Dragon Magazine #137, September 1988, the “Forum” section:

Would any gamers agree that ever since the publication of the WATCHMEN series, campaigns and gaming generally have become “Watchmanized”? In other words, real role-playing interaction and character psyche development are seen as more important and, vitally, more “fun” than bickering over who gets to trash the most kobolds? I for one am not sorry to retire Otto von Hackenslash, the archetypcal no-personality fighter whose only concern was to use his +3/+7 strength bonuses on the next hapless goblin, and wheel out a character who will be more subtle, more willing to interplay, and more real.

Bullgrit

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I finished reading the Watchmen graphic novel. It’s a good book, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it really feels like it’s telling at least three different stories. Although Alan Moore weaves the stories together rather well, they still seem like they could have stood on their own, as distinct tales. And then there’s the Tales of the Black Freighter story which, unless I missed a subtle connection somewhere, is a distinct and separate story just thrown into the mix with no reason.

Rorschach’s story could make for an interesting series on its own. Doctor Manhattan’s story is a fascinating idea that needn’t be connected to the other characters at all. Ozymandias’ scheme is so weird that it feels strange amongst the almost realistic (other than Dr. Manhattan, of course) feel of the rest of the story. And the whole back story about the early crime-fighting groups seems unnecessary.

Again, I did enjoy this book. But at times it felt like I was reading three or four or five different novels in the same publication. It’s like Moore had all these ideas in his head and he wanted to get them all out and published immediately, even if at one time. Some of the stories would have made great individual series, and probably could have run for years like Batman and Spider-Man.

It’s a good book despite this jumbled weakness.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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With the trailer for the upcoming Watchmen movie, I decided I look into the graphic novel. I had heard of Watchmen back in the 80s when it was first published (1986), and I had heard it was good, but I just never saw it in a comic or book store.

After hearing about the movie, I looked Watchmen up on Wikipedia, and the information there made me very interested in reading it immediately. I found it pretty easily — a stack of them were displayed in the front of the local B&N.

Well, I have it now, and after reading the review blurbs on the back cover:

A masterwork representing the apex of artistry…
– Entertainment Weekly

The greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced.
– Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof

I’m excited to experience it. I’ve read the first dozen pages or so, and I’m hooked.

The graphic novel, as a literary art, is terribly under-appreciated by the mass public. It’s the middle ground between a book and a movie. Too many people think of them as “mere comic books” without ever realizing that many are nothing at all like the super hero genre they think of when they say “comic book.”

As for the experience of a graphic novel, you can read one faster than an equally detailed novel, and they usually have a much broader and deeper story than a movie. With the illustrations (the “graphic” part of the name), the reader can see immediately what everything looks like, just like in a movie. You don’t have to read through long passages of description like in a regular novel.

I have come to appreciate graphic novels even more as an entertainment medium in my later years, because I just don’t have all the free time I used to have. I can experience a full, deep, and detailed story in a fraction of the time it would take to read an equally detailed novel. And the stories are much more fulfilling than anything you can get out of a 60-, 90-, or even 120-minute movie.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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I had seen the New Avengers comic title on the rack at a couple stores over the past couple of years, and the line up intrigued me: Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, and Iron Man. I never really could get into the old Avengers stories because the range of power levels — from Thor, a god, to Wasp, a miniature with stinging zaps — just made no sense to be on a team together. But this new line up seemed better balanced.

While browsing at a big book store, I found the first compilation of the New Avengers, Breakout: issues #1 through #6. I picked this book up and read it that night. I loved the writing, I loved the dialog, the characterization, the personality interactions, the action, and the story.

The only real problem I had with this story was how Spider-Man continued to fight and web-swing with a broken arm for two days.

So I bought a new compilation of this title each week: The Sentry (issues #7-10), Secrets & Lies (#11-15), The Collective (#16-20), and just this week, Civil War (#21-25).

I was surprised to like and enjoy The Sentry character and story. I really don’t care much for supreme-power-level characters, like Superman in DC comics. But The Sentry’s personality problem and back story (or lack thereof) are very interesting — a cool twist on how to bring in a new super hero to a fictional world with an already crowded and chronicled history.

With The Collective storyline, though, the New Avengers story started down a path that’s come to annoy me over the years — the in-depth crossover. Where the previous New Avengers books followed each after the previous, The Collective takes up the New Avengers story after a long and complicated story in other books: The House of M. Fortunately, though, the story in these issues #16-20 is relatively self contained, starting and ending with distinct points that don’t require knowledge of the other story.

But then the New Avengers Civil War story takes the crossover problem to the next level and starts the story already in the deep end. In media res is a legitimate storytelling method, but the author(s) should go back at some point and show what’s going on. This book doesn’t really do that. There’s an introductory text telling the reader what has happened before the first page, but this is a comic book — I want to see what happens, not be told what happened.

From the introductory text, it seems that some very strong characterization happened in the part of the story not covered in these books. And to make it worse, this book doesn’t tell the reader (me) where to find the part of the story I want to see. What title(s) is the story in? Dammit, it’s frustrating.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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I saw Captain America #36 on the rack in the local Border’s book store. The cover image showed Cap with a gun in his hand. This is so wrong.

If you don’t know, Captain America (Steve Rogers) died in the comics world (Marvel comics) last year. It was big news at the time, and I blogged on it. I predicted he’d come back. (I don’t know what happened with the Captain America series to reset the numbering. CA was well into the hundreds when I last read it, but this is issue #36 — that’s just three years of monthly publication.)

I picked up this issue just to see what they’re doing with this new Cap, and to see if a “Captain America with a gun” was as bad as I suspected it was. The whole concept of Captain America using a gun is completely antithetical to the character of Cap. Steve Rogers didn’t use a gun — he didn’t kill.

The new Captain America is James “Bucky” Barnes, the former young sidekick of Cap back in WWII. I know very little about James/Bucky because he was long “dead” before I picked up on Cap comics back in the mid 80s, and he hadn’t “come back” until long after I stopped regularly reading Cap comics in the late 90s.

New Cap is not as good a fighter as Old Cap, and he’s apparently very willing to kill his enemies. I don’t like him. In this one issue alone, New Cap shoots three bad guys (but none of them die). Now, this is not the first time someone with less morals (or mental stability) wore the Captain America uniform, so I’m not going to get all up in arms about this current situation — I just won’t buy another issue with this Cap’n A. This is not my style of Captain America.

I predicted (with no particular wisdom) that Cap would come back. The uniform has come back, but I don’t count that as fulfilling my prediction. The last page of this issue shows what looks like Steve Rogers in some kind of stasis chamber. This starts the fulfilling of my prediction. When Steve Rogers is wearing the red, white, and blue suit again, I’ll say, “Captain America is back.”

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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I had heard a few comments referring to World War Hulk (WWH) a couple months ago, and it sounded really interesting. I looked into the Marvel comics event to learn the set up: who did what, why, how, and such. I learned what happened to the Hulk to make him go to “war”:

Fearing the threat he posed to humanity, Earth’s most powerful heroes shot Hulk into space.

Landing on a faraway planet, Hulk became an Emperor and fell in love.

But the shuttle that sent Hulk away from Earth exploded, killing millions of people, including Hulk’s queen and the baby growing inside her.

Filled with rage, Hulk and his Warbound warriors have set coure for Earth, to bring revenge upon those he holds responsible for destroying his world.

I picked up what I think is the first Incredible Hulk issue concerning WWH, #106, and read it. Hulk is not actually in this issue; this issue is about She-Hulk and Amadeus Cho. (I’ve never before heard of this “smart kid”.)

In the opening scene of this issue, Iron Man/Tony Stark easily infects She-Hulk with some “nanobot power inhibitors” that removes her big, green power. They reduce her to normal. My very first thought at reading this was, “Why didn’t they just do that to Hulk?”

I’ve since bought a few more issues of the WWH story: a total of three Incredible Hulk (IH), and two Iron Man (IM). Trying to follow this story is reintroducing me to something I really hated back when I was regularly collecting and reading comics: storylines that flow through numerous different titles.

In IH #107, you see the Hulk engage Iron Man, but then the story cuts away. A few pages later, Hulk is apparently done fighting Iron Man; obviously Hulk won the fight, but the action is not shown in this book. There’s no mention of what to buy to see the fight—I’d love to see Hulk beat the crap out of Tony Stark.

The cover of IM #19 shows Hulk’s fist knocking the head off of Iron Man, so I figured this is the action that IH #107 skipped. Inside, they eventually get to the Iron Man/Hulk battle. (Tony’s in his Hulkbuster armor.) Iron Man injects Hulk with the nanobots he used on She-Hulk—why inject? (He didn’t inject She-Hulk; he just snapped his fingers in her face.) But apparently the nanobots didn’t work on Hulk. IM #19 ends with Hulk starting to smash the Hulkbuster armor.

So I picked up IM #20 in hopes of seeing the end of the fight. But nope. The fight is over, and Tony is a prisoner aboard Hulk’s space ship. Is the fight wrap up shown in another title? I don’t know, because there’s nothing in any of these books directing the reader where to go for the next part of the story.

This is something that at least the old multi-title crossover stories gave the reader: notes on what book to get for the next part of the story. This WWH story is frustrating. IH #108 is about Rick Jones and one of Hulk’s new Warbound buddies from space. No Hulk action.

At the back of IH #108, there’s a checklist for the “Roadmap to World War Hulk”. Thirty-seven books from May to October. It’s unfortunate that this list is given in the September issue of IH. It would have been more helpful had it been in the May issue of IH, #106.

I’m actually loosing interest in the story now, because after purchasing five books, the story I’ve seen has so many holes (not plot holes, but missing pieces of the story), and is jumping around so much, that I’ve lost focus. I’m lost as to what is happening. I really hate this kind of comics series. It’s hard enough for the casual reader to pick up a series; the publisher shouldn’t make it a scavenger hunt to follow a single story.

I’m let down, disappointed, and very frustrated. Marvel won’t be getting any more of my money for this story.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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My 6 year old has illustrated and written almost a dozen comic books. His first was a couple years ago. He used Spider-Man stickers for the characters, but he actually drew the cityscapes and the webs shooting from the sticker- Spider-Man’s hands. He then dictated the text to his mom who wrote it at the top of the pages. He has loved Spider-Man since he was about 2 years old—last year was the first year since then that he didn’t dress up as Spidey for Halloween.

Then he moved up to drawing everything, characters and all. As he’s learned to read and write some in Kindergarten, he’s been even writing his own text. By his sixth birthday, he had four or five comics to his credit.

In the past few months, he’s been interested in the Captain Underpants novels by Dav Pilkey. It’s a hilariously silly series, and he laughs out loud every time we read one of the stories—even the ones we’ve read half a dozen times. In these novels, George and Harold make comic books about Captain Underpants, and sell them in their school yard. My boy took this idea and ran with it. He’s made about six Spider-Man comics with the intention and expectation to sell them to his friends.

He draws out all the characters and scenes, colors everything, and then writes all the text. He gets me or his mom to staple the pages together for the finished product. So far, though, he hasn’t sold any of them. He’s given them all away to family members. We’ve got Spider-Man versus Electro, Spider-Man versus Doctor Octopus, Spider-Man versus Venom, Spider-Man versus robots, Superman versus Electro, and some rematch battles. His books include a cover page with the title, and the back cover with “The End.”

He’s drawn Captain America for me twice: once for a Father’s Day banner, and the image to the right for my birthday card. The birthday card shows a “bad guy” hanging from the ceiling, where Spider-Man webbed him up, and a robot knocked to the ground by Cap. (The second image to the right is from my 2 year old.)

His love of comic books came from his love of Spider-Man; he knew of Spidey before he knew anything about comic books. It was because of his obsession with Spidey that I bought him a couple comic books. I read the books myself before reading them to him, to make sure the story and images were suitable for a 3-6 year old. We’ve read them and he’s looked at them so much they’ve come apart. I’ve collected the separated pages and keep them stored in my comic collection boxes.

He’s seen my boxes of comic books, and knows I have a huge collection. He occasionally asks me when he’ll be able to read them. I’ve told him, when he can read them, he may read them. I also reserve the right to hold back on that “may” until he proves he can read them carefully. I haven’t saved these books in plastic sleeves, with cardboard backs, in long, specifically-sized boxes to let a kid (my son or not) accidentally tear or bend them. I’m a bit obsessive about taking care of books—comic books, game books, and regular reading books. (I even have a well-maintained, full set of my 1977 World Book encyclopedias that I refuse to let my wife throw out.)

So far, he’s proving that he wants to take care of books. He takes care of his personally-created comic books. It upsets him when his 2 year old brother gets a hold of them and scatters them about the house. He’s coming along nicely as an obsessive comic book geek. Makes a daddy proud.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

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