I once had a conversation about the late Mark Gruenwald, author of the flawed but still seminal and inarguably compelling Squadron Supreme, with one of his contemporaries. (For those of you who haven’t read the book, it’s a bizarre amalgam: Half then-groundbreaking realistic-superhero tropes and examination of the troubling underside of hero worship, half Marvel house-style Bronze Age-isms and wonky thought-balloon writing.) What was Gru’s story? I asked his fellow pro. Was he a brilliant writer hamstrung by company constraints? Or was he simply a guy who had great ideas but lacked the genius necessary to properly pull them off, a la Moore or Miller? This pro’s view was that it was probably more the latter than the former.
Tim O’Neil makes a similar argument in yet another long, thoughtful post on the ins and outs of superheroes, continuity, and other things I was pretty sure he didn’t want us to waste our time talking about. (No, I’m not gonna let that go. 😉 ) Go read it: It’s a revealing look at Tim’s true feelings about the genre and a heartfelt appreciation of Gruenwald’s work to boot.
In a related post, Dave Fiore does his usual thing, this time focusing on Gruenwald’s Captain America run. It makes me wish there was a version of this character, a character I love in the abstract, that I could get as into as Dave got into Gruenwald’s.
Courtesy of the illustrious Dave comes a link to this John Commonplacebook post, which goes almost deliriously in-depth into two scenes from Spider-Man 2: The atrocious Christ-figure bit from the subway, and the random-ass chocolate cake scene with the pretty daughter of the nasty landlord. Personally, my explanation for the latter scene was that, as the girl is clearly anorexic, it’s not like she was gonna eat it; there is, however, no excuse for the former scene. Anyway, John writes very well, but I can’t decide: Is this an insightful exploration of a rich text, or a textbook case of Milo George’s “justifying a love of junk” theory? You make the call!
(I would also like to say that I’m really coming to resent all these long analytic SM2 pieces, because they’re gonna make me wanna see the stupid fucking thing again despite my better judgement, when I know that I could go see Anchorman and enjoy it a lot more–and probably get just as much out of a close analysis of it to boot. All this business is like when people coax incredible amounts of societal and philosophical meaning out of, say, The Munsters or Bewitched. The analysis is interesting, and probably not even inaccurate, but that doesn’t make the shows any good. Ah, well. Dr. Octopus was kind of cool, I’ll give everyone that. Except for the idiotic talking-to-the-tentacles thing. It was dopey when Dafoe talked to his mask, and it’s dopey now, even if they’re a quadruple phallic symbol with vaginas dentata on the end. And I’ll be honest–I’m irritated that Donna Murphy was wasted in one of those “I’m a woman who needs to die to help make a male character interesting” roles, particularly because her death ended up playing exactly no part in her husband’s villainous motivation. Also, did you know that water can extinguish the sun without boiling? Alright, alright, I’ll stop there.)
The invaluable Egon reports that the Dewey Decimal Classification News is soliciting advice on how best to file graphic novels within the system. Clearly the presence of graphic novels in libraries is increasingly prominent.
Eightball #23 came out today, so now’s a good time to remind you that I’ve already written a lengthy review of the book: Click here for the original version and click here for the tweaked ‘n’ polished Comic Book Galaxy version.
David Welsh has written a wonderful review of the wonderful manga series Planetes. Regulars here at ADDTF know that Planetes is this blog’s nominee for The Best Comic You’re Not Reading. So render it ineligible and read it!
It turns out that Scott at Polite Dissent is a genius. Why? Well, now, when I say that Hush is the worst fucking Batman comic imaginable in any possible world, I actually can prove it with graphs! But Scott, even if you hadn’t just come up with a brilliant method of deducing the suckitude of any given Batman storyline, anyone who repeatedly kicks the snot out of Hush is okay by me.