From A Library – Conan: The Frost-Giant’s Daughter And Other Stories

Conan #0–6 and part of #7 by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord

Even though I’m a fan of genre stories, I’ve never read any Conan the Barbarian, which includes the original pulp stories and the respected comics by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith; I’ve only seen the Schwarzenegger films and didn’t really care for them. Therefore, I wasn’t particularly interested when Dark Horse acquired the rights to produce new Conan comics, even though it was written by Busiek. However, the presence of Busiek as writer meant that it was an easy call to try this collection when I saw it in my local library. And it was a good decision: these are very good comics, which are enjoyable and well told.

The book is about the early days of Conan, a young Cimmerian who has left his home lands to explore the world; he has ventured north where he becomes embroiled in a blood-feud between two northern clans (helps the Aesir against the Vanir). The Aesir follow the Vanir who attacked them, heading further north (where Conan meets the frost-giant’s daughter of the title) until they are betrayed and captured by Hyperboreans – not the noble spirits Conan was told about, but tall savages who capture Conan and his fellow Aesir, taking them back to the legendary city, where the awful truth behind Hyperborea is revealed.

These stories of Conan are told as legends (as revealed in a framing device in issue #0), and even I know enough about Conan that he eventually became a king, so these comics don’t have the immediate drama of possible death for the lead character in the fight scenes or the stories as a whole – it’s an odd reading sensation when you know that the majority of characters introduced who are not Conan are probably going to die. Therefore, the enjoyment of these tales is in the telling, and in this it is very successful. Busiek tells the adventures beautifully, with a strong and poetic voice for the narration and an authentic feel to the dialogue of a bygone era (although this could come from Robert E Howard’s original stories).

The other half to this storytelling excellence is the stunning art of Nord: he draws a great Conan (powerful and noble), dynamic sword fights and beautiful women (although I can’t understand why they’re not allowed to be completely nude; so silly). He is also a good visual storyteller with the perfect style for these stories (I can understand why he drew the book for several years); the only slight qualm is that the colouring directly onto his pencils sometimes obscures the beauty and power of his pencils. This is highlighted by the inclusion at the end of this trade paperback of the three-page audition by Nord for the job of Conan artist (from a Busiek script designed to demonstrate a penciller’s ability to cope with all aspects of Conan stories) – Nord’s pencils are absolutely fantastic and I would have preferred to see his art inked to show them to their best at all times. However, this is a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent book containing the adventures of the noble barbarian – after reading this, I can definitely see continual appeal for these pulse-pounding tales.

Being David Norman

When I started this sporadic blog back in January 2005, comic book bloggers preferred unusual names for their blogs instead of using their actual names (in contrast to today when the advice is to own your own domain name so that you can control your brand). I’m not sure why this was, but it made sense when everyone else was doing it and it added to the sense of community that existed. There was also a certain charm and inventiveness to the names (Progressive Ruin, The Invincible Super-Blog, The Hurting, Fortress of Soliloquy, Post-Modern Barney, The Absorbascon, Double Articulation, Delenda Est Carthago, Polite Dissent, The Johnny Bacardi Show, among many others), even if you eventually knew the blog by the author's name (or didn’t in the case of people who preferred pseudonyms, such as the original comic book blogger Neilalien).

Although I’ve never been a sufficiently prolific (or even prominent) blogger, I did read those early articles about owning the URL of your actual name and wonder about buying www.davidnorman.com; however, even back then, my name had already been taken by a German-based illustrator/storyboarder (artists and designers were very quick to adopt the web as an excellent form of portfolio), so the option was eliminated before I could worry about it.

At the time, I thought it was an odd coincidence that there was someone else out there on the internet with my name, because I was under the misguided illusion that my name was quite rare: I had never met anyone else with the same name, and I grew up thinking it was unusual to have a name that was made of two forenames. However, the internet has now destroyed that simplistic notion and I have discovered that I’m fairly Google-proof because there are so many other David Normans in the world.

Wikipedia lists an Australian rules footballer, a businessman, an ornithologist (who has a website of his own, connected with the Merseyside Ringing Group), a Canadian soccer player, a palaeontologist, and a cricketer as David Normans worthy of having an entry; there is also an actor with very few entries on IMDb. Using Google to look for name-based websites, there is a landscape gardener, a painter, and a very tech-savvy pastor in the US who is also on Twitter.

Mentioning Twitter brings me to another point – David Norman the pastor has to use @david_norman because I must have got there first with @davidnorman, thus ensuring that there are a lot of David Normans out there who probably don’t like me because they had to find other variations for their Twitter account. In particular, I wonder about the David Norman mentioned in this article in the Guardian – I got a shock when I was reading the newspaper itself and there was a picture of a man I didn’t recognise with my name underneath it – who would seem to be a notable chap yet has to use @tcfdan, and he has many more followers than I do. He is one of many who have had to mix numbers and extra letters instead, including: @davenorman, @1DavidNorman, @DavidNorman1, @davidnorman2, @DavidNorman10, @DavidNorman13, @DavidJNorman, @davidknorman (among many others – there is a huge number if you search for David Norman). I have been very lucky: I even have my own name for my Gmail account (I have been on Blogger since 2002, so I got an invite to join Gmail the year after Google acquired Blogger); I have received many an email from people trying to contact their David Norman who have used my numberless address instead of the appropriate number/letter permutation.

Despite being an early adopter of Gmail and Twitter, and blogging irregularly for the past seven years, I am still hard to find using search engines, which is fine by me – I wouldn’t have called this blog Clandestine Critic if I weren’t comfortable with the concept of anonymity (although this blog is the first hit when searching for ‘clandestine critic’). No, I’m happy being one of many; nobody will be confusing me for anyone else because there are too many of us. I won’t have to regularly remind people the way Warren Ellis has to regularly do on Twitter:

Hello. I am the British writer Warren Ellis, not the Australian musician Warren Ellis who works with Nick Cave. Sorry about that. Bye.

Comic Book Review – Spandex: Fast And Hard

Spandex #1–3 by Martin Eden
Published by Titan Books

Before receiving this review copy, I have to confess to knowing very little about this book. I had skimmed some articles about it on Bleeding Cool, but that’s about it. However, since the title featured in the pages of the Metro (a free newspaper distributed widely and daily to commuters in the UK) and on the Sun website, the book received a lot of attention, which has led to the publication of a hardcover collection of the first three issues of the self-published book by Martin Eden.

Spandex is the name a team of superheroes, based in Brighton (the unofficial gay capital of England), all of whom are LGBT. The leader is Liberty, a transvestite with a (female) power suit and ‘Gaydar’, a kind of Spider Sense. There is Diva (described as a lesbian Wonder Woman), Glitter (who has light-based powers), Prowler (who has the power to absorb the abilities of any gay person in the vicinity, and he also has a tail), Indigo (a French teleporter), Butch (a female Luke Cage, as it were, with unbreakable skin) and her twin Mr Muscles (who is very strong). From their HQ in an abandoned nightclub, they protect the world from mainly LGBT villains, like the 50-foot lesbian who attacks Brighton in the first issue to the pink ninjas in Tokyo in the second issue (they fly there using the Spanjet).

The first thing that strikes you about the book is the art. It looks quite basic, the sort of style you might see from a teenager, with very simple linework and not much pizzazz. It’s not to my taste, but it is deceptive: Eden has very good storytelling instincts, with good panel transitions and an ability to get the point across on the page. It uses very straightforward and bright colours, which seems appropriate for the material: this is traditional superhero soap opera with a gay twist. The inspiration seems to be The X-Men (Eden admits to loving the X-Men, Grant Morrison and superhero books in interviews; there’s a splash page in the book that is a homage to Leinil Yu’s cover to New Avengers #27), which seems natural when you consider the soap opera feel and the subtext of sexuality and prejudice against minorities, even if it does play more like a gay Avengers. There is also a darker undercurrent to proceedings: there is something suspicious about Liberty and the way the team is put together; and there is also violence, death and remorse in the book, which are dealt with in a serious tone.

The book is also for adults: there is swearing, nudity and sex (although not in a pornographic sense) throughout, although it just feels like a British sensibility instead of an attempt to shock, and the male characters do not have flat genital areas when wearing their spandex as occurs in mainstream American superhero comics. The third issue also deals with the concept of depression (as Eden explains in an afterword for the story), albeit via the means of ‘Gay Zombies’ and a hermaphrodite villain turning the world grey and dreary. I found this issue particularly haunting and moving, as it uses a superhero comic to talk about the difficulty of life for people sometimes. There is certainly more going on in the book than appears on the bright and flashy surface.

Although this is only three issues, it gives a good indication of a well-written book with lots of love and thought put into it (Eden has a day job working for Titan Magazines, so it’s obviously a labour of love). It may seem like a silly gimmick to catch the headlines – the first all-gay superhero team! – but it allows for a wealth of different stories, which are told with a light but controlled touch, with flashes of humour (such as the innuendo of the subtitle for this collection) and infectious joy (he has a character celebrate their victory in Tokyo by exclaiming ‘Yatta!’, as famously uttered by Hiro in Heroes). This is not a book I would have normally read, but I’m very glad that I have, and I would recommend it superhero and non-superhero fans alike.

Notes On A Film: The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble)

The content of this blog should indicate that this film was made for someone like me, who loves films and comics (although I’ve never been a huge Avengers fan), so whatever I have to say will come out biased. However, no matter how much I geeked out watching this film and how entertaining and awesome it was (it’s probably the most enjoyable time I’ve had in a cinema since Inception), I hope that this doesn’t invalidate my views.

The first thing to say is that it is impressive that this film exists: as a superhero comic book fan, the idea of a team-up/crossover is a tantalising idea; having the separate superheroes together in one film is an achievement in itself. There have been good films with superhero teams before (with X2 as the leader of the pack in that regards) but it’s different to take individual heroes from their own successful films and unite them in something that doesn’t make a mess of it because of the difficulty of the mix. The build-up with the individual films (Iron Man, Thor and Captain America were very good; Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk were slightly less good) heightened anticipation but meant that the blending of them could prove problematic. This is not the case: this film is everything you hope for in an Avengers film.

Everything in this film works. The individual heroes are believable on their own in the context of the movie and they are believable as a team – the movie has a plausible reason for their combination (aliens are coming to destroy the Earth) and brings them together in totally plausible fashion, with great character interaction, emotional bits, sufficient backstory to understand the conflicts, fantastic action and lots of great lines. The film is 140 minutes of pure entertainment from beginning to end (and mid-credits, which had me laughing out loud with geek glee; I can’t say anything about after the credits because non-US audiences have yet to receive it); I enjoyed it so much I wanted to see it again as soon as possible, just to relive the joy, but also to see the great moments peppered throughout. There are so many great moments that will make you smile or laugh, but I won’t detail them – you should enjoy them yourself for the first time and I won’t take that away from you.

Marvel has done a lot of hard work to get the film to where it is but there is one man who is responsible for the greatness of this movie: Joss Whedon. Yes, the film uses the basic plot of the first storyline of The Ultimates (which was just Mark Millar updating the Avengers); yes, Zak Penn has a story credit; yes, there are lots of other people involved in the making of a film. However, Whedon is the one who has crafted the beautiful blend that is this film. The deft handling of a large cast is a trademark of his (this is a rare skill, giving all the characters equal amount of quality time, something that regular comic book creators fail at with team titles); the great dialogue works in both the action scenes and the non-action scenes; and the fact that the female characters are so strong in an excessively male film (Warner must be kicking themselves for stopping the Whedon Wonder Woman movie). The Black Widow is handled brilliantly, given great moments of smartness and ability, with a depth to her character that was a revelation. The short scene with Pepper Potts shows her as a smart, funny and capable person, just through dialogue, and it was a delight to watch. The dialogue is whip-smart throughout – Tony Stark gets some of the best lines, suffused with the trademark pop culture gags that Whedon handles with ease – and the actors look like they’re having a blast with the talking scenes. Robert Downey Jr slips back in Tony Stark with ease, Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are back in solid superhero mode, Scarlett Johansson was great as the Black Widow, Jeremy Renner was good as Hawkeye (Whedon made me think that Hawkeye was a good character, something I didn’t think was possible) and Tom Hiddleston was having a ball as Loki (I couldn’t believe he got to say ‘mewling quim’ – hilarious). But, as reports have said, it is the excellent Mark Ruffalo and the motion-capture Hulk who steal the show. Whedon has done a fantastic job of capturing the character of the Hulk and why we like him, using him judiciously until needed and then turning the dial up to eleven; it’s an unalloyed delight and provides the two biggest laughs of the film (and this is a film full of funny lines).

It’s not all talking and funny lines; there is plenty of action along the way (Whedon balances the rhythm of little action pieces in between the conversations and the plot), until the final third of the film is one big beautifully choreographed fight scene. The CGI is great (the Ruffalo-based Hulk works really well), although I can't speak for the 3D because I watched in good old-fashioned 2D, the violence is explosive, the characters act and interact in exactly the right way and Whedon slips in action banter in the right way. It looks fantastic, as would be expected for something with this amount of money behind it, and it’s a joy to witness.

Joss Whedon must be a happy man. Not because he has written and directed what will be one of the biggest films of the year, but because he got to geek out and put Marvel’s superheroes together on the silver screen for the first time and have them do really cool stuff. And he did it really, really well. It's quite possibly the most perfect comic book movie yet.

Rating: DAVE (DAVID for the comic book geek in me)

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]