Review: Savage She-Hulk trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

[This guest review comes from Adam Noble]

Marvel has been putting on a good show lately of branding themselves as the lady-friendlier of the Big Two Superhero Companies, with its recent releases spotlighting female characters (the Rescue, Namora, Sif, etc. one-shots, the awkwardly named mini-series Her-oes), female independent comics creators (Girl Comics) and the upcoming Women of Marvel Omnibus. Nearly all solid efforts, some of which I've really enjoyed (Kelly Sue DeConnick is poised to become a recognized A-List writer with her upcoming run on the upcoming supervillain prison comic Osborn, and it's a conferral that's long overdue).

However, I have to confess there's a serious lack of female characters at Marvel that I'm all that interested in reading about regularly. There's lots of brooding ladies (this is Marvel, after all), eternally patient mother-sidekicks (looking at you, Sue), women who seem to bring about the apocalypse on a semi-regular basis (I wouldn't get too attached to Hope or her Generation, everybody). There's a lack of fun, funny, fully-realized distaff characters at either DC or Marvel these days. I mean, U-Go Girl's still dead, Kitty Pryde's a mute ghost and Jessica Jones has been doing the Jodie Foster "Stay away from my child" thing for the past couple of years, right?

The very reason that Jessica "The Sensational She-Hulk and Attorney-at-Law" Walters made for such a great character and ongoing title when written in the 1980s by John Byrne and again in the 2000s by Dan Slott was that both writers realized that the character's very essence has comedy gold built into it ("She's like the Incredible, Rampaging Hulk... but more ladylike!"). Slott and Byrne (and Jen) broke the third wall and made for great meta-commentary on the silliness of superhero comics. Basically, she's the only Marvel character I can see fitting in seamlessly with the Giffen/DeMatteis-era Justice League. That should tell you everything you need to know right there.

But that was then, back when mainstream in-universe superhero comics were permitted to be at all silly. Now I'm a pretty huge Fred Van Lente fan -- anybody who can write a cartoon primer to almost all philosophical thought ever (Action Philosophers) as well as a great all-ages Wolverine/Kitty Pryde team-up book (Wolverine: First Class) is aces. So it was pretty exciting news when his She-Hulk miniseries was announced initially -- it sounded like a great pairing of character and writer. Surely Van Lente could make liberal use of Walters' sense of humour and intelligence and bring us another all-time great She-Hulk story?

Except... this wasn't Jen Walters? It was apparently some alternate future daughter of the Hulk and... Thundra? I guess? My knowledge of the Hulk and his foes are pretty much limited to the ones who've appeared in the movies, or who have been mentioned in other Marvel Universe titles, so I had no idea what Thundra's deal was.

So what of the trade itself? The All-New Savage She-Hulk (TANSSH?) is written by Van Lente with art by four or five boilerplate superhero artists who draw with stiff anatomy and bland faces. Van Lente pulls off a few clever flourishes, including having TANSSH, or Lyra, travel back in time to modern-day Marvel NYC armed with a feminist-lingo-spouting reprogrammed Tamagotchi as her sidekick on a quest for the DNA (ahem) of the world's greatest "hero" Norman Osborn (then masquerading as good guy Iron Patriot during the utterly uninteresting status-quossover Dark Reign).

Lyra's grim quest to overcome the edicts of a bleak alternate world is given a shot of lightness, mercifully, when Jennifer Walters shows up and helps convince her that Osborn's team of Dark Avengers are Not Okay Dudes and Lyra totally should not have carnal knowledge of the ex-Green Goblin. Despite the fact that Lyra was created by typically fun-loving and inventive writer Jeff Parker, Lyra is basically Green Lady Cable, so it's nice that Jen is able to inject bring make with some jokes. Despite the revelation that Lyra actually loses her strength when she gets mad, the concept isn't explored to its full ironic potential. The extent to which this superpower demonstrates itself is limited to Lyra using words like "supple" and "flow" and the phrase "bend like a reed" while deploying Zen Future Kung-Fu against the Dark Avengers.

There's a back-up story featuring the second appearance of Lyra written by Paul Tobin, but it's odd that her aforementioned first appearance by Jeff Parker (Hulk: Raging Thunder) isn't included here, especially since it's heavily referenced in the roundtable discussion between Parker, Tobin and Van Lente.

The following year I was once again optimistic when Marvel published a sequel mini-series written by Parker and illustrated by Salva Espin (Wolverine: First Class, Exiles), one of the best superhero artists working today. Alas, the trade paperback's title is at least as convoluted as the plot: Hulk: Fall of the Hulks: The Savage She-Hulks. The first half of the TPB re-prints the Van Lente-written backups featuring Lyra working for an interdimensional patrol agency fighting leftover villains from Seven Soldiers of Victory (seriously!) and low-powered female versions of Hulk enemies. It is not very distinctive or good, and leads directly, albeit awkwardly, into the "Fall of the Hulks" crossover.

If you've been reading this crossover this book might make sense to you, but as I said, I am not a huge Hulk fan, particularly when the title is being masterminded by a latter-day Jeph Loeb. So I enjoyed looking at Espin's art here (until it disappeared during a She-Hulk fight with an army of Red Hulks to replaced by a bad manga imitation style). The story itself is utter confusing nonsense – something about a Red She-Hulk, who according to Wikipedia, is [spoiler redacted -- ed.] Is there any Hulk supporting character who isn't themselves a monster at this point? And if I'm right and that's the case, doesn't that defeat the original point of the Hulk's outsider status? But I digress.

There's a token attempt throughout H:FOFH:TSSH by Parker to tie up Lyra's conflicted relationship with her mother, but it's a subplot that belongs in a better/less crossover-ridden book.

From what I can tell, the Hulk line of comics seem to be in a bit of chaos despite this crossover. In addition to Incredible [green] Hulks (yes, plural) and [singular, red] Hulk there's an ongoing She-Hulks title debuting in November written not by any of the writers mentioned above, but Harrison Wilcox, a newcomer to comics, but a veteran writer of TV's Heroes.

The teaming of Lyra and Jen Walters still has terrific potential and if the pair can manage to steer clear of crossovers and if Wilcox can make the odd-couple/surrogate-mother dynamic work we might see Savage She-Hulk Lyra become a breath of fresh air in the Marvel Universe and some newfound adult responsibility for Sensational She-Hulk Jen Walters. My advice for fairweather She-Hulk fans like myself? Wait and see how the reviews for the new ongoing turn out, then maybe go back and pick up these trades to fill you in on who exactly the redheaded She-Hulk from beyond the future is.

Otherwise, hang tight for the new John Byrne run reprints coming in early 2011. Now that's some girl power.

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Review: Uncanny X-Men: Divided We Stand / Wolverine: Get Mystique trade paperbacks (Marvel Comics)

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada.]

If you go shopping on Amazon for trade collections of Uncanny X-Men, you’ll find that those unpredictable mad scientists who toil in Amazon’s warehouses have decided to begin numbering the Uncanny X-Men volumes with Matt Fraction’s first crack at writing the Mopey Mutants (eg. Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1: Manifest Destiny; Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2: Lovelorn), which is fair enough. Fraction is doing the nigh-impossible and giving us a fresh, exciting take on the X-Men without venturing too far left of field into hard sci-fi (i.e. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men) or going off in the other direction, into soap opera territory (Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men). Fraction’s been delivering an allegorically charged, witty and fun take on the X-Men that feels like it’s just getting started.

However! Amazon’s unofficial “numbering system” ignores the collection Uncanny X-Men: Divided We Stand, which falls in between Fraction’s run and the Uncanny X-Men/X-Men/X-Force/New X-Men crossover Messiah CompleX. I came up in the 1990s, my brothers and sisters -- I am not going to read an X-Men crossover ever again, if I can help it. (Once Onslaught-en, twice shy.) So I feel completely justified in telling people to skip Messiah CompleX and begin with Divided We Stand -- which features a recap page, if you need it.

But the volume doesn’t feel like the epilogue to a line-wide crossover. It instead feels like a prologue, and a more than serviceable one at that. Any explicit references to prior events feel more like the in media res way that Grant Morrison often begins his books (“Jimmy’s been cursed by a gypsy fortune-teller? Sure, why not…”).

Although Fraction isn’t credited with the writing of this volume, his Immortal Iron Fist collaborator Ed Brubaker is surprisingly on top of his game here, so much so that one suspects that Fraction was involved to a large extent in the plotting. I’ve criticized Brubaker on this site before: he’s capable of crafting great crime comics but writes in such a grim, “realistic” idiom that he shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet (3.048 metres) of a superhero comic writing credit. Yet, here’s a Brubaker-penned story about Cyclops and Emma Frost vacationing in the Savage Land, Angel and Warpath getting hypnotized into thinking that they’re hippies (along with most of San Francisco), and Nightcrawler wearing an Angelina Jolie hologram so that Colossus gets photographed by paparazzi.

Yeah, not so much with the grim.

I suspected briefly that Fraction might even have ghost-written this volume, except it features lots of Brubaker hallmarks like having everybody give long speeches about exactly how they feel (like people do all the time in real life right? *COUGH*) and Emma Frost not sounding the least bit English or, for that matter, bitchy.

But in all, this is the most fun superhero book that Brubaker has attached his name to, and it does a great job of setting the stage for a pretty terrific Fraction run. If you’re looking to get on board with Uncanny X-Men after hearing all the buzz surrounding the current crossover with Dark Avengers, this is a great place to start -- consider it Volume Zero and dig in. Uncanny X-Men: the San-Francisco treat.

Bonus review: Wolverine: Get Mystique, written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Ron Garney (the creative team behind the excellent ongoing series Wolverine: Weapon X), serves a similar function to Uncanny X-Men: Divided We Stand, in that it acts as a bridge from Messiah CompleX into the new status quo. Mystique -- whom casual X-Fans will remember as being played by naked Rebecca Romijn in the movies -- has betrayed the X-Men’s sympathies once again, and Wolverine has been tasked by Cyclops to bring her down ... permanentlyOOOHSNAP.

Wolverine’s hunt for Mystique across continents and war zones turns out to be a framing device built to showcase a flashback to the pair’s first meeting, in the days of flappers, speakeasies and the Charleston. Wolverine and Mystique’s relationship escalates until it reaches a climax in a boxcar that neither of them could have foreseen. Funny, violent, genuinely disturbing and most of all sad, Wolverine: Get Mystique is not just the best solo Wolverine story ever: it’s also one of the best collected editions Marvel has ever released. And for a $10.99 US cover price, it’s also a bargain.

Get this, then get the collection entitled X-Men: Manifest Destiny, which mostly consists of the Aaron-penned story of what Wolverine gets up to once he moves back to San Francisco with the other X-Men (it involves kung-fu warlords and is perfect). Then, start picking up Wolverine: Weapon X.

Ol’ Sniktbub has never been better at doing what he does. He’s the San Francisco treat. (I already used that joke? Never mind. Just pretend I made a Grateful Dead reference.)

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Review: JLA: Ultramarine Corps trade paperback (DC Comics)

[This guest review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

JLA: Ultramarine Corps is a book of extremes. (Hey, why isn't that a book? "Extreme Justice?") This volume collects the initial three issues of the defunct Justice League of America anthology "JLA: Classified," which were written by legendary former JLA scripter Grant Morrison, and illustrated by Ed McGuinness, who, among his many other virtues, has a name that contains the name of my favourite alcoholic beverage. This volume also collects JLA: WildC.A.T.s about which I'll tell you straight-up, Slice: it sucks. I'm going to pretend JLA: WildC.A.T.s doesn't exist for the next few hundred words.

The "Ultramarine Corps" JLA storyline, so-named by somebody at DC's trade-paperback department, doesn`t really have that much to do with the titular team of superheroes, who previously appeared in Grant Morrison's mid-90s JLA run as government-sponsored foils for the Justice League. A better title for the collection might have been the cover copy on the first issue: "Where is the Justice League?" or even "JLA: Seven Soldiers."

JLA: Ultramarine Corps is probably not a great book to throw at somebody who has never read a DC comic before. For starters, if you don't know who the Ultramarine Corps are [Ed: and even if you do], you'll probably get whiplash reading the book`s first few pages, in which the Corps storm the floating city of Superbia to rid it of the invading telepathic ape Gorilla Grodd and his partner, Neh-buh-loh the Huntsman, formerly Nebula Man. "The JLA is AWOL," Corps member Warmaker One intones as the story begins. "Who needs the Justice League?" (Asking that question never works out well for anyone.) As awesome as it is to see The Knight (the British Batman wannabe) blow past monkey warriors on a motorcycle with the music of the Sex Pistols playing, once you notice the song that's playing is "Pretty Vacant" you can sort of see where Morrison is going with this. The Ultramarines are all style, no substance; all show, no go.

And because Grant Morrison`s at the helm, this book works on a few different but familiar levels. First off, the story (released in 2005) serves as a connecting bridge between some of the plot elements of Morrison`s 1990s JLA work and his subsequent efforts for DC. Neh-buh-loh and the parasitic Sheeda-men are here from Seven Soldiers of Victory, the infant universe of QWEWQ from All-Star Superman plays a major role, and, of course, the Knight and his young female sidekick, The Squire, from Morrison's Batman are present. When Batman receives a distress call from Squire and quips to his trusty butler "I'm opening up the sci-fi closet, Alfred. Don't tell my friends in the G.C.P.D. about this," Morrison has effectively laid out a concise manifesto for his coming Batman run.

But as readers of All-Star Superman know, any time the infant universe of QWEWQ gets mentioned, it's a red flag: Morrison has something profound to say about the actual real world and our need to create superheroes. To be sure, the story is about how the Ultramarine Corps are "pretty vacant" and cannot stack up heroically against the JLA. But that story's been told before -- in Kingdom Come, in "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way," in Warren Ellis' StormWatch -- the vigilantism vs. heroism theme is nothing new to superhero comics. So what's going on here?

Morrison's telling us what each team of heroes means to us. The Ultramarines are violent and militaristic, and after Superman and company save the day, Big Blue gives the Ultramarines an appropriate dressing down. The Justice League spends the first two-thirds of the book tracking down the super-serial-killer Black Death on Earth-Q (Batman laments: "They got lost saving somebody else's universe. Typical."). It's difficult to express here, but there is something about how all the scenes on QWEWQ are drawn in a 4-by-4 panel grid that is unbelievably claustrophobic, and when the League talk about our universe and its lack of superheroes being "unbelievable," "damaged," and "unhealthy" there is something so ineffably sad about it. It is like someone in our world describing a universe without color or light or love. For myself, at least, it brings to mind the final pages of Jimmy Corrigan -- Superman feels for us. Hence his decision to assign the Ultramarines to patrol QWEWQ and become its heroes and redeemers. Regrettably, as any reader of Seven Soldiers of Victory knows, the Ultramarines are doomed to fail.

As much as I enjoyed Morrison's recent apocalyptic meta-epic Final Crisis, JLA: Ultramarine Corps gets to the heart of that work's themes in a more concise, more uplifting, more energetic, and more poignant way. Namely, if superheroes didn't exist [which they don't] we would have to invent them [which we have]. And the superheroes know it.

In case I've lingered too long on the emotional/spiritual elements of this story, let me assure anyone who is considering reading this: it is also ass-kickingly awesome. It has The Squire (on whom the entire Internet has a crush, from what I can tell) placing telephone calls to another dimension while on a JLA base on Pluto. It has telepathic man-eating gorillas fighting Justice League robot-clones. It has Batman roasting on a spit. It has Batman in a flying saucer. All of which is drawn by Ed McGuinness, who we all loved on Deadpool in 1997 [Ed: and Superman in the 2000s] and who even manages to make Jeph Loeb worth reading on a semi-regular basis. He's like Joe Madureira except with style and talent and a work ethic.

Oh, and much as I'd like to forget it, JLA/WildC.A.T.s is in this collection, too. Appropriately, as filler. It's drawn by Val Semeiks (DC One Million), whose work I'd describe as "bland" but I can't really work up the enthusiasm to get past "bla." If you've read any superhero crossover before, JLAWildC.A.T.s is just like that one, only not fun or cool. The only thing remotely memorable is that Majestic tells Electric Blue Superman that he'd look good with a cape. Ugh. [Ed: And yet written by Grant Morrison. Go figure.]

Despite the presence of a weak crossover with the Un-X-Men, JLA: Ultramarine Corps is one of those comics I allow myself to at least skim on a monthly basis. It's loud, it's fun, it's touching, and it has lots of Batman. It's everything I love about superhero comics. And at least in terms of succeeding at what it sets out to accomplish, it's every bit as successful as, say, Watchmen. (Yeah, I don't play.)

[Coming next week, the long-awaited Collected Editions review of Final Crisis. Don't miss it!]

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Review: American Splendor trade paperback (Vertigo/DC Comics)

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

“This guy might be the worst thing for comics.”

That summary of Harvey Pekar’s current standing comes courtesy one Tom Scharpling, host of the radio program The Best Show on WFMU, when Scharpling and regular guest/comedian Paul F. Tompkins were debating whether Pekar still has any relevance in modern comics. Scharpling posited that Pekar’s most recent issues of his autobiographical comic American Splendor (published by DC/Vertigo in 2006-2008) have gotten so dull that the only way to spice them up would be to have Pekar develop super-powers and be forced to write about the very thing that he loathes more than nearly anything on Earth: superheroes. (One industrious listener of the Best Show created a mock-up page of what American Splendor: Super “Hero” Harvey might look like and it is, one has to admit, pretty awesome.)

Scharpling and Tompkins’ shots at Pekar are pretty funny and, one has to admit, pretty accurate (“Are you seriously gonna leave me hanging? How did he like the oatmeal cookies?!” sez Paul). But the FM funnymen are being unfair: yes, Pekar’s living situation has changed – he had his comic made into an award-winning movie; he is retired (his sweetly autistic former co-worker Tobey Radloff is nowhere to be found within these pages, sadly), and, yes, Pekar does spend a lot of time in these twin volumes in the role of “writing about the life of a guy who writes about his life.”

But criticisms like this miss the point of these two volumes and of The American Splendor Project in general. First of all, American Splendor was never a thrill-a-minute cavalcade of laughs and tears, even in its “file-clerkin’/getting pilloried by David Letterman/going through a succession of romantic failures” heyday. It was always dull. That was kind of the point. And the hit-to-miss ratio has at least improved since the early-90s Dark Horse era of the book, which contained far too many lectures about jazz for anyone’s RDA. The second attraction of the book was/is its dare to the revolving door of artists: “hey, make this schlubby guy and his misadventures visually interesting!” And in that regard, the DC/Vertigo volumes trump nearly anything done in American Splendor before (excepting of course R. Crumb’s seminal work on the book).

In Another Day (reprinting DC/Vertigo’s first four-issue mini), we’ve got Ty Templeton, Eddie Campbell, Chris Weston (never been a huge fan, but his two-tone art sells me), and Gilbert Hernandez, as well as Pekar standbys Dean Haspiel, Greg Budgett and Gary Dumm. Recurring themes throughout the book are Pekar’s interactions with sales clerks, difficulties getting/taking medications and the everyman’s struggle with that most essential and infernal of household fixtures, the flush toilet.

Another Dollar (reprinting “Season Two,” another four-issue mini) sees a greater continuity between issues, as our hero injures his arm in #1 and struggles with this latest health crisis through subsequent issues. He is aided by some returning artists from the previous series, as well as Darwyn Cooke, Warren Pleece and Sean Murphy. David Lapham illustrates what is perhaps the funniest post-movie-era Splendor story, in which a neighbourhood teenage pseudo-fan awkwardly drops by the Pekar residence to ask our hero advice on how to break into film – during which Harvey gets so bored, he gets up to grab himself a drink of juice, abandoning the kid on the front porch for a spell.

And speaking of artists whose work is pleasantly surprising in black-and-white, Darick Robertson, who has always seemed to lack focus on Transmetropolitan and The Boys completely wins me over here. I’m guessing that doing a real-world story forced Robertson to reign in his tendency for over-the-top reaction shots which makes it a lot easier to admire his finely detailed, expressive and humane depiction of a Pekar faced with a broken-down car and the receptionist who proves his only ally against this crisis. In a comic where Pekar tries to come to grips with a reviewer who praises his comic but trashes its author, illustrator Chris Samnee reminds me of the early work of Stuart Immonen, which probably shouldn’t work, but does, terrifically – every ambivalent line on Pekar’s face is hilarious.

Harvey Pekar is a survivor – of failed relationships, of financial hardships, of a go-nowhere job, of cancer fergawdsake – all of which were chronicled wonderfully in decades’ worth of comics as well as in the filmed adaptation of said comics. The movie may have provided some validation to The American Splendor Project – the damaged-but-not-broken everyman putting his life on display for any who care to look, and thereby exalting that life – but it didn’t end it. Pekar’s journey to the finish line continues, financial success and retirement from civil service be damned, and these volumes do a superb job of capturing that journey and presenting it for any who care to follow him.

And in case you were still wondering, he liked the cookies.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]

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Guest Review: Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One hardcover (Vertigo/DC Comics)

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

This hardcover volume, entitled Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One reprints "Saga of the Swamp Thing" issues 20-27, the opening eight issues of Alan Moore's mid-eighties run on the series. It includes the famous story "The Anatomy Lesson," in which the titular muck-man discovers that he is not a man transformed into a mossy beast, but rather a vegetable-creature who has deluded itself into believing it is a man.

As an "archival" edition, this new hardcover is ... durable, I guess, which you want in something calling itself "archival." Gone is the original beautiful Michael Zulli painted cover from the trade paperback, replaced by a lot of black, Alan Moore's name in big lettering and Swamp Thing's head in profile.

There are other problems with this volume, and they also have to do with how it stacks up to the earlier paperback edition. Yes, this hardcover is a big deal because, for the first time, it reprints "Loose Ends," issue #20 of the original series, where Alan Moore tied off the stump of Martin Pasko's run, and sowed the seeds of Moore's own story-to-come. However, there is always a price to be paid: we got some Moore, but we also lost some Moore. The original text introduction by Moore is gone in the new edition, most likely because it did its best to summarize Swamp Thing's back story for the new reader, up to and including "Loose Ends." Fair enough, death to spoilers and all that, but in the process we also lost some excellent musings on the horror genre, DC continuity, comic book continuity in general and storytelling in general including a tangent in which Moore discusses the possibility of Dr. Frankenstein performing experiments on the heroines of Little Women, a notion that seems to anticipate both League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls.

(When this volume was announced, months ago, I donated my "Loose Ends"-less Saga of the Swamp Thing trade to my local library. After the hardcover came out, I quickly made a photocopy of Moore's intro to stick between the pages of the new hardcover. Don't laugh, there but for the grace of God go you.)

It's also a shame that Moore's intro has been lost because new readers may find themselves surprised at how easily Moore's Swamp Thing bumps up against other denizens of the DCU proper. After all, Gaiman's Sandman usually tried its best to ignore those early cameos by the Martian Manhunter and Mister Miracle. Same goes for much of Hellblazer. But Moore's Swamp Thing is a "mature readers" book that happily co-exists alongside Jack Kirby's Etrigan, the Justice League, and later, the Crisis on Infinite Earths itself. The DCU is a true cosmos of fiction that we're often in danger of taking for granted, and the lost Moore intro illustrates that point explicitly -- although we've still got the comics themselves, so I guess it's not so bad.

Oh, incidentally: instead of Moore's intro, we get a chummy, backslaps-all-around intro by Swamp Thing creator Len Wein and another by horror author Ramsey Campbell, who gives a brief history of the "mature reader" comic up to the point before Moore began to work in American comics ("My ward is a junkie!" et al).

It's necessary to read Swamp Thing now with the proper context in mind. Moore's prose is sporadically overblown and purple; the art by Moore's former Miracleman cohorts Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, while evocative and atmospheric, is sketchy and at times bogged-down with "inventive" (read: difficult-to-follow) panel layouts; the "horror" is, to be honest, pretty conventional. But the characters shine through all the rough patches: "Alec," the Thing himself; his lover Abby Cable; Abby's husband Matt (later to be seen as the pet raven of Dream); and perhaps most indelibly, Jason Woodrue, the villainous Floronic Man, who delivers to Alec the truth about his inhumanity, before trying to Take Over the World with only Alec to stop him.

Whatever its flaws and growing pains, without Moore's run on Swamp Thing, modern comics would look very different indeed, and we certainly wouldn't have Vertigo, which is the biggest evolutionary step that mainstream comics has ever taken.

And, finally, did anyone else's copy arrive slightly sticky, as if slicked with chlorophyll? If so, DC, I am declaring this the worst cover gimmick ever.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]

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Review: Batman: The Man Who Laughs hardcover/trade paperback (DC Comics)

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

This edition has, like Batman and The Joker themselves, a really weird and convoluted back-story. Here goes. Batman: The Man Who Laughs was originally a 2005 prestige one-shot by Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke (The Mask, Major Bummer) that told the story of The Joker's first caper, a direct sequel to the penultimate page of Batman: Year One, a.k.a. the best comic ever in history. The Man Who Laughs went out-of-print, and Brubaker's name gradually became more and more of a selling point.

Early last year, DC republished the book as a hardcover, and found some Brubaker-penned filler bound The Man Who Laughs together with three issues of Detective Comics in which Batman teams up with Alan "Green Lantern, no not that one" Scott, who is significant to the Bat-mythos in that he was the first superhero (in current DCU chronology, at least) to operate out of Gotham, and if you go by Hush, then Scott served as a major inspiration to young Bruce Wayne's initial idea to become a crimefighter.

Now, in 2009, The Man Who Laughs comes to us in softcover once again, still including the GL-team-up. And here's the thing: I bought this knowing that the titular story isn't very good. Brubaker is a great writer whom I've admired for more than a decade -- Criminal, Scene of the Crime, the under-read The Fall, Daredevil, Gotham Central (-- and Catwoman! -- ed.) are all masterworks of the crime comic form. Some of those books may feature superheroes, but nevertheless ... Brubaker is not a great superhero writer.

He doesn't know how to just let superheroes be ridiculous/stupid/fun, which I think is one of the criteria for the title of "great superhero writer." And if you are writing a Batman comic that attempts to fill in the gaps between Year One, The Killing Joke and Matt Wagner's twin Hugo Strange mini-series Mad Monk and Monster Men, you are one-hundred-percent obligated to provide another masterpiece, or just don't bother. This is not that thing, particularly in hindsight, now that a certain billon-grossing movie has given us (arguably) the definitive Joker, and at least the definitive Batman-fights-The-Joker-for-the-first-time story.

Doug Mahnke does a great job here, but the wild energy of his MAD Magazine-meets-George Perez style isn't right for Brubaker's psychological, low-key writing (a year later, Mahnke would be matched with his perfect writer on Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory: Frankenstein!, a book which is made of such unadulterated "win" I'm astonished it still isn't an ongoing). (Seconded! -- ed. again)

The Man Who Laughs' plot itself is just a re-hash of Batman '89 and Batman #1 with Joker seizing the airwaves to terrify Gothamites and assassinate prominent fat rich guys. But! I shelled out for the softcover, ultimately, because, primed by the silly and wonderful Batman: The Brave and The Bold, I wanted to see Batman on a really dopey team-up with Alan Scott, an 80-year-old media baron who wields the world's most powerful weapon, whose existence makes no sense in a Post-Crisis DCU, and whose only weakness is wood. (If Alan Scott didn't already exist, Jeff Parker would have had to invent him.)

But I should have known better: Brubaker is far too left-brained a writer to really have fun with this team-up. Something like a goofier, super-powered version of the "Beware the Grey Ghost" episode of Batman: The Animated Series should ensue, with Batman discovering that not only is one of his inspirations fallible, but, really, if GL had decided to remain in Gotham instead of joining the Justice Society and moving to New York, really could allow Bruce to take a weekend off now and then (maybe even the occasional Spring Break!).

Instead, we get a story of supervillain revenge that could have featured just about any other superhero. Brubaker manages to script a touching moment between the two heroes in the Batcave at the end of the final chapter, but it doesn't really feel earned. It feels like the end of a more interesting story, where Batman got to work out some super-abandonment issues with Alan Scott as a surrogate dad like those wire monkeys from the experiments, only powered by alien ore.

Anyway -- Tim Sale provides the original covers for the Green Lantern story, so those are at least unique and striking. I also have to wonder why DC didn't take the opportunity to cash in on the popularity of Brubaker's Criminal and Marvel's superhero Noir line and re-package Brubaker and Sean Philips' similarly out-of-print Gotham Noir one-shot here. But regardless, the book we have fails to live up to any of the potential the characters or creators should have brought to the table.

However, if you're anything like me, you will buy this trade anyway, because it is, after all, a sequel to Year One, after all, and you'll stick it on your shelf next to The Long Halloween. I guess the joke's on us.

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Review: Marvel Boy hardcover/trade paperback (Marvel Comics)

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

There's always the question of what to listen to while you're reading. Grant Morrison probably would have picked something with more synth in it ("The Fall" is always a safe soundtrack for good superhero comics) but I went with Propagandhi's "Less Talk, More Rock" while re-reading the new hardcover collection of the 2000 Marvel Knights mini-series Marvel Boy, and it seemed to work OK -- both works are loud, dynamic, singular and explicitly in love with anarchy and hostile to corporations.

Until very recently when Marvel Boy (a.k.a. the Kree soldier Noh-Varr) joined the cast of something called Dark Avengers, debate raged as to whether this was the "secret first Ultimate Marvel book" which Joe Quesada had spoken obliquely of. Well, it's pretty clear now that it is in Marvel continuity proper (Earth-616) for better or worse, but the book definitely carries the smell of Ultimate Marvel and that imprint's mandate of "bringing Marvel Comics into the twenty-first century."

To me, the operative question is not "what universe is this book taking place in?" but rather "How does Marvel Boy figure into the oeuvre of Grant Morrison?"

On close examination, you can see Grant Morrison taking the opposite tack at Marvel than what he does with DC's stable of superheroes. At DC, everything he writes is connected, and Morrison is the first writer to use the notion of comic book continuity to its fullest literary potential. Animal Man connects to JLA connects to Batman connects to Seven Soldiers connects to All-Star Superman connects to DC One Million, and so on, enriching and enlivening the work. Of his three major works at Marvel, each has been self-contained to the point of barely needing to exist in a "comic book universe." The X-Men living in their own corner of the world is nothing new, but in four years' worth of New X-Men, Morrison never acknowledged the wider Marvel Universe. Fantastic Four 1234 was the same old FF story told on a broader scale and barely mentions any other superheroes. The same goes in Marvel Boy, except . . . not.

We never see the other superheroes, but their presence is felt. The villain, Midas, wears one of Iron Man's old suits, and is obsessed with giving himself the powers of the Fantastic Four. Marvel Boy is attacked by bastardized versions of Captain America called "Bannermen." Dum Dum Dugan and S.H.I.E.L.D. are present and accounted for. What's most important here is the sense of Marvel -- its ghost. As a logo, as a brand. Angry, alienated, rebellious ... Noh-Varr is almost the distillation of all the Marvel heroes, of Marvel as a brand\u2026 and so quite appropriately, Noh-Varr does battle with a living corporate identity at one point in the comic. (If not for thorny legal complications, I'm sure Morrison would have preferred to call this book Marvel Man.)

In both pacing, art style, coloring and dialogue cadence, Marvel Boy owes a lot to the then-recent Warren Ellis runs on The Authority and Planetary. And while J.G. Jones may be just a little less polished and fluid than Bryan Hitch and John Cassaday, his page layouts are more inventive, which serves to draw you back in for multiple reads. (However, Jones' at-times-stiff facial detailing recalls Bryan Talbot, who would is the last person you want drawing a Grant Morrison superhero comic.)

Noh-Varr is a punk superhero. He blows up an evil corporation with a cosmic bullet, carves obscenities into blocks of NYC and has his girlfriend blow up Epcot Center. Also, his best friend is his spaceship's living computer. (Is that punk? Sure! Why not!)

Superhero comics run on nostalgia and the veneration of decade-old concepts, so it's not surprising that something like Marvel Boy, which flies in the face of the familiar, takes some getting used to. But once you realize the hopefulness that's present in Noh-Varr's parting promise to turn Earth into the capital of the new Kree Empire, and also realize that Morrison will probably never complete this saga, it makes you love this unlikely volume all the more. Thanks, Marvel, for re-issuing this book as a hardcover, in an attempt to cash in on Final Crisis like the corporate shills you are.

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