Moon Knight #29 – Werewolves vs Satanists

From the quarter bin from the Riverfest street flea market came this issue. This issue was published March 1983.

We have Russell, the Werewolf by Night being chased by satanists who have started a church and are bent on world domination. They even have offices at 666 Fifth Ave. Manhattan. That address was once the headquarters of DC comics, which seems a little bit of a joke on behalf of this Marvel title as well as an appropriate location for the business offices of satanists. Russell sends a message to Moon Knight for help and Moon Knight gets coldcocked by a satanist. The werewolf gets away and Moon Knight manages to track him down after waking up at dawn. He finds Russell and takes him back to the Moon Knight compound and with some help from a doctor he knows he gets some xrays and finds that there is an electronic tracking device in Russell’s skull which has allowed the satanists to track him. The doctor will remove it but it is getting dark and Russell will transform soon so the doctor is told to leave and Moon Knight ties Russell down to a bed and prepares for the full moon. As we leave this issue Russell transforms and breaks free, and he is hungry. Thus in the next issue we are promised a confrontation between a hungry werewolf and Moon Knight.

At the end of the issue is a short story called “Colloquy” Moon Knight is just chilling one quiet evening while having a hallucination of his various personalities/alter-egos talking to him. Lockley is doing alright but Marc Spector is seething from his rage at what he did during his time as a mercenary. We are left with an interpretation of Moon Knight as a man who is suffering through purgatory for his powers. The life which he led is what has pushed him into this role of a superhero, because to a certain degree the Egyptian God who granted the Moon Knight powers also had a major role in his movement into a superhero role. He is reborn and suffering for his sins at the same time.

This comic also featured a couple of iconic poses of Moon Knight and Werewolf By Night that are in the Offical Handbook of the Marvel Universe (the original version). I really like the cover of this issue as well. It is almost totally black except for the werewolf’s eyes and teeth with blood spilling down on one of Moon Knights throwing blades. Simple and very classy with the Moon Knight logo in red.

Irredeemable Ant-Man Vol. 1 and 2: The Hero That Is Really A Bastard

It was aroundcomics.com that made me pick up this Robert Kirkman penned comic. Marvel has collected the 12 issues into 2 digest volumes, both with ten dollar cover prices. Phil Hester did most of the art. Basic outline: Eric O’Grady is a Shield agent, a low level one with a brain numbing job of monitoring communications. He has a good friend, who has alot of potential but suffers from a very bad problem. He is friends with Eric, who is a real bastard. While Hank Pym is working on a new ant man suit Wolverine attacks the helicarrier (from Wolverine: Enemy of the State). In the chaos of all this Eric and his friend knock out Pym and his friend puts on the suit, which can allow a person to shrink down to ant size as well as control insects…the whole ant man power package.

Well, the helicarrier gets attacked again and Eric’s friend gets shot in the head. Eric puts on the ant man outfit on and that is when trouble starts. I won’t bore you with a total synopsis of the issues, but Eric is a bad person. He is a liar, he sleeps with his dead best friend’s girlfriend on his dead best friend’s grave. He makes friends with a cat burglar. He is in all ways a very poor example of humanity, a coward, a loser, a just plain bad person. So what makes this worth reading? It is very funny and Kirkman made a story about a superhero who probably should not be a hero. The book starts with Ant Man hiring people to mug attractive young women so he can save them. He shrinks down and sneaks into women’s apartments to watch them shower. He lies constantly. Then there is the thing with his best friend’s girlfriend. That was in some poor taste for Eric. Phil Hester’s pencils are also very good. Not over the top art, but smooth and angular at the same time. Not photo-realist, something I don’t really care for in comics. Kirkman is funny and inventive, but he can also turn into very serious territory on the next page. I also like the way the story is embedded in other Marvel events. It begins with Wolverine: Enemy of the State and ends with World War Hulk. It works because the Ant Man is a B-List character in this book.

The moral question of his being “irredeemable” is an interesting point. He is just a regular bastard who gets powers from the suit. His behavior is horrible, and in the end he doesn’t redeem himself as much as give up on everything and everyone except being Ant Man. That is not really redemption, but it does show a little bit of growth.

Interview with Peter Beste, Photographer of Norwegian Black Metal on Headbanger’s Blog

A fine podcast worth listening to. Sound quality is not the greatest. This is going to be an interesting book.

Podcast and article (cut and paste into your browser, the link doesn’t embed right):

http://headbangersblog.mtv.com/2008/04/04/exclusive-podcast-black-metal-photographer-peter-beste/

The rest of the site is also interesting, even if it is MTV2:

http://headbangersblog.mtv.com/

Tales of the Fear Agent: Alcoholic Space Exterminator

Hi, my name is Huston.

Hi Huston.

Lame joke. Yep. This book is about an alcoholic space exterminator named Huston. When I say alcoholic I mean he is drinking whiskey, drunk in zero gravity and messing up his life with a flair for tragedy level of alcoholic. On top of that he is a space exterminator, an interesting gig when you consider that with all the alien life forms in the universe which ones get to be the “pests”. That is a point at times, but the pests tend to be the ones that are not intelligent or useful.

The big thing that sticks out with this title is style. There is a Space Opera sci-fi feel to the characters. Making the lead character a drunk who bumbles into all kinds of bad situations also makes for some interesting stories. The only friend Huston has is his ships computer. I haven’t read anything else from this title yet, but at some point Huston had a son who died. This caused him to slip into his alcoholism and depression. This of course leads to some suicidal thoughts and a death wish with only the ship’s computer to stop him from making the poor choices such a mind set is wont to entertain.

This series was created by Rick Remender and Tony Moore. Rick Remender, Hilary Barta, Steve Niles and others wrote the stories in this volume. The art is varied, but it is all pretty good. There is some Frank Cho in this. Being published by Dark Horse it also has a very good pedigree of people involved in the series. Most of the stories in this particular volume are short one shot pieces, they fill out some of the character but it does not provide an origin or a primordial story. In a sense I like that. It is not what is in the character’s past that makes him interesting in this case, it is the cross between self-destructive cowboy and science fictional exterminator.

I can find not real reason, but books about exterminators (like the Vertigo series Exterminators and those passages of William Burroughs) always interested me. A character who has made the destruction of pests their career is interesting. It is a very working class job, not something many people want to be but also something very interesting. Like a cable man they have access to all kinds of places people might not know even exist. They also have an interesting job in that if they do their job right then they should never return to that place again. It makes them a wandering character of sorts, kinda like Clint Eastwood’s character in the spaghetti westerns or the ronin from Lone Wolf and Cub. Huston as a space exterminator goes to some very dangerous places and takes some horrible jobs. His is not the life of an adventurer, but a wanderer who is just doing this grind to keep himself in booze and fuel. On top of that there is a strong pulp element that allows this hell to be humorous at times. There is something admirable about that, and something very dark as well.

Black Metal Vol. 1: The Book That is Too Much Metal For One Hand

Written by Rick Spears, drawn by Chuck BB and published by Oni Press this book tells the tale of the twins Stronghand, Shawn and Sam. These youngsters are not exactly fitting in with their school, but they don’t want to. They also have a kid brother that is annoying in his insistence on being silly counter to their gravitas. Their mom takes them to the mall where they find a metal record shop that stocks vinyl and discover a rare recording by the band Frost Axe that is so metal they have to have it. Of course they try to steal it, but when they get caught their oblivious soccor mom just pays for it. They take it home to probably one of the coolest stereos one the planet, play it and open a door to hell where they find the Sword of Atoll. The story just keeps going from there and it is silly, fun and great if you are a fan of metal.

This book is interesting because they went with the choice of publishing this in the smaller digest format. It did lower the price down to 12 dollars but what concerns me is that the book might end up being stuck into book stores with the manga. This book is not manga, despite some possible comparisons with the art that some may see (which some might see, but I don’t agree with). The black and white part is what does that, not anything inherent in the art…in my opinion. The theme of the book is not manga though, but it fits nice into that section of Borders due to the physical size of the volume.

This book is funny and enjoyable. It is a bit like Metalocalypse, it makes humor out of metal while expressing a love for the subject as well. That I do like. It also plays with the stereotype of black metal fans in a way that is both endearing and inclusive rather than exclusive. It’s not that the Stronghand brothers are elitists, they are just who they are and they have no need for the things in life that do not forward their metal tastes. Alot of people are that way in what they like or believe. But that said, they still have a mom and a kid brother and they do not necessarily want to embrace that fully (like most teenagers) but they do not hate them either.

Birth – Michael Bracco’s Tale of the Other Culture/Gender

Black and white graphic novel around 80 pages drawn and written by Michael Bracco. Essentially this is a science fiction fantasy where 2 cultures, one from the ocean and one from the land are at constant war with each other. They meet and fight on the beach. One group is called the Aquan and one group is called the Terans. Among the Aquans the females would die during childbirth. Among the Terans the males died during intercourse because their reproductive seed was in their heart, which had to be removed for conception. The war was created by blame and hatred for the evolutionary situation which made a tragedy of reproduction. Since the war had been going on so long both groups were near extinct. A delicate truce is reached and an Aquan/Teran couple manages to conceive the first cross species embryo.

Unfortunately the differences of culture and gender could not be contained. In a sequence that is really pretty emotional an argument turns into a fight that turns into a death. The story does not end happily for our characters. I don’t really want to spoil it, but the reason I loved this book is that it takes the tragedy of this difference for what it is…so deep they might as well be from different planets. Alot of thinking on gender takes this point of view. The differences are so deep (whether culturally imposed or biologically attributed) that all there can be is a war between the sexes. I don’t agree with this idea of an unchanging situation of conflict. I think men and women can work well together, but there needs to be a fundamental recognition that gender is not based in essential qualities (like we are taught to believe). Gender is a constructed condition, experienced and acculturated. As a man among other men I know that some men cannot handle the idea of taking orders from a woman. It is really unfortunate, they are taking orders from a person and if you cannot handle the responsibilities of that job you should quit. But I digress…

The other component is the difference between cultures, especially cultures that are so similar that they cannot possibly get along. What really makes this book sing is that there is not a great deal of information told through words, so much of the book is represented in silent actions by the two groups. That is the other thing, anything said or done by one group is mirrored in the other. These two groups might be at war but they are so much the same that they really belong together. In fact, the evolutionary circumstances that make the male Aquans and female Terans die points to the fact that they need each other evolutionarily. One gender without the other is a total tragedy. The first couple that tries it cannot make it work though, but how can you give this story a happy ending without blowing the social commentary angle?

I really enjoyed this story. It is a really fast read and Bracco wrote and drew the thing, so it has a real vision to it. The art is emotive despite the alienness of the characters. I highly recommend it.

Spiderman’s Tangled Web – Vol. 2: Issues #7-#11

This trade covers the Gentlemen’s Agreement story arc, with a couple of other things thrown in. Gentlemen’s Agreement is a 3 parter that features an interesting moral quandary. If you need half a million dollars and the only way you could raise the money is with by using a secret would you? Well, that is what our character has to face. The problem is the moral question we put together with the story is not the full story. I won’t spoil it but a reveal changes your understanding of the events in a way that makes you feel much different about the morality play that unfolded.

In addition you get a photorealism piece that is not that great. You also get a Darwyn Cooke, of the JLA New Frontier fame, one shot that is a pretty good Valentines Day story. A little on the young adult side, but not bad.

This series has a definite young adult feel to it. The Gentleman’s Agreement arc is an exception. It deals with some issues of death and pathos. The other two stories are more juvenile in nature. The Darwyn Cooke story is pretty good. You can probably pick up this trade for cheap. I got it in a lot of Spiderman books that came out to a little under 2 dollars per book with the shipping thrown in. It is definitely no Karven’s Last Hunt but I have read much worse Spiderman story lines.

Secret Invasion – The Infiltration: You’re Gonna Read All The Next Marvel Event And Like It!

Read the Secret Invasion prequel trade. First off, it is a little overpriced at 20 dollars. I got it in a lot of stuff from ebay. That helped. It collects some Skrull based issues starting with the Fantastic Four #2, the first appearance of the Skrulls back in the 1960s. That is followed by New Avengers: Illuminati #1 and #5, New Avengers #31-#32 and #38-#39, Mighty Avengers #7 and Avengers: The Initiative Annual #1. The basis of this selection is that it is a primer for the Skrull background that gets developed in the Secret Invasion miniseries and the cross-overs that will help take your money and give it to Marvel, maybe making some money on the deal for your local comic shop, online retailers and a big chunk of the pie for Diamond Distributors.

I know it sounds like I’m complaining here, and I guess I am. My complaint is not with Marvel, but with myself for feeling like I don’t follow the story unless I read all the cross-overs. Still, with all the story out there I am glad they put out this trade. It covers information that is going to be of value for anyone reading this new Secret Invasion storyline. Basic outline: the Skrull invasion is blowback for the Illuminati trying to control every goddamn thing. They took the fight to the Skrulls and got captured. Though they escaped their DNA was sampled and this is going to lead to how the Skrulls could impersonate the Marvel heroes and act as deep sleeper agents. At least that is my prediction. However, I think that there will be some retroactive continuity changes at work here. In this trade we find out that Elektra was a Skrull after she gets killed by the New Avengers. Spiderwoman takes the body to Iron Man, who has had a real problem going around thinking he can arrest the New Avengers. Damn Civil War fallout has made fugitives of Spiderman, Wolverine, Dr. Strange, Luke Cage etc. Hopefully this Skrull thing will clear up some of this.  I know it’s not part of his character, but I like to see Spiderman get a little respect every now and then.

Well, the book sets you up for the upcoming Marvel event. I don’t know if it is going to be that great. There is alot of hype and the first issue was good, but I wonder if they can maintain the story when it comes time to start revealing Skrulls and messing with the existence of characters.   The paranoia element is good, I like how everyone is scared that everyone else could be a Skrull.  If you have read the Captain America – To Serve and Protect trade then you have seen an early story about the Skrulls and the paranoia they can provoke.  That was in 2002, the Expose storyline in Captain America #5-#7.  Funny thing is they are taking a pretty good story arc and creating an event of it, creating an exegesis of sorts.  If it turns out like that storyline I am going to feel a little cheated.

Evidently the reveal of Elektra as a Skrull means she is dead. Sad, because I have read some good Elektra stories in the past few years.  She is a good character and though this Skrull thing explains alot about her return from the dead after Bullseye offed her all those years ago I hate to see her go. ‘Course she will come back again, no one stays dead in the Marvel Universe forever.  Hell, she may even be the Deus Ex Machina that ends the whole event.

Nixon’s Pals – Supervillian Social Worker

Nixon is a parole officer for supervillians and he is having his worst week ever. This graphic novel is probably one of the best things I have read all year. The podcasts have been hyping it up, and I know Around Comics made it a pick of the week. Well, it is worth the hype. This book was great.

Nixon has a pretty crappy life. In being the parole officer for these superpowered ex-cons he has to suffer alot. When he goes to check up on these people and the results are less than admirable he is likely to get hurt. This is just what happens when he checks up on the Bricklayer, a bit like the Thing from the Fantastic Four. Well, the Bricklayer has gotten ahold of an interdimensional portal, a clear parole violation because his presence in another dimension is a curfew violation. Nixon doesn’t really wanna arrest the guy, but when the portal explodes Nixon finds himself in the rubble with a broken forearm. If that was all…but it is only the beginning of the worst week any human could ever have.

Nixon comes home in time to catch his wife in bed with another man, a superpowered dandy who is known for his links to the bad guys and quite a record of sexual conquest. This does not sit well with Nixon. Then Nixon checks up on another one of his parole wards and gets the ever loving snot beat out of him. There was even a fine kick to the crotch that Nixon had to endure. Also Nixon has been having nightmares where aliens have abducted him and torture him. This is just where we are at the midpoint of the book…about the 2nd Act. From there this living hell goes deeper into the dregs of human/superhuman experience.

The art work was really good, a black and white style with some good greyscale. The noticeable thing is how Nixon looks like the main character from Hard Boiled, the Frank Miller book from the late 1980s. This was somewhat deliberate. The rogues gallery of paroled supervillians was also quite interesting. The book deals with some fundamental problems with the rehabilitation process, namely how do you convince a supervillian to work as a short order cook for six dollars an hour. How do you convince him that he is no longer a criminal when the world of crime will not leave him alone? The book deals with this and the portrayal of the parolees is given some depth and consideration. It stands up to my test for a great graphic novel…with out the pictures and with some decent prose it would make a damn good short story.

Lovecraft is Rock and Roll: Neil Gaiman talks about HPL

Neil Gaiman interview where he talks about HPL and the way his stories impacted Gaiman as a writer. Includes some anecdotes about the rise of the Cthulhu religion and the early rationalization involved with incorporating the Cthulhu mythos into a belief system. Gaiman or HPL never said it but it is the recognition of existentialism as part of the English speaking mindset.