Comic Two-fer

Summer's for fun, and all this heavy literature needs to be broken up with something a bit lighter. For some, this is television. For me, it's comics.

(Okay, there's only been one dense work so far this summer: "One Hundred Years of Solitude", which I haven't even finished. But next is "Gulliver's Travels", and another horror story. I have an excuse, okay?)

So, two comics that are both entertaining and well-written. Yes, these may be mutually exclusive; see most summer blockbusters for that.

"Runaways" is written by Brian K. Vaughan, author of the recent "X-Men: First Class" movie. Like the opening to that movie, "Runaways" takes an unorthodox look at superheroes. The chief plot mover is when six kids decide to spy on their parents and realize they are a clan of supervillains. From there, the kids investigate and find that they themselves have access to powers, gadgets, and telepathic dinosaurs. Their parents had hoped the kids would continue the legacy. Instead, they rebel and become... well, what?

Superheroes. That's the word that should finish that sentence, right? That's how the story goes. And at the end, they have a desire to fight crime, and most of them have powers. But they're not heroes. They're fugitives - what the X-Men always try to be. The X-Men happen to be more like refugees, though, because they always have a home in the X-Mansion. The whole point of "Runaways" is that they have no home.

The old origin story tropes are here. Shock at finding new powers, a raid against villains more powerful than they, luck and a bit of good strategy allowing the new heroes to win out in the end. They are buried beneath a linear narrative that doesn't only stick to those tropes (although, partially, that is the idea); very good characterization; and art that looks as pretty as a painting.

And right away we feel like these are the oppressed minorities, steeling our opinion that these kids are wronged by their parents. There are four females - one very young, and rarely taken seriously at first by her fellow teammates. One of the two remaining males is black. Even the white guy, a jock, feels oppressed because his parents are nerds, and highly disappointed in his academical failings. He has no idea how to operate the equipment he inherits.

Comics like "Ant Man" feel like a collection of tropes that, together, makes a story. "Runaways" feels like it's trying hard to be a narrative.

I also recently finished the first three adventures of the "Tintin" series, in preparation for the new film. I was surprised at the variety in quality.

These first few stories ("Tintin in America", "Cigars of the Pharaoh", and "The Blue Lotus") were written in three different styles. At least one ("Cigars") was redrawn several years later to keep a consistent style with later volumes; all were edited a decade or two after their original publication, to make them more accessible to the post-World War II masses; and all were translated from the original French, so some jokes are altered to make more sense to a British/American audience.

"Tintin" was originally published as a comic serial, and the first two stories reflect that. "Tintin in America" is the story of Tintin, junior reporter, and his dog, Snowy, as they come to Chicago in order to reduce crime and stop two bands of gangsters. They chase after first one, then the other boss, while capturing their mooks along the way. He really does seem to be removing them from the streets one man at a time. "America" feels episodic, but vaguely linear.

Meanwhile, "Cigars of the Pharaoh" is treated more as a mystery, but not one that Tintin goes willingly into. On a cruise, he meets an eccentric professor on the lookout for an Egyptian tomb. Finding some cigars there, he begins to unearth an illegal opium trade. Not for a long time does he know what he is unearthing, though, and the story emphasis is on the mini-episodes he encounters along the way, rather than on the bigger picture.

But the mystery is not quite solved in "Cigars of the Pharaoh"; the leader of the opium gang appears to die, but in fact survives and disappears. A mysterious poison that drives people mad is unleashed upon Tintin's friends. Tintin sets out to find an antidote, and shut down the opium trade once and for all.

"The Blue Lotus" is a longer journey than other Tintin books. It remains episodic, with Tintin steadily approaching the denouement of a bigger story, but the main objective is always in sight. The reader usually knows how close Tintin is to achieving it, and keeps in mind the obstacles he has already overcome. It's a coherent narrative, and it ties up nicely.

It's also remarkable how well author Herge depicts 1930s Japan. This was the book at which he began his tradition of heavily researching the areas he wrote about. Thanks to a letter from a Chinese teacher who wished to keep his students from balking at the Tintin comics, Herge was treated to a thorough tour of Japan's and China's cultures and heritage. The Chinese and Japanese characters are far more sympathetic than the American and Egyptian ones of previous adventures. There are even references to political events of the time, such as Japanese-Chinese colonialism.

The Tintin comics were said to inspire such famous adventure films as "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and I believe it. No matter what the situation or how good the overall writing, emphasis is always on two things: adventure and humor. The varying locals, the quick pace, and the constant slapstick are a refreshing frosting that lie on sometimes substantial baked dessert-stories. They are primarily fun, and secondarily deep, and that's what makes these books classic.

Starting points

I'm not quite sure how to approach this.

Two reasons. One, this is Stephen King's first published work. Do I review it from the perspective of a new reader, or from the perspective of an old reader, or as something in between - as somebody who's read a few of King's more recent works, and none of his older stuff? I fall around the middle of that spectrum, right?

Two, is there enough here to review? There might be more interesting material here to discuss. Pardon the existential crisis, but I'm beginning to think that simply critiquing a book - quantifying it, or putting my own admiration of it on a sliding scale - is not enough here.

Carrie is weird. Not in tone: this is the prose I'm used to from King. It hasn't changed much in forty years. Not the genre: realism with a hint of magic is one of my favorites, after all.

It's the message, and the way it's delivered. Carrie follows titular character Carrie White, picked on by her classmates for her entire life, and constantly subject to the fundamentalist Christian rantings of her mother. The story (short, for a King novel) includes two major scenes - both examples of taunting Carrie that go too far - and the fallout from them. And then it's all over. I read it in a couple of days.

This should be pulp. The cover of my edition is graphic-novel style: simple low-quality drawings with expressive fonts. But as I've come to discover with King lately, this author has a knack for sophisticated messages (it's what makes his horror so powerful), as well as top-notch storytelling.

I mean it, top-notch. The pace is usually breakneck, and the prose is great. And King leaves no stone unturned: he takes time to round his characters out as much as possible. In one example, a character hears the garbled shoutings of a nearby pedestrian before she falls unconscious. The pedestrian is then given a backstory and several friends within the next few pages. King explores every cranny of his story as he tells it.

Having chiefly read (and enjoyed) Under the Dome, I should note that King's science fiction does not differ greatly from his horror. Dome may even count as a horror novel with sci-fi elements; they are similar in tone, and even in events (nice town with several major characters introduced before disaster strikes the whole community).

The biggest difference between Under the Dome and Carrie is that the latter feels like King-lite. It's early, and it's short, because it was King's first novel. But the story does not contain as many morally reprehensible characters as Dome. No Big Rennie to have qualities that other characters like but the readers despise. No, the characters are... more open, not only with the reader, but with other characters. Evil is not omnipresent here.

Cruelty is. Carrie is violent, and it feels like a cathartic (and horrific) comeuppance for what she endures throughout her whole life. And life is cruel to the other characters, too. All the high school girls notice that life after high school will be cookie-cutter, boring, pointless. Life stops after they leave their hometown, or they never leave and life stops anyway. Futility reigns.

Where was I? Oh, futility - like writing a relevant review of Carrie. It has aged well (song titles make it a period piece, as well as fashion styles, but little else), and it's arguably aimed at King's youngest audience, high schoolers. How much you like it depends on your taste for horror; the conclusion is not as gory as other King stories, but it has its fair share of blood, and the final fate of Carrie's classmates is strong. Most excellent is that King's voice is present from the beginning. He had written long enough by this point, it seems, that he knew what kind of stories he liked to tell. That enthusiasm is contagious, which makes me want to read more of him.

Astonishing

You'd be hard-pressed to find many superhero duos in comics. In the Marvel Universe, Cloak and Dagger nullify the negative effects of each other's powers; in DC, Hawk and Dove work together despite different views on violence. But that's about it. Team-ups don't count (they usually last only an issue or so), and neither do hero-sidekick teams, where one is obviously in control of the operation.

The Wasp and (Gi)Ant-Man are almost a hero-sidekick team, but Marvel's a bit more subtle about it. True, only Giant Man gets billing on the cover, but that's because most Giant Man comics shared a space with other stories, and there was only so much room. Wasp gets her name on the title page, and sometimes she gets a feature to herself, too. ...Well, I suppose Robin could sometimes say the same thing, especially after heading the Teen Titans. All right, maybe Marvel isn't subtle about it. But what can you say? It was the sixties.

Mind you, the feminism movement was in full swing by the sixties, so I'm surprised the Wasp's behavior wasn't already dated by then. It's certainly dated now. Though Janet van Dyne is given powers almost equivalent to Ant-Man's (sometimes better - she got a weapon; sometimes worse - she couldn't grow), she is almost never in charge (although Marvel notes this at one point and purposefully gives her more to do because of it, thanks to reader complaints), she is frequently the damsel in distress, and Ant-Man (Hank Pym) frequently distrusts her company, telling her to remain safe while he leaves to fight crime. Janet's behavior doesn't help matters. She's just so in wuv with Hank, as she tells him all the time, and she only thinks about fashion, going out to dinner, or (mostly) moonlit nights with her partner. She's not given much of a character.

Come to think of it, Ant-Man doesn't have much of a character, either. The "Fantastic Four" volume that I reviewed earlier had a bit of an arc, in which the characters of that team came to love and accept each other by the end of the volume. Ant-Man and Wasp grow to respect each other eventually (mostly in the last few issues), but their emotions are so sporadic that it never flows well. Some days Hank sits alone in his lab, ignoring the Wasp, and other days he pines for her.

This may have to do with the writing. Stan Lee famously did all the writing for the early Marvel superhero books, but he did have help. As Steve Ditko reportedly gave ideas for the Spider-Man comics, Stan Lee has surrogate authors fill in the details of the plot and dialogue after he comes up with the basic story for many of these Ant-Man comics, including the very earliest ones.

It may have to do with Giant-Man's purpose as a character, too. These issues (short as they are - as I mentioned, Giant-Man often shared his comic with other stories, including the Hulk later on) span a wide part of Hank Pym's career, from initiation, to his meeting with the Wasp, to his membership with the Avengers, and finally to his first retirement. Pym was not always intended to be an Avenger, probably, but soon the Avengers drop in on Giant-Man's comic without nary a word from the editor, who usually mentions a new guest-star by name several times so consumers will buy their book. This has led me to believe that the Giant-Man comics would be primarily read by Avengers fans who want to know more about the Giant-Man.

The comics aren't really long enough to stand on their own as a story, either. Sure, Giant-Man has as large of a rogue's gallery as everyone else, but in twelve pages there's barely time to introduce him, check on the daily activities of our heroes, and then bring in the villain before he is defeated. Some of the villains are pretty good (Eggman and Porcupine come to mind), but even some recurring villains I don't feel like they're trying hard enough with. The Human Top never receives an explanation for his superpowers, although I'd be interested to finding them out.

The Human Top displays the one big complaint I have about Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Wasp comics: they feel like Marvel superhero comics that have been reduced to the very basics. Unfortunately, all Marvel comics will be judged next to the early Spider-Man until I find something better, because Spider-Man worked hard to make a coherent narrative out of its protagonist, convincing (well, conclusive anyway) backstories for its villains, and a general tone that fit with the way Spidey got his powers: villains got their powers from SCIENCE!, and Parker solved his problems with SCIENCE! Hank Pym is also a scientist, and he invents things as often as Mr. Fantastic, but the tone doesn't extend from there. The villains are just villains, not characters. Wasp is his partner, but for most of this book it's a reluctant partnership, made for convenience. We're here to read about superheros battling villains, and that's fine and entertaining, just like many summer blockbuster movies. But behind the bare mechanics, there's no substance. Nothing besides hype makes me feel like I should come back for more - and sometimes even the hype fails to please. (Spider-Man, for instance, was a guest star, but ended up being terribly written - what a wasted opportunity, compared to the countless interesting guest stars of his own book.) "Essential Ant-Man" works, but only just. Like much of Marvel's early stuff, it's an experiment, but it didn't take enough risks.

Lightly skipping through shallow puddles - or books

Nice easy read, nice easy post to start the summer.

I didn't expect to like The King in the Window as much as I did. It loses points right off the bat - the little amount of action in the first chapter is stifled by what amounts to a travelogue of Paris, as well as way too much character backstory that brings the momentum to zero. As I continued reading the book, it became evident that the author of King (Adam Gopnik) had a lousy editor; the first chapters, at least, are drawn out longer than they should be. The novel feels rough around the edges.

Still, The King in the Window is... largely pretty good, actually. It's extremely imaginative, even when it follows the standard fantasy narrative formula. There's the hero, his female and male sidekicks, the old wise and witty mentor, and the faceless bad guy in an iron mask. At some point the female will get kidnapped, the male sidekick will inspire the hero, and the mentor will learn something about herself. It all ties neatly together in a plot by which the world is almost destroyed but, at the last minute, saved.

Around that framework, though, is draped a story of mirrors and windows, around which Gopnik creates a pretty complex mythology. He even manages to link this to modern-day real-life and conceptual computers, bringing both past and future into play. Dualities abound, which is as it should be in a story about mirrors.

The hero thinks a lot of himself at the beginning of the story, because he knows he is the hero of a story. That's also a concept that has some promise. And the woman's a little subversive, too.

Oh, it wasn't easy to continue liking this story. The imagination is something I'd kill for in most other stories, but its presentation has flaws. For example, much is made of the process of thinking, and of the fact that each event in life should follow logically from the other. Yet The King in the Window lacks logic. All over the place, characters make leaps of faith that don't make sense. And sometimes concepts are introduced and used before they are fully explained. This can be done well, but here it isn't. In other books, I get the feeling that the author always had a sense of the underlying logic of his world, and managed to only gradually reveal it to us. Here, Gopnik really feels like he's making it up as he goes along.

So, in essence, while the beginning of the book explains too much, the end explains too little. Characters with promise, like that male sidekick, are tossed away. The Window Wraiths, a kooky band that crowns our hero, is forgotten for the middle of the book. There are a lot of great concepts, but they weren't well linked and there wasn't quite enough time to develop them. The pacing of the book has improved, but not its content. I wanted to understand this world better.

Gopnik dedicates his book to his son, who requested that all the cool parts be put closer together. Which makes for a well-paced yarn, but a shallow one. The King in the Window reads well, will be contemplated for a couple of days after, and then quickly forgotten. The substance to this novel is a well-worn framework, and it's the only thing, in the end, that the reader can hang on to as the author leaps disjointedly around his universe. Still, it's an entertaining read, and it's a good way to start the summer.