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Friday, February 29, 2008
Kick-Ass #1
Marvels Comics: X-Men #1 isn't a well known comic. It was a part of this one month event in 2000 where Marvel put out a few books with the gimmick that they're meant to be the comics that people in the Marvel Universe would read. Mark Millar wrote the comic (with Sean Phillips on pencils and Duncan Fegredo on inks, neat!) and as obscure as it is it's the book that, for me at least, sums up Millar's entire approach. There's a sequence where the X-Men encounter upon this villainous version of Dr. Strange (apparently in the Marvel Universe Dr. Strange isn't seen in a very positive light). So far I'm enjoying a fast paced and interesting superhero story and then, WHAM!, Dr. Strange just admits to being a cannibal and eating Iron Man. That's what reading Millar's work is so often like. He's scripts are lean so while his scripts aren't filled with a lot of useless exposition or lackluster sequences that would get in the way of a simple story that, well, kicks ass. But while you're in the middle of a story you'll come across something, usually a stray piece of dialog, that just makes you go "ick."
Here we have a comic that proudly states it's temperament in its title. I thought Millar and John Romita Jr.'s run on Wolverine was fun stuff but I was hesitant about their creator-owned series. The conceit is: superheroes in the real world. Okay, we've already had Watchmen, Ex Machina, Blankman and countless other comics and movies trying the same thing. What would Millar's delicate touch bring to this sub-genre?
Now when Douglas Wolk and Paul O'Brien reviewed Millar's first issue of Fantastic Four they spent a lot of time on those little pieces of dialog that are just so irksome. O'Brien even said that devoting so much to two sentences spoken by the characters in the book is "nitpicking to the extreme." But reading a Millar comic it's little things that stay in your mind long after you've put the book down. For me it was the pop culture profile of main character Dave Lizewski. He's a high school student. He and his three friends follow monthly superhero comics. In high school? If they were goth kids who read Jhonen Vasquez's stuff I'd believe it. If they were the literary types who read Maus and Persepolis I'd believe it. But Lizewski and his friends are maladjusted, geeky kids. Comic books aren't going to provide the proper amount of stimulation for a kid with as much angst as that bunch. When a kid enters high school that is the prime age to give up comics. Kids like Lizewski spend their time playing video games, and we do see him do just that, hotlinking stupid crap to their MySpace pages and converse on IM services to lie to their friends about how much sex their having.
Here's where it falls apart for me. Lizewski announces how much he enjoys Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and he's even the "numero uno" Buffy fan. This kid is what, 17? So he was 12 when Buffy went off the air. He was in grade school when the show had its best seasons. Of course, there are DVDs of the entire show but what would prompt a high school kids to go through seven DVD box sets of a show that was relevant when he was first learning how multiplication and division works? I went to high school when Buffy was on the air and people by and large didn't watch it then. I would read my Mom's copy of Entertainment Weekly and see the critics in their thirties praising the show up and down. It was always the collegiate and post-collegiate demographic that enjoyed Buffy and Angel the most (it wasn't until I was that age did I discover the show).
So that bothered me. Then we come across a scene where Lizewski comes across three taggers and is preparing to strike as his new superhero persona. So what is Lizewski's battle cry? He calls his combatants "homos." I understand how someone could find that offensive but in the context of the story I think it actually rang true. It makes total sense that if one of those geeky kids did try to be a crime fighter he would say that. This is a kid who probably spend his time after school going to YouTube and posting those comments that say "u r gay lol." Granted, I can see having a problem with how Millar treats slurs like that in such an off-handed fashion. But as shallow as this might make me appear my big problem with Lizewski being homophobic is that it makes his appreciation for Whedon's work even more unrealistic. If this kid's the number one Buffy fan did he not pick up any of the message of the work? It's not like Joss Whedon is the king of subtlety. Did he not pay attention to the fact that when Buffy or Firefly fans do any kind of charity auction or event it usually goes to Equality Now? So what we have is a kid whose superhero fandom drives him to be a real world superhero. But that fandom is partly built out of renting numerous DVDs of Buffy box sets because, after all, if high schoolers of today love anything its 90's pop culture. This kid absorbed enough of the show to declare himself the premier fan but the whole feminist and tolerance message just flew right past him. Or maybe the kid's a huge feminist, he just drew the line at acceptance of homosexuals. That makes sense. And while he was missing the point of Buffy he was spending time in the local comic book store buying every Marvel and DC book he could afford. I've shopped at stores up and down the state of California. I've worked in three bookstores, all with visible and well stocked graphic novel sections. When I lived in Ventura County the store I usually shopped at a store that was a ten minute walk away from a high school at most. I've never seen any high schoolers buy or browse superhero comics. If Lizewski was a loner with such a hobby I'd believe it. But a group of high school kids who read Marvel and DC? The only way you're getting four teenagers in front of a rack of mainstream superhero comics is if a nostalgia obsessed adult had quadruplets and brings his kids everywhere.
This is the nitpicking that O'Brien apologized for. Perhaps I should apologize as well but I know I'm not the only one who is going to be bothered by how sloppy Millar is in his choices. The thing is I still enjoyed some of Kick-Ass. There are moments where the Lizewski is being written as a teenage Travis Bickle and those are great. The scene that discusses the kid's mom dying and the numbness he felt afterwards was spot on. Seeing Lizewski fail horribly at his first attempt to be a superhero also made perfect sense. Reading Millar's work feels like reading a comic where one really bad writer teamed up with one really good writer and now they're fighting for control of the story.
John Romita Jr. along with inker Tom Palmer and colorist Dean White do an amazing job that is also ill-fitting for the book. Romita is an artist who instills glamor and dynamism into his characters with the stylistic was he shapes bodies. Those big boxy faces with the large square eyes can look so damn cool. For Eternals or World War Hulk it works perfectly. But I don't think a comic that is supposedly portraying "our world" should look like that. There should be a plainness to the way people look and move. If the book really wanted to establish itself as taking place in the real world it should include some scenes of the mundane situations that the superhero Millar and Romita usually work on never have to deal with. Another comic with a similar premise was Grant Morrison and Gene Ha's aborted Authority run. The first issue had these small panels devoted to a guy looking for his cell phone. Something like that would be perfect for this book. The big splash page Romita gives us is meant to bring home how bad Lizewski screwed up. What it does is betray the atmosphere the book's premise demands. His failure should be quiet and pathetic, not treated with any type of grandeur.
Kick-Ass fails at what it sets out to do. It has those little bits of Millarness that drive people crazy. With all that going against it the book still has a fascinating character at the center of it (he's not realistic mind you). This is only the first issue so perhaps the book will grow into its own strange beast that works by its own warped logic. I'd love to see it jump into a story where Lizeski's obsession prompts the plot but also causes his downfall. I hope we get that and not a scene where I have to read about a teenager tell me how great Dick Sprang is.
Permanent Link: 8:24 AM |
3 comments
Comments:
Hmm, I dunno. I discovered Buffy in grade school (best show ever, yeah?) and followed comics all through high school. So I guess that didn't bother me. This issue was still mostly *not* kickass, though.
And I always knew Dick Sprang was awesome.
# posted by Bill Reed : 5:53 PM
"Reading Millar's work feels like reading a comic where one really bad writer teamed up with one really good writer and now they're fighting for control of the story."
Man -- you just nailed down his entire career. Kudos.
# posted by RAB : 1:09 AM
One more thing...doesn't this look like he's about to repeat all the same fallacies?
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=13184
# posted by RAB : 12:28 PM
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