Ugly American # 22: Ug-Ah-Lay Uh-Mary-Cahn

Captain Marvel
Once upon a time I read Captain Marvel # 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick and was lukewarm about it. I was not a huge fan of Dexter Soy’s art, but I appreciated the novelty, which pretty much made me Soy’s biggest fan. I’ll never forget perennial Pollyanna over at iFanboy Ron Richards calling it a “shit show”. People were not into Dexter Soy. The script as I recall was solid. I could see potential, but wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be about, other than an ethereal sense of womeny women gazing awestruck into space. Then I felt a small amount of bitter vomit in the back of my throat and thought – what’s that about? Oh yeah… pretense. I promised myself I was giving it at least three issues, because I loved Deconnick’s Osborn a great deal, but I just didn’t care enough about this to get past the one issue.

Fast forward to last week, when I read a testimonial extolling the virtues of Captain Marvel and decided it was time to fulfill my promise and give the book a shot again. So I did a little digging and discovered that Kelly Sue got herself a new artist called Filipe Andrade and a new direction with Captain Marvel # 9. So I bought that one, plus #10-11 and got current.

And you know what? Captain Marvel is a pretty darned good comic book. First thing I noticed about the current Captain Marvel run is that it is far more unabashedly a superhero comic. Carol punches dinosaurs, pulls several tons of train out of the ground, and brushes elbows with Tony Stark, and Captain America, and Jessica Drew. She’s got a rivalry with Death Bird, and there’s a mystery villain behind her pulling strings and doing some moustache twirling. The “A” plot right now revolves around a lesion inside of Carol’s brain that gets aggravated when she uses her flight powers. Doctors tell her that it probably won’t be lethal, what with the healing factor and all. But the process of regenerating that piece of her brain would probably wipe everything that makes her “Carol” clean. It’s a nice homage to the old terminal illness bit that Starlin did back in the day with a more psychological modern twist. Flying has been established as a key piece of her character, so the stakes are very high. The story has all of the elements of a good bronze age romp, and doesn’t seem to be winking at you or ashamed about it.

While it’s doing the page-turney potboiler stuff, Captain Marvel is shockingly character-driven and intimate. It’s actually quite a bit like Hawkeye. If you enjoy Hawkeye, I really don’t see how you’d avoid liking Captain Marvel. It’s essentially the same formula. The blueprints are so similar that you’ll notice an unusual amount of attention paid to apartment dwelling neighbours in the superstructure, and characters playfully misconstruing the main character’s name. (Hawkguy, Cap-Eee-Tahn Uh-Mary-Ca) Not sure who’s copying who, really. Captain Marvel # 1 predates Hawkeye # 1 by a month, although the Captain Marvel I just read is fundamentally different as regards tone and pacing. I guess it doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s good.

And it is good. Character moments abound, and not just for Carol. There are no “bit” parts in Captain Marvel, and very little if any wasted space or momentum. Reading Captain Marvel is getting to know Carol Danvers, and the crazy old lady eternally affixed to the park bench knitting her a hat, and Chewie the cat, and the cab driver that Carol dupes into taking said cat to the vet so she can go save the city from rampaging dinosaurs. One thing I’ll promise you – you will not feel cheated out of your $2.99 if you buy Captain Marvel. Deconnick is writing a really efficient machine that is dense with story and emotion.

There are some issues. Sometimes the book feels overly precious, and you can catch it in the act of being entirely too pleased with itself. To be fair, each issue comes equipped with a line or four that you will desperately wish you’d thought of. But not every vendor handing over danishes needs to be a silver-tongued quipster. It tends to put cracks in the world investment. (See: Bendis, Brian Michael) Captain Marvel is a bit of a Bunny Book, but isn’t overly obnoxious about it, at least not the three issues I read. One of the sub-plots involves a group recruiting Carol to fly humanitarian aid to some underprivileged something-or-other. I don’t have any problem with people helping people, but when these little excursions are opposed by papier mache Evil Rich White Guys, I’m just warning you that I’m going to throw the comic at the wall.

Hard. It’s going to happen.

And then there’s the art. Andrade’s work is not exactly from the Neal Adams illustrative school, which is fine. It reminds me of what Mike Huddleston was doing on Butcher Baker more than anything. So if you liked that, you should feel right at home here. It’s not a deal-breaker for me, because Andrade seems to be deftly capturing emotions and a sense of action…but it’s not super appealing to my tastes, either. When I look at the cover to #9 and see that gorgeous Jamie McElvie stuff, I kinda wish the whole book looked like that. But I’m admittedly a bit of an art neanderthal.

I recognize that Captain Marvel is a different kind of a book, and I like the idea of some experimentation in style. But on the other hand… what’s wrong with just putting a Tom Grummett on the book? Nobody really talks about that guy, I think he’s great. That stuff looks attractive, and I always know what I’m looking at. Tom Grummett would probably quit drawing if he knew I was on his side, though. “What? That asshole thinks I’m good? That’s it, I’m done.” Sorry, Tom.

So. Captain Marvel. Old school high-impact super heroics laced with DeConnicky character goodness, and each $2.99 issue is stuffed to capacity. That’s a pretty good package.

I used up more space on Captain Marvel than I intended, so let me very quickly get to a few other items worthy of your attention:

The Private Eye
Did you know that Bryan K Vaughan and Marcos Martin are self-publishing a digital comic called The Private Eye? Well, they did. They put it up on something called panel syndicate, and here’s where it gets really crazy – you pay whatever you want. The comic is available without DRM entanglements, at whatever price you deem fair. If you think you should get it for free, you just enter $0.00 and download away. I’ve always thought that $1 was about right for digital books. Since the first issue of The Private Eye was 32 pages and nearly double-sized, I pitched them $2.

It’s a noir detective story fused with a dystopian future in which our social media-driven culture eventually hits critical mass. When the dam finally breaks, Newton’s Law tears the internet down, and most folks walk around in their daily lives with masks to hide their identities. Privacy is one of my 21st century pet issues, so I was extremely pleased to hear about a Vaughan comic tackling the subject, and wasn’t disappointed by what I found in the first issue. Lots of landscape panels and beautiful art from Mr. Martin, but you probably guessed that.

I’m deadly curious to know how much they’ll take in for the issue, but I doubt we’ll ever know. Trent Reznor and Louis C.K. have had success with this kind of business model. My guess is that Vaughan and Martin can drive 8-12K to his book, and I’m guessing that average donation settles around $1.50, which would mean, what? $12,000 - $18,000? My figures are pure fantasy, of course, but if I’m right that’s enough to keep the book going. They don’t have to share that money with a publisher, and they don’t have to wait a year down the road on a trade collection to get in the black. It could be the future, at least for name talent. It helps to be Bryan K Vaughan.

Incidentally, I had issues with the download. I got the comic just fine, and in PDF form. Ordinarily when I download anything I can teach the computer to put it on my desktop for later reference. Couldn’t do that with The Private Eye. The good news is, I was able to just go back to the website and “repurchase” the book for free when I wanted to reference it again later. If they go with a pay only model later, that would really irritate me, though. I’m sure the issue is with the user, not the comic. I’m not particularly tech savvy. If any of you have similar issues, I’d be curious to hear about them. I’d also be curious to know what you decided to pay for the comic.

East of West
Holy balls, Mr. Hickman! Jonathan Hickman is the king of Implied Depth, nobody thinks bigger. Maybe Grant Morrison? It’s Grant, or nobody.

So check this out – Hickman’s new Image book is a sci-fi, futuristic, supernatural, alternative history western. You’ve got the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of whom has gone rogue. America develops differently than history remembers, splitting into seven different factions. Revivalist preachers and Indian shamans independently and spontaneously script apocalyptic prophecy. I’m sure novels could be written about any little piece of any little piece of that. I’d love to read the text of those prophecies, or a history of the formation of the Endless Nation, or the mythology of the Horsemen. The story is impossibly big.

What you get in issue # 1 though, is just a sliver. It’s mostly set in 2064, and there’s a lot of fantastic old-timey gunslinger talk, and the Nick Dragotta art is Next Level. Gorgeously illustrated, and I love the colors. There’s just no way that we’ll get to see even .02% of what’s being set before us….but if Hickman can sell us on the idea that we’re getting 10%, it’s going to be one for the ages.

I’m not ready to declare this a Hall of Famer yet. Let’s give it a good six issues before we can even guess about where this is going and how satisfied we feel about the payoff. I’ll say this – the first issue was satisfying in what it offered on its own, and East of West is the most ambitious sonovabitch you’ve ever met.