Hellblazer #280

Gemma has always been a survivor in Hellblazer, managing to avoid the grisly fate of many of Constantine’s other supporting characters, like her father, grandfather and mother. She has always straddled the line between normal person and occult mage, a female Constantine if John hadn’t been quite so screwed up.

Milligan has pushed her over the edge and the results are mostly promising.

Gemma attended John’s wedding, and was sexually assaulted by Demon Constantine. This is classic John. He let Demon Constantine loose as a decoy for himself, knowing Nergal would be gunning for him at his wedding. And in protecting himself, he wasn’t very concerned about letting an evil version of himself run around on Earth for a short period of time. Something bad always happens, and this time it happend to Gemma.

Hellblazer #280 is probably one of the only issues narrated entirely by someone other than John, and Gemma’s internal struggle concerns whether she will become a “Constantine” or stay a normal person.

Milligan does a good job with this monologue, especially considering we already know the outcome. She still seems to care for John, even though she believes he abused her. Notice how she still takes his advice about not making deals with creatures, even when it’s a creature she summoned and is ostensibly in control of. Although at the end, she proclaims she is now Gemma Masters, what she has done is classic Constantine. She wanted revenge, and didn’t consider any of the possible consequences.

My one concern is the conclusion of this storyline. “It was all a big mis-understanding!” seems like a poor conclusion to a story of sexual abuse and attempted murder.

And a part of me is afraid that Gemma will finally bite the dust, leaving Chas the only surviving member of John’s original cast.

The art is servicable, a halfway point between cartoony and the more realistic art we usually see on the title. The bird monster looks unthreatening, but Gemma is wonderfully drawn with her black mascara running down her face. Kudos are deserved to both writer and artist for showing restraint when referencing Gemma’s assault.

This being a Vertigo title we could have seen a graphic depiction of John raping his neice. Thankfully, such shock value was avoided. Overall, Milligan’s run has been good, but not great, and this issue falls pretty squarely into that description.

Punisher MAX #14

Every now and then, a writer and a character are matched with such precision that the work defines that character permamently. Examples would be Frank Miller writing Daredevil, Alan Moore writing Swamp Thing, and most recently, Garth Ennis writing the Punisher.

Several writers have tried the Punisher MAX comic since Ennis left and so far nobody has been able to move out of Ennis’ shadow. If anyone can make Punisher MAX their own, in the wake of Ennis’ historic run, it’s Jason Aaron.

His first storyline took a bold step to officialy remove the MAX stories from standard Marvel continuity by creating a new backstory, and a new version, of the Kingpin. This first storyline seemed to blend elements of Ennis’ Marvel Knights run on the character with the visceral carnage of the MAX run. The Mennonite assassin was reminiscent of the kind of villain Ennis was so great at creating. The second storyline created a MAX version of Bullseye. Again, Aaron seem to aping Ennis. The stories were good. After all, a poor man’s Garth Ennis can still be worth reading. Steve Dillon’s art is better than his original work on the Marvel Knights run, as his people don’t all seem to have the same facial features, a complaint I sometimes have with Dillon’s art.

It’s in the this third storyline that Aaron is making the Punisher is own. The storyline cuts back and forth between Castle in prison, feeling the weight of his age, and the time after he returned from Veitnam, but before he became the Punisher. Both of these storylines give us glimpses of Frank Castle we rarely see. In prison we see him weighed down with age and regret, and truly vulnerable. In Ennis’ run Frank could seem like a superhuman killing machine. Alone, weak and surrounded by vicious enemies, Frank seems more human. In the flashbacks we see a part of the Punisher that no one (to my knowledge) has ever told before. Here, Frank has come home from Vietnam and has, for all intents and purposes, turned into the Punisher. Only he wants to pretend that he is a normal person again.

At his work he injures a foreman harassing a female coworker, but backs down when he is tempted to kill the man. Instead he moves to a different job.

Whenever he is presented with an oppurtinity to revel in what he has become, he flees. His wife cries because she knows he hasn’t really come home from the war. It’s amazing no one has explored this area of his life before. Punisher: Born showed us Frank going over the edge, but there’s still a gap from then until his family actually dies.

I eagerly wait to see Aaron’s frailer, more human Punisher deal with his tormentors in prison while the mechanical and dark Frank Castle struggles to deny his true self.

Dillon’s art is well known, especially on the Punisher. As usual, the art is simple, there aren’t a lot of shadows or complex actions. Dillon’s art was better suited to the Marvel Knights version of the character, but works in the MAX version well enough. I can’t help but prefer other past MAX artists, however, like Leonardo Manco, for example.

Overall, Aaron and Dillon seem like the first team capable of averting the inevitable collapse of the character after Ennis left, while still moving into new directions.

Occupation Tourism

There is a tourism industry, for people, largely from the Western First World to tour the occupied West Bank. The ostensible purpose, other than making money, is to cultivate positive press for the settlements there. The article quotes a number of participants in this industry, as well as tourists, praising the entire project. However, even the rudimentary re-statement of the facts by the news article dashes all their assertions apart.

"We are not monsters," Ilana Shimon told a clutch of tourists this week, leading them through Havat Gilad, a small settlement outpost built without Israeli government authorization.

"I'm against violence. All we want is to sit on our land and we want you to be our ambassadors," Shimon told her visitors near her home in Havat Gilad, where she lives with 30 other families, making up about 250 people, most of them children.

The quoted person claims to be "against violence", and yet the settlements exist only due to war. As the article explains:

About 300,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in a 1967 war and home to 2.5 million Palestinians. The World Court has ruled the settlements illegal.

Occupied land is, by definition, land taken and maintained by military force. International law, and common morality, clearly state that territory seized during war is not legitimate. And even though the quoted settler is against violence, and I'm sure he is a perfectly nice person, his choice to live in the militarily occupied West Bank is a voluntary participation in an illegal, and by defintion, violent enterprise.

The tour took the group through several small settlements, some of them built without official permission by settlers who see themselves as pioneers exercising their claim to a Biblical birthright to the land.

How can anyone exercise a "biblical birthright" to land occupied by someone else? To achieve such a birthright requires the removal, or disenfranchisement, of the people who are already there. Why should the current inhabitants respect someone else's religious claim? It's their religion, after all, and not the current inhabitants. The same logic was used by the conquistadors, who politely informed the Natives of South America that the Pope had given their lands to Spain.

Daniel Lippert said he and his wife come to Israel two or three times a year, but this was their first visit to the West Bank. "We donated money to Havat Gilad last year because it is the right thing to do," Daniel said. "God promised the land to the Jews. The Palestinians should become Israeli citizens or leave."

God promised the West Bank to the Jews, we are told. Such a simple explanation. But why did God not announce this promise to all, surely a great deal of confusion could have been avoided. And where is the evidence of this? In a religious book, of course. I could write a religious book that Portugal is promised to the Daoists or Russia to the Rastafarians, and the only rational differences between our claims would be the number of people who believed each.

"There is no other explanation to our success other than divine providence," Ben Saadon said. "We didn't come here to make a business profit, we came here for the love of the land and as the years go by we see God is rewarding us."

Again, the same logic, applied universally leads to absurdities. There is no other explanation for the success of the CEOs of the financial giants who crashed the world economy, and were protected by government largess, than God favors them.

There is no other possible explanation for wealthy Communist bureaucrats in China or child millionaires enriched by their parent's stock options then God! Clearly God is rewarding all those who are successful, and by extension, punishing all who are desolate.

Thus, the entire occupation is a continuous reward by God onto the settlers and a punishment on the Palestinians. Reversing the religions and areas involved could bring to mind all sorts of different historical atrocities, but people seem to be able to convince themselves that in this case, all the absurdities people usually say are actually true. It wasn't true when everyone else throughout history claimed it was their right to occupy such and such or land, that God favored their violent endeavors, but it's correct this time. Even in this fairly benign Reuters piece, the impossible logic of imperialism is exposed.

Full Relaunch List

DC has now released the full relaunch list, and most of it looks like the same old crap with new numbering. The only things that look interesting, in my opinion are:

Batwoman finally getting released. JH Williams III is a god.

Wonder Woman by Azzarello.

Justice League Dark by Peter Milligan. Milligan writing Shade and Constantine? Worth a shot.

OMAC, for the Kirby nostalgia factor.

Action Comics by Grant Morrison. Morrison's All-Star Superman is one of the best superman stories ever.

Swamp Thing. I love Swamp Thing and Scott Snyder has a lot of positive buzz.

Frankenstein Agent of SHADE. Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth is one of the best ongoings right now and Morrison's Frankenstein is an interesting enough character to look into it.

That's seven out of 52 I plan on picking up. There's a few I have some interest in (Animal Man by Jeff Lemire, Red Lantern Corps by Peter Milligan) that I might pick up if they get good buzz. We'll see what happens. Cheers.

Flashpoint!

I remember reading an interview with Alan Moore where he stated that comic companies will try anything to bring in sales except have good writers and good artists. Flashpoint is a perfect example of this.

Flashpoint is DC's new event, which follows Brightest Day (which followed Blackest Night), and it has over 40 tie in issues. Trying to come up with the biggest marketing blitz in comics history apparently, DC has also decided to cancel all but two of their ongoing series (Green Lantern and Batman Inc are spared) and launch 52 (!) new ongoing series at issue #1. Re-launching a series from #1 with a new creative team isn't new, but nobody's ever done it for an entire line. The more important question to ask, however, is whether any of this will be worth reading. And if the stories will be good, why the re-numbering gimmick?

Not all of the new series have been announced, but a few sound promising. Grant Morrison writing Superman and Brian Azzaerrelo writing Wonder Woman for example. But again, these series would be good regardless of whether they were numbeed #1 or not.

Within three years, most of these new series will probably be cancelled and the old standbys (Action Comics, Detective Comics, etc) will have returned to their original numbering. How much continuity will be altered remains to be seen. Altering continuity is fine if it's in the interest of a good story, but if it's done at the behest of crass editorial policy (Younger! Hipper!) then it tends not to last and be badly received.

DC is trying awfully hard, but so far they haven't gotten me interested enough to buy a single issue of Flashpoint.