While December just passed, due to the craziness of the holidays and our various series (Year in Review, Festival of Lightsabers), it was hard to come up with a proper representation of the month that was. But we shall do our best, in this tag-teamed edition of This Month in Comics!
Biggest Reveal: “Guardians of the Galaxy” #9
Al Ewing and Juan Cabal’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” #9 not only revealed Star-Lord — who disappeared sacrificing himself near the start of their run last year — was still alive, but that he’d spent over a century living in another dimension with the (female) Aradia and (male) Mors, and fallen in love with both of them. Star-Lord turning out to be LGBT naturally sent chins wagging across the internet once outlets read the issue, as (sorry Iceman) he is Marvel’s highest-profile LGBT lead (and played by an Evangelical Christian on screen no less), but more importantly, it’s a poignant, metafictional depiction of a man realizing everything he believes about himself is wrong — and as made clear by the flashbacks, this won’t be the biggest change Ewing and Cabal make to Quill’s character by the time their run ends. – Christopher Chiu-Tabet
Best Use of Crayon in a Comic: “Power Pack”
Most comics are drawn with pencils and inks. I guess nowadays, just as many are probably done entirely on a computer. Every so often, you see a comic done with oils. Just as rare? Watercolors. But how often do you see crayon used in the pages of a mainstream published comic? Add one to the very short list: every issue of “Power Pack” by Ryan North and Nico Leon. “Power Pack” is an incredible showcase of both of their talents, and it does so by creating in-universe art objects to convey the story. My favorite of these objects? The recap pages of each issue are comics drawn by Katie, youngest of the Power family. “Drawings by kids” isn’t a totally new idea in comics. But everything about these pages are a hoot. From the spot on perfect texture of the crayons, to the fake stickers, to the shaky lines that make up the panels, you really believe a 9-year-old made these pages. But that’s not true! You know when you hear a trained singer play a terrible singer in a movie? And you appreciate their ability even more because they can turn it off as effectively as they can turn it on? Nico Leon is like that! His art is so effective most of the time, that it’s impressive he can totally change his style and draw something “bad” that is in fact, amazing. –Jake Hill
Best Pandemic Comics: “Heroes at Home” and “COVID Chronicles.”
The world outside all our windows in 2020 was the COVID-19 pandemic, reflected in comics this month in two distinct but effective ways: one lighthearted, one serious.
The lighthearted approach came from Marvel’s “Heroes at Home,” a one-shot that showed just what your favorite superheroes were up to during quarantine. Spider-Man’s done some baking, but leaves out one key ingredient. Carol Danvers struggles with her Zoom account and a Flerken appearance during her meeting. Hulk tries the “clap for essential workers” with some disastrous results. And Venom deals with a distinct lack of toilet paper. Readers will certainly find at least one moment to identify with in this collection – – for me it was Thor’s home haircut. (While I did not end up shaving my head as he did, I will say that the ponytail has been quite the saving grace.) Superheroes have to quarantine too, and they’re just like us in coping with this new normal.
On the other side of the spectrum is AWA Studios’s “COVID Chronicles,” a collection of personal vignettes that first appeared on NBCNews.com in the spring and early summer. This is the more sobering look at the pandemic: health care workers fearing for their lives each day they went to work, families separated by closed borders and lockdowns, the dual pandemics of COVID and racism. While these cartoons are not making their debut in this collection, it’s the timing of the release. The combination of holiday pandemic fatigue and the discovery of a more contagious COVID strain make this book a sobering wake-up call to continue to treat this disease seriously.
Continued belowHope is certainly on the horizon with vaccine deployment. But for the short term, this disease still ravages our society, and comics answered the call to preserve and reflect this new world order. – Kate Kosturski
Weirdest Structure of an Event: DC’s “Dark Nights: Death Metal”
I love it when comic events aren’t what you think they’re going to be. That said, I prefer it when my comics are surprising in their content, not their publishing schedule/order. DC’s “Death Metal,” which wraps up today, has been a lot of big, dumb comic fun, but it has been structured in a bizarre way. The main series is 7 issues, but at least 2 of those feel totally superfluous from a storytelling/plot place. But from the oodles of one-shot tie-ins, at least 3 of those feel incredibly important.
In December, there was a “Death Metal” issue or tie-in every week. “The Last Stories of the DC Universe” was the emotional tether of the series, a key component in the reading order. “Death Metal” #6 felt like a ramp up to a final battle, which is also what “The Last 52” felt like, two weeks later. “The Secret Origin” is a Superboy Prime comic, which is always welcome at my house, but was, at very best, tangentially related to the overall event.
And so, when “Death Metal” gets its inevitable omnibus, it’ll read like its as bloated as a corpse fished out of a river after a week, and the trade will read as impossibly thin. I may sound like my friend Greg Matiasevich, but this is why comic binding makes so much sense. – Brian Salvatore
Reprint So Gorgeous, You’d Swear It’s From the Future: “Usagi Yojimbo: Wanderer’s Road”
While I’ve always cultivated a healthy respect for the wandering rabbit ronin that is Miyamoto Usagi, I can’t claim to have read much of the eponymous series. I don’t know what caused me to crack open “Usagi Yojimbo: Wanderer’s Road” #2. Maybe it was the incredibly vibrant and evocative cover by Peach Momoko. Maybe there’s something in the cultural zeitgeist that really drew me to a character with unshakable moral certitude. Maybe I was just bored. But “Wanderer’s Road” #2 blew me away. You never expect such a whimsical cartoon to hit you with an emotionally affecting story about family abuse, but when it happens, you’ve just got to give yourself room to feel your feelings. I remembered to use my analytical brain too, and took in all that Stan Sakai accomplishes through clever panel layouts, expert pacing, and unparalleled body language. The dude is a good cartoonist it turns out. And I know he’s been making new “Usagi” stuff for something like 40 years.
So when did this prescient tale come out? 1988! A few months before I was born! There’s something timeless about really good comic book storytelling. But this feels like something more. With the sharp, modern colors by Ronda Pattison, “Usagi Yojimbo: Wanderer’s Road” looks like a peek at the comics we will be making in the future. –Jake Hill
Biggest Sign of the Times: DC’s ‘Infinite Frontier’ Writers
The line-up of writers for DC’s ‘Infinite Frontier’ is impressively varied: you have Mariko Tamaki, who’s only the second woman to write an ongoing Batman title, on “Detective Comics,” plus Geoffrey Thorne, Stephanie Phillips, Brandon Thomas, Ram V, Gene Luen Yang, Becky Cloonan, and more. You only need to look back only almost a decade ago to DC’s big relaunch then, ‘The New 52,’ to see how much has changed, when all but a handful of the launch titles were penned by white men. There’s still a long way to go (there’s a conspicuous lack of Black women), but it’d be hard to contrast DC’s 2011 and 2021 titles, and not see the shift in who DC considers will give them all a distinct voice. – Christopher Chiu-Tabet
Comic That Puts Your History Books to Shame: “The Comic Book History of Animation.”
I have always loved how Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey distill history into the sequential art form, as they did with “The Comic Book History of Comics.” So tackling animation, another medium with its roots in drawing, in this format makes the most sense. Does lightning strike twice for them? Absolutely.
Continued belowAs with “The Comic Book History of Comics,” there’s a lot of moving parts to cover in a finite page count. It would be easy to spring off into various branches with each issue, but the team does well with a very linear focus. And even when those branches do take place, they provide information to understand context and intrigue the reader to learn more, but always tie back to that original thesis. In the first issue, an explanation of the early days of animation at the turn of the 20th century requires some explanation of the early days of film, how Georges Méliès influenced the “chalk-talking” of vaudeville. The script doesn’t bog itself down in academe; this is a history of animation told to you over several beers in a pub. Van Lente also understands that history is not a vacuum, weaving in discussions of psychology, artistic technique, science and political economy. All of this is supported with Ryan Dunlavey’s art, which personifies its players to their most iconic works (yes, that is an early Walt Disney wearing mouse ears) and doesn’t skimp on irony.
You can read a prose book on the history of animation and become informed. Or you can read “The Comic Book History of Animation” and be informed and highly entertained. – Kate Kosturski
Least Surprising Accolade: “Immortal Hulk” Winning Our ‘Best Ongoing’ For the Third Straight Year
The Multiversity staff can’t agree on much. I don’t mean that we are a tough gang to deal with, but rather that we have a diverse set of interests. And while our Year in Review results are far from unanimous, it should come as no surprise what our Best Ongoing of 2020 is. It’s so rare to be able to, in real time, to recognize that you’re reading an all-time great run. Will it continue for 2021? It’s too early to tell, but I, for one, wouldn’t be shocked. – Brian Salvatore
