Hellblazer #92-96 - A Review

Written by: Paul Jenkins
Penciled by: Sean Phillips & Pat McEown
Inked by: Sean Phillips
Colored by: Matt Hollingsworth
Lettered by: Clem Robins
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Vertigo Comics

It’s a hard thing being a new Hellblazer fan. Actually I’ve been a fan of John Constantine for a long time; I’m just now getting around to putting together a complete run of his comic. And here lies the difficulty. Vertigo’s TP program is suspiciously spotty in regards to Hellblazer.

Rather than collect the whole series in order, the trade paperbacks seem to be released with no more criteria than the current popularity of the writer, particularly if they are currently working upon another critically acclaimed Vertigo series at the time. This worked well in regards to collecting the complete Hellblazer writings of Garth Ennis, who wrote many of the series’ major high-points. But one has to wonder why the comparatively bland runs of Brian Azzarello and Warren Ellis were collected if not to wring more money from the pockets of the fans of Azzarello’s 100 Bullets and Ellis’ Transmetropolitan.

The real tragedy is that some of the major, series-effecting moments have gone uncollected because of this. The writings of Jamie Delano who started the series and kept it going through the early formative years have only one simple trade collecting the first nine issues of the comic. This completely neglects Hellblazer #11, which depicts the oft-referred to “Newcastle Incident” and is the closest thing John has ever had to a one-issue origin story. The too-brief runs of Grant Morrison and Eddie Campbell are available only to those who have a comic shop with a well-stocked back-issue bin.

And perhaps most perplexing, not one of Paul Jenkins Hellblazer series is collected in a trade paperback format. This is doubly vexing when he wrote, for my money, is the quintessential John Constantine story. A story which, while nothing unusual in basic plot (John Constantine, former punk rocker turned supernatural sleuth, has someone close to him threatened by the forces of evil and he saves the day through equal application of con-artist skills and real magic.) excels in execution and pay-off.

Critical Mass, which takes place during issues #92-96, is that story. Jenkins made a story here that drew upon the whole history of Hellblazer, making it a treat for all the long-time readers. Despite this, he managed the neat trick of making it all accessible to new readers; a trick which most Hellblazer writers have been unable to pull off, preferring instead to ignore the supporting cast created by other writers and create their own as “long-long” friends from John’s obscure past.

Fresh from his victory over The Devil himself, John is staying with some friends when their son Syder is possessed by a demon named Buer. Buer, we find, was a contemporary of infamous evil magician Alistair Crowley and an unrepentant pedophile. Upon death, he proved so evil he managed to work his way up the ranks of Hell to become a fully-fleged demon, charged with the task of torturing of all the souls of innocent children that somehow wound up stuck in Hell.

As one of the few still loyal to The Devil (who has, since his defeat at John’s hand, been reincarnated into the body of a Greek fisherman), Beur sets about trying to bring back his fallen lord, fearful that a power struggle now will lose him his position. He speaks to The Devil on Earth and learns that only thing that can restore him to power is for “the most hated adversary” to willingly give up his soul to The Devil or an agent acting on his behalf. The most hated adversary, they quickly realize, is John Constantine.

Ever fearful of innocents around him being killed or damned because of his work, John is terrified when Beur claims that he can claim Syder as his, for a demon named Negral owed him a debt. John now, thanks to the events of a pervious story, holds Negral’s blood inside him and, by the laws of Hell, Negral’s blood debts as well. Beur makes John a deal; in exchange for his soul, not only will Syder be spared Hell but Beur will arrange the release of Astra, the young girl who John tried and failed to save from a demonic attack during “The Newcastle Incident”.

Building beautifully off the previous stories of Delano and Ennis, Jenkins wove a story that would have major repercussions for the rest of the series with “Critical Mass”. I won’t spoil the ending for you all except to say that this contains perhaps the funniest scene in all of Hellblazer and the quintessential Hellblazer story ending, where even in the throws of victory, John Constantine still finds a way to lose something or someone.

Sean Phillips artwork here is excellent as well, showing the horrors of Hell and the horrors of London with a skill surpassed by no Hellblazer artist except perhaps Steve Dillon and even that is a debatable point.

Small Gods #3 - A Review

Written by: Jason Rand
Penciled by: Juan E. Ferreyra
Inked by: Juan E. Ferreyra
Colored by: Juan E. Ferreyra
Lettered by: Jim Keplinger
Editor: Kirsten Simon
Publisher: Image Comics

It took me a while to get around to reviewing this book, as I’ve had to struggle to get copies of it from the shop I work at. And by the time I DID get a hold of it, the deadline for requesting to do a certain review had passed. Thankfully, I was given free reign to review whatever I wanted this week and was able to grab the last copy on Small Gods #3 on my lunch break. So now, I can finally tell you all about what is easily the best new title to come out this year.

Owen Young is a honest cop. He is also a psychic in a world where telepathic powers are recognized as real and heavily regulated by the government. Owen has the ability to see crimes before they happen; a useful power for a cop. Or rather it would be, if bureaucracy didn’t require him to take a telepathic lie-detector test to verify each of his visions as real while the clock is ticking. The law also prohibits him from arresting people before the fact, so Owen has to hope he can catch criminals in the act before anyone gets hurt.

Owen’s problems begin when, during a bank robbery bust, he is telepathically attacked by an unlicensed telepath. Owen is able to push back, being a latent telepath himself. Unfortunately, telepaths are not legally able to serve as cops. This is due to all the legal problems that arise with mind-readers being able to find out just the right questions to ask a suspect.

It matters little that Owen didn’t discover his powers, weak as they are, until he was already on the force and it will seriously jeopardize the whole department, to say nothing of Owen’s life, if the suspect is ever able to identify Owen. To that end, the entire department steps up to back-up Owen, with fellow officer Jodi officially replacing Owen as the arresting officer and Owen being sent on extended vacation until the whole situation blows over. Owen goes home, where his girlfriend leaves him, afraid that her love for him may have been telepathically implanted. That brings us to this issue, which opens as Owen’s partner John shows up on his doorstep and suggests that the only way they can get out of this is to arrange an accident for the would-be bank robber.

Rand’s premise for the world of this comic is nothing short of brilliant and guaranteed to be a hit among multiple-audiences. Fans of NYPD Blue and Law and Order will love this for the spot-on portrayal of police life with a twist. X-Men fans will enjoy the more realistic spin on how superpowers might be a source of discrimination even as they are utilized and exploited by the same system that fears them. The writing matches the inspired premise, with all the characters possessing distinct personalities and the dialogue sounding appropriate, with a sprinkling of profanity but nothing particularly gratuitous. (No one F-word for ever five words, here!)

The artwork is every bit the equal of the writing. Ferreyra’s style is not unlike that of Tony Harris, but not quite so dependent upon shadows. His faces are as distinct as Rand’s personalities and there is little danger of any characters being confused due to the artwork. The phrase “photo-realistic” is bandied about far too much by comic reviewers today, but I am at a loss as to how else I can describe the appearance of the artwork here. It is something unique unto itself, and nothing emphasizes that more than the credit on the first page where Ferreyra is listed as “Artist” and “Greys”. There is no color in the comic besides shades of grey and the grey’s are utilized expertly, making every page look as if it were captured by a black-and-white camera rather than a pencil. But penciled it is, and quite well!

Looking To The Stars: What's My Age Again? - Part Two

I got a lot of feedback regarding my recent guide to the ages of comics. Most of it centered upon the current age of comics and where a line, if any, should be drawn in regards to where it began. Suffice to say, most everyone disagreed with my naming Kingdom Come and Grant Morrison's JLA as the defining turning point of the genre, but nobody else seemed to agree upon an alternative!

Consider this letter, from Robert Schwabe…

Okay Matt,

I understand. It's kind of arrogant to bring up your namesake over and over again. I get that.

But come on. You and I both know what the turning point was for The Current Age/Renaissance Age. And that was the introduction of James Robinson & Tony Harris's Starman.

(please forgive the rest, as my sense of time may be off)

Busiek & Ross's Marvels probably kicked it off, showing the Marvel Age as both glorious and horrible. Displaying the joy as well as the loss of innocence of the days gone by. But, it was a limited series, with limited scope. A wonderful Normal Rockwell/Ken Burns treatise of the Marvel Universes "Greatest Hits Album". (Don't get me wrong, I do love it)

Astro City kept the ideas going, but it was a limited independent series. Read by many, but not mainstream.

Kingdom Come was a fun Elseworlds story that had tremendous scope and vision. But did it really change anything. I don't see writers emulating the tone or vision that Kingdom Come began.

So....

That leaves me to Starman. I remarked to someone once, that Starman was the culmination of every comic book that I've ever read. All roads that I have traveled, have brought me to this series.

From the moment you opened the pages of Starman every month, you knew that you were picking up a comic book that had a reverence for what had gone on before, and a new outlook for the future. Robinson & Harris created:

The modern reverence towards the past. Whether it was Jack Knight searching for 1950s Hawaiian Shirts, or sitting down with deceased members of the Justice Society. You could feel the love on every page. Would the JSA revival have been possible without Starman? Would the return to roots Ultimate Spiderman have been possible?

The new anti-hero. The slacker turned savant. Jack Knight brought in genuineness to the civilian side of the equation. Jack was not a millionaire playboy or a leading reporter for top newspaper. He was a junk dealer. He was one of those small business/shop owners you see everyday (and may even buy comic books from). Jack was a real entity from the 90s. I knew people like Jack. These days you see comic books like HERO and Secret Identity as well as television shows like Smallville, where the powers aren't the story; the people are. And the people are real.

Realistic villains. In "The Modern Age", there was a distinct change in the motivation of villains. I mean just look at The Shade, Bobo, Solomon Grundy, and The Mist. These were complex villains. Villains could now be heroic if needed. Villains could be misunderstood. Villains could suffer from inadequacy. This sense of the modern villain is seen everywhere today, I think. From Daredevil to JSA you can see this change.

Well, Robert. You won't find a bigger Starman fan than me. There are few who will sing the praises of that long gone and much missed title than yours truly. But even I have to admit that Starman, while being very much the epitome of the "appreciate the classics" attitude in comics these days, was never really a ground-breaker.

You mention Starman having realistic villains and a hero who was a real person. Big as James Robinson fan as I am, he was far from the first person to do this. Stan Lee started grafting complex motivations on his villains and writing stories that were as much about the hero's personal life as it was his crime-fighting some 30 years earlier.

I agree with you that Starman probably made JSA possible and that it was no doubt an important transition book from the Dark Age to the Renaissance. In fact, you can compare it to first 130 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, which slowly took Peter from his Silver Age roots into the darker Bronze Age.

As far as Kingdom Come not being influential, it was influential enough to inspire a short term "this is our definitive future" movement among the editors. Many issues did do stories based off of visions of Kingdom Come's grim future. Indeed, the final issues of Starman were influenced by Kingdom Come and the need to make sure that the "future" Starman was shown. It also propelled made Alex Ross the most prolific painter in the industry and won Mark Waid considerable accolades.

I'd like to say Starman was the point where it all changed, but I just can't justify it. It was always more of a cult classic than a franchise title and while it was critically praised, it never had wide-spread popularity nor was it a high-seller.

Blaine Thompson had another starting pint in mind for the Rennisance…

I think that we are definitely in a new age, but I think that Kingdom Come might be a little early. You still had the awful Heroes Reborn fiasco over on the Marvel end of things at that time. I think that a new age is when the industry as a whole moves in a certain direction. For me, Marvel's Ultimate line is a good beginning of what I'll call the New Age.

The Ultimate Line marked a big shakeup with Marvel. Some don't like the Ultimate Universe, but the important thing here is that it marks Marvel returning to more character driven books than major events. DC also seemed to get away from this pattern.

I think the New Age is a combination of the best of the other ages. You have the continuing trend of realism that started in the Silver Age. You have the social commentary that started in the Bronze age without the restrictions of the Comics Code. You have a universe of well rounded characters that can be as gritty as a Dark Age title, or as clean cut and colorful as a Golden Age one.

Series like Identity Crisis seem to take all of these elements and throw them into a blender.

Interesting observation on Identity Crisis, Blaine. I agree that it is mixing and matching elements of all the eras, though to what effect is as nearly as big an arguing point as when the Dark Age ended!

One problem I see with making the Ultimate Universe's creation the turning point is that Ultimate was more about creating a series that new fans could easily get into than paying tribute to the classic Marvel stories. Granted, Ultimate Spider-Man HAS been written as a tribute to the classic Spider-Man stories. But Ultimates has always been more about updating the idea of the Avengers than holding to the old stories.

Paul Sebert's complaints were different. Rather than debating the starting point of an age, he had issue with exactly what caused the Dark Age of comics…

Very good column last week, but I think you just narrowly missed the mark on just why things went so hideously awry during the Dark Age of the early 90s. Dark Anti-Heroes, Event Stories, and gimmick covers weren’t so much the cause the problem so-much as symptoms of the disease as was sloppy art and bad writing.

Greed caused the Dark Age. Not only were gullible speculators snagging up everything in sight, but even long-term comic fans were duped by the dream of picking up the next Action Comics #1. This led to a flood of people buying multiple copies of #1 issues and not sticking around for #2.

People generally talk about what was going on with Marvel, DC, and Image during that era, but tend to forget that there were many, many more companies trying to snag a piece of the market and make a quick buck. And I’m not just talking about short-term successes like Malibu and Valiant. Remember Tops Comics? Lightening? Continuity? Now? Defiant? Techno Comics?

Throw all those all together with both Marvel and DC making their own massive expansions and you have a dangerously over-crowded market place. Many of these companies were run by people who honestly had no idea how run a comics company.

And as absurd as some of the gimmicks and decisions made at those companies (anyone remember Plasm #0?) that wasn’t as idiotic as those being made by Marvel’s owner Ron Perleman. Perleman’s “why do a business with another company when you can just buy it” philosophy lead to a number of ill-founded business acquisitions (Panini, Fleer/Skybox,etc) that caused the company to bleed millions of dollars and climaxed with the disastrous Heroes World buyout. (for more on this read "Comic Wars" by Dan Raviv.)

Finally greed to a dubious “me-too” creative philosophy. Anything that was sudden success was given dozens of imitators. Prompting a dangerous boom and bust cycle among these fads. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a surprise multi-million dollar property in the late 80s, prompting dozens of indy publishers to publish books with anthropomorphic heroes for a few years in hopes of lining up a toy contract. Even Marvel tried to cash in on this trend with Brute Force. A few years later all of these copy-cats were gone. Today the Turtles & Usagi Yojimbo remain the only survivors of that era.

Then a few years later Youngblood and Spawn had made their creators at Image multi-millionaires, and dozens of creators were trying to imitate the Image Comics style. Then Bone because a surprise mainstream hit, prompting a brief influx of black and white indy books. And then came Lady Death and… well you get the point.

There are many, many reasons why the crash came but ultimately the factors within the market and the creative environment can all be connected by to greed and shortsightedness.

Paul's a great historian, but I didn't want to bog down the newbies with too much detail too soon. And the focus of the column was meant to be a basic history; not an examination as to what factors caused The Dark Age of comics.

Paul's right in saying that greed was the major motivator behind the Collector's Age. But Greed is the major motivator of most business on the corporate level. The individual writer may care about writing the best Spider-Man story ever, but the suits upstairs only care about how much money is getting put in the till.

By that token, the bad writing and sloppy artwork came about because of the gimmicks, not the other way around. Call them secondary symptoms if you will.

Publishers get greedy and demand that the editors get the writers to start toeing the line with the latest hot trends: anti-heroes, certain art styles and shiny holofoil covers. The writers and artists either don't care enough to put the full effort into doing work they know is likely going to be stuck in a bag and never looked at and start phoning it in.... or the company fires the people who decide to stand up for quality and get the hacks who can crap out scripts for five #1 titles in a week.

There are all the letters I got permission to publish from the reader. My thanks to everyone else who wrote in about the column.

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. NEW Matt Website.

Daredevil #64 - A Review

Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciled by: Alex Maleev
Inked by: Alex Maleev
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Virtual Calligraphy’s Cory Petit
Editor: Jennifer Lee
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Some guys get all the luck. Take Matt Murdock. He’s a respected lawyer. He’s a superhero. And he’s gotten it on with a lot of really amazing women. Sure, there’s the whole “blindness” thing. And there’s the whole “not-so-secret identity”. And the problem of his being disbarred and probably jailed with all the guys he spent a lifetime putting away if anyone can ever actually prove that he IS a superhero.

Come to think of it, it really sucks to be Matt Murdock right now. Even if he does get more booty than Blackbeard and his little black book features an ex-porn star, three gorgeous professional assassins, a psychotic multiple-personality actress and now - an ex-wife.

If you haven’t been reading Daredevil lately, you’ve been missing out. Brian Michael Bendis has taken the book down a twisted path and every issue is an actual, honest to gawd surprise. Granted, this is nothing new as Daredevil has frequently been one of the most mysterious and certainly one of the most consistently well-written titles within the last five years. But Bendis has proved his metal and certainly stands worthy of standing on the platform with Miller and Nocenti. Daredevil is also easily one of the easiest books to jump on-to, as the plot thus far is recalled handily at the start of every issue so that newbies have no trouble hopping into the middle of a storyline.

The artwork is suitably dark and has a neat grittiness to it even as approaches photo-realism at some points. Maleev is a master at weaving shadows together and the book is dark without ever feeling overly inked. Indeed, colorist Dave Stewart managed a wide variety of lighting effects that covey mood very well. The blue coolness of evening as Natasha and Matt talk on a rooftop, the bright yellow light of a sunny autumn day - even the flashing red and blue pattern of a police car light are all captured perfectly within the colors of this book.

Looking To The Stars: Men Of The Hour

My recent experiences attempting to get people reading JSA despite the heavy amount of back-story have led me to an epiphany. If the only problem is a clear and easy history guide, then I shall write one.

Henceforth, expect a new semi-regular feature as part of the usual Looking To The Stars columns. A JSA Retrospective detailing the history and legacy of the various characters of the team. These will be done as required by the current issue of JSA or as time permits based on request. (You'd be amazed how many letters I get that would be more appropriate for "Who's Who in the DCU".)

This month's retrospective: The Men Of The Hour.

Rex Tyler was a chemist in World War II, who created a drug called that would temporarily enhance the strength, speed and stamina of whoever took it for one hour. He called the drug Miraclo. He called himself Hourman. Rex would fight crime as a member of the Justice Society of America until his death, battling against the time-manipulating villain Extant.

One of the few heroes who actively enjoyed the life of a crime-fighter and saw it as much a fun way to spend an evening as it was a great responsibility, Rex still managed to create his own chemical company and develop it into a large national conglomerate. He was successful enough to marry an actress several years his junior (Wendi Harris) and had one son; Rick.

Rex was a great hero, but a less than dutiful husband and father. He was often absent, so addicted was he to the rush of fighting evil and arguably to his power-enhancing drug. Still, Rick did try to follow in his father's footsteps and took up his role as Hourman after his father's apparent death. Actually, Rex and the other JSA members were trapped in another dimension, fighting an illusionary end-of-the-world battle, which they later escaped. Still, for all intents and purposes, the world's first superhero team was dead.

Rick joined Infinity Inc.; a team of next-generation heroes, who were all mostly the children of the JSA founders. Still, Rick's tenure as Hourman was very short-lived. While Rex denied being addicted to his own drug, Rick was a definite addict. Worse, he was stricken with leukemia (a side effect of his extended drug use) and was forced to retire from heroics.

It was after this that a third Hourman appeared: this one a robot from the future, whose programming was based off the genetic code of Rex Tyler, in an odd way making the robot an ancestor of the first Hourman. Possessing far greater powers than Rex Tyler had ever dreamed of, this Hourman, who later adopted the name of Matthew Tyler, was able to control time itself.

It was Matthew Tyler who went to Rick Tyler, and used his powers to cure the cancer within him. Matthew then returned to the future, but not before giving Rick two gifts. First, he gave Rick the gift of foresight; to be able to see acts of evil he could prevent exactly one hour before they happened. Second, he established The Timepoint: a place where time stands still. It is into this time-point that Matthew pulled Rex, a moment before his death. The Timepoint will exist for one hour while father and son are together, hopefully giving them a chance to reconcile their somewhat troubled past before Rex must return to the point of his death.

Rick later joined the JSA, after being one of the few heroes not captured by long-time JSA enemy The Ultra-Humanite. Aiding then-JSA team leader Sand and a few other ignored heroes, Rick was able to save the world from the Ultra-Humanite's plans for world-domination and offered full membership in the team his father helped found. In addition to his new vision powers, Rick is using a new-and-improved, non-addictive form of Miraclo. Instead of popping a pill, the new drug is injected directly into him by means of a special gauntlet equipped with a timer to let him know how much time he has left before the effects wear off.

This was all turned on its head in recent issues, after Rick was critically wounded by a sword-slash to the stomach. Using the portal that sent him to the Timepoint, Rick switched places with his father, sending him back to the present to help his teammates in their battle as he became frozen in time, where he could not die.

Since coming back, Rex has actively avoiding going to see his wife, afraid of reopening the wounds of his death to her. It was only in this last issue, spurred on by the words of a friend and realizing nobody had told her what happened to their son, that Rex went to his old home to see Wendi.

Matthew Tyler appeared to them both, saying he could return Rex to the time point, as well as get Rick the medical help he would desperately need once time-restarted. Between the medical skills of Dr. Midnite and Mr. Terrific as well as Matthew's ability to increase the flow of time to speed Rick's healing process, Rick was restored to full health just in time for the Timepoint to begin dissolve. Rex Tyler's time was up. Or so it seemed, until Rick Tyler jumped into the vortex that would take Rex back to his death.

Where we go from here in the next JSA, I can only guess. I don't have the ability to see the future an hour ahead, much less a month. The one thing I can predict is that whatever happens, it will be enjoyable.

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. NEW Matt Website.