Planet of the Capes

w: Larry Young; a: Brandon McKinney

ISBN: 1-932051-20-1

$12.95, 80 pages, B&W/Color

There are a million and one reasons why Larry Young & Brandon McKinney’s Planet of the Capes shouldn’t work. The plot is a shambles, for one thing. We see things happen and we have no idea why they’re worth seeing–there’s no through line, there’s no narrative drive, there’s no weight that pulls us from one scene to the next. The characters, and we’re using that term loosely, are ciphers, just the latest in a ever-lengthening line of Batman/Captain America/Superman/Wonder Woman/Hulk/Green Lantern/what-have-you manques. The art is almost confrontationally ugly, the kind of style you see in dollar-bin back-issues of bad 80s Marvel & DC books, complete with lousy paper stock and the glorious color of the black-and-white glut. And the whole thing, of course, is merely the latest pisstake on the superhero genre by a smartass indie guy, which, although not quite as unnecessary as another straight superhero book, is still pretty goddamn unnecessary. (What the world needs now is not another Brat Pack.) No, it shouldn’t work at all.

But it does.

A creepy, uncomfortable graphic novel, Planet of the Capes follows the–see, I was tempted to say “adventures” there, but it’s really just a bunch of crap that happens for no real reason–of four supertypes: A Batman-cum-Captain America knockoff named Justice Hall, who is the latest raven-themed vigilante in a line of such individuals dating back to Ben Franklin (the raven is the national bird in this, the Federated States of America, and I certainly got a kick out of finding out why); quasi-bad-girl Kastra, an alien princess type with the usual amorphous telekinetic/energy-based powers that women superheroes always get saddled with; the Schaff, a rampaging Hulk stand-in who is himself the result of an accident in which two other superheroes (the Green Lantern-ish Red Fez and Kastra’s father, an intergalactic warrior leader) were physically melded together; and the Grand, a Superman figure about whom we learn next to nothing, beyond the fact that he’s a bona-fide asshole. After we’re introduced to all four characters (via an autograph-seeking kid who couldn’t be more transparently a mere plot device), we see them get blown into an alternate dimension, where planet Earth is superhero-free. In very short order, all four “heroes” end up dead. (No, I’m not spoiling anything–it says so in giant block letters right there on the back of the book.) How this happens is where they story hooks you.

On Young’s website he says that each of the four superheroes represent not just a super-archetype, but a faction of the comics industry. I’m not going to sit around guessing who’s what (beyond the obvious conjecture that the Grand represents modern-day superpublishers)–I’m far too taken aback by how perfectly Planet demonstrates how the excess baggage of the superhero genre, unless it’s being handled by extremely gifted men and women, makes great art so very difficult create. In the heroes’ world, their behavior is readily understood and tolerated, if not fully accepted, but with a flick of the switch no one they meet can make heads or tails of what the hell they’re doing or why the hell they’re doing it. It’s a reaction I’m sure you’re familiar with–you probably felt it last time you read a lousy superhero comic, one where the characters did things simply because, well, that’s the way things have been done for the past sixty years. The result of such by-the-numbers obesiance to convention and cliche, Planet shows us, is soulless, ugly, and ultimately destructive. (So too, naturally, is at least one of the heroes in the story. Getting there is half the fun.)

But none of these ideas would stick if there wasn’t something to the work itself, and there is. The book features a terrific four-color flashback to the event that created the Schaff, with a compelling wordless sequence that (in a rare move for the book) gives the scene some real heft. The final act takes place atop a dam, with wide-open spaces of sky, sun, and water giving the impression that these characters really have been freed from their constraints, and could go do something either very bad or very good at any moment. And the final confrontation between the two sudden nemeses is surprisingly forceful, all squinty eyes and lantern jaws and unexpected, horrendous violence. Again, Young was smart enough to leave this key sequence silent, and again McKinney imbued it with a sense of dread that enables it to work without simply relying on audience memories of similar confrontations.

Planet of the Capes is likely to be one of those books that either works for you, or doesn’t. (A quick look around the comics blogosphere should tell you that.) With its slapdash plot and largely empty characters, I’m sure some people would feel cheated by the $12.95 pricetag (that’s three bucks more than your average manga volume, for a whole lot less story). But Planet is a solid, squalid little book, and if you’re in the right mood, it’ll tell you a lot of things you’ve wanted to hear about far too many supercomics. “We’ve been had” is the message, and this nasty, brutish, and short supercomic is the messenger.

(Besides the fact that Franklin Harris is now almost exclusively mangablogging, that is…)

The major chain bookstore where I work recently expanded its manga section fourfold. Literally. At least. Meanwhile, the non-manga graphic novels and trade paperbacks still take up the same measly bookshelf and a half.

But remember, everyone, 2004 is a good year to get out of the manga business!

(Aw, c’mon. I kid because I love.)

PS: Two interesting aspects of our ever-growing manga sales. First, kids who come in looking for the books always ask where the “Graphic Novels” are. By this they simply mean manga. Point them in the direction of the non-manga GNs and they simply haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.

Second, I’m not actually sure if this is company-wide or simply how our staffers have organized things, but the dividing line between what gets shelved with manga and what gets shelved with non-manga is simply one of format and size. In other words, the Marvel Age Spider-Man digests get shelved with manga, while larger collections of actual manga like Buddha and Nausicaa get shelved over with the non-manga books. To put it another way, books that are formatted like your average manga collection get shelved where buyers will actually see them; books that aren’t, don’t. Publishers, are you paying attention?

So it turns out that comics writer and anti-war activist Micah Wright has been lying for years about his status as a former Army Ranger. The closest he ever got to being a Ranger was ROTC.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t agree with the man’s politics, but that’s not why I’m posting about this–this just offers more proof, if any was needed, that people whose behavior is bad or unstable online are likely to behave badly or be unstable in real life, too. Wright, you’ll recall, is a perpetual source of feud fodder, taking Marvel to task for not treating him like a star and accepting his Epic pitch out of hand, ripping DC a new one for cancelling his StormWatch: Team Achilles book, treating his political opponents like Nazis, and aiming both barrels at fans who read traditional supercomics, manga, or basically anything that wasn’t StormWatch: Team Achilles. Given all that, I’m not the least bit surprised that his C.V. is just so much B.S. I’ve seen this sort of thing before from messboard trolls and flame-warriors, and I’m sure I’ll see it again.

I hope Wright can get his act together, I really do. By most accounts the man has talent. But he’s already burned so many bridges that alienating his most devoted fans and defenders, as his lies about his past have now done, might be enough to knock the wind out of his sails for good. It’s certainly enough to destroy his credibility on any number of issues, and I’d imagine it’d make any future attempts to write a title that’s part of “the literature of ethics” very difficult indeed. (Deservedly so, by the way–let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is a very, very sleazy thing to have done. It’s Jayson Blair territory, with the added disgrace of trying to suck prestige off of people who are putting their lives on the line, if not losing them, every day.) My real point here is that people should remember that when they see someone acting needlessly belligerent or bizarre online, chances are good that there’s something wrong on the homefront too. Next time you’re tempted to engage one of these characters, think twice, not just for your own benefit, but for their’s as well.

It’s also worth remembering that people who are as politically strident as Wright is tend to have serious personal problems in other areas, too. I’m no more surprised that Wright has spent the past few years with bullshit gushing out of him like a brown geyser than I am that Ted Rall is pathologically vindictive, or that Bill Bennett is a closet gambling addict, or that Newt Gingrich served divorce papers to his bedridden cancer-patient wife, and on and on and on.

And it’s also also worth remembering, as Jimmy the T has been pointing out, that this is not a hoax. This is not Micah Wright saying to Newsarama and the Pulse (and the WaPo, for that matter), “you’ve been punk’d, dude!” Nor was the Army Rangers thing something he mentioned once that snowballed, or something he tried to keep quiet. This is a guy who invented a dangerous, I-risked-my-life-for-my-country-and-now-I-see-the-error-of-my-ways life story out of whole cloth, and humped it constantly, in order to make himself look good, back up his shrill and belligerent politics, impress potential publishers and employers, sucker fans and consumers, and make money. The day before he was to be outed to the world, he “came clean,” but immediately began blaming everyone from George W. Bush (surprise!) to lazy fact-checkers to the corporate media to–aw, who cares? The man is a liar. And if you were a fan of his work, he’s stolen your money, hasn’t he?

Cross the street from your storefront cemetery

Hear me hailing from inside and realize

I am the conscience clear

In pain or ecstasy

And we were all weaned my dear

Upon the same fatigue

(You’re staring at the sun)

Oh my own voice

Cannot save me now

It’s just

(standing in the sea)

One more breath

And then

I go down

Your mouth is open wide

The lover is inside

And all the tumults done

Collided with the sign

You’re staring at the sun

You’re standing in the sea

Your body’s over me

Note the trees because

The dirt is temporary

More to mine than fact face

Name and monetary

Beat the skins and let the

Loose lips kiss you clean

Quietly pour out like light

Like light, like answering the sun

You’re staring at the sun

You’re standing in the sea

Your mouth is open wide

You’re trying hard to breathe

The water’s at your neck

Your body’s over me

Be what you will

And then throw down your life

Oh it’s a damned fine game

And we can play all night

You’re staring at the sun

You’re standing in the sea

Your mouth is open wide

You’re trying hard to breathe

The water’s at your neck

Your body’s over me

You’re staring at the sun

You’re standing in the sea

You’re staring at the sun

You’re standing in the sea

“Staring at the Sun,” TV On the Radio

I

Speaking of fine rock and roll music, Pop Culture Gadabout Bill Sherman has a couple of noteworthy posts up. First is a review of the excellent self-titled debut elpee from edgy-effete rockers Franz Ferdinand. Angular guitars, sleazy lyrics, and you can dance to it! Well worth checking out, and it’s on sale almost everyplace you’d care to shop. Second is a response to my would-be debunking of the cult of London Calling. Bill can sympathize with my lack of enthusiasm about the album’s genre pastiches, but argues that these tracks prepare the listener for the bigger and better things on the album. (He cites another pastiche, the kick-ass “The Card Shark,” but having done some more thinking about this I think one could argue that straightforward rockers like “London Calling” and “Clampdown” might seem merely workmanlike, rather than nuggets of pure punk satisfaction, if there were nothing different to offset them.) Folks, I’ve read a lot of record reviews, and Bill does this sort of thing as well as anybody.

Today I picked up the Walkmen’s new(er) album Bows & Arrows with some birthday lucre (it was yesterday), and holy cow, how good is its lead single, “The Rat”? It sounds like what Joy Division might have sounded like had Ian Curtis conquered his depression and directed his anger outward instead. The urgency of the tune–the careening guitars, the high hum of the keyboard, the pounding drums pulled way up in the mix–is simply flabbergasting. The video is brilliant as well–just simple, high-contrast black-and-white footage of the band performing the song in its Mercata Studio space, their restraint almost unbearable in light of the fury of the song.

I’m not very far into the rest of the record, but it seems like they’ve become a much louder band, without abandoning the peripatetic song structures that made their first album such a hauntingly bitter pill to swallow. This is a very, very talented band.

I appreciate Dave’s theories about the virtue of mainstream superhero comics’ neverending narratives as much as the next guy, but I wonder if the problem isn’t that they never end, but that they do end, over and over and over, and are artificially resuscitated time after time after time. You know what I mean? Compare Amazing Spider-Man, in which stories or story arcs go on for a certain amount of time and are then wrapped up pretty neatly, with something like The Sopranos, which if you go by standard film-crit standards or McKee’s Story is an absolute fucking mess, but, in the way it sends up plot threads like they’re attached to balloons, getting them tangled, having some hang around, some get tied up, some float off into the ether never to be heard from again, replicates the gorgeous power of actual human life better than nearly any work of art I can think of.

Hm. You know what I mean?

Oh yeah, day job, sporadic blogging, blah blah blah.

That is the absolute last time I indulge in rhetorical excess. This I swear to you by all that is holy!

Seriously, I knew when I wrote it that I shouldn’t be advising people to “ignore” Kill Bill‘s critics. I myself am not ignoring them, and have had interesting conversations with at least two via email. I was trying to make the point that I think you (the generalized you) should go see the movie(s), and was trying to make that point using one of those Paul O’Brien-type “I can prove it with graphs” kinda statements. Obviously, I blew it, and now folks think I want to “stifle debate,” which I certainly don’t want to do.

To wit, go read J.W. Hastings, who, in addition to providing an anti-Kill Bill blog post link roundup, righteously and rightfully takes me to task for copping one of those odious “if you don’t like it, you just don’t get it” attitudes. (To be honest, I do think some people just don’t get it–after all, some people thought John Travolta’s character in Pulp Fiction came back from the dead during the final segment–but I don’t think that of J.W., Dave Intermittent, the Peiratikos crew, Dave Fiore, or any of the other bloggers I’ve read who’ve had negative takes on the films.)

I will, however, stand by my assertion that I like the movies too much to say anything interesting about them. This is not to say that the fact that they are good goes without saying, or anything like that–just that I’m too happy with my happiness with them to produce something worth reading about them, basically. (I’ve seen some cases where something similar is true for people who take the opposing view too, by the way.)

I am a Total Geek, with a geekiness rating of 34.91124%.

If they had more music questions or asked about college majors or tattoos, I would have done even better. Or if I liked math at all.

(Link courtesy of Dave Fiore, who’s really on right now, by the way: Check out his post on the pros and cons of continuity and its discontents; and on auteurism, which contains this:

Yes friends, we can only wonder what marvels might have emerged from Renaissance Italy, if work-for-hire had not held the art world of that time in its nefarious thrall–instead we are left with trashy “fanfic” efforts like the Sistine Chapel. What a pity.

Hilarious!)

We were listening to the Clash’s London Calling at work the other day, and I finally had to come out and say it: Wouldn’t it be a much better album with four or five fewer songs?

Critics make so much of how it’s this wide-ranging genre-hopping masterpiece, and they’re right about the range and the multiple genres, but it’s the masterpiece part where I think they’re off track. Granted, I don’t have much interest in roots-rock and world music to begin with, but the Clash’s stabs in those directions strike me as slapdash and vastly inferior to their punk, pop, and hard-rock efforts. Picture a London Calling that goes straight from “London Calling” to “Hateful,” and from “Clampdown” (or, to be fair, “The Guns of Brixton,” which is pretty striking) to “Death or Glory,” and maybe you’ll catch my drift.

It’s not that I don’t admire their ambition or heterodoxy–given the humorless necrophiliac lockstep that much of punk has found itself in during the intervening decades, such qualities are to be commended. Hell, my favorite Beatles record is the White Album, which virtually defines all-over-the-map-ness. But the Clash, for all their virtues, are simply not the Beatles, and London Calling is a case of the Clash’s ambition outstripping their innate talent.

It may come down to a simple matter of aging well, or aging poorly. When London Calling came out, listeners were no doubt impressed that a band with the Clash’s punk bonafides (re-established on any number of the album’s tracks) had a sonic palette so daring and expansive–the punk side stayed punk and the far-out side stayed far-out, if you will. (Obviously, there were limits to how far out the critics would allow the band to go; cf. Sandinista!) Today, the way the album pushed past the punk boundaries is interesting from a historical perspective, and in some cases fusing that attitude with a solid pub-rock core yielded undeniably killer results (“Rudie Can’t Fail,” “Revolution Rock,” and especially the gorgeous Phil Spectorisms of “The Card Cheat”) but it’s the fury and the songcraft of the real rock that makes the record memorable, not its comparatively weak nostalgic novelties.

It’s really for the best if you ignore the people who didn’t like Kill Bill Volumes One and Two, which taken together comprise one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

I do, however, wish I knew how people can watch a movie in which bad behavior occurs and, because they find the film amusing on some level, deduce that that bad behavior is being endorsed–particularly in an oeuvre like Tarantino’s, in which characters who refuse to renounce violence and deceit are inevitably punished for that refusal. (You want to see a movie in which gratuitous violence is immorally played for laughs? Rent any of St. Mel’s Lethal Weapon flicks.)

Girls–real, live girls–and kids–real, live kids–buy a lot of manga, and I mean a lot, at the bookstore I’m now working at. They also steal a lot.

Kevin Melrose has broughten his A-game now that Tim O’Neil is out of the linkblogging business. Check him out.

Kevin was nice enough to point me to interviews with Ed Brubaker, author of the terrific Sleeper, and Brian Bendis, author of the terrific (insert one of his twelve million monthly comic books here). The Brubaker interview touches on whether or not Sleeper might be made into a TV series, which brings up that old question: Would Sleeper work better without superpowers? Needless to say I’m not a superhero basher–I just wonder if Agent Carver’s no-way-out predicament seems less grim and inescapable due to the presence of flight, invulnerability, and so forth. Still one of the best superhero books going, but I can’t make up my mind about this.

J.W. Hastings is back on the quickie review beat, with thoughtful looks at Planetary, The Punisher, Smax, Daredevil, The Pulse, The Ultimates, and more.

Franklin Harris draws a conclusion from the success the Hellboy movie has had in driving up sales of the Hellboy graphic novels–in the bookstores, primarily. In light of this, can we read Marvel & DC’s recent “back to basics” moves as a tacit acknowledgement that they’ve given up on their drives to get those legendary New Readers into the comic shops, at least with their main lines, and are focusing on eating up as much of the existing comic-shop market as possible while segregating new-audience outreach efforts into initiatives like Marvel Age?

Demo review coming this week. Please be patient.

Finally, NeilAlien points to Rich Johnston who posts a report that the shooting script for Sin City consists of photocopied pages of the comic book, which of course is ridiculous, but the notion that there are photocopied pages of the comic book being consulted on set isn’t so ridiculous, which leads me to say “Oh God PLEASE let this movie be as good as it should be.”

Yesterday I asked if Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’s Sleeper would be better without the presence of superpowers. (Flying and laserbeams and suchlike, not the USA and USSR.) Reader Dan Coyle writes:

No.

And here’s why, after giving some thought on the subject: Holden’s motivations are tied strongly to his superpowers- his inability to feel and his invulnerability are both a gift and a curse and probably influences his actions to a very high degree.

Now, your mileage may vary when it comes to such metaphors–“He can’t feel any physical pain, and this mirrors the emotional numbness he feels” may just be the comics equivalent of “they’re zombies, and they’re in a shopping mall–get it?” But the point is that Carver’s power set was not chosen at random. It’s tied directly into the themes of the series.

This is one advantage of superheroes who are, if not creator owned, at least designed with the input of the current creator–whatever themes they plan on exploring can be worked directly into the fantastic elements from the get-go, instead of depending on the kind of heavy lifting required of, say, Brian Bendis to get Daredevil where he wanted to go, or of Grant Morrison with the X-Men.

When I used the word “broughten,” I was deliberately using a non-word. I just want us to be on the same page about this.

Man, I didn’t expect them to have that conversation!