Titans: The Lazarus Contract

If you’ve been following along you’ll remember that I’ve taken note of the presence of Deathstroke lurking in the shadows of the previous two Titans books I’ve reviewed (The Return of Wally West and Made in Manhattan). I’d started in on Titans Volume 3 when I found a reference to the team’s battle with Deathstroke in the past tense. Had I missed something?

Turns out I had. But I picked up a big pile of these comics for a dollar each from the library’s overstock sale so I had the missing piece, which is this book. It didn’t have a number because it was part of what’s known as a “crossover event” involving a bunch of different titles, in this case Titans, Teen Titans, and Deathstroke.

This led me to the next question: Was all the build-up worth it?

No.

Basically what you need to know here is that one of Deathstroke’s kids, Grant Wilson, was recruited by H.I.V.E. (ahem: the Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination), who gave him a serum that turned him into the supervillain Ravager but that ultimately brought caused him to have a heart attack while fighting the Teen Titans. Deathstroke sort of blames Grant’s death on the Titans, and decides he’ll use the Flashes’ (Flash and Kid Flash’s) ability to enter into the time force to go back into the past and save his son’s life. Since everyone knows disruptions in the space-time continuum always go wrong, the Titans and Teen Titans team up to stop Deathstroke. This they manage to do and Deathstroke, more disappointed than angry, decides to “retire” by setting up a new team of hero/villains composed of his other kids.

I don’t like most time-travel stories. This one doesn’t work for all the usual reasons. I particularly didn’t care for the blather trying to explain the mechanics of time travel. You see, Deathstroke modified an extractor made by someone for Flash to keep his speed power under control. Deathstroke uses this device to store that energy in battery cells connected to his fancy new “Ikon suit” (complete with lightning bolts!) that has a “gravity sheath” that allows him to move at near-light speed and enter the “time stream.” Then, when the Titans and Teen Titans want to follow Deathstroke they mimic his combination of Kid Flash’s super-speed and the gravitational properties of his costume by joining Jericho’s gravity sheath with Flash’s speed to create a “time vortex” stabilized by Raven’s “chrono-kinesis” and Starfire’s energy, all while being tethered by Raven’s mind-meld to the rest of the team as Flash goes running into the speed force, at least until Raven’s “vast mystical powers” begin to fray and her soul-self is in danger of being trapped in the “speed force,” which is where Deathstroke has looked into the face of God and achieved a higher consciousness.

Enough already. I lost interest in all of this long before the end. It all just seemed like a bunch of sparks and noise, with too many characters involved and not much for most of them to do but stand around barking at each other. Not that I knew who a lot of these people were anyway, or cared. I do know Deathstroke and have found him an interesting character in the past, but he’s a lot less so here, especially when he starts spouting scripture (a lot of scripture) in the epilogue. I think maybe there are fans who like this kind of story but it wasn’t my thing and by the time I finished I was glad that I was done with it, and nearly done with my Titans book haul.

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The MAD Book of Mysteries

Since I’m a fan of both MAD Magazine and classic detective fiction, a book like this couldn’t really miss. I also like that it’s full of original stories and not a grab-bag of previously published material, and that all the stories have the same author and artist (Lou Silverstone and Jack Rickard, respectively).

So the line-up of crime-solving all-stars here sounds like the cast of Murder by Death. There’s Hercules Pirouette, Archer Spillane Spayed, Shtick Tracer, Allergy Queen, Charlie China, Perry Maceface, and Shamus Holmes. And there’s also a spoof on G-Men movies now and then, a quick trip to Peanuts-land with Chuck Frown, Private Eye, and a bunch of gags about what cops say vs. what they really mean. Alas, there’s no Nero Wolfe or Miss Marple, though they’re on the back cover. I would have loved seeing them.

The gags aren’t terribly funny but Silverstone knows his stuff and the way he pokes fun at the material will make you smile. He takes digs at Poirot’s long, drawn-out and confusing explanations of the crime, and has Number One Son getting back at his dad for all the mean cracks made at his expense. But the style of humour is mainly geared around running a gag-a-page of snappy comebacks. When Shamus Holmes declares that a murder victim lived near a canal Dr. Whatso says “A canal? That’s eerie, Homes.” To which Holmes replies: “No, alimentary, my dear Whatso!” Because the deceased worked at a candy company you see.

Rickard often gives the supporting characters familiar movie-star faces. James Cagney and Robert Redford, for example, as their era’s representative G-Men. I loved the look of all the stories, though MAD‘s house style of square speech bubbles and sans serif lettering seemed out of place. I don’t know why they couldn’t have played around with that more. Lettering matters.

What I took away the most from revisiting this pocketbook today though is how much the cultural landscape has changed. In the late ‘70s-early ‘80s classic detective fiction could be sent up for a mass audience, here or in the aforementioned Murder by Death, because it could be assumed everyone had some familiarity with these characters. Today I think that kind of awareness belongs to a vanishing few older readers. To be sure, golden age detectives still have their cults, but they aren’t household names anymore. And what’s more, nobody has taken their place. Caricature exploits character, and the old guard had plenty of that. But how can you caricature Inspectors Morse, Rebus, or Gamache? They’re more realistic and psychologically grounded but not as memorable, and give satirists a lot less to work with.

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Aliens: Dead Orbit

Dead Orbit is a one-man show, being written, drawn, and lettered by Canadian comic artist James Stokoe. It’s impressive when someone can handle all these roles as a comic auteur, but there are times when you think a division of labour might have helped. That’s the feeling I had here anyway. I love Stokoe’s art, which turns a space station into a giant, crumbling oatmeal cookie and sees Xenomorphs hiding in the wicker nests of wiring and machinery. I also liked the visual concept he had of turning the impregnated survivors who are “rescued” being burned to a crisp in their cryo pods so that it looks like rotting zombies are giving birth to chestbursters. That was a great touch, typical of the inventiveness found throughout this comic franchise.

The story, however, is hard to follow. I wasn’t sure of the time scheme, as most of the story is a flashback, but I don’t know how much because within the flashback there are a couple of flashforwards, though not as far forward as the story’s frame. This lost me completely the first time through because I got confused as to when Wascylewski was cocooned by the Xenomorphs. And what happened to the salvagers anyway? It seemed like that might be important, and then it wasn’t.

Things were just moving too fast. At one point there’s even a joke made about how quickly the creatures are growing, which is a poke at Alien that is often picked up on. The point remains however that everything here seems to happen in a rush and even at the end I was still wondering a bit about what was going on and in what order.

The supplemental materials describe Stukoe’s original pitch, which was a much more conventional Aliens story featuring space marines infiltrating a planet infested with Xenomorphs. But at some point he decided to go in a different direction, and this is definitely more like the first film than the second. The crew don’t even have any firearms and have to improvise with whatever tools they can find on the ship. Good luck with that!

Perhaps a little too scrambled in terms of its narrative for its own good, this is still another solid instalment in the Aliens franchise, and not to be missed by franchise fans.

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