IMBRAT’Z MULTIMEDIA

(author) Itai Rosenbaum 

This is, for all intents and purposes, the last issue of Sensational Spider-Man. While issue #41 will be hitting store shelves, it will be as part of the One More Day cross-over, so I’m counting it as an issue of Amazing. So, for the purpose of this review, I’m looking at the last issue of this book, so some words on that are required.
 
Out of all the Spidey books available (with the exception of Ultimate Spider-Man), this book was always the one I looked forward to the most. While Amazing is the flagship title, and thus, the most important one, I believe this fact only helped this book. Being out of the spotlight, the book didn’t have to focus on things like Spidey joining the Avengers, or Civil War. It could tell its own stories, without owing anything to anyone.
 
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, ever since coming on the book (and the time when Sensational officially started, as before it was called Marvel Knights Spider-Man), has injected the book with a strange, unique element, not found in other books. Ever since the first storyline, you could tell this book was not your run of the mill Spidey book. It didn’t try to reflect the Marvel Universe as we see it today, and was not grounded in reality. Instead we were treated to fantastical plots, involving weird, rage-inducing stones, Super-Villain team ups and the first appearance (and one of the best) of Eddie Brock in years.
 
The last issue serves as a perfect coda to a great run. Aguirre-Sacasa uses a plot element that has been used to before, particularly in an “ending” issue. Spidey meets god and has a heart to heart conversation with him. While this type of plot isn’t groundbreaking or new, Aguirre-Sacasa’s riff on it is fresh and pulled off excellently. His characterization of the Lord Almighty is handled quite well, and if the Man Upstairs really does act and sound like this comic, several things are a whole lot clearer to me now.
 
Clayton Crain’s art, as always, is spectacular. His painted style has this otherworldly feel, which goes hand in hand with the otherworldly story. His painted figures are excellently portrayed and his depiction of God is amazing. In some instances he uses photo backgrounds and while I am not a fan of this technique, in this instance it just works.
 
Overall, this was a great final issue to an excellent series. I will miss this series very much, and I hope to see more from everyone involved in this book, in particular Aguirre-Sacasa, whom I’ve grown to like throughout the course of this book.
 

(author) Itai Rosenbaum 

Say what you will about the issue, but X-Men #202 proves one thing - X-Men books are fun again.

To me, X-Men is the one franchise where creators should go all out, crafting weird plots, with outrageous art. In the world of the merry mutants, anything goes.

Mike Carey’s adjectiveless X-Men has been a prime example of this. Ever since he stepped on board the title, Carey has bombarded us with one freaky concept after another. From the Children of the Vault to the Hectatomb, Carey’s high concepts have been some of the most imaginative concepts to come upon the X-Men in years. Now, with the most recent storyline, Blinded by the Light, Carey has scaled back on weird villains only to supply us with an onslaught of classic villains, some which we have not seen for a very long time.
 
In part 3 of the four-part storylines, we finally find out why the Marauders and Acolytes have hit the X-Men so hard in the past two issues. Some will say that this entire arc feels like set-up for something further down the line, but let’s face the facts - that’s exactly what it is. We all know Messiah Complex is right down the line, so it’s pretty obvious this arc leads into that. Once you accept that this entire arc is just a fun romp through X-Men history. The most important thing about this book is that it’s just plain fun. We don’t have heavy, emotion-laden dialogue. Instead we get about 7 different fights. And then we get Mr. Sinister. Let the good times roll, I say.
 
Regarding the art, there are many people out there who dislike Humberto Ramos’ exaggerated figures and expressions. I have to say, I’m not one of those people. Ramos’ art is so over-the-top is suits the mad, chaotic action going on perfectly. I am also a fan of the more cartoony artists such as J. Scott Campbell, Mark Bagley and their ilk, so Ramos is right up my alley.
 
I must add a word about the Endangered Species back-up feature - the word is “snore”.
 

 

 

Writer: Cecil Castellucci
Artist Jim Rugg:
Publisher: Minx/DC Comics
2 May 2007, 176 pages, $9.99
by Jon Kirby
 

Relevance has long been prized by the comic book industry. During the Depression, then-young superheroes like Superman and the Green Lantern spent most of their time trust-busting and cheerleading the New Deal, rather than trouncing interstellar foes. And by the 1970s, Green Lantern/Green Arrow had tapped the cynical zeitgeist, while Stan Lee bucked the Comics Code to release a three-part Amazing Spider-Man story about drug abuse, a taboo subject under CCA guidelines.

 

Of course, we’ve seen plenty of fantastic exploits along the way too, but comics as a medium have always exhibited an acute sensitivity to the real world. And 9/11 and the ensuing War on Terror have brought new challenges for funnybooks to face up to: Spider-Man stood in shock at Ground Zero, and Captain America took the fight to the terrorists, while the Vertigo series DMZ has taken to depicting the realities of life during wartime by staging a divisive civil war on American soil—to say nothing of Marvel’s own Civil War, where the usual metahuman fisticuffs served to dramatize anxiety over vanishing civil liberties.

Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg’s graphic novel The Plain Janes (published by DC’s new Minx imprint) takes a more subtle approach. In a similar slice-of-life indie style as comics like Ghost World and Teenagers from Mars, The Plain Janes tells the story of Jane, a well-adjusted girl from Metro City whose family retreats to the placid suburb of Kent Waters following a terrorist attack that nearly claims Jane amongst its victims. In the aftermath, Jane manages to rescue an unidentified male victim whose only possession is a notebook with a cover that reads “ART SAVES”—a notion that Jane spends the rest of the story putting to the test.

The Plain Janes revolves around P.L.A.I.N. (People Loving Art in Neighborhoods), the titular guerilla group of similarly-named girls—plus, later on, a gay boy named James—who resolve to bring art out of the galleries and into the streets of their hum-drum hometown. It’s the kind of trickle-down Situationism that any artistically-bent teenager can love, and like a lot of activism it doubles as psychotherapy for the Main Jane: by detouring terrorism’s extra-legality into a mission of beautifying and inspiring her community, she hopes to exorcize the painful memories she carries with her from the attack.

At first, the world of The Plain Janes seems as flattened out as Thomas Friedman’s, and as black-and-white as its own stylish artwork: The Big City stands as the arbiter of all cultural value, while Jane’s high school ("Buzz Aldrin High") is split down the quad, as a Popular Front of geeks and artists stands against a junta of cheerleaders and footballers. Jane, an ex-blonde, actively rejects the popular kids for the pariah Janes, who initially rebuff her; it’s a twist on the Heathers/Mean Girls approach, where the sensitive protagonist somehow finds herself on the side of darkness. But the more you read, the more complexity and nuance Castellucci and Rugg ladle on—and the more you remember that when you’re a teenager, the world often does resolve into a high-stakes hormonal clash between Good and Evil.

And more to the point, The Plain Janes uses its moral landscape to underscore its central point: for the average person faced with the cruel reality of terrorism, the choice isn’t between anything so grandiose as freedom or tyranny (since adults have their own dualisms to throw around) as much as deciding whether or not to live in fear. The attack on Metro City spooks Jane’s parents into fleeing to the suburbs, while Jane, who after all was closer to ground zero than anyone else in the story, realizes that no place is really safe (one of the story’s deepest conflicts is also one of its most immortal, that of the young against their elders). But despite her gutsy resolve, Jane carries her own psychic scars, and she acts out of the hope that the dictum from John Doe’s notebook ("ART SAVES") can redeem her along with her button-down surroundings.

Many comic book bids at relevance have stumbled, with all the complexity and moral ambiguity of the real world varnished into easy answers and neat solutions as clean-cut and unrealistic as the capes fighting over them. But The Plain Janes spins a story of outsider-dom with affecting charm and poignancy, thoughtfully confronting the emotional costs of terrorism without becoming a humorless polemic. It reminds us that the present is, as ever, full of grim challenges eager to seduce us into shutting the world out and locking ourselves up from it—but The Plain Janes, like its eponymous heroes, is an endearing inspiration towards overcoming that fear. As Raoul Vaneigem once wrote: “Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, will hold it at bay.”