2012 x 5: Five Pieces of Pop Culture Pleasure

Issue #1 of The Manhattan Projects

The Avengers: Widely hyped blockbusters are typically disappointing, the recently released Hobbit film being a glaring example. The years-in-the-making film version of Marvel Comics' the Avengers is the rare one that's every bit as good as advertised. The obvious object of praise is writer/director Joss Whedon, who found an ideal middle ground between characters and icons, but Whedon's success owes a lot to the magnificent casting done for the Marvel films that lead up to this one. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark remains the clear favorite and gets most of the best lines, especially in a face-to-face confrontation with Tom Hiddleston as Loki, but the whole group is great to watch. The biggest surprise, though, was Chris Evans as Steve Rogers who does a terrific job of conveying Captain America' s absolutely un-ironic heroism without coming across as a cardboard cutout. Frankly, it shouldn't have worked, but then that was true of this movie in general. With eight lead-worthy characters in the mix, this should have been a terrible mess. Instead, it was the best comics adaptation I've seen, and a sequel can't come soon enough.

Joe Jackson at Strathmore Music Hall: The chance to check Jackson off my list of musicians I need to see live worked out by accident , but I couldn't be happier than it did. Jackson was touring to promote his new album of Duke Ellington songs, but he didn't short-change fans as far as his own songs. As good as Jackson is as a singer and composer, his gifts as an arranger are of anything more prodigious, and this show was no exception. Every song, including ones that were old before I was born, sounded fresh and alive. The closest thing to a complaint I can muster is that he didn't play my own personal favorite of his songs ("Home Town" from the album Big World), which for an artist with Jackson's body of work is no complaint at all.

The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman: Jonathan Hickman had a great run writing The Fantastic Four for Marvel the last few years. As good as some of those stories have been, though, they pale in comparison to his original series The Manhattan Projects, a collaboration with up-and-coming artist Nick Pitarra published by Image Comics. As the title suggests, the series is set in the 1940s around the Manhattan Project with a cast of characters that includes Robert Openheimer, Albert Einstein and Harry Truman. However, despite the presence of familiar people and and events, this series is far removed from the standard alternate-history approach. Put another way, Hickman is not dealing in what-ifs but rather WTFs. It's hard to summarize without spoiling the story, but a keyword is "multiple". The scientists involved are engaged in multiple projects beyond the atomic bomb, we encounter multiple US presidents and Doctor Openheimer has multiple personalities to name a few. Comparing any new series to one of comics' landmark series is going out on a limb, but this comic bears comparison to Watchmen. Though Pitarra's art is a very different style to Dave Gibbons' work on the older series, it certainly fits the tone of this book. As for the story itself, its intersecting plot threads traversing time, place and mental space may be even more complex than the relatively simply parallel structure Alan Moore used for Watchmen.

Muse - "Explorers": Overall, I like the band Muse better in concept than actuality, but this song from their current album The 2nd Law is a thing a wonder. Epic and uplifting, it clearly calls to mind Queen, especially in the low-key keyboard-based intro, but still manages to sound distinctive and original. For the record, "Madness" from the same album isn't quite as good but is compelling enough that I'll probably find myself checking into their back catalog in earnest after years of resisting.

Star Trek - The Newspaper Comics: While Star Trek comics - good and bad - have been around nearly as long as the show itself, I never knew there had been a newspaper strip until I read about this collection that was released earlier this month. The reasons the strip is less well-known than it should be are detailed in the book, but the key thing is of course the strips themselves. More so than almost any Star Trek comic I've read, they honestly capture the feel of the show and the characters we love. Not only are the stories themselves strong, you can practically hear the voice of Shatner and all the other stars when you read the dialogue.

The Other Doctor Manhattan

With the possible exception of the overwhelming success (both artistic and popular) of The Avengers movie, the biggest comics story this year has actually been a batch of smaller stories. Between DC Comics' contentious decision to release prequels to Watchmen and the ongoing lawsuits by the heirs of Jack Kirby and the creators of Superman against Marvel and DC respectively, the treatment of comics creators by "the Big Two" has definitely put a negative light on a form of entertainment intended to celebrate justice and good. On a more positive note, it's also drawn attention to creator-owned comics titles.

The biggest player in this area, Image Comics, turns 20 this year and got a nice birthday present in the form of an article in the New York Times. Among the topics touched on was creators who write DC's and Marvel's characters on a work-for-hire basis while creating their own (and owned) titles for Image. While the article gave a much-deserved nod to the series Fatale, by Captain America writer Ed Brubaker, I was disappointed that another key Marvel writer's series wasn't mentioned.

Writer Jonathan Hickman has been writing The Fantastic Four the last couple years. As good as some of those stories have been, they pale in comparison to his original series The Manhattan Projects, a collaboration with up-and-coming artist Nick Pitarra.

As the title suggests, the series is set in the 1940s around the Manhattan Project with a cast of characters that includes Robert Openheimer, Albert Einstein and Harry Truman. However, despite the presence of familiar people and and events, both the project and those surrounding it are far removed from history as we know it. The series is also far removed from the standard alternate-history approach. Put another way, Hickman is not dealing in what-ifs but rather WTFs.

It's hard to offer details without spoiling the story, but a telling keyword is "multiple". The scientists involved are engaged in multiple projects beyond the atomic bomb, we encounter multiple US presidents and Doctor Openheimer has multiple personalities for good measure. Another key multiple can be found in issue #4, but again I don't want to spoil anything. The key here is that these multiples add up to something tremendously (some would say mind-blowingly) good.

It's a dicey proposition to compare any series, especially one that's only five issues in, to one of comics' landmark series, but this comic bears genuine comparisons to Watchmen. Though Pitarra's art is a very different style to Dave Gibbons' work on Watchmen, it certainly fits the tone of the story. As for the story itself, its intersecting plot threads traversing time, place and mental space may be even more complex than the parallel structure Alan Moore deployed on Watchmen.

Obviously, time will tell if that comparison holds true or is just my enthusiasm running away with me. I only hope that Hickman's upcoming Avengers title for Marvel won't mess with the release of The Manhattan Projects. I'm well and truly hooked and can't wait to see what happens next in this version of the past.

When Less is (Alan) Moore

When the Watchmen prequels were announced in February, despite the bad blood that’s coagulated between Alan Moore and DC Comics over the past two decades, the reaction was pretty muted overall. Moore gave one of his typically dismissive (and self-serving) comments about DC being “dependent on ideas that [he] had 25 years ago”, people from DC gave the expected spin, and the world kept turning. A couple months later, the simmering has given way to a boil as Before Watchmen has become the flashpoint for the debate over how comics creators are treated by the two major publishers. 

To be sure, this is a debate worth having, but I find myself increasingly annoyed at Moore’s prominence in the discussion. It’s amusing, albeit in a sad way, that the two most prominent stories of creator mistreatment of my youth are in a sense still with us even if the creators themselves are not. The ongoing legal dispute between DC Comics and the heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and the one between Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby aren’t just landmark intellectual property cases, they speak to how hard it is for major corporations to do the right thing when billions of dollars are at stake. I only wish that people didn’t insist on equating the treatment of Moore with the genuinely shabby treatment Siegel, Shuster and Kirby received. 

I want to sympathize with Alan Moore's position, but I have a hard time doing so, not in spite of the way DC treated the creators of Superman but rather because of the way DC treated them. Unlike Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Alan Moore was a successful and established comics professional when he started working for DC.  Rather than take the project he originated to an independent publisher where he could have been sure of full ownership, Moore signed a deal to do Watchmen with a major publisher and now acts like a spoiled crybaby whenever the large corporate entity (DC has been owned by Warner since the 1970s) adheres to the terms of that contract. Everyone takes Moore at face value when he says he was  swindled but has anyone considered that maybe he was just dumb?

My focus here is not on whether Moore’s contract with DC was fair or if they lived up the spirit of that contract (both of which seem be more of a grey area than the righteous care to admit) or whether Before Watchmen is "ethical" (I can't get past how pointless the endeavor is for long enough to render judgment). Intellectually I know I should want to take Moore's side, but it's hard to throw my support behind the mean-spirited crank who's spent most of the past 25 years being equal parts self-righteous and mendacious on this issue. In a 1987 issue of The Comics Journal, Moore described the situation with DC on Watchmen as follows.

"So basically they're not ours, but if DC is working with the characters in our interests then they might as well be. On the other hand, if the characters have outlived their natural life span and DC doesn't want to do anything with them, then after a year we've got them and we can do what we want with them, which I'm perfectly happy with."

I don't see that quote referenced in a lot of these "DC shafted Moore" pieces. That's probably because the man who said those words understood exactly what the terms of his deal meant. Moore probably hoped that Watchmen would be like the novel Superfolks, a cult success that would drift off the radar in a few years to be rediscovered a generation later at which point he (and Gibbons) would be able to reap the rewards. When it didn't work out that way, Moore conveniently decided DC had "swindled" him. At a time when the heirs of creators who truly were swindled are rightfully fighting Marvel and DC over these legacies, the issue of creators’ rights deserves a much better poster child than Alan Moore.

Who Watches the Guy Who Asked Us About Watching the Watchmen?

For the most part, my reaction to DC Comics' announcement of several prequel series to the iconic story Watchmen is a hearty shrug. It's not that I don't think the comics will be good. In fact, with people like Darwyn Cooke on board, I'm confident it will all be very well done. It's just that it all seems a bit pointless. Since the original series gave us all the back-story we needed for these characters, additional stories seem likely to be either superfluous because they have no connection to the Watchmen mother-ship or obligatory because they're crammed full of references that no one who isn't immersed in the original storyline will appreciate. Either way, I think it will be much more enjoyable to hear what original series co-creator Alan Moore has to say about it, as this could be the slight against him on DC's part that finally pushes him over the edge. I'll be watching.

Obligatory Addendum: Moore's reaction to DC's plans was swift and sure. Indeed, it predated the above posting. When asked for comment by the New York Times, Moore described the move as "completely shameless." He actually said a lot more than that, but that's for another column.