Big Trouble in Little China (Legacy Edition Book Two)

I enjoyed the first volume of this series so much that two years later I had no trouble remembering where it left off: with Jack Burton being transported into the twenty-first century as a roadside attraction. Usually two years is more than long enough for me to forget plot lines entirely.

This collection contains three main storylines. In the first, after being brought out of suspended animation in the year 2015, Jack meets up with some of his old pals (and their children), and gets involved in a plot to take down a billionaire who collects pop culture artefacts from the 1980s. One such artefact being Jack’s rig the Pork Chop Express.

We’re introduced here to the girl who will become Jack’s new sidekick, his buddy Wang’s daughter Winona. Though of course Winona thinks of herself as more than a sidekick, and it’s her skill in martial arts that saves Jack’s bacon more often than he saves her. She’s also helpful in explaining the changes that have taken place in America since the Reagan years, which is the source of lots of the usual kinds of jokes stemming from Jack and Winona speaking what amount to different languages.

The second story has Jack and Winona and the rest of the gang heading off to Macao to take part in a poker tournament and rescue Margo Litzenberger from Koschei the Deathless. Here they are reunited with Egg Shen, who inadvertently sends Jack and Winona back to 1906 San Francisco, just before the earthquake is about to hit. This marks the beginning of the third story. In San Francisco Jack and Winona meet a younger Egg Shen and also get the origin story for the evil wizard Lo Pan before sorting out their respective timelines.

I liked this just as much as the first volume. The period gags are all on point, from the A-Team spin-off in the first story, to the Harry Potter kid in Macao, to Jack’s ongoing hunt for a payphone. And plot-wise it keeps spinning off in all kinds of crazy directions, including a crossover event revisiting scenes from the movie. The only place it dragged for me was in the primer on the rules of Texas hold’em, as presented by the Three Storms. And I guess the land developer/casino operator who becomes a nativist politician in San Francisco was a bit unnecessary. It’s interesting to note how often this character kept popping up in comics around this time.

Graphicalex

Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Four

In my notes on Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Three I talked about how I preferred the back-to-basics Swamp Thing stories that played like X-Files “monster of the week” episodes to the epic storylines involving some grand cosmic battle between good and evil. I felt that way again here, as I really enjoyed the introductory stories about the druggies eating some sweet potato that has fallen off Swampy’s back and going on hallucinatory trips, and “Ghost Dance,” about the legacy of a gun manufacturer playing out in a haunted house (a story that was a personal favourite of Alan Moore’s). But once we get back into the preparation for a final battle between a newly awakened power of evil and the forces of light, I thought things weakened. Sticking with the comparison to the X-Files, you spend all this time building up the main storyline or “mytharc” about Fox’s missing sister and alien abductions and black oil, but when you finally go on board the mothership you know you’re going to be disappointed. I mean, where do you go from a build-up like what we get here: “This is ultimate dark, ultimate light. The forces and the stakes here are fundamental and absolute . . . and whichever side meets its final destruction this day, everything will be changed.”

That said, I thought the final battle was well choreographed. A host of characters are assembled. John Constantine is holding a completely useless séance with a group Neil Gaiman describes as “the detritus, the flotsam and jetsam of the DC occult universe.” Swampy is in hell (or thereabouts) and is joined by Deadman, Phantom Stranger, the rhyming demon Etrigan, and the Spectre. They’re trying to stop the aforementioned evil. Or maybe it isn’t evil. Maybe it’s just misunderstood. In any event, the glowing hand of God descends from heaven and the world just continues on its merry way. “Nothing has happened. Everything has happened.” Good and evil are necessarily linked, you see. Can’t have one without the other. According to Gaiman’s introduction, Moore thought this had something to do with the Manichaeism of American culture, and what happens is an answer to Swamp Thing’s questioning if there is “some truth . . . that may be divined . . . from the entrails of America.”

Well, colour me unimpressed with these flabby conclusions. Getting to them was a lot of fun though, even if Swampy himself remains a remarkably passive as well as ponderous figure throughout. I think maybe Moore came up with the character of John Constantine just to liven things up. I do like what Moore did with this series, but at the same time I don’t think he was ever as interested in Swamp Thing as he was in doing his own thing.

Graphicalex

The Owl and the Pussycat

I’ve said before how much I love this Visions in Poetry series, and in particular how the illustrations really offer up new interpretations of classic poems. Stéphane Jorisch’s take on Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” is another great example, presenting the poem in a way that I’d never thought of before.

My own sense has always been that the Owl and Pussycat were an odd but natural fit. After all, opposites attract. Jorisch, however, emphasizes their difference, making them into a sort of Romeo and Juliet coupling. The beautiful pea-green boat takes them away from an apartheid society where dogs and cats and owls never mix. The other species look on at the Owl and the Pussycat and whisper. The couples that cruise by on the Chez Noah stare (no interspecies sex there!). Even the fish in the sea stick their heads out of the water to watch them sailing by. And so our happy couple, who only have eyes for each other, have to go to the land where the Bong-Tree grows to be married by a singular turkey, after buying a ring from a singular pig. Mythical beasts like unicorns and mermaids approve.

As I say, this is never the way I’ve read “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and I don’t think it’s a reading I’d adopt as my own. Jorisch does, however, very much make it his own and I thought the book another splendid entry in a series that never disappointed. I only wish they’d published more!

Graphicalex

Chew Volume Five: Major League Chew

When last we left off, Tony Chu’s daughter Olive had just been kidnapped by Mason Savoy. His reasons are at least generally clear: he wants to act as her mentor, bringing her cibopathic powers along so that she can aid him in his plans, which have something to do with uncovering the conspiracy behind the bird flu. And as bad luck would have it, Tony himself is also kidnapped at the same time, by one of Amelia’s coworkers, a guy who wants to feed him the body parts of long-dead baseball players so that Tony can spill the beans on their sordid sex lives. This will allow him (the kidnapper) to score a big advance for writing a sleazy book on the subject (Superstar Sluggers’ Untold Sex Tales) after which he’ll auction Tony off to underground figures who want to do scientific testing on him.

This volume doesn’t do a lot to advance the main storyline, but it does throw in a lot of the sort of madcap madness that fans will love. Tony is busted from the F.D.A. and becomes a traffic cop, leaving his former partner Colby teamed up with a cyborg lion while working for the lusty ladies of the U.S.D.A. And once again Colby has to hop in bed with the boss to help Tony out.

A lot of the regulars are sidelined. Tony’s brother and sister only pop in as cameos, and the redoubtable Poyo doesn’t appear until the triumphant final page. It looks like he’s had some work done and is even more of a mean fighting machine than ever. There’s also nothing said about the aliens or the vampires. But we do meet Hershel Brown, a xocoscalpere. This means he can sculpt anything out of chocolate so realistically that it exactly mimics its real-world counterpart. So a chocolate machine gun or samurai sword is totally lethal. Alas, this skill doesn’t save him from being cut into pieces by some Russians (or Serbians, or “some damn thing”).

Tony gets rescued by Amelia, Colby gets a new partner, and Olive is starting to grow into her awakening powers. I haven’t been disappointed by this series yet and look forward to what’s next.

Graphicalex

Doctor Strange: Strange Origin

Yet another reboot origin story, this time for Doctor Strange. Except author Greg Pak doesn’t change up the original origin story (I had fun writing that) very much. It’s still Dr. Stephen Strange being an arrogant surgeon who loses use of his hands in a car accident and then seeking out the Ancient One, a mysterious figure who introduces him to the world of magic. While at the temple of the Ancient One, Dr. Strange meets Mordo, the bad student, and Wong, who will go on to become Dr. Strange’s manservant (he’s a little more independent than that here, but still fills the same role).

On the plus side it’s a pretty condensed retelling, with Dr. Strange getting up to speed just by memorizing a few incantations. After that, he and Wong and a sexy Italian sidekick are off hunting down the three rings of power to prevent Mordo from getting his hands on them. Yawn. Come on. We’re really doing this rings of power thing again?

At each stage there are portals opened and demons burst through that then have to be banished through an appeal to the Vishanti or else good ol’-fashioned fisticuffs. And Dr. Strange proves himself worthy to become a Sorcerer Supreme by renouncing the power of the rings and going back to the Ancient One to continue his training.

It wasn’t my thing. I liked the giant tiger of the Vishanti, and the art by Emma Ríos is distinct in a sketchy sort of style, but I also found it hard to read in places. The demons sometimes seem like balls of ectoplasmic yarn. And the story was underwhelming for the reasons given. Also included in this volume is a teaser for a different storyline (The Way of the Weird, which I already had a copy of), and that felt out of place even if it is just bonus content. The origin story there is presented as a flashback to the original, and not to the book we just read.

If you’re a Dr. Strange fan I’d give this a look mainly for the different style of the art, but otherwise it should be a pass.

Graphicalex

The Uncanny X-Men: Red Wave

Another franchise reboot. Krakoa, the living island of misfit toys, has fallen and the X-Men have disbursed around the globe. Beast and Cyclops are looking for new digs in Alaska while Rogue, Gambit, and Wolverine get together to toast wieners and drink beer in the Louisiana bayou. Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters has been turned into Graymalkin Prison, a penitentiary for mutants run by Dr. Corina Ellis, which is where Professor X is currently being held. And Charles’s old flame Sarah Gaunt, after being turned into a Javier Botet/J-horror demon called the Hag, is out hunting for more mutants to add to Dr. Ellis’s collection. The Hag’s next stop is the bayou, where a foursome of young mutants, along with Jubilee, have found Rogue and company and are looking for protection.

I’m guessing none of that synopsis will mean anything to most people reading this. Suffice it to say that this is all about Gail Simone setting things up for a new X-Men run, with the usual generational dynamic. Right from the start with the X-Men there’s been the idea of educating and training young people in the responsible use of their powers. That looks set to continue, and the newbies seem like a fun bunch to follow. Especially emo-manga boy.

Also to the good is the character of the Hag. I didn’t like her backstory of romancing with Charles back in his Oxford days, but after her transformation in a hurricane that kills her kid she turns into a pretty fearsome foe, even taking down Wolverine handily. The way Rogue stops her though was corny as hell.

The romance between Rogue and Gambit was a little more advanced than I was expecting, but I guess comics are growing up. What I found hardest about having the two of them together so much was their silly accents. Rogue, a child of the Mississippi bayou, is all folksy (“I mighta coulda got a mite overconfident”), while the Cajun Gambit is all “dat” and “dem” and calling Rogue “chère.” A little of this goes a long way. Or, put another way, it soon gets annoying. Not quite as annoying as that silly script they started putting Thor’s speech into in his comics, but getting there.

Overall then a decent way of kicking off a new story cycle, with some good stuff and a few hiccups. Worth seeing what comes next anyway.

Graphicalex

The Vault of Horror Volume 1

The Vault of Horror was one of three main horror comic titles put out by EC in the 1950s before they got shut down by the government. The others were Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear, and as I said in my review of The Haunt of Fear Volume 1 the three were basically interchangeable, with the same writers and artists and no difference in the kinds of stories included. They even did crossovers, so that the Old Witch (host of The Haunt of Fear) and the Crypt-Keeper (from Tales from the Crypt) will sometimes show up in these pages to introduce stories. The Vault-Keeper is the guiding force here, and he’s indistinguishable from the other two. To the point where I honestly thought he was an old woman, until he started shooting down rumours about his being romantically linked with the Old Witch.

OK, so what are you getting? Well, for starters it’s issues #12-17. Does that mean that Volume 1 is skipping anything? Not really. As with The Haunt of Fear, EC started publishing stories from The Vault of Horror in another comic called War against Crime. Then, when War against Crime became The Vault of Horror they didn’t change the numbering, for business reasons I don’t fully understand. So issue #12 is really the first issue of The Vault of Horror (something similar happened with The Haunt of Fear, which had started with issue #15 because previously it had been The Gunfighter, and Tales from the Crypt, which had been Crime Patrol).

The stories themselves don’t win any awards for originality. As I’ve previously noted, ripping off classic horror tales was an EC staple, so that’s on the menu again here. The first story is a version of The Wax Museum. “Doctor of Horror” is just the story of Burke and Hare. “Island of Death” is “The Most Dangerous Game.” “Voodoo Horror!” is The Picture of Dorian Gray. Throw in several werewolf stories (set, as always, somewhere on the English moors), a vampire, a couple of practical jokes that backfire, some premature burials, and you’ve got a pretty musty vault indeed.

Not that there’s much wrong with that. I always get a kick out of these comics even when they’re just playing the greatest hits. And there’s at least one story here, “Baby . . . It’s Cold Inside!” that I thought was quite original. Though if you showed me the source for it I wouldn’t be surprised. It was getting to the point where I was feeling that even the stories without an obvious inspiration had to be coming from somewhere. But in any event, I’d probably rate it the best.

Other features include short stories by editor Bill Gaines, some random chortlings by the Vault-Keeper, and a mail bag. With regard to this latter department, I always wonder how many of these letters were actually sent into EC’s (or Marvel’s, or DC’s) offices and how many were made up. Some of them are clearly fictional, but others might have been legit. It was a time when people actually did write letters. They sure don’t anymore.

There’s a sort of manic energy throughout, not just in the typical comic style of throwing exclamation marks at the end of every sentence (even something as banal as “They seat themselves on roughly hewn chairs!”), but in the crazy laughter on almost every other page. There are the “Heh-heh-heh”s of the Vault-Keeper, of course, but also some hee-hees, haw-haws, and lots and lots of “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”s. In a Foreword to this volume by R. L. Stine he writes that “What attracted me to these comics was that they were so hilarious. Has anyone ever concocted such a mix of horror and humor before?” I don’t know about that. It’s not like the stories here are all that funny. But they do trade in a kind of dark humour and even in the most extreme situations it all seems like a lot of fun. Not that that helped them any when the censors came calling.

Graphicalex

Cemetery Beach

With that title, and a bleak if indeterminate cover, I went into this thinking it was a horror comic. It’s not. It’s an SF-action title set in some future with an alternate history where interdimensional travel was discovered a hundred years ago. Our hero is a “pathfinder” named Mike Blackburn who has been sent to explore an off-world dystopia that we set up back in the early twentieth century. Whatever the idea behind the place was in the first place, it’s now basically a fascist state run by a Baron Harkonnen figure.

Mike begins the story being interrogated in one of the state prisons, but he quickly escapes along with a rebel chick named Grace and they spend the rest of the book running away from the army/police and trying to get to Cemetery Beach, which is where Mike’s transport back to Earth (a place natives call “oldhome”) is parked.

There are things to like here. Artist Jason Howard does action well and there is a lot of action on tap here. It’s really just one long chase scene, with lots of explosions and vehicle crashes. There are series of pages with no dialogue, or even sound effects, at all. And I was intrigued by some of the hints at world building by Warren Ellis. There’s a germ pool on the planet that keeps people alive forever but has the side effect of turning them into “mushroom cancer soldiers.” The relation between Earth and the place Mike goes to reminded me a lot of Frank Herbert’s Dosadi. And I liked the way the fashion sense of the natives has stayed stuck in the 1930s, which fit the fascistic tone.

But these are all just hints that something bigger is going on. As noted, the plot doesn’t allow any time for expository dialogue beyond quick descriptions of the different zones Mike and Grace are traveling through. And the series itself, which ran for seven issues, breaks off abruptly, as though there was more to come. But I don’t think it’s been continued in the years since it came out in 2019.

So it’s not bad for what we’ve got, but it still feels a bit like half a comic. It’s frustrating that some of the interesting avenues for exploration that are opened up remain unexplored. If you just like the shoot ‘em up and blow ‘em up stuff though I’d recommend it.

Graphicalex

Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Volume 3

Say what you will about Stan Lee as a writer, he certainly knew how to work at speed. This was especially the case during the 1960s, when he was churning out copy for a whole series of Marvel titles. Each of the comics collected here, published in 1966-67, was written by Lee and illustrated by Gene Colan, and on the masthead of issue #32 they even ask “How do they do it, month after month?”

Well I don’t know how they kept up such a pace, but they managed surprisingly well, despite some obvious lulls. One such low point being issue #28, where Daredevil has to take on aliens looking to strip-mine Earth: “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Planet!” This comic begins with a six-page intro that is quickly dismissed as “one of the longest prologues on record” in the playfully self-referential style that Lee favoured at the time (“Stan” even has a Batman-style cameo when Daredevil says hi to him as he’s climbing past an open window).

On the other hand, the volume concludes with a great four-parter that has DD taking on Mr. Hyde and Cobra, a pair of bickering supervillains. Mr. Hyde splashes a “potent chemical” in Daredevil’s face that’s meant to blind him, which of course doesn’t mean anything because he’s already blind. But, for some unexplained reason, “since the man without fear is already blind, Hyde’s formula affected his super senses instead – making them totally useless!” So until he finds the antidote, Daredevil is pretty much totally helpless, though he does make a fair run of things for a while, pretending at times to have gotten his sight back. This is a lot more difficult than pretending to be Matt Murdock’s twin brother Mike, a cool “hipster” (the word meant something different back then) that Matt invents to confuse Foggy and Karen as to Daredevil’s secret identity. This makes for a decent storyline as well.

Otherwise what we get here is what fans of the comic had come to expect. First and foremost there’s a blind superhero whose other senses are so advanced he can identify people by their heartbeats (or, in the case of the Owl, “his powerful birdlike emanations,” whatever that means). In fact, Daredevil can even fly a jet, a point that has to be dealt with by “Sly Ol’ Stan” thusly:

To save you the trouble of writing scathing letters to us, we’ll explain here and now how the sightless D.D. can pilot a plane! He feels the vibrations of the needles and dials within the instrument panel, and his own natural radar sense takes care of the rest!

The second feature common to most Daredevil comics is a B-list supervillain, or pair of B-list supervillains who never seem to get along that well. I’ve already talked about Mr. Hyde and Cobra. Among the other baddies teaming-up here are Leap-Frog (he’s got springs in his flipper-style footwear!) and Stilt-Man, and the Masked Marauder and Gladiator. That we find out the Masked Marauder is really just the landlord of the office building that Nelson and Murdock operate out of feels right. He’s found his niche.

The third recurring feature is the guest appearance by another Marvel superhero. Here we get Ka-Zar, Spider-Man, and Thor. They’re all stronger than Daredevil so he mainly has to just survive the scraps he gets into with them by jumping out of the way.

The final thing to note is the self-reflexivity and self-deprecating humour I mentioned earlier. For issue #26, “Stilt-Man Strikes Again!” a note right on the cover admits “It’s one of our least-inspired titles, but the story’s a blast!” At several points in the volume sound effects are drawn attention to. Daredevil bouncing off the top of a car with a “BTANNG!” for example, gets this notation from “Scrupulous Stan”: “Special note for those who may read this story aloud: in the sound BTANNG, the second N is silent!” This will come in handy for the Leap-Frog character, who jumps around with a PTANNG!, a SQUANNG!, and a FTINNG! And later we’re told of a “PTOW!”: “In reading this story aloud . . . the first letter in the above sound effect is presumed to be silent!” That’s from “Stickler Stan.”

Overall then, an entertaining collection that I’m sure gave fans everything they wanted, or at least were expecting. And maybe a few things they didn’t. As usual, Lee is just embarrassingly bad with anything to do with romance. At one point we see Matt alone in his apartment with a framed photo of Karen. Why a blind man has a photo of the girl he has a crush on is hard to figure, but he picks it up to address her thusly: “Karen, my darling . . . even though I cannot see you . . . your beauty is like a living thing to me! In my mind’s eye I’ve devoured your features hungrily . . . greedily . . . like a starving man!” Which is a lot of what the Little Rascals used to call mush. But the fact that he says these lines while “looking” at a photo of Karen feels almost like camp.

Graphicalex

Alien: Descendant

What do Xenomorphs eat? You may think the answer is “Everything.” As apex predators it’s probably safe to assume they’re omnivores. But thinking back over the films and the comics I’ve seen and read I don’t remember seeing or hearing of them actually eating anything. They kill everything that moves, or use other species as baby ovens, and goodness knows they grow at an astonishing pace, going from infants to full-size adults in minutes, but where do they get the energy to sustain such a metabolism?

This book is a sequel to Alien: Thaw, and even though it takes place thirteen years later with a mostly different set of characters it’s  probably best to read Thaw first. Basically Zasha, the little girl who was the only survivor of the Xenomorph outbreak on the ice moon of LV-695, has come back with the usual gang of space marines, synths, and Weyland-Yutani jerks. And, again as per usual, the mission has something to do with W-Y grabbing some Xenomorphs. I don’t know why they’re so obsessed about this, but it’s a core part of the franchise mythology.

Things kick off here though with a backstory that has no dialogue (beyond Hssssss! Skreee! And Whrrrr!) explaining the genesis of a new strain of Xenomorph that was created when the Xenos first arrived on LV-695 and crossbred with some insect-like species. These new descendants are white Xenomorphs and now they spend most of their time battling with the regular Xenomorphs. At least until the fresh meat arrives.

This wasn’t my favourite Aliens comic. As with Thaw, Declan Shalvey handles the writing and Andrea Broccardo most of the art. Broccardo does well enough with action but I don’t like his human figures and faces at all. Shalvey’s story, meanwhile, doesn’t really go anywhere. There’s a flashback structure that isn’t very clear the first time through and I’m not sure if I understand the ending. Nor is very much done with the civil war between the different Xenomorph clans, despite all the time spent setting it up in the first issue. Because the series has set such a high standard, Descendant was probably the first Alien comic that I felt disappointed by. It has its moments though, particularly with regard to the underwater salvage operation, and is still a decent read.

Graphicalex