Civil War

To show how behind I am on comics events, I just read Civil War. The plot concerns a superhero registration act that would require all superheroes to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. or become fugitives. Captain America is staunchly opposed to this, for some reason. Super heroes are all basically breaking the law anyway, so I'm not sure what the big deal is really. Spider-man for example, has always been an outlaw.

Iron Man is siding with the pro-registration forces. Iron Man's rationale makes a little more sense. Get all the capes organized under S.H.I.E.L.D. and get them trained and distributed across the country. When Stark offers to explain what he's doing to Cap, Cap fries his armor and sneak attacks him.

Rogers never really explains why this whole thing upsets him so much. Presumably, we're supposed to be drawing some kind of parallel to the Patriot act or something, but the whole thing bears no real resemblance to anything in real life. Somebody gets killed, because at least one person has to die in every event comic. *yawn*

Iron Man goes from seeming sort of reasonable to imprisioning people in the negative zone and letting supervillains out to hunt down Captain America's forces. I understand granting goofballs like the Trickster amnesty in order to make themselves useful, but Bullseye? Really? Bullseye is a mass murderer who I wouldn't trust to tie his own shoelaces without killing someone.

At the end Cap gives himself up to avoid more bloodshed. This is the same guy who refused to negotiate before, and was totally un-rattled by being pounded into the dirt by Iron Man or Goliath being killed. But, now he's just gonna give up. Apparently he really doesn't have iron clad principles or resolve. And that's the end. Cap gives up and nothing is resolved.

I feel like all the character's actions are interchangeable and nobody really elaborates on why they are one side or the other. We could just as easily have Cap leading the registration side against Iron Man and it would have made just as much sense. There are various other things that don't make sense. We see Cap, Daredevil and Luke Cage all get new secret identities...which they never use. For some reason, the Punisher seems to have a great deal of respect for Captain America. Again...why? Who cares?

Overall, Civil War comes off as a pointless mess.

Random comic review 14: Wolverine Origin

The concept of Wolverine Origin seemed pretty spacious. The acknowledgment even mentions this. Why tell Wolverine's origins now? The advantage of comics is if a terrible story is told, we can always just retcon it or send it down the memory hole. (Like the rework of the Punisher's origin where his family was killed in a human sacrifice by demons and he was given angelic superpowers. As far as I know, it was never officially retconned, but everyone ignores it, which amounts to the same thing.)

I am a relative newbie to the Wolverine party, but my understanding of the character is that his central drive is the continuing struggle between civilization and savagery that rages within him. Wolverine seems to struggle between different levels of this dichotomy: noble savage, failed human, barbarian and bloodthirsty killer. In Origin, he starts as a pampered wealthy boy with a pet puppy and crippling allergies. He seems to have a psychotic break after seeing his father and mother die on the same night and refuses to speak to anyone for a long time. From here, he grows into a rugged frontiersman, which seems to suit him. Civilization and tangled relationships blast through and he falls further and goes to live in the wild, turning his back on humanity entirely.

Now I'm sure there are loads of crap Wolverine comics, but between Origin, Weapon X and Wolverine by Claremont and Miller I am going to tenatively look for more Wolverine stories to read.

Random Comic Review 13: Unknown Soldier volume 1

Unknown Soldier falls into that Vertigo mold of updating an old DC property. This is however worlds apart from Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol or Shade. Unknown Soldier takes place in the very real and very fucked up miliue of Northern Uganda, where a not particulalry nice man named Joseph Kony leads an army of brain washed children on a crusade to create a theocratic state based on the ten commandments.

This is a story where a self described pacifist loses his cool and tortures a man to death. Unknown Soldier explores the limits of pacifism as well as the futility of violence. It's a tragic, well-researched, depressing, amazing, violent story.

Random Comic Review 12: Wolverine: Weapon X

I've always sort of wondered about Wolverine. He's immensely popular, from cartoons and movies and so on. But what about comic books? What are the Wolverine comics to read?

Weapon X is a good place to start. It's good. Surprisingly so. The story has a jumbled hard sci-fi narrative that blends delusion with reality. Logan is dehumanized and turned into a puppet at the behest of some scientists. It's bloody stuff, torture for fun and profit.

Is Logan a man or animal? Are we all animals on the inside? Could any person be reduced to a feral state? Is that our natural way? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I really felt the struggle of a man fighting the brainwashing of his captors. Certainly, in real life there is documentation of the CIA sponsoring experiments to induce psychotic breaks or memory loss on (voluntary) subjects. This isn't too much of a stretch for a program to dehumanize a captive, and Logan is really put through the grinder here. It made me want to read more Wolverine.

Rating: 8 out of 10 Hobbesian savages

Random Comic Review 11: Marvel Masterworks: Thor vol 2

With Lee and Kirby as permanent creators Thor takes off here. The Thor/Don Blake/Jane Foster is still pretty derivative of Superman, but the touches of mythology are what makes this shine. Highlights include Odin teleporting every single man, woman, and child off of the Earth (!) so they won't be injured when he, Thor and Balder fight Surtur. That is boss as hell.

Mr. Hyde and Cobra keep showing up, and Thor emotes with the best of them over his love for Jane. It's cheesy, yeah, but that earnestness is part of the appeal.

8 out of 10 Lame Doctors who can become Thunder Gods but always change back at the most inconvient times

P.I.G. Guide to the Middle East

I thought this book would be terrible going in to it, a Fox News version of the Middle East. It wasn't quite as bad as all that, but not something I would ever recommend to anyone. The book starts on the first page with Strawman fallacies about traditional right wing bogeymen "the left", "political correctness", and goes on to the media, academics, Michael Moore and so on.

This is clearly not an academic work. There are no footnotes, endnotes or a bibliography. The author never bothers to define what he means by PC, nor does he provide any examples. Basically, anything he disagrees with is "Politically Correct" or "liberal". Obnoxiously labelled side bars tell us about "Books You Aren't Supposed to Read", who is telling us not to read them again? What exactly did the media do that is so dastardly? The whole thing is laced with strawmen about all the same tired targets of right wing attacks. Bleargh.

The main argument of the book is that the Middle East was better off under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which kept the people ignorant and standards of living low. But at least there was stability. The main watchword here seems to be stability. But again, he never bothers to tell us what he means by stability. The author also dismisses those who would blame the West for the problems of the Middle East, but then goes on to detail all the blunders made by Churchill dividing up the Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Conference. If he wanted to claim that the West is partially responsible that might make sense. But he tells us that A. The West is not responsible at all and B. Here's all the ways that England screwed up the Middle East.

There are other contradictions, he decries Middle Eastern countries turning to socialist style governments, but never mentions how socialistic Israel is (Israel has something like 10% private land ownership). Egypt's army during the Yom Kippur war is described as being "poorly trained" in one section, but described as well trained in another. Despite admonishing Arab regimes for following western trends, the author chides the Shah for not following more free-market policies. He blames Carter for "losing Iran". Losing it? To who? The Iranians? For shame they should take over their own country! And yes, the Ayatollah hated us, maybe because we destroyed their last government?

He freely describes Saddam's atrocities, but then forgives Reagan for supporting him, by comparing American support for Saddam to the Allied support for Stalin during WW2 against Nazi Germany. Key differences for that analogy include the fact that the Allies, including Russia, had all been militarily attacked by the Axis powers. Nazi Germany had in fact declared war on America and was actively trying to take over Europe and Africa. And their partner had attacked Pearl Harbor. Iran, on the other hand, attacked no one. There were hostages taken, yes. And for that we should sponsor Saddam to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians?

A better analogy would be if Japan had never attacked the US, and after Operation Barbarossa we threw our support 100% behind Hitler. Like the USSR, Iran was our ideological enemy we had interfered with decades before, but that currently posed no real threat. Hitler, like Saddam, liked filling mass graves full of innocent people. But Saddam was ok for that period, because he supported stability.

This mysterious stability never really gets defined. We learn that Assad under Syria is acceptable because he promoted stability, despite his massacres against his own people, with up to 50,000 or more innocents dead. Apparently stability does not include peace, otherwise tens of thousands of dead innocents would seem to discount it. Stability seems to be code word for "Supporting American Interests", or at the very least, not opposing them actively.

There is a chapter on the occupation of Iraq, where we learn that George Bush is an idealistic liberal do-gooder. The author dismisses out of hand any concept of Bush invading Iraq for anything other than an intense love of human freedom. The fact that his first adventure into spreading beloved, sweet, delicious freedom happened to be in the most strategically important area of the world seems to be a wacky coincidence. Bush Jr's main fault then, is that he just loves freedom too much! Much better books have been written about the invasion of Iraq, including Fiasco, No End in Sight and Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

The author repeatedly disparages the idea of Middle Eastern democracy outside of Israel, but does note that Iran under a moderate, Khatami, wanted to make peace with America. America spurned him, and a hardliner took over. If democracy is so untenable, how did such a nice guy end up in charge of Iran? If the US had taken a stance other than "Always act like an asshole to Iran, no matter what" Khatami may have gotten some of his reforms done. Or at the very least, Ahmadinejad might not be in power now.

Israeil is presented as an unabashed force for good. The history provided is largely dealing with their Wars, the actual plight of Palestinians or Arabs inside Israel is given almost no mention. Any massacres or atrocities carried out be Israel or their proxies goes unmentioned. The invasions of Lebanon are almost completely skipped over, except for one mention which he blames on Jimmy Carter. If Carter had not forced Israel and Egypt to come to a peace agreement, the two countries would still have their armies staring at each other over the Sinai, and thus Israel would not have been able to invade Southern Lebanon. Thus, the Israeli-Lebanon war was Jimmy Carter's fault.

Saudi Arabia is held up as the ideal agent to introduce peace and stability, and although there are certainly worse countries, there are certainly a lot better. Saudi Arabia has problems with poverty, slavery, women's rights and so on. But democracy is always worse, we're assured.

The author seems to know his history for the most part, but is way too caught up in dissing on right wing targets in strawman attacks, and goes by the annoying habit of calling anyone who does anything he disagrees with "liberal." Oh yeah, Henry Kissinger, renown war criminal, is hailed as a genius.

Random Comic Review: 10: Marvel Masterworks: Thor volume 1

I've never really been a big fan of Thor. Still, one cannot judge something until you have read it. So I cracked open the first volume of Thor stories from Marvel Masterworks. What we have seems to be Marvel's answer to Superman. Unlike Superman, who exploded right out of the gate, the first set of Thor stories get off to a pretty rocky start.

The concept itself seems pieced together from a variety of other comics. The Don Blake-Jane Foster-Thor relationship is straight from Superman, and indeed there are adventures that end in a panel where Jane says something like "If only Thor were here now!" *sigh*, and then Don Blake thinks to himself "If only you knew!". That exact panel will feel very familiar to any reader of Golden Age Superman stories.

The idea of transforming from weakly to superbeing and back will seem familiar to any readers of Captain Marvel, and even Thor's look seems reminiscent of previous comic book Thors.

Here is Grant Ferrel, a golden age hero who is granted the power of Thor by Odin:

The stories have plot deficiencies familiar to the first Superman stories, actually. This ultra powerful being, after dealing with some aliens (in Silver Age Marvel comics, different races of aliens took turns invading Earth every other day) he deals with some thugs and common criminals. The God of Thunder fighting some gangsters, I wonder who shall win? There's also some terribly dated battles against communists, who sort of dress like Nazis, and thus maybe earn the title of Commie-Nazis.

The artists and co-writers rotate in and out. The worst story involves some half-hearted looking art by a guy named Al Hartley. Shape shifting aliens come to Earth, and then attempt to drown the world in chaos by painting bridges with polka dots and letting cars drive on the sidewalks. Thor is captured by being stunned by the side of their space ship. Not sure how they planned to take over Earth? By tricking everyone into falling over and landing on their ships? Thor sends them packing by throwing their leader into space, and their alien fleet chases after him to catch him. Either Thor can throw many times the speed of light, or these aliens of the week have some real crappy space ships.

In another story, Loki successfully tricks Thor into giving up his hammer, and then goes around turning people's cars into ice cream. The horror! The best story is probably the one with the Radioactive Man, not coincidentally drawn by Jack Kirby. Here we have a villain worthy of Thor! There's a certain symmetry in having an ancient God fight a man imbued with radiation, who explodes like Hiroshima when defeated.

The villains start to pick up a bit. We get Sardu, who looks like the guy inside those coin operated fortune telling machines. Merlin makes an appearance, looking like a lost D&D LARPer. Other than the Radioactive Man story, the other highlights are the Lee and Kirby back up stories featuring Tales of Asgard. Only towards the end does some of the Silver Age Marvel goodness start to shine through. After cycling through 3 or 4 co-writers and different artists, we finally settle down to Lee and Kirby.

P.S. I should note that although at some point it is revealed that Don Blake is actually just Thor cast onto Earth to learn humility, the idea of a regular person literally transforming into a mythological God could be very interesting. The stories never really seem clear on what is really happening though, as Blake and Thor are clearly the same person, and Thor is shown to exist in the past before Blake would ever have been born.

P.P.S There is a particularly amusing panel where Jane imagines her life together with Thor, with her shining his hammer and ironing his cape. Way to dream big, Jane.

Rating: 5 out of 10 Damsels in Distress