Annual time y’all! 51 pages of non-stop The Question goodness and by goodness, I mean morally greyed contemplation and the occasional beat-em-up scene. Oh, and the Green Arrow is here too. Because why not.
Spoilers ahead
Cover by Ed Hannigan
and Malcolm Jones IIIWritten by Denny O’Neil
Illustrated by Bill Wray & Shea Anton Pensa
Colored by Bill Wray
Lettered by Paul FrickeThe Question and guest star Green Arrow team up to face the price of a truly crime-free society in a tale by Dennis O’Neil and Bill Wray.
Admission time. “The Question” Annual #2 is actually the first of a two-part crossover with “Green Arrow,” something I did not know about beforehand, unlike with the last Annual. The “Green Arrow” Annuals from this era have yet to be digitally scanned (legally) and I do not own this one in print. Unfortunately, this means I have no idea how the situation in Hub City turns out but, you know what? I kinda like the uncertainty. I don’t get that often nowadays, that wonder of what will happen next and not being able to find it right away.
I know I can just look it up on a Wiki or buy the issue of ebay but where’s the fun in that? I can also amuse myself with these “Who’s Who” entries that feature some truly 80s looks.
Plus, “The Question” Annual #2 works on its own as a complete story. Acting as a sort of retelling of Vic’s origin as The Question, ‘Losing Face’ gives us a glimpse into the Vic at the start of his crimefighting career, contrasting as well as mirroring his attitudes at the start of the series. In the flashbacks, Vic is as insufferable as can get. Sure, he was bad back in issue #1 but this makes him look like a sleepy cat in a sunbeam.
He’s brash and arrogant, without the chops to back it up. He’s sleezy, sleeping with Judy, the secretary, in his office right before he goes onto be another yelling head on TV. He’s quick to violence and acts first, thinks later. He’s filled with righteous indignation but that indignation comes from a place of hubris, of self-superiority. His message is muddled — was it the doctor’s willingness to perform, at the time, illegal, abortions that was the bigger “sin” or was it the fact that he caused someone to die that is the issue — and his journalistic spirit non-existent at best, having neither fact-checked his story before going live nor even following up with the woman in the video.
It ultimately doesn’t matter, as the doctor is a grade A murderer. Or, maybe it matters more. O’Neil, and current-Vic, takes past-Vic to task for his actions and that’s the bulk of this issue’s conflict.
I don’t particularly love this Annual. There are great moments but on the whole, there are a lot of technical and writing aspects that are dated and not so great. The most noticeable one is O’Neil’s approach to writing accents. Oh man is it bad here. “Geev os the bowl” for “Give us the bow” for the Santa Priscans speaking English stood out to me as particularly painful. It feels like caricature rather than honest rendering. There’s also another casual N-word drop at the start. Again, I get what he was going for, and the guy gets a nice knee to the face, but was it really necessary to use the slur? It adds nothing, other than to provide another example of garbage people and why Vic contemplates allowing the gas to hit Hub City.
Moreover, the way O’Neil handles sexual issues isn’t always done with grace. He, along with much of the era, looks down on sex work and if there’s going to be a sex worker in a story, they’re bound to be doing it because of drugs or poverty. In this case, it’s a combination of her choosing it and then, when it changed into a more unsafe profession, being stuck. That isn’t to say there can’t be an indictment of the exploitative aspects of the industry or society’s constant devaluation of agency in female sexuality but Judy showing up again as a ragged sex worker is merely there to be another example of 1) Hub city’s decline and 2) Vic’s choices in the past harming others.
Continued belowI can say with certainty she served little narrative purpose other than that because right after she tells her story, all we get is a side shot of her stomach and butt in fishnet-stockings as she asks for more coffee.
Speaking of the art, I’m torn. I love Wray’s odd, single or dual color choices for scenes, lighting them with purples and greens. It gives the whole thing an off-kilter feel and helps draw attention to aspects of a page that otherwise would’ve been lost in more “realistic” coloring. Wray’s art itself is dynamic, reminding me a bit of Matt Wagner’s work on “Grendel” while Pensa’s feels like it was ripped straight from the underground comix movement. I love that this doesn’t look like the main book but there’s an emptiness to many of the pages that just doesn’t feel right.
Wray also has some problems with flat facial expressions following highly exaggerated ones and moments where the anatomy of a character kinda. . .breaks. Nothing too bad — not like what Brian highlighted in his latest Shazam column — but feet do not bend that way when kicking.
His backgrounds can be barren when they shouldn’t be but then he turns around and gives these beautiful half-page spreads with full environments. The best part of the issue, though? Wray drawing Batman. He looks like a content cat and I can’t think of a better place to end this review on.
Next time, back to our regularly scheduled cliffhanger follow-up.
