DMZ Vol. 2 - Body of a Journalist

DMZ Vol. 2 - Body of a Journalist
By Brian Wood, Riccardo Burchielli

Though still not living up to the promise of the premise, Volume 2 of the Brian Wood/Riccardo Burchielli Vertigo series DMZ is a step up from the first, offering a clearer focus, better stories and a stronger exploration of the series’ cool hook.

But I’m not yet totally sold. I still can’t help but feel that Wood & Co aren’t quite there. The characters are shallower than an inflatable kiddie pool – I’ve spent 12 issues with Matty Roth and Zee, and feel like I barely know them – and the dialogue lacks life and punch. Matty is frustrated with the war, but I don’t feel any real humanity or emotion there, just F bombs. Our window into who these people are is a string of profanities without character or personality. Sorry, but “fuck!” and “aww fuck!” and “fuck this shit!” does not make for good characterization. Fine if you’re playing a Grand Theft Auto game, not so fine if you’re reading a work that attempts to say something larger than, “Fuck!”

Speaking of that profanity, it struck me while reading this volume that the profanity and occasional graphic violence is the only reason this is a Vertigo title – and neither are necessarily vital to the story. Well, the graphic violence is, arguably, but that’s assuming Wood wants to highlight the plight of civilians caught in the hell of war. Ostensibly that’s what he wants to do, but that rarely comes across in the story. When it does, great, but things are spotty in that regard. Wood needs to give his world room to breath. The segments that feature Matty’s first person narration or the newsreel segments are all too brief, because they are exactly what we need. They strike a great tone and give us the insight into the world and characters of DMZ. They set mood and atmosphere, offer context, and get us into the heads of the people in the story. We need MORE of that! As for the profanity, I feel like it’s there for its own sake. Unlike the incredibly witty-yet-profane dialogue of Brian K. Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man or the character-heavy-yet-profane language of Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets, the F bombs add very little to this book.

Hey, great, it’s Vertigo, which means you can get away with this stuff ... but if it’s not adding anything to the characters or story, drop it.

And it’s not adding anything to the characters or story.

Still, if I’m bitching, don’t let that be an indication that I didn’t enjoy this. I did. The second volume of DMZ was a big step up from the first. There is a good story arc here centering on corruption, propaganda, and manipulating the media to influence public opinion. Some very solid themes that could have used more exploitation, but nonetheless were enjoyable to read. We’ve got some new characters, political intrigue, betrayals and double-crossings, and the sense that something larger is at work. We're starting to tap into the series’ potential.

I like that. I like that especially because I hate to see great potential go to waste.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.

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DMZ Vol. 1 - On The Ground

DMZ Vol. 1 - On The Ground
By Brian Wood, Riccardo Burchielli

You know when all the parts of a machine look great, but when you put them together something just doesn't click? For me that was the first volume of Brian Wood's cult favorite DMZ . I think I was supposed to like this more than I did.

After all, what’s not to like? The premise is right up my alley. America at war with itself. New York an island in the midst of the war. The survivors, isolated in the city, have hacked out bits and pieces of a society – though anarchy all too often still reigns supreme. A young journalist is in the middle of it all, documenting the war in the midst of New York City and what that conflict is doing to the civilians there.

That's the stuff right there, folks. Exactly the sort of thing I’d like to read. So why did the first volume leave me wondering if I wanted to keep reading?

Because it failed to deliver on all that promise.

For all the praise Wood gets for this supposed love letter to New York City, I rarely got the sense of place I should have felt. One should be immersed in the city, living it and breathing it and feeling it, yet that sense of being there was inconsistent. When they nail it, they nail it – but they don’t always nail it. That's a pretty huge failing for a series of this type, seeing as it leans so heavily on location.

Maybe it’s the art. Riccardo Burchielli’s style does not appeal to me, but that’s something I can live with (even if all the characters are as ugly as sin). What I can’t live with is rough storytelling. Burchielli draws a great cityscape, but his panel-to-panel work just isn’t as clear and direct as it should be. It’s not that I felt lost, it’s just that it’s very, very uneven; a spotty sense of composition, totally arbitrary use of unusual angles, and so on. A case of style over substance doing the story a disservice.

It doesn’t help that the coloring is so damn muddy. Everything is washed out in a murky reddish hue, so few things really pop from the page. I understand the color choices and why they were made, but this book really could have used more contrast in that regard. Even if you want a bleak, war-torn near future, in order for it to really have impact you've got to have something cleaner to set next to it. Maybe this is why the issue set in Central Park during the winter looked best. It offered an excellent contract with the overall look of the series.

So what we're left with is the writing carrying the load. Well, it does what it needs to do, but not much more. Wood’s writing was fine. Not extraordinary, a bit problematic here and there, at times very good, but overall it didn’t grab my bag. Quick dialogue and an attempt at a "hip" and "edgy" tone that doesn't always ring true.

I’m hoping this stuff improves, because there is a lot of potential in the premise of this series.

Which is what it boils down to for me. The premise. The single strongest thing about this book, and the one thing that will get me to read the second volume.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com and was also featured at Popthought.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Secret Wars

Secret Wars
By Jim Shooter

What a bunch of painfully written fanboy drivel.

And what a walloping good time.

Wait, what? How can it be both? Easy. It just is. I mean, gather a bunch of the coolest heroes and coolest villains, stick them on a planet and have they fight for twelve issues? Awesome! A hoot and a half! In theory, at least. But couple the sheer overkill of having so many characters vying for the spotlight with the terribly one-dimensional writing and you’ve got something as awful as it is awesome.

I liked the trip down memory lane (like most comic geeks my age, I first read this back when it came out). Seeing the Wrecking Crew smash stuff up and the Absorbing Man slinging his ball and chain around was a blast. Remembering how this series briefly changed things in regular Marvel titles was nifty; X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man were all impacted by the events of this story. Lots of great moments; the Hulk under the mountain, the initial battle, anything Galactus. Following the twists and turns of the plot – which might not be much, but it did the job – was a lot of fun. Bad guys attack, good guys attack back, and on and on and on. You’ll get no arguments from me. An old school slugfest is what I wanted from Secret Wars and an old school slugfest is what I got.

Not quite an old school slugfest, though. Much as I like the modern style superhero comic, one thing I find many newer comics lack is coherency when it comes to action and fights. Read a title like New Avengers, for instance, and you find that battles are simply a series of formless pinups with banter here and there. Such is the case with many newer comics. The plot and dialogue shines; the action does not. For all the sometimes stuff characterization and awkward dialogue, old school comics did action right. There was an ebb and a flow you just don’t see now, a coherency to the way fights unfolded. Battles actually had a beginning, middle and end. They were tiny stories within the story.

Well, Secret Wars’ battles were modern before their time, because more often than not they are a series of chaotic panels with little rhyme or reason. Trying to juggle too many characters will result in that sort of thing, I s’pose. Sometimes they hit the right notes, but just as often they were a mess. A dozen heroes and a dozen villains in a panel, with some crap dialogue stringing it together, ending with some contrived plot device to stop the battle until next issue.

Oh, and that writing. The plotting was fine. It was really freakin' cool, in fact. I like the way everything here played out. But damn were Shooter’s characters a bunch of one-note, lifeless mannequins. Reading his Wasp was especially painful. His X-Men were less recognizable than Grant Morrison’s. Spider-Man served no purpose at all. And all Captain America ever said was, “Hit ‘em hard and hit ‘em fast!”

Ugh. Dreadful.

But those criticisms don’t mean I didn’t enjoy the ride, because I did. How can you not like Doctor Doom stealing a god’s power, Molecule Man dropping mountain ranges on people, Spider-Man beating up the X-Men (though when Wasp did the same I choked), and Ultron zapping Kang? It was all good fun! Total fanboy wank written kind of poorly, sure, but good fun nonetheless.

This series is more of a landmark than it's often given credit for -– maybe because people consider it a bad landmark that helped kickstart unwelcome trends -– and, if you can get past the dodgy writing and contrived plot, is a fun blast from the past.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Akira - Volume 6

Akira - Volume 6
By Katsuhiro Otomo

As we learned in the long, drawn-out lead up to Volume 2's climax, Katsuhiro Otomo, visionary creator of Akira (both the manga and the film), has no qualms about stretching his dramatic moments out to the breaking point, so the fact that the final volume of the saga is one gigantic climax should come as no surprise.

Those who have seen the film will recognize elements of how the story comes to a head. Tetsuo finds his incredible power increasingly difficult to control, resulting in a grotesque transformation into a gelatinous mass of veined, bloated flesh. His body tries to adsorb whatever is around it in order to contain the power. He can't control it. The result is a nightmarish baby run amok.

Meanwhile, Kei, under control by the shriveled little peers of Akira, attempts to square off with Tetsuo and put an end to him. While all this is happening, the American military, the Colonel (who is now a lone wolf), Kaneda and Joker and others, all converge on the Olympic Stadium where the followers of Akira and Tetsuo have taken refuge.

It's pretty huge, ultimately sprawls over several key locations, and contains enough plot twists to keep you interested. Lady Miyako, for instance, ends up being far shrewder than we imagined, orchestrating the one plan that might finally put an end to both Akira and Tetsuo.

But her plan is risky, and the cost just might be the destruction of, well, EVERYTHING.

The resolution? Very similar to the film's. (Though the manga came first, the film was made while the manga was still in progress.) Not as vague, though. A little more direct, a little easier to digest, a little easier to wrap your head around.

Except, of course, for the somewhat bizarre epilogue.

After the mass destruction that closes out the book, the military arrives to bring aid to the survivors. In a scene closely mirroring the one that opens Volume 3, the survivors drive them away, take the supplies, and claim they are now a sovereign nation. With the military standing in shock, the survivors then cruise away through the rubble of Neo Tokyo, off to live their life amid the ruins. The final shot shows the ruins parting to reveal a huge, shining city even more polished and beautiful than the original Neo Tokyo.

A glimpse of the future? A sign of hope for tomorrow? A signal that better days are to come and that a utopia will be born from the corpse of Neo Tokyo? Maybe.

But why did the survivors turn away the chance at aid? Why did they declare themselves a sovereign nation? They seemed to have no motivation to do so. No reasoning behind it. Nothing up until this point even suggested it was in the cards, so it feels completely out of the blue. Otomo laid no groundwork for this ending, and the result is a certain degree of, "What?"

Still, it doesn't detract from the awesome epic that is Akira. As one of the crowning achievements of comics, I don't care if you love manga or hate it, Akira is essential reading for anyone who loves the comics medium.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Akira - Volume 5

Akira - Volume 5
By Katsuhiro Otomo

Katsuhiro Otomo's beloved manga sprawls out into its fifth volume, and with it comes sights far more extraordinary than anything we've seen to date, stuff that makes Akira's destruction at the end of Volume 3 look positively tame by comparison. Things that not a single person on planet Earth could miss.

See, by this point Tetsuo's powers are surging beyond belief. He is now capable of feats the likes of which only gods should be capable. This seems to be changing him. His brief encounters with Lady Miyako may or may not be helping him control his power -- it remains an open question whether she is helping him or using him -- but at the very least this savage character has undergone a change. There is an almost angelic air about him through a long stretch of this volume. His hair is light and short, his demeanor no longer menacing, his approach almost gentle. This is not the Tetsuo we knew.

A real change or the calm before the storm?

What we've got here is a shifting of the powers, the chess pieces being moved into place for the epic, volume-long climax to come. Once again, there is more substance here than in the first part of the saga. Previously one-dimensional characters continue to develop flesh and bones, and, most interesting of all, the Neo Tokyo situation becomes an international issue. And how could it not? When you see what Tetsuo does about midway through this book ...

Wow.

It ought to be outlandish, Tetsuo's insane abilities at this point, but Otomo's art and fantastic sense of composition have you too busy picking your jaw up off the floor to bother questioning the extent to which Tetsuo has developed. Does this kid need to breath anymore? Can he travel at the near light speed? It doesn't matter. There is simply too much awesome to fuss with such questions.

The penultimate volume of Akira is every bit as packed with action as the previous four, only now we sense the endgame is near. Things are drawing to a close. The storm has one last burst of fury to unleash.

And now we haven't a clue how these two super powerful kids can ever be stopped.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Akira - Volume 4

Akira - Volume 4
By Katsuhiro Otomo

Yo, shit just got real.

At the end of Volume 3, Akira, the little boy for whom the story is named, wigs out and blows Neo Tokyo to kingdom come. Buildings topple, places flood, civilization is thrown into ruins, and the whole place generally looks like a bunch of dominoes in mid-topple. Yeah, you just spent 1,000 pages hearing about Akira, Akira, Akira ... and now you know why this kid was feared.

So Volume 4 picks up an unspecified amount of time after that major turning point. From this point forward, Katsuhiro Otomo's saga becomes a much different beast. This is clear from the very start. Otomo does a great job of introducing us to this new Neo Toyko when a helicopter bearing aid is taken by marauders. The chopper flies in over the jaw-dropping destruction below and lands amid the rubble, but the people who were there to help are turned on and killed. BOOM. We're in an all new world.

This volume is different than the earlier volumes in other ways beyond setting, too. Rather than action being the sole thing that pushes the still somewhat vague story forward we suddenly have an actual look at Tetsuo as a person, warring factions that are more than unexplained names and notions, and real character development for some who had until this point been fairly two-dimensional. It feels like there is a lot more meat on these bones. A lot more substance.

Oh, and for those fans of the movie who have not read the comic, this material is all exclusive to the comic. It extends the story in a major way and will have you looking at Akira in an all new light.

The kind of themes that also helped make Akira relevant also start to come into play. The nature of power and responsibility, cults of personality, humanity and morals, survival of the fittest, and the nature of the universe. It's not painted with a Big Message banner, but it's all there, making the action feel less wasteful and mindless than the early motorcycle gang sequences. A more satisfying read is the result.

And that action remains high energy and badass, only now it's in an even cooler setting. Otomo must have been nuts to pack his world with such detail. At least when Neo Toyko was still whole he could break out the ruler and draft nice, clean cityscapes. Here it's a mass of twisted wreckage and rubble, skyscrapers jutting up from the torn Earth like rotten teeth. Between those broken pearly whites run a HUGE cast of characters with guns, powers, bombs and other means of killing one another dead. The cast was already fairly large, but here it gets even bigger, with loads of instantly recognizable (albeit nameless) side characters slamming through shootouts, chases, and eventually an all out war.

Though Otomo's storytelling stretches itself out like a lazy cat, it's never less than brisk. It moves, and as such there is a lot to digest here. Lots of twists, turns and happenings. The plot essentially begins anew, and once it starts moving it doesn't slow down.

Plus -- and this is the big one -- here we finally see the origin of Akira and the other super powered children! Woot! You can put some of the pieces together earlier in the series, but here is where it's spelled out in an explicit way. The who, the how, the why. Puts it all in a clear context, and helps to set up some military-related stuff that will come later.

That's right, yo, shit just go real.

This is awesome.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Akira - Volume 3

Akira - Volume 3
By Katsuhiro Otomo

A 300-page chase scene. That’s pretty much what the third volume of Akira is. Nearly 300 pages of a little boy getting kidnapped again and again, passed back and forth by several factions competing for control of him.

And then a dozen or more pages of savage, epic destruction.

Thing is, despite the scope of the third volume being so limited, it packs in almost as much information as the first two volumes combined. Fractures in the government, an attempted coup, rebellion, a bizarre religious leader, the military enforcing a police state. There is a lot happening and a lot of people to track. Much of it happens off-panel. The coup, for instance. We hear about it and see some of the fallout from it, but only a small fraction of the fallout, and we never fully see it take place. We know the entire city is under siege, that the whole of Neo Tokyo is in turmoil, but we see it only through the lens of our specific story. All Katsuhiro Otomo shows us is the lengthy (in pages, not in time elapsed) struggle to have control over the little boy, Akira.

Of course, you can’t control Akira. Not really. So when his power is triggered near the end, WATCH OUT. The destruction is awesome to behold. They’ve hinted and hinted and hinted that Akira is like nothing we’ve ever seen, but it’s hard to believe he could have surpassed the level of power we’ve seen from Tetsuo. But he can. By a long, long way.

This volume is the most intriguing thus far because it broadens the world of Akira -- just before completely turning it on its head. We finally get a sense for some of the factions involved in the vast backstory and a sense of their history, even if only in passing. I liked that. This is the stuff I want to know. Sure, the action is great and Otomo makes it exciting -- by now this should come as no surprise -- but I want to know more about these people and this world. This is FAR more engaging than the largely empty motorcycle gang stuff at the start of this epic.

Speaking of the motorcycle gang stuff, I wonder if Otomo really knew where he was going with things at that point? It’s such a pointless diversion in many ways. Yeah, we see Tetsuo’s spiral into insanity, but damn it took a long while (500 pages), and those particular gangs are largely irrelevant after that point in the story. Joker's return later in the saga doesn't really add all that much to the narrative, after all. At least here the relentless action matters.

Even better, the action is more focused on characters we like and can root for.

Like Chiyoko. She’s awesome! At first she looks like a big, soft, matronly woman. How wrong that assessment is! She’s the badass to end all badasses, as tough as they come and able to smash noses and blast apart enemies without breaking a sweat. You really grow to love her throughout all the chasing and fighting here, a love that pays off well in the next volume. She’s great.

Anyway, this is the climactic volume of the saga’s first half, ending in a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE event that completely changes not just the face of Neo Tokyo, but also the tone of the entire series. From this point forward Akira will have more to say than it has thus far. The story becomes better. The politics more intriguing. The drama more compelling.

Really, Akira has only just gotten started.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Akira - Volume 2

Akira - Volume 2
By Katsuhiro Otomo

The second volume of Dark Horse's massive reprint of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga classic, Akira, closes the door on the story's first act and takes the first major step towards the climactic change this story will see at its midway point, a change that is a major, major divergence from the better-known film.

The pacing of this volume is relentless, but not in the highly compressed way of early American comics. Golden and Silver Age American comics moved along at a breakneck pace, too, but they did so with major jumps in time between each panel. Superman hears trouble in one panel, and is on the moon socking an alien bank robber in the next. Not in Akira. While the action never stops, the way it's presented is stretched out like silly putty. Tetsuo taking an elevator ride for 100 pages? Yep. Oh, sure, the ride is filled with action and cuts back and forth to at least three other intertwined storylines, but still, jeez! Yet Otomo manages to make it work.

The artwork remains magnificent (though the faces are probably even more cartoonish than before). In one late scene in which we first meet a key character, Otomo manages to convey a remarkably chilling, almost otherworldly sense of power in a relatively small, innocuous figure. Very impressive.

The story, however, isn't undeserving of some knocks.

For instance, Tetsuo kind of annoys me. He's a punk kid who now realizes he can do whatever he wants to do. Got it. Understood. It'd be nice to have some sympathy for or understanding of him, though. It's clear he's drifting into madness, that he is being consumed with the power at his beck and call, but a little touch of humanity sure wouldn't have hurt. It's absolutely impossible to like this character. Too bad, since he plays such a central role in the story.

Oh, and despite being about 400 pages, some American readers might be turned off by the lack of density here. A lot happens and the action never stops and the plot surges forward like a tsunami, boom boom boom fast and furious, but it's easy to feel like there isn't a lot of meat on these bones. As mentioned earlier, Akira is presented with sparse text, sparse dialogue, no captions, almost nothing in the way of exposition, and the small character moments are few and far between.

So why do I like this so much? Because it's like an endless cliffhanger. It never lets up. Otomo puts carrot after carrot in front of us and before we know it we're slamming through pages. Fity at a clip. One hundred at a clip. Two hundred at a clip. You want to know more about what Akira is and how they will finally stop Tetsuo and just plain what's going to happen. It's engrossing. It's a great thrill ride.

Amazingly enough, though, we're still about 400 pages away from it getting really awesome.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.