DESTROY ALL MONSTERS by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, with Jacob Phillips

 

1988, Los Angeles, and Ethan Reckless is feeling his age. His body aches all over -- reminders of the gunshots, stabbings, and explosions he's survived -- and he's a step slower, in both a literal and intellectual sense. How did it all go to shit so fast? 

Anna, Ethan's more-than-sidekick-but-not-quite-partner-slash-best-friend is also feeling her age. Approaching thirty, with a steady boyfriend, she wants to get out from beneath Ethan's shadow, find out who she is and what she wants to make of her life. To that end, Anna's decided to move in with Dmitri, crossing the 405 freeway -- across town from where she and Ethan have worked and lived, it might as well be across the country -- and it scares Ethan. So much so, that he acts like a dick, making it easier for Anna to cut the ties necessary to shack up with her boyfriend, even if he talks through classic movies. 

Untethered, lost, Ethan dives back into his work and takes on a case that's bigger than he can handle by himself. He calls Anna, both to borrow her car and see if she wants to go in on the case with him. She agrees, but remains distant. 

On its surface, this job should be a cake walk. So, of course, everything goes to shit, just not in the way Ethan could have anticipated. Maybe if he was younger . . . ah, but there's no good to come of pursuing that thought. Even once the case is completed, despite its unsatisfactory conclusion, it isn't really over. Their target still has one card up his sleeve. How will Ethan & Anna escape that final play, and can their friendship survive, even if they get out alive? 

Destroy All Monsters is the third book in the Reckless series from writer Ed Brubaker & artist Sean Phillips, with colors by Jacob Phillips, and it's another home run for this stellar creative team. Brubaker's writing feels effortless, as he continues to hone his craft to a razor sharpness. The pacing of the book is top-notch, allowing me to dwell on a page or a panel, even as the narrative urges me forward, turning pages to see what's next. The twists and feints evolve naturally from the characters and the setting, the seedy underbelly of 80s L.A., with none of it seeming forced. And the people (using the term characters just seems wrong) all feel fully realized, even when the limits of space only allows for a quick sketch. 

In particular, for those who've been following this series and already know Ethan and Anna, this third book offers the readership a wonderful insight into their personal history, as well as their relativistic present, providing a better, and fuller, understanding of these two friends. One feels for them, as their friendship is tested throughout this story, and the audience is left to wonder how their relationship will look, going forward. It is this -- the dynamic of Ethan and Anna's relationship -- that I found most fulfilling in my reading of Destroy All Monsters, even with the expected excellence of the plot. This rupture in their friendship is the core of the book, as their relationship is the core of this entire series, and Brubaker adds so much to that dynamic with this third installment of the Reckless series. 

Sean Phillips equals his collaborator with this book, as he has done for many years. Phillips's clean linework grounds these stories, and his clear storytelling means readers are never lost, even if they're unsure of where the story may be heading. He evokes 1980s L.A. -- from the buildings to the cars to the fashions -- allowing the audience to lose themselves within the story and enhancing the reading experience to a great degree. Like Brubaker, Phillips, with his economy and precision of linework, makes it look all too easy. It is not, but it's a testament to his skill that it comes across this way. What a wonderful synergy of creative talents. I suppose that's what comes of working together these past couple of decades. 

And Jacob Phillips, Sean's son, is no slouch himself. His colors are reminiscent of watercolors, adding another dimension to the story. Sometimes the coloring is representational, setting us directly on a sidewalk in a residential neighborhood, while other times the color choices feel abstract, to a degree, evoking an emotion or feeling rather than anything resembling photorealism. And yet, it all works brilliantly. This is one of the aspects of this team's creative output that allows it to stand apart from the rest of the comics on the shelves, and I, for one, am here for it. 

Destroy All Monsters, as with so much from this creative team, is a master class in comic book storytelling. Whenever a new book from Brubaker & Phillips arrives, I always place it on the top of my to-read pile. And when I close the covers, I am never disappointed. This latest endeavor, a series of self-contained graphic novels that combine to tell a broader narrative with Ethan and Anna, has been outstanding. I love the characters. I love the stories. And I love the format. I am excited to know there is a fourth book arriving relatively soon. I can only hope there will be many more after that. Regardless, I can't wait.

-chris

What It Is – week ending 28 December [2014]

With apologies to Dave the Thune (as well as Mike Baron & Steve Rude).

WRITING:

Every day.  1000 words.  That’s the goal.

Christmas week.  That meant the writing got a backburner again – though I only missed one day of writing this week, but the amounts were all below 1000 – as I worked on wrapping gifts and writing out my boy’s letters from Santa.  Yes.  From Santa.  I stole this idea from Tolkien, who would craft these wonderful, illustrated letters to his own children from St. Nick.  This year they learned of Santa’s discovery of a group of ice dwarves who had been living in the North Pole for far longer than Santa has been there. When the North Polar Bear stumbled into their secret homes, they came out, finally, and offered their assistance to Santa.  It was a fun little story to conceive, and though the dip pen can be frustrating, I am always happy with the results.  And, overall, this was a great Christmas.  Our youngest is seven, at just the right age to enjoy Christmas and the magic of Santa, and he played Santa on Christmas morning, making sure others had gifts before he opened one of his.  That was pretty special.

READING:

Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata, published by Viz comics.

I finished reading this series.  20 volumes about two young creators – one a writer, one an artist – who come together in middle school and decide they want to pursue the dream of becoming famous manga artists in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine.  This was such a blast.  The art is wonderful, and the way these creators manage to continually infuse the narrative with tension and drama is a testament to their creativity.  Highly recommended.

Brain Movies III by Harlan Ellison

This collects a number of Ellison’s teleplays, in their original script form.  Ellison has never been one to leave things up to the directors and actors who envisioned his scripts for television.  These scripts are fully realized, with visual details that allow one to picture these stories quite easily, in one’s mind.  Plus, we get a few anecdotes from Ellison, at the beginning of each script, which are always entertaining.  This third volume is centered around Ellison’ full-length story “Cutter’s World.”  We get two iterations of this script – first, the TV-movie version, followed by the revised film version.  It was interesting to see how some things changed.  The first 100 pages were roughly the same, but then Ellison enhanced the story immensely, with stronger connections between the aliens and Cutter, the protagonist, that not only upped the emotional engagement for the audience, but also tied the entire narrative together far better, without it feeling forced.  Great stuff, and interesting from a process standpoint.

DD by Brubaker/Lark

Started reading this run, and it’s good (duh).  Not as engaging as the Bendis/Maleev run, but still some fantastic Daredevil stories.  I think one of the things that places this run beneath the Bendis run is the fact that Brubaker seems to stretch his narratives out more.  Where the Bendis stories seemed to run 5 issues, on average, Brubaker’s storylines all run to about 10 issues.  Not that it feels padded, but the emotional charge isn’t as immediate with the longer arcs, and it doesn’t impact me in as visceral a manner as those quicker, sharper Bendis narratives.  Which isn’t to say these aren’t some pretty great stories.  Just different.  And I can appreciate that.

WATCHING:

Miracle on 34^th Street

My favorite Christmas movie, hands down.  It evokes everything I love about this holiday, the lush decorations, the ideal of it being a season of giving, and the magic that surrounds it all, for me, embodied by the main character of Kris Kringle, the man hired to be a Santa at Macy’s department store who claims to be the one, actual Santa Claus (AGE: ‘As old as my tongue and slightly older than my teeth.’).  I haven’t watched this in a few years, and I decided to subject my seven-year-old to it, even though it was the black and white version (his lament, not mine).  Overly idealized with just the right amount of cynicism from Maureen O’Hara’s and HER NAME’s characters to make it too saccharine, in my opinion, I had forgotten how smartly written the script was.  The way it goes about “proving” Kris Kringle is the one and true Santa Claus in the court proceedings is worth the price of admission alone – especially the scene with the prosecutor’s son coming to the stand as a witness, which leads to the state of New York conceding that Santa Claus is a real person.  I loved rewatching this, and my son also enjoyed it, sitting for the entire movie without any complaints.  Win, win. 

Bladerunner – The Final Cut

Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece (I view Alien as a horror masterpiece) has long been a favorite movie of mine, and when the “Final Cut” was released a few years back, I picked it up.  But I discovered, while watching it this past week, that I had never watched it; I’d only watched the “making of” documentary, apparently.  Man, is this final cut great!  It elevates the film so much, and it was great before.  Without the dopey voice-over, you really get to appreciate the musical score composed by Vangelis and better understand how much it adds to the overall film, evoking emotion without being soon the nose as some composers, aided quite a bit with the “electronica” approach he took.  Just brilliant.  The other major fix is that Scott excised the more upbeat ending by cutting the film at a point prior to that – a point that is more ambiguous while also being more bleak, matching more closely the overall thematic approach to the film.  I was surprised how much more I enjoyed this cut, and I look forward to watching it again. 

MISCELLANY:

New Year’s Eve will see the release of the Winter issue of Needle: a magazine of noir.  And my story, “Silence,” will be included in there, along with some great crime fiction – having enjoyed previous issues, I believe I can say that without reservation.  I will have a link here when it goes live and also plan on writing a bit on how I managed to achieve this goal.  But that’s another post. 

SIGN OFF:

And, as always, check out my friends – Brad & Matt and Don McMillan for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris

What It Is – week ending 23 November [2014]

With apologies to Dave the Thune.

WRITING:

Every day.  1000 words.  That’s the goal.

Got sidetracked and took Sunday and Monday off from writing.  Which afforded my mind a chance to wander, and an incident from my childhood reared up (an abandoned and run-down home a few blocks over from my house, which had a single light on in a second floor room – prompting chills and the question of why the electricity was still on in the house).  Over the course of the week, I wrote a story using this as a springboard, something I’d wanted to do for a long time, and I’m fairly happy with the first draft.  A bit under 5,000 words, I know it will need some serious cleaning up.  But I like the point of view I took and the tone I tried to carry throughout the whole thing.  Anxious to revise this and set it off in the wild sometime next year.

Also:  9 Things You Need to Write A Novel

READING:

CINDER & ASHE by Gerry Conway and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.  Once you get past the horrendous Cajun accent Gerry Conway places in one of the main character’s mouths, this is a pretty good series.  Beautiful artwork, a compelling and multi-layered storyline, with a mystery that makes sense.  Good stuff.  If you can get past that damn accent.

THE FADE OUT & VELVET from Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (artist: Fade Out), Steve Epting (artist: Velvet), et al.  I haven’t been getting new comics for a  number of months now, preferring to save my money and get collections through the library when they become available.  But Brubaker and his team of collaborators pulled me back in.  I was at the local independent bookstore/music store/video store/game store/comic store, Bull Moose Music, and saw a couple issues of the Fade Out and issues 6-8 of Velvet (I already have 1-5) and had to pick them up.  And they were fantastic.  The thing about these books, besides the engaging and exciting stories, is that they often include short essays in the back related to the narrative material.  They’re the extras you expect in the collection, but they’re in the single issues.  So, for that, and for the fact that I have loved most everything Brubaker has done, independent from the Big Two, I allowed myself to be pulled back in.  And I was not disappointed.  Looking forward to getting these on a regular basis.

THE MULTIVERSITY by Grant Morrison, et al.  And, since I was perusing the comic racks, I figured I should check out the fourth issue of Multiversity, Pax Americana, by Morrison & Frank Quitely, which was burning up my social feeds online this week.  Wow.  When these two artists collaborate, it’s always brilliant.  Taking on the Charlton characters, they infused the comic with many of Alan Moore’s best-known formalistic approaches to telling comic book stories (which, it should be pointed out, are not crutches he used but techniques utilized in specific stories).  In Morrison’s hands – and this could be due to the apparent feud between Morrison and Moore – these feel like tricks used to say:  “See, I can do this too.”  They are well done and enhance the experience of reading the book, but they don’t feel as essential as when Moore utilized them in books such as Watchmen and Promethea.  Could be my prejudice showing through, but I can live with that. 

The earlier issues were also available, and I picked them up too.  They’re just as enjoyable.  Looking forward to seeing where this all ends up.  (and man, that Cameron Stewart cover for the Shazam issue looks phenomenal!)

BATMAN: STRANGE APPARITIONS by Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, and others.  Finished this book up this week.  It was really enjoyable.  Rogers’s art is amazing in this.  I don’t remember it being as good when he did the Silver Surfer, with Englehart, years later.  But it holds up in this.  And the stories are fun too, even if some subplots are too quickly wrapped up for my taste.  Overall, I would definitely recommend this, especially to a Batman fan.  Great art, good writing (for the most part), and some interesting twists that will keep you engaged. 

TURING’S CATHEDRAL by George Dyson.  I’m 100 pages into the birth of the digital age, and it’s fascinating.  So many names I’d never heard of, scientists, theoreticians, and thinkers – BIG THINKERS – all working toward the creation of a computer, in the early twentieth century.  Good stuff. 

WATCHING:

I’m always behind in my movie and TV watching (a not unwelcome result of being a father and writer – these both take time).  But this past week I finally decided to check out Peter Jackson’s THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, or the movie that should have encompassed the entirety of the book but did not.

Yeah, throwing my prejudice right out in front of this one.  The Hobbit was the first book that totally enthralled me and captured my imagination.  It was second grade.  Mrs. Corey read it to us.  I discovered that my uncle had a copy, and I borrowed it so that I could re-read each chapter at home.  I distinctly remember lying on my stomach, up on my bed, and reading my uncle’s hardcover edition – the smell of those, or similar, pages jolts my nostalgia-button in a manner that little else can.  I love that book.

So, it was with trepidation that I read about the three-film adaptation Jackson and his crew were planning.  And this is from someone who loved their Lord of the Rings films and felt them to be exemplary adaptations from Tolkien’s masterpiece. 

So, the first Hobbit film.  It’s entertaining, moves along at a brisk pace, is well acted and engaging, with beautiful scenery and amazing sets and special effects (though some scenes felt surprisingly awkward and not well done, but if you’re reaching beyond your grasp, that is, in general, a good thing).  Certainly, details were changed – as was the case with the Lord of the Rings films – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  When translating a story from one medium to another, it is imperative that the creators understand the differing strengths of each and adjust accordingly.  In that regard, I would say Jackson, et al. have acquitted themselves nicely. 

That said, I don’t find it to be a good adaptation of Tolkien’s book. 

However, I don’t know that I can fault them.  The major issue I have with the film – and let me state that I did enjoy it, and the “issue,” as I see it, did nothing to lessen that – is that it is not faithful to the book.  Unlike the Lord of the Rings, this movie shies far away from the tone of The Hobbit, as written by Tolkien.  Whereas the novel is a book for children that can be appreciated by adults, the film is one that I could never recommend for children.  But, it does match nicely with the tone of the initial films, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which makes a lot of sense.  The vast majority of those seeing these films will never have read any of the source material.  And creating a children’s story after the success of the epic Rings movies would be foolish.  I understand completely why they did it.  I just wish it was a film that I could share with my youngest boy. 

For that, I’ve still got the book, and the Rankin/Bass film.

MISCELLANY:

Thanksgiving next week, which means Christmas is coming up quick.  I’ve always loved this time of year – living in Maine, we used to get the type of snow and scenery you’d find in a Norman Rockwell painting; not so much nowadays.  I love Christmas trees and decorations and the classic TV specials and finding just the right gifts for everyone (we don’t shop at the mall, so it’s far more enjoyable than it could be), and I love the fantasy of the entire thing, the magic of Santa bringing joy to kids.  I prefer a secular Christmas – the holiday being a holdover of pagan rituals – and I really get into it.  So much so, that I have taken on something that J.R.R. Tolkien did for his children and write letters from Santa to my boys.  These always include some little adventure or mishap that occurred at the North Pole in the past year, which is the fun part.  I write them on nice, heavy-stock paper or, if I can find it, distinct handmade paper, using a dip pen, while sealing them in wax.  It’s one of the things I look forward to most, at this time of year.  It also means work on the novel will probably be put aside for a bit, but that’s okay.  This is more important.

SIGN OFF:

As always, check out my friends – Brad& Matt and Don McMillan for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris