I thought the Gotham City Sirens series looked silly when DC Comics announced it. They'd canceled the long-running Catwoman series, which in its heyday was an astoundingly good crime noir series that transformed Selina Kyle from dismissible sex symbol to complex anti-hero. Consider that the Catwoman series prior to the Ed Brubaker incarnation sent Selina to women's prison so as to present a gratuitous shower fight, with steam dutifully covering everyone's naughty parts; Brubaker's stories, instead, dealt with alcoholism, guilt, and a grittier Gotham City than we'd seen before even in the Batman titles.

I'd long since stopped reading the previous Catwoman series before the women's prison storyline came around, but I knew that spelled the death knell of that book. There's something that seems to me rather tone-deaf about these kinds of "bad girl" books, a category in which I initially lumped Gotham City Sirens.

Despite the stereotype that comic book fans are male loners at home with their comic books while their peers are out on dates, we know that comic books fans are instead regular people, often adults, of both genders with social lives and a variety of interests. That is, art can be titillating, and so can comics, but when faced with something so ham-handed as Catwoman fighting naked women in the shower, or Hawkgirl wearing lingerie underneath her costume in The Maw, I wonder if the creators believe their audience to be that comic book fan stereotype. At times comics companies seem to think that books can survive on sexual innuendos that might titillate only the most basic of their readership, and I'm skeptical whether that strategy ever actually works.

But whereas indeed Gotham City Sirens has a naked Poison Ivy, a half-naked Zatanna, and for some reason Catwoman no longer ever seems to zip up her costume above her breasts, it also has one other aspect to sell it as more than just a "bad girl" book: writer Paul Dini.

[Contains spoilers]

We know from his years of work on animated Batman series that Paul Dini loves these characters. If Dini's depiction of Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn, the so-called Sirens, is prurient, then it's prurient with the best of intentions, and he loves them for their minds as well as their bodies.

What I quickly found in Union is that this book is not Chuck Dixon or Gail Simone's Birds of Prey, nor is it Ed Brubaker's Catwoman. The twists in the story aren't terribly complex, nor is there much really gripping drama nor noir moodiness; in fact, the book has an overall air of comedic zaniness to it. I'd describe Sirens as a funny book about Batman's villains, perhaps unfortunately named since the characters in question include the Riddler and the Joker in addition to the three women. When one considers that Arkham Reborn is also a book about Batman's villains, positing this book as a comedy seems an unlikely fit; in essence, however, I'd say Sirens is about as close to the madcap tone Paul Dini achieved in some of his best Batman: The Animated Series episodes as we've seen so far in the DC Universe.

Union takes a while to get started. The purposefully-ridiculous villain that brings the Sirens together is perhaps a bit too silly. Guillem March's art, which is beautiful toward the end of the book, is too distorted here, and makes the whole first chapter feel hastily done. Then immediately Ivy and Harley turn on Catwoman to try to learn Batman's identity; then immediately after that, Hush captures Harley, and Catwoman and Ivy have to save her. It's all very obviously in the service of bringing the characters together, and in that way seems forced and predictable. Even the Sirens' initial fight with the Joker fails to distinguish itself from what we've seen before.

And then Paul Dini reveals the Joker in question as Gaggy Gagsworth.

It's not so much that I give Paul Dini credit for remembering and re-using a sidekick of the Joker who only appeared once at least fifty years ago, as much as how compelling Dini makes Gagsworth in this book's sixth chapter. The Joker is not the antithesis of Batman necessarily, but Gaggy turns out to be an altered version of Robin Dick Grayson, a circus performer who might've had a good life if the Flying Graysons hadn't replaced him in the circus, and then if the Joker hadn't later outgrown him. The irony is thick here in that Gaggy disguises himself as the Joker just as Dick has now taken on the cowl of Batman; even more moving is the way in which the Joker seems to have "put away childish things" by disowning his sidekick (after the death of Jason Todd, maybe?), while Batman's now working with Robin number four.

The book's concluding chapter is a single-issue story where the Sirens spend the holidays apart, and Dini steals the show with his depiction of the family we never knew Harley Quinn had. In a New York-style tenement building, Harley's mother takes care of Harley's lazy, no-good brother and his two kids. Like Oprah, perhaps, one never imagined Harley even had a mother, and then even more amazing is just how normal Harley and her mother's relationship is. Next, Harley visits her father, a con artist in prison, and Dini and March tell more about Harley in one panel than in years of comics -- a panel in whicih Harley's father displays a smile that's not exactly, but very much like, the ever-present smile of the Joker.

Gotham City Sirens: Union works, ultimately, when it's not trying to do too much -- throw the Sirens together, give them a whole bunch of villains to beat, pit them against one another. Rather, the single issue profiles -- of Gaggy, of Harley, writer Scott Lobdell on Riddler -- make this book, giving us unexpected insights into Batman's foes. I wouldn't necessarily put Gotham City Sirens at the top of my "to read" list, but the thought that Dini puts into these stories, especially at the end, satisfied my misgivings about what this book could have been.

[Contains full and variant covers. Printed on glossy paper.]

Timeline updates and more coming this week -- stay tuned!

Number 904


Big Pappy and the rowboat fender-bender


Sometime in the mid 1950s my father, Big Pappy, took us for a week's vacation at a lake. One morning after we'd fished from a bridge, Big Pappy took us for a rowboat ride. He wasn't paying enough attention and bumped into another rowboat, which caused quite a loud discussion between him and the other rowboat pilot. I hadn't thought of that in years, but that's what I was reminded of when I read "City Park" by the team of writer Fred Toole and artist Al Wiseman in Dennis The Menace #18, 1956. I bought it in California last October and it gave me a flash from the real-life past. Art imitating life.

Speaking of art, Dennis creator Hank Ketcham drew the cover, which ties in with the story.

We've had some other stories by the Toole-Wiseman artistic team, and you can find them by clicking on "Al Wiseman" in the labels below. For this post I've included a non-Dennis story by the team, "Screamy Mimi."














  
Over at Girl-Wonder, there's a final piece of mine on the matter of sexism in 2000ad, in which I explain why it's a subject that has finally defeated me. There's a limit to how long a well-meaning head can be uselessly slammed into a particularly solid brick wall, and my head's reached that limit, it really has.

So, why not pop over to Girl-Wonder and to the words of a perplexed and somewhat thoroughly disappointed man responding to a month of weeklies in which, yet again, women are largely defined by their bodies, their sexual pasts, and/or their capacity to be an angst-inspiring hostage? The link is placed in the box immediately to your right and just up an inch or so, under the label of post number 3, and you'd be very welcome to click upon it, I do assure you. (Alternatively, and while I'm working out how to add a hyperlink, you might want to cut'n'paste http://girl-wonder.org/gwog/2011/02/outthere-no-3-on-2000ad-late-januaryfebruary-2011  :))             


Next time, a final look at the Paul Cornell/Gail Simone "Action Comics/Secret Six" crossover. Or, at least, I fully expect that part 4 of 3 will be the last piece, although I have been wrong about such matters before, to say the very least ...

Number 903


"I've just seen another Face..."


Friday's Face posting segues into today's story, "The Face," drawn by Steve Ditko, which appeared in Tales Of Suspense #26, in 1961. I downloaded the scans of the original art some years ago from Heritage Auctions, then encountered the story recently when I found it reprinted in Fear #8 from 1972.

I'm posting both so you can look at a really well-designed story without color, then with. The art is not packed with details. Ditko's minimalist design choices might have had more to do with how much work was on his schedule, but I find it exceptionally attractive. I also think the full-page splash is a classic.










When DC Comics announced an Absolute Identity Crisis collection last week, I couldn't help but ask, where's our Absolute Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War?

Well, we're not quite there yet, but I'm thrilled -- as DC's new collection solicitations start rolling out -- to see a single $30 paperback volume collecting the entire Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War saga.

That this book is paperback is a little offputting -- I, for one, am not about to ditch my hardcovers for a paperback -- but it's probably necessary for both size and cost reasons, and to market as an easy buy for Green Lantern movie fans. What pleases me about this is that it shows DC is getting the fans' message that we don't like these multi-volume, flip-around-to-read collections; here's everything all at once, hopefully with the Tales of the Sinestro Corps War interspersed.

And not that it's a big surprise, but the Green Lantern train has most definitely left the station: DC already has a late 2011 release date for collecting the Green Lantern: The Movie prequels.

Trend to watch: The paperback editions of the Gotham Central omnibus volumes seems not to have been a fluke; October sees a paperback of the first deluxe JLA volume, with the other three certainly to follow. Makes one wonder if the Starman omnibuses are coming in paperback, too.

Speaking of hardcovers, early reports show Superman/Batman: Sorcerer Kings in hardcover -- returning that series to hardcover after a paperback deviation for Superman/Batman: Big Noise. I'm going to be annoyed if it turns out some of this series is going back and forth between paperback and hardcover without the equal volumes of each; not so great for the shelves.

Quick shots: The Spy vs. Spy Omnibus seems long overdue; has Warner Brothers ever released a Spy vs. Spy collection before? Also, I'd be pleased if Showcase Presents All Star Comics collects the 1970s series that leads into the new Infinity Inc. collections.

It also looks like JSA All-Stars gets another collection despite the series's cancellation with The Puzzle Men; this gives we Doom Patrol and REBELS fans that we'll see final collections of those as well. Series-wise, there's also Titans: Family Reunion and Zatanna: Shades of the Past in the offing.

Still, the most exciting thing for me remains the complete Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War collection. It's no Legion Lost or Showcase Presents Trial of the Flash, but the season is still early ... stay tuned!

Number 902


"I've just seen a Face,
I can't forget the time or place..."


I've gone on record a couple of times saying I think the Face had a pretty stupid schtick. He wore a suit and his costume was a green mask which wouldn't scare a 6-year-old. Artist Mart Bailey wanted us to believe he could scare crooks and the whole Japanese army, until the character gave up the mask after World War II and appeared in his civilian identity as Tony Trent.

Apparently, from notes I've gotten from a couple of my readers when I've shown the Face, they forgive the Face for wearing a funny-looking mask, and I have been gently chided for my complaint. After all, this is only a comic book character. I have to agree with that. But it also has to do with driving down the freeway just before last Halloween and becoming aware of a car in the next lane pacing me. When I looked over the passenger was looking at me; he was wearing an old man mask, and it startled the bejabbers outta me.



I maintained my composure and stayed on the road. I turned, outwardly calm, back to my driving. I did not want the young whippersnapper in the mask to know I needed to change my underwear.

So I guess the Face's mask would scare someone, and now I know it would be most likely me.

This is the final posting from Sparky Watts #1, 1942.










7.

There's a great deal that I might add in this part of our chat about the recent crossover between "Action Comics" and "Secret Six" on the matter of how both Ms Simone and Mr Cornell add depth and detail to their recognisably modern-era, fast-moving scripts. And having been a teacher for almost twenty years, I certainly do find difficult not to fill up these pieces with every potentially relevant grain of information I can, as if some imaginary student might suffer an exam catastrophe because I haven't made my notes as comprehensive as possible. But that's a particularly bad habit here, since I'm not approaching a subject I know relatively well, such as that relevant to a specific exam syllabus, but rather using the opportunity of writing a blog to try to gleam some small measure of insight into the business of how thoroughly entertaining comic books are created. What's more, I do have to constantly remind myself that I've discussed a great deal of the information that's relevant to matter at hand elsewhere. For if we're talking of how Mr Cornell and Ms Simone succeed in crafting comics which use a great many of the more contemporary narrative tools while ensuring that their books are far more than


three minute reads, then that's something that's already been repeatedly touched upon in pieces on this blog for much of the past year. And so, for example, we've already talked about how Ms Simone might have politically informed her work, as when we were recently discussing "Welcome To Tranquility", and of how Mr Cornell might have done the same, while engaging last year with his short story "Secret Identity" and his work on Captain Britain and MI:13. To repeat such points would at best be redundant and, at worst, apparently obsequious, duplicating often admiring statements long ago expressed in what would most probably read as an act of utter Uriah Heepism.  So,  if I fail to once again mention, for example, any detail of how Ms Simone so deftly uses continuity to make her books more substantial and entertaining in that which I've written below, it isn't because I've somehow come to the conclusion that her most recent work lacks any such quality, but rather because I've written at length on the subject before, and especially in connection with her use of the characters of Catman and Deadshot.

But the matter of how Mr Cornell uses continuity, or rather, how he uses history, whether from the real or a host of imaginary worlds, isn't something that I've had the chance to talk about previously, and so that's the topic that I'd like to concentrate upon for the remainder of today's piece.

 8.

"Intertextuality" is an ugly if useful word that gets all-too casually and imprecisely banded around in academia, and I doubt I'd ever have come across the term if I hadn't found myself struggling to deliver a few lessons of Media Studies a week for some three years in the late Nineties. For anyone who's never come across this brute of a mark-earner before, it's used in its broadest sense to refer to the way that creators use other people's work to add meaning to their own. For decades, the writers and artists of superhero books have tended to put to use the contents of other comics to achieve this, mirroring other creator's work, adapting other creator's plots, and generally relying on the ever-proliferating mass of continuity, of a common and narrow store of comicbook memories, to encourage the audience to perceive complexity and value in what's tended to be rather familiar fare.


It's quite unavoidable, of course, that such a process should occur in any genre and in any medium, and it's often an incredibly productive business. But when a genre such as that of these marvellously absurd superheroes gets into a longstanding habit of constantly referencing itself and relatively little else, it runs the risk of becoming creatively inbred and functionally deformed, if not ultimately sterile. A thirtieth Galactus story in which he threatens to gobble up the Earth again, which constantly draws off the content of the preceding twenty-nine epics? Yet another grimy, cynical twilight of the superheroes tale, re-using the same familiar mashed-up tenth generation "homages" of Watchman and Dark Knight, produced with the expectation that it'll feel apocalyptically important because those seminal works did? Comic books informed solely by even the best of their tradition don't become more powerful, of course, but far weaker, endlessly rolling out less and less distinct uncreative photo-copies of the surface rather than the soul of the past's great work.


But Mr Cornell is self-evidently part of the ranks of those writers who not only want to broaden the inspirational gene-pool of the genre, but who can't help themselves in doing so. There's something endlessly cheering about his utter unwillingness to consider producing thin, self-referencing fare which exists in sterile isolation from all that verdant stuff that's there for the shaping in the world outside of the Big Two's un-mainstream. And just as we can note his deliberate intent to master the modern-era form of scripting from his work on the first issue of "Wisdom" onwards, we can also follow his enthusiasm for using a mass of material from beyond the world of costumed crime-fighters to add something distinctive and invigorating to the mix. At its most explicit, as in "Fantastic Four; True Story", where the reader is presented with a host of characters often casually stigmatised with the utterly defeating label of "classic literature", Cornell simply refuses to suppress his conviction that the books he's referring to are self-evidantly exceptionally good fun


In "Black Widow: Deadly Origin", for example, we find allusions to, and scenes inspired by the narrative conventions of, 007, Bourne and Mission Impossible. ("I'm going to have my collected James Bond themes on all the time while writing it." he told CBR in 2009.) But at the same time, we're also presented in the same book with cameos of Logan, Bucky Barnes, and The Red Guardian matched with specific moments in the history of the USSR and its empire. And this is one of the aspects of Mr Cornell's writing that's most interesting and important where this genre is concerned, in that Mr Cornell's not in any way snotty or snobbish or dismissive about the characters and the continuity of the fictional universes he's working in. He's not trying to suggest that the superhero as it's often been presented isn't a beguiling and magical thing, but he is unable to consider resisting his belief that so is just about every other type of story too. And regardless of whether these extra layers of story are recognised or not, they mark out Mr Cornell's books as notably different, creating in them individual and distinct textures which add to their character and appeal.

 9.

There's a love of history, and a willingness to enjoy at the very, very least a touch of historical research, in Mr Cornell that first became overwhelmingly obvious to me, or so it seemed, when I was reading his "Black Widow: Deadly Origin". In the first chapter of that book, there's a two-panel appearance by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, which in itself is unremarkable, except that's he's portrayed in a way that, to my knowledge, is unique within the pages of any superhero comic book. Instead of the usual taciturn, faintly oriental and frankly sinister stereotype, here we're given, for all the scene's brevity, a figure recognisable from modern popular scholarship. For it is only in recent years that we've become familiarised with the face that Stalin could and so often did present to those around him. A psychopath who could be a warmly intimate and, despite decades of Western preconceptions, an astonishingly gregarious, apparently good-humoured man, Stalin rose to supreme power with a measure of charm as well as through the application of an abnormally ruthless and scheming character . The laughing, wandering Stalin of "Deadly Origin" was so spot on, and so untypical in the context of comic books, that I immediately started to pay even more attention to the unshowy historical background of the tale, as well as reaching for my copy of Montefiore's "Court Of The Red Tsar", which, if I was compelled to, I'd wager is a text that's not unknown to Mr Cornell.


This process of both buttressing and enriching his work with these other real-world narratives can be seen in "Action Comics" # 895 too. Sometimes, it's nothing more playful than the use of an appropriate historical name that might sound to us like that of a bronze-age supervillain - Spearhavoc (*4) - or that chosen for a city - Sacristi - that is itself a French swearword adapted from a religious ritual, a suitably ironic title for a profane conurbation masking a somewhat transcendental and hidden reality.(*5) At other moments it's the use of unspecified but clearly historical events to serve as a backdrop for Vandal Savage's centuries old obsession with prophecy; can that be Rousseau at 895:4:2, and surely that must be the Prague Spring two panels later? And all of this material is used to inspire the reader to ask themselves one absolutely pertinent question; what does it do to even an immortal man to be that obsessed for that long and with no good reason beyond prophecy to be so?  

*4:- There was, for example, the splendidly named Bishop Spearhavoc, who served as Edward The Confessor's goldsmith, as a swift Googling will reveal.
*5:- Or so I'm told. French, let alone the etymology of French swear words, is not comfortable territory for me in any way at all.


Regularly grounding action in references to historical events which, for all that they needn't be identified or understood in order to enjoy the story, lends comic-book events a real-world flavour which is as much a relief as it is a pleasure, I'm sure, to many a reader. I'm far, far from being even vaguely competent in Bohemian/Czechoslovakian history, and so there are a series of possible references in "Action Comics" 895 which escape me and leave me cheerfully grasping at vaguely-informed guesses. (Is that the thirty years war at 895:4:1? Is that a reference to the brief revolts of 1848 a few frames onwards?) But the point is no more that the reader is driven to an obsessional search for information by "The Black Ring" part 6 than it is that Mr Cornell is seeking to spread the gospel of Central European studies. What matters is that the real world and the fictional one are shown intersecting, given the latter a greater sense of depth while expressing a joy at how all these various actual and fictional narratives can be both playfully and serious-mindedly referred one to the other.


Of course, Mr Cornell's desire to use history as content and flavour rather than as an aspect of ostentatious self-regard can lead to a tiny measure of frustration in the reader who'd quite like to know a little more. What did happen in Bohemia in 1358 that inspired Mr Cornell to set a scene there, and is the character with a lupine quality and dark black eyes at the fore of that splash page anything other than an unlucky everyday citizen? (Could the events be connected to the Black Death, since even Savage's language has been affected by that specific horror; where the Black Lantern energy was referred to as "things" in the scene set around 1000 in # 894, by 1358 he's referring to its globes as "pustules"?) Similarly, in "Black Widow; Dark Origin", shouldn't the attack on Stalingrad in 1928 by "imperialists" actually have occurred in 1918 in Volgograd, when the White Russians occupied the city? (*6)


But these kind of trivial questions aren't important, and that's especially true in a comicbook universe where we just don't know what might have occurred in the USSR of Marvel's 1928. What's important is that the text is alive with aspects of depth and enthusiasm, which can, if the reader wants, inspire them to ask a few questions more than they might otherwise have felt moved to consider. The appeal and the value of these books by Mr Cornell is no more founded solely or even substantially in history than many of Ms Simone's comics are made fascinating by her evident love of the geography and culture of nations far beyond America's borders and nothing else. But all that extra care, and curiosity, and, yes, excitement, about how stories might do more while working in an effective and efficient way surely doesn't hurt a comic book's achievement either.

*6:- But then, I could have easily mis-read or misunderstood that page of BW:DO or missed out by not having read previous chapters of "The Black Ring" while waiting for the trade. This isn't a question of getting the references right, as if these comics were nothing but a game of spot-the-connections , but of rather being inspired to read each comic as if it were more than a quick surface-dash from set-up to throw-down.


Oh, dear; to be continued. I must stop saying I'm going to write a particular number of entries on any subject when I invariably over-run. There's one last piece on this topic already written, although not checked, to go up next, and that'll be put up soon.  My apologies for any confusion, and my best wishes too for a splendid time to anyone who's kindly persevered with this page for at least long enough to reach these closing words.

.