Dr. Strange is the Villain of Matt Fraction's Defenders (and Silver Surfer is the Only Hero)

As soon as we see Dr. Strange in Defenders, he's being kind of an ass. In his narration, he already regrets the one-night stand he had with a young grad student who isn't even dressed yet. But his regret is full of insincerity and weird, insulting jabs at the young woman. From there, he doesn't stop being a jerk until, at the very end of the series, all of reality is saved through Strange realizing that he shouldn't have been so jerky to the aforementioned grad student in the first place. Which is admittedly a funny and surprising way to wrap up the story, but I'm not sure it's worth the pages and pages of him as an inept, arrogant superhero prick.
     Some amateur magician who tries to bully Strange gets his soul trapped in a jar and left on a random shelf, never to be thought of again. To be fair, he did threaten one of the great loves of Strange's life...but only kind of. The woman in question, Martha, was accidentally brought back to life by Strange, except that he brought her back as she was when he first knew her many years before. Since then, she'd been married and had children before she passed away, but the version Strange summons has no memory of that. When she asks him to tell her the truth, he does, and coming to terms with the idea that she died and came back and lost an entire lifetime of memories in between is almost impossible for her to handle. Before she can fully digest it all, the kid who ends up in a jar arrives and poses a danger to Martha and Strange's secret, impossible relationship, so Strange sends her away. He doesn't want to know where she goes, ostensibly for her own safety, and the poor woman (who can't use her own identity because she should be older and dead) ends up cast out in the world alone with no plan.
     These are small-scale offenses, and not the only ones, but there is a central, enormous dick move Strange makes that is literally the cause of all the rest of the trouble in the story. When he and the rest of the Defenders stumble on a bizarre, well-hidden, well-guarded, and totally inexplicable machine, his first thought is that they should steal it. With his allies' help, he takes it home to be studied, because god forbid there be something in this universe he doesn't understand. He also rather rudely sends the rest of his teammates away, since apparently no one could possibly be of any assistance to a mind as great as his. It's infuriating behavior right away, and the simple act of moving the concordance engine (as we learn the machine is called) from its original home is the mistake upon which the rest of the comic's end-of-the-universe narrative is based.
     It's too frustratingly complicated to get into how the Defenders learn the details of the concordance engine and what it's for, but it boils down to it being one of several that were built and placed on Earth by outside forces so that the planet would be especially full of superpowered people, hypothetically strong enough together to fight off the Death Celestials that travel from one universe to the next unmaking things. Strange's decision to displace one of the engines throws off their mojo in some vague way that leads to a Death Celestial showing up and successfully wiping out life on Earth instead of being stopped by a unified group of heroes like it was supposed to be. By the time Strange finally realizes it's all his fault, the damage has been done. So he goes back in time and uses very simple magic to prevent himself from ever even going on the adventure that would lead him to the engine in the first place. Instead, he takes the grad student he was so cold to the first time around out on a date, and apparently that tiny bit of pseudo-decency was all that had ever been standing between the obliteration of everything and life continuing as normal. Again, that concept makes me laugh, but it doesn't make me like Dr. Strange or look any more fondly on the time I spent with him.
     Because even if he course corrects in the end, for me as a reader, all the horrible shit that Strange's actions brought about still happened, and he was still dense and selfish throughout those events. Also, I'm not wild about the idea of a whole story building up to a final beat that undoes everything which came before it, but that's a different point, I guess. What I'm really saying is that Strange is both a bad guy and the bad guy in this narrative, responsible for the success of a great evil through several smaller evils of his own. The argument might be made that his intentions were good, but I don't buy that. I think his main intention was to figure out a mystery because he's fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of something he can't solve or decipher. He never even asks if there could maybe be consequences to moving the engine, let alone considers what those might be, or thinks that maybe all the awfulness that follows might be because of what he'd done. Someone else has to point it out to him in a painfully direct way. And that someone is the Silver Surfer.
     Separated from the rest of the group by the hyper-powerful beings who originally built the concordance engines, Silver Surfer gets a full explanation handed to him of what's happening with the Death Celestial and how to fix it. What he does with that info is telepathically pass it on to Dr. Strange, showing the sorcerer the error of his past ways, and this ends up being the most important thing any of the Defenders ever do. Which I guess is what I really mean by my claim in this post's title that Surfer is the story's only hero. The other characters genuinely try their best to do good and battle evil, but Surfer has the only actual success. Everyone else manages to delay the game a little at best, and actively (if inadvertently) exacerbate things at worst. Even Surfer only does that much until a big-time deus ex machina plucks him out of time and space to show him the truth. Maybe he's not any more or less heroic than anybody else, just lucky enough to be more effective. But in terms of who puts an end to the primary villain's (Strange's) wickedness, it's Silver Surfer all the way.
     John Aman, the character played as the main antagonist, is also clearly a villain. He's just as self-important, over-confident, and stubborn as Strange, and their mutual tendencies to use violence first and keep everything to themselves is what makes them enemies rather than allies. They basically want the same thing, but fight one another instead of spending the time to figure out that they could be on the same side. Aman is worse insofar as he straight up murders several people, only to discover they weren't even the people he meant to kill. He also commits genocide against his own country, though we don't see that happen, just the aftermath. Yeah, ok, he's way worse. He's aggressively, knowingly evil at a level Strange never reaches. BUT. Though he's completely nuts and morally bankrupt,  Aman's ultimate goal is to undo Strange's original mistake in moving the concordance engine. He goes about it all wrong, but his obviously deep-running insanity makes me understand if not forgive his psychopathic methods. Dr. Strange, on the other hand, ought to know better. That's not objectively as bad, but it irks me more.
     Then there's the Death Celestial, a villain in the mindless beast sense, but on the stage for such a short time compared to either Aman or Strange. The same things apply to Nul, Breaker of Worlds, the enemy of the opening arc who leads the Defenders to the first concordance engine they find. These characters are one-note unstoppable forces, not possessing sentience in the way we understand it. Nul is more animalistic, driven by instinct rather than want. The Celestial presumably operates on a higher mental plane than humans have access to, but certainly doesn't perceive our lives as being significant, nor does it in any way try to communicate. It's an agent of constant devastation, not concerned with the details of the things it destroys. These characters are dangerous, but I hesitate to label them as "evil," and whether I do or not, they're not as responsible for what they do as the human villains who have the ability to look at the consequences of what goes down, and who actually care about them.
     So even if he's not the most forceful, purposeful, or maniacal of the many baddies in Defenders, Dr. Strange is the one who bugs me most. His particular brand of wrong-doing gets under my skin, because it's so easily avoidable, it's immature, and it comes from a guy who claims to be on the side of righteousness.
     Tomorrow: Forget everything I said above! Let's talk about how gorgeous this series is!

Good, But Not Great: Hawkeye & Young Avengers

It's like when you hear a joke that only makes you smirk while everyone else is in stitches. Though you can understand conceptually what makes the joke funny, and even pull some personal amusement and pleasure from it, you still feel like you're not getting it in the same way as those people around you. This happens in any and every medium, and it can make you question your competence and intelligence, even if only for a moment, when your own feelings seem to be counter to those of popular opinion. Right now, for me, this is happening in comicbooks in a big way with Matt Fraction & David Aja's Hawkeye and, to a lesser extent (because it is only two issues old) Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie's Young Avengers.
     Let me be clear: I like both of the books in question. Like them a lot, even. Visually they have each had some pretty stunning moments, there's a good deal of tight and funny dialogue in them, and I'm into their respective casts. But I don't think of them as the highest in current superhero comicbookery, nor have I ever considered them deserving of that level of acclaim. Are they more solid and better-looking than the majority of titles available today? Definitely. They belong closer to the top of the list than the bottom, but I don't LOVE them.
     I might grow to love Young Avengers over time. It's still so new and has been good thus far, but it's also immensely decompressed and has a sizable cast, so not that much has gone down as of yet. The first issue got more than one perfect review online, but in my eyes it came across as a pretty standard debut: we got brief glimpses of the current lives and personalities of all the main characters, and it ended by introducing the threat of the opening arc. Not every first issue is smart enough to do this kind of common sense groundwork, so kudos to Gillen for starting at the beginning, but still, the result was too many threads established too briefly for any of them to fully capture my attention. The issue had ADD; the opening scene of Kate Bishop and Noh-Varr was the best and most fun, but it was never returned to, abandoned in favor of meeting the rest of the cast. Even in Young Avengers #2, which was considerably more focused, there was but a single throwaway line referencing the characters from the debut's first scene, so in more than 30 pages Gillen has yet to get back to the most interesting story he's introduced. Yes, this is how comicbooks get written nowadays more often than not, aiming for the trade rather than satisfying single issues. And that's fine, and I like the other threads of the book, so I'm happy to follow those instead of the one I really want for now. But my mind isn't ever going to be blown by a book that, in two full issues, can't completely wrap its arms around or explain ANY of its myriad plot points, especially if it flat out ignores some of them for the sake of developing others at a snail's pace. When this arc wraps and I do have all the answers, I may well be thoroughly wowed. What bugs me is that so many reviewers online are already wowed, and I can't place why. It feels to me like Young Avengers isn't even expecting to drop its readers' jaws yet, that Gillen & McKelvie are taking their time in the beginning so that the latter half of their story can really go nuts. Nevertheless, the overwhelming praise continues to pour in, and though there MUST be people online talking about the title's flaws, too, they are much harder to track down than those folks enthusiastically waving the Young Avengers banner.
     Hawkeye is a stickier wicket, because my problems with it vary from issue to issue. Very much not written with the collected volume in mind, this series does mostly one- or two-issue stories, and while some of them have been a load of fun, there have also been a few duds already. And though I credited it above to the initial and most regular artist David Aja, it has also been drawn by Javier Pulido (#4-5), and Steve Lieber & Jesse Hamm (#7), and where Aja kicks ass the others only punch it lightly. So it is a less stable, reliable title than I want it to be, and even though I have seen this fact acknowledged online in places, the majority of what I've read has had a higher opinion about each issue than I.
     I never really thought the villains with broken English who say "bro" at the end of every sentence were especially funny, so maybe I'm just not the target audience, because those guys show up in the debut. But the story around them in that first issue was a strong one, showing Hawkeye's toughness along with his genuine altruism. And Aja's art was stellar right away. So I stuck with it, and though they had some rough spots, issues #2 and #3 were both more good than bad by far (even when the "bro" guys returned). Nothing that melted my face in the stories, but consistently great artistic work, from Aja and colorist Matt Hollingsworth both, and some impeccable humor from Matt Fraction. It was off to a strong start.
     But the Javier Pulido-drawn "The Tape" story was of lower quality on all fronts. The plot didn't ever grab me and then resolved on a cheap fake-out kind of ending, Madame Masque has never impressed me as a villain, and Pulido is similar to Aja in some ways but far less polished and detailed. His characters' expressions are wilder, and their appearances more prone to shift or morph from panel to panel. As much as I had enjoyed the opening three issues, I never raved over them the way I saw others doing, and then during "The Tape" I could feel my interest waning rapidly. But the promise of Aja's return kept me around, only for Hawkeye #6 to be another "bro"-fest. An entertaining, beautiful one, absolutely, but this being their third issue, the gang of tracksuit-wearing thugs began to feel like one-note clowns.
     #7 was the Hurricane (Superstorm?) Sandy issue, and even though it was inarguably awesome for Fraction to donate the royalties, the stories themselves felt a little cheap and like they were pandering. I'm not sure that could have been avoided entirely in the telling of Sandy stories about superheroes, but that didn't make it any less grating. Also, again, the art was not as strong. It's good, clear, emotive stuff, and both artists fit nicely with their respective stories, but it's a dip for the series, which doesn't help the weaknesses of the narratives.
     And that brings us to Hawkeye #8, another one centered on the "bro" dudes that seems to be leading us into a longer arc centering on them. Damn, now that I think about it, those jerks are the main baddies in half of the issues so far. Maybe that's the only reason I don't like this book as much as other people.
     Whatever. I'm still reading it eight issues deep so I must be enjoying myself. I don't eagerly anticipate it every month but I do look forward to seeing what it'll deliver. And I never know exactly what to expect, which is a point in its favor for sure. As for Young Avengers, I think I'm committed to the full first arc already, no matter how long that ends up being, after only two chapters. So even if I'm not trumpeting it as the next big thing in superhero books, I am glad to be reading it and excited to see how it plays out.
     But I'd love to love these series with the same enthusiasm I seem to find around every corner of the Internet. I want to feel like I am in on the joke, but I just don't yet get what the big deal is.

Dearly Departed: Casanova: Avaritia

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

Hot and heavy. That's how I would describe Casanova: Avaritia. Not in the sexual sense, although there's plenty of passionate, psychedelic lovemaking going on. But when I say hot and heavy, I'm referring more to the emotional impact of the series. There is a heat to the pace and, even more so, the art of this book. Blazing guns, explosions, rocket ships, and oh so much blood, all done in a palette founded in stark, warm reds. It's as if there was a burner underneath the story, being slowly but steadily cranked up, forcing the characters to charge ever faster toward their individual destinations. As for the heaviness, it comes from the content and, more specifically, the attitude of our titular hero, Casanova Quinn. The ne'er-do-well charm and smugness which were such definitive aspects of Cass's personality in the previous two series are largely absent here. He's no longer playing a game in which he finds any joy, instead feeling trapped in a life of ceaseless violence and pain. Though no less likable a lead, his is definitely less fun and funny here than in the past, and it adds a significant weight to the events of Avaritia. It's hot and it's heavy, and while I'm not yet convinced that it's my favorite of the Casanova titles, it made for the most intense and challenging read.
     The choice of red as a base color this time out is an excellent one. Cris Peter uses a variety of crimson shades to underscore the high-octane action and deep sadness of the narrative equally. When violence erupts, so do the colors, as harsh and striking as any of the images they display. But the reds can also be dulled and/or darkened as needed for those times when Casanova is grappling with his depression. In his quieter, more brooding scenes, there tend to be either calmer reds or, more often, simply fewer of them. Peter makes careful use of soft greens and white space to add depth to these more contemplative moments. Cass's hope is fading, and so the world around him becomes muted, especially in contrast to the brash hues of the fight sequences.
     While the coloring is a powerful component, as it has always been in the world of Casanova, without Gabriel Bá's insane and insanely gorgeous artwork it would be far less visually stunning. The colors may highlight the book's intense moods, but it is Bá who captures and displays those mood in the first place. Casanova's despair, Luther's innocence and fear, Sasa Lisi's confidence, Seychelle's wickedness...Bá has his entire cast down to a T. Yet even as he delivers nuanced performances from the characters, his style remains generally broad and chaotic, which adds tremendously to the ultimate feel of the series. At its heart, this is still a madcap sci-fi adventure, so the story's severity doesn't mean Bá's art is any more subdued. Quite the opposite, in fact. Early on there is mind-blowing splash page where Casanova is pulled out of a dying universe and back into his own, and from there things only get more artistically astounding. There are pages covered by grids displaying the same events over multiple realities, each rendered just as convincingly and beautifully as the next. Countless new locations, scenes of chaotic action, tender moments of intimate romance, and everything in between are all handled deftly. And, my god, there is an amazing sequence in the final issue that feels like the entire nightclub experience, designer drugs and thumping music and flashing lights all, translated into comicbook form. It's a singular feat of graphic storytelling.
     There's no denying the impressive work done by all parties involved in expressing the larger feelings and ideas of this narrative, and Matt Fraction's script is just as essential a facet as the images which accompany it. Casanova is forced by his father Cornelius to eviscerate entire realities in an attempt to erase his arch-enemy, Newman Xeno, from existence. These universe-wide genocides begin to take their toll on Cass, and even when he learns Newman's real name, Luther Desmond Diamond, all that changes is that rather than wipe out whole worlds, Casanova becomes a reality-hopping assassin, incessantly murdering new versions of the same guy. It's a gripping set-up, and it ultimately leads to Cass and his girlfriend Sasa Lisi fighting against Cornelius' goals and rescuing one of the innumerable Luthers to bring into their hearts and their bed. An ultra-violent, sometimes meta-fictional, spacetime travel action love story. No wonder it never has the time (or space) to catch its breath.
     One slightly negative result of this pedal-to-the-metal approach is there are a few plot details which end up being rushed passed or glossed over. I've read Avaritia several times, and, I admit, there are a handful of things which still confuse me. The workings of the Lacuna, for instance. Is it where they send Luther in the end, or is it what Cass uses to escape? It appears to be the latter, but then what, exactly, do they do with Luther, and why don't Cass and Sasa merely do the same with themselves? And either way, why did Sasa build a spacetime machine that only one person could use to get away? What was the purpose of suddenly introducing Suki Boutqiue to the story only to just as immediately remove her from the board? And did Kaito murder Cornelius, or is it his cancer that finally does him in as promised in the first issue? Based on what we have here, feels like it could go either way.
     Here's the thing, though: I don't really care to find answers to these questions. I'm sure some of them are contained within the book's pages, and as I reread this and the other Casanova titles, those which came before and the ones to follow, I suspect I'll notice more and more until my confusion disappears. But even if that's not the case, I enjoyed the ever-living daylights out of Avaritia, possibly in spite of its breakneck pace but also in part, I think, because of it. Right around the time most of my questions arise, Sasa Lisi describes this whole mess as a "Race to get fucked to infinity," and that's precisely what it feels like. These characters, at least initially, are unable to avoid the violence and death which surround and engulf them, and so they each find their own twisted ways to embrace it instead. They throw themselves headfirst into the muck and, once they meet each other down there, try to kill one another. That is, they do until Cass and Sasa, fueled by their own love, decide to push back against this impulse and, instead, protect a life or two. They spare Suki (may that's why she's in here!), rescue Luther, and in the end Sasa helps Casanova himself escape. The specifics of the methods they use to accomplish all of this saving and fleeing my be unclear, but they're also unnecessary. What matters is that it happens, that in the midst of a seemingly unbreakable cycle of violence these two characters actually manage to protect some lives. Ideally it'd all be understandable, but I'll take emotional/conceptual relevance over total story clarity any day.
      The very, very end of Casanova: Avaritia, by which I mean literally the final two or three pages, is also a tad confounding. Presumably meant as a sort of lead-in to the next series, Acedia, it's not so much a resolution as a massive shift in status quo that is not, as of yet, explored. But again, this is not a complaint. While Cass may have managed to escape the situation he was in when this tale began, he clearly has not outrun all of his enemies or problems, and that's a logical place for him to end up. His circumstances were so dire at the start of this narrative, any amount of improvement feels like a major victory, so we get the payoff of seeing our hero succeed even if we know his satisfaction and safety are not going to last for long. The good guys may not win outright, but they accomplish their more immediate goals and also stop the villains from doing the same, so we get to be happy for them, even if only tentatively so. More importantly, though, is the wild ride which brings us to this endpoint. Having already pulled out all the stops in the preceding Casanova titles, Fraction, Bá, and Peter are free here to tell their most hard-hitting narrative to date. It may be more dismal and sometimes depressing than what came before, but it's all the more compelling and ultimately satisfying for it. Nobody is safe from the enormity of what goes on in this book. Not the characters, not the creators, and certainly not the readers. As Sasa Lisi says, "Everybody gets fucked to infinity."


Casanova: Avaritia #1-4 were published by Marvel Worldwide Inc. and are dated November 2011-August 2012.