comickal: recently read, ellisian fields and true history edition

[iainpj]

And hey! there's even one title that falls into both categories!


You kind of wonder what Avatar was about last week. Three Warren Ellis titles coming out on the same day from the same publisher is just odd.

Doktor Sleepless #1 (Warren Ellis/Ifan Rodriguez; Avatar)

I ... don't quite know what to make of this title yet. It's another of Ellis' future dystopia tales (I seem to be using that word a lot lately), in which drugs are omnipresent, and people are thoroughly disconnected. John Reinhardt transforms himself into Doktor Sleepless at the beginning, because despite having achieved some renown on his own, nobody wants to pay attention to him any more.

Peculiar side note: with Doktor Sleepless, this is the second time today I've seen someone talk about people being characters in their own story; once in a real(ish) context, where they were talking about a person not being a sympathetic character, as if he were fictional instead of real, and in Doktor Sleepless, where John transforms himself into a character because nobody wants to listen to him: People like listening to characters. Characters are safe, because they're not real. So today, I become a character. Is the key to getting people to hear what you have to say to transform yourself into an obvious character in your own story, one wonders? But I digress.

The story is, so far, interesting enough to keep coming back for more. It feels oddly like Transmetropolitan meets The Pied Piper meets A Formal School of Philosophy that I can't think of the name of. Doktor Sleepless has his nurse assistant, like Spider's filthy assistants. Rodriguez' artwork is spectacular, both photorealistic and only somewhat stylized. There's a bunch of explanatory/supporting material in the back, as well as a wiki at doktorsleepless.com where other material will appear between issues. Ellis has said that Doktor Sleepless will not be collected in trade, so if you want to keep up, then floppies are the way to go.

It's going to be interesting to see where he takes this one.

Black Summer 0-1/1-2 (Warren Ellis/Juan Jose Ryp; Avatar)

Avatar should have simply issued issue 0 of this series as issue 1. They've already introduced confusion, because the chapter numbers inside the issues don't match the cover numbers, and since typically, issue 0 of a series does not carry actual content, people probably think they could have skipped issue 0. They were, of course, quite wrong. In issue 0, John Horus, one of a group of seven people who acquired powers via technology, kills the president, vice president and a good chunk of the cabinet inside the White House, for committing what he regarded as criminal acts -- to wit, somehow sending the heroes out of the country and leaving it vulnerable on September 11, and for basing the war in Iraq on lies. (So, really, it's clear that this is an entirely fictional president, right?) In issue 2 (that is, issue 2 that calls itself issue 1), Tom Noir, the crippled alcoholic member of the team who withdrew from the public eye when he got hurt, gets targeted by the government, because the government understandably decides that it can't trust any of the superpowered, and they should all be eliminated with malice aforethought. This, needless to say, does not work, else we would not have a story, right? We also get some of the background -- done as black and white flashbacks -- where Tom and the team mentor first try out some of the enhancements and weaponry. Said mentor is now trying to have Tom and the other surviving team members killed; he also had Tom's lover killed accidentally while trying to kill Tom the first time, years ago, because Tom was too smart to let live.

I have to admit, I'm really curious as to how this turns out, even though it means that I'll have to endure seven issues of Juan Jose Ryp's art. (I'm pretty solidly on record as feeling that his style is seriously over-ornamented for my tastes, although he does restrain it considerably on color books, because otherwise the artwork would be incoherent.) That said, I may let it drop to trade; there's been no indication that Avatar doesn't plan to collect this series, and it's clearly going to be a very thoughtful fight comic -- but a fight comic nonetheless.

Crécy (Warren Ellis/Raulo Caceres; Apparat/Avatar)

The first of this year's Apparat books, instead of being the first issue of a series that never appears, apparently this year's Apparat may be longer perfect-bound one-shot issues about historical events, judging from this first entry. Crécy covers the battle of Crécy, in which, due to an interesting confluence of events, the English longbow defeated the French cavalry and Genovese crossbow. We're told about the battle primarily by William of Stonham, "a complete bloody xenophobe who comes from a time when it was acceptable to treat people from the next village like they were subhumans". The storytelling technique, quite oddly, is for William to break the fourth wall and talk more or less directly to us, lecturing us, if you will. But seldom has any high school or college had a lecturer like William; he is -- historically accurately, he notifies us -- really spectacularly foul-mouthed. Very colloquial lecture, it is. He tells us about history while we sort of watch it happen. If you could give a series of books like this to high school students, they'd be a hell of a lot more interested in history than they are.

Raulo Caceres' artwork is some of the most insanely detailed work I've ever seen, yet it isn't at all annoying. You can see the details he's trying to show you. In places it sort of looks like an old tapestry.

I'd love to see what an actual English history buff thinks of it. My own detailed knowledge of British history comprises the late War of the Roses and the Tudor period, and little else.

Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love (Jim Ottaviani/Dylan Meconis; G-T Labs)

(Disclaimer: I am acquainted with the author of this work.)
Wire Mothers tells the true-life story of Harry Harlow and how he came to research the issues of love and affection and what it means for proper child development. Rather, Harry tells his story, entirely in flashback, to a new janitor, come to learn the ropes about cleaning the research facility on the same day that Harry needs to prepare for a piece that CBS is doing on him. We hear about Harlow's early research, what he did to try to avoid the prevalent anti-Semitism of the day (his real last name was Israel), how he sort of slid sideways into his work on learning and love and how they relate, and his own periodically unfortunate love live (although he did manage to marry two very impressive women, one of them twice).

It's a really fascinating and very human story (despite the monkeys and wire mothers), presenting the science in an easily understandable way without feeling like it's talking down to you. Meconis' artwork fits the story, being just realistic enough and just stylized enough. It's .. an oddly sweet work. If you've got a science-oriented high-schooler, they might like it. College students working in psychology might also appreciate it. Highly recommended.

Paulo Parente's Dust 1 of 2 (Paulo Parente; Image): Dust tells the story of an alternate history, one in which the Axis (Germany, Japan, Africa) (...Africa?) found alien technology that let them develop superpowered people and animals through technology, and the rest of the world is now trying to catch up. It's 1946, and the war is still going on; it's apparently killed so many men that women are not only allowed into combat, but have achieved high office in the Sino-Soviet forces. And ... eh. Essentially, Dust exists purely as a tie-in to a game that's being sold. The artwork is both very detailed and very dark, and the women are all bravely bold, high-busted and defiant ... and, you know, cold. If you're going to get the game, you'd probably want the comic; otherwise, I'm not sure why you'd bother.

The Chemist #1 (Jay Boose; Image): Vance Laroche is selling Levator, a reverse-engineered drug, to The Trust when, for no apparent reason, the Trust decides to double cross him. Laroche and Alexis, the woman who was set up with him by the Trust, manage to escape to Canada, only it becomes apparent to us -- albeit not to Vance -- that he was allowed to escape. And so the hijinx begin! Honestly, at this stage, the story is just very strange. Vance reverse engineers prescription drugs to sell to the mob, who then sells them on the street to people who can't afford prescriptions; as Alexis points out to him, this doesn't make a lick of sense. Moving prescription drugs as prescription drugs really doesn't seem to be within the mob's normal method of operation. I haven't decided yet if I'm interested enough to keep seeing where the story's going; nothing about it is really all that gripping, and it's kind of hard to get past that logical objection.

The 99 Special: Origins
(Naif al-Mutawa, Fabian Nicieza, Nabeel Mohan/John McCrea with Jason Dennis; Tashkeel Media)

I'd wondered if this series would ever make it over here. I'd heard about The 99; a series using Muslim and Arab characters and tropes. It's been both quite popular and quite controversial overseas. Given this country's current hostility to all things foreign generally, and many things Arab and Muslim specifically, I hadn't thought they'd try to publish here. I'm glad that they did, and I hope it works out for them. From the looks of things, "Origins" and the next issue, "First Light", will be given away for free, and after that it will be sold normally.

We start by being told the story of the Abbasid Caliphs and how they turned Baghdad into the center of education and learning, in part by building a host of libraries through the city, but Dar al-Hikma was the greatest of these. However, it becomes clear that the Mongols are going to sack Baghdad, and the librarians look for a way to preserve the knowledge of the library. They hit on a spell that will distill the knowledge into gemstones, but are interrupted by the invasion. Through a series of odd events, the invaders then accomplish the first steps of the spells for them, and they're able to distill the contents of the libraries into the gemstones. Several generations later, a man called Rughal tries to stream all the knowledge of the gemstones into his mind; it seems to go very badly, exploding the fortress containing the gemstones and scattering them far and wide.

In the modern day, Dr Ramzi, scientist, seeks the gemstones under cover of his 99 Steps Foundation which is ostensibly involved with alternative energy. In the meantime, in Arabia, a small city is being destroyed, apparently by the interaction between the military and one very very large and confused young man. It turns out that Nawaf, the young man, was caught in an explosion that embedded one of the lost gemstones into his flesh, producing freakish strength and size. (How a gemstone intended to increase knowlege has that effect is currently left unexplained, for now.) Of course, it also turns out that there's a villain in the woodwork.

Aside from the fable at the beginning of the issue, there's not a lot that feels all that different. It's a fairly standard origin story at this point, telling how the necessary people come together and how they come into their powers. As mentioned, that they have powers, instead of a big squishy brain thing going on, doesn't make a lot of sense; you have to assume that the explosion or something else altered the base nature of the gemstones.

It looks like it's worth going on for the next issue -- you certainly can't beat the price -- and I think the unique aspects of the series will appear as the title continues.