Some Fantastic Place No 5: "Seige" # 3 & "Blackest Night" # 8

1. A Mission Statement: What's He Mean About This "Some Fantastic Place"?

If you're a regular visitor to this blog - and if you are, then once again Grud bless you, dear reader - then you'll know what to expect from the "Some Fantastic Place" entries, and you can skip this section and nip on down to part 2. But if this is your first time in these parts, the following is a quote from a previous blog which should give you some idea of what to expect in these change-of-pace and somewhat less-analytical sections of TooBusyThinkingAboutMyComics;

"It's really tough working out how good a comic is. So this time, let's not bother. Let's take a more relaxed and emotional path to evaluation. Let's do away with all pretense at intellectual analysis and abandon all critical thought, fanboy indignation and continuity cop-ness. Let's just start looking for good things. Little good things, perhaps, just tiny nuggets of fun. Imaginative single panels, witty snatches of dialogue, unexpectedly appropriate sound effects. All the things we would have noticed and treasured when we had less comic books to indulge in and far more time on our hands."


Pleasing Moments From Seige # 3, no. 1: I love the insouciance of The Sentry's attitude to his power here. (Or, I love the attitude of whoever it is that's in control of the Sentry this week.) There's no sign of bravado or breastbeating. He's not exasperated or even troubled by the conflicts before him. Killing Gods is simply something that he does in the course of the day. It's as if he were a driver who, secure in his work and glad of something to do, idly wonders how many roundabouts he'll have to drive around before lunch. It's a tough job, he seems to be saying, but it's not so tough, being as I'm safely in control of the Sentry's body, and it's not as if I've got anything else that's too important to do until tomorrow. The banality of evil is nearly always far creepier that the hand-rubbing, nose-dribbling variety, and that's accentuated by Mr Coipel and Mr Morales art, where our hyper-dangerous villain is shown to be so quietly determined and so not-at-all phased by the job of labour before him.*

*Gain 10 points if you heard the opening chords of Steely Dan's "Godwacker" when you first saw this panel.


Pleasing Moments From Seige # 3, no. 2: I sometimes wonder how super-heroes and villains stay in the least bit of control of themselves when faced with each other for the nth time over five or more decades of the bitterest conflict. I get fed up with my newsagent and he's been rude to me twice in nine years. But perhaps Charlie Brooker's attitude is right, and the only engagement we owe to the powerful and abusive is a forceful measure of contempt. If this is so, and I'm still tempted to believe that surely Peter Parker should've been driven to kick Osborne's head off his shoulders like a football, then there can be no better example of contempt than this languid punch and Peter's mildly exasperated "Oh will you shut up!" After all, if someone really isn't worthy of your attention, let alone your undying hatred, then it's surely best to punch them so hard that their open mouth spits dribble all over their costumed right shoulder. It's a statement which says "After almost 50 years of doing this, I've won so many times I can't even get properly furious anymore." An attitude which I bet just stings the greenist of goblins.

Pleasing Moments From Blackest Night # 8, no. 1: For the first time ever in a "Some Fantastic Place", you see just above this sentence a panel which isn't a "pleasing moments" choice. Since I'm sworn to good, clean, positive thoughts here, I can't tell you why I'd never have chosen this incredibly detailed, astonishingly crowded panel of lot and lots of costumes posing sternly at each other, but I can ask you to take a look at the left-hand page of the two, and then request that you rest your eye at the far left of that page at around the half-way mark. And that's where this splendid little splenetic fellow originally came from;


And he certainly is a pleasing moment for me. It's as if Modok had been cured of his structural immobility by some itinerant snake-oil man and, having cast off his mechanical seat and tubes, learnt to breath fire while hanging out in tight red leathers. Now, I don't know who the big headed chap with the very large molars is, and to be honest I actually don't care. But he reminds me of the days when the Green Lantern Corp seemed to be a pleasingly off-the-wall and often incongruous fusion of character types from quite disparate genres of fantasy and science-fiction. A little grasshopper with a mask and power ring, sir? With perhaps this cute little chipmunk too? Comes with his own power lantern, yes, sir. Guaranteed to last until somebody thinks you'll buy more comics if we kill all the super-powered chipmunks off.


Pleasing Moments From Blackest Night # 8, no. 2: In our mediums' endless quest for spurious authenticity and dubious social credibility, we seem to have raced after every imaginable - and printable - variation on polymorphous sexuality, and quite forgotten that one of the varieties of human sexual and romantic behaviour is contented, socially-sanctioned monogamy. Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm only suggesting that there be a few happily married couples in each superhero universe, and I hope that we might find publishers brave enough to include a few same-sex liaisons there too. And I'm in no way against polygamy, polyandry and/or Pollyanna-with-the-ribbons-in-her-hair, as long as it's all consenting and responsibly portrayed. (Supergirl and Comet I still have problems with, yes, and I know that you don't need me to explain that, but on the whole I'm pretty liberal on these issues.) But can we please also have some folks who fall in love and stay in love? Sometimes I feel it's more likely that Mogo will go roller-discoing out with Ego the Living Planet and conceive lil'moons on an incredibly big dancefloor than, say, Aquaman and Mera might just get to be happy together for longer than a four-issue mini-series.

Having said that, though I'm pleased to see my old friends reunited and apparently still in love, I have something of the difficulty to commit to this new status-quo that must mark the victims of serial infidelity. How long is it going to be, DC, before Hawkgirl forgets who she is, or Hawkman mates with a troupe of long-lost Amazons? How long before Arthur and Mera split up and drive sharks at each other because it's easier to write trauma and loneliness rather than contentedness and mutual loyalty?

I want to believe you, DC, I really do, and my heart feels compelled to forgive and commit. But I just don't want to be hurt anymore.

Result: I enjoyed it all. I really did. These are the sort of comic books that should be read at the beach on a Bank Holiday day-trip, with a Wall's dairy cone dripping ice-cream over the crowded panels of punch-happy super-people. These are the sort of comics that ought to be sadly lost in the back of a too-hot, too-crowded bus and later remembered fondly because they were never taken home and read to death.

That's how I'm going to remember them. For an hour or two anyway.

Then, and only then, I might start to get all grown-up, if not medieval, on their ass.


My favourite critical review of either of these books is to be found at the Mindless Ones site
( http://mindlessones.com/2010/03/30/late-on-tues-its-our-reviews-green-lantern-52/ ) where Zom takes, shall we say, a different approach to "Blackest Night". Copy & paste the address above and check it out if you haven't already, & I promise I'll learn how to put direct links here for next week. Deal? Thank you very much for dropping in, and good night!

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