.

The issue opens with the greatest panel sequence in the miniseries. A close-up of an American soldier holding his face in both hands. Blood is on his hands. It’s raining. More blood flows and drips down his hands. He removes them from his face and he has no eyes and half his nose is gone. His mouth is filled with blood. In the final panel, he falls face first into a puddle and dies. “There is a Great Beast loose in the world of men,” the narration over the first panelr reads. “It awoke in dark times, to fight a terrible enemy. It stormed through Europe, across the far Pacific, and crushed the evil that it found there underfoot.” According to the narration, this “Great Beast” came to destroy evil. It was good at one point. But now that evil has been defeated, there is no putting away the Great Beast. “So the Great Beast must be fed: and every generation, our country goes to war to do just that.” The second and third page is a shot of the Vietnamese overpowering American troops. Castle and a few others fire from behind sandbags. Grenades are thrown. Pieces of heads are blown apart. There’s a severed arm off to the side. mid-air. The narration reads, “Today is the day we feed the Beast.”

It’s not long before Castle, Goodwin, and Angel, along with many more make a run for it. Angel stops to fire at the enemy. Goodwin tries to get him to keep running. Angel manages a few words before his head is blown clear off. “There ain’t no God, fool! Look around you! there ain’t no muthafuckin’ God!”

Anti-aircraft guns are used on the Vietnamese. Some are blown away. But there are just too many enemy soldiers. American jets fly overhead and drop bombs. “I was so certain I would make it,” Goodwin says in narration. “The big freedom bird. Thirty-six and a wake-up. I am out of here. In the end I can do no more than follow on a killer’s heels, rushing with him to his Alamo.” A soldier aflame runs at Goodwin with a bayonette ready to strike. Goodwin is grabbed and pulled into a plane. Beautiful flight attendants call his name. One says, “You made it, you silly son of a bitch.” He smiles with tears in his eyes and the plane flies off into the white of the background. He’s dead.

As Castle blows away Vietnamese soldiers, and actually stabs one in the stomach with the rifle when the barrel burns out, a voice tempts him. The voice says it can help him. Castle just needs to accept the help. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I don’t believe the voice to be of supernatural origin. I believe it’s inside Castle. I believe Castle accepts the beast within himself. He becomes a savage. He lets go of his humanity to fight his order. And he lives. He should have died in that battle, but against all odds, he pulled through.

Goodwin couldn’t give up his humanity. He couldn’t give up on his hope to return home to the good America. Castle gave up everything he had and he survived. He fed the Great Beast inside. He returns to America. The last shot of Vietnam is of Goodwin, blood soaking his shirt where his heart would be. His corpse is left behind. Maybe that’s what happens in war. There’s no humanity left by the end. Castle goes home, but he’ll never be the same. The Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk turn into something inhuman, but are still able to hold onto their humanity underneath. A lot happened in the world in the 1960s. The Punisher still looks human, but he’s not complete. Vietnam has created that hole in him.

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Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Heroes Never Rust #54: Introductions

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Darick Robertson, Garth Ennis, Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, The Boys

Heroes Never Rust #54 by Sean Ironman

Introductions

Now that the tone and racy content has been set, issue two of The Boys sets up the characters. In the premiere issue, readers were shown two of the main characters (Billy Butcher and Wee Hughie), but now the rest of the team comes out to play. There are twenty-two pages of content, three characters to introduce, two main characters whose stories must be furthered, and there’s still world-building that needs to be done. There’s not much room to spend on each character of the team. Plus, introductions shouldn’t feel like exposition. It’s a lot of work for Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, but they solve any problems with a strong structure.

The issue opens with Rayner (the CIA contact for The Boys) looking through files of past cases of The Boys. She gave Butcher the go ahead to start up again and seems to have doubts. Other than Butcher making superheroes pay for being dicks, readers haven’t been given much about what Butcher and his team actually does. In two pages, Ennis and Robertson set up just how devastating Butcher’s team can be, while still keeping a mystery element in play. Readers aren’t shown much, but they are given hints with excerpts from the files.

“Brutal beating unlike anything on record at this hospital”
“Prisoner demanded, then begged not be released”
“Extremely ragged decapitation, followed by”

It’s enough to set up the team and show that Rayner is not fully on board with Butcher. Most importantly, the plot doesn’t stop to tell the reader what happened in the past. It uses past events to complicate Rayner’s relationship with Butcher and gives the reader a peek at the team, which Ennis and Robertson then go into.

The rest of the issue jumps back and forth between a conversation between Butcher and Hughie as Butcher attempts to make Hughie a part of the team, and Butcher collecting the other three team members (The Frenchman, The Female, and Mother’s Milk). We all know Hughie will eventually join the team so I won’t waste time here discussing Butcher talking with Hughie. Now, I like Butcher and Hughie, but a conversation could be awfully boring to read. So Ennis and Robertson break up the issue so that it’s not shown in chronological order. At points in the conversation, the story jumps to Butcher approaching another member of the team.

The first is The Frenchman. He’s drinking espresso at a coffee shop and talking to himself. Some assholes in suits make fun of him. “Fuckin’ French faggot.” “Goddamn surrender monkey.” He stares at the suits cool and calm. Then, quickly, he puts goggles on and beats the shit out of them. Butcher walks in, and The Frenchman calms down, runs up to Butcher, and hugs him, happy to see his friend again. Then, they walk off, leaving the suits bloody and either dead or unconscious. The action scene does a good job breaking up the conversation between Butcher and Hughie, but it does so to show The Frenchman’s character. It’s not just random action scene. The reader sees that The Frenchman is dangerous but not wild. While he shows a range of emotions in the short scene, he’s not emotional. He’s in control and can go from sitting with a nice espresso into killing somebody within a second.

The second is The Female She’s on a doorstep, small and thin, with a jacket that’s three times too large. She knocks quietly, and the bad guys inside argue and then try to get rid of her. She grabs the man at the door and shuts the door behind her. Butcher watches the house from across the street. Readers only get the screams of those inside. Then, a face, not the skull, just the face, ripped from a man hits a window and slides off. That’s all readers get from The Female. She never speaks. But, readers can see that she might be more dangerous than The Frenchman. She uses her looks to her advantage, but in a different way than many comic book female characters. She doesn’t have huge breasts, long legs, and wavy hair. She looks sad. People drop their guard, and then she tears them apart.

A couple of summers ago, I took a poetry class and the professor said that poetry is about creating a pattern and then breaking that pattern. This is done by creating a structure to stanzas and lines, and, at the end, changing it up. It creates a tension in the structure. That’s what Ennis and Robertson do here. We get two introductions with violent action scenes. These scenes show the capabilities of The Frenchman and The Female. But, with the third member, Mother’s Milk, the pattern changes. Mother’s Milk, a large black man, is shown in his dining room drinking coffee from a mug that has “Bad ass” on the side. His first line of dialogue is “Butcher, man…I dunno.” He’s calm and seems tired of it all. He only gets a little worked up when Butcher puts his mug down on the counter without using a coaster. The first two introductions are three pages each, while Mother’s Milk’s intro is four pages. He seems more important than the other two because of the change in pattern.

Mother’s Milk’s daughter comes in dressed in a small tank top that shows off her breasts, and when he tries to talk to her about it, she yells at him and leaves. This guy can’t even control his own household. He’s a far cry from the other two, but I get the feeling he’s got something brewing inside. Butcher gets the action here. He goes outside and yells at the daughter and crushes the gun from two guys she’s hanging with. This introduction gives more color to the issue—it complicates the structure, making Mother’s Milk stand out and making the issue more than just the other teammates killing a bunch of people. Changing that pattern helps save the issue from a bunch of boring exposition and setup.

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Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read inThe Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Heroes Never Rust #53: Censorship

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Heroes Never Rust

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censorship, Darick Robertson, Garth Ennis, Megan Kelso, sean ironman

Heroes Never Rust #53 by Sean Ironman

Censorship

A couple of years ago, I went to a cartoonist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna, Florida. One afternoon, I sat on the porch with the master artist for my group, Megan Kelso, creator of Queen of the Black Black and Squirrel Mother. We spoke about my work, both past and future. She said she chose me for the residency because my work was confident, that I was going to tell the story I wanted to tell and it didn’t matter if the reader was on board or not. At the time, I thought it was a weird comment, but I kept returning to Kelso’s words when I read new work.

Nothing is made for everyone. Whatever comic, essay, story, poem, movie, music, or anything else is for every person in the world. Your favorite story is another person’s most hated story. I’ve come to think of creating art as something like this: I sit down at my desk in the morning and I have the whole world as my audience. Once I decide to write, I’ve lost like half the world. Once I decide to make a comic, I’ve lost like 80% of the world. Once I decide to make a comic about a dog and a T-rex travelling through time together, I’ve lost another 10%. The goal isn’t to finish with the most audience. Well, maybe if you’re a salesperson. My goal is to make sure whatever audience I have left is truly affected by my work. Part of creating a work of art is that you just have to go for it. It doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like it or thinks it’s stupid, you just do it the best you can and go all the way with the concept. There will be others out there.

I love a lot of comic book writers. Way too many to list here. But usually, no matter how much I love one comic that a certain writer has done, he or she has written another that I don’t care for. Except for Garth Ennis. Everything I’ve read from Garth Ennis has ranged from good to fantastic, with Preacher being my favorite comic. One of the main reasons I love his work is because he just goes for things, regardless of whether a lot of people will love it. He’s confident in his work. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to take a look at volume one of his series The Boys, drawn by Darick Robertson, another one of my favorite creators.

The Boys is about a CIA squad who monitors the superhero community and makes sure no one is causing trouble. For decades comics have attempted to bring superheroes down to the level of humanity. Instead of the god-like Superman, Marvel Comics brought in the Fantastic Four, Spider-man, Daredevil, and the X-Men. More humanity was brought to superheroes. Regular people were superheroes. In the 1980s, the deconstruction of the superhero came around. What if superheroes were in the real world? Many of these comics had superheroes taking control of the world or these comics pointed out how superheroes couldn’t really exist. In The Boys, Ennis and Robertson take the reality of superheroes in a different direction. Superheroes aren’t conquering the world or deciding what is best for the world—Superheroes are dicks, at least many of them. They are incredibly powerful and popular. They walk around like frat boys who think they own the place. They are sexual deviants and care more about public perception, money, and status than saving the world. In a way, I think The Boys is closer to what superheroes would really be like than Watchmen or other comics. The Boys is a dark comedy, but sometimes comedies can get closer to a serious subject than a straight drama. This comic has a lot of sexual content, violence and profanity. So much so, in fact, that it was dropped by its original publisher, Wildstorm, an imprint of DC Comics. Luckily, Dynamite Entertainment picked up the series. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Ennis said, “We’d have died on the vine [at DC]. The book would have been chipped and chipped away at until writing it was pure frustration.”

The first issue focuses on two characters: Butcher, the leader of the Boys, and Hughie, who will become the newest recruit. The comic opens with a full page shot—a close-up of a superhero’s head being crushed by a boot. With Robertson on art, the image is incredibly detailed. The superhero has no teeth. His nose is crushed. One eye is swollen shut. Blood sprays. The ground is cracked. Underneath comes the title for the individual issue, “The Name of the Game.” Some readers don’t like violence. I don’t get it, but okay. People like what they like. I saw Steven Spielberg’s film, Munich, with a girlfriend and her parents. I loved it. They hated it. They said it was too violent. I don’t know what they expected from a film about the Israeli government’s secret response to the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. But, oh well. That didn’t make it a bad movie. Those people just weren’t into what the filmmakers were going for. Same thing with The Boys. If the reader doesn’t want to read a very violent comic, they know on page one what they’re getting into. They can stop right there. Dr. David James Poissant, author of The Heaven of Animals, taught me that the job of a writer at the introduction of his or her story is to let the reader know what they are in for. It’s up to the reader to decide if they want to keep reading. Ennis does just that.

By page four, we’re introduced to Wee Hughie, who is on a date with his girlfriend. They say they love each other and they kiss. Oh, how cute. Then out of nowhere, a superhero knocks a supervillain right into Hughie’s girlfriend and crushes her against a brick wall. Hughie is left holding her arms, ripped off her body just below the elbow. The superhero doesn’t care. He beats the villain and then runs off to the next adventure. What a dick.

This sequence is shocking not just because of what happens, but because of how Ennis and Robertson break the page. On one page is Hughie and his girlfriend all happy and lovey. The next page’s first panel is Hughie holding his girlfriend’s severed arms, and she’s already been crushed into the brick wall. Her death happens between panels. In comics, time passes between panels. Static images come to life in the gutters, the gaps between the panels. Here, Ennis and Robertson give the reader, and Hughie, a shock by having such a huge moment happen in the gutters. She’s dead and gone before we even realize what’s going on.

Something similar occurs on pages seven and eight. Butcher goes to see a woman at the CIA. He walks into the room. She looks at him. Then, the next page opens with Butcher having sex with her doggystyle. It gives the scene a much larger effect and allows Ennis and Robertson to quicken the pace. The boring stuff is skipped. Also, by page eight, we’ve had a superhero’s head being crushed, a woman crushed into a wall, her boyfriend holding her severed arms, and Butcher fucking a woman and saying, “Wait’ll you see where I wipe my dick.”

Obviously, this comic isn’t for everyone. This is the first third of the first issue. There are seventy-two issues. If you don’t like it by page eight, you should read something else. It’s not Ennis and Robertson’s job to give the reader something they like. It’s their job to create what they set out to create. Hopefully, enough people like it and read it so Ennis and Robertson can eat and pay their bills. But that’s it. They’re going to do what they want, regardless of readers thinking the comics is too filthy or violent. They get my respect for that, and my money because I happen to love what they do.

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