Heroes Never Rust #66: Superman, A Man’s Son

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Bjarne Hansen, Heroes Never Rust, Jeph Loeb, sean ironman, Superman, Superman: For All Seasons, Tim Sale

Heroes Never Rust #66 by Sean Ironman

Man of Steel: Superman, A Man’s Son

One of the complaints that I hear about the superhero films made in the last few years is that they are origin stories. How many times must we get Spider-Man’s origin? Superman’s origin? I must admit that I have made the same complaints. Superman, after all, has been around since 1938. There is a reason why he has lasted so long, and it is not because he only has a great origin story. These characters have a lot of potential and have many great stories and ideas that can be adapted to film. Is the answer to stop crafting stories that deal with the character’s origin? No. A character’s past can be an important aspect of a story. When I am writing memoir, I may use an event multiple times. I find that different parts of one event are important at different times. The trick is to not write the same scene again and again and again. In Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Superman: For All Season, Superman’s origin is given, but told through events that differ from the usual approach.

Superman is well known, especially his origin. Krypton explodes. Superman is sent, as a child, in a rocket ship to Earth. Ma and Pa Kent find the ship and raise him as their own. Some people may remember other characters such as Lana Lang, a love interest in Smallville. Loeb and Sale don’t repeat these events. Too many people know about them. And let’s face it, who is reading Superman comics? Well, people who read Superman comics. People who are familiar with comics, or perhaps familiar with the character from films. How many readers come to Superman: For All Seasons and have no knowledge of the character? I doubt very few, if any at all.

The comic skips Krypton and skips the Kents finding the rocket ship. The story even begins after Clark Kent has discovered his abilities. Where’s the tension and conflict in him discovering his abilities? For All Seasons is not about Superman finding his powers—it is about why Clark Kent must become Superman. The first issue, “Spring,” deals with Clark during his final months in Smallville. It is about a boy who must leave the only home he has ever known because he has the ability to be more than he is.

The first issue is narrated by Pa Kent. It wastes no time to reveal Superman. Narration opens with a close-up of the S on Superman’s chest. Pa Kent goes down the line of what Superman can do. Leap tall buildings. Change the course of rivers. Outrun a bullet. “Believe it or not, there was a time before all that. When he was just…a man’s son.” The page is laid out in three panels. In each one, the “camera” moves closer and closer to Superman’s chest, until the last panel is mostly yellow. But the next page is what sets the tone and focus of the issue. We get a large two-page layout consisting of two panels. Both are two-pages wide, with the top two-thirds consisting of a shot of Clark Kent in overalls just off his porch in Smallville and the final third of the spread being a close-up of Clark shouting for Pa Kent. Instead of a page showing off what Clark is capable of, or even focusing on Clark, the panels leave so much room for the background, for Smallville. In the largest panel, Clark is far to the right and far from the camera. The porch takes up most of the panel. We see boots, a barrel, a porch swing with pillows and a blanket. We see the family dog and chickens, and there’s a red barn a few yards away. The second panel is mainly the yellow sky darkening in the evening. Clark is out on the very right, calling for his father. The focus is not on Clark but on what made Clark Superman (and I don’t mean his superpowers).

Clark Kent leads a comfortable life, for the most part. His family has a nice little farm, he has friends and a girlfriend, he knows the town people, and they are kind to him. Clark can spend his whole life in Smallville and lead a happy life. But that wouldn’t be best for the rest of the world. Clark can help people. He saves a man from a tornado and Pa Kent reflects back on it. “There are so few things a person can be really sure of. But, I believe, in the wild trouble of that moment…our son…became a man.” After, Clark looks out at the destruction and says, “I could have done more,” and Pa Kent thinks back that thinking he could have done more will continue to haunt him. They raised him right, and now they have to let him go out into the world. Superman: For All Seasons is more about a father having to let his child leave home than Superman battling some supervillain. It’s one of my favorite Superman stories. Pa Kent says it best on the final page of the first issue, “At the end of the day, I’m not sure we’re all that different from any other parents. We worry about our son. That he’s eating right. That he’s making friends. That he’ll stay out of harm’s way. Even if he is Superman.” By focusing on Pa Kent’s reflections and staying away from the obvious points of Superman’s youth (the discovery of his powers), Superman: For All Seasons allows an entry point for the reader. Haven’t we all felt we’ve had to move on, move away from our family and friends, from the place we are safe, so that we may have chance to reach our own potential?

_______

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 #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.

_______

Photo by John King

Heroes Never Rust #63: Lost in Vietnam (The Punisher’s Platoon)

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Born, sean ironman, The Punisher, Vietnam

Heroes Never Rust #63 by Sean Ironman

Lost in Vietnam: The Punisher’s Platoon

In the first issue of Born, readers were given two points of view: Stevie Goodwin and Frank Castle. Readers only get Goodwin’s viewpoint in the second issue. Frank Castle remains as the main character. By showing him through Goodwin’s eyes, the reader can be guided into the difficult story.The first act has Goodwin attempting to keep his friend, Angel, off drugs. Many soldiers at Valley Forge have given up. Castle and his platoon are the only ones who still patrol. When Goodwin drags Angel out of a drug bunker, Castle approaches and asks if Angel is clean. Goodwin says yes and Castle walks off. Many readers might view Castle as a hard commander, but I don’t. He doesn’t reprimand Angel. He doesn’t argue with the men still in the bunker sitting around high. What soldiers do doesn’t matter to him. If they can shoot, then they can shoot. If they can’t, then they are no good to Castle.

Goodwin and Angel go out on patrol with Castle. Goodwin tells readers that he doesn’t have to go out with Castle’s platoon. He says he’s only there for Angel, but that doesn’t make much sense. If he let Angel get high, Angel wouldn’t be out on patrol. Goodwin wouldn’t have to look after him. “Some of us are here for our brothers, some of us for our horror stories. Some of us even still believe in duty. Americans through the looking-glass, lost in Vietnam.”

Goodwin is lost. There’s no right or wrong in Vietnam. Neither side are angels. No one is a war hero in Born. When the platoon comes under attack, snipers shoot down American soldiers. Goodwin and the rest of the platoon hide. Castle is the only fighter. He stands tall in the wide open and fires a sixty into the trees, taking out the snipers. As the enemy is killed, Castle doesn’t smile. He takes no joy in this. He’s shot in the arm, and to take a line from Predator, he doesn’t have time to bleed. He’s emotionless. When the Vietnamese are dead, Castle stands over their corpses. Goodwin thinks, “The black pig-iron in his hands falls silent. Try as it might, the world cannot exhale.”

American soldiers find a Vietnamese soldier, a woman, bleeding out but still alive. Goodwin and the rest stand in a circle as one American pushes the dying woman onto her stomach and rapes her. Where is the good America that Goodwin spoke of in the first issue? The American solider who rapes the woman is unimportant. A minor character introduced just for this scene. He could be any one of those soldiers. Any person who has lost their sense of morality.

Castle shoots the Vietnamese woman in the head and tells the American, “No rape. We’re here to kill the enemy. That’s all.” Then, he walks off. When no one is looking—well, except Goodwin—Castle drowns the rapist. Castle, in his own mind, has not lost his sense of morality. He only sees the world in black and white and will never see the gray. At the end of the issue, Goodwin states that he is scared of Castle. “Because this place is hell and we need a man like him to lead us through it, and what that says about us in unthinkable.”

Goodwin stays quiet, instead of telling the other soldiers. He might not like Castle, but he needs Castle. In that last scene, Castle is only shown in shadows. When he says he wanted to punish the rapist, he has no eyes. Only darkness. The cover of the second issue shows an American solder’s skull in a cracked helmet. Worms and plants cover the head. If Goodwin wants to get out of Vietnam, he needs to stick close to Castle. That’s why he goes out on the patrols. That’s why he stays quiet. Americans in Vietnam need a leader who is willing to damn himself so that right can be right and wrong can be wrong and those that do wrong can be punished. Goodwin needs to believe that right and wrong still count for somebody.

_______

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.

_______

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.

___________

Heroes Never Rust #52: Choice Over Power

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Heroes Never Rust, Muties, sean ironman

Heroes Never Rust #52 by Sean Ironman

Choice Over Power

he other day I was driving down I-4 and thinking about Harry Potter and how much I don’t give a shit. Living in Orlando, I can’t escape all this talk about the new section of Harry Potter opening at Universal Studios. I was given the first book a couple of years ago, but I’ve only read the first chapter. Yeah, yeah, I know I should read it. I’ve been hearing that since the first movie was released. But I just don’t care. I thought most of the movies ranged from bad to okay, with a couple of them being good.

So I’m driving and thinking about how I don’t care about Harry Potter and I don’t want to read the books and I figured out why. I hate the character of Harry Potter. I think the story would be much more interesting if he was killed toward the beginning and Hermione, who is clearly the best character in the story, had to fight against Voldemort and his gang. I don’t care for characters who are special. Something happened to Harry Potter that he had no control over and now he’s some special kid who’s the only one who can defeat the great big bad guy. Give me a break. I know it’s not quite fate, but it’s close. I don’t like characters who are special so that they are the only ones who can save the day. It’s boring.

Yet, I love the X-Men, a group of superheroes born with superpowers. For a minute, I was stumped. How can I dislike a story that focuses on a character who’s in a situation he has no control over and like a story that focuses on characters who are in a situation they have no control over?

In 2002, there was a mini-series called Muties. The difference between a mutant and Harry Potter, in regards to my earlier issue, is that mutants might get superpowers, but that doesn’t make them superheroes. They are hated and feared for who they are. They are killed for who they are. If Harry Potter was born a wizard, and then had adventures just based on that, I might be into it. But being some special kid makes me think of greater issues in our society, of people thinking they’re special. No one is special. But that’s my own issues.

Back to Muties. The mini-series presented the daily life of mutants in the Marvel Universe, away from the X-Men. What’s it like to have mutant powers without having Professor Xavier and his school? Each of the six issues focused on a different character, unrelated to the other issues, and was drawn by a different artist. The first issue focused on Jared, a boy who was smart enough to skip three grades. As the youngest in high school, he’s picked on and doesn’t have many friends. His single friend is a girl he’s crushing on named Kate. The basic plot is young Jared likes Kate, but he walks in on Kate making out with one of the bullies. Jared asks Dunk, a bully who is having Jared do his homework, if he could get his friend to lay off Kate so Jared could have a shot. Dunk refuses and beats Jared. Then, poor Jared makes a poor decision. He gets his father’s gun and brings it to school. He fires at Kate, her boyfriend, and Dunk, killing Kate and Dunk. Then, Jared is taken to jail.

That’s the story. It’s not much on plot, but I don’t know if you noticed, I didn’t mention anything about a mutant. Jared is not a mutant. He’s smart, but smart just like a lot of kids. He doesn’t have telepathy. He just reads a lot. The only mutant that’s in the story is Dunk, and he’s not shown to be a mutant until the very end when Jared shoots him. Dunk, a star basketball player, stretches like Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four. He doesn’t use it to save the day. He doesn’t stretch to protect his friend or Kate. He’s desperate, reacting, trying to save his life. Being born with mutant powers hasn’t made him special. It won’t save him. If anything, he’s had to live in secret, keep his power hidden. After Dunk is shot, the students say, “Jared stopped him” and “You saved us, man.” Poor Dunk was hanging out in the hall, talking with friends. He wasn’t using his powers. But that doesn’t matter in this universe because mutants suck. Even the title of the comic, Muties, is a derogatory term for mutants.

Issue one has an interesting art style where the pages change style. The first page is in a painted-style with no gutters. It’s a full-page shot of the high school with a small panel laid on top, with a thin black border. The second page is another full page painted shot of Jared in class. Then, the third page showing a scene in class features panels without a tight border on a loose-leaf background. The panels change from a painted style to tight pencils. The lines from the loose-leaf run into the panels. It’s like the notes Jared takes in class. We’re getting closer to his point-of-view.

Most pages stick to one art style, but later, the styles start to overlap. Whenever we need to get closer to Jared and his viewpoint, the notepad style returns. On one page, his drunk father sends him to the store to get more frozen dinners. The page is painted when we are far from Jared, but the one panel of him at the store, upset he’s had to go out again for his father, is back to the notepad. It’s also the first panel on the page that gives us a few words of interiority. To sympathize with someone who will kill two people by the end of the issue, the reader needs to really feel for Jared. The change in art style allows an almost silent method to understand his motivation. Words are kept too a minimum throughout.

When I read a great comic, there ends up being a page or two that I can recall for years afterward. The opening of the second volume of Maus with Art Spiegelman and his drafting table on a pile of corpses, for example. Or when Magneto says, “I can’t. I’m concentrating,” and rips Apocalypse in half at the end of the Age of Apocalypse. Here, it’s the two pages with Dunk being shot and the aftermath. The first panel on the page is in the painted style of Dunk stretching to get out of the way of Jared’s fire. Then, the second goes to a panel closer to most comics. The gun in Jared’s hand is three times the size. This panel is where Dunk is shot and killed. My reading of it is that we are in Jared’s mind here. He’s thinking of himself as a hero gunning down one of those evil muties. On the next page, when one of the students thanks Jared for killing Dunk, the art style returns to the notebook style, minus the loose-leaf blue lines. We’re closer to Jared there. When Jared realizes that Kate was gunned down too, the comic starts to distance itself from Jared’s point of view and returns to the painted style of the first couple of pages. Again, comics can’t just rely on text. The visual medium requires more than just someone drawing pictures in panels. Muties shows us what it’s like to be a mutant. A kid can shoot one in the hall of a high school and people congratulate him. When he shoots a regular person, that’s when things turn sour. Being able to stretch didn’t save Dunk. He wasn’t meant for something greater. He just wanted to live like every other kid, and when he’s killed, people are glad, even though he never caused any of them harm.

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Sean Ironman (Episode 102) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Heroes Never Rust #49: Is Gud Dog?

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Heroes Never Rust

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Frank Quitely, Grant Morrison, Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, We3

Heroes Never Rust #49 by Sean Ironman

Is Gud Dog?

To me, the comics medium is my favorite medium for stories. I like movies. I like TV. Prose. Poetry. Music. I like stories, but I love comics. One of the reasons I love comics is that I feel artists can do more in a comic book than in other mediums. You have visuals and text, so the best of both worlds can exist. But there’s also really no money in comics. It costs an artist just as much to draw a planet being destroyed as it does to show a person drinking a cup of coffee. Ideas can get wilder without some suit coming in and saying it’s too expensive.

Over the next three weeks, I’m going to take a look at one of my favorite comics from the 2000s, We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. We3 can’t exist in another medium—at least, it would have to change quite a bit. It’s about three animals (dog, cat, and rabbit) who are put in robotic suits by the military for research. The military is going to shut down the program, so the doctor who cares for the animals lets them loose. The military goes after them. When it was released a decade ago, it was described as Homeward Bound meets Terminator. It’s extremely violent, with very little dialogue. And there’s barely a plot. Basically, I described everything that happens, minus the ending, already. It’s mostly a showcase for Frank Quitely’s artwork.

But it works. The focus on art has been lacking from comics in the last decade or so. Comics goes back and forth, with a few years of writer-driven comics, and then a few years of art-driven comics. Hopefully, more focus on art comes around soon. I think when there’s a focus on art, a comic becomes less of a storyboard for a film. In a writing community, I hear people say the art doesn’t matter when it comes to comics. It’s story, they say, that’s important. Yes, story is important, but by taking a step back when it comes to word balloons and captions, a strong artist can tell the story in a new and innovative way.

When I say We3 is focused on the art, I don’t mean to say the comic has very detailed art that gives the reader something pretty to look at. It has that, but Quitely is also focused on how the comic presents such pictures, in the service of a story.

The opening sequence of We3 is amazing not just because how well Quitely draws a man running on a treadmill or the detail he puts on a close-up of a man’s eyes as he sweats. The sequence is amazing because of how Quitely paces the scene and how he builds tension until the three animals obliterate the man running on the treadmill. There’s no dialogue, although Morrison does get in some cheats with a couple of question marks and exclamation points in word balloons. There’s so much the scene doesn’t show. A group of armed men sit in a rundown living room. We see them look at glowing red eyes in the chimney. Then, we cut away to the man on the treadmill. We don’t even see the animals fire. We don’t really see the animals much, except in shadows and a glimpse of them entering and exiting a room. It’s creepy and plays like a cold opening on a TV show. The scene sets up how dangerous these animals are.

The next scene is of Doctor Roseanne, the woman who cares for the animals. For those of you who have trouble with exposition, study this scene. It begins with here trying to get a parrot to talk. Through this, we see her holding a series of cards. One has RIP printed on the cover. She opens a door to another room in her house. It’s an empty bed and an empty desk. Beside the bed , there seems to be some medical supplies. The page finishes with a close-up of tears in Roseanne’s eyes. When she exits the room, we see a photo on the desk of a man with a young girl in a graduation gown. There’s no talk about her father dying. We’re just shown these little details as she gets ready to leave.

The first issue’s highlight, in terms of art, iis the six-page sequence of security camera footage. We get six rows of three panels each for these six pages. Eighteen panels for six pages showing Roseanne letting the animals go after she’s told they will be decommissioned. We see her let them loose. We see them escape. We see other scientists and security respond. Once again, there’s next to no dialogue. This sequence works, I think, because of a little detail—the panels don’t fit on the page .The last row on the first pages is cut off. The top and bottom rows on the next page are cut off. We aren’t looking at separate comic panels, not really. What we’re looking at is a spread of the security camera footage that security is looking at. We’re in that little room where a security officer has a whole bunch of little TVs. There’s a few lines of dialogue, but the word balloons have ripples around them. It’s an interesting way to show that the dialogue isn’t heard clearly. Security is watching the footage. That makes the scene more interesting because we aren’t getting some random artistic layout that means nothing. The decision to show the security footage is story-based.

I can’t end this week’s column without talking about the animals. The dog is named 1. The cat is 2. And the rabbit is 3. Together, they are We3. The animals talk and have personalities. But they aren’t like animals in Homeward Bound or other stories. They have a fractured diction and have the personalities of the respective animal. The dog is a dog, not a person in a dog body. The dog asks a military man, “I. M. Gud. R. U. Gud 2?” When the military man doesn’t respond, the dog tilts his head, upset and curious, and says, “? R. U. 2?” The man says calls the dog a good dog, and the dog says, “Gud dog. Is Gud dog?” The dog just wants the person’s approval. The cat is more wild. “Mmmmmen st!nk. Bossssss! St!ink!” The rabbit just seems a bit dumb. “No. Grass. East. Now. Grass.”

After they are let out, the cat and rabbit look to the dog for direction. He tells them they will go “home.” The sad part is that the three have no home. The cat says as much on the last page. “We3 no home now.” Then they run into the forest and military helicopters in the distance fly toward them. The animals don’t get much to say, but their limited dialogue works well. I care for them much quicker because I don’t lose focus on what the military has done to them. Even when they speak, I think about the torture they have had to endure because man sucks. I think it’s important to build a story that enables the reader to imagine aspects that they are never shown. I want them to find home and I really know nothing about them.

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Heroes Never Rust #46: The Turning Point

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Alan Moore, Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Heroes Never Rust #46 by Sean Ironman

The Turning Point

The fourth issue of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the most action-packed one yet. The league attempts to retrieve the cavorite from “The Doctor” and stop the devious foreigner from building his airships. We finally see Mr. Hyde cut loose and rampage his way from room to room creating a distraction so Quartermain and Mina can get their hands on the cavorite. Of course, the team succeeds, escapes unscathed, and hands over the cavorite to Campion Bond. Job well done. Britain has been saved.

But wait, this is the fourth issue of a six issue miniseries. It’s not over. It’s just beginning. With all the violence and death and dismemberment in this issue, many readers might think the gruesome deaths of the countless evil henchmen take center stage. But there’s a lot of suspicious behavior to be found. There are a lot of secrets.

The issue opens with Captain Nemo talking with two of his own men (Ishmael and Broad Arrow Jack). Nemo doesn’t trust Campion Bond. “Bond believes we are his pawns. He thinks no-one observes his game. But I am no-one. I observe everything and to play with Nemo is to play games with destruction.” He refers to himself in the third-person so you know he’s serious. Captain Nemo sits out most of the action, putting together his plan.

Another trick of a character is Mr. Hyde pretending not to see the Invisible Man. We get a couple of panels from Mr. Hyde’s point of view, and we see that he can make out the heat signature of the Invisible Man. Mr. Hyde is like Predator from Predator. But he pretends that he can’t see him. When the Invisible Man points in the right direction to go, Mr. Hyde says, “You keep forgetting, Griffin. I can’t see you.” The reason behind this lie doesn’t come out in this issue. But it does change the way the reader views Mr. Hyde. He isn’t a mindless hulk. He might not look like a person, but he’s not quite an animal either. Dr. Jekyll’s more dangerous than a beast. When the Invisible Man tells him they have to rescue Mina and Quartermain, Mr. Hyde still holds a grudge from when they captured him. “Murray and Quartermain. Huhughh. Yes, I remember them from Paris. They shot me, poisoned me and abducted me. I don’t think there’s any great hurry, is there?” I don’t know why Mr. Hyde lies to the Invisible Man, but I can make an educated guess that it’s not for something good. The Invisible Man better watch out.

The last segment of the issue reveals the largest and most dangerous of the hidden truths. Last time, I wrote about how based on Alan Moore’s previous work, we were going to get to a point when the league turns against the government. This issue features the beginning of that turn. Campion Bond leaves with the cavorite, but then we find out the Invisible Man is nowhere to be found. He’s following Campion, seemingly under the orders of Captain Nemo. I really enjoyed that the only reason we now see where Campion goes off to is because one of the members of the league follows him. Many writers might have just chosen to reveal to the reader the identity of Campion’s boss. But that always comes off as bullshit. If the reader is following a character or set of characters, then we should know what they know. There may be exceptions to that rule, but I think it’s a good one to have. If a point-of-view character knows something, the reader should know it to. We find out the identity of Campion’s boss because one of the characters finds out. We don’t just get the writer revealing it to the reader. It’s a part of the story.

Mina Murray thought Campion’s boss, Mr. M, meant Mycroft Holmes, is the elder brother of Sherlock Holmes. She was close. While Mr. M is not Sherlock’s brother, he is a Sherlock Holmes’s character. Mr. M is Professor James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s arch-nemesis. Apparently, he used the league to fight a rival crime lord and to steal the cavorite for his own insidious schemes. We’ll have to wait until the next issue to see what the league does with this knowledge.

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Heroes Never Rust #45: Undercover

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Alan Moore, Heroes Never Rust, sean ironman, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Heroes Never Rust #45 by Sean Ironman

Undercover

Now that the team has come together, the mission can begin. As Captain Nemo puts it, “An enemy of Britain has stolen its one sample of cavorite, the key to the mastery of the air.” The more I re-read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the more I think about Alan Moore’s other works. Moore wrote Watchmen, a comic that asks the question, if we put our trust and power into superheroes to save us, who’s there to keep them in check? In V for Vendetta, Moore’s story follows an anarchist who fights against a repressive Britain. In his best work (at least in my opinion), Miracleman, Moore follows a superhero who slowly separates himself from society, from humanity, and comes to be thought of as a god. There seems to always be an anti-establishment thing going on in Moore’s work. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the heroes work for the British government. But I still think Moore is fighting against the establishment.

The so-called villain, “The Doctor,” has stolen the cavorite (a metal introduced in The War of the Worlds), which will help create airships that can drop bombs on England. But we never see this. Not once, at least as of yet, has the heroes seen the Doctor, or has the reader been given a scene with The Doctor, or even a henchmen running off with the cavorite. Campion Bond, a government stooge tells the league and they go off. There have been no threats, no attacks. The league is trusting the British government, and I fear they will regret it.

The idea of the foreigner, of the outsider, being less than a white male British citizen is staying with the comic series. To blend in, the Invisible Man puts on the whitest makeup. Take a look on page two, at Mina’s waist, it’s pencil thin , being held tight by a corset. Captain Nemo, the foreigner, must stay on the ship, even though he seems to be the most capable member of the team. In talking to Dr. Jekyll about Mina, Quartermain lets on that he believes something “ghastly happened to her last year.” Then says she divorced her husband. How ghastly.

They are a team pretending to fit in with the British government, but they can’t. Nemo. Mina. The Invisible Man. All outcasts. Quartermain is a product of a past time, no longer fitting in with the current society. Dr. Jekyll is the closest to a regular British citizen, except for underneath his gentleman-exterior, he becomes a hulking beast.

Where do these heroes search for the bad guy? In the Chinese district. Of course, the “real” British citizens couldn’t have anything to do with it. Go to the foreigners.

I shouldn’t be too hard on them, though. In the end, they do find an airship, with a cartoonish offensive Chinese drawing on it. Mina and Quartermain (along with the Invisible Man) sneak in. Well, not so much sneak in. They lie and tell a Chinese man that they have no place to sleep so the man lets the couple in. `

At the end, we’re given a splash page of men working on a giant airship with guns much larger than a man. It seems to spell doom for the league, and for Britain. Ending each issue, Moore gives up a little paragraph that speaks directly to the reader and sets up the next issue. This issue ends with a box with a green dragon wrapped around it. “Tremble, dearest Reader, at the horrid spectacle of Johnny Chinaman, armed with the mighty weapons of our new Electric Age and bent on turning them against our island home!” Johnny Chinaman. Of course, we aren’t meant to take this seriously. I don’t need Moore’s past work to tell me that. He’s setting us up for when he pulls the rug out from under us, for when the league must turn against Campion Bond, the status quo.

___________

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Episode 102: A Roundtable in Honor of Donald Duck, on his 80th Birthday!

07 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Disney, Episode

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102 Ways to Save Money at Walt Disney World, Der Furher’s Face, Dianne Turgeon Richardson, Donald Duck, Donaldism, Dumbbell of the Yukon, Early to Bed, George Plimpton, Jeffrey Shuster, Lewis Hyde, Lou Mongello, Mary Blair, Mousterpiece Theater, RObert Benchley, Saludos Amigos, sean ironman, Teege Braune, The Band Concert, The Clock Watcher, The Symphony Hour, The Three Caballeros, Trickster Makes This World, Walt Disney

Episode 102 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download. On this week’s show, my friends Teege Braune of In Boozo Veritas fame, Sean Ironman of Heroes Never Rust fame, Jeff Shuster, who is the Curator of Schlock, and Dianne Turgeon Richardson join me for a roundtable discussion of Donald Duck on his 80th birthday.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The Band Concert (1935)

Early to Bed (1941)

The Symphony Hour (1942)

Saludos Amigos Trailer (1942)

Der Furher’s Face (1943)

Commando Duck (1944)

The Clock Watcher (1945)

Dumbbell of the Yukon (1946)

Soup’s On (1948)

Donald Applecore (1952)

Mickey Mouse Club Intro (1955)

Clip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988, set in 1947)

Commercial for Mousterpiece Theater (1980-something)

NOTES

Dianne Turgeon-Richardson critiqued of the storytelling of Maleficent on her blog.

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Episode 102 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.