I've Been Reading A Lot Of Disappointing Books Lately

Justice League 28
DC Comics
Geoff Johns, writer
Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Scott Hanna, artists

I enjoy reading comics, so I want to talk about the ones I enjoy, not the ones that didn't live up to the potential I hoped they could have. But there have been several in the past few days that just didn't meet my expectations going in.

In the case of this issue of Justice League, continuing the "Forever Evil" crossover, the story itself was good: Cyborg got a complete makeover in the previous issue after all of his cybernetic parts split off, decided to call itself The Grid, and joined the other-dimensional Crime Syndicate that has taken over the world and imprisoned most of the League. This new, much more streamlined Cyborg 2.0 seeks out Dr. Will Magnus, creator of the Metal Men, to help him counter-attack the Syndicate, so this issue serves to introduce the New 52 versions of the Metal Men, who all act pretty much as they did before the New 52 reboot.

The problem is, the only real change I can see that the New 52 has brought to the Metal Men is that they all got a bad case of the uglies, especially Iron, Lead and Mercury.

These three, in particular, look as if they are wearing armor they should be able to remove. All six of the Metal Men — also including Gold, Tin and Platinum — look a lot more robotic than they used to. Now, I know that they technically are robots. But their respective responsometers not only give them their distinctive personalities, but each of the Metal Men also has complete control over his or her shape, allowing them to be able to shift and form tools and such from their bodies. Based on that fact alone, they should have very streamlined, fluid bodies, but especially when seen next to Cyborg's own new chassis, they look very clunky.

I've looked through the issue several times and can't find any kind of design credit. So maybe Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and/or Scott Hanna designed the new looks for the Metal Men. These guys have wowed me with their art in the past, so I would hate to think that they are responsible for this mess. Rather, almost the entire New 52 redesign came from Jim Lee, another artist whose past work I have enjoyed, but who seems to have gone overboard with the unnecessary costume details and seams and such in the New 52. These look to me like they are more of Jim Lee's bad design work for the reboot.

Here's hoping the Metal Men's appearances soften over time.

Big Surprise — I Like It!

Queen & Country 1-12 (2001-02)
Oni Press
Greg Rucka, writer
Steve Rolston, Brian Hurtt and Leandro Fernandez, artists

Neither this title or Greg Rucka were on my radar in 2001 when Queen & Country debuted. The title wasn't Rucka's first comics work; he'd already done Whiteout — which I also missed at the time but have since purchased a copy of; now if I could just get the time to read it — and penned a large portion of "No Man's Land" for the Batman family of books at DC. I read and enjoyed most of the "No Man's Land" stuff, but Rucka's name had not yet made an impact on me or my reading habits.

That was then. Since then, I've read his post-"No Man's Land" run in Detective Comics, a couple Black Widow miniseries, Gotham Central and great runs on both Wonder Woman and The Adventures of Superman. I just enjoy a lot of Rucka's writing. So I've been curious about this series starring British intelligence agent Tara Chace for quite some time. A recent find online netted me all of the comics to date for a nice price, and so far I have read these first 12 issues, representing three separate missions for Chace and her compatriots.

I have to admit, that first issue didn't leave me with much in the way of good first impressions. At least not the kind that would have brought me back for a second issue if I was buying the title when it first saw print.

That first issue opens in the middle of the Operations Room of the S.I.S. with several principal characters waiting as current operation "Broken Ground" unfolds. The operation involves agent Tara Chace being sent into Kosovo to carry out an assassination. Along the way, we learn that Tara is one of three field agents, called "Minders," who report directly to Paul Crocker, the director of operations. Crocker is shown to be a bit of a curmudgeon outwardly, but he genuinely cares about doing his job and the well-being of the Minders once a job is completed.

One of the things that took a little getting used to is all of the jargon and agency shorthand characters use in the series. The dialogue rings true for people who hold these positions and have for a long time; they would naturally use an economy of language to refer to each other, like referring to the director of operations as D-Ops. But for a new reader picking up a first issue and not knowing what to expect or able to recognize faces or places, it can be a bit confusing to follow.

Tara Chace wasn't quite what I expected either. We first see her on the fourth page of the story. She is covered almost completely in camouflage gear and in position for her impending kill shot. After successfully taking down her target, Chace is on the run, trying to make her exit out of the country. To evade pursuit, she sheds the outer camouflage and takes off on foot. The clothing she is wearing is still rather loose-fitting, which is fine, but the figure running for several pages looks like a man, not a woman to me. Without the dialogue and a key image near the end of the book, I truly think I would have assumed the figure was a man during the rest of the book.

Assassination is pretty a heavy topic to start off with, too. It's clear Tara isn't thrilled with her current assignment, but she's doing her job. It's made pretty clear that her main target and the others Tara kills while executing her mission are not nice men, but it's still shooting them from a distance while they are unaware of any danger. Not your usual heroic act.

The remainder of that first story arc deals with the repercussions of Chace's successful assassination mission, both for Chace personally and for the S.I.S. We are also introduced to more of the S.I.S. members, their relationships to each other, and some others they deal with on a regular basis from other agencies. By the end of the arc, I was starting to feel a little more comfortable following all of the jargon-heavy dialogue, but I still didn't feel much of a connection to any of the characters. Again, had I been buying this book off the shelves when it was new, I might not have stuck with it.

But since I'd just purchased all 32 issues of the main title and all nine Classified issues, too, I figured I'd give the series more of a try. Issue No. 5 kicked off the second mission, "Morningstar," which sends the other two Minders, Tom Wallace and Ed Kittering into Kabul, Afghanistan. This story arc held my interest a bit more because of current events from the past decade or so, and as I learned more about the characters and came to understand them better, I found I was beginning to like them.

Each story arc of the series, at least so far, has a different art team. I'm not familiar with any of the first three artists outside of this series, but Steve Rolston, the artist for the first four issues had a clean art style that had almost a cartoony look to it. The art wasn't so cartoony as to clash with the subject matter, but there was no mistaking it for hyper-realistic art, either. Brian Hurtt had a very similar style on the second arc. Some of the characters looked slightly different, but not unrecognizable from how Rolston had drawn them, so it wasn't a hard transition. In fact, Tara Chace was the most altered visually, as far as I'm concerned, and while she still looked quite tough and not so much like a stereotypical comic-book heroine, she did look like a woman now.

Tara's transformation continued with the switch to artist Leandro Fernandez on the third story arc, "Crystal Ball." Several readers commented on Fernandez's art style in the letters pages after his first issue, No. 8, commenting on how Tara's breasts had grown and how her style of clothing had become much more revealing suddenly. By issue No. 12, the end of "Crystal Ball," quite a debate was raging in the letters pages about the change in art style Fernandez brought with some liking the change and others hating it.

As for my opinion, I can see an in-story explanation for Tara's change of dress style in her behavior, if that is what Rucka is going for. Tara is still dealing with some of the baggage that cropped up on her assassination mission in the very first issue. I don't see her as a character who would normally date a co-worker, yet she and her fellow Minder, Ed Kittering, have begun a relationship frowned upon by several others. There's also story evidence that her current drinking habits are new. I could see her new wardrobe as another outward manifestation of her inner conflict, if that is how Rucka chooses to go with things, but time will tell on that point. Otherwise, I see Fernandez's art as the most cartoony — almost caricature-esque — of the three artists so far, but again, the characters are not unrecognizable from issue to issue or story arc to story arc, so I don't mind the changes so far.

Bottom line, this book progresses at a snail's pace. I find myself wondering how someone who read the series as it came out — with a less than monthly schedule — didn't give up in frustration at the slow pacing. I'm almost certain I would have. But having it to read one issue after another in a matter of days or weeks instead of years, I find myself very much warming up to the characters and wanting to know what is going to happen to them.

I still have some trepidation about later issues of the series. Rucka is a novelist as well as a comics writer. To date, he has written three Queen & Country prose novels with the same characters and continuity as the comic series. I haven't reached the place where any of the novels should have "occurred" yet, but I wonder if they will be missing pieces hurting my enjoyment of the series. That isn't to say that I will never read the prose novels; as much as I'm liking the comics so far, I expect I would like them as well. I just don't know if I will take the time as I am even further behind on my prose reading than I am on my comics reading at any given time.

Apparently, I am finally reading this series at a great time, too. I've recently heard rumors of both a possible movie deal based on the series as well as Rucka returning to writing more Queen & Country comics with a Volume II series possibly beginning later this year. Now is the time to get caught up on the older stuff before new content makes catching up even harder.

I Can Get Behind This History Lesson

The Creature Commandos! tpb
DC Comics
J.M. DeMatteis, Robert Kanigher, Dave Manak and Mike W. Barr, writers
Fred Carrillo, Pat Broderick, John Celardo, Bob Hall, Jerry Ordway, Dave Manak and Dan Spiegle, artists

I was very happy and more than a little surprised to see this volume solicited a few months ago as I've long had a passing interest in DC's Creature Commandos characters. I'm not a big fan of more traditional war-themed comics, but make the soldiers and Marines fighting the enemy into versions of famous movie monsters, and you've got my attention.

I was reading a lot of comics at the time of the Creature Commandos' debut, but my access to comics back then was pretty sporadic. So I completely missed the characters until much, much later when I came across a copy of Weird War Tales No. 119 featuring the Creature Commandos at a flea market. It was a pretty beat-up copy with some discoloration on the cover, but I could still tell that was a Frankenstein's monster in Army fatigues battling a couple lions with a vampire, a werewolf and a gorgon similarly engaged in the background. I was very interested.

The story opened with this bizaare-visaged quartet strolling through a wax museum, marveling at the recreations of Hilter, Jack the Ripper and other real-life normal-appearing monsters. The Creature Commandos comment that next to these horrors no one could possibly object to them, but almost immediately, other patrons of the museum catch sight of them and react poorly.

I didn't know how these fighters had come to look as they did, but I wanted to know more about them. We didn't have a home computer in those days, so my interest extended only as far as keeping an eye out for more issues whenever I was somewhere I might find some; there was no real research conducted. So I completely missed the fact that this comic was not as old as it's condition might indicate. I assumed the Creature Commandos were a product of the 1960s or maybe 1970s when both monster comics and war comics had their heyday. I further surmised that this was likely the 119th appearance of these characters in this title. But I assumed incorrectly on all counts.

This volume has confirmed for me that the Creature Commandos were in fact a product of the 1980s. They were created by J.M. DeMatteis and Pat Broderick and debuted in Weird War Tales No. 93, cover dated November 1980. The issue I'd purchased, No. 119, was only their 18th appearance in the title, and they would go on to appear in only two more issues after No. 119.

The original three Creature Commandos are Sgt. Vincent Velcro, Oklahoman Warren Griffith, and Marine Pvt. "Lucky" Taylor. These three were transformed into a vampire, a werewolf and a patchwork man resembling Frankenstein's monster, respectively, as part of Project M, a secret operation sponsored by all branches of the military to introduce an element of psychological warfare into America's fighting forces during the height of World War II. These three transformed warriors were sent on special assignments under the command of Lt. Matthew Shrieve, a normal man with a disposition much more monstrous than any of his charges.

The early Creature Commandos missions had the team face a variety of Nazi threats, often infiltrating Axis compounds to free captured scientists or freedom fighters. The Commandos would use the shock their appearances caused, as well as their monstrous strength and other inhuman abilities to defeat their enemies. Sometimes the Commandos were pitted against the dinosaurs of Monster Island or paired with their frequent Weird War Tales co-star, J.A.K.E., the G.I. Robot.

Dr. Myrna Rhodes, a plastic surgeon, is accidentally transformed into Dr. Medusa, a snake-haired beauty who joins the Creature Commandos in Weird War Tales No. 110, the team's 10th appearance. There are still a number of special missions after the addition of Dr. Medusa, but the Commandos are just as likely to be "vacationing" and dealing with public reaction to their appearances while the military leaders try to figure out what to do with them.

A common theme throughout the Creature Commandos adventures is how humane the Commandos act despite their monstrous looks and how tragic their lives are as a result of their transformations. This is juxtaposed against the normal looking, but much less empathetic actions of their enemies, the general public and even their own leader, Lt. Shrieve, who never misses an opportunity to remind the Commandos that they can never lead normal lives looking like they do. Yet these adventures are varied enough to not fall completely into formula and become overly repetitive.

I think the more recent re-imagining of the Creature Commandos in Tim Truman's and Scot Eaton's 2000 limited series would have done well to remember that juxtaposition. Their eight-issue mini wasn't a bad read, but it pitched the Creature Commandos against otherworldly invaders in another dimension while doing their thing to defend Earth. The appearance of the classic four members was altered pretty drastically, a few new members — a cyborg, a mummy and a gill-man — were added, and Shrieve was swapped out for a more sympathetic human commander. But without ordinary humans to be repelled and monstrous humans to fight against, something vital was lost.

Umm, OK ... Where's The Funny?

Gon Volume 1
Kodansha Comics
Masashi Tanaka, writer and artist

I'm not quite sure what to make of Gon now that I've finally "read" one.

I've heard a lot about this Japanese manga series, most often being described as beautiful artwork and very funny stories about the title character, a tiny but ferocious dinosaur still around long after any others of his kind have gone extinct.

Early on, I learned that the series was without words — no word ballons, thought bubbles or captions of any kind — just pictures. It takes a certain kind of writer/artist to pull off that kind of comic effectively without leaving the reader feeling lost along the way, but I've read examples of the form done well in the past. For the most part, I feel that Masashi Tanaka is among the writer/artists who can pull this feat off. I followed each little story in this first volume of Gon's adventures pretty well.

But the series still leaves me scratching my head a little bit. All cover images I've ever seen of Gon look cartoony in their depiction of the title character and any others shown. That seems to fit with the funny tone I expected from the series based on past reviews and discussions of Gon. But the interior art doesn't match up. The interiors are beautifully, realistically illustrated so that the other creatures depicted look as if they could crawl or leap or fly right off the page in many instances. The situations depicted tend to be equally realistic and quite graphic at times. Anyone expecting a kid-friendly tale judging by the Gon covers is going to be very disappointed by the interiors and likely will have a child in need of counseling, or at the very least with an awful lot of heavy questions. These aren't Disney adventures by any stretch.

The image above, for instance, shows Gon and a lion sharing a wildebeest they have just brought down together. The U-shaped marks on the lion's forehead in the second panel (Remember, manga is read from right to left!) are Gon's teeth marks; Gon bites down on the lion's head and pulls its mane and slaps its back with his tail to control it while using the lion to bring down the wildebeest in the first place. That's kind of a darkly humorous scenario, I'll grant, but illustrated in a very realistic fashion that just leaves me confused how to react to this series.

Perhaps I'm being too narrow-minded, but it seems to me that the Gon series is a little confused about what it wants to be — cute and kid-friendly or serious and graphic — and ends up mixing the two together in a fashion I found a little disconcerting. I'm not that anxious to read the other six volumes of the Gon series at this point.

That's Taking Continuity Too Far

Star Trek: The Badlands Books 1 and 2 (1999)
Pocket Books
Susan Wright, author

This isn't the first time I've discussed prose novels. In fact, I've done it here, here, here and even here. But all of those instances were prose novels about comic book characters and their adventures.

While the various incarnations of Star Trek have all existed at one time or another in comics form, they are first and foremost a television and film medium. So this is still kind of a departure, and I admit that. But I wanted to talk about these books because of what I didn't care for about them, and it's a problem that crops up in comics from time to time, so there's still a bit of a connection. Besides, it's April Fool's Day, I've got no prank for you, so something different seemed in order.

After publishing many, many prose adventures for the various Star Trek incarnations for a number of years, Pocket Books hit upon the idea to publish novels that brought a common theme to each of the Trek franchises. As far as I know, the first experiment with this idea was the "Invasion!" series of prose novels in 1996. In the first book, the classic Enterprise crew from The Original Series responds to a distress call from the Klingons only to find the advance fleet of a much larger invasion force bent on conquering the known universe. The Original Series crew manages to throw a big enough monkey wrench into the invasion plans that the larger attack is halted for a number of decades, but the subsequent three novels all show the later Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager crews again dealing with the same invaders in their own century. Later came a "Day of Honor" series of novels and a "Section 31" series doing something similar.

These two "Badlands" novels attempt much the same thing, but on a smaller scale. Instead of four separate novels, "The Badlands" includes two novellas each in just two paperbacks. In the first book, TOS crew is ordered to the Romulan Neutral Zone on a mission and encounters a previously unknown phenomenon that threatens the ship and crew. Seventy years later, TNG crew encounters the same phenomenon, only managing to survive using the knowledge of the threat gleaned by TOS crew and adding to it. Then a few years later, the maiden voyage of the USS Voyager brings that crew into contact with the phenomenon, and it is left to the crew of the Defiant from DS9 to finally bring an end to the threat once and for all, in the second novel.

Susan Wright, the author of these adventures makes a couple choices that interfered with my enjoyment of these books. First, she doesn't just set the events of her tales within the vague time frame of each Trek series; she pins down exactly when each of her four tales occurs within the larger Trek tapestry. Now, that may sound like a fan's fondest wish: to be given the answer to when does this adventure occur in the context of the others. But Wright takes things way too far, incorporating events from episodes of the various Trek shows into her stories. Entire scenes of the Voyager installment, for example, are lifted directly from the pilot episode of that series. But Wright gets bogged down with details from the shows in many places because of this. In the DS9 segment, for example, the events take place at a point in the television show when one of the main characters has been captured by Dominion forces and is being impersonated on DS9 by a doppelganger for the purposes of espionage. This introduces elements into that portion of the "Badlands" story that unnecessarily complicate Wright's story and are never resolved within her story because they must continue on in the TV program.

For me, personally, another issue was being less familiar with the later Trek franchises. I grew up watching TOS in reruns, and it holds my first and best Trek love. I have seen episodes of each of the later series and know most of the main characters, but I am not familiar with every detail of TNG, DS9 and Voyager continuities. With the level of detail from specific episodes Wright includes here, I was sometimes lost reading about events I had no outside knowledge of and for which Wright did not provide enough context within her own story.

Now, I am willing to concede that the level of show detail Wright incorporates into her stories might simply be a matter of personal tastes. Maybe I didn't like these books because I'm not as familiar with the other three Trek franchises, but a fan of them might think Wright's stories are just grand.

Here's a further complaint, though, that I feel can't be dismissed as personal taste. There are a number of errors and inaccuracies in TOS portion of Wright's "Badlands" story. For instance, she constantly has characters onboard the Enterprise speak with each other by first tapping on their shirt badges. In all three later Trek shows, technology has advanced to the point that a character's shirt badge was also a communications device, but in TOS, those shirt badges are simply fabric patches sewn onto the uniforms. While onboard the ship, characters converse by using a wall- or desk-mounted comm panel, and when away from the ship, they used handheld communicators. The comm badges haven't been invented yet in TOS universe. This is just one glaring inaccuracy in one portion of Wright's overall tale. It makes me wonder, however, how many inaccuracies were included in the other three portions that I didn't catch simply because I'm not as familiar with those programs.

Overall, I'm sorry to have to recommend giving these two Trek books a pass. There is too much good Trek out there to enjoy to waste time on these books.