Looking at my library, I realize that I’ve been reading a lot of graphic material - call it graphic novels, collected comics, or what you will. I hadn’t really commented on these lately, so here’s a few short notes on those that spring to mind.
Let’s take out the garbage first. Fabricio lent me - and insisted I read - Wolverine: Enemy of the State. I’m going to be a kind man and just say that it’s for Wolverine fans only, but honestly, I haven’t read a single X-Men story I enjoyed since God Loves, Man Kills (the Brian Singer movies are, of course, another matter entirely).
Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers is a well told series that examines a world where superheroes are common - so common, in fact, that there’s a special unit of the police department whose duty it is to just deal with crimes involving superpowered humans. It’s got some pretty interesting characters and Bendis’ sharp writing style - a lot more evident in Goldfish or Jinx - carry them through, but by the time I got to Anarchy (volume 5) the stories had begun to repeat themselves and it was pretty clear that if Bendis had an idea of where he was going, he was just going to act like he didn’t have a clue.
On a similar vein is Bendis’ own Alias series, which is set on the Marvel universe instead of a custom-made one. Bendis’ writing in Alias is a lot tighter, the storylines more mature, and the series never has the feel that it’s just bringing on the cliffhangers just to keep us suckers buying more books.
Which, by the way, is a problem I have with Brian K. Vaughn’s Y: The Last Man. It’s got a very interesting story structure and man, does Vaughn know how to leave you wanting more. He’s a literary crack dealer and he knows it: reveling in the inevitability of the junkies coming back from more, he leaves plot threads hanging left and right just to see how long he can string us along. And by god, if it weren’t so damned entertaining, I would have stopped by now. I just wish I could convince myself that he’s going somewhere and not just aimlessly wandering.
Tomorrow: Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Scott Morse and Matt Wagner.
[...] latest chapter in the comic series Y: The Last Man - Kimono Dragons. I’d spoken of the series before, and kindly referred to it as literary crack. This latest episode doesn’t change that [...]