Comics at hand

For your comic-reading pleasure, a few items to review …

[I did this post originally a week ago, but left it in draft mode, dagnabbit.]

Batman/Huntress: Cry Blood TPB (DC)
This is a collection of the 6-issue 2000 mini-series written by Greg Rucka, purchased as part of my current gorging on things written by him. The series deals with the background of the Huntress, a character I’ve never encountered much save for her appearances in Grant Morrison’s JLA. Here we learn all about her mob family background, and how she got into the Bat-biz. The various Bat-cast make appearances, as does, of all folks, the Question.

It’s a mixed bag. The art is serviceable, but uninspiring, and by running the flashbacks in pale off-colors, this flashback-heavy series ends up with a pale, off-color look. Rucka’s writing is decent enough, strong as Helena deals with her problems (poorly and well), weak when the endless array of mob stereotypes keeps flashing across the screen. I kept getting confused by all the different families, which made the lethal politics all the less moving.

Crisis on Multiple Earths TPB (DC)
This collection sports a spiffy Alex Ross cover, but the inside is a Silver Age delight, providing the first eight Silver Age cross-overs between the Earth-One JLA and the Earth-Two JSA, under the guidance of Julius Schwartz (editor), Gardner Fox (writer), and Mike Sekowsky (penciller). The stories are no less goofy than anything else from that era, but they provide some of the seminal, iconic fodder for that era’s memories.

(What they also provide, which I’d not realized, was the title for the “ultimate” Crisis tale. After stories like “Crisis on Earth-One!” and “Crisis on Earth-Two” and “Crisis on Earth-Three” and “Crisis on Earth-A,” it only made sense for Marv Wolfman to call his Earths-shattering maxiseries, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”)

Unnatural Selection (Comicraft)
Hip Flask has been a Raymond Chandler-esque “mascot” for Richard Starking’s Comicraft fonts for some time. By setting up an interesting (but uncopyrighted) comic book visual, the ads for Comicraft could be shown off.

So I suppose the evolution of Hip Flask, a giant hippo P.I./adventurer into an actaul comic book character was inevitable. Unfortunately, the sort of carefree movie matinee adventure has turned, at the hands of Richard Starkings (story and letters), Ladronn (art and story) and Joe Casey (dialogue with Starkings) into something dark and sci-fi and gorgeous and menacing and more than a bit obscure. This Hip Flask one-shot origin issue combines a bit of Blade Runner with a bit of Miller’s Ronin to posit a Kirby/Mignolaesque mad scientist/industrialist breeding an army of artificially evolved creatures — not just Hip[popotamus] Flask [7a], but rhinos and zebras and elephants and giraffes.

It all comes to a big bloody conclusions, while setting up further dire darkness. In and of itself it’s a finely crafted story, but it’s also throwing away a character who was just “fun” in favor of someone who, I suspect, will be dark and tortured by his past experiences.

Pity that.

The Last Man #1 (DC/Vertigo)
It seems to me I’ve seen this done in a few short stories, but writer Brian Vaughan seems well on his way to doing something interesting and long-term with the idea of, suddenly, world-wide, every Y-chromosone-bearing critter, from humans to animals, dropping dead.

All, that is, save for one man and his monkey.

Consider these few items from the text page at the back:

In the United States alone, more than 95% of all commercial pilots, truck drivers, and ship captains died … as did 92% of violent felons.
Internationally, 99% of all mechanics, electricians, and constructions workers are now deceased … though 51% of the planet’s agricultural labor force is still alive. …
14 nations, including Spain and Germany, have women soldiers who have served in ground combat units. None of the Unites States’ nearly 200,000 female troops have ever participated in ground combat. Australia, Norway and Sweden are the only countries that have women serving on board submarines.
Worldwide, 85% of all government representatives are now dead … as are 100% of Catholic priests, Muslim imams and Orthodox Jewish rabbis.

Hell, you could write several dozen short stories about those stat, let alone the personal stories.

I think this one may be a winner.