To Read or Not to Read: Bedlam, East of West, and Mighty Avengers

You know what series I should be gobbling up? Bedlam. For starters, it's drawn by my current favorite comicbook artist, Riley Rossmo. His off-kilter, kinetic style has proven to be adaptable to many different tones and genres, and never disappointing or dull in the least. He created my favorite comic of last year, and was the artist of the very first title I wrote a full column about on this blog. His work fascinates me, as does his career, which has very rarely involved Big Two work yet seems to be about as consistent as any artist working in comics today. To have him on an ongoing series, a relatively high profile one at that, should almost automatically mean a commitment from me.
     But I'm not ready to go back to Nick Spencer. I spent a lot of time and money on several of his titles, and with a few small exceptions, they all aggravated me with their pacing, lack of payoff, and focus on big, sprawling, cool ideas and events rather than, say, a relatable or even understandable story. He writes great dialogue, and builds strong characters through it over time when he chooses, but sometimes he doesn't even do that. I haven't read some of the work that made his name, primarily Existence 2.0 and Existence 3.0, but I read most of what he did in the year or two after that, and overall it was unsatisfying enough for me to swear off the guy for a while. The concept of Bedlam interests me, because I'm basically a sucker for stories that center on the villains (except DC's Villain Month, which can go fuck itself...but that's for another time), but most of the elevator pitches of Spencer's stories sound like they're up my alley. That's why I started reading his stuff in the past, and kept reading even after it started to wear on me. I kept hoping the books would step up and realize their potential, but Spencer never made it happen.
     Bedlam gets good reviews, by-and-large. At least as far as I've noticed. Maybe someday I'll check out the first trade paperback, like if a friend of mine has it or I find it on sale. And I believe in some pile somewhere I actually have the first issue, part of a massive treasure trove from this year's Free Comic Book Day. So if I ever dig it up and get to reading it, and it totally melts my face with awesome, then I'll likely track down the rest of the series. But for now, Spencer is too big a snag, even collaborating with Rossmo.
     East of West isn't on my reading list for basically the same reason, except that I don't dislike Jonathan Hickman nearly as much as Nick Spencer. It's more that Hickman has fairly regularly proven to read better in collections than monthly installments. It was true of his Fantastic Four/FF run, and I definitely got more out of S.H.I.E.L.D. when I read it all at once than one issue at a time. Same goes for Secret Warriors, which lost me partway through when it was coming out, but upon a reread I was able to appreciate what it was doing far more. Hickman's narratives tend to have a lot of big concepts and small details both, and to keep track of them all, it's helpful to read everything as close together as possible. So, if anything, I'm trade-waiting East of West, but even then, I doubt if I'll buy the collected volumes as soon as they're available.
     For one thing, I'm not eager for another dystopian future setting. I'm not sick of them, exactly, it's just that they've never particularly appealed to me to begin with, and recently they've become so ubiquitous that I feel like I need a really good, specific reason to invest in a piece of dystopian fiction.
     Nick Dragotta is just shy of being that reason for now, though he's a seriously talented artist, so I imagine East of West will be something I pick up someday. He's not as high up on my personal list as Riley Rossmo, but that's purely due to my own tastes, not an objective comparison of their technical or storytelling skills. Dragotta is every inch the artist as Rossmo, and with Hickman having a slight edge over Spencer, East of West is more likely to get a look from me than Bedlam, probably.
     Those two titles have writers I'm not wild about with artists I adore; Mighty Avengers has the opposite problem. Well, Al Ewing isn't a writer I adore, necessarily, but that's only because I'm not especially familiar with his work. I've read a bit of his Judge Dredd stuff, and it's all been fantastic. What really makes me want to read this series is its cast. Luke Cage? Jennifer Walters? Monica motherfucking Rambeu?!?! Yes, please! Honestly, White Tiger, a new Ronin, and a new Power Man all entice me as well. I could live without Spider-Ock, but I'm not riled up about that enough to be turned off completely, since he'll be just one of many voices in this series, instead of the star character. But Falcon is a definite plus, and so is Blue Marvel, whose debut series I read and enjoyed, so on the whole it's great-looking lineup.
     But uggggggh...Greg Land SUCKS. He's the anti-Rossmo, with his stiff, robotic figures and complete lack of vision or originality. Sitting here now, I can't think of a single creator (not just artist) whose name on a project would make me less likely to buy it. I want so much to support Mighty Avengers, for so many reasons. It's mainstream work for Ewing, it's a cast full of characters I love, it stars several female and non-white characters, and it's a team worthy of the name "Avengers," for a change. Yet to spend any more money than I already have on comics drawn by Greg Land...can I afford to do that, really? Not just in my wallet, but in my spirit, I'm just not sure I can.

Dearly Departed: Rebel Blood

Dearly Departed is a semi-regular column where I look back on recently completed or canceled series.    

Surprise endings are hard to pull off. Having a big, world-changing reveal at the very end of a story is often either easy to spot from far away or, even worse, so dramatically unexpected and ill-fitting that it feels forced. In Riley Rossmo and Alex Link's mini-series Rebel Blood, the final twist finds an excellent balance between being truly surprising and making absolute sense in the context of the larger tale. I'm sure some people predicted it while the book was coming out, but I certainly didn't, and even rereading the series after the fact, it's a powerful conclusion. For four issues, we follow Chuck as he fights his way through numerous human and animal zombies in an attempt to reach his family and save them from the infection. Then, rather suddenly, we discover that there were never any zombies, that his family was never in any danger, and that the entire zombie invasion was Chuck's insane hallucination. Of course, that means all the people and animals he ran down, shot, and/or hacked up with an axe were alive and innocent at the time, and so our hero becomes a villain as the story winds down. Perhaps still a man for whom we feel some sympathy, about whom we have an understanding that no one else in the book shares (save for maybe Red, see below), but a cold-blooded murderer nonetheless, and one who went on a terrifying spree before he was finally stopped.
     Chuck's mental instability and, truth be told, his unreliability, are both established right away. The second scene of the first issue shows Chuck not only attempting suicide, but lying to his boss about it being an accident and subsequently losing his job as a firefighter. At the same time, we watch his marriage fall to pieces around him while he stoically and silently does nothing to save it. Finally, we learn that Chuck is currently working as a fire lookout, spending his days all alone in a tower in the middle of the woods. All of this immediately sets him up him as deeply unhappy and at least somewhat unstable, in addition to being utterly alone. Not exactly a recipe for a man you're eager to trust.
     However, when the zombie shit hits the fan, there's no obvious reason to doubt the reality of it at first. We have not yet been shown anything we know to be unreal, and even if Chuck isn't the most dependable guy, he's perfect in the role of zombie story action hero: he's crazy, he's got nothing to lose, and he's understandably eager to prove himself in light of all his recent failings. So the groundwork laid out by Rossmo and Link doesn't automatically make one doubt what Chuck sees, hears, and experiences. In fact, for me it had the opposite effect---I assumed it was all real, and that the reason for Chuck to have such deep and varied problems was so he could slowly but steadily redeem himself in the face of this crisis, coming out the other end not only a survivor but a victor, probably for the first time in his life. It seemed like he was built for this. And of course that ended up being true, but not in the ways or for the reasons I imagined.
     Looking back, there are of course several hints that things are not what they seem. There's a zombiefied pregnant woman on the side of the road who tries to flag Chuck down for assistance---not your average zombie tactic. Or the fact that we watch Chuck get bitten all to hell by a group of infected rats, yet he never himself succumbs to zombieism. And in one of the best parts of the series, there is Danny Whitehead and his friends, a group of hunters/poachers who also live in the woods and who Chuck checks in on before heading back to town. When he arrives, he finds Danny and company already in zombie mode, yet they've lost none of their intelligence. Not the first smart zombies I've ever seen, but definitely an indication that Chuck may be misreading the situation. Plus once Danny's crew overpowers Chuck, they merely bind him and lock him away rather than, say, eating him.
     So why, with all these clues, was I fooled by Rebel Blood? Why didn't it ever occur to me as even a possibility that Chuck was making up this whole event? What, precisely, is this comicbook doing right that makes its surprise finale so satisfying and successful?
     Even before discovering the depths of Chuck's madness, Rebel Blood is a character study first and a zombie story second. It's so focused on exploring the ins and outs of Chuck's point of view that questioning it never crossed my mind. And more than that, even saddled with all his craziness, Chuck's overall reaction to the zombie infestation is actually fairly grounded and realistic. He has moments where he's overwhelmed by the horrors he has to face, but just as many moments of genuine bravery. Like anyone, his mind runs wild with worst-case scenarios, yet he also motivates himself by imagining that this whole affair will make him into a real-life action hero, earning respect, gratitude, and even fame. Perhaps most realistically, he latches onto a stranger, the only other "survivor" he knows about, a voice coming through his radio that claims to belong to a cop and calls itself Red.
     And in Red we find the craziest and most confounding single aspect of the story. Throughout Chuck's adventure, he is followed by a strange lurking figure with a head in the shape of a terrifying deer skull. Though the creature is never directly noticed or addressed, it's clear from the beginning that it has some measure of power or influence over what goes on. So when I first discovered that Chuck was never fighting zombies or in danger of anything but his own insanity, my thought was that this skull-headed demon thing was a physical representation of that insanity. But then, on the very next page, in comes to light that the detective in charge of this bizarre case is none other than Red, and one page after that we see him cast a shadow in the shape of old skullhead. So who or what is Red, really? Considering that his last line is, "Who're you?" his exact identity, nature, motives, etc. are likely meant to remain mysterious, but it seems pretty clear that, to some extent, he's the cause behind Chuck's final, homicidal breakdown. The hows and whys of it are unclear at best, but as I said, this is a character study before it's a zombie story, so the details of what caused Chuck to see these monsters don't need to be explained. The point is how he handles his madness, not where it came from.
     Besides, one of the things I like most about Rebel Blood is how much credit it gives its readers. The story moves through time, moves in and out of Chuck's memories and fantasies, and has unsettling and unexplained characters like Mr. Skullhead/Red creeping about, yet it never sacrifices clarity in its storytelling. Smart and subtle visual clues, sometimes as simple as a shift in the coloring, help to keep things from becoming muddled, and the main narrative of Chuck's battle from the woods to his house is so direct that anytime we move away from it, jumping right back in is no problem. The book requires your full attention throughout in order to stick its unexpected landing, but it also holds your attention effortlessly with its captivating and horrifying artwork, natural-yet-stylized dialogue, realistic approach to people in crisis, and flawed and fascinating protagonist.
     Chuck isn't easy to like or even understand, but I felt like I had accomplished both by the end of the series, because of how skillfully Link and Rossmo handled him along the way. Realizing that this crazy, angry dude who'd won me over was, in fact, crazier and angrier than I could have known was certainly a punch to the gut, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. I keep coming back to take the hit again, and even though I know it's coming now, it still packs a wallop. That's the mark of a great twist ending: you can return to the story over and over and still feel shock, surprise, and sadness when you reach the conclusion.

Dearly Departed: Green Wake

Dearly Departed is a semi-regular column where I look back on recently completed or canceled series.

It begins so simply. Sepia tones, overt narration, a car crash. A woman is dead and the man who's with her is overwhelmed by it. He tells us so, plainly and directly, in his captions. For a page or two, it feels like so much more forgettable melodramatic tragedy.
     Then the man is swallowed up by a pile of frogs that appear from nowhere. And then next thing you know, with no warning or introduction or even a time stamp, we're in a whole new place with a whole new color scheme (although it is a limited and muted palette), looking at a brutally murdered body. We also see two men who are looking at the corpse for themselves, one of whom seems to be the man from the car crash (but wasn't he just buried in frogs?) and the other one who appears...to BE a frog? Or maybe like a half-frog? What the hell is going on here?
     In this somewhat disorienting opening four pages to its debut issue, Green Wake quickly establishes some of its most important and pervasive elements: the dark and chaotic art that Riley Rossmo utilizes brilliantly throughout the series; the narrative voice of the story's protagonist, Morley; and above all, it lets the reader know that this is not a book to be breezed through, that it will be somewhat unpredictable and deceitful. Not that it is a difficult read, per se, but it is not exactly an easy one either. If attention is paid to each page and panel, it's actually not that complicated a story. For all intents and purposes, it's a crime procedural like any other, except that it is set in a supernatural world built out of people's guilt. And also it's partly a Messiah story. So maybe it is kind of complicated.
     It is certainly too intricate to bother trying to rehash or summarize the plot for you here. I highly recommend you read it if you haven't, and I'll talk about why in a moment. But before I dig into my opinions, give it a look for yourself. It is, after all, only ten issues. That's just TWO trades! Go for it.
     But if you're unfamiliar with the story, then here's what you should know---Image originally slated Green Wake to be a five-issue mini-series. But it was so immediately well-received, they decided to change it into an ongoing series before the initial five issues had even all come out (if memory serves, the announcement was made between #3 and #4). Then, almost as quickly, it got canceled, after only one other arc (also five issues long) was completed. What results is an interesting kind of narrative. Each arc has threads that are very much self-contained, but they also tell one continuous and complete story together: the story of  Morley slowly gaining an understanding of over Green Wake (the titular setting of the series) until, in the end, he is abel to destroy it and free all of its inhabitants.
     Looking back on the entire run, I can't help but wonder if this tight connectedness between the two arcs is part of why the series never picked up enough steam to keep going. Morley escapes his guilt and thus escapes Green Wake at the end of the first arc, and then in the final pages of #5 and the opening pages of #6, he comes back again. His only explanation is that his self-forgiveness "didn't stick," and while it is true that guilt is never easily overcome, I'm not sure I buy the idea that a man who worked so hard and long get to a place where he could let go of his pain would immediately slip back into such an overbearing depression.
     But even if Morley's return and role as destroyer of Green Wake were inevitable (and it does feel like writer Kurtis Wiebe always knew that's what Morley would ultimately accomplish), he definitely did not need to come back to Green Wake RIGHT AWAY. It's really not that hard to imagine "Lost Children" without him (the first four issues, anyway). It would still be pretty damned compelling. Esther's story could be shown in full rather than related in a few panels of dialogue, and through her Morley's legend would resonate and remain significant. Krieger and his junkie nemesis could still have their escalating battle, leading to Krieger's death. Carl could still show up, sometimes fighting against his new mistress and sometimes doing her killing. And Micah and the children could go through all the same beats, their story remainaing more or less unchanged, with the exception that Micah wouldn't go to Morley for help. In the end, he would declare his independence and return to the schoolhouse on his own, still get seen by Esther, and still get eaten by his original victims, the children over whom he sent himself to Green Wake in the first place. "Lost Children" has legs without Morley, because in many ways Morley's story is separate from the rest of the narrative. He goes through the motions of investigating the new murders, but what he's really doing the whole time is trying to figure out Green Wake itself. His searches never lead him to Esther's lost children, even though she basically tells him all about them. He decides that he doesn't care, that in this case the murders past and the impending murder of Micah are acceptable losses. Because what he wants is the truth about a deeper mystery.
     Hmm...I didn't plan on this column being one long argument against Morley's return, and still don't. I actually think it's totally appropriate, perfectly so, that the finale of the series would be Morley ripping Hecate/Green Wake's guts out and sending everyone trapped there back to their actual lives. That's always where he was headed, whether he knew it or not; it was always his endgame. Figuring Green Wake out is what drove him, and he had to know that figuring her out would mean pissing her off and having to fight her influence. I just wonder if hurrying him back into the book weakened it overall, and though I don't really believe that a second arc without Morley would have prevented its cancellation...I want to believe it, because I want to believe in a world where it's true that if a more interesting story is told, sales improve.
     Of course, the real problem "Lost Children" had was that it was following that first arc, that original five issues. Which, by the way, is a serious masterpiece. And that is ALL about Morley. He's a unique figure in Green Wake from the beginning, and his reasons for being there, as well as his reasons for acting the way he does while he's there, are both incredibly simple and intensely profound. He's a really amazing character in a really amazing world, not to mention what a badass hardboiled detective he makes. Always smoking, always saying cool, gritty shit. Brooding constantly. He's perfect, and  that first story---"Green Wake" I guess, would be the name of the arc---is arguably perfect as well. It hits all the right beats in all the right places, and it relies on such simple, universal themes and plot points to build the foundation for such a complex story. Car accidents, lost love, cheating on someone while living abroad, second chances...it's all so familiar. Yet the world that is built up around and because of these things allows the characters and readers alike to reexamine them and really appreciate their power over us. Wiebe captures so many different kinds of anger and depression and sadness in his different characters' distinct voices, and Rossmo captures them all equally well in his kinetic drawings.
     It's remarkable how expressive Rossmo's art is even while it helps add to the horror and chaos and confusion. At the end of #2, when Green Wake first takes physical form, we see what something truly ugly and horrible looks like in a world where ugliness and horror are commonplace. And his deliberate use of the color red, in both arcs, brings just the right level of life and vibrancy to Green Wake. Even though, admittedly, the reds are mostly for blood, fire, and the clothing of villains. Still, Green Wake might have survived without Morley, but Rossmo was essential from start to finish.
     Wiebe, too, who clearly had a powerful and detailed vision of Green Wake (and non-italicized Green Wake) from the onset, and who is dangerously skilled in both dialogue and pacing. I have not read much else by Wiebe (I should, right?), but his voice is singular and unique as an author here, even as he speaks through so many varied character voices.
     Truth be told, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Kelly Tindall on letters. A lot of interesting and important cues are gives in the letters as to where and when we are in the story. Not so often that they serve that kind of role, and it makes Green Wake all the more impressive.
     And it is an impressive series. Despite my frustration with some of the decisions about how to move forward after the opening story, I throughly enjoyed every issue of Green Wake as it came out, and continue to enjoy them all on multiple re-reads. It is an exploration and celebration of human emotion and its ability to affect the world and the people around us. It is a bloody murderfest set in a nightmare world. It is just another story of a man seeking redemption.
     For real, it's only ten issues. Go read it.



Green Wake was published by Image Comics and is dated April 2011-February 2012.