The Fourth World: Omnibus Volume Four

I just finished reading the final Fourth World Omnibus. I love that DC put these books out, the issues hold up well, and are thematically extremely relevant to the world we live in today. This last volume is a downturn in quality from the earlier issues, but it concludes with a couple of great stories, the unjustly maligned “Hunger Dogs” graphic novel and its prelude are a satisfying, epic conclusion to the saga.

If there’s a central theme to The Fourth World, it’s the idea that darkness will always fail to control the world, and in the end, the forces of good will find a way to win. The reason for that is that the order Darkseid seeks to impose is inherently fragile. It’s a lot easier to shine a light than to blot out the sun. We see this played out in the final issue of The Forever People, where Infinity Man finds his way out of a cosmic prison to go back and battle Darkseid. The issue ends with Darkseid banishing the Forever People to another dimension, something they’re cool with. What he calls a punishment, they see as an opportunity to build a new home for themselves.

Mister Miracle is about escape, he is the incarnation of chaos, a man who cannot be held by any prison. Apokolips is a prison planet, so he is the ultimate affront to that world. He can escape from any prison they cook up for him, and even when the series drifts away from its Fourth World roots, the core theme remains present.

Most of this book is Mister Miracle issues, and he was always my least favorite of the Fourth World books. These issues aren’t bad, but they are a bit formulaic. The joy is in watching the developing relationships between the various characters. We get to watch the formation of the Mister Miracle Escape Troupe, the creation of a surrogate family for various characters. Scott and Barda are the central relationship here, and it’s great watching them get closer and finally get married at the end of the series.

Also introduced is Shilo Norman, a kid who will grow up to play a central role in Grant Morrison’s Mister Miracle series. He’s not too notable here, though I do like the way Kirby creates an inter-racial family with Scott’s adoption of Shilo. Kirby is extremely politically progressive, and his youthful energy serves as a rebuke to the traditional image of generational conflict in the 60s. Reading this series, it’s clear he’s philosophically right with the 60s counterculture, and Jimmy Olsen and The Forever People read as extended tributes to those ideas.

Kirby sounds like an incredible guy, it’s crazy to think of all the stuff he must have done in his life, making all these stories, fighting in World War II, and more. He came face to face with the Earth incarnation of Darkseid and Apokolips, and I’m sure much of the series is informed by what he saw there. It bothers me when people equate patriotism with this conservative ideal of the whitebread nuclear family. Kirby came out of that generation, but he’s making these trippy, progressive comics that are as groundbreaking as anything else that came out of the counterculture. You know if he were around today, he’d hate what Bush did to this country, and would be writing comics about people who fought back.

Morrison’s Mister Miracle will likely make a lot more sense if I read it now, after reading all the original stuff. I like the idea that Shilo wanders away from the wedding in issue #18 unsure of whether anything he just saw was real, and it’s those memories that come back to him when he plunges into the black hole in the series. Seven Soldiers owes a major debt to what the Fourth World books did.

After a bunch of random standalone issues, the Fourth World concepts and characters return in issue #18, the wedding of Scott and Barda. It’s great to see them back, many classic Mister Miracle foes return and we get a final confrontation between the forces of freedom and the forces of control. Highfather shows them all up, and everyone escapes to New Genesis. Darkseid is left behind to reflect on the fact that “Life at best is bittersweet.” Situated a panel away from a caption saying “The Mister Miracle series will not be continued…” that feels all too appropriate.

However, the saga is not over. The other titles fade to the back, and the Orion/Darkseid conflict surges to the fore for Hunger Dogs. These stories have a pretty bad reputation, but I really liked them. I suppose it could be a bit underwhelming if you’d waited fifteen years for the conclusion, but read in succession with the issues, it works well.

“Even Gods Must Die” is primarily a visual spectacle, Kirby’s art feels rawer and crazier than the old stuff, and his layouts are more experimental. Every page seems to be half covered in crazy Kirby gizmos, and filled to the brim with faces and bodies in motion.

The big conflict here is between Darkseid’s attempt to impose total order on Apokolips, and the spark of chaos that Orion brings. Darkseid has turned to machines, “The Micro-Mark” in particular, which is apparently an artifical version of the anti-life equation. He is using this to subdue the masses and turn them into mindless drones who believe only in Darkseid.

Again, there’s huge relevance to what we’re seeing happening in politics today. There’s a lot of talk about why movies about Iraq fail, and primarily I think it’s because it’s hard to express the anger that a lot of people feel without coming off as preachy and over the top. I think people have a hard time accepting their own culpability in what happened, so we wind up with movies that explicitly claim to have no political agenda. But, this is a time when we need people to speak out, and sometimes it’s easier to that through genre. What the Fourth World books do is tap into a conflict so eternal and fundamental to humanity, they remain forever relevant. The original concept came out of Vietnam, but Darkseid’s agenda feels like exactly the kind of thing we’ve seen Bush and his crew do.

Much emphasis is placed on the mechanation of Apokolips. They no longer need foot soldiers to kill and keep control. When we’ve got politicians speaking about unmanned drones to protect our borders, and an army where you can bomb people from remote, it’s clear how relevant this is. And, I think it’s only by viewing the conflict in this kind of archetypal genre narrative that we can recognize how dire our own situation is. Real life villains don’t have faces of stone, they wear suits and speak like they care about you. Is anyone supporting Darkseid when they read this story? No, and if that’s the case, why are people still supporting his counterpart on our world?

That’s why I like the fact that Kirby recognizes one man can’t save the world, he can only hope to ignite a change in the masses. Before reading it, I wondered why the book was called “The Hunger Dogs,” and it turns out that the dogs are the people of Apokolips. We’ve been following the conflict of gods, and never understood what it did to the people on the ground level. They want to throw off the control of Darkseid, but they don’t know how to. That’s where Orion comes in.

Orion is the spark of chaos, born in the darkness of Apokolips, he has seen the light and now returns to spread that light and tear through Darkseid’s control. In the prelude, we see him eventually reach Darkseid, and in an awesome turn of events, get abruptly gunned down. But, Darkseid doesn’t seem to even care. He’s going through the motions at this point, seemingly in an extistential crisis. His imminent victory feels meaningless. I particularly like the scenes where he revives people who’ve died during the series, only to find that they are little more than flesh puppets, their existence only reminding him more of what he lost.

“The Hunger Dogs” is ostensibly about the final confrontation between Darkseid and Orion, but the real action takes place away from that, on New Genesis. Throughout the entire series, we’ve seen New Genesis and Apokolips pitted against each other in this eternal struggle of freedom and control. Darkseid beings an assault on New Genesis, but High Father winds up totally subverting the paradigm. Darkseid thinks that destroying their world will destroy the people, but in the end, the destruction of New Genesis liberates them to go searching the galaxy for a new way of life.

Much like with the Forever People, Darkseid believes that upending the order of things will cripple his foe, only to find out that he’s given them an opportunity to find something better. Darkseid is ultimately about the status quo, keeping people locked in specific patterns of behavior. High Father is much more malleable, they have a satellite ready, and are perfectly willing to go searching the stars for a new world. Nobody knows what they’ll find out there, but they’ve got hope.

So, Darkseid first loses his cosmic foe, and next uses his personal foe, Orion. Rather than embarking on another duel to the death with Darkseid, Orion decides to take the people he cares about and run away. I’m guessing one of the big issues people have with the book is that they see this ending as a cop out. We’re deprived of the epic final confrontation between father and son. But, I feel like we get that in “Gods Must Die,” we’ve seen that you can’t defeat Darkseid through force. “Hunger Dogs” is all about destroying the idea of Darkseid, the Manichean ideal that he so stringently represents.

By running away, Orion deprives Darkseid of an enemy, and without an enemy, his life is meaningless. He doesn’t care about controlling the people anymore, they’re running over his machines and causing chaos in the society. At this point, he only cared about Orion and Tigra, and now they’re running away, never to be seen again. Orion chooses a life of adventure, of new discoveries, instead of continuing this tired old paradigm of good vs. evil.

That’s ultimately the greatest escape of all. The book begins with a war, and it ends with the close of that war. Evil is not defeated, it’s the idea of war itself that’s abandoned. The chaos Orion inspires in Apokolips will eventually bring down the civilization, in a way that acts of destruction never can. People can only be ruled by fascist governments if they believe that’s the only way things can be. Bush can install the Patriot Act because he says we’re in imminent danger and this is the only way to protect ourselves. But, once you realize that’s a lie, that the whole world is built on a lie, the people will revolt against the current order. Orion has shown the Hunger Dogs that Darkseid need not be feared, and they are ultimately the ones who will win the war. It is their human passion that will destroy the machines Darkseid barely even cares about.

I love the final couple of pages in the book, particularly High Father’s speech about the new nature of their existence. The people he’s speaking with fear that they might find a foe greater than Darkseid. But, where they fear the unknown, he relishes it, hoping that they will find a better world. It is a gamble to choose the unknown, but perhaps they can find hope out there. “The world we seek must find us. We are the ones who are lost!”

And the whole world closes out with one final appearance of Metron, towing a young planet behind him, the planet that will presumably one day become the new hope of High Father and the residents of New Genesis. Metron is essentially another fiction suit for John a Dreams, a person who’s outside the game, above the conflict, and moving to ensure that certain things happen as they need to. There are a lot of similarities between the Fourth World and The Invisibles, most notably the destruction of a Manichaean paradigm at the end. Evil is not defeated, it’s exposed as pathetic and lacking next to the overwhelming light of forward progress.

In the end, it’s disappointing that Kirby couldn’t finish the story as he’d hoped to. I’d have loved to see everyone come back for the finale, get the Forever People, Scott and Barda, Dave Lincoln and Claudia Shane, and even Jimmy and the newsboy gang back to help defeat Darkseid. But, I think it’s a total misjudgment to say that this ending is somehow a failure or disappointing. I think it’s as pop and exciting as any of the comics that preceded it. After reading these books, it’s easy to see why Kirby is revered as a god of the medium.

DC Universe #0

DC Universe #0, the prelude/teaser for Final Crisis and a variety of other DC books dropped yesterday. It was pitched as a primer for new readers, giving them the info they needed to follow DC’s upcoming stories. I don’t consider myself a new reader, I’ve read 52, Infinite Crisis, Crisis on Infinite Earths, all of The Fourth World, Grant’s JLA and more, but I found myself very confused, and not really knowing what was going on for the vast majority of the book. So, I think the book would be absolutely impenetrable to totally new readers. That said, I am pretty intrigued by the stories, so perhaps the book did its job.

I think one of the great myths of recent comics discussion is the idea that readers need done in one stories and clear jump on points if they’re going to enjoy a book. Ultimate Spider-Man was specifically designed to have standalone arcs, so you can pick up any TPB or arc starting issue and enjoy it. Warren Ellis has talked a lot about this, and done series like Global Frequency that are modular and designed to be easy for new readers to pick up. I don’t think this is a bad idea, but if you read people talking about why they got into comics, very few of them say they picked up the first issue of a book, or a new storyline and got hooked from there.

More frequently, you’ll hear people talk about how they picked up a random issue of Claremont X-Men, or something like that, and didn’t know what was going on, but wanted to know more. For me, I picked up some X-Men comics, and was baffled, but I was interested in knowing more, so I picked up Essential X-Men 1, and went from there. So, technically it was reading a jump on point that got me into comics, but I would never have been interested if I hadn’t gotten a glimpse of the crazy universe and its many stories from the current issues. Hearing about stories like Mutant Massacre and Inferno, I wanted to find out what they were, and discover the characters’ backstory. If there was a downside to actually finishing the Claremont run, it’s that all these stories were nailed down into something concrete, rather than existing as this hazy apocryphal narrative.

So, in that sense, this book works. It presents cryptic glimpses of various storylines, and has me intrigued for a number of them. I wouldn’t normally read a Wonder Woman comic, but this teaser wasn’t bad, and reminded me of the Gail Simone issue I had gotten free at New York Comicon. I won’t be buying this new storyline in singles, but I might grab a TPB of Simone’s first arc when it comes out.

The stuff with Green Lantern was totally incomprehensible, as was whatever was going on with Superman at the start of the book. The book in general felt a bit too divided in focus. By jumping around to all these stories, we don’t get a real feel for them. It would have probably been better to make a choice and go for either something that’s straight up ad, or go for more of a coherent story.

That said, I do really like the scene with Libra at the end of the issue. The tagline for Final Crisis is ‘The Day Evil Won,’ and the series seems to be dealing explicitly with the dark power of Darkseid. Having just finished the last Fourth World omnibus, I’m curious to see how Morrison deals with Darkseid. I like the religious angle, which feels very contemporary. I could imagine Dick Cheney leading a similar meeting of his business associates, asking them to join him and invade Iraq.

The end of The Invisibles posited a world on the threshold of a new age, ready to burst into glorious chaotic life. In Volume III, the old order was already destroyed, and their defeat was a formality. However, our world hasn’t gone that way, and it’s appropriate that this crossover deal with a resurgent force of evil in the world. Darkseid is the pure incarnation of control, and by believing in him, this ragtag crew of villains could become united for a single cause.

So, that was me intrigued, and bodes well for what’s going on in FC. However, the ‘big revelation’ out of this issue was the return of Bart Allan, the original Flash. Now, the only reason I have to believe that happened is the various media articles about it. Reading the issue itself, I had no idea that that happened. Yes, there’s the giant Flash sign on the last page, but that means he’s returned from the dead? My interpretation would more be that he’s merged with the DCU itself, and perhaps that is the take, but it doesn’t seem to gibe with what the media’s reporting. Is that the Flash falling through time, and glowing with power, or Darkseid? I don’t even know.

And, I think that’s a big problem with the issue. I think it errs a bit too much towards the cryptic, if I can’t tell what’s going on, someone who’s read many, many current and older DC comics, then you’ve got a very narrow audience for the book. I don’t necessarily mind not being able to follow everything, but if this Flash story is something internal to this book, it should be at least somewhat comprehensible.

Still, I don’t think Morrison’s responsible for most of the content in the book. It’s got a lot of stories to tease, and not much space to do it in. It succeeds in intriguing me, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to hook, or even make any sense at all, to a casual fan. Now, for some people that might not be a problem, getting a glimpse into this crazy universe could get them on the path to buying some more books. But, a low priced book going out the week of Free Comic Book Day should at least have some internal logic.

Torchwood: 1x01 - 1x04

As I was saying before, watching Torchwood made much clearer what it is that makes Doctor Who works. His joy and energy makes even a run of the mill episode enjoyable, and watching his life spirit come in conflict with vast darkness is what ignites the major conflicts in the series. Torchwood doesn’t have this same life spirit, the characters are all a bit darker, and the external world is treated more as a menace than something exciting to be discovered. The show has its moments, but after four episodes, I don’t think it’s quite found its voice.

The basic structure of the first episode is pretty similar to Doctor Who’s ‘Rose,’ however ‘Rose’ worked better for me because I was totally new to the universe, like the character was. Here, I know who Jack is, I’m aware that there’s weird stuff going on, so it feels like we’re one step ahead of the character. Gwen is a solid protagonist, I like the pull between her regular life and the more lonely, workaholic lives of the Torchwood gang, I’m guessing she’ll eventually dump the boyfriend and commit full time to Torchwood.

My central issue with the series so far is the portrayal of Captain Jack. This was a character who was so charismatic he got this spinoff made after only a few episodes on Doctor Who. The central appeal of the character was his reckless sense of adventure, his enthusiasm to go anywhere and do anything. He’s the character we know, and in theory, he should be our point of view character, not Gwen. So, I’m not sure why they chose to change him from a friendly, energetic guy into a brooding mysterious guy. It kills the appeal of the character, and makes the show into much more of a typical broody, dark sci-fi show.

The show has a lot in common with Angel, and like the first season of Angel, it struggles to find its voice. I think all the episodes are watchable, and have their moments, but none of them really click. The strongest is probably ‘Day One,’ which puts Gwen in some tough situations, and contrasts her naivete with the world weariness of the rest of the gang. But, like early Angel, they frequently try to make the series too dark and humorless, as a contrast to its goofier parent show.

Now, I love dark stories, the darker episodes of Who are my favorites, but those dark episodes still feature fun and awe. Look at the Master episodes, it’s his ecstatic dance as the six billion orbs descend that makes it work, there’s no need for brooding. The Doctor goes through dark times, but he keeps high spirits. The fact that he can be happy makes his sadness even worse. Other than Gwen, I don’t have a sense of who these characters are outside of work yet, and that makes it tough to care for them.

That’s where the series’ biggest misfire so far comes from. ‘Cyberwoman’ has a bunch of things going against it, that really goofy outfit on the woman notably, but the real flaw of the episode is that it wants us to care deeply about Ianto, a character we’ve barely seen, and the actor just doesn’t pull it off. It feels melodramatic and over the top when it should be emotional. It’s the kind of episode that sounds good on paper, but just doesn’t work in practice.

But, it’s still early in the series. I’ll stick with it and see how things go. The premise has a lot of potential, and Gwen and Jack have some good chemistry when they let him actually play something other than brooding mysteriousness. It makes no sense to me that his work crew should be unclear whether he’s straight or gay, the guy we saw on Doctor Who would have tried to have them all already, so they should know he’ll go for whatever, as long as it’s beautiful. It’s odd that they’d so completely miss what makes the character work when building a show around him. Jumping from the Jack we saw in the last episodes of season three to the Jack of Torchwood is an odd experience. It really feels like the same actor playing two totally different rules. I don’t blame Barrowman, it’s more the writing that fails him.

Doctor Who: 'Partners in Crime' (4x01)

This weekend I watched the first episode of Doctor Who’s fourth season, as well as the first four episodes of Torchwood. Watching Torchwood makes clear what the strengths of Doctor Who are, it’s that infectious joy the Doctor has at discovering the unknown. While I love the huge, dark two parters that lose out each season, the essence of the series is going to new places, seeing new things and experiencing something that takes you away from dreary everyday existence. Torchwood focuses more on that dreary existence, and consequently is a less engaging series. It’s not bad, but hasn’t done anything to really hook me so far.

I’ll start with the Doctor Who episode. As they usually do early in the season, things start off on a lighter note, with ten minutes of goofy comedy missed connections. It’s not the kind of thing I usually go for, but I really enjoyed it here, the heads bobbing out of cubicles, just barely missing each other every time. This all culminated in the really funny window to window discussion that finally brought our two main characters together.

But before that, we get a good idea of what Donna’s home life is like. Donna isn’t like Rose or Martha, she doesn’t have a whole life ahead of her, she’s lived and has realized that nothing she’s going to do is going to match what she had with the Doctor. Thematically, it’s similar to what they did with Sarah Jane in ‘School Reunion.’ It’s interesting because it makes the Doctor simultaneously the best thing in these peoples’ lives and the worst because he makes it impossible for them to go back to regular life. One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is Rose, Mickey and her mother at a restaurant in ‘Parting of the Ways,’ where she says that she cannot live like she used to anymore, she’s seen too much.

But, like Sarah Jane, Donna has gone into action in the Doctor’s absence, carrying on his mission. One of my favorite scenes in the episode is Donna’s conversation with her grandfather. The show is at its core about the joy we get from discovering the universe, and it’s really touching to see someone who’s looking to the stars instead of just staying trapped on the ground. The ending moment, when Donna waves to him from the Tardis, is the kind of thing that could play as cheesy on another series, but this show has such irony free love of human possibility, it works wonderfully. It’s the kind of moment you only see on this show.

Along with this we get some more fun comedy adventure stuff. Donna’s brassier attitude is a nice contrast to the awed demeanor of the previous two companions. She’s not going to be shocked to travel to the past or future, and I’m thinking she’ll help the Doctor to examine himself a bit. Here, we already can see how he’s thought about what happened to Martha, the pain she suffers weighs heavy on his consequences. He has to wonder, would everyone he takes on the Tardis have been better off if they’d never met him? Ultimately, the show leans toward the idea that the bad stuff is worth it if it means getting a chance to see the wonderful things that are out there.

But, I don’t think most people were thinking about all that at the end of the episode, instead it was one brief cameo that lingered, and that’s the surprise reappearance of Billie Piper as Rose. My reading of the scene is that she’s somehow able to project out of the parallel universe, into ours, that she’s working to come back to the Doctor, but isn’t quite able to pull it off yet. I’m eager to see her return, and it’s nice that we get some hints early in the year, it just doesn’t come out of the blue later in the series.

So, that’s it for the Who season premiere. Coming up next, my thoughts on Torchwood.

Battlestar Galactica: 'Escape Velocity' (4x04)

I think more than any show I really like, my opinions on Battlestar swing wildly back and forth from episode to episode. After the second episode of the season, I was a bit down on the series. Things just weren’t clicking for me, and I wasn’t seeing a clear path forward for the characters or narrative. It wasn’t the lack of narrative progress that was bothering me, it was the fact that scenes seemed to say the same thing over and over again after we’d already gotten it. But, the past two weeks have really turned things around, and right now, the show is as strong as it’s ever been, outside of the New Caprica episodes.

I didn’t get a chance to write up last week’s episode, but that’s not because I disliked it. It was a really brilliant episode, full of the kind of subjective surreal filmmaking techniques that this show does better than any other. It’s frequently hailed for its ‘realism,’ which is media code for shaky camera, but one of the things I love about the show is how it’s able to represent not just the external reality we’d see in a documentary, but also the tumultuous internal worlds within the characters’ heads. We are able to understand how Cally feels, her entire life, from those opening scenes. It’s easy to see why she’s frustrated and on the verge of total breakdown. The same sort of technique is used in last night’s episode to show Tigh’s uncertainty when talking with Six, and also to contrast Baltar’s external behavior with his internal doubt. This is what movies should do, not just let you watch the characters going through stuff, we should feel what they feel.

There’s two major plotlines really intriguing me right now. One is the final four cylons’ struggle to understand what they are. The central question is, what determines self identity. Is it what we believe ourselves to be, or is it what the world tells us we are? They know that they’re cylons, but what does that mean. Tory finds herself with superstrength, was that always there, or did her understanding of herself as a cylon fundamentally change her? Why can’t she just go on as she was, no one needs to know what she is.

For all three characters on the Galactica, it’s the guilt that troubles them. Are they culpable for the destruction of human civilization, on some subconscious level did they contribute to that destruction? For Tyrol, the guilt manifests itself in the fact that he doesn’t care about Cally being dead, on some level, I think he finds it a relief, but the fact that he doesn’t care worries him, because it means that he’s more a cylon than he thought he was. Where does the human end and the cylon begin?

This is where the stuff with Six and Tigh is interesting. She says that we’re like you, only more, presumably referring to humanity. They feel more and are more in synch than the fractured humans. Tigh has been losing it ever since he killed Ellen, and that guilt returns now because he realizes that he has punished Ellen for doing something far less bad than what he is.

This all gets wrapped up in a sado-masochistic framework, where pain becomes the way to know that we’re alive, the means of discovering our deeper humanity. This is presented in the scene with Tory plucking Baltar’s hair. It’s an odd scene, but makes sense as a thematic overture for the episode to follow. She tells the other cylons that she’s moved beyond guilt, she doesn’t seem to care that she killed Cally, she is beyond traditional morality. In this way, she’s quite similar to Roslin, who says the closer you get to death, the less you care about societal conventions. Tory probably feels like she will be found out eventually, so she can do anything to sustain her life, and in the mean time, she’s going to experience as much as possible.

Now that the cylons have moved beyond the shock of finding out who they are, we’re getting some interesting schisms. They’re all together now, but both Tigh and Tyrol seem to be one bad day away from snapping and giving the whole thing away. Tory appears to be more in control, but we’ll see if that sticks.

Elsewhere, Baltar continues his role as a prophet, and continues infuriating Roslin and Adama. I’ve always found Baltar more likable and engaging than Roslin or Adama, even though I’m sure Roslin and Adama are the best leaders, they’re just not as fun to spend time with. It always bothers me when Roslin blames Baltar for what happened on New Caprica. I think it was perfectly logical to settle there, if you’re on a boat at sea searching for a place you don’t know the location of, that may or may not exist, and you come across another island, it’s not that ridiculous to settle? I think it’s easier for them to blame Baltar for all their problems than face up to the fact that Roslin would have probably had to do the same thing in that situation.

The thing I love about the Baltar storyline is the way we’re not sure what’s true and what’s not. It’s quite possible he’s delusional and saying whatever he can to protect his own self interest. However, it’s also possible that the Six he sees is a messenger from God, that’s what she’s said all along, and maybe it’s Baltar’s destiny to begin a new age on the fleet. But, is this one god the same god of the cylons? Maybe this is the path to reconciliation for cylons and humans. It would be fitting that Baltar, who caused the initial destruction of Caprica, would be the one to find a way to heal the rift.

The best scene of the episode is Baltar getting knocked down and seemingly dragged up by the invisible Six time and time again, leading up to his huge speech about the love God has for all of us. It’s phenomenal stuff, watching him believe more and more in his message. In such a nihilist show, with people falling deeper and deeper into despair, maybe Baltar is the light they need? When does it stop mattering whether he really believes what he’s saying or not?

Practically every scene in the episode worked really well. I liked the scene with Adama and Roslin, watching Adama’s squirminess at her worsening condition. He doesn’t want to face up to that, even as she gets more and more unhinged on her way out. The big conflict in the offing is Lee’s rebellion against his father and Roslin. Will he be the one to finally knock her out of office?

If anything, this season seems to be about the conflict between old and new orders, and the gradual restructuring of societies. Here, we’re watching the older generation fade away. Roslin is dying, Tigh has lost sense of who he is, the hardliners are on the way out, and they’re no longer able to shape the fleet’s destiny like they’d want to. Baltar is just the first to harness the forces of evolution and change that will alter the fleet. Over on the Cylon ship, the same kind of thing is happening, a new generation overthrowing its elders, plunging the fleet into conflict. Lines are blurring, and everything seems uncertain going forward. The season really came back strong with these last two episodes, I’m loving where the show is right now, and looking forward to the stuff with Kara next week.

Doctor Who: 3x07 - 3x13

Before I delve into Battlestar, I’ve got to write up the end run of Doctor Who season three. I just finished the epic, brilliant season finale, an episode that hit the same core emotional place that season one’s “Parting of the Ways” did. This is the kind of psychedelic pop storytelling that Grant Morrison talks about, turning our everyday problems into galaxy spanning conflicts, and presenting us with another incarnation of the godlike problem solver, the Doctor.

The whole backhalf of the season was really strong, the best sustained run of episodes the show’s produced so far. I’ll delve into the earlier episodes a bit later, but first I’ll tackle the Master arc. The show picks up a bunch of energy starting in ‘Utopia,’ with the return of Captain Jack. I didn’t realize it until now, but he’s a big part of what made me love that closing run of season three. I think the show is strong when there’s somebody else around besides the Doctor and his companion. It opens the show up a bit, and allows for more deviation from the formula. In TV, I generally like a bigger cast, it allows for more emotional engagement and real danger. We know that the Doctor and Martha are not likely to die, but a third person hanging around with them very well may.

Plus, Jack is just a great character. I love the tension between him and the Doctor when he’s in the engine room in ‘Utopia.’ That episode may have a bit clichéd postapocalyptic future world, but that doesn’t matter since it’s all about building a feeling of dread. There’s tension all around, between our core characters and a feeling that this scientist guy must be something more than he appears.

I didn’t know who The Master was before watching the episode, but, much like with the Daleks back in season one, just the way they treat the revelation that this guy is “The Master,” you know he’s a major villain, and that shit is going down. When they open that watch and reveal him, it’s one of the best moments on the show so far.

That leads into the best episode of the season, “The Sound of Drums.” While the payoff to the arc is quite good in its own way, it’s the buildup of evil over the course of the penultimate episode that makes it really work. There’s a real sense of fear and impending doom, aided by the great musical score. The theme running through these two episodes makes everything feel sad and broken the world spiraling out of control, inexorably towards death.

The best moment of the episode is the revelation of The Master, as he kills the American president and brings down an army of orbs down onto the world. This is a perfect example of how the show can raise the stakes better than virtually any other out there. How many shows can have a guy call down six billion allies to destroy one tenth of the world’s population, all while sitting aboard his floating airship? John Simm is a huge reason the arc works, he’s a really over the top villain, he takes such joy in what he does. My favorite moment of the episode is him throwing on an 80s pop song while our characters are plunged deeper and deeper into suffering. Martha’s family is taken, The Doctor is age a hundred years and him and his wife are just having a great time, watching the orbs descend to Earth.

In a lot of ways, it’s impossible to top that moment. We know some other stuff will happen, the Doctor will somehow win, but it’s that moment when you realize just how high the stakes are, how messed up everyone is, that lingers emotionally. It’s a lot like that moment in season two when the Dalek prison ship opens and millions of them come flooding out, that’s the high point of the conflict.

But, that’s not to say the final episode wasn’t amazing in its own way. I can see people having a lot of issues with this, the deus ex machina nature of the ending kind of makes it feel that none of what we saw matters. But, there’s so many incredible moments, I don’t mind that, and I think it even kind of works.

Tracking back a little bit, that initial one year later title card was the first major “oh shit” moment of the episode, and it just kept building from there. I really liked the black ops stuff with Martha, the real feeling of desperation around her. They did a great job of building an entire doomed world in one episode, though again, I wish this had been at least a three parter, or that The Master was more integrated into the earlier parts of the season. He was such a great character, I’d have liked to see more focus on him. His crew was around, but not the man himself. The ending did a good job of integrating stuff from earlier in the year, but much like with season two, the ending is so huge, yet so compressed, it could have used another hour to develop.

The failed escape attempt was a great sequence, you get the sense they’ve tried this many times before, to no avail. The Master’s trip to Earth, to retrieve Martha, was another fantastic scene. There were a bunch of episodes in season one that hit me on a really deep emotional level, much more than almost any show out there, and I hadn’t really felt that again until this episode. What gets to me about the show is the combination of these absolutely massive scale troubles and a very tight emotional focus. Martha’s speech about the Doctor in the refugee shelter is something that could just not work. On Babylon 5, they would have people give these kind of speeches about Sheridan, and it always felt a bit like JMS being self congratulatory about his own writing.

Perhaps because Doctor Who is such an enduring icon, it’s okay to talk about him in this way. It reminds me a lot of what Morrison’s doing over at All Star Superman, where he taps into the power of an icon through his storytelling. He’s not so much creating the character as just reflecting the power he already has. The Doctor is so powerful as an idea, that speech just works and really got to me, particularly when contrasted with the pathetic nine hundred year old Doctor trapped in the cage up on the ship.

So, as you might imagine, I really loved the moment when the Doctor ascends out of the cage and is reborn thanks to the power of an idea. The moment is a bit of a dud from a strict narrative point of view, it’s a cop out and makes little sense on a literal level. But, looking at it from an emotional point of view, it’s amazing. The Master is the avatar of control, seeking to make things his way and impose old order on the populace. The Doctor is the force of chaos, of free individual thought. In that moment, everyone in the world speaks up and says that they will not be oppressed. They invoke the name of the god of freedom and he is liberated.

I love the visual of the Doctor floating on a cloud of light, fully reborn. Turning him into the old guy, and the little creature was essential to making this moment work. He had been gone so long, it felt like a huge relief to have him back. The moment reminds me a lot of Rose absorbing the time vortex, it’s this glorious burst of energy and idea triumphing over the cold logic of repression. It’s the kind of thing you rarely see in a world where most stories are frustratingly bound by the strict logic of reality. Yes, it’s easy to abuse the idea that light and wonder somehow beat any bad guy, but when done right, it’s pretty awe inspiring.

The Master’s death itself is handled less well. It felt clichéd to have the Doctor stop Martha’s mother from shooting him, so that the burden of the death could be placed on The Master’s wife. I’m curious to see if she’ll return, perhaps with the power of The Master, but I think it would have been more interesting for her to be loyal to him to the end, despite his obvious abuse of her, like she was in a haze and deluded herself into thinking he wasn’t a bad guy.

But, the Master’s death scene, and his subsequent grilling was pretty effective. Though, I felt like it was so close to Return of the Jedi that I got taken out of the film for a second. I wish they’d found a way for the Master to survive, since he was such a great character. But, if he survives, he can never do something bigger than ruin the entire world over the course of a year, so it might be for the best that he died. But, it could have been interesting to see him trying to regain his powers over the course of next year.

We close the season with The Doctor losing another companion, this one by her own choice. It’s interesting that they chose to keep Rose so prominent in her absence, to the point that she essentially forces Martha out here. I know she’s coming back in the fourth year, so it makes sense, but I hope her return is worth putting Martha out. I liked Martha, but I think her arc, even more than Rose’s, shows the human toll of what The Doctor does. He may have saved the whole world, but would it even need to be saved if he hadn’t been around in the first place?

Before all this happened, there were a bunch of really strong episodes. ‘Blink’ was a great standalone story, with the series’ best use of time travel as a philosophical and narrative device. Most of the episodes use time travel just a way to get to the story, here time travel was the story and it worked wonderfully.

The ‘John Smith’ two parter was another highlight, a historical episode that really worked. I like messing with the formula, and this episode put us in a really interesting situation, first with the mystery of what had happened, and then with the Doctor’s reluctance to return to his own identity.

I’m now all caught up with the episodes that are airing in the US. I watched “Voyage of the Damned” earlier tonight, a pretty solid episode, that ended with what I interpreted as a tease for Rose’s return. I’ll probably just watch the episodes live as they air in the US, which I believe is only a couple of weeks behind the UK.

And while that’s going on, I’m going to watch the first season of Torchwood. I’ve heard mixed things, so I’m not expecting an instant classic. But, if it captures some of the Doctor Who magic, it should be worthwhile.

On the whole, season three was the show’s best. The first half was pretty shaky at times, but the run that closed out this year was pretty much all great. I don’t think The Master arc quite matched “Parting of the Ways,” but it’s definitely my second favorite story on the series.

New York Comicon: Day 2

I’m back from my second day at the New York Comicon. I did a few things today, but spent a lot of the time waiting in line. It was much more crowded than yesterday, so much so that it became tricky just to move around.

I got there early to try and talk to Chris Claremont, but he was signing a booth with some artists who were doing sketches, so it was a long, glacial line and I didn’t get to talk to him. The whole Marvel booth was set up really poorly, they’d have people grouped together who had no particular connection, it would have been a lot easier to have individual lines for different people.

But, I pressed on and went down to the Battlestar Galactica panel. But, I’ll delve more into that when I review last night’s episode. Suffice to say, it was a lot of fun, and featured a trailer for the rest of the season that made it look unbelievably great.

After that, I wandered around for a bit, then went down to the Grant Morrison spotlight panel. This one featured a lengthy intro that was actually quite awesome. Some guy, I’m not sure who he was, read a lengthy quote/manifesto from Morrison while images from his comics flashed on screen, basically summing up the philosophical points of The Invisibles. From there, Grant opened it up to questions from the floor, and thankfully most of the questions were really on point and didn’t feature the lengthy “First, let me say I love your work” intros that are so commonplace at events like this.

Grant said that after Final Crisis, he’s off superhero comics, except for Batman, for the foreseeable future. He’s got two new Vertigo series in the works, War Cop and Atomika Bomb. I didn’t actually attend the Vertigo panel yesterday, but apparently War Cop is about a soldier who comes home and wants to stay at war and Atomika Bomb is about the daughter of Doctor No doing badass spy things. He’s also working on Seaguy 2 and 3, a.k.a the emo adolescence and eventual maturity of Seaguy. It sounds like they’ll match the surreal greatness of the previous one. He described a scene where Seaguy is a matador who has to put women’s clothing on a bull that sounds pretty crazy.

He also answered a bunch of questions about his personal life. He echoed something he’s said earlier, about how he feels like the surreal comics he makes are more like our perception of reality than so called ‘realistic’ work. He sees life like a David Lynch movie, and I’d agree, sometimes that surrealism or stylization can heighten the emotion. And, Grant is a master of grounding the crazy concepts in very real emotion, perhaps because for him, they don’t start out as mad ideas, they begin as feelings that he then transmutes into a sci-fi concept.

He also discussed the aborted project Hyper-Crisis. It would feature the Chronovore tearing a rift in time ten years long that would have to be filled by events. So, a character’s action would be a ‘rivet’ in the bridge in time, and everyone would have to do certain things to ensure the bridge gets built right. It sounded pretty cool, but I could see it bring problematic to transform those concepts into an exciting story.

He touched on the troubled launch of The Authority and Wildcats. He said that his role in 52 caused the delays on those books, and that the script for Wildcats #2 has been written, and will eventually get drawn. However, when I got a copy of issue 1 signed by Jim Lee later, Lee said that issue #2 was not in the works, and probably wouldn’t be for a long time. As for The Authority, after reading the reviews for issue 1, he said “Fuck it” and will not continue the title. I really liked both issues, but The Authority probably don’t have another story that needs to be told about them.

He said that All Star Superman is his current sigil book, and is designed to tie in with the mythic Sun God. One guy asked him if All Star Superman #10 meant that Superman was our God, and he said that he’s more active than our current God. All Star Superman is notable because it’s such a unanimously loved book. Morrison has really tapped into something with this take on Superman, he’s created essentially the ideal being, and let him loose in the fictional world. The cover of 10, where Superman holds the Earth in his hands, that’s what it’s all about, he can protect us and inspire us. It is easily the definitive take on the character, and really redefined what he can be for me. Writing Superman isn’t about trying to angst him up, it’s about letting him be so warm and amazing, and contrasting that with a world that can never quite match up.

Grant said that he doesn’t do as many drugs as he used to during the ‘90s. While writing The Invisibles, he used himself as a laboratory, and the drug experiments were a part of that. Much of it was about trying to get back to what he experienced in Kathmandu, when he was abducted and showed the whole of time. He talked about that experience as well, he said everything was so much more clear there than in our reality. But, later on, he rebuked Gnostic philosophy, with its focus on the Manichaean. He quoted The Invisibles, saying that the material world is the piece of heaven that we can touch.

Speaking of The Invisibles, he said that he wasn’t going to do the new Invisibles book he was talking about a couple of years ago. He said when there’s a movie called 2012 coming out, it’s time to move on. That’s obviously a bit disappointing for me, but I don’t think there’s anything that could be added to The Invisibles. I’d love to see the characters again, but I don’t need to.

I do hope that some of his new creator owned work is personal in the way The Invisibles was. Seven Soldiers and All Star Superman feel very autobiographical, all about grappling with the issues he’s facing as he gets older. But, his other recent stuff, like 52, Batman, or The Authority was pretty much just good superhero stuff. Not every work can be a profound experience, but I’d still love to see one.

He discussed growing up, and how his three biggest influences were The Beatles, The Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols. He said his favorite musical genre was psychedelic pop, three minute songs that take you away to another world. I think that’s as good a description of his comics as any, it gets to the core of what makes his stuff so special. So much work that’s meant to be philosophical is just kind of preachy and boring. Plato came up with that awesome allegory of the cave, if he was writing that today, he could have made it into a superhero story and it would be a lot of fun to read. Just because something’s pop and fun doesn’t mean it isn’t emotionally or intellectually significant.

Thinking of The Invisibles, I love the intricate philosophical conundrums presented by John a Dreams, but I also love the simple joy of Jack and Fanny dancing in San Francisco or King Mob marveling at the music playing in Dulce when he’s escaping. That’s what makes the book so special, I called it the pop avant garde, he calls it psychedelic pop, whatever it is, it’s great.

He said that he was working on Pop Magic, and should finish it soon or he might die under mysterious circumstances. He also said he’d never write an autobiography since “you wouldn’t believe it,” and it’s already written in the comics. As for Final Crisis, he reiterated that it will feature “everyone,” and for him at least, it will be the final crisis, and his final work at DC for the time being.

And, was Alan Moore the villain of Seven Soldiers? I believe Grant said not necessarily, but you could see it that way. One funny bit, while waiting on the line to get his autograph, I saw his bag, and the book contained within? Exit Interviews with Alan Moore. The bearded man’s face looked out from under the table, hidden away, but still present. Where's the beard hunter when you need him?

After the panel ended, I got some stuff signed by him and asked about the fate of Indestructible Man, the rumored third part of the hypersigil trilogy, which he was going to do with Frank Quitely. He said that it was too much of a downer of a story so he left it behind, and he and Frank are going to do a different project, a superhero comic, then another creator owned project, but that can’t be announced yet. I’m guessing when he said superhero comic, he meant a corporate owned one, but that would seem to conflict with him leaving DC. Perhaps it’s a Batman arc?

Either way, in the next couple of years, it sounds like we’re going to get a lot of great series. War Cop and Atomika Bomb sound cool, Final Crisis seems to be the culmination of fifteen years of DCU work, and eventually we’ll get new creator owned series with Frank Quitely and J.H. Williams. That will be a great day.

I hope Grant passes through New York again at some point not too far away. It’s always fun to see him speak, and I’m getting a bit spoiled. I’ve seen him three times in the past two years, and at this point am accumulating quite a collection of signed stuff.

New York Comicon: Day 1

The first day of my trip to the New York Comicon was a lot of fun, I didn’t get too much insider info, or attend any of the panels, but I got to talk to a bunch of creators I wanted to talk to, and had a good time wandering around. The show was pretty huge, and while crowded, it wasn’t too overcrowded. I’m guessing tomorrow will be busier, but today had a pretty manageable crowd.

When I first got in, I wandered around for a while, taking in the scene. I’d never been to a con this big, so I took full advantage of the freebies offered by DC, snagging a couple of nice looking Final Crisis posters, as well as a bunch of free comics, comics I actually wanted to read like Young Liars and Northlanders. I picked up a couple of cheap trades as well, then wandered around Artist’s Alley.

Eventually, I got a sketch from Yanick Paquette. He was really great, and spent about a half hour drawing the sketch and talking about working with Grant and Alan Moore. He said that an Alan Moore script is notable because it contains so much, ninety to a hundred pages for a twenty page comic book. In writing, he offers you various options about how to do the scene, and then at the end says “Or whatever you think is best, along with background on the philosophy and history behind the work. So, that when you’re finished reading it, you’ve thoroughly thought the scene through and understand what he wants.

He went on to say how the Grant scripts for Bulleteer were short, about five pages, and would feature occasional random words written in huge red letters. Hearing him speak, it sounded like the whole Seven Soldiers project was a bit out of control and Grant was making it up as he went along because Bulleteer changed so thoroughly from what he had originally been pitched. I think that’s part of what the work was, as it became less seven discrete miniseries and more one large story told in the background of seven smaller ones. But, he said that the short Grant script also made him think because he had to assess the situation more deeply then someone who told him exactly what to draw.

Next I headed over to the DC booth to get some stuff signed by Grant. I had him sign the Bulleteer sketch Yanick had just done, and the aforementioned Final Crisis posters. I told him what Yanick had said about the Bulleteer script and he said that it was insane, he would never write a five page script for a twenty page comic. So, I don’t know what to believe. I got a picture taken with Grant as well, he was very cool. Hopefully I’ll be able to hear him speak again tomorrow, at his spotlight panel.

After that, I wandered around a bit more, eventually stopping at Artist’s Alley once again to get a sketch from Phil Jiminez. Phil draw Ragged Robin for me, a really pretty piece. I talked to him about The Invisibles a bit. He was also very cool, it’s amazing to me that these artists do so many sketches for free. It’s great for fans, I do love that the medium is small enough that you can talk to the people who made these amazing stories. The Invisibles is my favorite work of fiction of all time, and I got the chance to talk to the writer and one of the major artists in the same day. Chris Weston is also supposed to be there, but he’s apparently at the Splash Page comics booth, not his own booth, so I didn’t see him today, hopefully tomorrow.

After that I wandered around a bit more, then the con was shutting down, so I left. I’ll be back in action tomorrow, hopefully I’ll check out a couple of panels and talk to some more people. On the one hand, it obviously is a bit of a geeky thing to go wander around this con, but it’s fun for me, and I enjoyed seeing the people who dressed up and had fun with it. Our real world is too boring, wouldn’t it be cooler to live in one where Stormtroopers and Jedi and Superman walk around with the rest of us?

New York Comicon This Weekend!

This weekend, I’m taking my first day off from work since August to attend the New York Comicon on Friday and Saturday. I was at school when this happened last year, the last con I went to was at Madison Square Garden back in 2003, and it sounds like that pales in comparison to what’s going on here. The guest list is ridiculous, virtually every major comic book writer is making an appearance, and a huge amount of artists will be around as well, a lot of people I’d love to meet. So, I’m pretty excited, the major issue for me now is figuring out which of the panels I’ll actually be able to get to.

Obviously, I’m hoping to check out a bunch of the panels with Grant Morrison. I’ve seen him speak a couple of times, and it’s always fun. Final Crisis is sounding more and more intriguing, and it looks like we’ll get the announcement of some new creator owned projects as well, so it’ll be a great time. All Star Superman has been fantastic, but Grant’s been in a bit of a lull since Seven Soldiers ended. Hopefully the new creator owned stuff will be just as good as the wave of We3 and Seaguy.

I’m also hoping to check out the X-Files 2 panel, and see what Chris Carter has to say. And, I feel like I should see at least one panel with Stan Lee, and some of the other old timers at the con, since it’s not likely they’ll be doing many more cons. It’s crazy to think that the people who created comics as we know it are still alive and will be at this con.

I’ve got to go through all the panels and set out some kind of plan, but I’ll probably spend most of my time just wandering around, talking with the artists and meeting some people I know from the online world. If nothing else, I’ve got to get an Invisibles sketch from Chris Weston. I’d also love to hunt down a decent copy of Rebuild of Evangelion.

If anyone reading this is going to be attending, let me know and I’ll keep an eye out for you. As I said, I won’t be based at a booth or anything, but I’ll be around and am always up for some con-versation. I know a bunch of sci-fi fans in real life, my dad’s seen all of Buffy, Doctor Who, Battlestar, etc., but there’s not too many places where I can get into an in depth discussion of Morrison’s work, or Claremont’s X-Men. And if anywhere’s the place, this will be it.

And, if you’re not going, expect full coverage on the blog. It won’t be the exhaustive kind of stuff you’d get at Newsarama, but you’ll hear what things are like on the ground, and what makes an impact on me.

Battlestar Galactica - "Six of One" (4x02)

So far, this season of Battlestar Galactica has been a bit frustrating. Each episode has had some great scenes, but I’m not feeling a lot of momentum. The tagline for the season is “All will be revealed,” but I usually find stories based on ‘revelations’ to be a bit tiresome. The reason I dropped Lost was because it was all about teasing out the big answers, and not about watching the characters grow. The axis of causality wasn’t what characters did, but an extratextual authrotiy that decides when it’s time for the characters to know something.

This worked last season with the cylon revelation because of the presentation. From a storytelling perspective, it’s pretty poor, some music starts playing and all of a sudden we find out four random characters are actually cylons. But, because it’s played with the insane camera angles and churning score, it works. The production overwhelms the flaws in the writing. But, now we don’t have that much narrative momentum. We basically have characters hitting the same beats over and over again, beats that may be necessary for the characters, but aren’t that much fun to watch as a viewer.

Look at Starbuck. She’s forced to play this same “We’re going the wrong way” line over and over again. I love Starbuck, but I think putting her in this position strips her of a lot of the energy that makes her work. I want to see the unhinged authority thwarting pilot who appeared briefly at the end of last episode, when she decided to go bust Roslin. Or, you could go in a different direction, and have her be a more grudgingly spiritual person, who must believe now. To some extent, that’s what happened, but it’s played in such a way that she gets a bit annoying.

And, I think there’s a lot of potential problems with sending her on a scouting mission to find Earth, primarily the fact that she can’t actually find it for a while. The show isn’t one to permanently mess with its status quo, so I don’t see them reaching Earth until near the end of the series. What will she do for the rest of the time? And, won’t it hurt the show to have her away from everyone else. The Helo subplot in season one was great because it let us learn about the cylons, but what will this subplot show us? Though, I suppose I should wait until the plot actually gets going before judging it.

The acting in this episode felt a bit off for me as well. Sackhoff is usually great, but I just wasn’t feeling it this episode. The same for Roslin and Adama, I felt an awareness of the performance in a way I usually don’t on the show. It might be the writing, since everyone was a bit off. The characters are forced to talk in circles around the same issues, and there’s no sense of forward momentum. There’s virtually no narrative at this point, it’s just examining what’s happened already. I don’t really have a sense of what the season will be about, beyond the vague idea of looking for Earth.

The stuff over on the cylons was better, but also struggled with the fact that it was pretty much just people talking. I loved the scenes where Cavil watches Sharon twirl around, and the use of that same cylon music cue is hypnotic. But, again, I felt like the production was covering up for the fact that there’s not that much of substance there. We’ve got some dissent in the cylon ranks, and a Six taking the lead. There’s lots of story potential there, but it only begins here.

What did work superbly was the stuff with Baltar, particularly the scene with Tori. I love how Baltar is starting to believe his own lie, and maybe at this point it’s not really a lie anymore. I find it strange when people call Baltar a villain, he may be a sleaze, but he’s human and vulnerable in a way that Adama and Roslin aren’t. They’re out to oppress this guy who’s been the victim of many awful circumstances, maybe I should hate him, but I just don’t.

But, good Baltar is countered by a seemingly endless string of scenes saying good bye to Lee. Lee is to this show what Riley was to Buffy, a one dimensional character in a multi-dimensional world. I thought he left the military already, why are they doing this whole party for him? I was talking with someone yesterday and she was saying how you can tell a lot about someone’s personality by who they came out of “Unfinished Business” liking, Lee or Kara. I had no love for Lee.

So, it’s not a great episode, pieces are still moving into place, and I’m not feeling much forward progress. But, I’m sure things will pick up eventually. And, at least Baltar’s still great.

The Authority: Earth Inferno and Brave New World

The end of Mark Millar’s run on The Authority was one of the most troubled in recent comics history. I was somewhat into the comics scene at that point, so I remember seeing articles about how much stuff had been changed and messed with, but I didn’t actually read the book. Reading it today, I think it holds up as one of the defining superhero books of the decade, a run that raises a lot of interesting questions about what power can do in the world, and delivers just a really fantastic superhero story. There are some bumps along the road, but in general, this is a fantastic piece of work.

A lot of the book’s greatness is due to Frank Quitely’s amazing art. Chris Weston is one of my favorite artists, his run on The Invisibles is my favorite of any comic, but even he can’t come close to matching what Quitely does on the book. Looking at them back to back, there’s no contest. That said, the art shift in Transfer of Power is a bit easier to deal with because we’ve got four issues of Dustin Nguyen’s shitty art separating Quitely and Art Adams. Art Adams isn’t quite up to Frank’s level, but he’s still really good, and it’s not until Gary Erskine comes on that the art tails off a bit.

But, no one can match Quitely. My favorite issue in the back half of his run on the book is the battle with the original Doctor that closes out Earth Inferno. It’s an epic issue, and gives Quitely a lot of interesting stuff to draw. I think Millar’s greatest strength writing the title is that unlike Ellis, he always finds a role for everyone in every story. Each member of the team is an essential piece of the larger machine that defeats the villains. Frequently, it comes down to the Midnighter taking someone out, but along the way, everyone gets to do something. I remember when I first read Relentless, I was confused about who all these characters were, but reading these books, everyone has a role and something of a personality. It’s by no means a character focused book, but I do care about them.

Again, I think much of that is owed to Quitely’s art. Hitch draws pretty, but blank people. Quitely’s are grittier, more relatable and real. He’s a master of giving everyone an individual body language. This is most noticeable over in All Star Superman, with the division between Clark and Superman, but you can see a real difference in the way Jack Hawksmoor carries himself versus the way the Doctor carries himself. Quitely has so much more emotional detail in the panels, going from him to someone like Nguyen, who just draws pretty pictures, is a major step down. Quitely is like Wong Kar-Wai or Terence Malick in the sense that he makes you reassess what is possible with the medium. Every detail of every panel has a reason and tells us something about the story and the world.

But, that’s not to say that this only Quitely’s achievement. Millar’s hit or miss for me, Ultimate X-Men was pretty bad, The Ultimates has its moments, this is the only work of his that totally succeeds for me. He’s a writer who’s often out to shock, and with a book this over the top, the shock value stuff works better. As these last two storylines show, Millar’s writing is at its best when he’s at his most sadistic. He does a great job of coming up with massive threats for the heroes to deal with, throwing them down a hole and watching them dig themselves out.

The buildup in Earth Inferno is solid, I really like the scenes where the team has to save people who are drowning in New York City. I think this book has a lot to say about a post 9/11 world, and I’m glad scenes like that exist. Seeing the real destruction makes it more real and grounded. I can see why people had trouble with it at the time, but it’s better to deal with and question these issues than just leave 9/11 as this event that happened, but can never be dug into deeper than just it’s a tragedy.

But, the real joy of Earth Inferno is the last issue, when the evil Doctor battles the team. It’s a huge confrontation and Millar brings out a lot of great character moments within. My favorite is the devastating scene where the Doctor goes back in time and molests Angie as a child. It’s a totally sadistic moment, but if the goal is to show a character who exists beyond traditional morality, that’s the way you have to play it. At this point in the series, just blowing up a building doesn’t cut it anymore, this kind of psychological assault is harder to watch. This is the ultimate foe, someone who can travel through time and destroy you anywhere you are.

But, the sadistic assaults the characters encounter throughout the series can be a bit tough to take. The backhalf of Brave New World is largely about watching the characters suffer through a series of degrading psychological tortures. On the one hand, I do love this kind of altered perception stuff, and the tortures are pretty awful. They’re all about wiping away identity completely, removing the essence of who the person was and leaving behind a shell for the corporate gangs that rule the world to mess with. However, there’s just so much bad stuff piled on them, it becomes a bit icky. The Swift scenes in particular did this for me, particularly after seeing the altered art from #27. At what point does it stop being about pushing the characters down so they can rise up and start being just about enjoying torturing the characters?

But, if we’re looking at the book as superhero comics to the nth degree, shouldn’t the foes be even worse? I don’t really care about the ‘god’ attacking Earth in Ellis’s run, but I do care about what happens to the characters here, and I feel emotionally engaged in watching them fight back later in the story. So, it works in that respect. I will say that the last issue of the series is fantastic, full of great payoffs as the team finally regains their dignity and takes reality back.

I think the series’ political engagement can be a bit overstated. There’s not that much political content here, Earth Inferno is great, but not particularly groundbreaking superhero stuff. However, reading this book in a post Iraq context raises a lot of questions. The Authority are all about not heeding the will of governments who want to maintain the status quo, they will overthrow dictators and fight to make a better world. How is that different from what the US is trying to do in Iraq? Why are the same liberals who are outraged we’re doing nothing about Darfur so opposed to our attempt to make Iraq better?

That’s why I think the last storyline is important, and provides a kind of answer to the question. The corporate and governmental interests who control the world are interested in maintaining the illusion of change. We can go to war in Iraq because it will make them a lot of money without disrupting anything. We’ve already been there, and it’s an area that’s perpetually at war, so we’re not really changing anything. To invade somewhere like North Korea would require a huge change in diplomatic philosophy, and invading Africa wouldn’t benefit our business interests in any way, so Iraq it is.

But, that still raises the question, wouldn’t every Authority intervention lead to the kind of chaotic power vacuum we’ve got in Iraq? That’s part of what I think Morrison’s run was going to explore, the idea that the Authority can overthrow a dictator, but they can’t save one man’s marriage. You can never make everyone happy, so what’s the best way to make a better world?

The thing I like about the series is that it’s an essentially optimistic work, it’s saying that change is good, and we should work to evolve beyond the status quo. There are a lot of bastards out there, but it’s still worth fighting to change things. I feel like people may see the team’s frequently debauched behavior as an attempt to shock the audience, but it’s more about evolving beyond traditional morality. It’s okay to have two gay characters on the team, it’s ok for people to sleep with each other, they’re not bound by the restrictions of society, and that’s a large part of what bothers the corporate interests they’re opposing. Those guys are as debauched as anyone, but they keep it behind closed doors. That’s why they support the new Authority, they may be even worse than the originals, but they don’t flaunt it in public.

Ultimately, Millar’s The Authority is one of the seminal superhero works of the decade. In the future, I think we’ll see people doing throwback widescreen comics in the same way you see Silver Age throwbacks today. But, it’ll be hard to match what Millar did here. There’s the feeling that this matters, and is real and vital in a way that other Authority stories don’t. The best way to tell how good Millar’s Authority is is to compare it to the absolutely awful Joe Casey annual, which features all the typical beats of an Authority story, but just doesn’t work. I’ve got my issues with Millar’s work, but it feels fresh and exciting, a new paradigm for superheroes. It’s a shame the book ran into so much trouble in its later days, but read today, it holds up as a really great story.

Reading this made me even sadder that Grant Morrison’s Authority has ran into so much trouble. I think he had a really interesting take on the characters in the two issues that were published, his could have been the first really important take on the characters since the Millar run. But, in a lot of ways, the concept seems to belong to that moment, and perhaps it’s best to let it die with issue 29. There’s not that much inherently interesting in the characters or concept, it’s more the energy that Millar and Quitely brought to it in that moment, the series of amazing images they created together.

Doctor Who: 2x01 -3x06

So, I’ve finished the second season of Doctor Who and am halfway through season three. Regarding season two, I think the season is stronger in some ways than the first year, there’s none of the embarrassing moments like the farting slitheen, but there are some clunkers that clunk worse than anything in the first season. And, while the transition between Eccleston and Tennant is smooth, I think something is lost with Eccleston’s absence from the show. But, along the way we get a lot of great episodes, and the final moments of season two are a perfect capper for Rose’s story.

The major difference between Eccleston and Tennant for me is that Eccleston’s Doctor felt a bit more conflicted about what he was doing, he had a more alien feeling that was gradually broken down over the run of the season, as he got closer to Rose. I don’t know that much of the backstage history, but I feel like there was a conscious decision to go with an edgier Doctor in the first series, to make it clear that this show was a Battlestar Galactica style reboot, a little darker, a little more intense than before. Tennant has an interesting mix of lighter comedy style and emotional distance. I suppose the point is the Doctor has come to terms with his past, and after realizing that Rose is an equal partner, not a burden, he can open up a bit.

Along with that, with the concept established, Rose moves to the background a bit. We no longer see most of the stories from her perspective, there’s not as much focus on the sheer wonder of everything. The moments that salvage even the weaker episodes are when we get an insight into how Rose perceives these different times and place she travels to, when she understands just how lucky she is to be a traveler with the Doctor. For her, this life is an escape from the boring everyday routine of working in a shop, for the Doctor, the travel is everyday life. What that means for him is one of the big questions underlying the series? Would he give it all up for a regular life?

The most emotionally powerful episode in the first chunk of the season is “School Reunion,” where we see what happens to the people the Doctor leaves behind. Sarah Jane struggles to go on living her life without the Doctor, and in her, we see Rose’s future. She will get old, the Doctor will not, and eventually he will leave her behind. I also really like the stuff with K-9 in this episode, he’s a goofy looking metal dog, but it’s still pretty sad when he dies. And, it was good to see Anthony Head getting some work.

But, most of the episodes in the past still didn’t quite work for me. “Idiot’s Lantern” was a bomb, the worst episode of the series to date. The werewolf episode wasn’t as bad, but still didn’t feel particularly original or exciting. There was an attempt to tie it into the series’ overall mythology with the origin of Torchwood, but one cool allusion does not make the episode worthwhile. The best part of that episode was definitely Rose trying to get Queen Victoria to say she was not amused. “The Girl in the Fireplace” was the best of the period episodes because it had that really interesting bouncing back and forth through time. I particularly liked the design of those clockwork robot foes.

My major issue with this season is the fact that Rose’s character arc is basically resolved at the end of “Parting of the Ways.” She chooses to stay with the Doctor and continue to go on adventures. So, there’s less emotional conflict, and the episodes live or die on their own merits, there’s less of a backing narrative arc to get us through the weaker episodes.

But, the end of the season is pretty spectacular, a fitting close for the show’s first two years. I really liked the supporting cast, so it was nice to see Jackie and Mickey get the spotlight. The battle with Daleks and Cybermen was pretty spectacular, the moment where they open the Dalek prison ship was amazing. However, I can’t help but wish that this was a three parter. I think they could have done more with the Daleks, it was cool to have them, but it felt like they were there just because people expect them to show up every year, it didn’t really add anything to the narrative.

However, regardless of any issues I’ve got with the rest of the season, the final ten minutes or so was brilliant, an incredibly sad piece of character pain that would make Joss Whedon proud. Rose has chosen the Doctor over her family, she wants to keep going on adventures, and her mother knows this. But, she’s pulled away and forced to spend the rest of her life not only cut off from the Doctor, but with her parents knowing that they were her second choice. Musically and visually, this is the show at its best. But, it’s the performances that really stick. Tennant and Piper are better than they’ve ever been, and the knowledge that he won’t even get to say he loves her, she won’t get to hear it stings. The Doctor has to face living the rest of his life, living an eternity, without ever seeing Rose again. Now, I’ve heard she appears in season four, so it won’t be forever forever, but still, it’s a great, tragic moment.

It’s a testament to what Tennant does that I was cool with entering season three without any of the people who were on the show at the beginning, Rose and the supporting cast are gone, it’s a new world. I do miss them, I think Jackie and Mickey were critical to grounding the show in real emotion. Without characters like that, you just take for granted the sci-fi reality the characters live in, because we’re watching a sci-fi show, we don’t flinch when weird stuff happens, but if you want to keep your show emotionally grounded, you need the characters to feel things on a real level. And, that’s what those characters made Rose do. One of the most emotional moments of the whole series remains the scene at the restaurant in “Parting of the Ways,” where Rose is crying, unable to face returning to ordinary life after what she’s been through.

Having watched a bunch of season three, I find the show missing something. Martha’s a good character, but I just don’t care about the characters in the way I did in season one. The conundrum is, if they develop Martha’s homelife, it feels like a retread of Rose, if they don’t, I’m not going to care about her as much. The episodes are a little more consistent than earlier, but there’s no real great ones, nothing like “Father’s Day.”

My two favorites of the season so far are “Smith and Jones,” which recaptured the wacky energy of season one, and made it easier to see the Doctor as alien again, and “Gridlocked.” The latter was a really fantastic piece of sci-fi, with a great concept and strong execution.

“Shakespeare Code” fell prey to the same jokey referencing a historical figure that annoyed me in the Charles Dickens or Queen Victoria episode, and just wasn’t that exciting. The Dalek two parter had its moments, but felt like a dilution of the original menace of the Daleks. The more times they meet the Doctor and don’t kill him, the less effective they are as villains. Plus, that story really hit some of the same beats over and over again, it felt a bit padded.

One of my central issues with both seasons two and three is that there’s a feeling of routine. Maybe it’s because I was totally new to Who with season one, but it felt really exciting to know that anything could happen next, they could go anywhere and anywhen. Now, things feel a bit routine, and I think they’re doing a less satisfactory job of linking the standalones together to keep a feeling of progress throughout the season. The Doctor/Martha relationship does evolve, but it’s stuck beneath a lot of plot of the week angst.

Ultimately, “Parting of the Ways” may have just been too good, and skewed my perception of the rest of the series. That episode was so good, full of so many things that I love, it made me overlook a lot of the flaws of the season, and it made it hard for everything after to follow up. Increasingly, the show feels like one of those bands that can make amazing singles, but can’t really put together a good album. But, the episodes that are good are good enough for me to stick around, and none of the bad ones are that bad. Except for “The Idiot’s Lantern,” that was just awful.

All Star Superman #10

This was a big week for Frank Quitely comics. Earlier in the week, I read The Authority: Earth Inferno, and yesterday I finally caught up on All Star Superman #10. Reading these books, it became clear that Frank is the best comics artist of all time, edging slightly ahead of JH Williams for me. His work has such a unique quality, going beyond realism to a kind of hyper-reality. And, he always seems to make creators kick up their game to compete. Grant Morrison always writes good comics, but you get the sense that his Batman is just a fun diversion, he wouldn’t deliver a Batman script to Quitely. If Quitely’s going to spend months working on an issue, it’s got to be worthy of his time, and this issue definitely is.

There’s a number of things that are striking about All Star Superman #10. But, what really jumped out to me is just how satisfying it is as a single issue. Much as I love the medium, I think there’s virtually no books on the market today that are satisfying to read on an issue to issue basis. There’s just not enough material there to make it worth your money or keep you sated for the long gaps between issues. If people are saying it’s too frustrating to wait a week between 45 minute TV episodes, how are you going to keep them occupied during month long gaps between 22 page stories? That’s why I read most of my books in trade.

But, if every single issue was like this, this dense and emotional, comics would be a lot more popular. So much happens in the issue, there’s so many ideas, and so much feeling, I want to read more, but I don’t need to, it’s a totally satisfying experience as a single part of a larger work. I always take longer to read Quitely comics because I love to get lost in the pages, to just study the artwork and linger in the moments. It took me probably double the time to read this book than it did the average single issue, and the longer I spend on a comic, usually the better it is.

The thing that Morrison does better than any other writer out there is combine his huge ideas with a very real emotional base. One of the many outstanding moments in the issue is Superman sending the Kandorians out to save the kids in the hospital. It’s a loopy sci-fi concept, the notion of these miniature people being injected into Superman to try and save him, but Morrison brings you into a headspace where you accept that, and roll with it. Then, the moment where Superman sends the Kandorians out to heal the kids becomes incredibly beautiful. It’s a single page that’s just totally invigorating. It’s like all the joy and possibility of humanity is contained in that one single panel.

There’s a lot of moments like that in the issue. We see what Superman means to the people in the world, the way he is able to save a whole city and a single girl, and each of them feels equally significant. The scenes on Mars are amazing, you can practically feel the wind blowing through Superman’s hair, Quitely is able to convey the tactile experience of the place simply through the visual.

The notion of freeing a city of small people feeling inferior next to someone so large is a perfect metaphorical encapsulation of humanity’s feelings towards Superman in the comic. For Luthor, it’s hard to deal with knowing he’ll never be able to be as good as Superman. Even if Superman dies, Luthor will still live in his shadow. However, for a lot of the humans, Superman functions as an ideal, something to aspire to and be inspired by.

This is captured perfectly in the scene where Superman saves Regan from committing suicide. In that single page, Morrison and Quitely capture everything amazing about the character. Other writers put Superman in more traditional villain battling stories, but that doesn’t work for the character. I love Morrison’s vision of him as this pacifist ideal, someone who does want to save everyone. The implicit message of a lot of hero stories is once we clear out the bad guys, we can make a better world, but they never make it past that beating the bad guys part. Here, Superman isn’t battling villains, he’s battling the very force of negativity itself. So, saving Regan is equally important as saving Kandor, it’s all part of the same push for something better.

So, does that make Superman the ultimate Morrison hero? In The Invisibles, we saw King Mob move away from guns and try to create some kind of zen war practice. Superman is above the game, he’s not battling people, he’s just trying to save lives. He is as enlightened a character as Morrison has ever written, and reading this issue, you can see why he is the top hero, why he’s such an enduring myth.

That’s what Morrison makes explicit in the wonderful meta elements of the infant universe Qwewq. It was awesome to see Qwewq back, the beloved character/concept from Seven Soldiers. It’s been present in much of Grant’s DCU work, and I hope to see it return in Final Crisis. Qwewq has always been the stand-in for our universe, a world without heroes. So, it turns out that Superman has invented our entire universe as a means of seeing what the world would be like without him. And, it turns out that we would have to invent him. Those final pages are exhilarating, as we zip across plot lines and stop briefly on the birth of Superman in our world. He is an idea so powerful, he will always be around in one form or another.

I always love the metatextual elements that Morrison uses in his work, and this book ties in wonderfully with Flex Mentallo. Flex was all about dealing with youth, with the feelings of inadequacy that come with adolescence. This book follows it up, as Morrison, and the character of Superman, come to terms with getting older, becoming more aware of imminent death. I need to reread Flex and compare it with this book, but what both books uniquely have is the sense of wonder about superheroes. There’s some inherently unknowable about this Superman, some piece of him that remains beyond us. Morrison told that classic story about meeting Superman before writing this, and finding it all from talking to the guy who said he was Superman. The character feels like something beyond Morrison’s imagining, like he’s writing this series to have an accurate record of who he is.

I don’t know that the universe of Qwewq stuff will factor in the rest of the series, but I love that Morrison got it in there. It’s part of what makes the issue so good, the onslaught of ideas and concepts, Morrison struggling to fit in all the ideas he had for the character with only three issues left. You stack Qwewq on top of Regan, on top of the bottle city, on top of the kids at the hospital and you’ve got a crescendo of emotion coming off the book.

I really love the scenes with Superman and Lois as well. Quitely draws her so beautifully, and as shown here, she is his rock, the one person who can keep him going when he gets down. And, of course, he can’t just stay with her, he can hear everyone, hear all their pain, and knows that he can save them if he tries hard enough.

I think this is without question the greatest Superman comic I’ve ever read, and I find it hard to believe anything out there could top it. In the character’s seventy years of existence, this is the best story that’s been told about him yet. The Superman we normally see, here on Earth-Q, is but a flawed reaction of the man himself. This is the platonic ideal, who Superman should always be. I think I dwell so much on Quitely’s art because it doesn’t feel like Morrison is writing the series. I can see much in common with his other work, but I almost don’t want to delve too deep, to deconstruct it. I want to let it linger as this series of perfect moments, of single pages that say more than years of stories can.

I’ll admit I was a bit lukewarm on the series after loving the first four or five issues, it dipped for a bit. But, this issue brings it fully back, it’s everything a comic should be. It is the greatest Superman story ever told.

Battlestar Galactica: 'He That Believeth in Me' (4x01)

It’s been a long time since we saw a new episode of Battlestar Galactica. It was a relief to finally get the show back after a year, though I’m already dreading the six month break that will follow the end of this year’s run. Just air the show and get it done already. But, best not to dwell on that, instead it’s time to be happy that the show has returned, and is doing pretty well. This episode featured some really dazzling moments, but was mostly about maneuvering things into place for future storylines.

The highlight of the episode was the opening space battle, a trippy, hallucinatory experience. Most of the time visual effects are evaluated solely on verisimilitude, or scale. Transformers effects are lauded because they look real, but I feel like we’ve moved past simply replicating reality as a criterion for evaluation, we’re at an age where effects need to be evaluated as art, and these effects are incredible pieces of visual art. The streaking missile lines lingering in the sky, the masses of star and cloud matter, it’s all beautiful, a visual experience. By removing the usual focus on building tension during a battle and instead just sitting back for a more relaxed experience, we’re able to appreciate the art and wonder of it more.

After that, we’re back to more traditional storytelling, which is kind of hard to evaluate at this point. The tricky thing about series premieres is that they’ve got to work for people who haven’t seen the show in a year, and for people who just binged through season three on DVD and are eager for more. So, a scene like Apollo turning down the wings had me thinking oh yeah, Lee resigned and worked on Baltar’s trial. I was used to the status quo, of Lee as military guy, so I wasn’t even thinking this needed to be addressed. But, it’s the kind of thing that someone who’d just seen season three would be wondering about.

To that end, I think the episode suffers a bit because it needs to devote story time to exploring the fallout of Starbuck’s return and the revelation of the four when we’ve had a year to ponder this, and are ready to move on. I think it would have felt disingenuous to skip over Kara’s troubles, and I love a lot of the moments here, particularly when Kara roughs up Anders and the two guards to go after Roslin, but I also think the episode got a bit bogged down in dealing with the consequences of her return. This is the kind of story that might have benefited from a jump forward in time, so we would know that the characters dealt with the issue, but we don’t have to deal with a bunch of scenes that have the same inconclusiveness.

The same is true over on the final four side of the plot. We need to spend time with these people to see how they’re reacting, but at the same time, all the scenes are basically the same, echoes of what we saw in season three’s finale. Move too fast and you risk people saying, you’re not dealing with the character fallout, however, I think we needed something newer here. My favorite moment was Tigh hallucinating that he was shooting Adama, it was obviously a dream, but it was a great way to capture Tigh’s fears about what he could do. I’d like to have seen more of the subjective experience of fear, rather than just showing the characters looking at each other while other people talk.

The storyline that did work was Baltar’s trip to the cult. Baltar has long been one of my favorite characters on the show, and I love what they’re doing with his character here. The early highlight is the scene where Baltar talks to Six and they think he’s praying, but that’s topped by the fantastically devious “one god” scene. Baltar may think the people who captured him are a bunch of crazies, but y’know, as long as he’s there, he’s not going to turn them down.

The question this story brings back to the fore is, what’s going on with the Six who Baltar sees. Is it all a cylon plot to convert humanity to monotheism, or is he really seeing an emissary of God? Either way, I hope the cult of Baltar grows. I like Adama and Roslin at times, but I’d love to see Baltar show them up by winning over more and more minds on the ship.

So, this was a pretty solid episode that set things up, but other than those first ten minutes, isn’t that spectacular on its own. Still, there’s a lot of promise here, and the cinematography and acting on the show remains so good that even if there’s not too much going on, it’s still a joy to watch.

John From Cincinnati Revisited

Yesterday, John From Cincinnati finally came out on DVD. The much maligned series has become something of a punchline since it aired. I’ve got a Google News Alert for the series, and will frequently get sent an article in which some new show is panned, with the only caveat being “at least it’s not as bad as John From Cincinnati.” So, I figure now is as good a time as any to tell people who haven’t seen the show that it’s one of the greatest TV series of all time, an intricately constructed world that builds and evolves over the course of ten episodes. It’s one of the most joyous series of all time, a unqiue mix of strange supernatural content and very real, gritty human emotion.

I watched the first episode tonight, and it holds up really well. The opening credits sequence is probably my favorite of any show. The building guitar line over those first shots of water leads us up above the waves in a mix of contemporary and classic imagery. And the big bang happens in there as well. Just hearing the song and seeing those images brought me back to the summer, to watching the show on Sunday nights, eagerly awaiting each episode.

My experience of watching the show paralleled what happened on it. I started out watching it alone, and got some other people hooked on it as it aired. So, a community built up around the show, and every Sunday, we’d be there to watch it. There are some works that define an era for me. Summer 2001 for me was playing wiffleball in the evening, then coming home to watch X-Files season three and read Sandman: The Kindly Ones. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of nights that this happened, but it’s come to represent the entire era in my mind.

Summer 2007 is wrapped up in JFC, and watching the show brings back a lot of good memories. I think the show is really about social gatherings, people coming together and building something, and that’s part of what makes me love it so much. Watching the first episode, it’s not quite what it will become. It’s weird to see people who aren’t cast regulars on the show, but at this point there are only about ten main characters, it’ll take a bit for the cast to double. But, the roots of most of what’s to come are in place, and there’s a lot of seeming non-sequiters that make a lot more sense once it’s clear where Milch is going.

Hopefully the DVD release will salvage the show’s reputation. Are we so close minded that this sort of magical realism, this spiritual storytelling has no place on TV? Realism’s great, but in a lot of ways this show feels more real to me than a lot of so called ‘realistic’ stuff. Everyone in the world actually lives in their own mind, they perceive things through a cloud of dreams and memories, and that’s why the supernatural flourishes in the show work for me. They externalize the mental trauma these people are carrying around. I’m reminded of something Grant Morrison said, that the reason he can relate to superhero comics is his problems feel huge, he feels like more like Superman battling a renegade sun than some guy dealing with some personal problems. Our problems feel huge to us, they feel of cosmic importance, and the ultimate message of the show seems to be that saving one person can save the world, even if that person is yourself.

As the show goes on, it takes on a trance like quality, mental and physical reality collapse on each other until they’re virtually indistinguishable. The best example of this is the legendary John speech in episode six, I remember the first time I saw it, I didn’t really get what was said, but I knew I’d witnessed something profound. And that’s what this show is, it’s a spiritual experience on film, and I’m so happy Milch had a chance to make it.

Doom Patrol: Crawling From the Wreckage

I’ve written about a lot of Grant Morrison works on here over the years, but I’ve never delved into Doom Patrol. I’ve only read the series once, back in 2003, the pre-blog days. But, with the recent release of the series’ last trade paperback, I’ve decided to upgrade my single issues to TPB and reread the series.

While the series undeniably has its moments, particularly the heartbreaking last issue, it’s not one of my favorite Grant works. Reading the first trade again, it made me think about the very clear switch in Grant’s style that occurred during The Invisibles, specifically issue #17, the first issue of ‘Entropy in the UK.’ The issue, and much of his subsequent output is all about pop glam characters, cool people in a cool world. But, Doom Patrol is of the decidedly earlier mode, more down to Earth, with less showy art and style. I prefer the crazy pop period, but Doom Patrol does have a lot going for it.

In Morrison’s two big early DC works, Animal Man and Doom Patrol, he uses an everyman protagonist, a down to Earth guy in a crazy world. In this case, Cliff Steele, a.k.a Robot Man, is not really at home in the world of strangeness. He stills calls Rebis Larry, unable to accept that his friend has become a kind of transgender spirit being. He’s an everyman, who just happens to be trapped in a robot body. I’ve always found it ironic that Morrison’s early work feels much more like the work of an older man, it’s more down to Earth and less gimmicky and explosive.

But, it’s not exactly staid. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on, but the surrealism is in a different mode than late period Invisibles. It’s more conceptual strangeness, very specific spins on reality. The late period Morrison has surreal ideas flowing, and they’re not always delved that deeply into. For each of the storylines in the first volume, he takes a specific idea and develops it over the course of the story, playing it out to a logical conclusion. It’s a much more narrative work than his later stuff. I frequently hear people criticizing Grant for an inability to string together a basic story, but I don’t really mind that. I like the tangents and strangeness.

I think Grant’s goal with the book was to come up with villains so strange that they make the heroes look normal. That said, I think there’s a bit of repetition in the first two arcs. The Scissormen and Red Jack have a similar look, and in both arcs, the Doom Patrol get transported to a strange other dimension to battle the villain. But, it’s always a joy to watch Cliff and Jane in action, their relationship is the greatest strength of the book.

I’ve only read a couple of issues of the second trade so far, but already, Mr. Nobody and the Brotherhood of Dada have stolen the book out from under the Doom Patrol. They feel like a proto-Invisibles, spreading anarchy across the land. The Mr. Nobody origin story is the strongest part of the book so far, a conceptually mind bending sequence. I also love how strange it is that he has become just a black outline, and no one seems bothered by it. Their anarchic spirit is a major difference from the essentially conservative mandate of the Doom Patrol. The Doom Patrol are there to battle the strange threats while Dada is there to disrupt social order.

When I first read it, I thought of Doom Patrol as a solid, occasionally great work, but not up to the level of most of Morrison’s longform work. But, it’s still a great read, Cliff and Jane are fantastic creations, and Morrison always throws in some strange, fascinating concepts. Plus, this time I get the added bonus of knowing the DCU better, so I can appreciate the Will Magnus cameo in the first issue, as well as the Booster Gold and Animal Man appearance later on. It’s all connected.