Ugly American # 23: Surprise!

I read a lot of good comics this week, but the one that struck me the most – both for its contents and the nuances of context was Avengers Arena # 7. We covered the book briefly here at Ugly American Inc. when it first broke, but for the uninitiated the basic conceit is this:

A group of young Marvel B-D listers are captured by a suddenly amped-up Arcade and forced to fight to the death “Hunger Games” style.

It’s a dirt simple, powerful hook. Well, sort of. Detractors might question the derivative nature of the premise. Mostly people were upset about the concept of a comic devoted to “whacking” semi-beloved characters for sport. Particularly in a medium where deaths seem to be awfully cheap and temporary.

For a story like this, I think feeling guarded is justified. Is any of this real? Is it canon, or an Elseworlds tale? How do we know that Arcade hasn’t ripped off some of Xavier’s Danger Room tech and plugged these kids into his own little matrix? Or if that’s the case, why bother tempting an ass-whupping by kidnapping the actual kids when you could just run the sim with life-like holograms? I guess I can only speak for myself, but I found it difficult to fully invest myself in Avengers Arena because in the back of my head I’m waiting for Bobby Ewing to come out of the shower. That’s a slightly tantalizing but mostly uncomfortable feeling.

Avengers Arena # 7 shines a spotlight on Arcade, his sexy assistant Miss Coriander, and the origins of this new-and-improved Murderworld. All of the important questions get answered here. I think there’s still some room for button-hooking, so they may not end up being THE answers. But if you want to know if Murderworld is a tangible place in a physical locale, the answer is “yes”. Is Arcade really as powerful as he appears to be? Ehhh….sort of. And you may not entirely buy the premise of those powers or their limitations, but at least you’ll understand the rules the book is playing by. Were the kids physically captured and physically present inside of Murderworld? Definitely “yes”. Are the kids actually dying? Again, I think there’s room for fudging, (this is Arcade and a comic book after all) but this issue is presenting the answer as “yes”. Is there a reason why this scenario is so reminiscent of other pop culture memes? “Yes”. Does that take it off the hook? Probably “no”. But at least the book is now finally playing fair with us.

Now here’s the real question – why in the world would ever take seven issues to play fair with your audience?

The answer is this:

Comics are in such a dark hole of incestuous recycling of ideas, and so ravaged by the spoiler-obsessed comics “news” industry that the only vestige of novelty left to the creators is to try and confuse the shit out of you.

Story? Who cares? We’ve heard it all before, and if we haven’t, it will be well-trodden and used up a full month before the issue actually hits stands. Comics are no longer constructed to be enjoyed or understood. Today’s comics are adversarial in nature. They aren’t trying to please us, and we aren’t politely expecting to be pleased. We aggressively fight to crack the code, and they in turn go to increasingly bizarre lengths to encrypt the message into gibberish. Who will win? Answer: nobody.

The stories are lost. What they’ve turned into are Hobbit riddles in the dank corners of Gollum’s cave. Once all the carefully crafted gems have been used up, all you can do is repeat them or cheat.

“What do I have in my pockets?”, says Marvel.

“Uh….I don’t know, and that’s not even a riddle”, you reply.

“Fuck you, then, I win!” says Marvel.

That’s where we’re at as a medium now, at least for the Big Two. Before I go any further, I want to make a couple things clear. I think Dennis Hopeless is an excellent storyteller with a superlative grasp of character and what makes us care about people. Avengers Arena # 7 is a prime example of that, actually. What grabbed me was not the plot reveals, which were fine and much needed. What grabbed me was peering into Arcade’s life outside of Murderworld, where he is strangely vulnerable, detestable, broken, and oddly charming about it all.

What I want is the inside baseball. I want to know what the frost giants of Jotunheim are doing when Thor isn’t bouncing an uru hammer off their skulls. That’s where the juice is for me, and Dennis Hopeless is really good at delivering that stuff. Hopeless gives us the inner workings of Arcade’s bizarre celebrity villain birthday parties, and a previously undeveloped relationship with his assistant. As good as the Arcade stuff was, the Coriander bits were better. She was a nothing to me last month, this month I’m in love. Now I want to know how much of that relationship is genuine affection, and how much is just two broken people trying to get over on each other. That’s interesting. That’s character. That’s story. That’s magic!

Now, how much of that magic is lost if they just lead with that information, in a first issue or zero issue, or an Avengers lead-in issue? None. The story is stronger for it. I am not less interested in Arcade and the concept of Murderworld now that I know the emotional impetus and some of its basic working elements. I was less interested when I didn’t know that, because I had no anchor with which to ground my investment. The “mystery” of Arcade’s Murderworld was not driving me deeper into the book, it was constantly threatening my ability to continue. I held course because Hopeless provided enough character moments in the interim to counter-balance my plot reservations. They got lucky on that one, I often bail. We all do.

And again, to be clear, I’m not picking on Avengers Arena. A lot of comics are guilty of confusing intrigue with confusion. Remember East of West last week? Loved the art, only liked the story. Clearly something is there, but I don’t know what, and that’s by design. It’s hurting my ability to connect with that material. How about Five Ghosts? I really enjoyed the pulp tone of that book, the design, the spider-monsters, the look. I know a little something about the nature of Fabian Gray’s abilities, but I got most of that info from the solicit, the back matter, and because I’m tuned into comics podcasts. The content of the first issue itself establishes little that is concrete or compelling about the most critical element of that character and the comic. The move is to provide core clarity and then dazzle us with the depth. What’s a literary ghost, and how does Fabian use them? It’s important to have a basic understanding of that. What’s the benefit in confusion?

Listen, I’m not suggesting that I need to be spoon-fed or that you have to play all of your cards instantly. Remember Preacher? Lots of twists and turns and mysteries to be solved around the way, but in the very beginning the guts are spelled out very clearly:

• Jesse Custer is a tough sonavubitch ex-preacher who has lost his faith

• Jesse Custer is ironically hit with a divine power to compel others to do as he says

• Jesse Custer wants to use his powers for a reckoning with God

Boom – you’re in! No, you don’t understand right away exactly what happened to Jesse, or why. You don’t know how he got hooked up with an asshole vampire or why he’s so bad with women, or why Starr liked it in the can. Garth Ennis left plenty of room for the story to breathe, but you knew exactly why you were there and what you were dealing with.

I think I get where all this is coming from, and believe it or not I have some sympathy for Marvel and DC. So much of their clientele are now middle-aged and jaded, and have seen it all at this point. We say we want new things, but we only ever seem to buy the old icons, and how do you keep it new? They won’t be expecting a punch in the balls, right? Pow! Except I don’t want to be punched in the balls, or lost at sea.

We’re in trouble as a medium when I hear Bendis selling Age of Ultron based on the fact that nobody can guess how it ends. Two weeks in all of that gets leaked, and then what’s that worth? It was rubbish from the beginning, though. Making your audience get the answer wrong isn’t the same as telling a good story. “What number am I thinking of?” is kind of a shit game with no real skill involved.

Here’s a secret that seems in danger of being forgotten – human beings are story machines, designed specifically for the transmission and reception of lore. Stop trying to jam the signal in the name of novelty. God help us, we need a little more Jim Shooter in comics right now.

Avengers Arena was an enjoyable # 7 but it would have been incredible # 0.

Somebody give me an “Amen”, or challenge my commentary with their own!