GRAPHIC NOVEL and TRADE PAPERBACK (TPB) REVIEWS

by The Masked Bookwyrm

Miscellaneous (non-Superhero) - Page 4-B

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cover by Epting El Cazador 2007 (SC TPB) 142 pages

Written by Chuck Dixon. Illustrated by Steve Epting.
Colours: Frank D'Amata, Jason Keith. Letters: unbilled.

Reprinting: El Cazador #1-6 (2003-2004 by CrossGen Comics)

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Published by Hyperion Paperbacks

CrossGen Comics was a company that exploded on the scene with some lavishly produced series, sidestepping the super hero-centric style of Marvel and DC with more sci-fi and fantasy based series. But the company stretched too far and too fast and eventually collapsed. One of its last titles, caught in the company's collapse, was El Cazador, which eschewed the fantasy and SF for straight, old fashioned historical adventure about pirates on the high seas (a genre rarely explored in comics...despite the running idea in The Watchmen of an alternate reality where pirate comics were the dominant genre).

Despite leaving its story arc incomplete, the six issues were subsequently collected in a TPB by Hyperion Paperbacks -- an imprint of Disney Enterprises (and given Disney's success with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, one wonders if they were hoping for a similar success).

The story involves a young Spanish maiden whose ship is captured by pirates, and her brother and mother kidnapped by the king pirate, Blackjack Tom. But the woman manages to reclaim her vessel, establishing herself as the captain -- now dubbed Lady Sin by her pirate crew -- and she sets out to track down Blackjack Tom and rescue her kin.

Chuck Dixon is a well regarded writer for his unpretentious action-adventure tales. I've read stuff by Dixon, and often reasonably enjoyed it...even as it rarely makes much impression. As such this is a work where the writing is okay...but bolstered immeasurably by the art, with Steve Epting delivering lush, richly detailed, historically researched panels which evoke a bit of John Buscema's later style -- but eminently more detailed. Yet as good as the art is, this is one time where I suspect the real star is the colourists, as Frank D'Amata and Jason Keith deliver gorgeously rendered pages where the texture and detail, I think, is supplied as much in the hues as Epting's line work. The colours are a little too dark a lot of the time, where even scenes on the high seas under a cloudless sky are a bit sombre.

Still, it's truly gorgeous to look at.

And Dixon certainly has a decent feel for pacing, and the dialogue flows from the characters' tongues well enough.

But overall, there's a certain...blandness.

The back cover quotes a review saying "forget those peg-leg, walk-the-plank melodramas", that Dixon and company are going for "gritty truth". But the comic really does seem like Dixon and company are just trotting out all the cinematic cliches (fire ships, chases through shallow water, a last minute rescue where a noose is severed with a shot -- could 17th Century guns even shoot with enough accuracy to hit a rope?). Oh, there's certainly care given to the proper terminology and I'm sure it's reasonably well researched (though I think Epting, like his Hollywood counterparts, errs on the side of the aesthetic when depicting the pirate ships...'cause I'm pretty sure I read that pirate ships were less majestic vessels).

Obviously, the cliches are part of the fun. But what Dixon fails to do is put any new spin on them. A lot of the action scenes seem lacking in clever strategy...or even logic (I wasn't sure how the blind navigator was supposed to be able to negotiate the shallow water better than a sighted man).

And the characters don't really pick up the slack. Dixon writes in a cinematic way, without thought balloons, so all you see is all you get. Lady Sin's ability to go from a noblewoman to a Pirate Queen isn't given much explanation, nor why the crew is so willing to follow her -- or why we should care about her. Even her driving motivation -- to rescue her mother and brother -- seems more like an abstraction, than an emotional quest. Nor is Dixon interested in exploring any moral dilemmas. I'm reminded of the old Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk must masquerade as his evil self in another dimension...and the inherent drama in the episode was how Kirk could maintain his basic decency while pretending to be a tyrant. But here, there's no sense that Lady Sin sees any contradictions in the life she has suddenly assumed. The supporting cast is defined just enough to keep them from fading into the woodwork...but not so much that they really stand out as personalities.

Dixon does slightly better with Redhand Harry, a privateer Lady Sin crosses swords with, who at least is given hints of a mysterious past (and one suspects Dixon had more interest in him than his nominal leading lady). But even Harry isn't really that compelling.

In a movie, a charismatic actor can make a part come alive -- but in a comic, the writer has to work harder to create a character.

In these six issues there are escapes and sailing about, and atmospheric ship-to-ship battles that are breathtakingly portrayed (as barques loom out of the fog). Despite being cancelled in mid-series, there are self-contained episodes (Lady Sin thwarting a mutiny). As such, even though it ends in mid-arc, with nothing resolved, it doesn't really end on a cliff hanger, per se, making it not wholly unsatisfying read as an unfinished saga.

But there's a feeling Dixon and company were keen for the milieu of a pirate comic...but had less of a sense of what to do with it, or how to break past the generic cliches.

Still, for all that -- it is a reasonably fun read, benefitting from the breathtaking visuals and the atypicallness of the genre (for a comic) which alone makes it fun to have on the shelf. But as an on going, indefinite series, one rather suspects that even if CrossGen hadn't folded abruptly...El Cazador might well have run aground on its own.

Cover price: $__ CDN./$12.99 USA

Enemy Ace: War Idyll 1990 (HC & SC GN) 128 pages

cover by George Pratt Written and painted by George Pratt.
Letters: Willie Schubert. Editor: Andrew Helfer.

Commentaries by Joe Kubert, George Pratt; sketches.

Rating: * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Published by DC Comics

Enemy Ace: War Idyll is a fully painted graphic novel that resurrects one of DC Comics' more unusual -- and critically acclaimed -- heroes from its war comics (from back when it published titles in that genre). Baron Hans von Hammer, a German (therefore: enemy) World War I air ace. Never as successful as, say, Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, as originally written by Robert Kanigher, was a brooding, philosophical character, making him a logical choice for this "serious" graphic novel (moreso than, say, the Creature Commandos). At least, that's my understanding, having only read a couple of short Enemy Ace stories written long after Ace's heyday which was back in the 1960s and early 1970s when he headlined Star-Spangled War Stories (among other comics).

Printed on heavy paper, giving the book a weighty, important feel, with the story itself comprising some 95 pages, War Idyll begins in 1969, with the elderly von Hammer in a West German nursing home being visited by aa American journalist doing stories on old soldiers. The journalist is a Vietnam veteran, haunted by the war, and seeks some perspective on his experiences through learning of von Hammer's. Through flashbacks, von Hammer relates some of his war time experiences, as does the journalist in one chapter.

War Idyll is a moderately interesting, atmospheric story...but not too much more. It got me thinking a little of the whole nature of comics vs. other narrative mediums, of how comics still struggle for mainstream respectability. I'm the first to argue comics shouldn't slavishly seek to mimic other mediums (such as the common trend of eschewing thought balloons and text captions to more seem like a movie). Comics should take pride in being their own animal. With that being said, I couldn't help thinking that if writer/artist George Pratt had proposed this same story as a movie or novel, it wouldn't have been made/published. Even as a short story it seems a tad wanting.

It's well named, since one of the definitions of the word idyll is a poem, and, story wise, that's more what this resembles. There's very little in the way of an actual plot, per se. Von Hammer's reminiscences relate a time when he, an air ace usually above the fray, crashes in no man's land and wanders through the true horrors of war. That's not much of a story, exactly, not in the sense of scenes building on each other, or that questions are presented that need answering, or that we're heading toward anything. Even the relationship between the ageing von Hammer and the journalist never quite evolves into a character drama.

All of those criticisms might seem a tad...crass. After all, what Pratt is trying to do is a brooding reflection on the horrors of war, a serious and worthy treatise to be sure. But that's the same thing you would expect from a movie or novel on the same topic, and yet you would still expect it to be told in the context either of a story, or as a richer character exploration. Or, at least, through more unusual scenes, with Ace's journey perhaps becoming a Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now odyssey (not that I regard Apocalypse Now particularly highly -- an over-inflated music video masquerading as a "serious" movie).

Pratt falls into the conceit demonstrated by other creative types (in all mediums) of seeming to think he's the first person in the world to tackle a subject. Most of what he depicts is pretty standard -- there were few sequences that made me go "Oh my God, I never realized it was like that." Ironically, the scene in the tunnel in Vietnam came close to that, to evoking a sense of nightmarish claustrophobia and terror. That's ironic because Vietnam has been so thoroughly mined by American storytellers, the familiarity of the milieu makes that sequence, overall, less interesting than the W.W. I scenes.

Of course, is all that fair? Perhaps one can assume that a comic -- even an adult-aimed graphic novel -- will touch a different audience, an audience who has previously shied away from gritty war movies. As well, the first world war has, maybe, been less depicted in recent years by Hollywood, so scenes of trench warfare and gas attacks will take on a shocking newness for many readers (being Canadian as I am, and Canada having participated in that war more fully than did the United States, maybe I'm more familiar with it, through school and even movies, than might be this book's main, American audience).

Pratt's dialogue is surprisingly strong, with scenes between von Hammer and the journalist convincing. I use the word surprising because my understanding is that Pratt is first and foremost an artist.

The painted art is both powerful and effective...as well as problematic. Pratt (a painter with work in galleries) paints in, basically, an Impressionistic style. Often it's atmospheric, with a sequence of von Hammer wandering through snowy woods broodingly effective, or even the scenes of von Hammer and the journalist have a haunting ambience. But his style gets so impressionistic, it actually starts to become Expressionistic at times, with panels where I couldn't quite make out what I was supposed to be looking at. I wondered if that was on purpose, the art creating its own subtext by getting more chaotic and confusing as we get more into the thick of conflict...but I don't think so. There isn't enough of a change for me to believe that.

On one hand, through the art, Pratt can accomplish something a movie can't. He can diverge from reality just enough to (perhaps) create a more penetrating reality than a more literal motion picture can (or even a novel). There are striking scenes and images in the book that no movie, no matter the budget, could duplicate. On the other hand, Pratt can also lose the edge, the horror of his setting through the art. Showing a mass grave doesn't necessarily shock as well as it might, when the corpses don't entirely resemble corpses. Far from crystallizing the horrors of war, he can actually soften them.

Of course, even as a philosophical/socio-political essay, War Idyll doesn't have much to say beyond the usual: that War is Hell. Pratt stops short of actually denouncing war, or suggesting alternatives, nor does he delve at all into any of the motives for the wars. Granted, I didn't expect him to and I'm not really criticizing him for the lack of a bigger (and controversial) stance.

And for fans of Enemy Ace, and the whole sub-genre of aviation stories, the fact that much of the story takes place on the ground will be disappointing. But then, Pratt's intention isn't to tell a frivolous adventure.

This is certainly a decent enough read, a brooding look at one of humanity's greatest follies. But it seems undeveloped, needing a stronger plot or character stuff to provide a foundation for the ruminations. In a sense, it reminds me of the later Uncle Sam -- also a fully painted, "ambitious" comics story that believed its worthiness overrode much need for it to meet conventional narrative expectations.

Cover price: $18.95 CDN. / $14.95 USA

Essential Tomb of Dracula, vol. 2
For my review at www.ugo.com, go here.

cover by Harris Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days 2004 (SC TPB) 120 pages

Written by Brian K. Vaughan. Pencils by Tony Harris. Inks by Tom Feister.
Colours: JD Mettler. Letters: Jared K. Fletcher. Editor: Ben Abernathy, Kristy Quinn.

Reprinting: Ex Machina #1-5 (2004)

Rating: * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Suggested for Mature Readers

Published by Wildstorm (and imprint of DC Comics)

For decades, super heroes have dominanted mainstream comics. So much so that when creators develop non-super hero projects, they often try and work in some sort of loose super hero aspect...or maybe it's that, when creating yet another super hero comic, they try to find some off beat variation on the theme.

Which brings us to Ex Machina (and this collection of the first five issues) -- a comic that could be likened to TV's The West Wing meets a super hero. Set in a, more or less, "real" world (ie: not part of a "super hero universe"), Ex Machina is about Mitchell Hundred, who acquired super powers -- the ability to "talk" to machinery and control them just with his voice -- and engaged in a brief career as the world's first and only super hero: The Great Machine. Then he decided to hang up his costume and, instead, get himself elected Mayor of New York City.

It's an intriguing premise, one in which the "super hero" aspect is subordinate as Mitchell must deal with normal municipal crises -- and not-so normal ones (someone is murdering snowplough operators), while we also flashback to Mitchell's days as The Great Machine. (Though The West Wing analogy has been used by others, a closer relative might be the Canadian TV series Da Vinci's City Hall -- about an ex-cop turned mayor where some plot threads were crime oriented).

Unfortunately the execution didn't quite come together for me.

Part of that, I suppose, is with a project like this, you can go into it with certain assumptions about what it's supposed to be that may not have been the creator's intent.

But for a "political" drama...it doesn't really seem like writer Vaughan has spent much time thinking about issues or the realities of being Mayor of a big city. At one point, Mitchell comments it costs the city a "million dollars to shovel an inch of snow" -- sure, it's a tossed off quip, but what's the point of a series like this if you don't believe the creators have researched their milieu? (Now maybe it really does cost that much -- but I doubt it).

And it's a political comic...that seems to avoid being too political. Mitchell is a self-described "independent" whose aides include a Democrat deputy mayor and a Republican police commissioner, and in a scene where he disses the ACLU, he disses the NRA as well. Okay, I realize that's always the dilemma with this sort of project: it's entertainment, it's not supposed to be propaganda. But even a central sub-plot here, involving a potentially offensive piece of art work, is odd. The "controversial" art seems kind of meaningless...and a character in the story says the same thing! So Vaughan wanted to tackle the idea of a controversy...without getting too controversial.

Actually, there are times Vaughan seems to get political -- with seeming swipes at the anti-smoking crowd and environmentalists!

The series fails to entirely have that ring of verisimilitude I kind of expected. It's a "mature readers" comic, so the characters swear up a blue streak...but in a way that seems more like Vaughan is more interested in working in a four letter word than because this is really how these people would talk (would a mayor swear casually while talking to a reporter?) In true comic book fashion -- ala Batman's Jim Gordon -- the police commissioner seems to be hands on, investigating every crime. Even the whole notion of a "normal" world with a lone super hero is not convincingly evoked. Okay, that's been one of the hardest things super hero comics have struggled with for decades -- how do you "realistically" depict something, and society's reaction to this thing, which has never happened in real life and, in all probability, never will?

The nature of Mitchell's super power is interesting and fairly unique, but not very flashy...even as the premise of the comic might demand more archetypal abilities (ie: "What if Superman became mayor?") Vaughan seems to want to go for the revisionist quirk -- having Mitchell's Great Machine costume look thrown together, and indications his brief super hero career could border on misadventures -- on the other hand, it's his super hero mystique, we infer, that got him elected. Although, in the backstory, obliquely alluded to, we learn Mitchell was able to save one of the Trade Towers during the 2001 terrorist attacks, which alone might be enough to make him an icon among voters.

Mitchell himself...is somewhat bland, uninteresting and unendearing. The latter could be fine, if that was the intent...but I don't think it is. And we get little sense of why he wanted to be mayor. We learn his mother encouraged people (women) to vote. And he has a (sort of) friend, nicknamed Kremlin. But no sense of what issues drive him, what social concerns are paramount on his agenda. Frankly the fact that he would use his celebrity as a spring board into political office seems more opportunistic than civic minded.

The art by Tony Harris also puts me in a bit of a tizzy of conflicting emotions. It's realist art -- almost photo-realist (not painted photo-realist, but realist). It's very good and accurate...but it didn't entirely blow me over. Even though I often prefer realist art over more stylized comic book art, it can seem almost too photo-referenced. So the people can look a bit stiff, the choice of angles and presentation nothing exceptional. Maybe it's that in an unreal story (ie: a Superman story where he's battling dinosaurs) realist art can make it all the more cooler...but in a more realist story, with a lot of scenes of people sitting around discussing municipal politics, hyper-realist art doesn't bring anything extra to the scenes.

After an opening issue that establishes the basic idea and background, we move into a four part tale...that, I'll admit, is just one more indication of what's wrong with modern comics. It's a thin -- and thinly developed story -- stretched out over multiple issues. Basically, it's comprised of two plot threads, the B-plot -- the one involving the offensive work of art, which is the more realistic, but also more mundane -- and the A-plot -- involving someone murdering city snow plough operators (I designate it the "A" plot as, dealing with murder, it is the more "dramatic"). Neither warrant the pages devoted to them...certainly not as plotted. And, as mentioned, I can't say the corners were filled out with a lot of character development and brooding. Perhaps because of the TV influence of the West Wing/Da Vinci's City Hall, Vaughan is more interested in talky-for-talk sake scenes than introspection.

Now I mentioned earlier that sometimes the problem is not with the work, but your expectation of the work. I suggest I didn't find it very realistic...Vaughan might argue, duh, it's a comic about an ex-super hero! I also realized that it may be intended to be more light hearted and humorous than I "read" it as (just as The West Wing, though a drama, could be quite funny) -- at the same time, if I'm saying it "may" be intended to be humorous, clearly it wasn't quite hitting my funny bone that squarely.

The serial killer plot builds to a kind of anti-climactic denouement -- deliberately so, and the sort of twist that many a story have worked successfully. But it works best capping off a complex, Byzantine tale full of red herrings that seems to take us in a bigger direction...not a story that barely gets past an outline. Nor does it really create any sense of tension. At one point it is suggested the killer might be an old enemy of Mitchell's, back from the dead...except we had no knowledge of this arch foe and, given Mitchell's brief super hero career, it's hard to imagine how he could've acquired an arch foe anyway.

Now some of that may be unfair, as obviously this is part of a bigger series -- perhaps that foe will be detailed in later flashbacks. Certainly the series opens with Mitchell darkly reflecting back on his time in politics, intimating some bad days lie ahead and the whole comic is to be viewed as a massive mini-series. But hints and foreshadowing are all very fine, but I'm reading this for itself. How much I enjoyed and was involved in what happened in these pages will decide whether I stick around to see such cryptic remarks unfold.

And I just didn't enjoy it that much.

This is a review of the story as it was serialized in the monthly comics.

Cover price: $__ CDN./$9.95 USA.

cover by Moline Exit Wounds 2007 (HC GN) 174 pages

Written and illustrated and coloured by Rutu Modan.
Letters: Rich Tomasso. Editor: Noah Stollman.

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1