Green Lantern - Animated!

So while that pair of rampaging children Geoff Johns and Jim Lee have been gleefully smashing every last historic superhero icon DC owns, Bruce Timm and company have been busy putting together what may be the definitive statement on Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern mythos.  The irony of that, given the extent to which Johns seems to think he both created and owns the very idea of the Green Lantern Corps (as well as the sheer number of ideas and characters here that were originally his), is both poignant and exquisite.

But more to the point:  based just on the pilot episode, Timm's Green Lantern: The Animated Series is better than just about any other Green Lantern incarnation yet -- and that includes any of the recent comics and the movie (which I liked despite the fact that it's got Johns's fingerprints all over it).  Notable for being the first of Timm's animated series to be entirely computer-animated, it's not just visually stunning, though that is certainly the first thing we notice about it:  the simple use of luminescent colors, the elegantly abstract background design, the expert application of texture and shadow, the smooth and buoyant movement (watching Hal Jordan chasing a train in an early sequence is downright exhilarating), and especially the expressive character animation, which is of course wedded to the outstanding vocal performances of Josh Keaton as Hal Jordan, Kevin Michael Richardson as Kilowog, Grey DeLisle as the artificially intelligent and Green Lantern powered starship Aya, Jennifer Hale as Carol Ferris, Ian Abercrombie as sympathetic Guardian Ganthet, Brian George as the more antagonistic Guardian Appa Ali Apsa, Susanne Blakeslee as Guardian Sayd, Jason Spisak as the ambivalent Red Lantern Razer, Tom Kenny as the unctuous Red Lantern Zilius Zox, Jonathan Adams as Atrocitus (who is no Sinestro, but whose name similarly tells us everything we need to know about him and who is nonetheless a fine villain), and Kurtwood Smith as Frontier Lantern Shyir Rev.

Having given us a memorably nuanced John Stewart over four seasons of Justice League, Timm's focus in this series is, appropriately, on original Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan.  Hal has taken more than his share of lumps over the last few years so it's worth pointing out that his portrayal here is as close as anyone's come lately to capturing the essence of this iconic character -- the singular exception being Darwyn Cooke in DC: The New Frontier, which gave us a pitch-perfect Hal by way of The Right Stuff.  That's the Hal we get here:  impatient, brash, overconfident, even cocky (though never arrogant), but also tough, witty, loyal, gentle, noble, and completely charming -- in other words, the perfect Space Age superhero.  And he's well-matched in a truly lovable Kilowog, a quietly authoritative Ganthet, and a Carol Ferris who is both commanding and feminine.  And lest I make it sound as though it's all introspection and character exploration, I can assure you that there's plenty of action -- the early sequence in which Hal and Kilowog rush to Shyir Rev's rescue and face off for the first time against the Red Lanterns, with its rousing music and awesome climax (which features what is probably the funniest and most thrilling use ever of the Green Lantern oath), is better than anything in the Green Lantern movie from last summer.  The series seems clearly designed for a mostly adult audience -- and not just because of its cartoon violence, which includes casual threats of genocide.  The characters and conflicts are treated with a complexity and maturity that should not be surprising to anyone familiar with Timm's Batman, Superman, or Justice League animated series.  Indeed, watching Green Lantern: The Animated Series reminds us of why Timm's earlier efforts continue to be seen by many of us as definitive treatments of their respective mythologies.  This is an outstanding beginning for what promises to be one of the best of the DC animated shows.
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(These images were, as usual, skanked from all over the Web....)

 

 

(This last one makes for a great desktop wallpaper....)

Have a Marvel(ous) New Year!

Happy New Year (1945!) from Mac Raboy and Captain Marvel Jr.!

The Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2010 - The Final Four

I suppose this is all somewhat anticlimactic at this point -- I've managed to stretch this Top Ten list over the entire year, so that now while everybody else is taking stock of the best of 2011 (no, I'm NOT going there), I'm still lagging a year behind.  Back in June, you probably don't remember, I joked about trying to finish this countdown before 2011 ends.  December seemed a long way off back then, and now here it is practically New Year's Eve and I still have four titles left.  Chalk it up to a dissertation that I somehow need to finish in the coming year.  In any event, here, just barely under the wire, they finally are.

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#4 -- Batman and Robin:  Batman Reborn, by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, and Philip Tan (DC).  I had mixed feelings about Grant Morrison's newest take on the Batman mythology, with Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin; but I have to admit that the first story arc -- by Morrison and Frank Quitely -- mostly won me over.  And it is largely that arc to which this entry refers -- the volume itself collects the first story by Morrison and Quitely, along with the second story by Morrison and Philip Tan.  To be brutally honest, without Quitely drawing (and after the first three issues he settled into simply drawing the covers and left the interiors to other, less accomplished, artists), I rapidly lost interest.  The first arc, though, established the wittily reversed tone of the series (cheerful, optimistic Caped Crusader and grim, humorless Boy Wonder); Morrison himself described it as "an acid-tinged modernization of the sixties TV show as if directed by David Lynch" (Supergods, page 391 -- and if you still haven't read THAT marvelous book, get thee to your nearest library or bookstore toot sweet).  I was always more interested in Frank Quitely, quite frankly, than in the story (see what I did there?) -- the primary villain of the first story arc, Professor Pyg, was a bit too outré even for my taste, though I do admit he was a clever and appropriate addition to the Batman rogue's gallery -- Morrison demonstrated yet again that he understands these characters better than just about anyone else by deriving aerialist Dick Grayson's Batman villains from the world of the circus and the sideshow.  And that privileged little snot Damian Wayne continued to be a consistently interesting -- if constantly irritating -- addition to the Batman mythos, as Grayson proved a better mentor and father-figure than the absent Bruce.  But for me what made the first three issues of this series truly great was Quitely's art, looking more than ever like a mad love-child of Winsor McCay and Jean "Moebius" Giraud, and exemplified by this gorgeous image of Dick and Alfred:

It represents everything I loved about the first three issues at least, and that first story alone justifies its inclusion as number 4 on this list.

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#3 -- The Marvels Project, by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting (Marvel).  Turning the idea behind Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross's classic Marvels into an 8-issue miniseries to celebrate Marvel's 70th anniversary, Brubaker and Epting's Marvels Project was a microscopic exploration of the creation of what would come to be known as the Marvel universe, distinguished by Brubaker's usual attention to character nuance and by Epting's classically naturalistic approach to the art, which dazzlingly recalls the best work of such comics luminaries as Mac Raboy, Alex Raymond, Frank Frazetta, Hal Foster, and especially Al Williamson.  The focus throughout was primarily on one of Timely/Marvel's first superheroes, the original, now mostly forgotten Angel, who, like Daily Bugle photographer Phil Sheldon in the original Marvels, provides the eyes through which we witness the births of the earliest Marvel heroes, including the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, and Captain America.  Epting's realism is, as always, the perfect complement for Brubaker's writing, which is heavy on plot and character.  It's a deeply cinematic sort of storytelling, and it belongs in the same class as the original Marvels, James Robinson and Paul Smith's The Golden Age, and Darwyn Cooke's DC:  The New Frontier -- extremely influential works that lovingly situate classic comic heroes within a faithfully detailed historical context.

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 #2 -- Thor:  Tales of Asgard, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (Marvel).  I fear this title is another cheat, as it is technically a compilation of stories twice reprinted, originally as backup tales in the Lee/Kirby Thor beginning in 1962, then again as Tales of Asgard starting in 2009, with completely new coloring by Matt Milla.  Nonetheless, I have no doubt that this is one of the best comics of any kind to appear in 2010, and the compilation is a beautiful deluxe hardcover with lots of cool extras (including the recolored first-ever Thor story from Journey into Mystery #83, maps and character profiles from the old Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, alternate covers from the reprint run, and a huge fold-out poster of all of Olivier Coipel's original covers tipped in at the back -- see below).  As you might expect, Lee's writing is delightfully hyperbolic and overwrought, and indeed I would have been disappointed if it had been otherwise; Stan Lee belongs in the great tradition of American huckster showmen going all the way back to P. T. Barnum and Mark Twain.  It's also worth mentioning that he knows his Norse mythology.  Meanwhile, to see Kirby's depictions of Asgard with its Viking hero-gods and voluptuous enchantresses and awesome creatures is to long for the Tolkien adaptation he never gave us.  It's true that these stories are nearly fifty years old, but like the great mythic figures they depict they are, in the end, utterly timeless.  Only Kirby's Fourth World stories, Walt Simonson's classic Thor run, and Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman have ever gotten as close to the purest, most primal sources of superhero mythology.

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#1 --  The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects, by Mike Mignola (Dark Horse).  Mike Mignola is, simply put, a mad genius, and this delirious little collection of oddities is without a doubt my favorite book of his.  Since it’s a series of short stories I suppose it’s stretching the definition a bit calling this book a graphic novel, but I couldn't care less.  Mignola at his best is better than almost anyone else working today, and these stories represent his art in its purest form.  Obviously the main attraction here is the darkly hilarious title story (Emperor Zombie!  Mr. Groin!  Gung the Magnificent!  The Shamballah Turnip!  Three Horrible Old Women and a Monkey!), which is a reprint (it won an Eisner in 2003 and in 2006 was made into a brilliant but abortive animated pilot for a possible TV series featuring the voices of Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, and Patton Oswalt), but everything else here is just as amazing.  Another story, the Eisner-winning "The Magician and the Snake," Mignola wrote in collaboration with his (then) seven-year-old daughter Katie, and it is as simple and affecting as any fairy tale.  My personal favorites are "The Witch and Her Soul," which introduces a pair of wooden homunculi called Hankel and Manx and pits them against the Devil himself, and "The Prisoner of Mars," a delightful blend of H. G. Wells and H. P. Lovecraft featuring Doctor Snap, a minor character first seen in "The Amazing Screw-On Head."  In fact, one of the main pleasures of this volume is the way Mignola ties each of the stories together -- images echo from story to story, plot points introduced in one story often crop up as visual allusions in another, or a minor character seen or referenced in an early story will become the focus of a later one -- "Abu Gung and the Beanstalk," for example, is a retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk" which also manages to be an early adventure of Gung the Magnificent from "The Amazing Screw-On Head," while Doctor Snap tells his tale of the Prisoner of Mars from a tavern called the Magician and the Snake.  Mignola's art is... well, it's Mignola's, and there can be only one.  He has many imitators, but only he is Mignola.  There were flashier publications in 2010, stories that were bigger, more epic, more popular.  But I would argue that none of them was as good as this little gem from the vast alternate universe that is the mind of Mike Mignola.

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Art by Frank Quitely, from Batman and Robin:  Batman Reborn

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Art by Steve Epting, from The Marvels Project

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Art by Jack Kirby, from Thor:  Tales of Asgard (recoloring by Matt Milla beside the original colors).

 

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Art by Mike Mignola, from The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects

Superkiss

From Action Comics #306 - November 1963
Written by Robert Bernstein, Penciled/Inked by Al Plastino

How the time gets away!  I'll be finishing up my countdown of, yes, LAST year's best graphic novels in the next day or so.  I also have a post planned on the new Green Lantern: The Animated Series.  This is what I get for thinking I can work on my dissertation AND keep this blog at the same time....

Barsoom!

It seems plausible at least that Edgar Rice Burroughs's first great character -- John Carter of Mars -- was one of the many prototypes for Superman.  As a longtime John Carter fan (I always liked the Barsoom stories much more than, say, Tarzan), I was initially quite skeptical about the Disney feature coming out in March, but as each new bit of promotional material is released I find myself increasingly won over.  I am now officially looking forward to it.