What I Bought 3/24/2015 - Part 2

Typing this on Thursday. They say we have a chance of snow tonight. I can't imagine it'll stick if it does happen, since it's going to be sunny and at least in the 40s most of the day. But I've seen snow in Missouri in mid-April, so I guess we'll see.

Klarion #5 and 6, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Trevor McCarthy and Szymon Kudranski (artists), Guy Major (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letters) - So McCarthy stuck around until the end. I didn't expect that. I figured they'd move him to some other project since this book was basically dead on arrival. Hopefully he gets something that'll last for his next project.

Klarion eats Swag's nanobot, which boosts his power enough to get everyone out of his "pocket", although there's an ancient monster he'd angered in the past hot on their heels. Back in the world, Klarion tries ditching everyone for awhile, but Zell and her nanotech-based Buddydog track him down, just in time for his Buddybot to emerge from his hand. It has his face and hair, but also insect limbs growing out of her back, and Klarion wants nothing to do with her. He'd rather go fight Coal and his swarm of nanobots, and he beats him, and even shows some concern for his new "Daughter" when she showed up (mostly to yell at him for abandoning her). Then everyone has to work together to banish the thing that followed them from Klarion's pocket, which was some ancient beast from Jack Kirby's Demon series.

I'm not even going to try and claim I understand everything here. Coal was beaten, and it seems to have served as some representation of the public's struggle with the questions of what it means to be human raised by the Buddybots, since the public turned against them. But Coal's not finished entirely, he's just coming back with something new. Technology marches forward, and the questions can't be put off. Also the idea that we frequently implement something new without having a firm grasp of the implications. What we've created, how it reflects us, what its relationship is to us (Rasp was distinctly uncomfortable when it was pointed out Contessa was either his sister or daughter, considering he'd been wanting to mack with her).

I'm also not sure what to make of Klarion. Maybe that's the point, he's still a kid, he's still prone to mood swings, and even he isn't sure what he wants. Does he want to be part of the gang at the Moody Museum? Well maybe, it's nice to have people who care, but it would mean caring about other people, taking their needs and desires into account, and I'm not sure he wants to do that. He likes Zell, but he's afraid she's bound him to her in some way, and naturally, that she used magic for it. Better explanation than that he's developed feelings for her. He's confident in his power, but not confident enough to let that speak for itself. He's like those young hotshots in Westerns that think they have to challenge everyone to prove how good they are, when the ones who are the best don't feel the need to prove it. They know how good they are, and that's enough. Klarion isn't there yet.

I think he's also repeating past mistakes. He said his teacher would break his fingers if they were out of place during a spell, and eventually whatever it was about that guy that drew Klarion to him, it soured and the kid killed him. When he's confronted by his Buddybot, Klarwitch, he abandons it, and when it finds him, he smacks it away. Then he tries to teach it magic, but when it doesn't grasp it immediately, he knocks it off its broom and casts the spell himself. He seems to develop some concern for Klarwitch after that, but the damage may have been done. Klarion's already made himself look pretty bad.

McCarthy and Kudranski are a little awkward on their figurework - there are pages where Piper and Noah are almost unrecognizable, and Klarwitch never really comes together as a design - but the page layouts are pretty good. The double spread of them being ejected from the pocket, as the ancient beast comes charging in from the left in pursuit, that was pretty cool. The pages where the panel borders form the creature's mouth, so the interior of the border is ringed with teeth, also pretty cool. Guy Major helps, because his color work is nifty. I especially like at the beginning of issue 6, Coal's swarm (which has formed into a giant spider) has the same green glow letters and numbers get coming off computer screens. You know, the shade of green they used in the Matrix films? It contrasts with Klarion's blues nicely, but it does work as a good shorthand for technology.

So that does it for Klarion. Not sure it accomplished what it set out to do, it certainly didn't if keeping going for any extended period of time was the goal. As far as Nocenti's recent DC work, I'd rank it ahead of Green Arrow (McCarthy's a significantly stronger artist than what she had on that book), but behind Katana (which I think had a stronger central premise, and had a little more time to deal with it, rather than being rushed).

What I Bought 1/26/2015 - Part 6

I'm surprised Adam Silver didn't fine Knicks' owner James Dolan for calling that fan an alcoholic who ruins his family's lives when the guy criticized Dolan's ownership of the team. It would have been an easy move everyone would have approved of, a smaller version of forcing Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. It isn't like the fan was wrong. James Dolan is an utter failure at building a competitive team.

Klarion #2-4, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Trevor McCarthy (artist, #2, layouts and finishes #3), Sandu Florea (finishes, #3), Staz Johnson (finishes, #3), Fabrizio Fiorentino (artist, #4), Symon Kudranski (artist, #4), Guy Major (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letters) - The march of the fluctuating art teams. Always a sure sign the book is dying.

Klarion and Rasp fight a bit, but Rasp gradually gets it under control and retreat to the Moody Museum. Piper tries to get Klarion to understand there are consequences to his actions, but he doesn't listen, and he and Zell start getting closer. Meanwhile, the little tech thing Rasp got from Coal grows and works its way out of him and develops into a "Buddybot", a rapidly evolving A.I. that becomes whatever a person wants most. In Rasp's case, a girlfriend, but for other people they take the form of dogs, housekeeper's, whatever the person wanted, and they're eager to please, and people are eager to get them. Except Klarion, but when he starts trying to throw his weight around, he walks into a trap, and ends up in the crosshairs of a couple of government investigators of the paranormal (one of whom is the daughter of Piper's paramour, Noah). Faced with that, Klarion takes up Beelzebub up on his offer of a ride, and escapes, making the decision to leave Zell behind, but she gets dragged along anyway.

As you might expect, asking a favor of a devil doesn't lead anywhere good, and Klarion ends up in some magic bar, meeting with a black market arms dealing time traveler named Swag, who happens to be Coal's nanotech connection, and has some interest in Klarion being evil. Zell, Piper, and Noah find their way into the pocket, and try to talk Klarion away from Swag. And they fail miserably, as Klarion chooses power, though it remains to be seen what he'll do with it.

At one point in issue 4, Noah comments that he and Piper are offering Klarion something he's never had, which is a family, and that Klarion is finding he likes it. But I can't help noticing Klarion seems to pretty much choose the most selfish and/or destructive option at the end of every issue. He could have tried backing down when Rasp came after him, clearly not in his right mind, but he upped the ante. He could have chosen to try and free Zell and face down Agent Moody, but instead hopped in Beelzebub's car and bailed. It was only because of Zell's Petbot that she escaped. And then he chooses power, rather than try and prove he's right about the Petbot and wind up with Zell hating him. Except he might be about to destroy the thing anyway, which would still make her hate him, but hey, at least he'd be powerful.

I'm a little confused. There are a lot of moving parts, and I'm not sure where they're all going or if they're going to tie together. There's only two issues left, so odds are they won't be tying together. The whole Buddybot thing is kind of interesting, in that different people clearly want different things. Some people just want someone to listen, others need someone to tell them the things they desire are OK. Some people have contradictory desires. Actually, all people probably have that, and if the series were running longer, I'd be curious to see how the bots resolve that. So far, they seem content to just follow whatever instruction they receive first, like the alcoholic who told his to tie him to a chair if he went for a drink. But I would imagine it's going to get harder to make a person happy the more accustomed they get to the bot. Which I think is Swag's plan somehow. Coal seems like he doesn't have things nearly under control as he believes he does, and now Swag's trying to use the power he's given Coal as a lever against Klarion. I don't think either of them has any clue what the time traveler's game is, but neither do I.

McCarthy was doing a lot of cool things with his panel layouts in issue 2. There were a couple of pages where the backdrop was a floor plan of the Moody Museum, the panels corresponded to rooms marked with open doors, or with the name of the actual room. He seems to like tall, thin panels that move across the page like a series of irregular columns. It makes the book interesting to look at, because there's a lot of variety to the layouts. That's true of issue 3 as well, but with two other people besides McCarthy responsible for some of the finishes the figurework isn't as steady. Still, there's a nice build when he and Zell find Coal. The panels start out rigid, and the more Klarion sees of Coal's bots, the more suspicious he gets, and the borders turn into a swirling black mist, and the panels start tumbling toward the lower right corner. They start overlapping, the borders don't line up, and by the third fifth and sixth pages, the panels are moving in a huge circle around the pages, everything swirling down the drain into the escape route. It's nifty.

What I Bought 11/15/2014 - Part 4

I've kept forgetting to mention it, but Monday's post was my 3000th here. It's the 3001st overall, because Papafred posted that picture of Batman kicking that dude with the ice cream cone that one time.

Klarion #1, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Trevor McCarthy (artist), Guy Major (colorist), Pat Brousseau (letters) - The way that creepy guy's face is surrounded by the blue aura, he looks like the ugliest Metroid ever. Or a Pac-Man ghost.

Klarion has left his home of Limbotown. He wants to practice magic his way, to learn new things, to not feel restrained by people less talented. Also, he killed his teacher. He gets a ride from Beelzebub, which brings him tan extremely magical section of New York City. There's the Moody Museum, which seems like a home from magic-wielding orphans. And there's the Necropolitan Club, which wants to attract some of those magic-wielders as well. Klarion takes a job as an assistant chef at the Museum, but ends up going to a show at the club with a girl he meets at the museum named Zell. And by the end of the issue, he's fighting with the first person he met in NYC, a technomage named Rasp, who is probably already on board with what the Club is offering.

You can't say Nocenti and McCarthy didn't throw a lot at us, which is one of the things I've appreciated about Nocenti's DC work. Whatever other problems it might have, it isn't decompressed. Klarion's going to be an interesting character. One of the Museum's owners/staff notes that he's only concerned with whatever gets him where he wants to go. Which seems to be wherever he can learn and explore magic without feeling held back. Of course, there's no guarantee he'll read things right in that regard when presented with a choice, and I don't imagine every problem he'll face with involve that decision. Making friends with Zell and Rasp seemed more about being lonely than anything else, and his fight with Rasp started because he was concerned his new friend was out of control, and well, Rasp is out of control. I expect Klarion to make some bad choices, but I'm not sure what kind.

Beelzebub makes a comment I find interesting on Page 3. He tells Klarion all roads lead to the same place - yourself. But that where he (Beelzebub) is going, it's chaos. But he's driving a car there, thus he's on a road. So if Klarion is going with him, isn't he just going to find himself again, if that's where all roads lead? Unless that's the point. Klarion is chaos, and he doesn't realize it, because he's only looking at what he wants, and not the ripple effects of his actions.

One problem I've had with the books Nocenti's written for DC has been the artists not being up to the job. I don't think that's a problem I'll have with McCarthy. He does a lot of cool stuff with panel layouts, and borders. Pages 2 and 3 have these sort of eye-shaped panels that move in a counter-clockwise arc across the page as Klarion thinks back over his recent past, but they stop at the point he stops reminiscing, then resume after, when they move in for a close-up of his conversation with Beelzebub. The next two pages, the panels are this series of loops running diagonally across the page, with a yellow line and some dots separating the top half of the page from the bottom. That one doesn't work quite as well, because if you follow the loops it seems like you ought to read the top left panel first, then follow the road to the bottom left, then up and to the right, then down, and so on, rather than going straight across the top, then straight across the bottom. Still, it isn't that hard to follow, everything within the panels is clear and easy to read, and I appreciate the effort to do something cool.

Major's colors help. A lot of deep blacks that seem irregularly shaped, making the shadows seem ominous. They help Klarion's blue stand out, or the sickly green that's all over the Necropolitan Club. The eerie deep reddish-purple of the sky over the Moody Museum. The colors give the book the right sort of atmosphere, vaguely threatening and a little off-kilter. I still don't expect the book to last long, but I'm all in with it right now.