The columns at Sequart.com got me thinking about previous portrayals of r_pe in the super-hero genre. So I did some truly perilous web research and found some interesting discussion.

On the always difficult subject of Carol Danvers, there’s this overview in the Truly Awful column at a site called Quarter Bin. (It doesn’t seem like it’s been updated in a while, which is too bad.)

The most surprising thing about this piece on “Longbow Hunters” at Green Arrow: The Unofficial Fansite is Mike Grell’s assertion that Black Canary wasn’t r_ped in that series. (I’ve never read it, but consensus of the interpretation I’ve seen contradicts that. Of course, when the writer says it didn’t happen…)

There’s a lot less to be found on Mockingbird’s troubles in West Coast Avengers. A couple of Usenet threads recap the events and their consequences, though.

Loved last night’s episode of Justice League Unlimited. Now, can someone perfect cloning technology so Paul Dini will have enough time to write more comics like Zatanna: Everyday Magic?

I’ve never been much for solo books. Maybe it’s more that I’m not much for the characters who dominate solo books.

Superman has always bored me to tears. (Though I’m glad that they’re collecting Superman: Secret Identity, as I’ve heard it’s a great Superman book for people who aren’t particularly interested in the character.) Spider-Man was never quite escapist enough for me; the personal angst was always a little too recognizable, if that makes any sense. Batman works for me depending on who’s writing him (I’ve enjoyed runs by Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker.) And Captain America has never held my interest in his own title.

That’s not to say there aren’t solo books that I like, but they fall into a fairly narrow category. I would call it “solo books that read like team books.” I like a richly developed supporting cast, and I think it can go a long way towards illuminating different qualities of the lead (Dan Slott’s She-Hulk, Peter David’s Incredible Hulk and, to a lesser extent, Captain Marvel).

But it’s the team book that got me into super-hero comics and has kept me there. I like the interpersonal dynamic and the inherent soap opera that are part and parcel of a good team book. I like that they can serve as a showcase for B-list characters, keeping their stories at the forefront while throwing in some solo heroes as window dressing.

So what are some of my favorite runs on team books?

Avengers 141-149: I’m glad they’ve collected the Avengers/Defenders War and Celestial Madonna, but this period was always my favorite of Steve Englehart’s work on the series. (Art by George Perez didn’t hurt, either.) The concurrent stories were a great way of showcasing a large cast, allowing lots of interesting character development. Packed with plot, there was also a good dose of humor and some sly political satire. And if you’ve ever wondered why some longtime readers never thought Hellcat got her due, these issues demonstrate the great potential she had.

Uncanny X-Men #129-137: The Dark Phoenix Saga. Everything that needs to be said about this has already been said elsewhere, so… “ditto.”

Avengers #181-199: With a fluid line-up (featuring Ms. Marvel!), gorgeous art by John Byrne, Perez, and Carmine Infantino, these are just some terrific Avengers stories. A highlight was the resolution of the ongoing conflict with Agent Gyrich, the sharpest thorn in the team’s side ever.

New Teen Titans: Marv Wolfman and Perez created what was, for me, the platonic ideal of a super-hero team book. Colorful, distinct characters, a healthy dose of soap opera, and a steady stream of great new antagonists… it just didn’t get any better, from my point of view.

Legion of Super-Heroes: I got spoiled by starting with this book with the Mike Grell issues. It wasn’t as good again until Keith Giffen took over, but boy, were those some good stories. The Great Darkness Saga stands as the Best. Legion story. Ever.

Uncanny X-Men (the Paul Smith issues): Glorious Paul Smith art is the icing on this cake, as is the last gasp of seriously great storytelling from Chris Claremont. (And Ms. Marvel was there! Well, Carol Danvers. But she used to be Ms. Marvel!) These are the ones before everything went south.

Defenders 31-41, Annual 1: Ah, great Steve Gerber weirdness… the Headmen, Nebulon, a cult of clowns, and a nifty little character known as the Red Guardian. (She’s a communist neurosurgeon who fights crime, whether the Kremlin likes it or not!) It’s really long past time Marvel put out a collection of these stories. It’s the best Defenders story ever, and I don’t mean that as a left-handed compliment.

Justice League of America 139-150: These came after Englehart left Avengers, I think, and they share a lot of that book’s strengths. Some of my favorite B-listers got some great face time in these stories – Red Tornado, Hawkgirl, the Atom. And the pencils by legendary Dick Dillin are gorgeous.

Justice League: Giffen again, injecting intentional humor into a traditionally straight-and-narrow super-team. (I hear Justice League Detroit was hilarious, but I don’t think anyone meant it to be.) While I think the joke wore out before the series did, there are some real gems here.

More recently, there’s a lot to like in Kurt Busiek’s run on Avengers, readily available in trade paperbacks. I never liked Grant Morrison’s JLA as much as some, but the first arc is a winner. Morrison’s stories worked a lot better for me in New X-Men, particularly in the earlier arcs. And if you haven’t tried Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, you really should. It’s glorious fun.

In its enchanting Queer Eye on Comics column, Prism crunches the numbers on the first issue of Rob Liefeld’s Avengers Vol. 2, #1. My favorite entries in the data column:

• Total number of uses of the word mine in this issue, as spoken by Asgardian characters, Loki, Thor and the Enchantress: 24
• Number of times mine is used incorrectly, according to the definition: 19
• Number of times my is used by an Asgardian instead of mine: 2
• Number of times this occurs in the same word balloon as an incorrect use of mine: 1

Even after all these years, I’m still not tired of laughing at that comic.

Completely unrelated (or is it?), Gene Simmons of KISS may submit himself to the tender mercies of the Fab Five of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. To be filed under: “apocalypse, signs of…”

Chances are you’re familiar with what writer Chuck Austen can do with major franchise characters – the X-Men, the Avengers, the Justice League, Superman. You may also have heard how Austen felt limited by the storytelling restrictions imposed by Marvel, leading to an amicable parting of the ways.

So it’s natural to wonder, “Just what would we see if Chuck Austen’s artistic vision was freed of the stifling, airless environment of corporate comics? What would I do in the face of full-frontal Chuck?”

Alas, I cannot answer this question for you, as neither of the stores in town saw fit to get copies of Worldwatch #1 by Austen Press. (Something about “community standards” or “villagers with pitchforks.” The details escape me.)

Fortunately, blogging treasure Brian Hibbs has waded into Worldwatch for those of us who can’t… or won’t. Remember, though, that Hibbs is a professional comics retailer. He’s trained in special handling procedures for this kind of material, and while he makes it look easy, there’s still a great deal of risk involved.

Is it too late to hope that Austen Press has sent a review copy to Paul O’Brien?

The always readable Sequart.com comes at Identity Crisis from two different directions in articles by Julian Darius (Sequential Culture) and Jeff Chon (Arbiter of Good Taste).

Chon comes out swinging on the “con” side:

“Remember when I said superhero comics shouldn’t lose their sense of wonder, because bad things happen? Well, um… yeah. Anyway, as you now know, Sue Dibny was brutally raped and murdered in a cheap shock tactic so manipulative it made me pine for the simple subtlety of The Passion of the Christ.”

He’s looking at sex and the modern super-hero, and, unsurprisingly, the picture isn’t pretty:

“I understand how desperately superhero comics want to grow up, but the way they do reminds one of those child beauty pageants: it doesn’t look quite right, it makes you a little angry at times, and it’s sufficiently creepy.”

Darius is more charitably inclined towards the comic, and he makes some fervent arguments on its behalf. First, he looks at whether or not murder and rape, as they’re presented in IC, are used to crassly manipulative effect:

“Few would be so crass as to condemn a drama about a woman who was raped coming to terms with that abuse and learning to relate again to men. Although, it is worth pointing out, such a drama would more than likely be staged in the vein of Lifetime’s original movies, which notoriously play with the line of crass manipulation in order to advance emotionally a particularly fact-starved version of feminism.”

Now, I’ll line up and bash Lifetime any time you like. But, as much violence and despair as Lifetime’s dramas heap on women, the dramas are generally about the women. They’re routinely victimized, frequently in sensationalistic and vulgar fashions, but they just as frequently work to achieve closure and healing and seek redress for the wrongs done to them. Overwhelmingly more often than not, they’re the protagonists in the stories, not the damaged accessories to the protagonists. Darius reinforces this difference for me when he says:

“As always, the focus is upon the heroes’ actions to prevent this danger to their loved ones — except that, in Identity Crisis, this leads the heroes to take greater, more disturbing steps.”

I think Darius simplifies things a bit when he summarizes what he perceives to be the bulk of the objections to That Comic:

“But the attack against Identity Crisis has not been the relatively minor argument that DC neglected to place two words [a “mature readers” warning] on the cover. In fact, the attack has been distinctly retrogressive: that this [rape] has no place in super-hero comics. That, in essence, we ought to go back twenty or so years.”

Again, I don’t think that’s a comprehensive statement on the objections people have raised about the title. Certainly some people don’t think rape has a place in a comic with Superman in it, but just as many find its narrative flawed, don’t think it works as a mystery, find it sensationalistic or cynical… the list goes on. As Darius himself says:

“Those of us who appreciate comics as art are more inclined to ask how smart the story is, how clever the execution. Rather than, you know, condemning outright.”

And I think that’s precisely what a number of people have done, from a variety of perspectives. I think it’s much more complex and varied a response than a knee-jerk resistance to a depiction of rape in comics.

Darius concludes:

“Identity Crisis, like it or not, is teaching us about the super-hero genre — and it’s doing this both within the text, in terms of extending the old generic threat to the hero’s loved ones, and without, as we observe the retrogressive, didactic, and vitriolic responses to the series.”

What about the didactic and vitriolic defenses of it? 😉

So I picked up the first volume of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind yesterday. ($18 bucks? Ouch! I know Hayao Miyazaki is a legend, and everything, but still… Ouch! That’s two volumes of Sgt. Frog right there!) And I was trying to remember why I was picking it up.

(That happens to me a lot. I get recommendations or hear reviews from all kinds of outlets and people and put things in my “try that” file, simultaneously purging the reasons it wound up there in the first place. My disk space must be low.)

Anyway, Gary the Shopkeep helped me out. “It’s by the guy who did Spirited Away.” Light dawns, price tag hurts less.

Then Gary asks if I watched the subtitled version of Spirited Away or the dubbed.

Dubbed.

So then Gary says the story in the dubbed version is significantly different from (and inferior to) the subtitled version, and that the translators took some fairly serious liberties with Miyazaki’s original material. Can anyone confirm or deny that for me? Is it worth hunting down the subtitled version?

So… Ultimate Elektra #1… any possible way to judge this fairly, given my expectations of writer Mike Carey? Any point at all holding it to the standard he’s set with Lucifer or My Faith in Frankie?

No, probably not. I mean, it’s an Ultimate mini-series about a character who’s getting a movie franchise.

Should I just link to the Basement Tapes? Or better yet, skip right ahead to relevant excerpts at Fanboy Rampage?

Probably easier. And, hey, baffling remarks from Mark Millar! Bonus!

My favorite of this week’s comics, by a fairly wide margin, was WE3 #1. Writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quietly have created a cross between Robocop and The Incredible Journey. It’s sentimental and creepy at the same time, and there’s a welcome reduction in the quantity of Big, Weird Ideas. (I never was able to get into Seaguy because of what I found to be gratuitous BWI levels.)

For more in-depth commentary, take a look at some of the following reviews:

• Jog – The Blog
• Critiques on Infinite Earths
• Snap Judgments

I’ll update this as more reviews are posted. And you know they will be.

Let’s see what’s showing up at the comic shop today… hmmm… (click for previews via Mile High Comics)

Losers #15, Mystique #18, Noble Causes #1, Sleeper Season Two #3, We 3 #1 (Of 3), Wonder Woman #207, X-Statix #26… not bad, all in all. Oh, and Love Fights #12, which neither of the shops in town carries.

This would be the point where I’d try and satirize script samples sure to be included in Avengers #500 Directors Cut, but I’m a very lazy person when you get right down to it.

In the land of Crossoveria, Catwoman #34 wades into War Games, and Flash #213 experiences an Identity Crisis.

I don’t usually get too deep into the business end of comics, but I always enjoy reading the sales analysis at the Pulse. July figures are up for DC (by Marc-Oliver Frisch) and Marvel (by Paul O’Brien). On Frisch’s blog, he’s posted his Selector for the week. On the X-Axis, O’Brien has survived the experience of reviewing eight X-books in a single week.

Tom the Dog likes the new N cartoon, O’Grady. I do, too. And he’s saved me the trouble of saying why I like it by summarizing it so nicely.

Mike Sterling has stripped away the cheerful, all-ages facade of Harvey Comics at Progressive Ruin. As if Baby Huey wasn’t disturbing enough.

And, look, they’re collecting American Flagg! (story at Newsarama). This was the first comic I ever picked up that wasn’t published by Marvel or DC (or Archie or Harvey), and I really liked it. Social satire, science fiction, and the most impractical lingerie I’d ever seen. (Does it count as lingerie if it’s commonly worn to work?)