Propaganda Reviews: The Spirit Book 2 by Darwyn Cooke & J Bone

Spirit Book 2

by Darwyn Cooke & J Bone

with extra material by Walter Simonson, Kyle Baker, Glen David Gold, Gail Simone, Denny O’Neil, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Eduardo Risso, Phil Hester, Andy Parks, Ty Templeton.

I’ve already reviewed Cooke & Bone’s Spirit twice on this blog. (Here & here). So it should really come as no surprise to anyone that I thought this second collection was just as wonderful as the first.

It starts with the Summer Special issue and ends with a Holiday Special issue; both fill-in issues. Just looking at the list of creators involved with these fill-in issues gives you some idea of what you’re up against when you decide to fill-in for Cooke & Bone. It’s an indication of just how good the Spirit by Darwyn Cooke & J Bone really is that the majority of the creators here are writing and drawing at the very peak of their abilities and still get completely eclipsed by the skills of Cooke & Bone.

The final Darwyn Cooke & J Bone issue “Sand” is possibly the finest story of the entire run and certainly the closest thing Cooke’s written to truly capturing the very spirit and essence of Eisner. But that shouldn’t be a surprise, because, as Darwyn Cooke said in this interview with Newsarama, it’s the one story they adapted from Eisner’s original:

Originally we were going to kick off year two with a two-part story introducing Sand. When we saw our run wasn’t going to last two years, it was the one story I couldn’t abandon. I decided to do something we’ve avoided on our run. We actually adapted Will’s original story.

It seemed a fitting way to close out our run. It gives the reader the largest slice of backstory that Will created for his character, and in many ways, it helped me define Denny for the reader who may have found him a cut out or cipher.

“Sand” is a bittersweet look back by the Spirit on the lost love of his life, but also serves as Darwyn Cooke’s heartfelt goodbye to the book. Cooke’s decision to leave with issue 12 because his artistic collaborator J Bone was unable to commit to any more is understandable and laudable. As a final issue “Sand” is almost perfection and serves as a fantastic ending to the best adaptations of Eisner’s classic character.

(Cooke & Bone say their goodbyes to the Spirit in typically beautiful fashion.)

As you finish “Sand” with that gorgeous page above, the realisation hits that you’ll most probably never read anything that so perfectly captures everything that was great about Will Eisner’s most famous creation. Every single story of the Cooke and Bone run is excellent, with story and art that you will simply fall in love with. It’s a truly marvellous series and one that deserves to be sitting on your bookcase alongside all those marvellous Will Eisner volumes.

PROPAGANDA Reviews: The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison & Jon J Muth

The Mystery Play

by Grant Morrison & Jon J Muth

The actor playing God in a religious play is found dead. A decaying town becomes filled with fear & suspicion in this stunning psychological thriller.

Every character in the piece is searching for judgement or redemption. None more so than the detective, a bewildered, confused man, more interested in viewing the scene from above than dissecting the crime beyond recognition, he’s attempting to solve the mystery before his past catches up with him & seeking to unlock the secret of both the town’s redemption & his own.

From a thrilling, fast paced mystery story this mutates halfway through to become something far darker & deeper, full of psychological meaning & hallucinatory imagery. If you’re hoping for an easy read, with a simple resolution, forget it. Morrison writes an open ended story with layers upon layers of meaning.

Evocative, cinematic, and dreamlike, The Mystery Play is a multi-layered, tightly written & beautifully painted in photo-realistic style by Jon J. Muth.

Absolute Promethea coming October 2009. When do we get an Absolute Invisibles?

Over on his blog, JH Williams reveals what we’d all been suspecting: there shall be an Absolute Promethea from DC Wildstorm in October 2009, as confirmed tonight by the DC solicits that have just been released.

(Image from front cover of the Absolute Promethea slipcase, art by JH Williams III from his Flickr stream.)

Like I said, it comes as no surprise that we’re going to be getting the Absolute treatment for Promethea. Indeed, looking at the recent year end figures across various blogs, the Absolute volumes and similar very expensive single items are the thing that make DC’s dollar share top the charts even when they’re way behind Marvel in terms of market share. So that’s V For Vendetta and Promethea at least this year, with the Absolute Death being prepared. I’d be expecting (absolutely) everything high profile that DC has done over the last few decades to be getting the absolute treatment over the coming years, after all, it’s a very nice little earner.

Of course, what this really means is that over the next years we’ll see DC release evrything and anything they can possibly get away with. When they get down to Absolute Invasion the sound you will hear is the bottom of the barrel being thoroughly scraped out.

And I guarantee you this: even when they get to the very bottom of that barrel they’ll have managed to complete forget about the bloody Invisibles.

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Hellblazer 250

John Constantine: Hellblazer – issue # 250

by Dave Gibbons & Sean Phillips, Jamie Delano & David Lloyd, Brian Azzerello & Rafael Grampa, Peter Milligan & Eddie Campbell, China Mieville & Giuseppe Camuncoli. Cover by Lee Bermejo.

DC Comics / Vertigo.

Incredibly, with this 250th issue, Hellblazer has been going for nearly 21 years. Quite an achievement for a character that was never anything more than a mysterious Scouse wide-boy magus, popping up here and there to pester the Swamp Thing in Alan Moore’s magnificent run on the title. John Constantine was never intended to be a main character, so it’s all the more incredible that we find ourselves here so many years later.

I’ve followed the title off and on since that very first issue and still have to say that there’s nothing better than the first 80 or so issues with first Jamie Delano and then Garth Ennis on writing duties and pretty much defining everything about the character for any writer to come. You really can do no better than picking up the first collections from both writer (Delano’s Original Sins and Ennis’ Dangerous Habits) as a perfect Hellblazer taster.

(From Christmas Cards, by Jamie Delano and David Lloyd.)

As for the anniversary comic in question, there are three outstanding tales and two okay stories in this double sized issue. All sitting underneath that absolutely perfect cover by Lee Berjemo. Not a bad hit rate for this sort of thing really and purely down to my preference for the Constantine I remember most fondly; the watcher, the thinker, the devious, cunning plotter. I found myself most at home with the Constantine of Jamie Delano & David Lloyd’s Christmas Cards story and Peter Milligan & Eddie Campbell’s The Curse Of Christmas. The stories in both are sedate, subtle things, with some cracking art as you may expect from messrs Lloyd and Campbell along the way. In both of these festive tales Constantine is merely the observer or follower of the mystery, taking very little active part until that crucial final act where his presence is often enough to tip those magical scales.

The other tales have him rather more directly involved and it just didn’t read as well for me. There’s even an attempt in the Dave Gibbons opener to rebrand Constantine as some sort of magical Jason Bourne type. I don’t think the Hellblazer I remember would be up to jumping ten feet down, through the roof of a boat and without breaking stride, carrying on his relentless pursuit of a murderous baby snatcher.

One special mention though: although I thought that Brian Azzarello’s “All I Goat For Christmas” tale of Constantine lifting the curse of the Chicago Cubs was a cracking story, told in rhyme and involving Constantine painting one particular Chicago bar and it’s drinkers a very blood red. The art by Grampa is the real star of the tale though, reminiscent of Paul Pope in parts and a timely reminder that I should really get around to picking up his Mesmo Delivery from Adhouse Books.

(From “All I Goat For Christmas”, story Azzerello, art Grampa)

But like i say, it’s all personal taste here. Like any anniversary issue that does the anthology thing, some tales are going to be better than others. But in some ways it doesn’t matter. The Hellblazer template is so fixed by this point that there’s very little can be done to alter it. Not that this is a problem. After nearly 21 years telling a John Constantine tale is a little like a Sherlock Holmes tale, there are certain things that are rather essential.

And the future is looking good for Hellblazer; Peter Milligan takes over as writer next issue, Jamie Delano & Jock are celebrating the 21 anniversary year with the original graphic novel Pandemonium and Ian Rankin is producing a graphic novel later in the year as well.

Not bad for the bit part Sting lookalike taking the piss out of the Swamp Thing really, is it?

Brendan McCarthy’s Doom Patrol

Rich Johnston’s Lying In The Gutters this week had this little nugget of spectacular beauty for all of us. Back in the depths of time (1991), Brendan McCarthy and Grant Morrison got together to bring us issue 45 of the Doom Patrol, a comic that McCarthy had already done some initial character designs for:

Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol was a wonderous, technicolour nightmare of a series, taking the concept of the world’s strangest heroes and really going wild. One of the many fun and interesting characters Morrison introduced was Danny The Street; the time-travelling, dimension-hopping, sentient, transvestite street that featured throughout Morrison’s marvellous run on this comic, still very possibly my favourite of any comic run. Issue 45 was marked out to be a special imaginary tale of Danny The Street, written by Morrison and drawn by McCarthy but sadly it never got beyond the script stage, tantalisingly covered in McCarthy’s character doodles. Such a shame.

Anyway, the scans of the script are here. And you should already be familiar with The Strangeness Of Brendan McCarthy.

PROPAGANDA @ the FPI blog: Hellblazer 250

The Hellblazer holiday special and a celebration of the 250th issue is reviewed over at the FPI blog:

Hellblazer issue 250

PROPAGANDA Reviews – Grant Morrison’s JLA

JLA: New World Order & JLA: Earth 2

By Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, Frank Quitely

DC Comics

First, a word of warning, my obsession with all things Grant Morrison goes towards fetish. If it’s got his name on it, I’ll look at it. The Invisibles is one of my favourite titles & St Swithin’s Day, the comic he did with Paul Grist in the 80s, is my all time favourite. It’s only been recently with first The Authority and then Final Crisis that I’ve been willing to take a more reasoned look and criticise some of his work.

But I recently picked up his first JLA book; JLA: New World Order just through nostalgia and a curiosity as to whether my younger obsession had blinded me to the books or whether they were as good as I recalled.

But I shouldn’t have been worried. As simple superhero writing, it’s quite brilliant. The characters are spot on & the dialogue & situations are crisp & clear. The best & most obvious thing Morrison did with the JLA was to make it iconic again. Because they’d kind of lost their way at this point and it took Morrison to bring back the big heroes and make the JLA a massively important and powerful team once more. Morrison seemed to instinctively understand how to make it all work and it’s obvious in every nuance; Batman is hunched, feral, dangerous, Superman is pratically royalty in the way he behaves and moves, whilst the comedy that has always made good team books so readable is provided ably by Flash and Green Lantern. It was also obvious that Morrison had done his homework. This entire fiirst storyarc is a classic JLA story; rival superteam takes over world, JLA splits up to deal with theat. Perfection in superhero form comes along rarely but this is right up there with Claremont and Bryne’s X-Men or Jack & Stan’s FF.

Similarly his collaboration with Frank Quitely on the later JLA: Earth-2 is just as bloody good as I thought it was years ago. It’s beautiful to look at, as you would expect from Quitely and a wonder to read with a deceptively simplistic plot; Earth 2 is a mirror of Earth 1, good becomes bad, JLA meet evil Earth-2 JLA, Earth-2 Luthor is the only good guy on the planet, that sort of thing. When the good JLA are transported to the evil Earth-2 it’s Morrison’s brilliance that it takes a while for the good guys to realise that what they do by default anywhere else, save the day, just isn’t going to cut it. This time they have to lose. It’s that shift that really makes the book special.

So I’m relieved to see that I was right. Morrison is a genius, it’s just the last couple of new things I’ve read with his name on prove he’s a flawed genius. But all the best ones are, aren’t they?

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Batman : Cacophony issue 1

Batman: Cacophony issue 1

by Kevin Smith, Walt Flanagan and Sandra Hope.

DC Comics

Way back in the day, this is the sort of storyarc that DC would put in the main Batman book. And to be honest, we wouldn’t have noticed it. Hell, back in the day, they put Batman: Year One into the main book. And Batman: Cacophony is no Year One.

But it does have Kevin Smith writing it. Which nowadays pretty much guarantees at least one of two things, huge publicity for a mediocre project or the potential for a series to be delayed beyond all reason. The good news is that this time DC have done the sensible thing and waited until they have all three issues of this series in the offices before putting issue 1 out. The bad news is they went for the mediocre option. Actually that’s a touch harsh. A better description may be just average.

Because, purely on the basis of this first issue, it’s nothing more and nothing less than an average Batman comic, with an average plot and average art. There’s a new mask with guns who, for reasons yet unknown, breaks the Joker out of Arkham, gives him cash and sets him off in a gang war against Gotham’s current crime boss Maxie Zeus. Oops, not quite true. Even with my encyclopaedic knowledge of DC Comics (yeah, right) I had no idea when reading it that the villain in question that speaks only in sound effects is one Onomatopoeia, created by Kevin Smith for his old Greeen Arrow series. But google and wikipedia are fine websites for finding out these sorts of things.

(Joker – not quite the individual guided by reason alone that Ayn Rand had in mind methinks. Art by Walter Flanagan, from Batman Cacophony issue 1. (c) DC Comics.)

There are some nice touches; the first few pages particularly, with Deadshot breaking into Arkham before the new mask to kill a wise-cracking, Ayn Rand reading Joker and the subsequent breakout once Onomatopoeia shows up.

But once Joker is out of Arkham the whole comic gets just a bit inappropriate. Because this is, unless I’m much mistaken, just a standard, all ages, popular with kids and grown ups Batman comic. But within a few pages we have Joker dropping his prison pants and offering himself to his rescuer, Zsasz brutally murdering the parents and violently threatening the children in a family whilst deciding the best way to mark his kills with his knife on the last bit of uncut skin on his body. (Not his feet. Think more in the gutter ….. yes, correct.) All of this is delivered with a knowing yet sordid little virtual wink to the reader by Smith’s script. And then we have Smith’s take on the Joker’s raison d’etre:

“All I’ve ever wanted is to have a good time. And to annoy Batman, whenever possible, of course. And to one day murder Batman and defile his carcass sexually. And a pony.”

Whilst the “And a pony” bit might be worth a childish chuckle, it’s the “defile his carcass sexually” that disturbs the most. It used to be that you knew the Batman was a complex character and there were stories that could be told for an older audience wanting to investigate the complexities. But there were also younger readers who just wanted good, solid superhero Batman stories. And for a long time it was pretty obvious which one’s were adult focused and which were all ages. Just look at Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Killing Joke to see two perfect examples. They look grown up before you start reading. But not Batman: Cacophony. It looks just like any standard Batman book. And that’s the problem with it. Before anyone suggests it, I have to say I’m completely against any idea of labelling books and comics, believing that content determines a readership and labels serve no purpose whatsoever. But a little responsibility is called for as well on the part of the publisher.

Does DC believe this is an all ages book? Well, why make it look like one then? The artwork by Flanagan and Hope may be better than a lot of the superhero artwork, but it looks too much like the artwork for a regular all-ages appropriate comic. And worse than that, the dubious adult content is nothing of the sort. It’s adolescent snickering, cracking stupid knob gags for your friends and the people who haven’t worked out that you really haven’t got that much to say.

As a Batman comic Cacophony isn’t necessarily that bad. Nor does it have much in it’s favour. It’s merely average. But within that average story, there’s evidence of a disturbing willingness on DC’s part to allow noticeably adult content into a Batman book that passes itself off as just an average superhero book for all. But when you get a big name writer on your book I guess saying no isn’t really part of the deal?

PROPAGANDA @ the FPI blog: Batman Cacophony #1

Latest Propaganda review up at the FPI blog:

Batman: Cacophony issue 1.

Kevin Smith dishes up a rather unsuitable Batman comic.

PROPAGANDA @ the FPI blog: The Mystery Play

More reviews at the FPI blog:

The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison and Jon J Muth.

If you think it’s short, that’s because it’s a very old one that I dusted off a while back from the files. It was done for the old Propaganda sheet at Nostalgia & Comics when I had to fit 6 to 10 reviews plus pictures on one side of A4. That makes you write tight, concise pieces.
Typed it out with a view to expanding it and then realised it said what I wanted anyway so left it well alone.