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Catwoman (2002) #3
There’s a lot of great Darwyn Cooke “good girl” art in this issue as Selina goes undercover to find the john who’s been killing all the girls, which I suppose could kick off an interesting discussion of how male gaze works in a non-realistic styles like Cooke’s. But it doesn’t make for a great issue. There’s a terrific opening with Selina visiting Leslie Thompkins, but after a dream sequence for Leslie.
Like three pages. Beautiful art, with Cooke doing a Will Eisner Spirit nod. It has absolutely nothing to do with the comic itself. It’s just padding. Selina’s visiting Leslie to get Oracle’s digits; Batman doesn’t give Selina his white friends’ phone numbers. It’d be something if they wrote Batman—or even could imagine writing him—as more thoughtful than a sixteen-year-old rich kid.
Oracle comes through—off-page—and Selina and Holly go undercover to interrogate the used car dealer who sold the killer his car. Selina gets to wear the costume; Holly gets to walk the Cooke “good girl” runway. Again, great art. But not a particularly good mystery development. It’s a fun, mischievous scene but has to basically hold up the comic because afterward, it’s just a chase scene.
The bad guy gets past Selina, and to pass the level in the video game, she has to search three different warehouses before he kills again. Writer Ed Brubaker intercuts Selina’s mission with the killer and his date flirting and being sweet when really we know he’s going to disintegrate the girl.
The art’s neat, and some of the dialogue’s excellent; plus, Leslie and Selina are cool pals, but it’s like half an issue with clutter to make up the rest. It’s Darwyn Cooke art, so the issue’s definitely worthwhile; it’s just not a great installment in the arc. Brubaker doesn’t have much narration from Selina this issue either. The whole thing’s a little off.
But very pretty.
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Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #259
I actually did a quick Google, and nothing came up (despite the image results showing the very obvious covers side-by-side), so I’m going to assume this detail isn’t an undeniable fact: Legion of Super-Heroes #259 looks ridiculously like Whatever Happened to the Man on Tomorrow a couple of times.
I didn’t even realize the covers until after reading it; I was thinking more about the last page, which has a sad Superboy flying away from his future pals. It’s time for him to go back to Smallville and stay. And his reasoning is so goofy I’m going to spoil it.
Superboy is quitting the Legion of Super-Heroes because he came across Ma and Pa Kent’s gravesite in the future. He imagines they die from some weird tropical disease, and he’s not there to save them. He realizes it’s not real and doesn’t know how they died, which sets him straight enough to fight the bad guy, Psycho-Warrior.
Psycho-Warrior is writer Gerry Conway bringing his late seventies laziness to Legion of Super-Heroes. Last issue, Conway established P-W is from the same mental hospital as Brainiac-5 but not the connection. The connection is P-W saw the Legion going and visiting Brainy and being nice to him, and P-W hates friendly people, so he decided to kill Legionaries. Or at least render them comatose.
P-W’s got a surprisingly bad secret origin too, but he’s basically just a done-in-two super-villain who can move the story along.
After the bad guy’s defeated, Superboy tells his Legion friends he’s going to the past to stay because he can’t forget death’s serious business, and he’s been having too much fun in the future. Or something. It makes no sense, and it’s poorly written, with Conway apparently trying to do a Silver Age homage—an even more gracious interpretation than when I opined he might be trying camp—and it’s more about the spectacle. They’re really doing this nothing-burger of a farewell.
The Legion all waves, knowing they’ll never see Superboy again and whatnot, but none of them are particularly affected. “We all knew this day would come,” one says.
None of the Legionnaires mention they’ve been doing body modification to appear young to Superboy before he leaves, so it’s more like he’s their pet. They’re secretly mentally abusive to him.
Whatever. Conway never used Superboy enough for it to matter he’s leaving, and Conway’s been so disappointing it doesn’t matter if Conway’s not stuck with Superboy anymore.
The Joe Staton and Dave Hunt art tries a little harder than usual. Fails but tries. Staton’s at least got the Silver Age composition down.
Why the heck did they put Conway on this book he’s clearly not interested in doing.
Anyway. Farewell, Boy of Tomorrow.
I actually did a quick Google, and nothing came up (despite the image results showing the very obvious covers side-by-side), so I’m going to assume this detail isn’t an undeniable fact: Legion of Super-Heroes #259 looks ridiculously like Whatever Happened to the Man on Tomorrow a couple of times.
I didn’t even realize the covers until after reading it; I was thinking more about the last page, which has a sad Superboy flying away from his future pals. It’s time for him to go back to Smallville and stay. And his reasoning is so goofy I’m going to spoil it.
Superboy is quitting the Legion of Super-Heroes because he came across Ma and Pa Kent’s gravesite in the future. He imagines they die from some weird tropical disease, and he’s not there to save them. He realizes it’s not real and doesn’t know how they died, which sets him straight enough to fight the bad guy, Psycho-Warrior.
Psycho-Warrior is writer Gerry Conway bringing his late seventies laziness to Legion of Super-Heroes. Last issue, Conway established P-W is from the same mental hospital as Brainiac-5 but not the connection. The connection is P-W saw the Legion going and visiting Brainy and being nice to him, and P-W hates friendly people, so he decided to kill Legionaries. Or at least render them comatose.
P-W’s got a surprisingly bad secret origin too, but he’s basically just a done-in-two super-villain who can move the story along.
After the bad guy’s defeated, Superboy tells his Legion friends he’s going to the past to stay because he can’t forget death’s serious business, and he’s been having too much fun in the future. Or something. It makes no sense, and it’s poorly written, with Conway apparently trying to do a Silver Age homage—an even more gracious interpretation than when I opined he might be trying camp—and it’s more about the spectacle. They’re really doing this nothing-burger of a farewell.
The Legion all waves, knowing they’ll never see Superboy again and whatnot, but none of them are particularly affected. “We all knew this day would come,” one says.
None of the Legionnaires mention they’ve been doing body modification to appear young to Superboy before he leaves, so it’s more like he’s their pet. They’re secretly mentally abusive to him.
Whatever. Conway never used Superboy enough for it to matter he’s leaving, and Conway’s been so disappointing it doesn’t matter if Conway’s not stuck with Superboy anymore.
The Joe Staton and Dave Hunt art tries a little harder than usual. Fails but tries. Staton’s at least got the Silver Age composition down.
Why the heck did they put Conway on this book he’s clearly not interested in doing.
Anyway. Farewell, Boy of Tomorrow.
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Stoker’s Dracula (2004) #4
The issue ends with an afterword from Dick Giordano talking about finishing the Dracula adaptation thirty years after he and writer Roy Thomas started it. He confirms my suspicions they didn’t actually have it plotted out; rather, they did that work thirty years later. Or twenty-eight or whatever. Plus, it sounds like artist Giordano did a lot of the scene breakouts—it’s a Marvel book, after all—but also, no wonder the story’s got no pacing.
I can’t remember the last quarter of Dracula, the novel, but assuming the big events in this issue are correct, there’s not much Thomas is responsible for doing poorly. The fearless vampire hunters treating Mina as damaged, sinful goods? From the book. I do wonder if Van Helsing’s journal, written in awkward, stilted, but proper English, is from the novel or if Thomas paraphrased. When Van Helsing speaks, he jumbles his word order (a non-native speaker, he’s Dutch). It’s distracting.
Also distracting is white-haired Jonathan Harker (his wife was unfaithful, regardless of being brainwashed and mind controlled, his hair was bound to change). He gets the narrator seat a bit, and even though I’m only a few months delayed, his diary doesn’t sound like his diary at the beginning of the series.
I’d also forgotten how we were headed towards a terribly anti-climatic ending, which the comic does nothing to improve. Over-reliance on the narration, workman art from Giordano, stamp, done, move on to the next. The epilogue’s bewildering and, I suppose, where Thomas is most at fault. There must’ve been something better, maybe even something relevant.
The art’s okay. This new material is about getting through, not showing off. Almost everything is a montage sequence of some kind or another (with the narration tying the panels together). It doesn’t let Giordano work up any moment with the characters.
In the end, however, it’s not Thomas or Giordano’s fault Bram Stoker left the villain out of the last fifth of the story. It’s Giordano’s fault Van Helsing looks like a mischievous but not malevolent Keebler Elf, but whatever.
And the weird “follow the money” investigation the boys conduct is boring. They found Dracula thanks to accountancy.
Yawn.
I really wish they’d gotten to finish this back in the seventies. It’s cool they got to finish it thirty years later. But cool isn’t enough to make it succeed. Thomas and Giordano are just being too rote, especially for the finish.
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See How They Run (2022, Tom George)
Sam Rockwell can do an English accent. See How They Run occasionally has him use it but mostly has him stone-face while sidekick Saoirse Ronan amiably chatters away. The movie only asks Rockwell to act once or twice; he can do it with the accent. He’s not really a stunt cast because the movie doesn’t have him do anything, so it doesn’t get anything from him. He and Ronan are fine together. She’s the one who acts, he reacts, so their scenes all work off her momentum. For a while, it seems like the film’s building towards them as a duo, which works.
Sadly, it doesn’t end up going there, instead taking an ill-advised diversion involving a big-time Shining nod (though Amanda McArthur’s production design sets it up, lots of red carpets), where detective Rockwell talks to the murder victim at an art deco bar. It’s part of the second red herring suspect—as narrator Adrien Brody (an American film director in London adapting a stage play) would say, comes with the territory in a whodunit. See How They Run constantly reminds it’s a genre piece and shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Usually to modest but satisfactory effect. The problem with the second red herring suspect isn’t the red herring; it’s the lack of a third. They just go right into the finish, which involves bringing in the supporting cast and putting Rockwell and Ronan in a charming but pointless driving montage.
Because once the film inexplicably gives up on Ronan and Rockwell as a duo, it becomes a relatively engaging Agatha Christie spoof. Ronan and Rockwell were just diversions. Though then, the movie ditches the suspect pool to a fantastic cameo and an elaborate in-joke involving Brody’s film director before finally settling on being an unofficial advertisement for the Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the world.
See How They Run is set in 1953, during the first cast’s run, meaning someone is playing Richard Attenborough—Harris Dickinson. Dickinson is 6’1” and change. Attenborough was infamously shorter; pretty sure it was a plot point in at least one picture, if not more (he was 5’7”). The problem with Dickinson is he’s never a suspect. Neither he nor wife Pearl Chanda. It wouldn’t matter except the movie’s short murder suspects.
The first prime suspect is screenwriter David Oyelowo, who doesn’t get along with the victim. He doesn’t get along with the victim, Brody, his boyfriend Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, or anyone else. Oyelowo gets the film’s “and” credit; he’s the closest thing to a stunt cast.
And he’s not up for the task. He’s okay, but never anything more, once too often less. It’s an adequate performance, nothing more. Ruth Wilson and Brody are the other supporting cast members with the most to do. Brody’s amusing as the unlikable American, while Wilson’s only around to fill in backstory for other suspects.
Director George often uses a split screen device to show different characters’ perspectives. It’s almost good once, but it’s a padding gimmick. Run’s artificially enthusiastic.
Luckily, the cast and production are enough to get it through. It’s not a good star vehicle for Ronan, but she’s definitely the star in it. Until the third act, anyway. The third act’s a mess.
See How They Run’s fine. Affable, likable, engaging, disposable, which puts it ahead of the Mousetrap play if the samples are any indication.
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