As I mentioned in my John Carter first look, I’m somewhat new to Dynamite’s properties; more accurately, their licensed properties. When I attended the Pulp Panel at Baltimore Comic-Con 2014, I was interested in the Green Hornet for the first time. My only previous exposure was the trailer for the Seth Rogan film. I knew it was an old character from the time of the radio serials, but not much else. But after hearing about Mark Waid’s take on it, I flagged it as something to check out. Last time we looked at Kevin Smiths’ Green Hornet. This time we take a look at Mark Waid’s first two volumes. I don’t want to muddle things with comparisons, so I’ll just be taking a look at what Mark Waid did and, in about a month, there’ll be a comparison article. As I did last time, I’d like to first quickly outline the story and then take a look at the themes Mark Waid is exploring. This time the story takes place in the 1940s, closer to the original Green Hornet stories. This allows Mark Waid to make use of pulp tropes and simpler technology. There are just some plots that don’t make sense in a world with Twitter, cell phones, the Internet, etc. The Green Hornet and Kato have been operating for a while, but not long enough that all the lowlifes know who they are. A new mob boss, Cerelli, arrives from San Francisco and already knows who The Green Hornet is, such is his infamy. In a plot that comes right out of the pulp era, The Green Hornet finds out that Axis power agents have infiltrated the USA and are trying to sabotage US efforts to assist the Europeans in the war. They are also waging a propaganda war to try and keep the US out of the war. Eventually Britt Reid figures out that the city’s industrialists are on the take as the Germans are paying them and they’re also collecting insurance on the goods they destroy. Additionally, it turns out that Cerelli is a German masquerading as an Italian. After The Green Hornet and Kato disrupt the German plot, they decide to retire as the events of this arc were hard to manage. Unfortunately, Lenore Case blackmails/guilt trips them into continuing. Thus we end with a proper pulp ending - the hero did some good, did some bad, and lost some of himself and his freedom in the process. (At least he’s alive at the end)

We don’t often consider single issues here at Comic POW! We prefer to look at story arcs and completed series to get a better feel for what the author and artist were trying to accomplish. However, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some comics’ first issues to predict where we think it might be going and see how that compares with where the series actually goes. This new series is called “At the Beginning” and it’ll usually be for series right as they are starting up. It appears that Scott Snyder was not content to have one of the best works of fiction about vampires, he wanted to continue working the horror pantheon. He couldn’t have selected a better partner in this enterprise. I fell in love with the Snyder/Jock team when they were working together on Detective Comics Vol 1 on the Black Mirror arc. Jock can quite easily go from horribly disturbing artwork to regular artwork that nevertheless excels at facial expressions. This contrast can easily be seen when comparing the first few pages with the pages that follow it.

The concept behind Seconds is not original. I’ve read and seen similar stories ( The Butterfly Effect) - I even saw a trailer for a new movie in that vein (although my Google-Fu is failing me in finding the title right now). The execution, however, was deeply personal and remained rooted in the character of Katie. Unlike the gravity behind the changes in The Butterfly Effect (child abuse, etc), Katie’s changes are personal and somewhat petty. Or rather, petty to the outsider. To her, they are nearly as important as life itself because she sees her life slipping away. Bryan Lee O’Malley is almost the same age as I am. So we have a lot of the same cultural touchstones and a lot of the same life worries. O’Malley and I are already in our thirties, so Katie’s story is a bit more resonant with me than it might be if I were younger. And, perhaps the same way my wife and I saw Ariel from Disney’s Little Mermaid as misunderstood when we were kids and a spoiled brat now, I may have different feelings about Katie when I’m older.

I read Scott Pilgrim in its original manga-sized, black and white form when it first came out. With the final volume of the color version coming out this year, I thought it would be a great time to revisit the story as well as looking at how the addition of color changes things. I’ll be exploring the story and themes volume by volume. This time, volume 2. Beginning by revisiting the themes from last time, there is again the theme of extended adolescence. O’Malley does not add much to this over the last book. Nearly all of the characters are in the same place as they were before. O’Malley adds a few more examples of Scott’s extended adolescence and immaturity in this volume. Last time I wrote about how his dating of Knives Chau was a prime example of how he didn’t want to grow up after his last breakup left him devastated and against being an adult in relationships. Unfortunately for Knives, he meets Ramona soon thereafter and begins cheating on her. In this book Wallace once again tells him to breakup with Knives. He declines saying he doesn’t want to “because it’s hard”. He only finally agrees to break up with her when Wallace threatens to tell Ramona about Knives if Scott doesn’t do it. As I mentioned before, while there are adults that don’t want to deal with the pain of breakups and sometimes just let relationships drift into nonexistence, it is still a sign of immaturity. Scott needs to think about others, particularly the young and vulnerable Knives who he will hurt more the longer the charade goes on.

note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the assertion that all media tells you about the culture it was written in. Sometimes, as in contemporary media, this is easy to tease out. Other times, as with science fiction, it’s by extrapolation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-read Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, as a way to to understand Japanese culture. Part One can be found here. Story The story picks up where we left off before. Keitaro is going to go overseas with Seta to do some archeological work. The first story is a light story dealing with the Naru keeping Keitaro company while he waits at the airport for a delayed flight. Their relationship continues to thaw as Keitaro continues to gain respect for growing up and being less of a loser (at least by the standards shown in this book).

Back in April 2014 I mentioned that Image had a new series coming out and the subject line for the press release was: “The perfect new series for wayward Buffy fans.” I’ve made my way through the first five issues and it’s a good time to see if the comparison was apt. There are quite a few ways in which it is accurate. Our main character, Rori Lane, is a high school girl who is living with her divorced mother. She just transferred to a new school and new city (technically a whole new country). Her mother has no idea what she’s up to. She’s fighting demons - Japanese demons instead of vampires. She meets up with a few other high school students and they’re working together. I can see where Image Comics marketing thought, “Hmm, I think we can see some overlap with Buffy fans.” But Wayward is not just Buffy in Japan. That could be interesting on its own, but would probably also seem a bit too derivative. So it’s great that the above paragraph is where the similarities end.

As I mentioned in my John Carter first look, I’m somewhat new to Dynamite’s properties; more accurately, their licensed properties. When I attended the Pulp Panel at Baltimore Comic-Con 2014, I was interested in the Green Hornet for the first time. My only previous exposure was the trailer for the Seth Rogan film. I knew it was an old character from the time of the radio serials, but not much else. But after hearing about Mark Waid’s take on it, I flagged it as something to check out. Luckily for me, this year Dynamite did a Humble Bundle which included Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet. With the current near glut of comic book movies going to the silver screen, it was interesting to learn that Smith’s run on the comic was based on a Miramax movie script he wrote, but which was never produced. As a Kevin Smith fan, this intrigued me. Let’s first take a brief walk through the plot before looking at some of the themes Smith employs as well as any cinema-ness that sticks out compared to traditional comics. The story open in what, at least to me, appears to be an unspecified time period. Smith seems to be deliberately leaving it open to interpretation whether this takes place in the 1930s of the original Green Hornet stories or a more modern time. The Green Hornet (Britt Reid) takes out the last crime family and retires. Unlike Batman, his appearance does not lead to escalation of ever crazier criminals. Perhaps unrealistically, he has now reach his goal and instead of being corrupted by power, he’s just happy that his city has been rid of all the crime families. His wife knows he’s the Green Hornet, but his son does not.

Grant Morrison can be a tough read. His comics are almost always filled with metaphors, allusions, references, and Easter eggs. Sometimes this works masterfully like his run on Batman and Robin Vol 1. Sometimes it falls flat like his run on Action Comics Vol 2. Other times, like his run on Batman Vol 1 or Batman Inc Vols 1 and 2, it contains individual stories that are great, but fails to achieve a cohesive whole. I feel that Joe the Barbarian has most of Morrison’s best attributes and only a few of his weaknesses.

I read Scott Pilgrim in its original manga-sized, black and white form when it first came out. With the final volume of the color version coming out this year, I thought it would be a great time to revisit the story as well as looking at how the addition of color changes things. I’ll be exploring the story and themes volume by volume. I’d like to start by taking a look at how the conversion to color has affected the story-telling. Scott Pilgrim is an example of manga coming full circle. Osamu Tezuka, the originator of manga, was originally inspired by early Walt Disney. In turn, my generation has been influenced by manga as we create our comics. The original volumes went with manga’s small-size and black and white “coloring” both for authenticity reasons and for practical reasons - coloring and color printing is expensive. In a CBR interview O’Malley says, “Initially, I was resistant to color because the books were always intended for black and white. That was part of the manga aesthetic I was going for.” But manga-inspiration is not the only reason for black and white in comics. Robert Kirkman has stated that Walking Dead wouldn’t have the same impact as it does if it were in color. It’s better for the mind to fill in the gory details. In a strange way, even though O’Malley’s art is already manga-cartoony, the colored version definitely feels less “real” to me. With my look into East of West I spent some time talking about how colors can affect the mood of a book and how Hickman has two very different color schemes in East of West and Manhattan Projects. So I feel as though the colors in this version somewhat rob some of the reality from this admittedly fantastical story.

note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the assertion that all media tells you about the culture it was written in. Sometimes, as in contemporary media, this is easy to tease out. Other times, as with science fiction, it’s by extrapolation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-read Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, as a way to to understand Japanese culture. Part One can be found here. Story We move into a book I hadn’t read on a previous read of the series. It appears that Akamatsu is stalling a bit after the last book’s reveal. This book starts off with Naru claiming she didn’t mean it and then, after a night of zany hijinks alone in the house - Mutsumi invites them to Okinawa.