Comic Related - Life in Four Colors

Life In Four Colors #5:

A Comic Related Team-Up

Guess what, true believers. Yours truly tried to cram a little too much into this past weekend….and I almost forgot I needed to finish a new Life In Four Colors column and send it on it’s way to Chuck (I like to finish them about a week early and submit them as soon as they are completed, just in case there are last minute changes that need to be made.)

By the time I made this startling realization…I knew it was going to be difficult to finish everything I wanted to get done and do my column at the same time. Then it hit me….my daughter Raichal was already working on something she was planning to send Chuck’s way…why not combine what she was working on with something I was actually going to discuss in my blog…..which will now become a shorter than usual column but when paired with Raichal’s effort, it should Come Together just fine.

So like the days of old at Merry Ol’ Marvel, when the Dreaded Deadline Doom came calling….Stan Lee and later Jim Shooter would take a couple of lemons and make ….something that had lemons in it.

And here we are. Without further delay I proudly give you a Comic Related Team-Up brought to by myself and my Hero of the Day, Raichal Gladman.

Nuff Said.

A Gotham City Getaway
By Raichal Gladman

In my household nothing says celebration quite like comic books, so it was no surprise when I opened up a big stack of them on my twentieth birthday. That weekend I also celebrated by seeing Dark Knight three times in three days. So that weekend of my birthday became a little bit of a Gotham City Getaway. Originally I wanted to write a review on the Dark Knight and how all of the other movies this summer seemed to have lead up to it as a climax, but then a sense of dread washed over me. What can I possibly say about Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock, Wanted, Hellboy 2 and the Dark Knight that hasn’t been said by my dad or any other member of Comic Related?

Well I can say one thing, I saw it three days in a row opening weekend and I never got tired of it. As a comic fan and a Heath Ledger fan. (upon hearing about his death on January 22 of this year I locked myself in my dorm room bathroom for nearly three hours and cried).

I had been anticipating seeing Dark Knight since it was announced. I waited in line for fifteen minutes at one in the afternoon to get tickets for the five thirty showing. By three o’clock the same day the seven o’clock showing at the Springfield cinema was already sold out and there was a line that went all away around the building of people wanting to buy tickets for the next day showing. I believe that Nolan’s Batman appeals to so many people because unlike Superman, Spiderman, and the rest of the super powered gang he is a regular person, a very rich regular person, but a regular person none the less. Batman is more about having the courage to make a difference. Overall I loved the movie, although I do hope an extended director’s cut is released on DVD. I would have loved to see more of Bruce Wayne’s millionaire playboy antics, and I felt some of the scenes may have been edited to keep a PG13 rating I would love to see these scenes expanded.

Now onward to the other part of my Gotham City Getaway, Batgirl!

I often tell my friends that Garth Nix made me want to write, David Mack made me want to write comic books, and Cassandra Cain/Batgirl made me want to write her book. I think this version of Batgirl is one of the most underrated characters in comics despite winning the 2002 Wizard Fan Award for best heroine. I think one of the big problems is that when you say Batgirl people think of Barbara Gordon. I am sorry but I think Barbara Gordon being shot by the Joker and paralyzed from the waist down made for excellent story progression and I am happy that DC stuck to their guns on this one. Another problem I think the Cassandra Cain Batgirl faces is the costume difference. I know my boyfriend hates her costume. I personally love it. I often try to explain that this is not the happy go lucky Batgirl, of years past. Cassandra Cain was beaten and deprived of significant human contact until the language of the body became the only language she could understand. Because of this she is one of the best hand to hand combatants in the DC universe if not the best having beat Lady Shiva twice. But with all this she does have a weakness, and not a Superman kryptonite type weakness that is only faced every once in a blue moon but a challenge she has to face every day. She has yet to fully grasp spoken language and she is struggling to learn to read and write. In my opinion this makes her a very identifiable character and I don’t understand why she isn’t as beloved as she should be.

When I found out that Adam Beechen was writing Batgirl’s comeback series my excitement became fear. After all he is the man that turned her into a villain and was having her act completely out of character. But after reading the first issue of this new series on my birthday, I am beginning to realize that I don’t know how much of that mess up was him or DC’s now infamous editing dictating to him what he needed to write. Overall I enjoyed it and I would even say its better than the first issue of her original run. I encourage everyone to give this amazing super heroine a chance and if you still haven’t seen it go see Batman- The Dark Knight because I don’t want anyone missing out on the best movie of the year.

Thanks. Raichal…and remember everybody…what happens in Gotham stays in Gotham.

Now to the second part of this comic Related Team-Up!!!

Reflections of a Blind Man’s Soul
By Bill Gladman

I was reading Daredevil # 109 just last night…it was indeed a birthday blow-out at my house with only six days separating Raichal’s birthday and my own. And like Raichal, I too received quite a few Comic Related goodies…..Daredevil #109 being just one of them.

As I was reading I made a few comments to Raichal (who was sitting near by patiently waiting for me to finish the book so we could watch 10,000 B.C.). It seemed to me that the recent Daredevil stories by Ed Brubaker (and most recently with writing assist from Greg Rucka) have wandered about somewhat with little direction. Well… maybe more correctly…stuck in neutral. Daredevil has been a favorite book of mine for years and one of my favorite all time characters…and although I never regret buying or reading the book…there’s very little about it that really gets me excited anymore.

It’s a very consistent read. It’s never really bad…but rarely hits me in the mouth like Brubaker’s Captain America.

I did enjoy seeing Turk return in this issue along with a mention of his long time partner in crime, Grotto. Another long time character returned last issue…that being supposedly retired crime boss Eric Slaughter who in the past has employed both Turk and Grotto along with Bullseye. To see these characters at their best …just refer to the “Marked for Death” storyline by Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, and Klaus Janson that ran in Daredevil (vol.1) issues # 159-161.

But even the addition of a scattered group of characters from the glory days of the mag did very little to make me feel the book was any better than the any of the issues that had came before this one. I will have to admit, considering the nut-punch that Brain Michael Bendis gave ol’ Horn-Head before he left the book, (at the time of his departure from the title…the world at large knew Matt Murdock and Daredevil were one and the same. Matt was married to a character that nobody really likes, and lastly…he was in jail.) Brubaker has pulled off a series of small scale miracles to get this book back on the beaten path again. But there’s still something missing. The “wow” factor just isn’t there.

What’s really strange….Daredevil is the only book that I know of that has went through this same phrase, twice, at right about the same time. Allow me to explain. A few years ago Marvel cancelled a lot of their long standing titles…Daredevil being one of those titles. Several of these titles, once again including Daredevil, were later re-launched with a new numbering system. Many since then (besides books that started out as another title i.e. Journey Into Mystery/Thor) have since had their original numbering system re-instated. (Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts) Daredevil, for whatever reason, never did. So his book has had TWO different runs. Two different issues #109….see. And during the time period of the first run, right about the time issues # 100-109 were produced the book also seemed to lose some of its focus….until about issue #131 when Marv Wolfman first introduces Bullseye. Followed closely by appearances of the Jester, Death’s Head, the Purple Man, along with Ben Urlich’s discovering that Matt Murdock was Daredevil, and even Doctor Octopus and the Hulk!!!!

But Daredevil (vol.2) issue #131 was still twenty-two issues away. I hope we don’t have to wait that long for the book to become focused again. Especially considering the fact that the first time around each issue of Daredevil was only 25 cents each…so it was a little easier to wait twenty-two issues for the book to come out of a slump. After all that’s only a $5.50 investment (of course $5.50 worth of comics back then was not only a lot of comics…but if I was discovered spending that much on comics I was in a world of hurt…back then $5.50 could buy a week’s worth of gas…today $5.50 doesn’t even buy two gallons of gas or two comics for that matter….SHEESSH!!) A matter of fact if I have to wait twenty-two issues for Daredevil to once again become “something to get excited about” this time around I will have to shell out $66.00!

Daredevil may be the Man Without Fear….but that scares me more than just a little.

Well, that’s going to do it this time around. I apologize for the unorthodox approach to this column but we should be back on track next time around as I hope to bring you an interview with a couple of local comic talents, artist Chris Metzger (you can view a gallery of artwork by Chris at www.zonetrooper.com) and with a little luck I also hope to interview local comic writer Andrew McGinn.

Until next time…see you in the funny papers.