"Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods" DVD Review

It was two days before payday and I really couldn't afford to spend twenty bucks on an impulse purchase, but when I saw a copy of the Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods DVD on the front counter at the neighborhood comics shop, I could not just leave it lying there.  Despite having to live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next couple of days, I have no regrets about buying this movie. 

Through interviews with Grant himself and many of the writers and artists he has collaborated with the film traces Morrison's career in comics from his early days at British publication Warrior up to his recent work on Final Crisis and Batman.  Among those interviewed are many of his most important collaborators such as artists Steve Yeowell, Phil Jimenez, Jill Thompson, Richard Case and Frank Quitely; writers Mark Waid, Warren Ellis and Geoff Johns; as well as authors Tim Callahan (Grant Morrison: The Early Years) and Doug Woolk (Reading Comics), and that listing only scratches the surface of those who director Patrick Meany talks to in the movie. The filmmakers also managed to track down Morrison's childhood friend Gordy Goudie.  His recollections, combined with Morrison's candid reminiscences and anecdotes and insights from those colleagues and experts make Talking With Gods the most complete picture yet presented of  one of the most important writers of the modern age of comics.  Even with as much as I have read over the years about Morrison and his work, I still learned things about him that I hadn't previously known from watching this documentary.  For instance, I had not previously realized the extant to which his greatest work in my opinion, Flex Mentallo, incorporated elements of autobiography.  

It should go without saying that Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods is must-see TV for fans of Morrison, however it should also be seen by anyone interested at all in the medium of comics and how it has developed over the past couple of decades.  Morrison and his work, after all, have been an integral part of that development.

But, hey, don't just take my word for it, check out this clip from the film. 

No Fun: Defenders #147

It's about time for another one of those posts where I take a look at the 147th issue of a long running comic series.  Check out this earlier post for a full explanation of this madness. Today's example is from a series that barely made it to #147, The Defenders, which ended with #152.

One caveat before we proceed: While The Defenders has become one of the most fondly remembered titles and teams from Marvel's Bronze Age, this issue does not feature any of the "classic" Defenders line-up of Dr. Strange,  the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner or the Silver Surfer.  These are the characters most associated with the team and the ones who have been gathered together for subsequent reunions of the group.  The issue we're considering today, however, features the "New Defenders", a team consisting of three ex-X-men, the Beast, the Angel and Iceman, and several obscure fourth string characters such as the Gargoyle and the Valkyrie, most of whom got killed off in the final issue.

The first thing you notice about this issue is, of course, the cover.  It's actually a pretty cool cover with a slightly altered logo and a painted image of a World War II era Sgt. Nick Fury leading the team as they charge into battle against a background of a giant American flag.  It's the kind of cover that makes you want to open up the book and see what's on the inside.  If you do that, however, you'll almost instantly regret it.

This is a truly awful comic.  It fails on every level from writing to art, and it didn't even have a letters page.  To be fair, the lettering and coloring are decent. The story, bad as it is, is at least legible.

"...and Games" is actually an appropriate title for the story, since it contains no fun whatsoever.   (Actually, "Fun..." was the title of the first part of the story in the previous issue, though I doubt that issue was much fun, either.)

As to the story itself, I really can't tell you what's going on in this issue.  The Defenders, consisting mostly of a bunch of characters I don't know and aren't adequately identified or even differentiated from one another, are in Central Park fighting some villain with the silly name of Hotspur, whose evil plan isn't quite made clear, though apparently it involves mind controlling innocent civialians.  Of course, I have not read the previous issue, but I doubt that the story would make any sense even if I had.  The storytelling, both in the writing and the awful, amateurish art, is muddy and confused and the dialogue is simply awful. By the way, the people credited with creating this mess are writer Peter B. Gillis and artists Don Perlin and Art Nichols, and editor Carl Potts probably deserves a share of the blame as well. 

If this issue was typical of The Defenders back in 1985, then its no wonder it was cancelled a mere five months later.

'Tec Support: Batman Meets Zatanna (Sort Of) In Detective Comics #336

I had a great idea for commemorating DC Comics' 75th anniversary.  I would spotlight selected issues of their longest running title and the comic from which the company takes its name: Detective Comics.  Unfortunately, DC's 75th anniversary was last year and I just had that idea about a week ago.  Still, that's really no reason to let a semi-decent idea go to waste, is it?  Of course not.  Thus, I'm kicking off my new feature "'Tec Support" with a look at the Batman story in Detective Comics #336, "Batman's Bewitched Nightmare",  written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Kane and Joe Giella, which was reprinted back in 2004 in the trade paperback collection Zatanna's Search, re-presenting the earliest appearances of DC's premier sorceress. 
In the Batman story, the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder are in pursuit of a gang of bank robbers who are under the seemingly magical protection of an old woman who appears to be a witch.  She even flies around Gotham on a broom.  The witch, in turn, is an agent of Batman's mysterious foe who calls himself the Outsider.  The Outsider would later be revealed to be Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred, who had been killed off when editor Julius Schwartz took over the Bat titles and brought back to life as the Outsider with weird powers and a grudge against his former friend and employer.

A couple of years later, in Justice League of America #51, Zatanna finally locates her missing father Zatara with the help of magically created duplicates of all the super-heroes she'd encountered during the course of her quest: Hawkman, the Atom, Green Lantern, the Elongated Man and Batman.  When Zatanna gathers the real heroes together to tell them about her adventure, Batman points out that, as far as he knows, he's never met Zatanna before.  She then reveals that the witch he'd encountered earlier had been her in disguise and controlled by the Outsider.
One thing I wondered when I read Zatanna's Search is whether Gardner Fox originally intended the Detective Comics story to be part of the Zatanna story line when he wrote it, or if he retconned it in when he wrote the JLA story in order to get Batman into that story.  To me, the latter scenario seems more likely.
First of all, there's absolutely nothing in the earlier story to suggest that the witch is Zatanna.  In fact, there are quite a few things in the story that argue against it being her.  For one thing, the witch does not speak her spells backward, which is the trademark of the Zatara family.  Furthermore, the story seems to establish that the witch is not a real magical being at all, but that her seemingly magical powers come from her special broom given to her by the Outsider.

Secondly, the JLA issue was published in 1967 when ABC's Batman TV series with Adam West was the most popular show on the tube.  DC probably wanted to get as much Batman product out as possible and the idea of putting out an issue of JLA without Batman in it must have been unthinkable.  Note also the prominence of Batman on the cover and the blurb which exaggerates his role in the story.
"Batman's Bewitched Nightmare", since it includes the Outsider, also represents another compromise Fox was forced to make because of the TV show.  Since the show's producers were going to use Alfred, Fox was instructed to bring the character back.  Thus, he abandoned his original plans for the identity of the Outsider, which, as far as I know, remain unknown to this day, and used him as the vehicle for Alfred's resurrection. 

On the Cost of Comics

DC Comics seems to be pretty pleased with themselves recently.  

I'd wager that if you've been to a comics shop or visited a comics news site in the past few weeks, you've seen this image:

The company has been going to great pains to make sure we know how much they care about us and how they're showing it by pricing all their regular books at $2.99 across the board.  Honestly, I'm not all that impressed.

For one thing, all of the DC books I buy are already $2.99.  Doom Patrol was more expensive for the first few issues, but DC dropped the price when they dumped the Metal Men back up stories after #7.  I didn't really mind the extra buck in that case, because the Metal Men stories were worth it.  I hope we get to see more Giffen/DeMatteis Metal Men stories someday.

Anyway, the second reason I'm not all that impressed with DC "Drawing the Line at $2.99" is, and here I risk sounding like the grumpy aging fanboy that I am, I can remember when new comics cost a quarter.

I can't help thinking what my dad would think about the cost of comics these days.  I remember one time when I was a kid and he gave me a dollar to buy some comics, and was a little angry at me when he found out that I spent the whole dollar on just one comic book.  That book was an issue of Adventure Comics, which had just converted to DC's Dollar Comic format. 

Of course, back then, you got a hell of a lot of comic book for a buck.  When DC first began the Dollar Comic program, they were  64 page books with no ads.  In addition to adventures of some of my favorite characters such as Green Lantern, the Elongated Man and Deadman, that issue of Adventure was also my first exposure to the New Gods.  Although this was long after Kirby had moved on from the feature, I could still see something special in the concept.

Besides, I don't really buy that many new comics anyway.  Most of the comics I've bought in the last couple of years have been 70s and 80s back issues from bargain boxes.  I think someday soon I'm going to have to track down another copy of that old Adventure Comics.   

Deja Booster

In accordance of with long established standards of Internet etiquette, I am obligated to begin this discussion of Booster Gold #40 with a

***!SPOILER ALERT!! ***

as I intend to discuss the very last panel of the story. So, if you are at all  interested in  reading the issue, I suggest that you do so before going any further.  If you're not, well, I've really got to ask why you're reading this post in the first place.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business, shall we?

This issue is, as the old cliche would have it, a "perfect jumping on point for new readers." Which makes sense, as DC's month long "iconic" cover theme gimmick might actually attract one or two rapid completists who don't normally pick the book up and they might even bother to read it before they slab it.  The bulk of "The Life and Times of Michael Jon Carter" is taken up, as you can probably infer from the title, by a retelling of Booster Gold's origin. 

Back in #38, Booster traveled back to World War II and teamed with his once and future Justice League teammate General Glory to defeat evil Nazi scientist Dr. Nishtikeit. At the end of that adventure, an exploding time machine propelled Nishtikeit forward in time to about ten years ago and, apparently, made his head glow green.  He has spent the last decade building up a worldwide criminal empire and now he is ready to take his revenge upon Booster Gold. In order to learn as much as he can about his foe, Nishtikeit has his agents hack into Rip Hunter's computers.  They manage to get the records of Booster's past up until the time he joins the League before Hunter's security kicks in and destroys the invading computer worm. 

Later, Booster returns to Rip Hunter's lab and Rip tells him about the information theft.  Booster's a bit humiliated that someone has delved into his past and seen what a jerk he was back then.  Rip reassures him that it doesn't matter, because he's not that guy anymore, and has become the hero that he once only played at being.  That fact, Rip continues, makes what he has to do next that much harder.  Reminding Booster that he gained his powers through stealing from the Space Museum, Rip zaps him with a fancy-schmancy sci-fi ray gun and declares "--You're under arrest---and your trial begins immediately-- IN THE 25TH CENTURY!"

Now it didn't bug me that Rip was acting oddly or out of character, as I'm sure there's a reason for it which we'll learn in future issues.  My first thought on reading that panel was "Haven't they done this before?"  I stopped buying the first Booster Gold series on a regular basis after the origin story and fight/team-up with Superman in #'s 6 and 7.  However, I was sort of vaguely aware of a later storyline in which Booster returned to the future to answer for his crimes.

As it happens, I found those very issues, along with a bunch more from the first series, for two bits apiece at Half-Price Books.  Now that I've read all but three issues of Booster Gold Volume One, I feel pretty secure in expressing the opinion that the return to the 25th century storyline in #'s 13-15 were the best issues of that series.  So, do we really need to rehash that story?

Of course, this story will not just be a regurgitation of that earlier story, as I'm sure that revenge seeking Nazi scientist with the glowing green head will be involved and probably has something to do with Rip's odd behavior.

Besides, I realized as I thought about it that the plot of this book isn't really why I read it, or any book by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis for that matter.  I read their books for the character interaction, the dialogue, and the humor.  Booster Gold might not be their finest work, but it still has all those elements that make me love the Giffen/DeMatties team.

Generation Lost: Taking A "Wait and See" Approach

You may have noticed that I haven't written anything about Justice League: Generation Lost for a few weeks now.  The reason is not that I'm afraid of the negative comments that have greeted past reviews of the series.  Although, as I've said before, it seems as if I just can't win when reviewing this book.  Whether I love an issue or hate it, there's inevitably someone who vehemently and vociferously disagrees with my point of view.  Still, positive or negative, I welcome all comments.

No, the reason I haven't written about JL:GL recently is that I'm no longer reading it.  Which is not to say that I've stopped buying it.  I was beginning to get a little frustrated with the slow pace of the story from issue to issue, and considered dropping the book altogether.  However, I'm still holding out hope that the series will read much better as a completed work, and it was a bit late in the game to start waiting for the trade paperback collection.  So, I will be buying #18 today.  Then I'll throw it in a box for at least four months.

After I buy #26, I'll sit down and read, and hopefully enjoy, the whole thing over the course of a weekend.  I will, of course, give you my final thoughts on the story afterward.

Gonna See My Smilin' Face On The Cover of the Doom Patrol

As you've perused the racks of new releases at your local comic book shop over the past couple of weeks, you've probably noticed that DC is in the midst of one its line wide cover theme months. The covers of all DC Universe titles this month feature images that, as Ian Satler wrote in the "DC Nation" column last month, "...highlight the iconic nature of each character", or group, as the case may be.   Pictured here is the cover of the most recent issue of Doom Patrol, featuring core Patrol members Robotman, Elasti-Girl and Negative Man joined by....Bumblebee?

Bumblebee?  Seriously?

And she's even shown larger than Larry or Rita, though she's supposed to be only about six inches tall.

Apparently, she's a member of the team, and she has been part of the cast of this current series since the first issue, but, to be frank, she hasn't really done much.  I suppose its possible that writer Keith Giffen has plans  for her down the line, but so far she's really more of a minor supporting character than a functioning member of the team. 

If the editors wanted to feature someone besides the three original DP members on this "iconic" cover, how about Ambush Bug?  Since he showed up in the book, the Bug has contributed more to the team than Bumblebee has.  He has used his teleportation powers to take the team to where the action is and provided several of the series' funniest moments to date. In fact, he's been far funnier in Doom Patrol than he was in the entirety of his most recent mini-series.  I, for one, hope he sticks with the team for a while more.

And maybe next time DC does one of these cover stunts, Irwin Schwab will get the spotlight he deserves.