Author Archives: Drew

Nov 27 2013

Weekly Round-Up: Marvel Comics Released 11/20/13

round upLook, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Drew and Ethan discuss Thunderbolts 18, A+X 14, Superior Spider-Man Annual 1, Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe 2, Young Avengers 12, Uncanny X-Men 14, X-Men 7, and X-Men: Legacy 20.

slim-banner4Drew: Our Infinity-fatigue is pretty well catalogued at this point, but Charles Soule continues to find a fresh angle in Thunderbolts 18. Where other series are preoccupied with piecing together a monolithic narrative by retracing the same steps, Soule has stayed very street-level, keeping his team focused on the mission at hand, even as New York crumbles around them. They manage to succeed in that mission in spite of each of them being focused on their own problems. Indeed, with a significant portion of the resolution arriving via the coincidental overlap of those problems, this series feels all the world like the superhero version of Seinfeld. Continue reading →

Nov 26 2013

Daredevil 33

Alternating Currents: Daredevil 33, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Daredevil 33, originally released November 22nd, 2013. 

Drew: “The man without fear” is kind of a strange title for a superhero — between absurd power levels and unmatchable competence, most superheroes have nothing to fear in the first place. Heck, the Avengers just repelled an unstoppable force of universal destruction and one of them just shoots arrows. This prompts supervillain inflation, where each bad guy needs to be bigger than the last in order to draw any drama from the situation — at least, that’s usually the solution for most writers. Mark Waid, on the other hand, has taken Matt Murdock’s title to heart, and has set out to explore the kinds of horrors that have nothing to do with the size of the guy Daredevil has to punch. The result is incredibly relatable and human, but also extremely rare in modern comics. Continue reading →

Nov 26 2013

Red Sonja 5

Alternating Currents: Red Sonja 5, Drew and Taylor

Today, Drew and Taylor are discussing Red Sonja 5, originally released November 20th, 2013.

Time makes fools of us all.

-Eric Temple Bell

Drew: I’ve seen this E.T. Bell quote thrown around quite a bit, but it becomes less alluring with its often-omitted second half: “Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.” It’s clear that Bell is taking a historical perspective — our ideas and actions will someday be looked upon with the same bemusement that we have for the Salem witch trials — but I’ve always been more intrigued by how this plays out in my own lifetime. Time has a history of making us eat our own words, whether it’s doing something we swore we’d never do, giving up something we swore we’d always love, or just making us embarrassed about the people we used to be. A recent piece in the New York Times explained that we’re terrible at anticipating those kinds of changes — we simply can’t fathom that we’ll ever change, even though we always do. I found myself thinking about this quite a bit as I read Red Sonja 5, which finds two former friends battling on the very grounds they swore they would never return to. Continue reading →

Nov 21 2013

100 Bullets: Brother Lono 6

Alternating Currents: Brother Lono 6, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing 100 Bullets: Brother Lono 6, originally released November 20th, 2013.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.

-Anton Chekhov

Drew: Chekhov’s gun is one of my favorite writing principles — it insists that writing be as efficient and purposeful as possible — but as a reader, I often find myself wishing I had never heard of it. When writing, Chekhov’s gun is helpfully prescriptive; when reading, it is frustratingly descriptive. Suddenly every gun introduced is a time bomb — there’s no question of if it will go off, but when. That dovetails beautifully with Hitchcock’s famous explanation of surprise vs. suspense (effectively, that surprise is when a bomb goes off at the end of a scene, while suspense is watching that same scene knowing the whole time that the bomb is there), suggesting that each new element must hold our suspense until it comes to bear on the narrative. Of course, we know that this is rarely the case in practice — few writers can sustain that level of dread for such a sustained period — which is why Brother Lono has been such a fascinating study in suspense. Writer Brian Azzarello took great care in introducing his gun, reminding us that it is cleaned and ready to fire, and waiting until issue 6 to finally use it. Continue reading →

Nov 18 2013

The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction 3

rocketeer 3

Today, Drew and Ethan are discussing The Rocketeer & The Spirit: Pulp Friction 3, originally released November 13th, 2013.

“It’s the moment, when the movie … becomes an entirely different movie.”

DJ McCarthey

Drew: I’ve said it before (and I’m sure I’ll say it again): I love thinking about form. It’s one of the most fundamental elements of storytelling, and I believe that studying a narrative’s form informs us more about our own experience reading it than even the best plot or character analyses. I’m always looking for new perspectives on form, and was happy to see John Roger’s post on 3-Point Plotting on Mark Waid’s own Thrillbent. It’s a fairly straightforward introduction to the standard three act structure, but I had never seen it broken down so succinctly into “disruption, reversal, and conclusion.” I was particularly intrigued by Roger’s discussion on the reversal — which he defines using that McCarthey quote — as it explains the all-too familiar experience of a narrative changing direction abruptly after I’m already invested in what was going to happen. What happens when you liked what a story was more than the story it becomes? Continue reading →

Nov 14 2013

Deadpool 19

Alternating Currents: Deadpool 19, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Deadpool 19, originally released November 13th, 2013.

Drew: What do we expect when we read Deadpool? When I picked up my first issue just over a year ago, I was looking for a famously goofy character written by famously funny writers, and thought that issue delivered everything a Deadpool comic should. Then we published our first discussion, and started one of the longest, most in-depth comment threads we’ve ever had, all about how this version of Deadpool is missing the point entirely. It’s a strange contradiction, but comics are full of them. Is Batman a brooding spirit of vengeance or a campy man-about-town? Is Wolverine a violent savage or an impatient schoolmarm? Or, more to the subject at hand, is Wade Wilson an irreverent, fourth-wall-breaking yukster, or a tragic figure of the highest order? With the conclusion of their “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” arc, writers Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan make the strong case for “both.” Continue reading →

Nov 13 2013

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 11/6/13

round upLook, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Drew and Patrick discuss Forever Evil 3, Green Lantern 25, Batman Black and White 3, Action Comics 25 and Detective Comics 25.

slim-banner4Drew: You know you’re reading a Geoff Johns-penned event when the previous two issues (and the entire previous event) can be summarized in a single page, which is exactly how Forever Evil 3 begins. Like much of Johns’ big event writing (which seems to be the only type of writing he does anymore), this issue is largely content to move the pieces around the board, though things actually seem in place to build some momentum at the issue’s close: Batman and Catwoman are striking out to rescue Dick Grayson, while Lex Luthor’s team of rebelling villains has perhaps grown large enough to take on the Crime Syndicate. Continue reading →

Nov 12 2013

Mighty Avengers 3

Alternating Currents: Mighty Avengers 3, Drew and ShelbyToday, Drew and Shelby are discussing Mighty Avengers 3, originally released November 6th, 2013. 

infinity divider…and this whole justice league — Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman. You mean to tell me Superman can’t cover everything? For crying out loud, he’s Superman!

Jerry Seinfeld

Drew: It’s hard to resist the synergy of a superhero team-up. Batman and Superman have megawatt star-power alone, but combine them, and you can draw an even bigger audience. As easy as it is to justify those team-ups from a business perspective, it can actually be quite difficult to justify them narratively. Writers often resort to improbably massive threats or absurd contrivances to bring their heroes together, but the biggest problem with team-ups is much more fundamental than plotting. The appeal of superheroes — the appeal of the idea of The Hero in general — is that they alone bear the power to succeed in their journey. If you put several of them in a story together, their narrative purposes are at odds, dividing any victories between them in a way that is ultimately less satisfying. But what if a team isn’t made up of such heavy-hitters? What if they were presented with a problem that the members couldn’t possibly cover on their own? Mighty Avengers 3 zeroes in on exactly what strength can be found, as its team becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Continue reading →

Nov 7 2013

Batman/Superman 5

Alternating Currents: Batman/Superman 5, Drew and ScottToday, Drew and Scott are discussing Batman/Superman 5, originally released November 6th, 2013. 

Drew: Ironic detachment is a dangerous thing in a work of art. It calls our attention to the weaknesses of a story, but it can’t do much to address those weaknesses. In calling our attention to the foibles of a work of art, the artist is intentionally leaving them in, which either means they’re either left there intentionally (maybe just to point them out), or they’re actually unavoidable, in which case, making fun of them is entirely superficial. Either way, it makes the art about itself, which is great if the point of the art is to comment on the limitations of the form, but starts to break down if it needs to make any other points. Unfortunately, Batman/Superman 5 aims for something beyond its postmodern trappings, and falls firmly into this latter category. Continue reading →

Nov 5 2013

Superior Spider-Man 20

Alternating Currents: Superior Spider-Man 20, Drew and MichaelToday, Drew and guest writer Michael D. are discussing The Superior Spider-Man 20, originally released October 30th, 2013.

Drew: Do you remember the first time you saw Star Wars? I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but for some reason, we watched the first half-hour of Return of the Jedi in my third grade class. It was the first time I can specifically remember experiencing a narrative out-of-order, and also the first time I so desperately wanted to go back to the start to put it all in context. That’s a sensation that I’ve become quite familiar with over the years (think of every time you’ve been drawn in by a random late-season episode of a TV series), but has become a weekly experience since I started reading comics. Comics can be particularly daunting in that light, as many series are building upon decades of continuity. Writers strive to balance honoring that history while remaining approachable to new readers, and none do it better than Dan Slott. Slott has always managed a careful regimen of harvesting threads he planted years before even as he seeds future stories, and Superior Spider-Man 20 finds him pushing the envelope on both fronts. Continue reading →