Review: Rann-Thangar: Holy War Vol. 2 trade paperback (DC Comics)

A collection of DC Comics' best space-faring heroes; a cosmic, time- and dimension-bending story that spans from the beginning of time to the very end, and even a tie to the goings-on in DC's supernatural realm -- why isn't the second volume of Jim Starlin's Rann-Thanagar: Holy War a lock for me? Starlin is a comics legend, unquestionably, but one wonders if with this story he didn't try to do too much; some parts of Holy War soar, whereas other parts, perhaps unnecessary, come through rather flat.

[Contains spoilers for Rann-Thanagar: Holy War]

First, the good. If Starlin wrote (or was tasked to write) just an Adam Strange story, there might be far less wrong with Holy War. Indeed the main character of Mystery in Space, Starlin's first most recent foray into DC's cosmic characters, had been meant to star Adam Strange, which is why perhaps Strange takes such a leadership role in this story while Starlin's replacement Mystery protagonist, Comet, becomes something of a clown.

Starlin's Strange makes a couple of what I consider to be uncharacteristic foolhardy decisions, but Starlin also presents him as swashbuckling and heroic in the manner we've come to expect from Adam Strange. In this second volume especially, Strange must consider (amidst battles with marauding aliens and resurrected gods) his growing role as a politician more than a fighter on the planet Rann, something that picks up from themes in Adam Beechen's Countdown to Adventure (coincidentally, I think). Inasmuch as I might prefer Adam Strange "classic," this new role for the hero, and the new status of Rann at the end of this story, breathe new life and offer potential for great Adam Strange stories to come.

And certainly, Starlin does well in making this a cosmic story, not just one that involves alien heroes. Starlin devotes the entire sixth issue of Holy War to the epic origin of the Demiurge, the story's mystery villain, and there's a bunch of great mixes here: a mix of hand- and computer-drawn artwork, and a mix of both science-fiction and mythical, supernatural elements. Starlin hints at a great magic war that involves, among others, Zauriel, Etrigan, the Phanton Stranger, and the Demon, and I frankly wouldn't have minded more information on this rather than other aspects of the book. The Demiurge himself is rather mundane, not much different than I understand Starlin's Thanos or other entropy-seeking cosmic bad guys to be, though I did enjoy, through some time-travelling quirks, that the Demiurge appears in the story both as the villain and, in the future, apologetic for his villainy.

The large cast of Holy War, however, ultimately comes off as so much window dressing. To illustrate, Starlin's own Chief Max of Hardcore Station stands mute with the other heroes for three to four issues before Adam Strange finally asks him a question, such that I was completely surprised to realize Max had been there all along.

Starlin also inexplicably continues to flog Animal Man, both by having the other characters call him weak, giving him nearly no role, and ultimately mis-representing his powers -- one imagines DC wanted to include Animal Man because of his recent history with Adam Strange and Starfire, but it doesn't seem that Starlin wants Animal Man there and might've done everyone a favor by leaving the character aside. Starfire gets a moment's face-off against Lady Styx (the best villain of the bunch), but she's saved by The Weird and comes off as largely unnecessary herself.

The first volume ends with the question of whether Adam Strange has caused the death of all the citizens of Starman Prince Gavyn's Throneworld; the answer is yes. Starman is believably upset (though largely off-panel); Strange feels some guilt, but it doesn't have nearly the depth of, say, the aftermath of Green Lantern John Stewart letting the planet Xanshi be destroyed in Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey. When Strange, rather un-ironically, must also risk killing the entire population of Rann, but ends up repopulating them on the now-deserted Throneworld, the princely Starman is very, very quick to accept his new subjects; Starlin resolves the situation far too neatly and entirely without the kind of consequences due to this situation, though a part of me is glad he's refrained from needlessly angst-ing the Adam Strange character.

Once again Starlin turns to his constant theme of sacrifice for the greater good; whereas Comet and the Weird each had to consider sacrificing innocents for the greater good in Mystery in Space, here again Adam Strange sacrifices Rann and the Weird seemingly commits suicide in Holy War in order to defeat the Demiurge. Starlin admirably tackles weighty issues where other writers might shy away, but I must say it begins to feel a tad repetitive; maybe "life and death" is the only dilemma worth mulling over, but when Strange muddles over the same issues that Comet did before, it lessens the difference between the two, and makes Holy War feel like a generic cosmic opera.

Indeed, this commonality is Holy War's biggest problem -- there's a great cast here and the makings of an interesting story, but ultimately Rann-Thanagar: Holy War didn't grip me as much beyond elements of stories I'd already read before.

[Contains full covers, "What Came Before" text]

I'm going to keep with the cosmic theme now; Holy War has tired me, actually, of space stories, but I've heard how good the new REBELS series is, and so I'm curious to see if it'll defeat even my current intertia. We'll see!

Read More

Review: Rann-Thanagar: Holy War Vol. 1 trade paperback (DC Comics)

Having enjoyed Jim Starlin's Mystery in Space, with the widescreen cosmic action and creative science-fiction going a long way toward balancing the early-1980s, overly-narrative tendency still inherit in Starlin's style, I looked forward to the first volume of Mystery's effective sequel, Rann/Thanagar: Holy War. But Holy War brings with it a shift both in Starlin's writing of key characters, and also in the book's art team, and it causes Holy War to show far more of its seams than Mystery did. I did not enjoy this first volume as much as I had hoped.

[Contains spoilers for Rann/Thanagar: Holy War Volume 1]

I wasn't very familiar with writer Jim Starlin prior to his most recent DC Comics work, and for me his real breakout was his writing of the new Comet (formerly Captain Comet) in Mystery in Space. While Starlin's Comet is not always the toughest or most debonaire cosmic fighter, he makes up for it with brains and a heartly helping of gumption, always ready with a quip or "try it again" attitude; I mentioned before that Starlin's Comet reminds me of a space-faring Sam Spade. The first most jarring element of Holy War, then, is that we find Comet now a coward, a rather sniveling psychic-for-hire who refuses jobs, as a matter of fact, because they might be too dangerous. It would be easier to rectify this if Comet transfered from Starlin to a new writer, but indeed it's Starlin's own Comet who goes from Indiana Jones in one comic to early Booster Gold in the next. For a fan, right away it's clear that Holy War is no Mystery in Space.

The change is made worse, in my opinion, by the shift from artist Shane Davis in Mystery to Ron Lim in Holy War. Now, I know Lim has a history working both with Starlin and on cosmic characters (although minor in his biography, I much enjoyed Lim's art on a couple Kyle Rayner-era issues of Green Lantern), but both his Comet and other characters look thin and cartoony especially in comparison to Shane Davis's large, widescreen, in-your-face art; Comet physically seems no longer a powerhouse, but rather a hundred-pound weakling, nor are the villains terribly imposing. Overall, Holy War feels much less immediate -- Mystery looked like a Star Trek movie and Holy War looks like a doodle.

The difficulties, mind you, aren't just limited to my personal peeves about Comet. Starlin deals with a gigantic cast of characters in the story, which is entertaining, but in the beginning he seems to jump between them too much solely for the purpose of checking in (with way too large transition boxes by Lim), which makes at least the first two chapters seem rather scattered. There's an element of self-deprecation throughout the story that hinders it, both when the gathered heroes soundly reject the idea to formalize the team as suggested by Starlin's own The Weird (perhaps the best character in the whole thing) or when the other heroes criticize Animal Man's weakness (Starlin gives Buddy nearly nothing to do). Starfire gets few lines also, and seems to appear here mainly as window dressing; Starlin also reduces Adam Strange's wife Alanna to a damsel-in-distress in near tears at the kidnapping of Hawkman, a far cry from the fighter we saw in Countdown to Adventure.

For me, the main bright spot (since much of the plot involves the heroes running around to fight a loosely-defined religious threat) came with this volume's cliffhanger. Starlin threatens to duplicate perhaps his most lasting contribution to the DC Comics universe -- the moment in Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey where Green Lantern John Stewart's mistake causes the utter destruction of the planet Xanshi and all its inhabitants. In Holy War, Adam Strange's pigheadedness -- uncharacteristic, again, for the character -- causes the seeming death of all the citizens of Throneworld short of the Starman Prince Gayvn.

I say "seeming" because there's a chance we may find all the Throneworldians as slaves of the alien conqueror Lady Styx in the second collection of this series, but the "did Starlin or didn't he?" caught my attention -- as I noted in my Mystery in Space review, one thing I like about Starlin's writing is his willingness to take chances (and cause collateral damage), and I'm unsure at this point whether it would be better that the Throneworldians are OK and it's just a fake-out, or whether I want to see Starlin writing the characters actually going throught with it (probably the former -- I'd hate for this to follow Adam Strange around).

In the midst of the story is a Hawkman special, which essentially establishes that everything you once knew about Hawkman is wrong (again), but doesn't offer much in the way of explanation otherwise. The value or folly of this will likely be determined by what DC Comics does with Hawkman next; I know Hawkman plays a role in Blackest Night, and then if subsequently Starlin writes a blockbuster Hawkman series that makes the un-revelations here make sense, then all will be well; otherwise it's just another nail in the coffin of a historically mis-managed character.

Personally, I liked Geoff Johns' revamp of Hawkman and the short-lived series that stemmed from it, and I thought Johns' new Hawkman origin made sense; I'm hard-pressed to see why DC wants to muddy the waters again. Ultimately these numerous Hawkman retcons come off to me as kind of silly; DC bends themselves in knots trying to explain in-story the different versions of a character when the truth is just "hey, a writer at one point wanted to start from scratch," and it seems with every retcon things just get worse, not better.

So now I'm off to the second volume of Rann/Thanagar: Holy War, mildly optimistic but with a sense it's probably downhill from here. I gave Starlin a chance, but probably I'm going to skip the next series, Strange Adventures, until I can find it on the very cheap.

[Contains full covers]

Might continue the cosmic trip with R.E.B.E.L.S after this, but there's Green Arrow/Black Canary and Titans waiting in the wings, too. Thanks for reading!

Read More

Review: Mystery in Space Vol. 2 trade paperback (DC Comics)

My two outings on this blog with Jim Starlin's work have been a mixed bag. I wasn't much enamored with Death of the New Gods, as it failed to live up to my admittedly high hopes for it; but, I found I very much liked Starlin's Mystery in Space, an offbeat tale that's at times a bit clunky, mired in Starlin's 1980s-esque over-narating, but still offers much to enjoy. I've finally read the second volume, which also contains Starlin's 1980s miniseries The Weird.

What I liked about Mystery in Space, some readers might find offputting -- there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of the characters talking to themselves. One sees Starlin nearly aching to use thought balloons; instead, almost every panel contains narration. What's so appealing is that Starlin recreates "don't call him Captain" Comet as a cosmic Sam Spade, even dipping sometimes into hard-boiled detective lingo -- a hero who may not always be smooth, but at least has a quip in waiting, and keeps up that rat-tat-tat internal monologue the whole way through. This might not have worked on Nightwing, for instance, but Starlin succeeds in giving this new Comet his own appealing voice.

Ditto for The Weird, with whom Starlin seems to take as his mission to make as oddball and inaccessible as possible. Weird isn't strange in the sense of Ambush Bug -- that is, irreverent -- but rather narratively challenging; in the course of the story, he has his memory wiped at least three times, such that at least once I wasn't sure what Weird did or didn't know. As such, there's an innocent, distracted, and detached internal monologue that follows Weird that's strangely soothing. The Weird ponders deep philosophical questions of death, religion, and identity, but from a distance, like watching bubbles pass overhead. Again, it's Starlin creating an engaging character voice, and that goes a long way to make up for Weird's over-talking.

I was rather surprised to come to the 1988 Weird miniseries collected at the end of this volume, then, and find a far-less-weird Weird than the one in Mystery in Space. This Weird, an energy creature existing in our universe in the body of a corpse, knows his mission and reason for being; even if he stops along the way to interact with the dead man's family, he's still a Weird far more in control of his destiny than the picaresque being in Mystery in Space. The Weird miniseries is a rather straightforward tale of the Justice League International misunderstanding, and finally teaming up with a well-meaning alien rebel against a coming invasion; frankly, I'm not sure the point of the original Weird miniseries (if not just to team Starlin and artist Bernie Wrightson), though it's fun to see that League in action again.. Had I read Weird before Mystery in Space, I might have had more reservations about the character returning -- for me, the Mystery in Space Weird is the far more interesting character.

Still, the finale of Mystery in Space and the Weird miniseries do share interesting thematic questions. In a harrowing scene, a Mystery in Space villain kills all the residents of a section of the Hardcore Station satellite trying to draw out Comet; Comet must later contemplate killing an equal number of cult-controlled followers in order to save the station ... and does. The Weird likens it to when he had to kill "the Jason,"* which the reader learns more about in the Weird mini -- here, too, the Weird had to decide between letting a villain go free or destroying half of Metropolis. It's interesting that almost twenty years ago, Starlin has his protagonist make the same decision, sacrificing innocent lives for the greater good, and I appreciated both times that Starlin challenges the reader with something other than the easy answer.

I'm on now to read the next chapter of what seems to be a cosmic DC Comics Starlin epic, Rann/Thanagar: Holy War. I was pleased to see, at least for a while, Starlin cornering the market on DC's cosmic characters, as I think this section of the DC Universe (and also the supernatural characters) has worked well with connected miniseries by one writer. I'm not sure if that role has been passed to Tony Bedard, however, with his well-received R.E.B.E.L.S. series, but in the meantime, I'm looking forward to more with Comet, Weird, and the rest. (And where's my Hardcore Station collection, I ask you?)

[Contains full covers, explanatory pages]

We continue our look at Jim Starlin's DC work coming up next!

* Edit: As I was adding this post to the schedule, it suddenly occured to me the irony of one of Jim Starlin's characters killing "the Jason." Weird indeed.

Read More

Review: Countdown to Adventure Volume 1 trade paperback (DC Comics)

Pre- and post-Infinite Crisis, DC Comics has tried to revitalize its science-fiction and supernatural genres with a string of mini-series set in each realm. Countdown to Adventure, with the eponymous "Countdown" in the title, is both a pre-Final Crisis crossover book and the latest of these science-fiction series (following Mystery in Space)--but it's also a subtle, moving epilogue to Animal Man, Starfire, and Adam Strange's space adventures in 52. Writer Adam Beechen's Countdown to Adventure, I'd say, is a "thinker"--I finished it, pondered over it for a while, and found more and more meaning in the story as I thought it over.

Countdown to Adventure essentially takes the end of the space heroes' saga in 52 and then says, "Now what?" Whereas other 52 heroes like Renee Montoya and Booster Gold better achieved their own potential during 52, the space heroes struggled simply to survive; their changes were more insular, learning to rely on one another, than empowering. Countdown to Adventure finds the space heroes now necessarily separated--Adam Strange back on Rann, and Animal Man drawn back to the responsibilities of his family--only to find they're not necessarily sure how to survive without one another.

I felt initially disturbed that Beechen makes some waves in Animal Man Buddy Baker and his wife Ellen's historically model marriage, but I quickly came to understand the necessity of these waves. Buddy, like a soldier returning from war, feels no one can understand what he's been through except his fellow soldiers--in this case, the beautiful alien princess Starfire now living in his home. Beechen pits Buddy's growing reliance on Starfire against Starfire's burgeoning independence--in the absence of her powers, Starfire makes an attempt at a "normal" life--and there's great story power in the contrast of the two characters' arcs. By the end of the story, both heroes' lives return to the status quo, though Ellen ends up helping save the day in a way that might encourage other writers to give her a larger role in Buddy's adventures.

Beechen impressed me also in his use of Adam Strange. Though I can't stand that Beechen (or perhaps DC Comics Editorial) put Adam Strange back in his old fin-head costume instead of the new spacesuit that Pascal Ferry designed for Adam Strange: Planet Heist, I did think Beechen picked up on an important and previously untapped aspect of Strange's character. Adam Strange is essentially part of the bourgeoisie of the planet Rann--a vaunted hero and married to the daughter of the Rannian high muckety-muck Sardath; his feet, even without his jetpack, don't ever really touch the ground. Beechen turns this into a point of contention between Strange and the Rannians after Strange is stripped of his heroic title, and I felt we really learned new things about Strange as he had to face his own position of privilege. The end of this book brings a change for Adam Strange that I hope other stories will use as well.

Adam Beechen brings the 52 space heroes to such a good conclusion here that it seems, in a way, like the end of DC Comics's space saga for now. Fortunately DC's got Rann/Thanagar: Holy War right around the corner; I haven't heard the best reviews about the next series, but I for one am glad DC's cosmic renaissance hasn't ended just yet. Nice work here from Beechen, who brings the same level of excellence as he did in his run on Robin.

[Contains some, but not all, covers. Maybe the rest will be in volume two, along with the missing Forager backup stories?]

Back now to some Superman/Batman, and we'll see where we end up from there. Thanks for reading!

Read More