I liked the Warren Ellis-written episode of Justice League Unlimited that aired Saturday. The plot didn’t have much interest for me, dealing with the usual Ellis themes (“nanotechnology is potentially bad” and “super-heroes have an uneasy relationship with the regular people they protect”), and the whole “don’t underestimate the Atom” motif probably has one good episode in it (which JLU has already done). That said, the dialogue was often snappy, the action sequences were dynamic, and there was plenty of spot-the-hero fun. (When is the episode by Gail Simone going to air? I’ve been dying for that one!)

Oddly enough, I preferred the Teen Titans repeat, which is almost never the case. I enjoy this series a lot more when other teen heroes make guest appearances, so the presence of Aqualad and Bumblebee bumped it up. Seeing an upgraded Bumblebee was a particular treat. I always liked her D-list comics counterpart, in spite of her terrible motivation and the complete illogic behind her origin. The cartoon version is a versatile, smart, funny, independent heroine, and that’s always a treat. The writers and animators also did a great job of making an insect-themed super-hero look like a credible threat in combat, something comics often struggle to do. I like the contemporary character design a lot, too. Fun stuff.

There’s some discussion on Usenet over the latest Truth ad that’s shown up in comics. It features a pair of eyes that have been sutured shut, presumably by evil tobacco companies.

I’ve always found The Truth’s advertising annoying, not because of their intentions but because of their approach. As I see it, they take this position that deciding not to smoke is an act of anti-corporate rebellion. Any time a commercial urges its audiences to be an individual — by doing what the commercial tells them to do — my reaction rests somewhere between amusement and nausea.

When you factor in The Truth’s funding source — settlement money and mandates levied against tobacco companies — it gets even twistier. “Don’t believe what the tobacco companies tell you! Except for this ad, which they’ve paid for! Fight the power!” Bleh.

I’ve smoked on and off since high school, and I’d never recommend it as a pastime. I know perfectly well it’s unhealthy. At the same time, I don’t think anyone has ever found an effective message to discourage people from starting or continuing to smoke. I can’t imagine The Truth has, either, with their strident, self-conscious “edge.” (It seems like they could only effectively reaffirm a certain kind of audience’s decision not to smoke in the first place, honestly.)

I would love it if there were some way to measure response to efforts like this beyond focus-group reaction or anecdotal evidence. In my experience, the most common response to a Truth ad is, “I’ve never smoked in my life, but that commercial sure makes me want to start.”

Dorian at Postmodern Barney has some thoughts on the reaction, often negative, to authors from other media breaking into comics. He raises an excellent point about just what tier of the fame barrel these celebrities come from, but I’m not sure I buy his central premise on what the objections are.

I don’t know that there’s anger at the actual authors so much as at the publishers for the credibility grubbing that seems to pervade their marketing. It’s the “comics snag real writer” tinge of their promotions that bothers me, not interlopers from movies or television or prose fiction trying their hands at comics. And if that isn’t the actual thinking behind the hires, Marvel and DC’s press releases often seem… well… pathetically grateful.

And if this trend does, in fact, play off comics’ inferiority complex, as suggested by Paul O’Brien at Ninth Art, I think a certain amount of resistance to the tactic is healthy. If Marvel and DC present themselves as so excited at the arrival of a novelist or screenwriter, if they crow with delight at the snaring of a “real writer” (even if it’s a pose), isn’t there an implicit devaluing of the writers we’ve been enjoying all along? The ones who just write comics?

I agree with Dorian that it is a marketing tactic, ultimately, and probably doesn’t reflect a genuine value system for talent at either of the big two. (Also, Dorian is a comics retailer and interacts with readers a lot more regularly than I do, so there may well be a lot of “who does Meltzer think he is, taking jobs away from comic writers” sentiment out there.) But publishers do market a celebrity novelist who writes comics differently than they do even a celebrity comics writer. And it’s the mixed message of the marketing that I think is repelling some people.

And this doesn’t even get into the issue that Johanna at Cognitive Dissonance has brought up in the past: the skill set required to write a movie or a television show or a novel isn’t necessarily the same as the skill set required to write a comic. Ultimately, I don’t think readers are going to reject good comics based on the resume of the person writing them. (There aren’t enough for fans to have that luxury.) Novelist Greg Rucka is acclaimed for his super-hero and independent work, and screenwriter/television producer Joss Whedon is getting raves for Astonishing X-Men. I really think it’s the marketing that people find off-putting, not the incursion itself.

Preview pages of some of the… um… awaited What If titles from Marvel are up at Pop Culture Shock.

Michael Lark, fresh from a triumphant, critically acclaimed run on DC’s Gotham Central, begins his exclusive contract with Marvel by drawing… Brian Michael Bendis. No, seriously. Lark surprised Bendis by drawing him in as the narrator of What If Karen Page Had Lived? (This doesn’t stop one wag at the Bendis Message Board from uttering the particularly cutting, “How Byrne of (Bendis).”)

For What If Aunt May Had Been Killed Instead of Uncle Ben?, Ed Brubaker and Andrea DiVito chose as their narrators two clerks in a shop called “The Comic Cave.” One is significantly overweight. The other looks like Wild Child from Alpha Flight with the addition of really horrifying chin pubes. Geeks! Har!

I normally don’t order through Previews, but it seems like the easiest way to guarantee I can get new books by smaller publishers in a timely fashion. And, since I’m not a big fan of delayed gratification, I’ll give it a go.

I don’t think I’d have any problem picking up just about anything from DC or Marvel, but I will be reserving copies of JLA Classified 4 (the sequel to Formerly Known as the Justice League) and Seven Soldiers 0. February marks the launch of the new run for Runaways, which seems to be a six-issue limited series this time around. That’s disappointing, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that buzz about this title’s quality will be enough to give it a longer life.

There’s plenty of interest from Oni. The second volume of Scott Pilgrim arrives, and I’ll be picking that up, along with creator Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Lost at Sea. I’ve heard plenty of good things about Love as a Foreign Language, so I’ll try to catch up with that title. I haven’t read much by Andi Watson (just the first trade of Love Fights, which was okay), but praise for his slice-of-life titles has me interested in Little Star. (I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t lapse into the stupid-dad/domestically-incompetent-male genre.)

Renaissance Press has another issue of Amelia Rules Superheroes, which is always welcome. Another all-ager, Top Shelf’s Owly, has gotten great reviews, so that’s a definite maybe.

On the manga front, Tokyopop tempts me with the first volume of The Tarot Cafe. I think the tarot deck can be a great prop for visual storytelling, and the pitch promises a wide variety of supernatural shenanigans. It’s a tough call, but I think Viz’s SOS will win out over Times Two. There’s something about the phrase “secret dating agency” that pushes my buttons.

For other trips through the truly baffling Previews, stop by Comics Worth Reading, Comic World News, and Ninth Art.

Catching up on some recent reviews that I’ve really enjoyed reading:

Johanna Draper Carlson, in her infinite wisdom, has declared Sgt. Frog a Comic Worth Reading:

“Join the Sgt. Frog army, and soon you too will share in the joyful call of Gero! Gero! Gero!”

Amen, sister!

James Schee at Reading Along hits smartly on one of the things I love about Hot Gimmick:

“It is a rare talent to have a lead character who you both want to shake and tell to toughen up, and also take in your arms and help and protect as well.”

The Pickytarian wistfully recalls the glory that was Alias, before it got botoxed into The Pulse:

“Imagine that: a fully realized, believable human being – and a woman at that – as a character in a Marvel comic. Bendis’ accomplishment of this feat stands as one of his greatest achievements.”

Tom the Dog is puzzled by the popularity of a wide variety of entertainments.

“There is very little in pop culture that makes me think, maybe we’d be better off without pop culture in its entirety (this is a pop culture blog, after all), but Paris Hilton and her ilk are right up there.”

Poor Paris. Wait… what the hell am I saying?

Shane Bailey is a sweetheart, finding the nicest possible way to say that I can’t keep my yap shut. I’m totally stealing “more opinions than you can shake a stick at” for my subtitle.

Shane Bailey at Near Mint Heroes makes an accurate prediction in his comments on JSA 62:

“There’s one scene in this book that I’m sure someone will call Johns out on though. I’ll leave that for them to do.”

Spoilers, ahoy.

The scene in question features the brutal murder of Stargirl’s stepfather, mother, stepbrother, and half-sister. They’re having a pleasant family breakfast when time-traveling villain Degaton sends a squadron of killers who promptly shoot the father in the head, off the family dog, pump a large quantity of bullets and death rays into the mother and stepbrother, and shoot the baby as she wails in terror.

And with that, we have the last Geoff Johns-written issue of JSA I’ll ever read. It’s not a matter of the appropriateness of the material for a super-hero comic, though that’s probably a fair question. It’s not even so much a question of the level of violence, which is the definition of gratuitous. (Shooting a baby? As she sits screaming in her high chair?) It’s the pure, narrative hackery of the moment.

It’s a time travel story, so the reset button is sitting there like a gun in the first act of a play. Johns can either use that reset button, restoring the happy family, or he can pull a switch-up, teaching us all another somber lesson about the cost of being a hero. For me, neither outcome would make the rest of the story worth reading because of the inherent artificiality of it all.

If the event is undone, Johns can pass it off as “uplift,” while still having the thrill of his bloody money shots. If the event stands, it’s just an extremely ugly float in the grim and gritty parade that increasingly defines super-hero comics, particularly those published by DC. It’s vulgar either way, a sequence so over-the-top and disturbing as to derail anything that happens subsequently.

Beyond this staggering bit of bad taste, there are other Johns tics in evidence. There’s the whole daddy-hero theme that’s taken such a pounding in this title (and in Flash). There’s also the standard Johns narration, which always sounds the same, no matter who’s delivering it. (Stargirl apparently has speech patterns remarkably like the Wally West, at least in captions.) And there’s the prospect of another “undo death” routine, already portrayed with Atom-Smasher and Hourman.

I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to pull this particular plug. Fondness for this set of characters is probably behind it. But I just can’t take it any more. It’s bad storytelling, and it’s offensive. Enough.

(And, yes, I realize I’ve shot my credibility all to hell with yesterday’s “I want to hate something” post. I swear it’s a coincidence.)

I have no idea why, but I find myself gripped with the urge to find a terrible comic book and critically rip it to pieces. Maybe I’ve been too focused on formally reviewing books I like, and my hate muscles are crying out as they approach atrophy.

I realize that I really couldn’t fairly review a terrible comic in this state. First, it would require me to consciously seek out a comic I suspect of being terrible. (While I end up reading a lot of terrible comics, I can honestly say that I’m optimist enough to hope that they won’t be.) The thing that really makes a comic terrible, beyond the actual quality, is that it contradicts my expectations.

Beyond the fairness issue, there’s the expense. As much money as I throw at comics I hope will be good, I can’t quite bring myself to buy something like X-Force.

Maybe I’ll just go through the long boxes in the basement, find something that offended me to my core when I first read it, write it up, and get it out of my system.

Writer Gail Simone has continued her exclusive contract with DC Comics, and it’s easy to see why the publisher would want to hold on to her. Birds of Prey, Simone’s highest-profile comics work to date, is probably the best super-hero book DC produces.

The flexible premise allows for a range of stories. High-tech information broker Oracle (Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl) has teamed with adventurers Black Canary and the Huntress to, for lack of a more original description, fight crime and protect the innocent. Though it isn’t underlined, they take a more proactive approach, investigating unusual situations Oracle encounters through her network of sources.

This is an advantage if you tire easily of stories featuring villains acting specifically to aggravate or harm a comic’s protagonists. (Simone doesn’t avoid that kind of story entirely, but she keeps those kinds of events in proportion.) It’s refreshing to see heroes act to protect the public as opposed to the kind of damage control that results from more predictable grudge matches.

It’s one of a number of smart choices Simone has made with the book. Another is the recent distancing from the stable of Batman-related titles. Spinning off the events of the recent Gang War crossover, Oracle and company have left their Gotham City headquarters behind for a mobile base of operations. This ups the level of flexibility and frees the book from obligatory crossovers coming out of the Bat office. Along the same lines, Black Canary has broken off her relationship with unfaithful bastard Green Arrow, freeing the heroine of some baggage and rooting her more securely in Birds.

That said, Simone clearly delights in the vast playground that is the DC Universe. She makes appealing use of guest stars like Vixen, Gypsy, and others, and she’s always cognizant of her characters’ rich backgrounds. Continuity is an opportunity, not a burden, and the book strikes me as very friendly to new readers. (I’ve seen readers who are largely indifferent to DC back story say this about the book, too.)

Part of that accessibility has to be attributed to Simone’s focus on characterization. The cast is composed of experienced, mature adventurers, and they generally respect each other as such. There are conflicts – both Oracle and Black Canary show a worrying tendency to underestimate Huntress, though they’re getting better – but they stem from differences in philosophy. Oracle has a tendency to keep secrets, and Dinah’s peacekeeper nature is leavened by a judgmental streak. Huntress has traditionally (and I think disproportionately) been the black sheep of the vigilante community, but she’s downplaying her defensiveness in favor of a more cooperative approach. Any character combination pings nicely with natural chemistry because each character is strongly defined.

I’m particularly taken with Simone’s work with Huntress, who has been the morally inferior punching bag for Batman and his clique roughly since she first appeared. I’ve never really gotten the distinction Batman seems to see, and I’ve always attributed his disapproval to resentment of the fact that Huntress won’t fall into lockstep. Simone paints a more balanced picture in Birds. She plays Huntress as a more violent breed of vigilante, but Huntress is also committed to making her current situation work. She’s grateful to Black Canary and considers her a friend, and she and Oracle are gradually building a better relationship, despite some uncomfortable shared history. (They’ve both slept with Nightwing, and Huntress had a short, unsuccessful stint as Batgirl.) Huntress is proving her value to her colleagues, earning their respect. It’s a lot more rewarding than seeing her sulk over her daddy fixation with the Bat.

Simone has earned a reputation for folding comedy into solid super-hero storytelling. Some of her set pieces in Marvel’s Deadpool and Agent X are justly legendary (from Rhino being turned into a key chain to twin Hello Kitty assassins). The comedy here is more character-based, coming from three quick-witted women who often find themselves in extreme and absurd situations. It accentuates the action nicely, giving the adventure set-pieces and fight scenes an added dimension.

There’s a lot of talk about whether visuals by regular artist Ed Benes really serve what Simone is doing with this title. Some find them too reliant on cheesecake, and I have to say I fall into that camp. It’s too bad, because Benes is capable of truly spectacular action sequences that don’t need tits and ass to be impressive. He can also draw extremely sexy characters, both male and female, so it’s disappointing to see him get anatomical about it. Simone has rightly said in interviews that Benes includes wonderful “acting” in his illustrations. His figures and faces are varied and expressive. Still, he has a worrying tendency to cross the line from kinetic and sexy into ineffectively titillating. (It has the odd effect of suggesting a gene-spliced artist, half Cameron Stewart, half Paul Gulacy.) But that complaint is coming up with decreasing frequency, as Benes moves more to the Stewart end of the spectrum and gets better in synch with Simone’s style and tone.

And, ultimately, it’s Simone’s book, which is a very good thing indeed. She really strikes a wonderful balance of action, character, and comedy, even folding in fairly complex moral issues without getting maudlin about it. (Is Oracle right to keep secrets? How far will Huntress go to protect innocents or resolve a crisis? Who’s entitled to redemption?) As a result, Birds of Prey is a wonderfully mature entertainment that doesn’t feel the need to pat itself on the back about it. DC’s very lucky to have Simone locked into its roster for a bit longer, as she’s one of the best storytellers they have.

Christopher Butcher raises a very good point at comics.212.net about genre-centrism, so I’m going to take a break from comics today, and offer my thoughts on another form of entertainment.

Music. Specifically, Christmas music.

I kind of hate it. I hate that it’s everywhere you try and buy so much as a pack of cigarettes. I hate that it comes in so few flavors. I hate that commercials for slapdash Christmas CDs by truly terrible pop stars clutter the television airwaves.

I could go on, but I don’t have to, because Sars at Tomato Nation sums it all up nicely. Her description of the noise pollution of the average mall is particularly vivid:

“…a unique Christmas-music hell in that every store has a different song loop, each one blaring out the open front doors and competing not only with each other but with the mall’s own PA system, and the mall’s mix is extra-heavy on the sleigh bells and psychotically cheery trumpets in order to make itself heard over ringing cash registers, children screaming their heads off in terror because Santa smells like a rum-soaked diaper…”

Okay, so I don’t hate all of it, but what I do like is kind of weird. I guess it’s not so odd that I could confine my holiday-themed musical selections to the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas, which strikes every nostalgia nerve I have, beyond being just plain great music.

It gets weird when I look at the great mountain of depressing Christmas music that seems to have collected in our house. It’s all very restful on the surface, but ultimately somber and kind of unnerving. Imagine the most depressing holiday movie you’ve ever seen, and put in a wordless montage where the family is gathered in the waiting room at the hospital to see if grandpa is going to survive the drunk driving accident he got into on the way home from mass (because losing grandma would be hard enough), and then imagine the music that would score that scene as, say, Blythe Danner tries to comfort her family. Yeah, that’s the kind of Christmas music we like in our house.

(Sidenote: The most depressing holiday movie I’ve ever seen is The Last Best Year, starring Mary Tyler Moore as a psychologist and Bernadette Peters as her terminally ill patient. They move Christmas forward to allow Bernadette to enjoy the holiday one last time with her small but loyal circle of friends and… damn, it’s sad. Great, but sad. They’ve never aired it again, to my knowledge, not even on Lifetime.)

Also beloved in our household is Do You Hear What We Hear?, the Christmas album by Kiki and Herb, the profoundly disturbed lounge-act alter-egos of Justin (Kiki) Bond and Kenny (Herb) Mellman. Part cabaret act, part Edward Albee, part primal scream therapy, part deranged musicologists, these two will twist the most horrifying sentiments out of seemingly innocent holiday standards. My favorite track from the CD is probably Whose Child is This?, a medley of What Child is This?, Deep Inside by Mary J. Blige, and Crucify by Tori Amos. They really have to be heard to be believed. Even better, go see them. But sit in the back, if you can.