big box of comics: The Sandman — Overture

Tags

big box of comics, Dave Stewart, DC Comics, Dreaming, dreams, JH Williams III, Neil Gaiman, overture, sandman, Vertigo Comics

I am a child of Time and Night,
and this place will prove my end.

—Morpheus; Overture #5.

Last month’s Big Box of Comics featured Sandman: Endless Nights. This month, thanks once again to this blog’s readers, I filled in another gap in my Sandman collection with the superbly illustrated Overture. While I enjoyed Endless Nights, it didn’t quite earn a place among my all-time favorite Sandman stories, but Overture definitely made my top five. Let me share with you why.

First, the art by J.H. Williams III—assisted in no small part by colorist Dave Stewart—is probably the most awesome art to ever grace the pages of a Sandman story. It has incredibly inventive panel layouts that re-imagine what is possible with the very concept of panels and are perfectly suited to this story’s journey through numerous levels of reality and dreams. Williams employs a variety of art styles for the various realms and characters, even going so far as to draw multiple styles in a single panel, such as the four-page fold-out mega-splash page in the first issue where many incarnations of the Lord of Dreams gather in a single place.

Longtime fans of Sandman since the 1980s might recall the days when the original issues were printed on cheaper paper with more primitive printing processes and the colors often lacked vibrancy. But in Overture, with Dave Stewart’s colors on high-quality paper, the vibrancy is turned all the way up to eleven. Overture is a visual feast that must be seen to be believed.

Second, Overture brings back all the elements that made so many of the original long-form story arcs into instant classics. We travel through all kinds of fantastic realms, meet fascinating characters whose infinite depths we barely have time to explore, converse about weighty and poetic concepts, re-imagine mythologies, and create new mythologies on the fly as only Neil Gaiman can do.

Some reviewers have posted negative comments about the story, but those reviews only make me wonder if the reviewers remember story arcs such as the wandering Brief Lives from the original series. Sandman was always content to spend a lot of time on journeys that at first appeared aimless, was never in a hurry with the build-up, and reached unexpected and often quiet conclusions that left you scratching your head thinking, “WTF was that about?”—until you re-read the entire thing and grasped the meaning of it all.

Some reviewers complain about a lack of dramatic tension, since you know that somehow all of Overture’s complicated plot must eventually resolve into the events of the first issue of the original series. After all, it’s obviously a prequel. But I found the high stakes kept me engaged in wondering how Morpheus could simultaneously succeed on his quest and yet find himself captured at the end, and the outcome was anything but predictable.

One of the joys in reading Overture is how it connects to so many ideas and stories that were alluded to in the original series but were never fully explored or explained. Some reviewers say Overture is a bad place to start with Sandman because it requires you to know a lot about the original series for context. I disagree. I would absolutely recommend this as a starting point, because even though a new reader won’t totally understand all the context, the same could be said about starting with Sandman #1 and saving Overture until you finish the original seventy-five issues.

Sandman always had a lot of unexplained back-story about major events that were only alluded to in a couple of panels of dialogue. Overture gave Gaiman a chance to go back and fill in or expand on what might have seemed like throwaway concepts forty years ago. After reading Overture, I re-read the original series and found a new appreciation for so many small moments. Here are a few examples.

Overture gives us a more complete tale of Alianora, a former love of Morpheus who only briefly appeared near the end of A Game of You. Reading her scene in A Game of You made so much more sense to me after Overture. Likewise, when Morpheus recalls in just two panels of The Doll’s House how he failed to properly deal with a Vortex a long time ago, you know what he meant after Overture.

In Brief Lives, Delirium tells Destiny there are things that don’t appear in his book that contains the entire universe, and there is a single panel which mentions how Morpheus was weakened after some major episode that left him vulnerable to being captured in the first issue of the original series. Both of these brief moments are explored in much greater detail in Overture.

Overture also harkens back to one of my favorite standalone issues: Dream of a Thousand Cats. Morpheus appears differently to different species, such as when he appeared as a fox to the fox in Dream Hunters, and Dream of a Thousand Cats showed that he appears to cats as the Cat of Dreams. Overture explores this idea in its opening pages where Morpheus appears as a sentient carnivorous plant to an alien lifeform, and it also features the Cat of Dreams. Plus, a major plot point centers on having one thousand beings dream the same dream to create a new reality—a central concept in Dream of a Thousand Cats.

Overture builds on the idea of stars-as-conscious-entities from Endless Nights, giving the stars an entire cosmic city you don’t want to mess with, and developing the antipathy Morpheus feels for his androgynous sibling Desire as a result of that story.

You also discover the origin of the weird gasmask-plus-spinal-column thing Morpheus sometimes wears, another item whose origin was only ever mentioned in a couple of panels of the original series. DC Comics geeks know the real reason for the gasmask is that the original golden-age Sandman wore one while he was gassing his foes with chemicals that made them sleepy, but Gaiman took an old idea and ran with it—much as he did with the subsequent Jack Kirby version of Sandman in The Doll’s House.

Those are just a few things I picked up on, and other fans of Sandman will undoubtedly find more. So, as to the question of whether this is a good place to start with Sandman, I say it is. New readers won’t always understand what is going on, but that’s the same experience they get if they start at Sandman #1. To read Sandman, you must be willing to not have everything explained to you, to put together pieces of a puzzle, and to read the stories more than once to pick up all the clues and see how everything ties together. You must also be ready to indulge Gaiman’s love of leaving many mysteries unsolved, and many endings ambiguous.

I loved Overture, and it made me love the original series even more than I already did. The art will blow your mind, the story will deepen your appreciation of the original series, and it works not only as an overture but a coda to one of the finest examples of what can be accomplished in comic books. A huge Thank You to this blog’s readers for helping me add this missing gem to my big box of comics.

Collector’s Guide: Get the Sandman: Overture 30^th Anniversary Edition on Amazon in Kindle or paperback formats. It’s a little harder, but not impossible and certainly rewarding, to find all the original single issues in stock.

Big Box of Comics: The Sandman – Endless Nights

Tags

big box of comics, book review, dreams, endless nights, Neil Gaiman, sandman, Vertigo Comics

With all the talk about the Sandman thanks to his being adapted as a Netflix show, I realized I’d never read Endless Nights. Published in 2003, years after the original 75-issue series by Neil Gaiman ended, Endless Nights is a collection of seven stories. Each one focuses on a different member of the Endless: Death, Dream, Desire, Delirium, Destiny, Destruction, and Despair. As Gaiman recently mentioned in a video about mythology, the Endless are not gods, because gods die when no one remembers them anymore—but the Endless are forever.

Thanks to this blog’s readers, this month I added the hardcover edition of Endless Nights to my Sandman collection, and it was a good read. I would not recommend it as a starting point for getting into Sandman, because it will be confusing to readers who don’t already know the characters and concepts. But for those of us who read and loved the original series, it offers interesting vignettes and wildly creative artwork.

Each of the seven stories employs a different art team, and the pairings of artist with story feel very well-matched. Who but Bill Sienkiewicz could have created such wildly demented illustrations of a team of mentally ill people gathered for a mission to rescue Delirium?

Barron Storey’s non-sequential illustrations for 15 Portraits of Despair are truly disturbing.

Frank Quitely’s painted artwork for the story about Destiny shows a side of the artist I don’t recall seeing before; it’s recognizably Quitely, but with a very different vibe compared to his work with Grant Morrison or on The Authority.

Dave McKean—who did the multi-media covers for the original series—did an amazing job designing this book and all its various title pages and front matter. Todd Klein, the letterer of the original series, also shines by giving each story its own style.

My favorite chapter deals with Dream, also known as Morpheus—the Sandman himself. It’s like so many of the original Gaiman stories in that, yes, there is a “plot”, but it’s more about concepts and characters than action or adventure. Sandman is one of the few comics I enjoy even when there seems to be little more happening than characters talking to each other.

One reason is that Gaiman can achieve more in a couple of panels of dialogue than some writers can do in a single issue or even a whole series. For example, in only two panels of the story about Dream, Gaiman completely recontextualizes the origin of Superman and the planet Krypton.

Despair tells Rao, the star around which Krypton orbited, how artful and poetic it would be to have an unstable planet that would eventually die, and how wonderful it would be to leave only one survivor to despair over its loss. Millions of people have seen Superman as a symbol of hope, despite his tragic origin. By making him a character whose life was meant as an homage to despair, Gaiman adds a layer of poignancy and complexity to Superman and makes it all the more meaningful that he became something else entirely. Pretty heady stuff for two panels of conversation.

Overall, Endless Nights is a little too fragmentary to earn a place in my all-time favorite Sandman books. The story about Destruction, for example, never really gets explained and feels like an unfinished tale. But competition is stiff when it comes to Sandman favorites. The story arcs Season of Mists (which led directly to the masterful Mike Carey series Lucifer) and The Kindly Ones are epic in scope, and the original series is loaded with gorgeously written and drawn single-issue stories. The two limited series starring Death are also masterworks (The High Cost of Living and The Time of Your Life, now collected in a single volume).

But my all-time favorite is The Dream Hunters. It first appeared as a prose novel with incredible painted illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano, then was re-imagined as a four-issue comic book drawn by P. Craig Russell—whose work also appears in Endless Nights. The Dream Hunters is presented as an ancient tale from Japanese mythology, but Gaiman just made it up! It tells the story of a fox who fell in love with a Buddhist monk, and the dramatic sacrifices they made for each other. I’ve read it many times, and I don’t think I ever made it through either version without crying. If anyone asks me where to start with Sandman, that’s the story I recommend. There’s now an inexpensive ebook edition along with paperback and hardcover collections.

The fox perceives Morpheus as a fox in the Dreaming.

Still, Endless Nights is an artistic addition to the Sandman canon, and well worth exploring for fans of the series. You can find it in hardcover or paperback editions, or snag a $4 ebook of a more recent edition. A big Thank You to the readers of this blog for helping me add this book to my Sandman collection.

We3: Home Is Run No More

Tags

animals, bandit, cats, DC Comics, Frank Quitely, Grant Morrison, science fiction, tinker, Vertigo Comics, We3

Every now and then, I read a tragic story that breaks my heart, but no comic-book adventure has ever broken me so relentlessly as We3. A friend who isn’t really into comic books got into Grant Morrison thanks to the live-action show Happy—based on the four-issue series of the same name published by Image—so I’ve been digging into the Morrison archives. Along the way, I realized I’d never read what many people consider to be one of Morrison’s best works, if not the best. We3 is an action-packed story brought to life by Morrison’s long-time artistic collaborator Frank Quitely, and though I’ve enjoyed Quitely’s artwork for years, he outdid his own genius on We3. Before we delve into the book, let me just say that this story features one of my all-time favorite things: a cat who absolutely kicks ass.

The cat’s given name is Tinker, but she is only referred to in the story as “2”. Tinker is part of a team of three normal animals who have been surgically altered and had their brains messed with so they can become killing machines encased in high-tech armor to perform military missions and assassinations instead of having human soldiers do the job. Joining Tinker in this horrifying experiment are the dog Bandit—referred to as “1”, and the only one of the three to re-discover his real name in the story—and a rabbit named Pirate (“3”) because of a black spot over one eye.

Each of these animals was someone’s beloved pet before the story began. Instead of telling the reader this fact through flashbacks or exposition, the creative team shows it much more powerfully with “lost pet” flyers on the covers of each issue. When you realize what has been done to these hapless animals, the covers hit like a punch to the gut.

When the higher-ups decide that these lost and kidnapped animals need to be killed—decommissioned, per orders—the three of them escape their containment facility and run away. Their combat modifications and training make them dangerous to society, so the military pursues them. One of the many tragic aspects of this story is that the trio doesn’t mean to be dangerous murder machines. These animals were forced against their will to become horrors in the service of the same humans who want to put them down.

Nowhere is this more strongly portrayed than through Bandit’s canine emotional crises. Bandit truly wants to be a good dog. He wants to protect his beloved animal allies in We3 and also help humans, but he is forced into situations where his combat programming takes over and he kills humans. In the aftermath of the killings, his simple, mournful repetition of “Bad dog” hits home more powerfully than pages of dialogue or narrative captions could ever do.

Tinker does not share the dog’s remorse. She thinks the whole thing stinks. When Bandit tries to save a human body to convince himself he is a good dog, Tinker bluntly tells him the man is dead. As the two animals fade into the horizon while arguing, the panels reveal the human is annihilated from the waist down. In a combination of graphic images and minimal, broken dialogue, Morrison and Quitely set up the tension between the cat’s no-nonsense and apparently correct assessment of the situation with the dog’s potentially delusional idealism.

Each animal’s cybernetically enhanced speech pattern says volumes about them. On the first read, I had trouble understanding their speech, but it all became clear to me upon the second reading. Bandit the dog is haunted by regret over what he has been made to do, and he struggles to lead his “pack” in a volatile and untenable situation. Pirate the rabbit is the most simple-minded of the trio, only speaking in one-word sentences, but that doesn’t stop him from delivering a heart-wrenching reminder to his comrades that they are friends and are all in this together. Sadly, Pirate’s speech degrades into mere electronic noise after he suffers an injury.

Cat-lover that I am, I especially enjoyed Tinker’s dialogue. Her feline disdain for just about everything is expressed through the word “Stink”, rendered as “ST!NK” or, when she is really angry, “!SSST!!!NKK!” Compared to the peaceful rabbit and optimistic dog, Tinker appears to be the least bothered by all the killing. She seems at times to revel in it. Tinker is also the group’s cynic who doesn’t believe the trio will ever find a home, because “home” no longer exists for any of them—a point of contention that leads to an argument with Bandit.

And what is home? What does “home” mean to Bandit after all the awful things the team has endured? To the dog, home is a simple concept. “Home is run no more.” Home is a place where these involuntary machines of war can find peace and rest, and that is Bandit’s hope for We3. But as the story progresses, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that Tinker is right, that home and peace will be forever denied these unfortunate animals because of what’s been done to them—and what of their lives and identities have been stolen from them.

Quitely employs many innovative and dramatic approaches to action. A video by Strip Panel Naked does a good job of analyzing the groundbreaking visuals in this story, so check that out. Regarding the page where Tinker hacks and slashes her way through a series of panels filled with her enemies, I am reminded of what Scott McCloud taught in his book Understanding Comics, where he asserts that part of the magic of comics is what happens—but is not shown—between the panels, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks. Quitely gives us two-dimensional panels rendered in 3-D with Tinker in action, demonstrating how the cat is a fast-moving agent of destruction. While Tinker’s opponents exist entirely within the panels, she flashes like lightning through the spaces between them.

Go, Tinker! As Bandit says in a dramatic moment, “Gud 2! 1 Protect!”

Quitely also does amazing things with panels-within-panels to show a sequence of fast-paced actions in a slow-motion strobe effect, and he often employs elements of the scene’s environment to create panel-like divisions, such as rendering trees in all black to create dividing lines, or using the metal structure of a bridge to divide a series of movements across that bridge.

For a few pages, Quitely captures the narrative in an insane number of more than one hundred tiny panels to show footage from multiple security cameras in the containment facility—only to present a spectacular release from all that claustrophobic tension by finishing with a two-page double splash where our heroes burst into the night.

We3 has been collected in paperback, hardcover, and a second hardcover “deluxe” edition with ten new pages of story. But I recommend you read We3 either in digital format or in the original stapled comic-book format so you can see all the amazing two-page spreads without any part of them disappearing into the gutter of a bound book. Like I said in my recent review of the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil, it is a rare and beautiful thing to see a comic book story where script, art, and overall design are perfectly married for maximum narrative and emotional effect. We3 is one of those perfect unions.

Collector’s Guide: It’s hard to find the original three-issue printing, but you can easily find a reasonably priced collected paperback on Amazon. Current prices on the deluxe hardcover are ridiculous. Instead, I suggest getting the $10 digital edition so you can fully appreciate the two-page spreads.

john constantine 1994

Tags

hellblazer, John Constantine, sandman, Sean Phillips, trading card, Vertigo Comics

While re-reading the entire Sandman series from Vertigo this weekend, I found this John Constantine trading card from 1994. It had been safely encased in the original sealed plastic envelope for more than two decades now, like some kind of hell-blazing time capsule. So, what the heck. Why not rip that puppy out and put it on the Internet?

demo 1 by brian wood and becky cloonan

Tags

becky cloonan, black and white, Brian Wood, Dark Horse, DC Comics, demo, dreams, first issue, indie box, Indie Comics, Vertigo Comics, waking life of angels

These page come from the beginning of the first issue of DC/Vertigo’s Demo series by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. AIT/Planet Lar published a twelve-issue Demo series in 2003-2004 before Wood and Cloonan began with a fresh number one at Vertigo in 2010. DC/Vertigo published both series in two Demo paperbacks, and Dark Horse put them together in a single Demo Complete Edition which is 464 pages softcover.

I love Becky Cloonan’s black-and-white artwork and how she brings to life this dramatic first issue where dreams and reality intersect. Brian Wood is the author of DMZ, one of my favorite series. I did not feel like the target audience for the romantic drama of Wood’s New York Four and New York Five, but I have seen a few issues of Northlanders which interested me, and I enjoyed the three pointless punk-rock issues of Pounded.

DMZ

Tags

DC Comics, DMZ, Matty Roth, Vertigo Comics

Someone left a copy of DMZ #2 on the top secret fifty cent rack a few years ago. They inadvertently introduced us to a series we would now include in our Top Ten Favorite Comic Book Series. DMZ tells the story of young journalist Matty Roth’s increasingly tragic involvement in the next civil war on U.S. soil. Most of the story takes place in a war-torn New York city, a nominally demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the secessionist forces and the U.S. government’s forces – military, mercenary, and otherwise.

The 75-issue series breaks up into short stories lasting five issues with several shorter character studies interspersed between the main arcs. You can buy it as DMZ single issues, which other than a few early issues is not much more expensive than if you had purchased them new, or a series of trade paperbacks. Vertigo is, at the time of this post, three books into a deluxe hardcover edition which collects about 12 issues per volume. I had the single issues, which you can see in this post’s somewhat random photos.

Swamp Think!

Tags

DC Comics, Rick Veitch, Swamp Thing, Swamp Think, Vertigo Comics

Swamp Thing #75, part of Rick Veitch’s run on the title, remains a favorite of ours due to the lavishly large panels full of Swampy’s psychedelic ponderings on life, the universe, and everything.

Swamp Thing sits down and grows a bigger brain to consider a thorny problem: how to find a host for the spirit of the next elemental force of the Green.

Long-time fans know this elemental force eventually takes the form of his daughter, a character Brain K. Vaughn would develop in his time on the series.

Collector’s Guide: From Swamp Thing #75; DC Comics, 1988.
Written by Rick Veitch, with art by Veitch and Alfredo Alcala.

I Cannot Deny What I Know to be True!

Tags

Caitlin Kiernan, Dreaming, dreams, fish, John Totleben, Vertigo Comics

Fans of the classic Swamp Thing and Miracleman tales know the artwork of John Totleben. Here is a more recent Totleben classic that might have slipped under your radar. In this issue of the Sandman-related series Dreaming, author Caitlin Kiernan tells a compelling story about one woman who challenges her society’s notions of truth.

The woman is a fish named Lady Tethys, after the single great ocean that surrounded Earth’s land mass when it was all gathered into the super-continet Pangaea. An object from the realm of dreaming falls into her sub-oceanic environment. But the leaders of her city refuse to even admit its existence, as it is forbidden to speak of there being anything “above” the ocean. Totleben’s masterful artwork nails the bittersweet emotional tone of Kiernan’s tale.

Collector’s Guide: From Dreaming #33; DC Comics/Vertigo, 1999.

Jim Lee: Lono from 100 Bullets!

Tags

100 Bullets, Jim Lee, Lono, Vertigo Comics

Collector’s Guide:
– From 100 Bullets #26
– Reprinted in 100 Bullets TPB #4
– Reprinted in 100 Bullets Deluxe Hardcover #2

Losers – First Issue!

Tags

Andy Diggle, first issue, Jock, Losers, Vertigo Comics, war, war comics

The modern incarnation of The Losers is my favorite action series. If you saw the movie and think you know this comic book, then think again. If you like crime comics, this will be at the top of your list, too. I’m also a big fan of Ed Brubaker’s & Sean Phillips’ Criminal, too, if that gives you any idea of my taste in crime comics!

When the Losers, once an elite U.S. Special Forces Unit, stumbled onto the C.I.A.’s dirty little secret, their refusal to play along got them murdered — or so the C.I.A. thought. Now the Losers are back and out for payback against the organization that betrayed them.

2020 Update: Once upon a time, I sold my collection of all the original single issues, but I missed it so much that I got the complete TPB series in 2019 to read while traveling. I started reading it on the plane, didn’t finish, but stayed up until almost dawn in my hotel room reading the rest of it. If I were doing a top-ten list of books I couldn’t put down and lost sleep over, Losers would be near the top.

Anyway, let’s enjoy the first two scenes introducing our cast of Losers!

Collector’s Guide: From Losers #1; DC/Vertigo, 2003. Story by Andy Diggle; art by Jock. Reprinted in Losers TPB #1, 2004 and a double-sized Losers TPB in 2010.

Looking for the Jack Kirby version? Click Jack Kirby Losers to dig Our Fighting Forces #152!

Faker – first issue!

Tags

Faker, first issue, Jock, Mike Carey, Vertigo Comics

In the numbing cold of a Minnesota winter, Jessie Kidby and her freshman friends kick off their second semester with a wild party. But in the aftermath of the big blow-out, things start to go horribly wrong for all of them.

Nasty, supressed memories trouble Jessie, while her best friend Nick Philo has become an un-person. Nobody outside their tight-knit little clique can remember seeing Nick before. His records have been erased from the college’s computers. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal — but it becomes increasingly obvious that one of them is not what he appears to be.

Chock full of ruthless characters with hidden agendas, Faker takes place during freshman year in college; the ultimate time of reinvention, where, if you’re up for it, you can lie, cheat, and fake your way through almost anything. Let’s enjoy the freaky party scene where everyone gets trashed on cocktails in the chemistry lab — and its unpleasant aftermath!

Collector’s Guide: From Faker #1; DC/Vertigo, 2007. Reprinted in Faker TPB, 2008 (collects all 6 issues.)

Story by Mike Carey, whose scripting we enjoyed so much on Lucifer and Ultimate Fantastic Four, to name a few. Artwork by Jock, who did the art we absolutely loved on Andy Diggle’s Losers.

Neil Gaiman’s Sandman – first issue!

Tags

first issue, Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, sandman, Vertigo Comics

Sandman #1 unforgettably introduced the modern-day mythology of Morpheus, the King of Dreams. The first story features the talents of New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman with art by Sam Kieth & Mike Dringenberg. Dave McKean did the covers for the series, a collection of art in their own right.

Today we look at the re-colored version from the Sandman Special Edition #1. Some cranky, power-mad codgers have kept Morpheus imprisoned for decades. This messes up the dreams of everyone on the planet, not to mention makes Morpheus angry.

All these guys have to do is not cross the magic circle that surrounds Morpheus’ cage. But watch where you roll that wheelchair! Let’s enjoy the scene where Morpheus breaks free and punishes his captor, kicking off Gaiman’s critically-acclaimed 75-issue epic, Sandman.

Collector’s Guide:
– From Sandman #1; DC/Vertigo, 1989.
– Reprinted in the Absolute Sandman Special Edition #1,
– Reprinted in Essential Vertigo Sandman #1, 1996.
– Also available in ebook as Preludes and Nocturnes.

100 Bullets 11: That’s Why I’m Here. There IS Something You Can Do!

Tags

100 Bullets, Agent Graves, Brian Azzarello, crime, DC Comics, Eduardo Risso, Vertigo Comics

100 Bullets reads so intensely that I mgiht need to create a Volume Two of our Top Ten Favorite Single Issues just to include it. The hook of the series is that Agent Graves shows up one day with a briefcase. It contains a photo of the person responsible for the mess of your life, plus irrefutable proof of this. Also, you get a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol with 100 untraceable .40-caliber bullets that, if found, will end any investigation into the incident. Graves gives you both the full evidence and the knowledge you will act “above the law”.

What you do with it is up to you.

As the series progresses, we learn more about Agent Graves and his shadowy organization, and his true motives. But in the early issues, before the plot thickens and a web of intrigue spins out of control, a few stories focus more on the hook than Azzarello’s unfolding epic.

In issue eleven, for example, Agent Graves tells a grieving mother the final fate of her missing daughter. While the scene relies on exposition, the previous scene establishing her daughter’s absence is told entirely without words. Eduardo Risso uses a stark but tender moment in an empty child’s bedroom to convey the mother’s sadness. The scene in the diner, though, and the matter-of-fact delivery from Graves, suggest that despite horror he relates, Graves has seen many such horrors in his life. What could possibly compel him to present these briefcases, to open these personal wounds, and to offer these opportunities?

This episode of 100 Bullets raises questions about Graves’ motives and morality. On the one hand, he seems cold and cruel, chomping on a piece of pie as he relentlessly relates a tale that touches on just about every nightmare a parent could have for their child. On the other hand, while many of these scenes turn out to be part of the larger plot where Graves gets his old crew back together, this episode has nothing to do with that. Graves gives this poor woman the brutal truth and the means for justice (or revenge, depending on your perspective) with no gain for his organization or larger plan.

This suggests a much deeper moral characterization for Agent Graves. Often accused of simply playing a game, Graves seems to be either a sadist or a firm believer in a kind of higher justice. Moreover, Graves never takes matters into his own hands to right wrongs such as these. He puts that power in the hands of the injured party. He seems driven to pose this moral question to those he confronts. Yet, on the final page of issue eleven, where Graves witnesses the outcome of this woman’s choice, he takes no sadistic glee in the moment. Rather, he appears wordlessly somber, sober, serious. This is no laughing matter for Graves, not something he takes lightly.

Azzarello and Risso never, not in 100 issues, give us any thought bubbles or voice-overs to convey what’s going on inside Graves’ head. They leave us to judge him existentially — by his actions alone — through his dialogue, body language, and facial expressions, which Risso masterfully depicts throughout the series. Graves, therefore, poses the essential moral themes of the story to us, asking the question but never explicitly giving the answer. Just as he does with the briefcase and the bullets, Graves leaves the reader to draw the conclusions on their own.

It’s a great story, and I highly recommend the entire series. What you do with it is up to you.

Collector’s Guide:
– From 100 Bullets #11; DC/Vertigo,.
– Reprinted in the 100 Bullets TPB #2
– Collected in 100 Bullets The Deluxe Edition Book One

Kevin O’Neill Does Mars, #2

Tags

Kevin O'Neill, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vertigo Comics

Spend the afternoon on Mars with us. We’ve been Kevin O’Neill fans for years, but nothing really prepared us for the visual ecstasy of the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. If you missed it, check out Kevin O’Neill Does Mars Part 1!

Collector’s Guide:
– From League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2, #1.
– Cover from the “bumper compendium” reprint.
– Also available in a high-quality TPB format!

If you can’t read the dialogue, that’s because it is reproduced here in its original Martian!

Kevin O’Neill Does Mars, #1

Tags

Kevin O'Neill, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vertigo Comics

If you can’t read the dialogue, that’s because it is reproduced here in its original Martian!

Spend the afternoon on Mars with us. We’ve been Kevin O’Neill fans for years but nothing really prepared us for the visual ecstasy of the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series. If you’d like to see more, visit Kevin O’Neill Does Mars #2.

Collector’s Guide:
– From League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2, #1.
– Reprinted in a “bumper compendium.”
– Also available in a high-quality TPB format!