Not So Marvelous

I've been enjoying Marvel's new Captain Marvel series, but for the book's run so far, my enjoyment has been largely in spite of the art. Dexter Soy has never seemed like a very good fit for the book's tone, and it was sometimes hard to follow the action, but I was getting used to it by the end there. I just read Captain Marvel #9 though, and I kind of wish Soy was back.

There's a definite stylization to Filipe Andrade's art, which could make the book more expressive and dynamic, and that's almost certainly what they're going for. It'd work, too, if it weren't quite so inconsistent. The character work is really ugly, with characters eyes sliding around their faces and whatnot. Most of the close-up shots are actually quite good, so I don't know if he was just rushed or what, but some panels make Carol look like a flounder or Sloth.

Andrade's art, at its best, reminds me of Humberto Ramos, and at worst, like the late Carlos Meglia, whose work on Superman in the early 2000s was some of the worst professional comics pencilling I can remember seeing. It had the same problems as Andrade's: inconsistent, deformed characters, unclear perspective (there's a panel in this Captain Marvel issue where Spider-Woman looks like she's been shrunk because there are no indicators that Capt. Marvel is meant to be closer to the reader), and visual continuity errors (besides the dramatically shifting size of Carol's tablet/phone in the early pages, there's the issue that since the redesign, Carol has had notably and intentionally short, and not flowing butt-length, hair).

To add insult to injury, on the last page Carol is told she has some kind of lesion on her brain, a ticking time bomb. And, well...

Look, it's a minor thing, but there's a writer, a letterer, and two editors working on this book. Somewhere along the line, someone should have noticed that a bomb is defused, not diffused. The goal with a bomb is to remove its fuse (literally or figuratively) so it won't blow up, to de-fuse it. The last thing you want is for it to be spread evenly throughout the area; in fact, diffusion of the bomb is what you're trying to prevent.

Altogether, the sloppy art and editing error make this book look rushed, which isn't totally surprising given Marvel's wacky scheduling antics. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd certainly be more happy with one polished issue a month than two or three that were rushed to meet an unreasonable deadline. Especially when they end up with the same cover price.

Catching up

I've been steadily making my way through the comics I haven't had time to read over the last several months, with a particular focus on the Superman family books. One thing, though, has really bothered me: doesn't anyone remember that Ron Troupe and Lucy Lane were married? And had a kid? I would think that, since both characters are playing larger roles in the series than they have in years, and since the last time I remember them appearing (as well as baby Sam), they were in one of Rucka's issues, and since Rucka is one of the architects of the current status quo, that maybe there'd be some mention of all that. Instead, Ron Troupe's Secret Files entry doesn't even mention it, and he's still on the job at the Planet despite his wife being presumed dead.

I don't know, seems like a bit of ball-dropping to me.

---

Having just skimmed through Lucy's story in the Supergirl Annual, it's pretty clear that they've quietly and casually retconned away that entire era of Lucy's life, in order to make her into a bitter, unlikeable supervillain. I'm not thrilled.

Ultra-Retconite

I've been buying Power Girl's series out of curiosity. I like Amanda Conner, after all, and I've generally liked the take on the character which has predominated since those first issues of JSA Classified. And in general, I've liked the book (for the two issues I've read, anyway). The second issue even serves to reintroduce the Ultra-Humanite into the DCU. He's popped up a few times here and there in stories like the Lightning Saga, but he hasn't been a major player since he died in the JSA: Stealing Thunder story arc. Unfortunately, Gray and Palmiotti seem to have forgotten that the Humanite has this history, and have decided to give him a new, contradictory, and cloyingly sympathetic origin.

Now, I think I've been pretty good in recent years about not being a continuity wanker. I do my best to not mind the little inconsistencies anymore. But I'm also a firm believer in letting characters and stories live up to their full awesomeness potential, and I think this particular retcon goes against that principle. The Ultra-Humanite is a superintelligent mad scientist and one-time Nazi with a penchant for transferring to new bodies whenever the old ones wear out. He's been, at different times, a decrepit old man, a hot actress, an albino gorilla, and Johnny Thunder. In terms of sheer awesome origins, he's only a few points shy of Marvel's Nazi scientist made of superintelligent mutant radioactive bees.

And in terms of story opportunities, this one's rich. Here's a long-time JSA villain who killed an early member of the JSA, who has once possessed a beautiful woman's body and is looking to possess another, and who is the counterpart of a villain who routinely battled Superman on Earth-2. Power Girl is a one-time JSA chairman, a beautiful woman, and the cousin of Earth-2's Superman. Somehow, though, none of this gets mentioned in the Power Girl issue. Instead, we see that Humanite grew up sickly in what appears to be the modern day (if only because his lab assistant, Satanna, has dreadlocks and a midriff shirt reading "C U Next Tuesday," which would look out of place in the early 1930s, and because another technician mentions PETA, which was founded in 1980) and experimented for a lifetime with brain transplantation so that he could escape the prison of his physical form. Eventually, he was forced by his impending death to transfer his brain into an albino gorilla, and so goes the status quo.

I can't quite decide what the biggest problem with this new origin is. It's problematic in that it reduces one of the DCU's oldest villains to yet another sympathetic, misguided genius (the Nazi gorilla mad scientist quota is becoming dangerously low). It's problematic in that it disregards much of the JSA's history--even their recent history, since "Stealing Thunder" happened only a few years back and set the current status of the Thunderbolt and Jakeem. It's problematic in that it turns a story that should be resonating with the relevant history between the two characters into a story that resonates only with the idea that people only see Power Girl for her body. It's problematic because the story they've told would have worked better if they'd replaced Ultra-Humanite with The Brain and Monsieur Mallah. It's problematic because, aside from perhaps the surgery and the robot assault, the story could work just as well if the villain were Jericho.

But I think the biggest problem is that this is a good creative team, working on a story with a lot of potential. I'm enjoying this story, but I think I'd be enjoying it a lot more if it used the potential it's squandered with an unnecessary and unnecessarily standard supervillain origin.