Comics Fondle

The second issue has a little less story than the first. It’s not quite a talking heads book because it’s before talking head books, but it’s basically everyone–except the girl and the human fly (I’m hoping names will start sticking next issue)–hanging around the hotel restaurant.

Yes, a lot of new stuff is introduced–though an unobservant reader would probably miss the mayor being in cahoots with a crime boss–but it’s all very mellow.

Until the big action sequence anyway and it, quite nicely, raises more questions than it answers. If I remember the conclusion to Terminal City correctly, a lot does go unanswered, which means one has to look at what raising the questions do for Motter’s story.

Here, for example, the questions raised by the girl’s mysterious summons gives Motter the chance to establish her character in action, not exposition.

Again, I love this comic.

The first time I read Terminal City, which must have been almost ten years ago, it knocked my socks off. I’m not sure if it knocked them from the first issue, as this time through, I’m not yet without socks.

I’m close, of course. And finally knowing enough to say Michael Lark’s art here (at least with people) resembles Winsor McCay fills me with joy.

While Lark makes the visual experience of Terminal City, Motter sort of creates the place. It’s not just Lark’s drawings of this retro-futuristic city–it looks like an art deco paradise, something out of a poster for an old serial the actual episodes never delivered–it’s Motter’s history for it. He perfectly mixes character and exposition.

The first issue introduces the principle characters, a bunch of mysteries, large and small, and passes a lot of time thanks to Motter’s multilayered narrative.

I love it.

So Greendale is a comic book (graphic novel, whatever–I suppose it’s a graphic novel, since there aren’t issue breaks and it’s not a collection) written by a man, illustrated by a man, based on an album by a man… featuring exceptionally strong female characters. They’re kind of nature witches, really. But it’s about the women in this family. Kind of. But the protagonist is definitely a strong female protagonist.

Greendale has a heavy anti-corporate sentiment to it. I haven’t heard the album or seen the subsequent film, so I don’t know if Dysart and Young beefed up the graphic novel as corporatism has, since the album’s release, destroyed the American economy. But that sentiment is a MacGuffin.

The core of Greendale is a family drama. It’s not even a dramatic family drama–Dysart keeps his protagonist hopeful, even as negative events flood the characters’ lives–but it got tears to my eyes, first, as a family drama.

The second time was as the protagonist comes to understand her place in the world and in her family, as a woman. Not as many tears, just some wetness. It’s just really well written and affecting.

I don’t really want to see the movie now–Cliff Chiang made me want to see Greendale this way forever. His style is perfect for capturing the protagonist’s hopefulness, but he’s also able to show the darker sides of the story.

There’s really no room for a sequel, but I wish I could have more.

Ok, I missed the part about the cataclysmic world altering events only taking place in the West and not effecting anything else in America. Apparently, Delano doesn’t like the Huron.

Though there was that great picture of the yachts fleeing Manhattan.

It’s a confused conclusion, really more about the bad guy getting his comeuppance than anything else. I’m not even sure the ostensible lead has a part in the comic past a non-talking, one panel appearance.

He never, for example, gets reunited with his mother, which Delano has been promising since the second issue. Instead, she gets a great finish, but one where it’s now moment important to see meet her son than vice versa.

Instead, Delano goes with a far cuter ending, with the coyote guy getting the final pages.

I assume Delano was leaving the end open for another series.

Ghostdancing isn’t bad, it’s just painfully mediocre.

Well, the issue I’ve been dreading, the one where Delano explains all the backstory, here it is. And is it as bad as I’d anticipated? Oh, yeah.

As the American people flock–nude–to the wilderness to become one with the land (it’s an interesting idea, the land of America is magical, whereas the rest of the world maybe not), Delano sticks the reader in a car for the bad guy to give the good guy a lengthy, false history lesson.

Then the good guy meets maybe his dad, who gives him a truer history lesson.

Then there’s a bunch of stuff about how the white man ruined America when they came and colonized. But at least there’s no real illuminati nonsense this issue.

Ghostdancing is, five issues of six completed, a good idea for a comic, but not a good comic. Delano needs lots more space.

Or maybe less.

See, a cliffhanger. The bad guy is getting ready to do something bad and “to be continued.”

It’s an awkward issue, a bridging one, setting up the big conclusion. The comic takes place over a few hours, giving the reader a few pages (at least) with each member of the cast.

Unfortunately, Delano gives one of the illuminati an emphasis too and those pages, no surprise, are the worst in the issue. He just can’t make them work, not with the explanations he’s got in play already. They distract–as does keeping the most interesting thing in the issue (bones reincarnating at a museum and dancing) in dialogue instead of showing it.

After a third issue, it appears Delano has gotten back to his outline for scripting.

I’m still somewhat hopeful for the last two issues, but it’s unfounded.

Oh, and there’s some rather weak art from Case this issue.

For the first time, Delano just writes an issue–meaning there’s no crazy illuminati explanations this time around. Instead, it’s just an issue. And it’s a good comic book.

The potential finally starts to be fulfilled here, with the coyote guy meeting up with the comic’s messiah figure (who just happens to get a romantic interest as well). Delano layers the issue, showing some of their adventures in the present action, then having some of them shown as others discuss them.

The comic finally feels like Delano is enjoying writing it, instead of just presenting information to the reader.

Unfortunately, the better writing made

me pay more attention to the artwork, the first time so far.

Richard Case’s work here is mediocre at best. He’s frequently lazy with proportions and his work has a cramped feel to it.

I’m a little wary as Delano has to eventually sort the book.

The second issue has a whole bunch of problems. Some relate to the first issue, some don’t. The biggest one–Big Brother is real and has been fighting the Native American culture for five hundred years, all of Western culture is a fake, controlled by them–really annoys. Delano’s got some solid ideas, but when he tries to explain this illuminati nonsense? It flushes the book down the toilet.

For a page, it’s actually seeming like it’s going to be interesting, a bunch of unrelated stuff coming together… instead it’s all connected. The rest of the series, besides some cliffhangers (Delano introduces bad guys this issue to hunt the good guys), will undoubtedly reveal and resolve.

It fills entirely plotted and unimaginative, in the narrative sense. Delano fills it with characters and spends his time on them, instead of on the work itself.

It’s not lazy, just a bad approach.

So far–and one issue of six isn’t far enough to judge, I know–Ghostdancing isn’t impressing me. It takes the entire issue to get to the hook–the animal gods (or something like animal gods) have lost one of their own and it turns out she was a big hippie music star in the sixties in “the real world.”

Clearly, the search for her over the rest of the series will be what makes or breaks the series.

But, what Delano does here is different. He juxtaposes a bunch of characters together, the narration boxes featuring very deliberate prose. It’s good prose too, but incomplete, since he’s letting the visuals do some of the work. But they can’t do quite enough work because the concepts he’s writing about are so abstract. So, it’s a comic where the medium fails the work.

It’s an interesting read to say the least.

With the exception, obviously, of the Luke Ross art, this issue of Captain America is the best in story arc. I’m not sure if it’s the best part of the backup story, because–again–I couldn’t stomach it. Shockingly, Ross is a better artist than whoever does the backup.

See, out of nowhere, Brubaker decides this storyline should be about Bucky and the crazy evil fifties Cap. Sure, there’s the silly moment at the end when Sam tells him not to worry about being like the crazy Cap, but the comic is once again about Bucky being unsure of himself.

Brubaker’s whole thing with Bucky–initially–was that unsureness. Then he dropped it. And I guess I forgot about it (until it came back) because I was still reeling from Reborn and because Ross’s art was making my eyes bleed.

While Brubaker’s losing his touch, he hasn’t lost it yet.