Quick Rating: Good Things Come to Good Ends
Title: Devils’ Demise

All things come to an end.

Writer: Matt Wagner
Artist: Jay Geldhof and John K. Snyder III
Color: Jeromy Cox
Letters: Bob Pinaha
Cover: John K. Snyder III
Asst. Editor: Shawna Ervin-Gore
Editor: Diana Schutz

Grendel is a true anti-hero. He accomplishes heroic ends through non-heroic means. Essentially, the various Grendel comics trace the passing of the Grendel mantle through time, leaping across generations on occasion. In each age, the populace interprets the character of Grendel differently, funneling that understanding through one focal point. Grendel: God and the Devil #10 (Dark Horse) is a reprint from the Grendel series originally published by Comico, now more than ten years in the past. The entire God and the Devil miniseries is a reprint of a run from that original Grendel series. It has been re-colored and fronted with a snappy new cover by John K. Snyder III. This is the final issue in the God and the Devil miniseries. It shows the final confrontation between the Pope, the vampires, Orion Assante, and Grendel. Everything has led up to this.

So, why do I still feel a little let down. I love the self-commentary inherent in the methods used to tell the story. I love harshness of the artwork. And yet, I wanted more. It felt like the end of a one hour television drama with that annoying assumption that the viewers will be back next week, so let’s just say a quick bye and move on to the next show. After everything that has come before it, this issue should have felt like the Lord of the Rings- the books, not the movie. It needed the epilogues, even if they were going to be unhappy.

If you want to know about comic books, you need to know about Grendel as much as you need to know about Superman and Batman and Daredevil and Spiderman. The character never crossed over to the popular imagination, but plenty of great comic books never did. Swamp Thing is essential reading for the comic book aficionado. So is Grendel. Your grandmother might not enjoy it, but it is a great and glorious arrow that flew across the comics horizon.

December, 2003

I was eating a supermarket baguette smothered in margarine while thinking about Green Arrow. Why does it feel like sweeps week on the local news?

More than a decade ago, I woke up on Christmas morning to a box full of Mike Grell’s Green Arrow comics courtesy of my then-POOSSLQ-now-wife. Granted, I wanted Animal Man or Swamp Thing, but it was a good gesture from someone who hoped the whole comics thing would blow over before the wedding. I fell in love (with Green Arrow- I was already in love with the gift-giver). I still have that nearly compete set. I haven’t read them in a long time, but I still think you should race out and acquire them. They shouldn’t cost much and you’ll be happier for it. I don’t remember being bored by them, but they do make my mind wander to Daredevil for some reason. Maybe both of them have always been characters on the boundaries who have allowed their writers to take a few chances. Maybe they always seemed a little less iconic than Superman and the Fantastic Four. That could be because Daredevil sounded like some lunatic on a motorcycle at the county fair. For his part, Green Arrow sounds like some lunatic on a motorcycle in the Village.

Not much has changed since then. Oliver Queen is still having affairs and hanging out in the parts of the city that haven’t seen a street cleaner in a long time, but now it feels like I’m watching television reruns.

I was as excited as the next bandwagon rider when Kevin Smith decided to bring back Green Arrow. Counter to a lot of hand wringing, I did not worry too much about how he was going to resurrect old green and pouty. In retrospect, no one else really worried either since the answer seems to be because he was not completely dead, only partly dead. It goes without saying that totally dead would have been a definite problem. In the end, Smith entertained me without insulting me. I do get annoyed when somebody thinks they only have to commit to writing a comic for a limited period of time, but, hey, that’s looking at the glass as half empty. Meltzer did his thing and it was a lovely walk down memory lane.

Then Meltzer departs and suddenly we change streets. There was the lovely little intergalactic detour with Green Lantern, apparently necessitated by their shared tint fixation. Then, we’re back in Daredevil land all over again. All we need is for Drakon to cry out “You made me miss!” And did our big boss villain have to be overweight and bald?

Let’s look at Issue 29, shall we? Phil Hester and Ande Parks continue to create the sort of pictures that make me appreciate comic books. They’ve got style. The story is called “Straight Shooter Part Four: New Wounds” (or “Cross Purposes” if feel the cover better represents the title). That would be the fourth of six parts. That would be six months for this story to unfold… at a glacial pace. In short, here’s what happens: Black Canary begins to suspect that something is up with Green Arrow (in this case, he’s fooling around with someone else); the villains meet and decide to eliminate Green Arrow; Oliver and Connor read e-mail; Oliver practices shooting arrows with his injured hands while talking with Joanna, the ‘other woman’, while Oliver Queen’s young ward eavesdrops; Oliver Queen lures ugly monsters into a fight; and we finish with the tagline “We’re just getting started.”

I have really enjoyed Judd Winick’s work on other titles, but nothing happened in this issue. Read that summary again. At best, you could say that things were getting ominous for Oliver Queen in his personal life. His professional life involved another fight very reminiscent of the last fight against the same hideous beasts. Ominous just does not carry over for thirty days. Everything that occurs in this issue feels like a placeholder. And all that does is heighten the melodrama. That might work in a self-contained story, but not in a six-month story arc. Maybe Winick is just trying to tell us too many stories at once- maybe he’s struggling with the juggling of so many characters (in which case he never should have introduced the new love interest).

Has anybody since the big name novelist actually bothered to read the first twenty or so issues? Maybe I missed something, but I thought this new Green Arrow series was going to be about something, like finding your place in the world or something/anything other than bad guys and booty. Think about comic book runs that you’ve loved over the years. Didn’t they stick to the theme? When the theme goes away, it leaves a vacuum. You can’t fill a vacuum with nasties and noogies. When the theme goes away, so do the readers. Yes, we may love the artwork. Yes, we may think it will be worth a million bucks someday. The former can get you to buy one issue. The latter is sheer idiocy.

September, 2003

Quick Rating: Looking Backward a Bit Too Much
Title: The Frost Giant’s Daughter

Aaaaaggghhhh!

Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artist: Cary Nord
Color: Dave Stewart
Letters: Richard Starkings and Comicraft
Design: Darin Fabrick
Editor: Scott Allie

And so, my enthusiasm wanes.

I remember stumbling upon a horde of Savage Sword of Conan as a pre-adolescent. They were a glorious sight- covers that hinted at violence and other secrets. The tales were in over-sized black and white, quite exotic. The comics felt more text-heavy than even your run-of-the-mill seventies Marvel comic, which was packed with words. Conan and his friends were always half-naked, which had more and more appeal in succeeding years. And it seemed as though an issue or two was always popping up in somebody’s house. Yet no one had a pile of them, like there were piles of Superman or Spiderman. The reason was that every issue felt the same. And that feeling was apathy. The individual issues may have told different stories, but the final impression was otherwise.

This could be because Conan stinks as a character. It’s a fact, folks, and it’s about time we admitted it and moved on.

This issue opens with Conan finishing a battle which leaves him as the lone survivor. A gorgeous naked woman appears before him, which is unexpected in the middle of a frozen wasteland. She lures him off his path and into a trap.

Comic books, like real books, generally rely on empathy to maintain interest. Some sort of connection must be made between the reader and a character in the tale. This was the secret that Stan Lee stumbled upon, as did the long gone pioneers who created sidekicks. The challenge faced by monthly comics is maintaining that reader/character connection across vast periods of no input. (This may be one of the secrets of adult difficulties with comics. I have found that the younger set have a miraculous ability to recall the minutest detail of a comic read one, two, or three month previous. Children don’t need trade paperbacks. Their parents do. Perhaps adult brains are overwhelmed by information during the course of a month. Maybe they’re just full.) It is impossible to empathize with Conan. He always wins. He never has any discernable thought of any real interest. He lives in a world of unimaginable violence, which he mostly causes. He never sympathizes with anyone else. If you met him, you would not like him. He would be contemptuous of you and hopefully just growl at you. He’s the Hulk without the fine points. For that matter, the Hulk is pretty tedious, too, but he does have that whole dual personality thing going on.

There is nothing to be done about Conan, though. Robert Howard deserves credit for creating a character that has lasted so long. If he had lived longer, I suspect that he would have done a bit more with him—maybe not though. He might just have moved on to another genre, as seemed to be his wont after a few years.

The art continues to be an interesting experiment with coloring the pencils directly. It reminds me a little of N.C. Wyeth, but those were book illustrations and a little static.

If you remember the old Marvel Conan with great fondness, then this is likely to be your cup of brew. You may however find that you were not as fond of the whole concept as you thought.

April, 2004