::Robosexual::

Watchmen

    I was going to review Sin City, but it seemed too timely.  For the record, the movie wasn't good.  In fact, it was bad.  I'm not going to say it was horrible, but lord, it wasn't good.  Having read and loved the comics and other Frank Miller stuff in general, I found that the movie only barely managed to ape the visual style, and only rarely managed to capture the actual feel.  That said, I still have hope for the Watchmen movie - which may or may not actually come to pass.  It's being directed by the guy who did The Bourne Supremacy, who seems capable, and really has a respect for the comic - but it was supposedly the same for Robert Rodriguez.  Anyway.
    Watchmen, written by Alan Moore, is a high-water mark for comics when it comes to nuanced and mature storytelling.  The basic story revolves at first around the murder of a former masked hero, but the stakes seem to keep rising as each issue reveals new facts.  It is not a Detective Comics-type story, either - in fact, there is little in the way of sleuthing and only short bursts of action.  The heroes have for the most part disappeared from the public eye, having had their heyday in the 50s and 60s.  In fact, laws specifically restrict hero action, and the only ones still active are Dr. Manhattan, victim of a horrible accident which granted him godlike powers, Rorschach, a merciless vigilante whose true identity remains unknown to anyone, and Ozymandias, an egotistical sellout who maintains a superhero corporate empire, and is the professed smartest man in the world.
    The story is told from many points of view, some events seen several times, some only implied.  Mixed in with the larger story are many sub-stories - domestic discontent, romance, hero histories, psychological profiling, and a fantastic old Amazing Stories-style comic about a sailor whose ship has been wrecked by undead pirates, and who must create a raft of his dead shipmates to get home.  The stories are woven in, sometimes intimately with the story, and may mirror or give insight into the larger plot being woven.  It's really very sophisticated storytelling, and each issue ends with a full-text document or file perhaps related to the story.  The first few, for instance, are excerpts from a retired hero's autobiography.  Sometimes the stories come to matter only many issues later - it's really kind of a task to put the whole thing together.  In the end, though, it's really fantastic but not for everybody.  Some might get bored at the lack of action, or stop reading the end notes closely like I did.  It's a hard read, a sort of comic book Moby Dick.  I'm glad I stuck with it, though, as it is still a very relevant and well-told story.  Click the pictures for high quality - just a sample page so you can see the art and such.

Bone

    I was at Barnes + Noble yesterday, looking for stuff to read for free, but there wasn't much so I decided to go for a fluke.  I'd seen individual issues of Bone around at Golden Age Collectibles and other comic-type stores before, but it never looked interesting to me.  Kinda weak art, I thought, and not much ever seems to happen.  Well, I was wrong.  I picked up a one-volume edition of all the Bone comics, adding up to a Stephen King-worthy 1330 pages.  Thats a THOUSAND pages of a comic, and I read it all over the last 24 hours.  I'd like to say, "That's just how good it is!!" But really the reason I read it all is because I have little to do.  In any case, it really is very good.
    Bone chronicles the adventures of these three little guys - Fone, Phoney, and Smiley Bone - after they stumble into a huge valley full of strange creatures and ancient civilizations.  It starts out as just them finding one another and surviving, but soon a much larger plot starts emerging, as you might expect in a work of this length.  Without spoiling anything, there is a plot by some major players to restart the ages-old war between the men and the rat-creatures.  That's just the beginning of it, of course, and with the exception of a small period of time in the beginning, every second of every character is accounted for.  The story is very epic fantasy fare, reminding me of the kind of archetypical fantasy story of hidden potential realized in a period of historic significance (outbreaks of wars and such).  The Lord of the Rings books all have this, as do more recent things which draw from them, like the Matrix.  The whole story is a single narrative, really quite focused in its telling - things which seem irrelevant on page 350 may come into play 5 pages later, or 500.
    The downside of this edition is that the art is in black and white.  I actually wrote a paragraph criticizing the art (short version: old-fashioned and good but occasionally the story is too big for the style) but having not read the original version I have replaced it with this one.  From what I understand, the original art was in full and glorious color, but with individual color volumes going for 20 bucks, a full-color one-volume edition would run you just shy of $200!  So, while the decision to decolorize, like with Akira, may be a practical one, you lose a lot of the effect of the art.  Looking back, I'm kind of sad that I didn't know this in the first place, but for an impulse buy this was a real treasure.

Groo the Wanderer

    Groo is one of my favorite comics from when I was a kid.  He is a warrior, unmatched in skill with the sword, who travels the land with his heroic canine sidekick, Rufferto.  He is also without doubt the stupidest creature on the planet.  He can't count, read, reason, or, frequently, understand things that are said to him.  He appeared in several comics before a run of 120 comics in the early 90s, and has probably been in a few since, but in general Groo is no longer being done.
    The comic is drawn by Sergio Aragones, whose name should be familiar to anyone who read MAD magazine over the last 20 years or so; he is responsible for the "Drawn-out dramas" which appear in the margins throughout the magazine and the occasional wordless "Tarzan" piece or some such nonsense.  He has a spectacular sense of visual humor, and he is able to put a feeling of color and life into every frame of the comic, which is amazing considering the rather simple style in which he draws.  There is an endless variety of townspeople and creatures populating each scene, especially the large title plates which open each comic.  Despite the huge amount of people Groo kills in almost every issue, though, there is hardly a drop of blood (lots from dragons), and there is quite a light touch given to every fray.
    The writing is by Mark Evanier, or so I think; he changes his title every issue.  The writing is very good and each issue starts out with a little poem - nothing to run home and tell mom about, but how many other comics do verse these days?  The speech has an archaic style to it, and Evanier is not too proud to alienate his younger readers by using using words like "mitigate" or referring to Groo as an "unkept wretch."  Furthermore, while there is much carnage and even a little continuing story, this is not some kind of prehistoric Spider-man.  Each comic is a self-contained little parable, having to do with ignorance and false beliefs (Groo and Chakaal stop an inescapable cycle of human sacrifices), environmental interdependencies (Groo introduces war, money, taxes, government, and more to an island community in perfect balance), to simple truths ("Real friends are friends to the end, and even after that").  There isn't much preaching, but it is hard to miss the messages when a society begins worshiping Rufferto, and then becomes so obsessed with the "true image" of their god that they forget what the god stood for in the first place.
    If moral lessons don't flip your bit, you should read Groo anyway because of the great artwork and writing, and to see how the labyrinthine stories (they get quite convoluted as people scheme and counter-scheme) work themselves out in unexpected, simple ways - often Groo will kill everyone involved for their treachery or unconsciously instigate their total ruination.  You can find Groos at any comic shop for probably a quarter each at this point.
    Here's a good sample of the artwork, click it for a much larger (200k) version.