A Beautiful Gory Display: The Black Diamond and Sad Superman
The idea that Superman needs to walk across the country is ridiculous – Superman doesn’t need to reconnect with ordinary people.That’s the thing he’s best at!His Kansas upbringing, his Clark Kent persona – they ensure that he’s always in touch with the people.That’s why Superman does what he does – because he wants to help people and because it’s the right thing to do.There’s a great bit in a comic from a couple of years back, JLA / Hitman, where Superman looks at the Earth from space and his narration reads “If you knew how you were loved, not one of you would ever raise a hand in anger again”.And that hits it out of the park.That’s what motivates Superman – he loves humanity.Does that sound a guy who needs to trudge around learning about farm foreclosures for a year?
The motivation for his decision was even more problematic – a grieving widow slaps Superman because her husband died of a brain tumor.Thus, Superman feels sad.But it’s not like it’s his job to make sure that nobody in the world ever dies again.It’s not even like we’re talking about somebody who was smashed by rubble during a battle – a man died of natural causes.
My problem with this setup is that it completely pulls down the curtain.There are certain things you have to let go in order to make Superman work.Yes, logically he should be doing nothing but saving people 24-7.Natural disasters should be regularly averted, corrupt regimes toppled, and there shouldn’t be any threat of war whatsoever.And you can tell those kinds of stories with a Superman pastiche.In an isolated work, you can use a Superman-style character who has to justify why he isn’t fixing all of the world’s problems all the time.But to tell that story with Superman means that you’re breaking the toy – there isn’t a satisfactory explanation for why Superman would let people die in an earthquake while he’s visiting his parents half a world away.As soon as you try to give him one, that becomes part of his history – a veritable turd in the pool.It’s not something you should do with Superman.If you want to tell that story, create your own version of Superman and use him to tell it.
And for that matter, how many people will die when he’s busy walking across the country?While Superman’s hanging out in Frankfort, Illinois talking to Vietnam veterans, Metallo could be on a rampage.If you’re going to hold Superman responsible for a death from natural causes, as the story seems to, then he’s responsible for anything that his enemies do while he’s on a walkabout.
I’ve mentioned it here before, but Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman was the best Superman work of the last 30 years.It presents a Superman who can do anything but still retains that human touch.On one page, he’s knocking a giant robot’s head off, and on the next page, he talks a scared teenager out of committing suicide and gives her a hug.Morrison’s Superman doesn’t need to reconnect with anybody – he’s a guy who visits the children’s hospital and turns away invaders from a parallel dimension.This Superman would have talked to the widow, he would have empathized, and he would have stood with her and offered a shoulder while she grieved, and that’s what Superman should do.
I want to read about a Superman who’s entrusted to protect the very concept of fiction while he battles a vampire from space and an anti-matter version of himself (as in Morrison’s Final Crisis: Superman).I want to read about Superman fighting an assassin from another dimension with the help of his dog, Krypto, and then when all is said and done, he tells Krypto that he’s a good boy (as in a recent issue written by James Robinson).I want Superman to fight Bizarro, rescue shrunken bottle cities, and investigate the Phantom Zone.I want his writers to acknowledge that Superman is awesome and then have fun with the things that make him awesome.I don’t want to read about Superman going for a walk and feeling sad for an entire year.Now, this comes on the heels of a one-year span in which Superman did not appear in his own books.You know that scene in 40-Year-Old Virgin where Jonah Hill wants to buy the boots from Catherine Keener’s eBay store, but she can’t sell them to him because it’s an eBay store?He gets increasingly frustrated because she has an item that he wants and he has money with which to pay for it.That’s my relationship with DC right now – I want to give them money to let me read about Superman, but they’re making it needlessly difficult.
And since Superman will only be appearing in this series (Lex Luthor is taking over the lead slot in Action Comics), my choices are to read about Superman being sad or not reading about Superman at all.I don’t know why they’re putting all of their Super-eggs in one basket like that, and it’s very frustrating.I guess I can re-read All-Star Superman while I wait for Superman to go back to doing Superman things.
Now, as promised, it’s time to go back to positive with some reviews of good things.
Invincible Iron Man Annual (Marvel) – I’ve spoken highly of Matt Fraction’s work on Iron Man
before.Bottom line, he gets what works about the character, jettisons everything else, and just tells good stories.It wasn’t until the first movie that Marvel remembered that Tony Stark is a fun and appealing guy and he lends himself to good stories.Iron Man has very rarely lived up to his potential, but Fraction just gets it.
before.Bottom line, he gets what works about the character, jettisons everything else, and just tells good stories.It wasn’t until the first movie that Marvel remembered that Tony Stark is a fun and appealing guy and he lends himself to good stories.Iron Man has very rarely lived up to his potential, but Fraction just gets it.In this annual, he takes on one of the most problematic characters in Shellhead’s history – The Mandarin.Theoretically, Mandarin is supposed to be Iron Man’s main villain.But you haven’t seen him in the movies, and you probably won’t.Mandarin is firmly rooted in Korean War era “Yellow Peril” propaganda, which really doesn’t work in this day and age.He’s also ridiculously boring.In an effort to keep the character inoffensive, nobody has ever really given the Mandarin a personality.He’s Chinese and he hates Iron Man.That is the sum total of 40 years of characterization.
What Matt Fraction does here (along with artist Carmine Di Giandomenico) is tell the definitive Mandarin story.Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have even believed that there is, or ever could be, a definitive Mandarin story.In Batman terms, this Annual is a cross between “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” (the 70’s story that turned the Joker from a harmless gimmick villain to comics’ scariest villain) and “The Killing Joke” (the Alan Moore story that defined the Joker for the last 25 years).Not only is it the best Mandarin story ever, it’s the best issue of Fraction’s impressive run, and it’s one of the best things that Fraction has written so far.
In the Annual, the Mandarin kidnaps China’s most celebrated film director, Jun Shan, and forces him to make the definitive Mandarin biopic.By the fourth page, the Mandarin has blinded Shan in one eye (“It didn’t stop John Ford”), and it gets worse from there.There’s an astonishing cruelty and pettiness that define a character who’s really only known for shooting lasers at Iron Man.He is fragile and vain and unpredictable in his mood swings.
There’s an impressive technique at work here, where there are three different versions of events being portrayed – the way the Mandarin tells the story, what actually happened, and version that Shan is filming.It should be complicated, but the storytelling is just so good that it flows perfectly.And in a neat touch, the film version of the original Iron Man armor looks more like the movie version than anything we’ve ever seen in the comics.There’s a deranged sense of humor at work, with the Mandarin casting the least appealing Tony Stark ever, but it never stops being scary.
It’s worth noting that Iron Man does not appear in this issue at all.There’s an actor portraying Iron Man, but our hero never materializes in person.It’s a 68-page story about a character we’ve never seen before and a villain who nobody has ever cared about, and it is awesome.
The Black Diamond (Ait/Planet Lar) – First, a disclaimer.This graphic novel was written by spunkybuddy Larry Young.If you read the Lost recaps, you know he’s a regular commenter, a fellow Lost analyst, and one heck of a nice guy.He’s done a lot for spunkybean and for me personally, and it is very much appreciated.That said, I was excited when he started posting on the Lost recaps because I was already a huge fan of his work.(I’ve bought his Astronauts in Trouble in three different formats.)It’s kind of weird to review his work, but I really love Black Diamond, and I want to write about it.By the way, Larry published early work from an impressive lineup of writers I’ve talked about here in the past.Rick Remender (who turned the Punisher into a Frankenstein), Joe Casey, Adam Beechen (If you like The Venture Bros., you should read Hench), and the mighty Matt Fraction (see above for further details on that particular man-crush), among others, all put out some great work with Ait/Planet Lar.Their catalog is basically a list of things that I would like, which is much appreciated.It’s like the comic book publishing equivalent of FX – all stuff that I like, all the time.
I’m not sure how I missed Black Diamond back when it was originally published as a six-issue miniseries.It’s possible that its release coincided with a period of poverty on my part.It doesn’t matter, because this is the kind of story that really needs to be read in one sitting – it’s fast-paced and crazy and you’re going to want to plow through it all at once.
The thing I love about this book is that the high concept is so amazing that even a straightforward, by-the-numbers story set in this world would be worth reading.It’s set in 2054, when an eight-lane elevated superhighway runs from San Francisco to WashingtonDC.It was initially built in response to domestic terrorism, an alternative to commercial flight, but the Black Diamond ended up becoming a lawless frontier.The criminals and ne’er-do-wells run their own economy and live by their own rules on the Black Diamond, safely out of sight of the taxpayers.Dentist Don McLaughlin has to hit the road (in a souped-up ’73 Cougar) when his wife is kidnapped.That’s the pitch, and that is a story that I want to read.
But it’s the way Larry (I feel weird calling him by his last name.) tells the story that makes this something special.Early on, in the midst of a car chase, a couple of supporting characters discuss storytelling.(And I can’t even tell you how much I love the “Two kinds of stories” theory put forth here.)The dialogue in this opening scene is so good that it could stand alone in a talking head scene, but it’s in the midst of a car chase / gunfight.
While Black Diamond describes itself as a “comic book love-letter to the 1970’s drive-in movie”, it’s set in a world where everybody is smarter than you.It’s an action movie for English majors, where characters develop through crossword puzzle clues and kidnappers put out press releases.(“We announced your kidnapping on our blog.”)People quote Stealer’s Wheel lyrics at length, and it feels natural.It’s a weird mix of cool, easily accessible ideas and bold storytelling.In the space of a few pages, it goes from a discussion of the early days of aviation to a scene with a woman whipping Molotov cocktails at motorcyclists.
What I love is that it feels effortless – it doesn’t read like Larry’s trying to create a lull so that the next action sequence.It feels like that’s just how it happened.I don’t know if I’m explaining that adequately, but the tonal shifts and the tricks come off as the natural flow of the story.You know how when Quentin Tarantino has characters talk about what cereals they used to eat as kids, the whole time you know that he’s just setting the table for somebody to suddenly get shot in the head?This is the opposite of that.You’re following the conversation, and you get sucked in to the rhythm, and then you’re pulled along when it’s time to lasso the train.
I’m not going to ruin the ending, but I’ll just say that it’s sort of Grant Morrison crossed with the finale of The Sopranos.In the last few pages, my immediate reaction was first “Wait, where’s he going with this?” quickly followed by “I’ll be damned!He pulled it off!”It’s exciting to see somebody tell a story in a way that you haven’t seen before, and that’s what happens here.
By the way, I don’t usually have much to say about artists, largely because I never thing I’m saying the right things.I have the visual sense of Helen Keller, so it’s a discipline I just don’t understand.Jon Proctor’s art is more design-y than I’m used to, if that makes sense – sometimes he emphasizes page layout over storytelling, and somehow it still works.It’s very striking, and I can’t help but notice that he draws really awesome cars and dogs.(That freaked-out Pug in the first chapter?Perfect.)
This has been a very long article, so I’ll just sum it up by saying that I totally heart Larry Young and Matt Fraction.I also love Superman, but not when he’s mopey.And that’s one to grow on.
