Reviews: Comics and manga

[rivkat]

John Francis Moore et al., Superman: The Dark Side: What if Kal-El had been raised by Darkseid to kill, conquer and destroy?  The most interesting part of the artwork for me was the backgrounds – there isn't a white panel in the book; it is literally dark, which works pretty well thematically.  If you think that Kal-El will end up on the side of darkness, however, you don't know DC all that well.  And that was my biggest complaint – the reason that he changed was that he was Kal-El, and we all know that means Superman.  So, as it turns out, Ma and Pa Kent were totally irrelevant in making Clark Kent who he is.  I am not a fan of that kind of nature-without-nurture reasoning, so this one didn't work for me.

Kurt Busiek et al., Astro City: Confession: Brian Kinney (no, not the one from QAF, more’s the pity) comes to Astro City with martial arts skills and a chip on his shoulder from a bad childhood.  He attracts the attention of the Confessor, a Batman-like figure, entering trainng as Altar Boy.  Confessor’s secret is different from Batman’s, though he seems to have a lot of resources too, and Brian eventually learns what makes the Confessor such a different type of hero.  Meanwhile, someone is committing ritual murders near Shadow Hill, causing the public to become disillusioned with the superheroes’ inability to protect them, and the mayor proposes a registration program to ensure that heroes are properly controlled.  The portrayal of the “public” as a nearly undifferentiated mass, or indifferent when they weren’t picking up pitchforks, was the weakest part of the story for me.  There were moments when that started to dissolve – references to events in history that justified some people’s distrust of superheroes, for example – and part of the problem can be explained by Brian’s resentful teenage POV, but I still wanted more nuance from the population than “easily manipulated by demagogues.”

Peter David et al., Fallen Angel: The Angel, a young woman with some suspicious scars on her back, patrols the city dealing out justice.  Justice, however, is far from the same thing as mercy, so seeking her help can be perilous, as various people in this volume find out.  The city is ruled by the corrupt and the criminal – her relationship with them is often antagonistic, but rarely uncomplicated.  It’s a suggestive beginning, and the art is nicely noir, but so far the Angel is too much of a cipher, and while I’m intrigued by her lover, it’s mostly because he has all the standard mysterious potentially-redeemable-bad-boy attributes rather than being uniquely interesting.

Death Note, vols. 1-6: Okay, this is kind of complicated.  Demons carry “death notes,” allowing them to kill humans.  But a demon can give up its death note to a human, who will gain the power of the death note, subject to a number of rules (particularly that the writer of the note has to know the name and face of the intended target).  A death note falls into the hands of a brilliant young student who decides to rid the world of evil.  Quickly enough, his activities are noticed by a competing brilliant young man.  I get the slashy antagonist vibes, but I was put off by several things: First and foremost, Light Yagami, the killer, has no redeeming qualities that I can see.  He thinks his intelligence justifies sitting in moral judgment over others, whether they’ve been sentenced by the justice system already or merely accused of crimes; he doesn’t hesitate to kill investigators to protect himself, which makes his claims to focus only on punishing evil laughable; even if, as suggested, the death note corrupts, he is all too willing to be corrupted.  I’m still having difficulty with manga art, though some of the covers are beautiful. I’m having more difficulty with the treatment of women – aside from some fungible girlfriends/sisters/mothers, the main female character is an airheaded model/actress driven entirely by her ridiculous passion for Light, lacking in both morals and common sense, which everyone important in the narrative treats as perfectly normal for a woman.  There are also “FBI Agents” whose Americanness is purely notional, in that they have bizarre made-up names and seem to exist just to be non-Japanese casualties.  For me, these problems outweigh the undeniable gusto with which Ohba makes up and exploits rules for using the death note – there are some excellent plot twists, but I just want Light stopped and I don’t care about anyone’s angst.

Free to good home: Death Note, vols. 1-6.  Testament (Douglas Rushkoff), issues 1-6.  Kurt Busiek’s The Liberty Project.  And, as part of my Powers back-issue acquisition binge, I ended up with some doubles.  Available single issues: 1, 3-6, 8-11 (Roleplay), 15-20 (Supergroup), 21-24 (Anarchy), 25-26.  Comment if you want them and send me your mailing address at rivkat at gmail; I don’t really want to break up the Powers into a lot of mailings, so preference to someone who’ll take the lot.

Comments

Re: Free Comic Books

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I will have to check to make sure I didn't send those out as gifts with something else, but I should be able to let you know on Monday.