Infinite Comics
Real life, apocalyptic imaginings, and superheroes crowded a busy year for writers and artists
It was a big year for comics. Or maybe I just read them a lot. But they sure seemed to be everywhere, and not just due to the endless variety of titles on the racks at my favorite local shop, the Golden Apple (Happy New Year, you guys!). Comic-book stories also showed up at the movies (Spider-Man 3, 30 Days of Night, etc.), while television and comics continued to cross-pollinate, with writers for the latter working on such shows as Heroes and Lost, and TV writers moving to comics.
Connoisseurs of more “literary” works celebrated Shortcomings, the first full-length graphic novel published by indie wunderkind/Optic Nerve creator Adrian Tomine. Iranian graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi garnered mainstream attention this year when the film of Persepolis, her 2004 French-language autobiographical story, beat out La Vie en rose as France’s current Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film. Meanwhile, DC and Marvel kept milking their respective superhero-universe reinventions for all they were worth. Marvel killed off Captain America (again), allowing for much angst and speculation about who might end up filling Steve Rogers’s shoes. But DC really pushed the envelope by churning out another post-Infinite Crisis weekly series, Countdown, after concluding the first one, 52, in May. I liked Infinite Crisis and its plugged-into-the-moment explorations of real-world issues through costumed heroes. But enough is enough!
From the mainstream to the underground, comics this year reflected and commented on the zeitgeist in ways often more immediate, fanciful, and profound than any other pop-culture form. Top 10 lists are sooo 20th century, but below are some notable moments from 2007.
Sex, Sex, Sex
Some things remained resolutely underground, like Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s erotic fairy tale Lost Girls. OK, it actually was first published by indie imprint Top Shelf Productions in summer 2006, but by early 2007 this beautiful, deeply thought-provoking piece of $75 “pornography” had entered its third printing. Comics have historically defied convention by indulging “inappropriate” sexual fantasy, but Lost Girls is a multilayered, deliberately transgressive meditation that’s at once intellectually and sexually exciting, baring the secret desires, shames, joys, and fears the now-married collaborators dreamed up for three iconic female characters: Alice of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Dorothy from L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, and Wendy from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Yet, despite the work’s wish-fulfillment in creating a world where sexual appetites can be indulged without shame, the fantasy comes down to earth in the end, becoming a powerful antiwar statement as well.
War Is Hell
The one-two cultural punch of 9/11 and the Iraq war, now in its fourth year, has been fodder for everything from Marvel’s sprawling superhero battle Civil War to Rick Veitch and Gary Erskine’s sex-in-the-military spoof Army@Love for Vertigo. But another Vertigo title that draws on real-world events, Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s DMZ, was especially compelling. The story follows young journalist Matty Rich as he learns his way around Manhattan, now the titular demilitarized zone after domestic strife has splintered the nation into the “Free States” and what’s left of the U.S. as we know it. The idea goes further than current events, but it never seemed that far-fetched. And now, with the recent announcement that the Lakota Indian tribes are withdrawing from their treaties and inviting anyone near their lands to join them in leaving the U.S., it feels like life is imitating art.
Moving Pictures
TV and comics continued to mingle, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon not only writing for Marvel’s X-Men but also moving his canceled television shows to comics form: Buffy with a monthly Dark Horse series and Angel in a 12-issue IDW miniseries, which was launched in November and is so popular that the first issue sold out before it even arrived in stores. Comics auteur Brian K. Vaughan contributed to the Buffy book, while Whedon picked up writing for Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona’s Marvel creation Runaways. Vaughan also became a writer for ABC’s mysterious-island drama Lost, as did fellow comics writer Javier Grillo-Marx. Meanwhile, NBC’s mutants-save-the-world drama Heroes has veteran comics writer Jeph Loeb as a co-executive producer, while his frequent artist collaborator Tim Sale draws the comics art seen on the show.
Comics based on TV shows aren’t a new thing, but this year fans of Battlestar Galactica could read stories based on either the “classic” ’70s show or the re-imagined, current Sci Fi Channel show. Meanwhile, Supernatural: Origins told the backstory of the paranormal-investigating Winchester brothers from the hit CW show. Looking ahead, next month IDW will begin publishing the first-ever comic book of British sci-fi series Doctor Who (shown here on Sci Fi and BBC America) created specifically for the American market.
Novelists and screenwriters have also gotten into the comics act. Marvel put out the miniseries The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, a prequel to Stephen King’s sprawling, multi-book Dark Tower tale, which the author oversaw. Next March, the company will publish another DT series, The Long Road Home. Author Brad Meltzer, who helped relaunch DC’s Justice League of America and penned the controversial 2004 JLA-related miniseries Identity Crisis, is slated to write an upcoming arc of the Buffy comic. And film writer Reginald Hudlin continues to invent epic tales for Marvel’s Black Panther.
The Last ‘Y’
Brian Vaughan was a busy guy in 2007. In addition to his Lost and Buffy gigs, he also continued writing his Ex Machina, the story of New York City mayor and former superhero Mitchell Hundred (a.k.a. the Great Machine), for DC’s Wildstorm imprint. And he penned a Dark Horse miniseries, The Escapists, based on the comic-book hero from Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Most momentously, Vaughan and cocreator/artist Pia Guerra also concluded their 60-issue Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. Issue 60 actually comes out January 23, but the postapocalyptic tale of Yorick Brown, who becomes the “last man” on earth after a mysterious plague wipes out every creature with a Y chromosome (more or less), essentially concluded in No. 59. I won’t give it away, but, although I’m sad the story is over, the conclusion was both bittersweet and quite satisfying. For a book that so thoughtfully and broadly explored the deep roots of gender roles – and how drastically the world would change if our culture of male dominance/female dependence were so violently and abruptly uprooted – Y ended up being driven more by the characters than the ideas, as fascinating as those ideas often were.
What a Girl Wants?
Speaking of women, a classically underserved minority comics audience, DC launched Minx, a line of manga-style titles aimed at teen girls. I already complained in a May “Subbacultcha” column about the sexual implications of the brand name (but obviously I’m still not over it). I’ve read the six titles released so far and found them mostly all right, with the best being Cecil Castellucci’s terrific The Plain Janes (which gets a sequel, Janes in Love, next summer). Still, most have not been written by women, which is annoying and seems rather odd for a series aimed at girls. (It also creates funny errors, like when the supposedly fashion-forward main character in Clubbing complains that the rubber boots called Wellies only come in yellow. Actually, they come in lots of colors and patterns too.) Kudos to DC for trying to cater to young female readers, but I still wish women played more of a creative role in making these books.
Photo by DC/Vertigo Comics
Published: 12/27/2007
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