Is it just me, or was this kind of a “meh” week for comics? And why didn’t I get RUNAWAYS 17? There shall be a reckoning.

BATMAN: THE 12 CENT ADVENTURE: My shop was giving this away for free, and it was worth every penny. Another woman messes up horribly while trying to live up to Batman’s impossibly high standards. Just to modulate that formula, she’s also trying to be worthy of dreamy, perfect Robin. Adolescent self-esteem issues spark a gang war, which makes the already annoying prospect of a line-wide crossover kind of idiotic in the process.

BIRDS OF PREY 71: Boy, this arc really seems padded. Lots of things happened in this issue, but none of them really seemed to advance the plot or answer any of the story’s questions. I did like the scenes between Huntress and Vixen, though.

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON 6: I get it now. The Falcon is the character who Knows How the World Works. On one hand, it’s great to see the Falcon portrayed as Cap’s equal partner instead of his sidekick. On the other, he’s kind of a scold. And the Scarlet Witch’s characterization seems to be drifting somewhere between Ilsa in Casablanca and Natasha Fatale in Bullwinkle. But her behavior is supposed to raise suspicions, so I can live with it for now.

ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE 1: It’s shaping up to be exactly the kind of story Warren Ellis might have done in GLOBAL FREQUENCY, but it’s going to take four issues instead of one. On the bright side, there’s a nice introduction of a classic Marvel character to the Ultimate line.

UNCANNY X-MEN 447: Care Bear assault plans are Care Bear assault plans, no matter how you try and justify them in captions. The dialogue seems to be skidding towards dire. But Alan Davis sure can draw, and that makes up for an awful lot.

And the highlight of the week? ESSENTIAL AVENGERS Vol. 4! Classic (if dated) Avengers stories! A veritable who’s who of members and guest stars! Great art by Buscema and Adams! Now, if only I can resist the urge to run out and buy a jumbo variety pack of magic markers to color in all the pages. (Can anyone recommend a brand that won’t bleed through paper? I’m only human.)

In reviewing Eerie Queerie!, a yaoi manga by Shuri Shiozu, I have to get something out of the way at the outset. It has an absolutely terrible cover. To judge the book by it, you might suspect you were picking up a story about boy hustlers getting ready for a night of club drugs and techno. (That might make an interesting manga in its own right, and it might already exist, but… not my point.) It’s nothing of the kind, but given the actual content and tone of the manga, Tokyopop might think about whether they’re deterring potential readers who’d find it resonant by wrapping it in lurid imagery.

Okay, I’m taking my grandpa hat off now.

Once you get past the wrapper, Eerie Queerie! turns out to contain lovely, surprising stories about friendship, loss, and human connections. Shiozu blends insight, romance, and comedy to tell gentle supernatural tales with a lot to say about the living and the dead.

The protagonist is Mitsuo Shiozu, a student wandering the border between loner and lonely. He can see and speak to ghosts, and his body seems able to act as something of a hotel room for spirits with unfinished business. At first, he views these spirits as a nuisance, and he has good reason.

Take, for example, Kiyomi, a schoolgirl who was killed in an accident. A loner like Mitsuo, she died before she could achieve some fairly major milestones – her first kiss, expressing herself to a boy she liked – and she’ll happily use Mitsuo’s body to take care of her unfinished business. Of course, this leads to the spectacle of “Mitsuo” admitting “his” crush on hunky classmate Hasunama, to the horrified delight of their homophobic classmates.

But inconveniences aside, the situation leads Mitsuo to some difficult conclusions about his own life and opens a world of possibilities as he comes to care about both Kiyomi and Hasunama. In helping the dead achieve closure, he’s able to start reaching out to the living. (And Hasunama is definite boyfriend bait… handsome, solicitous, and intuitive.)

The second story is kind of the flip side of the first. The ghost in question wants to help the living move on as opposed to the other way around. It’s equally effective and touching, and it manages to complicate Mitsuo’s ambiguous romantic life even further.

The third entry in the book, oddly enough, doesn’t feature any of the title’s principle characters, but it’s a good thematic match all the same. A young girl, who lost both of her parents, copes with those losses and worries that there’s another to come as she sees her twin brother moving on with his life. The ghosts in this case are figurative rather than literal, but the story explores the same emotional territory in moving and effective ways.

There’s nothing particularly distinctive about the manga’s art, but it serves the story and tone well. (And the boys are predictably gorgeous, matching yaoi standards.) Shiozu does a nice job with facial expressions and body language, which makes the moments of possession play well. (Mitsuo looks like Mitsuo, but you can tell someone else is at the wheel.)

Eerie Queerie! was a real surprise to me, and an decidedly pleasant one. It tells funny, moving stories about the connections people forge and the ways they move on from sorrow and disappointment. I’m looking forward to other volumes.

(Thanks to Iamza and Libby for recommending this!)

Which of the following best describes your response to the preview pages from Avengers #501?

a. compulsive nitpicking

b. “Finch wishes he could do crowded roster porn like Perez.”

c. “Man, does that group have any membership standards at all?”

d. “Another quinjet crash right about now could save Bendis a lot of time.”

e. other.

I would have to classify mine as “all of the above.”

Wow! There sure is consternation over at the cool kids’ table! It’s like the yearbook editor got nominated for homecoming queen, or something.

I’m talking, of course, about some creator reaction to Michael Chabon’s keynote speech at the 2004 Eisner Awards. Graeme McMillan has thoughtfully excerpted some Millarworld remarks from Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, and others who seem to be striking a shockingly defensive posture.

Their primary gripe, it seems, is Chabon’s suggestion that the comic book industry, having struggled somewhat successfully for respect and a more mature audience, might actually try writing some great comics for kids again. One can easily wonder if they actually read or listened to what Chabon was saying.

Millar suggests that, “Bottom line: Kids don’t want to read this stuff. Old men do.” Which was precisely Chabon’s point… that not enough is being produced that kids would like, not that DC should solicit Watchmen Babies or Dark Knight: The Jhoto Journeys.

Bendis seems a bit disjointed in his remarks. He says comics aren’t too expensive, and follows this contention by saying how much his neighbor kids love to read his complimentary copies. So, unless he’s selling his comps to his neighbor kids at retail price, I don’t see how one follows the other. (And comparing the pricing of a largely disposable entertainment like comics with video games that can offer dozens of hours of diversion doesn’t really stand up that well, either.)

Millar again:

“What’s patronizing to me, Bendis and Hitch here is that Chabon has sold 18,000 copies of his creator-owned book (The Escapist) and is telling everyone this is what the market really wants. We’re out there on the front lines every day (doing this as a full-time job) and taking these books to a genuine mainstream audience.”

Seething hatred of the hyperbolic use of “out there on the front lines” aside, I think he’s missed Chabon’s point entirely. Chabon isn’t calling for the discontinuation of what’s on the market now, and he’s not saying it’s illegitimate. He’d just like to see a wider range of product that can bring new, young readers in the door. (And what entertainment genre doesn’t want to include young people in its audience? What smart one, anyways?)

Here’s what I see as Chabon’s central message in the speech: creators should write stories they love and believe in. They should think about storytelling before sales, crafting the best comics they can and worrying about marketing and demographics later.

It’s fascinating to me that Bendis and Millar would have such a hostile response to this message. But, then, I’m kind of a bitch.

I was going to review the current Mystique arc (“Unnatural,” issues 14-18) as a whole after next month’s final chapter, but Paul O’Brien made a very good point in his review at The X-Axis (which is back up and running):

“Now, Mystique presumably isn’t in absolutely immediate danger, because it’s solicited up to issue #20, and issue #20 is part 1 of 5 – so Marvel are presumably committed to the book through to at least issue #24. But let’s be realistic here – if you’re selling 500 copies more than a book cancelled due to low sales, and you’re dropping (at a rate of 18% in the last six months), then you’ve got a problem. So if people feel like drumming up support for Mystique, now might be a good time, hmm?”

Well, said, so here I go.

Mystique is a title that lends itself to the “if you like…” game.

Like Losers, Mystique is a well-crafted espionage adventure book. In this case, the protagonist is doing what might be termed “black-ops work” for mutant paterfamilias Charles Xavier, with the help of her diminutive telepathic handler, Shortpack. She investigates dodgy, mutant-related scenarios, in this case a skin-care company using mutants as guinea pigs.

Like Sleeper, the book features a morally ambiguous protagonist who isn’t entirely acting of her own volition. Mystique has spent much of her career as an opportunistic pro-mutant terrorist, relatively sincere in her beliefs but selfish enough to forego them if circumstances demand. Xavier is essentially strong-arming her into doing his dirty work, and part of the tension in the title comes from her chafing at his restrictions. (She doesn’t always observe them, which is a treat for those who view Xavier as a marginally competent control freak rather than Gandhi with an X-gene.)

Like Birds of Prey, the title has a flexible structure, with a powerful source of information and supervision (Xavier) sending gifted agents (Mystique and Shortpack) on a variety of missions. It has the potential to allow for a great range of stories, with a healthy dose of interpersonal tension thrown into the mix.

Since Mystique is a shape-shifter, writer Sean McKeever can play around with narrative expectations. Given her abilities and her ambiguous nature, it’s possible to leave readers guessing as to just who she is this time. It makes for some fun reveals, and McKeever loads plenty of action into the book.

Artist Manuel Garcia does very nice work with the material. I didn’t care much for Garcia’s work on Avengers, but that might have been a function of inking. I’m guessing Garcia and then-inker Bob Layton were just a bad fit, resulting in blocky visuals. Raul Fernandez provides cleaner and more fluid finishes for Garcia’s pencils, and colorist Matt Milla gives nice texture to the visuals.

Does Mystique break any new ground? Not particularly, but it’s about as solid an entertainment as mainstream comics offers. If the book doesn’t have anything weighty on its mind, it’s clever enough to overcome its relative weightlessness. So why not give it a try?

It’s just too hot to comment on anything at length, but I did enjoy a lot of entertainment goodness over the weekend.

I finally got the AMELIA RULES! THE WHOLE WORLD’S CRAZY trade, and it’s pure pleasure. (I feel the same way about the second, WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.) These wonderful, all-ages stories rest comfortably between PEANUTS and CALVIN AND HOBBES, and they’re just the tonic if you’re feeling worn down by life. They’re also Comics Worth Reading.

I thought the first volume of HOT GIMMICK was brilliant in general, and the subsequent volumes have proven to be brilliant soap opera. My favorite examples of this genre are driven by character, and HOT GIMMICK has a splendid cast to generate story. While the plot twists come fast and furious, they never seem outlandish. And it’s got to be some kind of miracle that creator Miki Aihara can (very carefully) humanize the sublimely creepy Ryoki. And, hey, it’s Manga Worth Reading! I’m spotting a trend, here.

The third volume of ALICE 19TH introduces a really tremendous plot twist that promises lots of ongoing tension for its young heroes. (I won’t spoil it here.) Suffice to say that Vol. 3 lives up to the promise of the first two, clarifying the premise a bit while raising the emotional stakes.

If you can get past the soft-core porn cover, EERIE QUEERIE! has lot going for it. (Remember how the terrible, lurid, completely incongruous Greg Horn covers made you reluctant to even rest your gaze too long on an issue of EMMA FROST? Same deal here, but not to such a Hornian degree.) It’s about Mitsuo, a reclusive young man who can see, speak to, and host ghosts. (He’s not too keen on the hosting part, as the ghosts generally take over his body to suit their own purposes.) As he helps a variety of bossy spectres achieve closure, he learns a lot about himself and forges unexpected emotional connections with the living. Funny, touching, and surprising. (I’ll be posting a full review sometime this week.)

Between Chuck Austen and Brad Meltzer, I’ve had trouble getting my Justice League fix, so I really enjoyed Saturday’s premiere of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED on Cartoon Network. (I can barely admit how much Cartoon Network I watch, but I guess it’s better that owning up to my bizarre fondness for DEGRASSI: THE NEXT GENERATION. I swear, I only watched it because I was looking for DARIA reruns on the N!)

Okay, not really, but the critiques of AVENGERS 500 are coming fast and furious.  Here’s a sampling:

Neither Don MacPherson nor Randy Lander at The Fourth Rail seems too enamored with it.  As MacPherson puts it:

“I have no problem with darkness enveloping icons of the super-hero genre. But I have to tell you… this is just too much. Bendis goes over the top when he puts these Marvel heroes through the wringer. So much goes wrong so quickly that the story completely loses credibility.”

Lander has other concerns:

“There are any number of decisions made in this issue that I think are mistakes with far-reaching and difficult to undo consequences, and more to the point, since this is setting the tone for the Avengers ‘family’ of titles as a whole, I’m very unhappy, as it’s a tone I hate for these characters.”

At this point, I wonder if there’s just about anything that’s too difficult to undo in terms of storytelling.  Exhibit A. 

There’s commentary from one end of the spectrum to the other at the Avengers Message Board, from disappointment to love.  Speculation is running hot and heavy, too.  Even Bendis pops by!  But, by far my favorite posts on the board come from the thoughtful and articulate Sean McQuaid, who must certainly qualify as some kind of lettered Avengers scholar.  Take a look at his musings on Earth’s Mightiest Bottom Feeders. 

At Avengers Forever, Glenn Walker offers a spoiler-rich review of the issue.    He enthusiastically approves, and throws in this interesting compliment:

“Brian Michael Bendis is a writer, not just a comic book writer who excels in just that media, but a real writer.”

On the blog front, there are reviews of varying length at 4-Color Review, gutterninja, and Neil Gaiman’s Journal.  (Kidding!  Kidding!)  Oh, and can we have some love for the Savage Critic?

“LEGION #36:  Something bad happens, something else bad happens, another bad thing happens…. did Gail steal Bendis’ notes for Avengers? Waiting for motivations, or rationales or something to make it a mystery or a story rather than just a series of events. Part of the problem is that events are too big — any humanity becomes a sidenote, rather than the focus like good fiction. It’s not badly done, no not at all, but it sorta feels like plothammer more than anything else.”

Nicely put, Brian.  Now, get out of my head.

Still haven’t had your fill?  There’s always Usenet. 

I just wanted to make a public apology to Troy Brownfield for the tone of my comments on his column, Your Manga Minute at Newsarama.  While I stand by much of the substance of most of my arguments, I was being excessively and inconsiderately sarcastic. 

I’d also like to thank Troy for taking the time to share his thoughts on his approach to commentary.  He’s done some fine work introducing manga to a wider audience, and I look forward to his future columns.

AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED is an Important Story that Changes Everything.  The best way to tell is by paying a visit to Marvel’s handy “Who gets it next?” org chart.  It’s hard to tell which entry is my favorite, but “Stumped:  lost an arm” and “Half the man he used to be:  ripped in twain” rank highly.

Like Mark Hale, I’m a big old Avengers fanboy.  I developed an unhealthy fixation on the Scarlet Witch.  I cried bitter tears when they ditched everyone cool to bring in Tigra.  I thought “Heroes Reborn” should have been followed up with a war crimes trial at the Hague.  It’s where John Byrne officially became dead to me.  I sat in the lonely corner reserved for the handful of people who thought Monica Rambeau was an insufferable goody-goody and sucked up too much story.

Ahhh, memories.

So it’s kind of odd that my reaction to AVENGERS 500 is pretty much… no reaction at all.  I mean, sure, I think there are too many splash pages and the explosions sail past camp and some of the dialogue could cause seizures.  But as far as what actually happens in the story?  Meh.  Couple of characters die, lots of stuff blows up, worst day ever, blah blah blah.

It’s like the nostalgia centers of my brain have atrophied, or at least the parts that govern sentimentality.  Honestly, Marvel and DC have told so many Important Stories that Change Everything that aren’t and don’t that it’s hard to get worked up over the latest entry into the genre.  And absent nostalgia and sentimentality, there really isn’t any suspense in the story for me.

To quote Grant Morrison, who’s speaking on an entirely different subject (found via Fanboy Rampage):

“The current vogue in superhero comics, post-‘Hush’ is for the ‘definitive’ take, which tends to manifest itself as creators playing it safe by cherry-picking and re-packaging all the best and most popular elements of an already successful feature. It’s a commercial strip-mining kind of approach to a given property that seems to make a lot of sense until you realize it can really only work once before you find yourself in the awful position of having to make up stuff again.”

Which is basically what Bendis and company are doing here.  (I’m not at all certain that isn’t basically what Morrison himself did with NEW X-MEN, but that’s a different discussion entirely.  And, besides, he’s right.)  And what Marvel tried to do with “The Crossing” and “Heroes Reborn” and the Walt Simonson run.

Honestly, no matter how drastically Bendis changes things in the title (and it was past due for a new coat of paint, I readily admit), Marvel will, at some point, change them back.  The new status quo will become as stale as the old one, and Marvel will want a quick boost, so there’ll be another Important Story that Changes Everything Back.

And that’s fine; it’s even kind of smart for a company to show that kind of flexibility, to recognize market forces and a changing audience. 

It’s just not very suspenseful, no matter what Vision pukes up.

What, you may ask, does IDENTITY CRISIS have to do with manga?  Not a blessed thing, as it turns out, but Troy Brownfield at Newsarama decided to devote his manga column to a defense of DC’s summer blockbuster. 

Brownfield falls almost immediately into the trap of assuming that people who find the story misogynist make the same assumption about its author, Brad Meltzer.   Brownfield compounds the fallacy by noting, “A little research would let you know that Meltzer is married to a woman that has worked with women who have gone through similar experiences.”  So, if my partner is a cardiac surgeon I can perform bypass surgery?  One wonders what James Carville and Mary Matalin might have to say on the subject of spousal synchronicity.

He cites a number of other works of fiction, books like American Psycho and the works of noted feminist Mary Higgins Clark, television shows like The Sopranos and The Shield, as proof that grisly deaths and violence against women aren’t new, as if anyone needs to be told.  The problem with those examples in particular is that the violence is consistent with each work’s fictional universe and tone.  It isn’t imposed out of hand to manipulative effect.

Then comes the best-selling fallacy:

“He writes thrillers that are best-sellers. This isn’t a guy that wandered in from Freshman Writing 101 and got to play with the big toys. This is a guy who built his craft over several novels – novels that have hit the New York Times Bestseller list.”

A brief glance through any best-seller list, any top-grossing movie list, any top-rated television list, will offer ample evidence that “popular” or “successful” doesn’t equal “good.”  Danielle Steel is on the best-seller list, for pity’s sake.  And to pull a quick quote from one of the New York Times‘ (free registration required) actual reviews of Meltzer’s books, in this case, Dead Even:

“Even if you swallow the absurd premise, the hollow banter of these narcissists is about as funny as pre-op jokes from your oral surgeon.”

Or perhaps The Tenth Justice:

“Meltzer’s dialogue is snappy, but his unlikely plot — a madcap mix of intrigue, romance and legal trivia — eventually sags under its own weight.”

My favorite line from Brownfield has to be the following:

“I’m speculating on Meltzer’s motive here, but what if his goal was to shock you?”

Gee, Troy, do you think?  Another gem, immediately following:

“What if he wanted to stun you, to show you something that you’ve never seen before?”

I’m fairly sure that Meltzer isn’t the progenitor of the rape and murder of female supporting characters in comics.  Its ubiquity is part of the reason people get up in arms over it. 

It’s only natural that there’d be a backlash against the negative reaction so many have expressed towards IDENTITY CRISIS.  It’s just an organic part of the process of discourse.  Everyone is entitled to their own reaction to the book and to express it in any venue available to them.  But one thing that I am perceiving amidst the backlash is the suggestion that readers who are offended by the violence or put off by the shoddy use of manipulative storytelling devices or have given it up in disgust are wrong to do so… that there’s some obligation to read and judge it in its entirety, despite the fact that the reader’s been viscerally repulsed by the early chapters.

Honestly, Meltzer can tell any story he wants with DC characters, so long as DC approves.  Readers aren’t wrong for liking it or for hating it.  And the fact that it’s generating polarized opinions doesn’t make it brilliant.  It makes it polarizing.

And, to try and track myself back to what started this rant, I would make a request of Troy Brownfield:  I read manga to give myself a break from formulaic, big-two crap like IDENTITY CRISIS.  I look at sites and read columns about manga to READ ABOUT MANGA.  Is that too much to ask?