Ah, the Essentials volumes. First, there’s the creepy, nimbly expanded upon by John Jakala at Fanboy Rampage. But, did you know that, long before Dr. Doom was cherry-picking local homes for comely Latverians in Super-Villain Team-Up, he was coming up with the stupidest plan in memory in the twenty-fifth issue of Avengers?

Admittedly, he was new to the vengeful despot game at that point, playing up the “mask of benevolence” and passing on the “droit de seigneur,” but you still have to wonder what on Earth he was thinking. Y’see, he decided to strike fear into the heart of a quartet of super-heroes by luring an entirely unrelated quartet of super-heroes into Latveria. Yup, to put a good scare into the Fantastic Four, Doom planned to utterly destroy the Avengers.

Wha-huh? Why didn’t he just use those energies to… y’know… destroy the Fantastic Four?

Of course, his strategem is genius, sending a forged letter to pathologically needy Eastern Europeans Wanda and Pietro, claiming they have a previously unknown Latverian aunt who’s just itching for a meeting with her famous mutant kin. And what does Cap’s Kooky Quartet decide to do? Pack up and head to Latveria without asking a single sensible question! (It markedly improves a stupid plan’s chances of success if it’s directed at stupid victims, apparently.)

Upon arrival, the Dysfunctional Four are immediately taken into custody so that Doom might destroy them utterly. Only then do the Avengers remember where they’ve heard of Latveria before. Oh, that’s right! It’s the dictatorship ruled by the Fantastic Four’s arch-nemesis! The Fantastic Four, with whom we have routine contact, who also live right across town! We can see their skyscraper from the mansion! Wave, guys!

Ye gods.

Do you need me to tell you that this plan goes badly awry? Even Doom can’t quite keep his motives straight, as mid-story he switches from wanting to frighten the FF to wanting to lure them to Latveria to rescue their peer super-team. Hilariously, the United States government prevents the FF from doing so, as Latveria is widely viewed as a friendly nation. So, sucks to be you, Victor.

Even the “mask of benevolence” gets a little tarnished. First, Victor gives his Avengers-hating populace a thrill by throwing a gold coin at a local urchin (who defeats the purpose entirely by swearing he’ll never part with it), only to be forced to coldly deny that same urchin departure from Latveria for vital medical treatment across the border. Because he’s covered the entire country with a force field to keep the Avengers in.

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to be a megalomaniac.

You think things are freaky now in Marvel Comics? Take a look into the distant past via Essential Avengers Vol. 2, which is absolutely (with apologies to Gwen Stacy) pregnant with melodrama.

In the early going, we have Hawkeye pining (kind of) over the Scarlet Witch:

“As far as she’s concerned, that over-aged square is the only Joe in the room! But it might be different if I was the leader here! Chicks always go for the guy who’s top dog! Just my luck it hasta be him!”

Keep telling yourself that, Clint. Still, Wanda seems to be hot for teacher:

“What is there about Steve Rogers that makes him so appealing to me?”

Contrary to Hawkeye’s power-is-catnip theory, we see the beginnings of Wanda’s fascination with head cases or emotional cripples:

“Is it the fact that he seems to harbor some tragic secret… some hidden sorrow?”

But maybe Clint shouldn’t be too bummed out:

“Or am I just confusing pity with the dawning of love?”

Harsh! But that’s a Patsy Walker comic compared to the woes of Wasp and Goliath. Maybe there’s more of a foundation for that spousal abuse story than I thought? Because when Hank gets stuck at 10 feet tall (doofus), things get ugly.

“Whereas I used to cherish the love of Janet Van Dyne… I cannot bear her sympathy!”

Now, that’s healthy. But it gets worse when Jan tries to… y’know… help. And what thanks does she get for acting as Hank’s assistant?

“I’ll get one — a top-notch scientist — not a chattering female!”

An interesting follow-up to one of Jan’s previous remarks:

“Hank, darling! You’ve been closeted in there all day!”

Okay, modern prism and all, but still…

Roy Thomas takes over about halfway through the volume, but things don’t get any less juicy. Poor Quicksilver is so torn between his boy-crush on Captain America and his way creepy relationship with his sister. Even Hercules, who knows from incestuous romance, Mount Olympus style, raises an eyebrow:

“They zelous devotion doth touch my very soul, swift one! Whence came such a bond ‘twixt mere mortals?”

Translation: “I thought only Greek gods got hot for their sisters!”

Yes, it’s a Freudian mine field, this early run of Avengers stories. Open this volume with care!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to make some recommendations. Armed with this fine list of non-soul-killing comic books, I went to the shop yesterday and placed some orders, starting with Hopeless Savages and Scott Pilgrim.

Of course, I also found myself unable to resist immediate gratification and picked up Essential Avengers Vol. 2, for some reason, and… well… Stan had issues. More on that later, but suffice to say that the interpersonal stuff was just hilariously stacked with unintended subtext. (Or was it unintended?)

Yesterday was movie rental day, which we hardly ever do for some reason. Mean Girls was okay, much sharper and smarter at the beginning than at the end, but Saved was a really delightful surprise, full of great lines and strong performances from people like Mandy Moore (I know!) and Macauly Culkin. (I know!!!)

Maybe it’s the last remnants of the blargh, but reading the Newsarama interview with Joe Quesada left me feeling kind of… I don’t know… dead inside as a fan of comic books. So, obviously, it’s time to take another crack at broadening my horizons.

So I’m asking: what have you read lately that’s really made you happy to read comics? What’s out there that’s fresh and exciting and weird and funny and smart? (OGN and TPB recommendations are particularly welcome, as the local shops don’t stray too far from major publishers. If I can order it on-line, all the better.)

Or at least that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn about the cold medicine I’m taking (and taking… and taking). But maybe it’s not the best idea to pop a few and then sit down to an episode of Lost. (Is this television’s version of decompressed storytelling, or is it the drugs?)

Shane at Near Mint Heroes wants to bring more zombies into your life with his Walking Dead contest.

Dorian at Postmodern Barney has linked all the follow-up to his “Why I Hate Manga” piece in one convenient place.

CapVsBats (a nom de ‘net that’s sure to raise Byrne’s hackles) takes a crack at scripting the preview pages from Avengers #503. “If only I could go back in time and redo that last panel! Only bigger.” Hee.

Consider yourselves warned. ChaosMonkey has packed a lunch and is taking a little excursion to the Ultraverse.

Blargh. I was going to post my comic shopping list, but if things progress at their current rate, my only purchases will be of the “don’t operate heavy machinery” over-the-counter-medication variety. Thanks, comic book industry, for timing a relatively uninspiring week to coincide with blargh-ness. (Queen and Country usually shows up a week late in these parts, anyways. And who knows what Tokyopop means when it lists the latest volume of Kindaichi Case Files?)

Have you visited A Blog Found on a Garbage Heap? You should. (And I should add it to my links, but… heavy machinery. Later. I swear.)

Matt Maxwell thoughtfully scripts the preview pages from Avengers #503 at Highway 62. (So… many… numbers…)

Oh, and Tom the Dog likes Desperate Housewives. I do, too. Though I suspect his nickname for William Shatner is going to lead some Googlers astray. Which is probably just as well.

I’m confused. I’ve read Alan David Doane’s Five Questions with Mark Millar. I’ve read Doane’s comments on the work of Geoff Johns.

Is Millar honestly that much better than (or distinct from) Johns? As near as I can tell, the major difference is that Johns writes middling, violent stories about super-heroes because he loves them, and Millar writes middling, violent stories about super-heroes because he sort of hates them. Where’s the gap?

Oni editor James Lucas Jones throws another label into the mix, talking about “the real mainstream” in an interview at Newsarama:

“Really, when you look at it, there aren’t a whole lot of comic companies that embrace the actual ‘mainstream.’ Oni’s output is considered, by and large, to be the indy fringe in comics – within the direct market. It’s not the superhero stuff, but at the same time, it’s what would be considered the mainstream in every other entertainment medium… Comics mainstream needs to get in line with what the rest of the world acknowledges as the mainstream. At Oni, we really feel like we’re pushing the real mainstream on the comics populace.”

It’s a tag that manages to be both accurate and, at least in my opinion, kind of annoying. It’s accurate because Oni, of all the North American comic publishers, manages to encompass the widest range of genres in its output, and that’s a very worthy thing indeed. It’s kind of annoying to me in a very specific way, the “it’s good for you” argument that adopts a position of relative virtue. I say this as someone who’s enjoyed every Oni book I’ve ever read, so it isn’t a comment on the quality of their output. I just tend to find myself a bit repelled when marketing incorporates the implication of a moral imperative.

I can’t really argue with Jones on this point:

“Oni’s output would include the romantic comedy that would gross $30 million on an opening weekend. It would be the cult teen flick like Napoleon Dynamite that just plays forever and has repeat viewing after repeat viewing. But because they’re comics, the subject matter is marginalized and pushed to the side, because ‘that’s not what comics do – comics are for big, splashy superhero stories.’”

At the same time, I think the comics direct market was built around the super-hero genre because comics serve that genre uniquely well. Romance, comedy, coming-of-age stories, spy thrillers, crime dramas, and other material are all fairly transportable. They fit comfortably in novels, movies, television series, what have you. They fit in comics, too, but for super-hero stories, the best, most reliable source has always been comics. Branching into other media has decidedly mixed results, or at least decidedly mixed fan reaction. If Oni wants to gentrify the direct market ghetto, more power to them, but it’s worthwhile to understand how the ghetto developed in the first place, I think.

I really admire Oni’s philosophy on manga:

“We’re not trying to replace manga by any means – we’re trying to show people that there is material that’s created in North America that’s just as valid and just as entertaining, and just as suited to what they’re looking for as the Japanese stuff they’re looking at. Which doesn’t mean that we’re forcing everyone into manga storytelling – we’re still doing things the way we do them. Our approach hasn’t changed- we were kind of already in line with that mindset of not being restricted by genre, and not trying to keep people from doing what they want to do because it doesn’t fit the mold of whatever popular trend is going on in the comics industry.”

It highlights one of the most significant similarities I find between Oni’s titles and the best manga: both have a creator-driven approach. With Marvel or DC, there will always be titles with Superman and Spider-Man, because the characters take supremacy. That’s the product, and it ultimately doesn’t matter too much who’s writing it this year, because the publishers have brands to protect and licenses to support. At Oni, at least in my impression, if Andi Watson doesn’t feel like writing “Love Fights,” or Greg Rucka takes a break from “Queen and Country,” you won’t pick it up next month to find that someone else has taken over. There’s a specific vision at work in each title, and that can have very rewarding results.

(And while I know some wonder about the wisdom of sorting product by size — mixing in digest-sized western comics with manga — I think this kind of shelving practice would serve Oni really, really well. The manga audience is much more likely to be receptive to its product than someone skimming through Marvel’s Essentials line. Not that those are mutually exclusive audiences, either, but from a sales standpoint, it strikes me as a clearer advantage.)

There’s tons of interesting stuff in the article — the role of the trade paperback, the rise of the original graphic novel, cracking the bookstore market, a pitch for retailer support (and I’d love to know what retailers think about the onus that pitch seems to put on them). There are also previews of upcoming projects, and I’m looking forward to trying them. (For a great series of reviews on Oni’s titles, check out The Hurting and search under “Oni Love.”)

James Schee at Reading Along noted some oddness in the formatting of the article, and I found myself feeling the same. It almost seems like an opinion piece from Jones that’s been broken down into an interview/article. There’s no byline on the piece that I can see, so I wonder if it isn’t just extremely smart Oni PR? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Possible spoilers ahead.

Rich Johnston has a code-amber spoiler-y rumor at the latest Lying in the Gutters about just who’s causing all this trouble in Avengers. I think the rumor is pretty plausible, not because the development makes sense, but because it serves the deck-clearing exercise.

Three issues in, there’s still a marked lack of attention to who’s causing the worst day in Avengers history or why, aside from the titular clue (“Chaos!”), the suspect’s conspicuous absence, and some murky coloring which, given some of the coloring choices in this title, might not constitute a clue at all.

So, presumably we’ll learn in #503 why this longtime mainstay of the team has suddenly decided to punish them for reasons that are still entirely unclear. (It’s double-sized, so there should be plenty of room to squeeze in a rationale.) And while there are plenty of potentially plausible explanations, I’m not filled with confidence that their intrinsic storytelling merits will outweigh their service in breaking with the past.

It’s all so reminiscent of “The Crossing.” Mysterious forces attack the Avengers, deaths of varying impact ensue, a longtime ally of the team undergoes a radical shift in established character to plot the team’s destruction (Mantis then, Wanda now), and uses members to facilitate that (Iron Man and Gilgamesh in that case; crash-dummy Vision with villain-puke action, suddenly soused Iron Man, and suddenly savage She-Hulk in this). There’s even the same kind of misdirection, where a member is wrongly suspected (a grieving Hawkeye in “The Crossing,” a badly mischaracterized Hank in “Chaos”).

Honestly, are super-hero comics so creatively starved that they have to dip into “The Crossing” for inspiration? And, strenuous destruction aside, has there been any narrative logic in “Chaos” so far to merit the shift to New Avengers? I know it isn’t fair, but the creative team will have to come up with something fairly spectacular to convince me of this story’s value.

I’m really enjoying Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel, but it weighs a metric ton. Good thing I’m working strength training back into my gym routine, because you need some upper arms for this thing.

There are about a hundred books out that I’m dying to read, but until I’m done with the above and Fortress of Solitude, I’ve issued a book-buying moratorium. Well, except for Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics, which doesn’t really count, since I just ordered it. Plus… um… it’s non-fiction. Yeah! That’s it!

I love having lots of good things in the freezer for future consumption, but if I never roll up another won-ton or ravioli again, it will be too soon.

Desperate Housewives debuts tonight. My hopes are high, based largely on the participation of Felicity Huffman and Marcia Cross, both of whom are hard core. But what is Television Without Pity thinking, not covering this show?

Johanna has announced the winners of her Fallen Angel Contest. I absolutely would not have been able to resist the winning entry.