The Prisoner: Shattered Visage 1992 (SC TPB) 200 pgs

Written by Dean Motter & Mark Askwith. Illustrated by Dean Motter (with assist from Robert Walton)
Painted by David Hornung, Richmond Lewis. Letters: Deborah Marks, John Workman. Editor: Richard Bruning.

Reprinting: The Prisoner #1-4 (a-d) (1988 prestige format mini-series)

Rating: * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Published by DC Comics

This is the only comic inspired by the cult British TV series about a secret agent trapped in a seemingly idyllic village, unsure who ran it -- his side, imprisoning him to keep the secrets he knew secret; or the "other" side, hoping to get him to divulge those secrets. Actually, Marvel was apparently going to do a version in the '70s (by Jack Kirby) but pulled the plug before the first issue was published.

Firstly, this story is not simply a comic book version of The Prisoner (ala Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.), but rather a sequel, set some 20 years later. So although Number 6, the hero of the series (played by Patrick McGoohan) is here, as is one of his Number 2 opponents (the version played by Leo McKern) there are also younger characters central to the story: an unnamed woman who has just resigned from her intelligence position, and her ex-husband, Thomas, who hasn't. She plans to sail around the world, solo, only to crash on the now-deserted island where the sinister village once resided. He, meanwhile, is caught up in the shadowy world of espionage, manipulating, and being manipulated, as he investigates the very notion of "the village" as alleged in a book written by the man known as Number 2.

I think.

See, the first problem with The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, is that, frankly, I didn't understand a lot of it. Now, that may seem like an odd thing to say. After all, the Prisoner TV series practically defined the notion of obscure and cryptic. But the series wasn't that obscure. It was weird, surreal, and heavy on the metaphors, and could be bewildering...but it wasn't confusing (too often). You generally knew what was going on, it was just a matter of working out the subtext. But there's stuff here that seems obscure simply for the sake of seeming obscure -- like mentioning in the fourth and final "chapter" that there have been global incidents, assassinations, etc. that seem to be the work of guiding intelligence...when nowhere earlier were we told such things were occurring. It's as if it wants to wear the mantle of sophistication, but not the substance.

As well, The Prisoner was a mix of cold war espionage, science fiction, parable, satire, whimsy, and surrealism, with the spy trappings quickly being revealed as a metaphor for the broader world and broader issues ("I am not a number," roared Number 6, "I'm a free man!"). This mix led to a kind of tug-of-war in the series as to what it really wanted to be, usually with the more memorable elements rooted in the fantastic and surreal rather than the espionage idiom. With Shattered Visage, Dean Motter and Mark Askwith seem to want to pull the Prisoner back to the spy game, even to the point where the premise in the comic seems a bit at odds with how the series (surrealistically) ended. Although this is cryptic and confusing, it's also far less strange and eccentric than the series.

The decision to shift the focus onto new characters is also odd. That's the decision you'd expect in a movie, where a Hollywood executive might grumble "Hey, these guys are too old -- let's get some younger characters in here for the kids to relate to." But in a comic, a character is only as young or as old as you want him to be.

Lacking the focus of Number 6, and the charismatic intensity of McGoohan's performance, the story meanders. In fact, the story doesn't entirely capture the spirit of the series, despite the fact that Motter and Askwith clearly know their source material. The series was dark, but also whimsical and satirical...Shattered Visage is largely without wit. The series could be energetic, with experimental editing tricks, but this is leisurely. Like a lot of comics these days, Motter feels the need to detail every gesture -- in one 3-panel sequence, a character throws a leg over a railing, dangles from the railing, then drops to the ground. The action could as readily have been conveyed in two panels, omitting the middle one. There's lots of wordless panels, making the book a somewhat briefer read than you'd expect.

Motter's pencil and ink style is reasonably effective, affecting a rough, unfinished style that reminds me of Turn-of-the-Century French impressionists.

Ultimately, the story was sort of interesting, but ultimately less-than rewarding.

This is a review of the story serialized in The Prisoner mini-series

Cover price: $25.95 CDN./$19.95 USA.

Graphic Classics: Rafael Sabatini
see review here

Savage Red Sonja: Queen of the Frozen Wastes 2008 (TPB) 88 pages

Written by Doug Murray, Frank Cho. Illustrated by Homs.
Colours: Will Murai. Letters: Simon Bowland.

Reprinting: the four issue mini-series

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

Number of readings: 1

Published by Dynamite Comics

Red Sonja is basically a female Conan the Barbarian, literally spun out of the Conan stories and supposedly inhabiting the same ancient world (though since Sonja's current comics adventures are published by Dynamite and Conan's by Dark Horse, I don't suppose there'll be much overlap between the two). She is generally credited to Conan author, Robert E. Howard, but I think her genesis may be a bit less straight forward than that, with comics scribe Roy Thomas having taken some basic concepts by Howard and turning them into the character we know today.

Anyhoo...after various runs in various (short-lived) Marvel Comics series in the 1970s/1980s, a minor motion picture, and a series of paperback novels commissioned in the 1980s, Sonja has been given a new lease on four colour life by Dynamite Comics, which has produced both a regular series, various one shots and specials, TPB collections of her old Marvel comics...and the occasional mini-series. Like this one.

Queen of the Frozen Wastes has Sonja in the northern wilderness (where, apparently, a cloak over her traditional bikini chain mail is all that's needed to ward off frost bite) leading a bunch of warriors after some marauders. The battle goes poorly for both sides and Sonja finds herself in a subterranean land ruled over by an evil sorceress and her sub-human minions, who capture wayward humans for food, sport, and for some (ill-defined) breeding experiments as the Queen desires to fashion a hybrid race.

This is one of those stories which is hard to assess, because it's not particularly awful...even as it's not particularly good. If you're just looking for a self-contained Red Sonja tale to kill and hour...I suppose this can do that. But if you want more...it ain't here.

As I've complained about more than a few modern comics, the problem here is it really doesn't warrant a mini-series. They could probably have told the same tale in one regular issue. It's not like there are a lot of twists and turns or anything. Howard's original Conan stories, for all that they were action tales, were often as interested in machinations, as Conan would become caught up in political intrigue. But a lot of Conan -- and Conan-esque -- comics tend to just present very simple stories that are excuses for a lot of fight scenes.

And even in that sense, the fight scenes are pretty repetitive (two of three end-of-chapter cliff hangers are almost identical to each other!). In the final issue, the Queen's dialogue seems to consist of basically repeating "Kill her!" and "Don't let her escape!" for 22 pages.

This is written by Doug Murray and Frank Cho. Neither of whom are writers on the regular Red Sonja monthly comic, so, admittedly, this maybe isn't reflective of the regular comic. However I did read the equally tepid one-shot, Red Sonja: Monster Isle, and Dynamite has to be aware that projects like this, by their very self-containedness, are liable to attract casual readers and so could very well be the make-or-break story deciding whether a reader picks up any more issues. But in addition to the thin plot, there's little here to make one interested in Sonja as a character. She's kind of bland and ill-defined. Cho is one of those curious figures in comics who gained great acclaim (and fans) as an artist, particularly for his shamelessly voluptuous, cheesecake women. Yet then somehow parleyed that into getting prominent billing for series like this, where he doesn't actually draw the thing (save some of the covers).

The art is by Homs, who delivers decent if mixed art. Some of the stuff is good...some leans a little toward cartoony which I have mixed feelings about in general, and in a barbarian-fantasy comic, where evoking an atmosphere is paramount, can seem a bit ill-suited. Actually, I remain curious about who does what in modern comics. Because a lot of the shape and contours of the figures, muscle curves and cheekbones, are portrayed in the colours, rather than inked lines. But is that still a reflection of Homs (perhaps the colourist is simply following pencil shadings that aren't reproduced in the finished work)...or is the colourist as responsible for the finished art as the penciller/inker?

While talking about "plot", and "character", I've been dancing around whether that's even the point. A lot of the point is the cheesecake/sexploitation. This was always the case with Sonja, and with modern comics no longer constrained by a "Comics Code Authority", and left to their own ideas of self-censorship, that's even more explicit here. Yet this isn't being marketed as a "mature readers" comic, so it ends up this odd little mix.

The violence is pretty gory in spots, with hacked off heads and limbs. The lascivious undercurrents are pretty overt, with the Queen herself lusting after Sonja, letting her hands brush Sonja's contours -- even kissing her (in one panel). And there's lots of scenes with a Bondage undercurrent of Sonja being bound, or dragged around by a leash.

Visually, Sonja's in her traditional skimpy metal bikini, and the Queen is equally underdressed (though the eroticism is muted a bit 'cause the Queen has a rather ugly, fang-filled face!) And though there's not necessarily nudity, per se, the nature of Sonja's chain mail loin cloth as she leaps about is that Homs depicts the undercurves of her buttocks a lot (in the curious mores of fashion, if Sonja was supposed to be wearing some sort of under garment or thong -- as some artists depict her -- it might not be considered "nudity", but if she's not, as seems the case with Homs, than it would probably be counted as nudity).

Now I'm the last person to be complaining about sexploitation, but for some reason it just feels a bit...awkward. Maybe it's because it seems so in-between. It's not really an interesting, cleverly plotted tale...with merely an added "plus" of raciness, yet because it pulls back from being an "R" rated comic, it can't really be regarded as just an erotic romp.

And when I say I'm the last person who has a right to complain, I mean it, 'cause I've written my own saucy Sword & Sorcery tales about a wardrobe challenged heroine. In fact, Queen of the Frozen Wastes actually reminds me of a story I wrote a few years ago. So why am I criticising? Well, maybe that's the point. Mine was a short story...Murray's and Cho's is a four part, 88 page saga originally serialized over months. And it just doesn't seem to justify it.

Or maybe I'm a hypocrite.

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

Cover price: __

The Ring of the Nibelung  1991 (SC TPB) 200 pgs.

Written by Roy Thomas. Illustrated by Gil Kane.
Colours: Jim Woodring. Letters: John Constanza. Editor: Andrew Helfer.

Reprinting all four issues of the 1989 prestige mini-series. Based on the four operas by Richard Wagner forming Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold, Die Valkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung.

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Published by DC Comics

Mature Readers

An adaptation of the classic opera cycle by Richard Wagner (which, in turn, was based on Teutonic myth) chronicling a tale of Gods, men and monsters revolving around a ring of great power and the tragedies that befall those who would possess it.

The bitter dwarf, Alberich, forges a ring of power, setting in motion a chain of events. Wotan, the king of the Gods, and others covet the ring, both for its power and because it is warned that if the ring is not returned from whence Alberich stole it, the gods themselves might fall. This leads to various triumphs and tragedies involving two generations of a mortal family who are pawns in the schemes of Gods and dwarves and to the ultimate fate of the gods.

Roy Thomas has spent many years, off and on, adapting to comics the writings of fantasists like Robert E. Howard and others, and the stylistically dynamic Kane was a longtime advocate of Sword & Sorcery in comics. With these two guys, you know if anyone can pull off such an audacious enterprise, it'll probably be them. Although P. Craig Russell has also produced adaptations of Wagner's Ring Cycle, which I haven't read so I can't make a comparison.

It's divided into four books (based on the four operas), each sort of self-contained but leading to the next. The first book is the strongest. Here, playing with the more acutely mythological aspects of the story, we are treated to some wildly imaginative imagery from Kane with Thomas crafting dialogue that has a convoluted, Old English feel, while still being perfectly comprehensible. As the saga progresses and the focus shifts more toward the mortal characters it begins to resemble more conventional tales of quests and dragons and betrayal, mirroring a play at times with lengthy scenes set in single locations.

Being largely unfamiliar with the operas, or the myths upon which they were based, the saga works well simply as a story, with clever machinations and surprising turns. One can see its influence in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, among others, and echoes of King Arthur and other myths.

A couple of reviews I've come across of this imply (condescendingly) it is a simplified version of the operas. I'm no expert myself, but having read an elaborate synopsis of the operas, Thomas and Kane seem to have stuck remarkably close to the material -- an advantage to adapting lyrics to dialogue is that you can cover the same ground in less time. This fidelity is both a plus and a minus. A plus because that's part of why one reads it (at least why I read it), to get a genuine sense of the operas' plot. And there are some effective narrative quirks meant to evoke a play -- like having characters whisper out-looud their inner machinations as opposed to presenting them in thought balloons.

Because of that, though, there's a feeling the story's weaknesses stem from Wagner's original. The gods are often more interesting than the mortal heroes who are shallow, hyper-macho, A-type personalities. You don't entirely care about them. Thomas could've softened them, fleshed out their motivation, given them a late-20th Century Liberal-Humanist spin (such as TV's "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys")...but perhaps he was wise not to, instead portraying Wagner's work in all its grandeur...and all its flaws. For that matter, the nature of the ring's power remains completely vague (not unlike in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings").

There are also bits where the story seems a bit abrupt as if we've missed something -- particularly with the fire God, Loge -- which may be because Thomas had to cut to fit it into the pages he had, or maybe because the original legends and myths were, themselves, a bit shaky in the logic department (as often happens).

There are some bits that give one pause. A brother and sister, separated at birth, fall in love. A-ha, we think, it's laying the ground work for an Oedipus-like revelation of dismay. Instead, the two, on realizing their common blood, actually think it's pretty cool, allowing their line to be pure. From their union comes Siegfried, the star of the final two books. Given that Wagner's work was later embraced by the Nazis, a movement obsessed with the nutty idea of "racial purity", one can be forgiven for getting just a touch of the willies reading that. It doesn't help that Kane (and colourist Jim Woodring) portray the characters in a stereotypically blonde and blue-eyed manner. It's not that I object to the narrative concept of incest, or that from this, ah, unusual union might spring a character with a great destiny. It's the way the characters warm to the idea that is uncomfortable (though at least one of the gods is non-plussed).

The late Gil Kane was one of the most dynamic, kinetic artists in comics and there is a tremendous robustness to his work -- supposedly self-taught, he understood more about the human figure and movement than a dozen other artists. Admittedly, he could be a bit scratchy and rushed in spots and tended to favour certain costume designs no matter the place or period. And there's always a certain coldness to his work. There are cold artists and warm ones, or hard and soft, inorganic and organic. Still, I'm hard pressed to imagine an artist more suited to the work (maybe John Buscema -- a "warm" artist).

The story garners a "mature readers" label because of some nudity. Curiously, in "serious" comics that employ sex or nudity, it's usually in ways involving rape and mayhem, while comics that throw in nudity just for the fun of it are usually dismissed by critics as peurile and even perverted. Go figure. But this is an exception, with some gratuitous nudity lacking any of that puritan condemnation. The first book contains a lengthy sequence involving naked water nymphs, though it's definitely the pinnacle of Thomas and Kane's flesh-peddling -- latter books contain no more than a panel or two of skin.

Whether a theatre/opera student who snoozed through class, or just looking for some escapist, fantasy entertainment, Thomas and Kane's version of Wagner's saga is vibrant. Admittedly, at times the characters and the story beg fleshing out, but that's as much Wagner's fault as theirs and it remains a grand, intriguing read.

This is a review of the story serialized in the mini-series

Cover price: $__ CDN./$24.95 USA.

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