Showcase Presents: All-Star Squadron Vol 1

Roy Thomas loves comics. He also loves the comics he grew up reading, and he tries to spread knowledge about them and comics in general through his excellent Alter Ego magazine, published by TwoMorrows Publishing. He's also revisited and revived many of his old favorites – like The Invaders for Marvel, and All-Star Squadron for DC, and now DC has relaunched the first year-and-a-half's worth of stories in a 500+ pages Showcase volume.

Thomas is pretty much a legend after having created just oodles and oodles of comic book successes, so I'm sure he and his reputation will survive a bad review from me – which is a good thing, because I think his writing absolutely kills this volume.

It's not like the Bob Kanigher writing killing Showcase volumes like The Losers or The Haunted Tank, by constantly rehashing plots again and again until I as a reader am utterly exhausted by it (and wondering how he could get away with it, until I remember that he had brilliant artists like Russ Heath and Joe Kubert – who by the way contributes a bunch of very nice covers in this volume – hiding all that sloppy, clichéd writing behind their beautiful artwork); on the contrary, Thomas keeps throwing plot development after plot development at the reader, keeping up a constant barrage of story ideas and villains at the reader.

Instead, the problem seems to be that he learned his writer's trade from Stan Lee and added his own didactic touch to it (he was originally a teacher). The character's lines are way too frequently dragged down by all the exposition Thomas crams their balloons with, about what has occurred before, what is happening now, who the character is, etc. A lot of it is meant to be characterization but since it's mainly a lot of clichéd phrases, the result is that the character comes across as an incredibly self-absorbes bore fond of pointing out the bleedin' obvious. The dialogues often become nighunreadable to me, and I also get quite tired of the "Good thing I remembered to…"-type thought balloons sprinkled throughout the volume.

Too much of the dialogue comes across as leaden,
weighed down by all the exposition it has to carry.

Which is a crying shame, because if it hadn't been for that, I'd probably have enjoyed the romping action and the constant effort to create a working continuity for DC's venerable old heroes. (In fact, right now, writing this review, I get to thinking of Grant Morrison, who actually is not so far from a Roy Thomas himself with his obvious love of the heroes he writes about – only with a modern writer's sensibilities, thankfully.)

Also, the art is excellent, mostly. The first couple of chapters are pencilled by Rich Buckler and look pretty good (which they should if he, as it seems to me, cribbed a lot of his figures from Neal Adams), and after Adrian Gonzales takes over, it still looks great even though he isn't quite as adept at conveying movement in his figures.

And the main reason that the art looks so consistently great is… Jerry Ordway.

Some very nice superhero art by Adrian Gonzalez and Jerry Ordway.

Ordway is one of the best inkers I know of. He made George Pérez's (somewhat fidgety) pencils look gorgeous in Crisis on Infinite Worlds, and he makes most of All-Star Squadron (a couple of stories aren't inked by him) look absolutely great. I was so sorry to see him start doing pencils, not because he sucked at it, but because he enhanced the pencils of anybody he applied his magic pen or brush to. It's a crisp, strong line with plenty of powerful blacks and also plenty of sensitive feathering, resulting in beautiful renderings of faces and figures. I'm happy that the cheap Showcase volumes aren't in color, allowing me to enjoy Ordway's inks without any colors obscuring them.

Anyway, I can't really recommend this book as I found it to be too much of a chore to wade through Thomas's prose, but if that doesn't faze you, you're in for some rollicking adventures and some great artwork. Best of luck to you.

Showcase Presents: Aquaman vol 1

I'm not one to say that it's a waste of time to read comics – a tradition that I uphold by not talking about the terrible "Dredger" – but I came close with this.

I'm being a bit unfair here, because this clearly isn't a comic for grown-ups, or even for teenagers. The stories are at first mainly about finding new (or not so new) ways of having various sea creatures stop criminals – like having Aquaman's pet octopus Topo and his octopi pals use lots of bows and shoot arrows at them, or using a swordfish to puncture something, etc. It's all based on the rather weak gimmick of Aquaman being able to use "fish telepathy" – which isn't even much of a superpower, since apparently almost any human who needs the help of fish can use it if they concentrate hard enough (or if the scriptwriter is sufficiently stuck for a solution, and sufficiently lazy) – and after a short while, it becomes rather tedious.

This schtick was sufficiently similar to what I'd seen in early sixties Superman stories that I had to look who was writing this stuff, but the name Robert Bernstein was unknown to me (turned out he was a "Superman" writer, though). Then I learned that the editor was Mort Weisinger, at which point I went "say no more!".

Anyway, there is development. Aquaman gets a sidekick – Aqualad – who wants them to have a home, so he turns an underwater cave into a home, complete with trophies. Also, Aqualad says stuff like "Leaping sea lions!" a lot, and Aquaman starts being referred to as the "Sea sleuth". Holy derivative, Batman! Also, the daring duo gets a recurring character, a sea sprite with magical powers and a somewhat wicked sense of humor...

The first half of this collection is drawn in a somewhat cartoons-influenced style by Metamorpho co-creator Ramona Fradon, who leaves the comic in 1961 (and later in the sixties takes break from comics to raise her daughter) and is replaced by Nick Cardy, for those who like that sort of thing – and Cardy does have a strong style and handles posing the characters well. He's not a Joe Kubert, bit when the inking is good, his art looks good.

This is, in the end, a kiddie comic. I'd say that "Adam Strange" is for kids up to 12-13 years old; this is for kids up to maybe 9-10. Us adults... Well, unless you can rationalize it by pretending that "I'm reading this to learn more about comics history", this one's not something you should spend any time reading, and it doesn't have the excellent art or fun creativity of some other old DC comics to recommend it – so I'm not going to recommend it, either.

Showcase Presents Jonah Hex av John Albano, Tony DeZuniga m fl.

Okej, det här är knappast någon ny recension, men jag kommer gradvis att överföra saker jag har utspridda på andra håll till min egen blogg, så att jag har koll på dem. Och John Albanos Jonah Hex förtjänar f ö all uppmärksamhet den kan få, tycker jag.

"What the blazes are you, Hex -- an INDIAN LOVER?"
"Nope! The only thing ah feels a genuine affection for is -- genuine  U.S. currency!"

Jag såg aldrig några spagettiwesterns. När jag gick i mellanstadiet verkade som om alla andra killar i klassen -- åtminstone de tuffa -- gick och såg alla Clintan-filmer, och tyckte de var hypertuffa och heta. Jag har aldrig varit tuff, och såg inga Clintanfilmer. Många år senare går de ju då och då på TV, så jag har insett hur mycket elände jag sluppit ifrån, men jag har aldrig sett några spagettiwesterns. Jag såg halva "För några få dollar mer" (eller någon annan) en nyårsafton och höll på att somna av leda. Jag har sett delar av några till, och de har alla varit grundligt tråkiga.

Tacka vet jag Jonah Hex i stället. En känslokall, girig prisjägare med vanställt ansikte som driver omkring i Vilda vstern och skjuter folk på löpande band. Och, inte minst, levererar hårda repliker med en kyla som borde få Clintan att bli grön av avund.

Jonah skapades av John Albano och Tony DeZuniga under All-Star Western-redaktören Joe Orlandos överinseende, men den som skrivit serien längst, och är mest förknippad med den, är tyvärr Michael Fleisher. När Albano skrev serien förenade den cynism och sentimentalitet på ett sätt som gjorde Jonah till en intressant gestalt -- han lyfte inte ett finger för att hjälpa någon utan att få betalt, men kunde lägga hundratals dollar på läkarvård åt en gammal kvinna som hjälpt honom när han var skadad. Det fanns alltid någon ironisk poäng med Albanos historier, men den poängen saknades ofta när Fleisher stod för manuset; i stället koncentrerade han sig på Jonahs (och världens) cyniska sida.

Den här Showcase-volymen publicerar Albanos historier, och är värd att köpa bara därför, samt Fleishers tidiga historier, som väl för all del går an att läsa. Sedan fylls den, på ett sätt som är rena lurendrejeriet, ut med andra western-historier som inte har ett dugg med Jonah att göra. Detta är dubbelt märkligt eftersom det finns mängder av Jonah Hex-historier kvar att publicera, bland dem den enda verkligt bra historia Fleisher skrev (f ö tecknad av den utmärkte Russ Heath) – den skildrar Hex' ålderdom och död, samt hans föga värdiga öde efter döden: uppstoppat freak show-spektakel. (Så mycket respekt hade Fleisher alltså för sin och Albanos skapelse...)

"Jonah Hex" var en gång en utmärkt westernserie. Den levde vidare långt efter att den blivit mera av en skaplig westernserie, och efter att westerngenren dött i den amerikanska serietidningsindustrin, ett gott betyg till Hex som figur/person och hans förmåga att fånga läsarnas intresse.

Rekommenderas, om än inte odelat.

Jonah Hex-index på http://www.lonely.geek.nz/jonahhex.html