MEDIA DIARY, MONDAY, JUNE 17, 2019

After finishing Cows last week, I started reading a novel that I've been meaning to read for a while now: Paul Beatty's much-ballyhoo'd satirical take on the Black California experience, The Sellout. I'd heard so much about this book, which was the first novel by an American—not just an African American—to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize, that I figured it couldn’t possibly be as good as its hype. Well, I’m about a hundred pages in, and so far, it’s better. I’ll get into why and how that is, once I’m finished reading it.

***

Right! On to comic books, then. Last Thursday, I had three books waiting for me in my pull file at The Beguiling. First up…

THE INVADERS #6
Marvel Comics
Story: Chip Zdarsky, Art: Carlos Magno

This series started out okay, with decent art and a story with some potential—I was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of bringing the original, android Human Torch back into Marvel continuity, as I’ve always felt he was criminally underutilized, with a rich, intriguing backstory. However, the first arc, ending this issue, turned out to be seriously underwhelming, with a HUGE amount of build-up (in this title and others) wherein Marvel has been trying to set up Namor as a world-threatening force on the scale of Worldbreaker Hulk (from the World War Hulk storyline), and sorry, but it just ain’t happening.

Sure, Namor’s got the powers to be a real threat, and I can see how it might work on paper. However, as per usual, whenever Marvel tries to outright “heel” the Submariner, he comes across like a surly Eurotrash male model who can barely contain his contempt for the weak and stupid surface dwellers “with their Frankfurter sausages and pathetic inability to breathe underwater” or something. 

For five issues now, Zdarsky has woven a complex, mysterious tale full of espionage, intrigue, and hidden history. He had the Winter Soldier and Captain America engaging in high-risk underwater reconnaissance, but kept whatever they discovered vague and ill-defined because he didn’t want to spoil the surprise of the Big Reveal at the climax. He even went and retconned Namor’s “amnesiac” period, which has been an important part of the narrative carry-over from the Silver Age to the Marvel Age. 

And for what? What was the Big Reveal? I won’t spoil it for you, except to tell you that it involves one small coastal town in the state of Maine… and me removing this title from my pull list. Bottom line? I think this is the fourth attempted Invaders reboot that I’ve had to give up on in the last ten years. I won’t get fooled again. Probably.

***

X-MEN GRAND DESIGN: X-TINCTION, #1 (of 2)
Marvel Comics
Art/Story by Ed Piskor

Hip-Hop Family Tree indie comics sensation Ed Piskor’s ongoing project aiming to re-tell the entire X-Men saga as one long, continuous narrative has finally reached the point in that team’s storied publishing career where doing so begins to be extremely difficult, considering this was the era when the X-titles began to proliferate, and different writers were being allowed to take different X-teams—just a couple at first, then a small handful, most of which featured Wolverine somehow—in all sorts of divergent, impossible-to-reconcile directions.

It’s also the point at which X-Men became way more of a soap opera than it heretofore had been, with disastrous romantic triangles and star-crossed love stories a-plenty, characters making stupid decisions based on silly reasons, really convenient “magic” popping up whenever it’s needed to close a plot loophole, etc, etc. It was a time, it seemed to me, when longtime series writer Chris Claremont was getting bored of it all. 

Personally, even though it was the X-Men who got me back into collecting comics in the early 80’s, I really dislike this particular, post #200 era of the team. Therefore, I’m probably not the best person to be reviewing it. Here’s a link to a review by a chap who freaking LOVED this era, for those of you who want to know what an enthusiast thinks. 

I’ll be picking up the second issue of this two-parter, regardless (all three of Piskor’s series published so far—Grand Design, Second Genesis, X-Tinction—have been two issues long, as is the planned fourth series), because it’s a good deal for the money, it’s a handy reference guide to the X-Men’s fictional history, and I love the continuity guides contained at the back of each issue. I’m telling you right now though, I have NO IDEA how he’s going to figure out a coherent history for book two of this series, and in particular the planned fourth series. He’s going to have to leave so much out, some fans are bound to be upset. Like, how’s he going to deal with Morrison and Quitely’s New X-Men book? Or Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men?! It’s going to be a logistical nightmare.

***

SILVER SURFER: BLACK #1 (of 5)

Marvel Comics
Story: Donny Cates, Art: Tradd Moore

Wow. Now we’re getting somewhere! Every single element of this beautiful new title is fan-damn-tastic. 

In an editorial note Cates includes at the end of this issue, he talks about being hired to write this title a while back and starting to work on the first issue, only to learn shortly thereafter that Stan Lee had passed away. 

It was no secret, of course, that Stan’s favorite character was the Silver Surfer. He said so many times. Upon hearing of Lee’s death, Cates says he took all the work he’d done to that point and destroyed it. He wanted to start from scratch, and create a story that was worthy of Stan Lee’s legacy, as his own, personal way to honor the man. I have to say, with his partner in art, Tradd Moore, Cates has definitely succeeded in doing just that. 

Silver Surfer: Black is everything a great Silver Surfer story should be; it’s tragic, poetic, heroic, beautiful, kinetic, and its pages are fairly vibrating with the Power Cosmic! As I did with other recent, superlative comics—namely Sobek and Little Bird—as soon as I finished reading this comic, I flipped to page one and read it again. It’s that good. BUY THIS BOOK!!!

***

Okay, so, what other “media” have I been grooving on this week? Well, TV-wise, I watched the third and fourth installments of HBO’s really quite amazing miniseries Chernobyl. Only one episode to go, and I’m at a loss as to where they can go from the end of episode 4. I’ll for sure be watching, anyway.

Across the pond, a new series starring one of my favorite performers, Matt Berry, has launched. Called Year of the Rabbit, it’s a hybrid of police procedurals and sitcoms, set in the Victorian era. Berry plays a brutal, thuggish copper named Rabbit, a London police inspector who looks almost as cruel as he behaves. 

In the first episode, Rabbit and his young rookie sidekick—forced upon him by a stereotypically constipated commanding officer, whose adopted daughter aims to be the first female (and Black) “lady-filth” on the London force—hunt down the murderer of a Parisian show-girl who was shot twice, then dumped into the Thames. East End squalor, full frontal nudity, quasi-Masonic symbolism and a visit with John Merrick, the Elephant Man, ensue, occasionally giving this series the feel of a loose adaptation of the classic Alan Moore graphic novel, From Hell. 

Anyway, I fuckin’ loved it, and can’t wait for the next episode.

Until next time!