Thursday, July 13, 2006
another comic review
GLA MISASSEMBLED
Somewhere down in Georgia I have a copy of the West Coast Avengers issue that introduced the Great Lakes Avengers back in 1989. If you don’t know, and I imagine most of you don’t, the Great Lakes Avengers are a group of marginally powered individuals from Milwaukee who decide to form a super-team, and figure there’d be no harm in borrowing the Avengers name. Their leader is Mr. Immortal, who has no special abilities other than the inability to ever really die. You can kill him, but he’ll get back up as good as new after a few seconds. He has some gymnastic talent, but other than that, he’s just a dude. Other members include Doorman, who can become a temporary door when standing against any solid substance, and Big Bertha, a beautiful model who can make herself grotesquely obese at will. It was total goofball stuff, goofy even for the time, but still awesome, and exactly the sort of thing I read comics for. It’s still a good idea today, if you ask me. Dan Slott got to bring the team back a few years ago; he’s the dude to go to for fun comics that harken back to the days of yore, so this miniseries seemed like a sure success. And hell, it is. What’s surprising though is how it affected my overemotional self. Superhero comics were better when they were fun and goofy, when they were written for kids and young-thinking adults and not just lame-ass thirty-year-old nerds. This is my firm belief, but it’s a tough conviction to defend, I think. There’s definitely a place for grimmer, more mature superhero comics, when they’re done well, which unfortunately is not very often. For every Watchmen and Doom Patrol, you get Punisher War Journal, or the entire early ‘90’s Image line. Obviously comics should be allowed to grow as an artform / medium, even superhero comics, and in the hands of talented people like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and ‘80’s Frank Miller good, serious, adult-minded superhero comics can be made that transcend the genre’s juvenile roots (Of course the best works by Moore and Morrison both transcend and celebrate those roots, merging ridiculous [and awesome] superhero bullshit with real-life context and consequences, but that’s beside the point). With GLA Misassembled, Dan Slott’s typical light-hearted, old-school style acts as parody and critique of both the controversial Avengers Disassembled storyline and modern-day “serious” superheroics in general. It’s a genuinely funny comic that openly decries the adult subject matter and graphic violence that have overtaken the superhero industry, most pointedly the rape and murder of a member of a beloved cult character’s support cast that was the focus of DC’s Identity Crisis cross-over. Slott wonderfully and succinctly displays how far comics have strayed from their fun-loving, convenience store past; he doesn’t go so far as to say that the industry should fully revisit those days, but he does lay out that there’s more than enough room for both styles to coexist. Some of the comedic devices Slott employs are cloying, like the running commentary from Squirrel Girl’s rodent sidekick Monkey Joe, but they’re not overly distracting. The worst you can say about GLA Misassembled is that, like most of Slott’s work, its heavy reliance on Marvel continuity and obscure references might make it somewhat opaque to newer readers. Still, regardless of how well-versed you are in the back-alleys of Marvel history, the humor is self-evident.
GLA MISASSEMBLED
Somewhere down in Georgia I have a copy of the West Coast Avengers issue that introduced the Great Lakes Avengers back in 1989. If you don’t know, and I imagine most of you don’t, the Great Lakes Avengers are a group of marginally powered individuals from Milwaukee who decide to form a super-team, and figure there’d be no harm in borrowing the Avengers name. Their leader is Mr. Immortal, who has no special abilities other than the inability to ever really die. You can kill him, but he’ll get back up as good as new after a few seconds. He has some gymnastic talent, but other than that, he’s just a dude. Other members include Doorman, who can become a temporary door when standing against any solid substance, and Big Bertha, a beautiful model who can make herself grotesquely obese at will. It was total goofball stuff, goofy even for the time, but still awesome, and exactly the sort of thing I read comics for. It’s still a good idea today, if you ask me. Dan Slott got to bring the team back a few years ago; he’s the dude to go to for fun comics that harken back to the days of yore, so this miniseries seemed like a sure success. And hell, it is. What’s surprising though is how it affected my overemotional self. Superhero comics were better when they were fun and goofy, when they were written for kids and young-thinking adults and not just lame-ass thirty-year-old nerds. This is my firm belief, but it’s a tough conviction to defend, I think. There’s definitely a place for grimmer, more mature superhero comics, when they’re done well, which unfortunately is not very often. For every Watchmen and Doom Patrol, you get Punisher War Journal, or the entire early ‘90’s Image line. Obviously comics should be allowed to grow as an artform / medium, even superhero comics, and in the hands of talented people like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and ‘80’s Frank Miller good, serious, adult-minded superhero comics can be made that transcend the genre’s juvenile roots (Of course the best works by Moore and Morrison both transcend and celebrate those roots, merging ridiculous [and awesome] superhero bullshit with real-life context and consequences, but that’s beside the point). With GLA Misassembled, Dan Slott’s typical light-hearted, old-school style acts as parody and critique of both the controversial Avengers Disassembled storyline and modern-day “serious” superheroics in general. It’s a genuinely funny comic that openly decries the adult subject matter and graphic violence that have overtaken the superhero industry, most pointedly the rape and murder of a member of a beloved cult character’s support cast that was the focus of DC’s Identity Crisis cross-over. Slott wonderfully and succinctly displays how far comics have strayed from their fun-loving, convenience store past; he doesn’t go so far as to say that the industry should fully revisit those days, but he does lay out that there’s more than enough room for both styles to coexist. Some of the comedic devices Slott employs are cloying, like the running commentary from Squirrel Girl’s rodent sidekick Monkey Joe, but they’re not overly distracting. The worst you can say about GLA Misassembled is that, like most of Slott’s work, its heavy reliance on Marvel continuity and obscure references might make it somewhat opaque to newer readers. Still, regardless of how well-versed you are in the back-alleys of Marvel history, the humor is self-evident.
