Comics can break your heart. They’re filled with compromise, creeps, and dunderheaded calls beyond measure. But they’re also magical, overflowing with incredible work by tireless craftspersons. Sometimes it’s just nice to sift through the years and years of books and pick out five things we can all agree are amazing. This week?
- Charlie Adlard drawing the blasted out scenery of a zombie apocalypse
Charlie Adlard is good at a great many things. He draws cool zombies, he has helped design a cast of like 100 characters at this point, but the thing that keeps me coming back to The Walking Dead every issue, is the chance that we might get another jawdropping spread of scenery.
The core conceit of The Walking Dead is a zombie movie that never ends and, if you ask me, the book is at its most interesting when it’s really exploring the ways that would impact the world around us. Sure it was interesting to see the cast trapped in a prison for like 843 issues (I think?) but the book got exponentially more interesting when it started to explore how societies were starting to develop.
Adlard’s background art is a subtler extension of that. Sure, if zombies existed, yes, right, we’d all be the Walking Dead, got it, but taking the time to meditate on what this would do to a Pennsylvania highway or supermarket parking lot, or even an entire city is what makes The Walking Dead such an interesting comic this far into its run.
- “Daredevil” summarizing why, as cool as they are, Superheroes are a problem
Marvel sells itself as reflecting “the world outside your window”. Sometimes that means a story where The Punisher becomes Captain America to fight White Supremacists, sometimes that means Asgard lands in Oklahoma, and sometimes Secret Empire.
Charles Soule and Stefano Landini (with colors by Matt Milla [we miss you Milla!] and letters by Clayton Cowles) however, take a quick moment in “Daredevil’s” first Legacy issue to spotlight what it would actually look like if superheroes existed. Any one who lives in a city (especially New York City) can identify with the rare bliss of owning a car in one. This little Scenelet (™ me) perfectly captures the real personal cost of superhero action in a relatable, undramatic way.
- Grant McCay’s amazing nose
“Black Science” can frequently be an uncompromisingly bleak comic. Its characters are deeply flawed and their actions (the best they can manage under the circumstances) often demolish the lives billions of innocent strangers. At the center of this vortex of compromise and suffering is Grant McKay, brilliant scientist (well, ex-brilliant, long story) and inventor of interdimensional travel. He’s gritty, complex, and this is his nose:
Mateo Scalera definitely practices an exaggerated style in his (incredible) work, but most of his character design adheres to the typical constraints of the human form. But Grant, bless him (and any and everyone who greenlit him), has been given a wholly unique look that, frankly, should fly in face of such a serious character. We’ve seen him rescue his kids, cheat on his wife, and, okay, fight a witch, which was a pretty weird thing to happen but I mean if we’re talking about a multiverse where literally anything is possible, fairy tale witches are too, right? But anyway, where was I.
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Right. Grant McKay’s nose. It’s just such a bold and audacious design choice, and it’s a testament to unique power of comics and illustration that it works so phenomenally well.
- Howard the Duck’s story in the “Squirrel Girl” zine
Thank you, Erica Henderson and Chip Zdarsky. I haven’t laughed this much reading a comic in a super long time.
- “Detective Comics” most recent storyline, “A Lonely Place of Living”
Detective Comics has been the low key best Batman comic since Rebirth started, but this most recent storyline has made a key component of its subtext text: What is the point of Batman’s mission? What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve it? What is the impact on the people recruited to join it?
Tim Drake has returned from Dr. Oz’s prison with future Tim Drake, who is now Batman. At the start of his Detective Comics run, Tim was ready to leave Batman’s mission behind and go to college. Instead, he got lit up by some drones and instead of dying, was ganked by Dr. Oz. This story solves the Tim Drake Batman problem (he wanted to kill Batwoman and save “current” Tim Drake from the future he has been forced to endure), but leaves Tim Drake surrounded by a team and a world he had planned on leaving. It’s unclear which way he’ll go moving forward, and that’s a super compelling position to put a superhero in. This run isn’t just laying out a string of circumstance to facilitate cool set pieces (even though it totally does that and exceedingly well), it’s calling into question the point of its central team’s existence, and whether it’s helping its members or destroying their potential.
