Before Watchmen and Free Zombies

The Pull List:

Before Watchmen - Minutement #1 - DC Comics
Earth 2 #2 - DC Comics
Animal Man #10 - DC Comics
Swamp Thing #10 - DC Comics
The Boys #67 - Dynamite (Not Read)


I started reading The Boys around Christmas time and tore through the series and the attached miniseries over the break. If a series catches my attention, I can burn through it pretty quick. And that's what happened with this series. The only problem with this method of getting caught up on new things is, I'll read through 60+ issues of a series and be caught up to the regular monthly releases. So I got caught up on The Boys and now have to wait four weeks to get a new issue and this week, I couldn't get my hands on the new issue. I've actually never run into this problem. I can usually get what I want to read when I want to read it, but the thing is, I'm not as irritated as I thought I would be about not getting to it. The series has been really great and Ennis has stated that he will end the series at issue 75, but it feels like we've reached a bit of a lul in things right now. It feels like the main conflict of the series  has been resolved and I can't see how the last few issues will wrap things up. I should state, as I do with my English students, if you want to try picking up and try reading The Boys, the mature readers label is definitely earned. The basic idea of the series is that Superheroes exist, but they can't really fight crime and they just shill for corporations. The US government decides to keep an eye on the supers (Who for the most part are spoiled and depraved individuals) they put a black ops unit together to harras and monitor the supers. It is a dark reimagining of the superhero myth, one where the superpowered beings aren't heroes at all.

And that is how I transition into Before Watchmen.

Alan Moore's original Watchmen was a pretty important and seminal work in the graphic novel medium, and changed the whole direction of the superhero genre. It has made it onto multiple best books of all time lists and definitely has a special place on my bookshelf and in my personal cannon of influential texts. When DC announced this summer's  Before Watchmen, a very particular segment of the internet exploded and fanboys picked up digital pitchfork and torch to storm the DC offices. To simplify the controversy here,  when Alan Moore originally wrote Watchmen, he didn't exactly get the best deal. He did not own the rights to the characters, they were the property of DC Comics, and he only got a bit of the money that came from the merchandising. The complexities of contracts and creator rights are a little bit above the goal of this blog. What I should say though, is I wasn't really sure about it myself. Because of books like Watchmen I am pretty cynical about The Man. To think that a time wouldn't come that DC would try to get more money out of these characters is a bit delusional. So it was inevitable. My one hope was that this new stuff is looking at the time before Moore's book, as apposed to looking at what happened after. Obviously, I have conflicting feelings about the thing. What convinced me to give it a try, in the end, was some of the most irritating trolls roaming the internet. The people that condem a work as terrible or worthless before they have even read a bit of it. So, I gave it a shot. With just one issue, there is no way that I can compare it to the original, but I don't think that's the point. This isn't suppose to be an equal or better than situation. What Darwyn Cooke has made here is engaging, smart, and wonderfully drawn, it looks and feels like old news reels about the birth of superheroing would look and feel like. I'm not saying I will enjoy all the others this much, but this one really worked for me and I will be reading the next issue.

Strangely enough, this also made me wonder, with all the superhero movies coming out, what it would look like if Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson directed one of them. Probably a bit like this. Actually, that's a good sounding idea. You would just need the right comic for them to adapt. PT would have nocked it out of the park if Jona Hex had been more There Will Be Blood and less really terrible. While we're at it, if you can get Kenneth Branagh to direct Thor, why not get Sofia Coppola to direct something like Wonder Woman? Just saying.

A year ago, I didn't really know who Jeff Lemire was, and now he has shown up in this blog three weeks in a row. And I am here to say, for the third time, just read his stuff. I have been on such a steady diet of superheroes for most of my comic reading life, that I think I have started to reach that point where I want something different on a more regular basis. Pizza is great, but I do also like chinese, sushi, or fine dining. The nice thing is, that with the new 52, there is a lot more variety in my diet lately. Animal Man may be rooted in Buddy Baker, the 1960s superhero, but it is decidedly a horror book. Looking back on it, I can't really remember the last time I saw any of the standard cape and mask tropes. If you aren't into starting something superhero, give this book a try. The first trade is out and it might be just what you need in your diet.

Most of what I just said about Animal Man can easily be said about Swamp Thing. Scott Snyder (As you may recall, one of my heroes.) has just wrapped up the first major story arc of the series, and this gets us going into something new that is just as dark and beautiful as the first arc. And maybe that is what has actually gotten me to change the direction of my reading of late. A lot of the traditional superhero stuff is just too boring, too predictable, too cliche. I've always believed that comics have the potential to tell stories in a way that no other medium can. They aren't movies, they aren't prose novels, they are a unique thing. When I very first started to buy and read comics at Kanab Drug, I just bought every book that had Batman in it, or named X-something. The people creating the stories didn't matter, what mattered is if had Batman or Wolverine in it. Of course now, maybe I'm just more picky, maybe I'm more of a snob, I don't know. But what I do know, is that at the end of a Wednesday, I don't want to feel ripped off, I want stories that I feel are worth the price I just paid at the LCS. There is nothing worse than buying a book, reading it, and then a week later not even remember what happened. Part of that weekly joy is the excitement and anticipation of "What is going to happen now". Just like with any literature I deal with, there are just some people that are consistant at giving me that. Lemire, Snider, Wood, Kirkman, all are able to do that, and that's why I follow them from book to book as opposed to the younger me's need to follow a character.

Well, my predictions were correct, Alan Scott is officially gay. Actually, gay in both theory and practice. I want to make that distinction because I think that takes a bit more guts in the comics industry. It's one thing to say a character is gay, or have the character say it, but it is something more to give that character a relationship, a significan't other, it also really pisses off a certain demographic of people, and I weirdly like the idea of those people pissed off. Though it wasn't as hyped or even really mentioned as much as the X-Men wedding proposal, there is a same sex proposal in here, it also ends about as well as the X-Men one did, though Earth 2's was a bit more train blowing up-ish. And that did worry me just a bit. As gutsy as I feel it was to have Alan in a relationship, I'm worried they may be on the path of putting his boyfriend in a fridge - in other words, killing him or putting him in a coma to motivate Alan to become a hero - let's just keep our fingers crossed that next month things will work out. Earth 2 also distinguished itself this week as one of the most diverse books on the rack. Of the four main heroes we have been introduced to, only one is a straight white male. That is pretty good percentages, especially in comparison to the rest of comic book land.

Contest Time:

As I mentioned last week, issue #100 of The Walking Dead comes out next month, and to get people ready, the most recent trade Vol. 16 A Larger World has just come out and I have a copy to give away. Here is how you win. I will have five questions related to The Walking Dead.  Each person to post a comment containing all five correct answers will be entered into the drawing. I'll draw the name and post the winner next week. You have until Tuesday the 12th to post your answers, and I will cover the shipping costs of the book to the winner, so lets go.

The Questions:

1. What is Andrea's sister's name?

2. In what issue of the comics did Michonne first appear?

3. What is the name of the town controlled by The Governor?

4. What did Rick and Laurie decide to name their daughter?

5. Name 2 of the four prisoners the survivors find in the prison.

Do your research, post away, and good luck.