007: Moonraker

Grade: B+

I don't imagine Fleming wrote a better 007 novel. Three volumes in, he's now comfortable enough with the formula to deviate from it in inspired ways. Here, he shows a "typical" working week for Bond. He also stretches himself in his ultra-romantic depiction of espionage. He's still conflating sex with torture, indulging in monographs on high-stakes gambling and automobiles, & staging violent scenes of derring-do. But he also hints at the real dullness of spycraft (Bond spends Mondays going over govt. memos). And for the first time, he includes the truly absurd plots that the movies have propagated.

(Thankfully, Moonraker bears no resemblance to the 1979 film, which is arguably the worst in the series.)

The book begins with the humdrum office work, but quickly moves beyond. M asks Bond to bust Britain's top rocket expert for card cheating at his gentleman's club. Fleming loves cardplay, but this book's game of bridge isn't nearly as much of a knucklebiter as Casino Royale's baccarat. The plot revs up though, when Bond is tasked with investigating a murder that ties in with the prototype rocket itself. Turns out, the project is a front for unreformed Nazis, funded by Commies, who plan to nuke London!

So the book climaxes in a farfetched, highly entertaining bit of action, as well as the rescue of yet another comely ingenue. It all happens within a week in southern England; the novel benefits from this concision and unity. The arc from mundane to fantastical is tight, thrilling, &, given the genre, plausible . Fleming has found his stride with Moonraker. This is quality pulp fiction, probably Fleming's "masterpiece". It's rejuvenated my interest in the Bond books, & I'll give the next two a try.

BOX SCORE
Moonraker
date: 1955
writer: Ian Fleming

Week of Dec. 10-16

Final Crisis #5

grade: A-
writer: Grant Morrison
artist: J.G. Jones, Chris Pacheco, & Jesus Merino
The Lantern Corps scene is rocky, but the rest of the ish hums w/ beautiful ideas, crazy physics, & hot fisticuffs. It reads smooth even w/ 3 artists. Tho' ½ of humanity follows D'seid, the tide turns: Mr. Miracle offers a free-will glyph to the Human League, while the Monitor gets his powers back.


Final Crisis: Revelations #4
grade: B
writer: Greg Rucka
artist: Philip Tan
Rucka riffs on Final C.'s Gotterdammerung, but you can tell the story matters to him. I'm also enjoying the focus on DC's women, w/ Huntress & the thinking man's heroine, the Question. She debates free will w/ an angel in a church (tho' not too cogently). FC: R draws me in, even when it's ludicrous.


Action Comics #872
grade: C+
writer: Geoff Johns
artist: Pete Woods
Still fun. Johns doesn't link up well w/ the “New Krypton” arc – shoehorning plot-lines in as Supe debates Kryptonian realpolitik – but as soon as there's action, he perks up. Luthor masterminds a counter-attack on the aliens, using Brainiac to free strange alien chimeras and humans lost-in-space.


Secret Invasion: Dark Reign
grade: C-
writer: Brian Michael Bendis
artist: Alex Maleev
Baddies, led by govt. official/Spidey foe N. Osborne, divvy up power. It's nice to read BMB/Maleev, but this one-act drama is a rather colorful board meeting rather than Masters of Evil a'plotting. Tho' it's charmingly cynical, it's also more W.-era than Obama. Namor & Doom steal the show.

007: Casino Royale

Grade: B

I grew up loving 007 movies, but I found the books baffling. I'm returning for another shot these days. And I'm thrilled & appalled in equal amounts. This first volume is fun bit of pulp espionage. The plot is ridiculous: a Communist agent, deep in debt, plans to refinance by winning big at the casino. Bond's mission: beat him at baccarat, & let the KGB eliminate him for losing the money.

This ludicrous scenario undercuts any pretensions towards realism that Ian Fleming has. Still, you get the sense that some of the spy stuff is accurate: the intel, the cover stories, the liaisons & behind-the-scenes maneuvers, & most of all, the careful planning.

But the author's priggishness can get awfully grating. The woman is a "bitch" for getting kidnapped by the villain, who huffs benzedrine from an inhaler. Fleming fetishizes things, describing alcohol, women, & cars in the same tones. He also indulges that British public-school obsession with sadism: the promise of sex is interrupted by torture, described in explicit & kinky terms.

It's a lurid, violent, & ugly novel, the British equivalent of Mickey Spillane. It constantly claims not to be Romantic, which is idiotic. Still (& I hate to admit it), Fleming can write: the baccarat set-piece in the middle of the book is great, & Bond is a vivid character. And there are a few real surprises (for example, Bond gets kidnapped & needs rescuing). The climax isn't a shootout or anything, it's a moment of doubt based on Bond questioning his own morals. Naturally, he overcomes those qualms & returns to espionage with a new sense of purpose. Oh, James.


BOX SCORE
Casino Royale
date: 1953
writer: Ian Fleming

007: Live and Let Die

Grade: C+

007 would appreciate the snobbish observation that the Bond books are more substantial than the movies. This one (#2 in the series) is nothing special though. Or, let's say, what makes it special is how candidly racist it is. Seriously, I was embarrassed to read this on the subway.

As with Casino Royale, Bond's not engaging in cloak-&-dagger so much as adventure in Cold War costumes. MI6 suspects that the crime lord of Harlem (Mr. Big) is also a Soviet agent who's financing his ops with recovered pirate's treasure. That's a beautiful set-up, if wholly ridiculous, & should be a pleasure.

But James Bond isn't at all likable. He's priggish, hard-boiled, & angry. As he follows the money laundering from NYC to Florida to Haiti, he admires autos & sneers at locals. He vows vengeance on Mr. Big for feeding the CIA liaison to sharks. It's hard to enjoy.

And yet, the character comes vividly to life. Fleming shows Bond being cunning, being tough, being sophisticated, all with deft style. The momentum is incredible, the plot is juicy. It's got a great sense of exoticism - even Midtown NY sounds romantic.

But it's all built on a surity that England is what's true & good. And what's evil is a conservative's nightmare. Not only is Mr. Big a negro commie criminal, he practices voodoo & sadism & keeps a white woman as his mistress (till Bond rescues her, twice). It's St. George v. dragons, retrograde even at the time. This volume has aged terribly, but I'll try one more book in the series.

BOX SCORE
Live and Let Die
date: 1954
writer: Ian Fleming

Crisis on Infinite Earths #9 – 12

GRADE
B+

REVIEW
What an improvement! The final third of Crisis is much better than the aimless middle act, and the last two issues top even the first act's audacious set-up. Of course, Wolfman's storytelling skills are fitful and his prose is purple. And somehow, even as he mints the first epic crossover, he succumbs to cliché. All this is especially frustrating since Pérez does career-defining work throughout the series. No matter how dense each panel is, or how many panels there are per page, the layout of each page is limpid & the pace is brisk.

Wolfman, on the other hand, spends much of issues 9 & 10 essentially offering us a Secret Wars-like good-v.-evil battle royale. With the Anti-Monitor in retreat, Brainiac and the supervillains capture three of the five remaining Earths. The resulting melee feels even more pro forma than the series' last three or four, for no reason I can finger. The cliffhanger, which sees some psychic baddie kill Brainiac, is eliminated within pages of the next issue.

At the battle's turn, however, Wolfman executes a series of strokes that finally lifts Crisis above the everyday comic book event. Rather than defeating the villains, the heroes team up with them to launch a counter-offensive against the suddenly resurgent Anti-Monitor. For the first time since the fifth issue, we get the sense that the book's antagonist is a true threat and not merely a ranting super-villain. And with that, the story gets wonky…

In DC's metaphysics, it's impossible to change history (a fact discovered by Superboy in an early 1960s classic tale when he tried to prevent Lincoln's assassination). So the Anti-Monitor has fled to before the Big Bang, where presumably the laws of physics no longer apply and he can revise the universe according to his whims. Ostensibly, he's stepping outside of the universe, but actually (this is the kicker) he's stepping outside of DC's Universe, where “DC physics” are suspended.

Now, I don't think Wolfman set this up consciously – he's no Grant Morrison. But as plot maneuvers go, it's genius: he threads a loophole to achieve his goal of revising the entire DCU. This idea is comic-book spectacle at its best, the moment that Crisis achieves the audacity of its intention. It's so clever that I don't mind yet another pile-on battle, the impotent actions of the villains, or sight of the Spectre arm-wrestling the Anti-Monitor at the moment of creation. The universe shatters into being, but with a difference: it's now a palimpsest of DC's multiverse, its loops and dead-ends edited into a continuum.

This fresh scenario makes a few characters redundant. Earth-2's Superman, in particular, feels a Sartrean nausea when he realizes that his universe never existed. In him, Wolfman finds a protagonist to assume the burden of emotional conflict. It's a belated solution to the story's biggest dramatic flaw: while the epic scope of Crisis is impressive, it's lacked a center for the reader to invest in. If you don't care about the DCU, you won't care about the stakes. Of course, Superman-2 has got company in his ontological paradox – Alexander Luthor of Earth-3, Superboy of Earth-Prime, etc. – but his reactions are the issue's burden, and they move me.

But the story doesn't pause for long. Instead, the Anti-Monitor returns (no explanations given, like an ogre in a cheap thriller) to shunt the Earth into his anti-matter universe. Again, Wolfman is showing us how powerful the villain is, rather than telling us: the Anti-Monitor's not just a ranting despot with an army of shadows and an anti-matter cannon, he's a being with the ability to move an entire planet from one plane of existence to another.

Naturally, there's a final battle. But rather than stage one more pile-on, Wolfman and Perez give the heroes a plan, one that involves syphoning a star, cursing the Anti-Monitor's shadow-army, and timely support from the evil god Darkseid. The Anti-Monitor falls, the universe is saved. Alex Luthor shunts himself and the other redundant characters into a paradisical dimension. The other Crisis Heroes go on a post-graduation road trip. And curtain.

There's a lot left to say, however. Most important from my perspective is how long it took me to read and review Crisis. On a fundamental level, it failed to grab me, but I'm not sure why. It's worth considering, & I'll do so in a follow-up post mid-week. I'll also look at the entire work to see whether it's coherent.

BOX SCORE
Crisis on Infinite Earths #9 – 12
date: December 1985 – March 1986
writer: Marv Wolfman
artist: George Pérez

Crisis on Infinite Earths, #5-8

GRADE
C+

REVIEW
In my first post on Crisis on Infinite Earths, I suggested that Wolfman & Pérez's imagination outstripped their execution. The sheer audacity of the work's scope made up for its confusions and opacities. Unfortunately, this second act deepens the sense that Crisis seems improvised. The work has a seat-of-your-pants momentum, but plot clichés are starting to sneak in when the imagination fails.

The first act climaxed with the grandest of cliffhangers: the destruction of DC's two main Earths and the murder of the Monitor, the only being who had a plan for salvation. We learn that his plan was predicated on his death: the Monitor used the cosmic energy released by his extinction to create a “netherverse” that could protect the Earths.

We're way beyond physics here. Crisis, like some ancient cosmology, views bodies as possessing incredible generative power. They save humanity, they house universes and they act as gateways to other worlds. Harbinger (the Monitor's adopted daughter) uses her own essence to shunt the remaining three universes into the netherverse. Our heroes spy her astride a barrier of churning antimatter, but the vision is beyond their comprehension.

Wolfman runs into narrative problems, however, on that mortal level. He can't seem to find a through-line. Much of issue #5 sees the heroes agog at the dinosaurs, cowboys and aliens who're wandering like wraiths through 20th-century cities. The sixth issue more or less recapitulates the first five: our heroes maintain order long enough for a cosmic being to rescue the multiple Earths. What the story gains in scope, it loses in focus.

It's only when Wolfman concentrates on the Crisis Heroes (Pariah, Harbinger, & Alexander Luthor) that his story moves forward. The three of them pool their knowledge for some much-needed exposition. The book's tone once more reaches for the metaphysical: call it “Genesis of the Infinite Earths.” One impulsive scientist, hungry for knowledge, fractured the universe and another awakened the evil that threatens to erase all creation. Then too there's the fraternal struggle between the Monitor – a meditating star-child – and his doppelganger, the villain of the piece.

That's where Wolfman's imagination finally sputters out. The Anti-Monitor is introduced with great fanfare, but he's more bluster than bite. His plan for the Flash goes unexplained; his scheme for the Red Tornado is underwhelming; the reasons he supplies for suborning the Psycho-Pirate are mutually exclusive. He's got some dandy Kirbytech (an anti-matter cannon?!), but his threat feels reduced from cosmic foe to techno-heavy. The heroes simply smash his machinery, a disappointingly clichéd comic-book solution to an unconventional crisis.

Of course, frontal assaults do cost lives. It's emotionally moving to see Supergirl and the Flash lay down their lives to destroy the Anti-Monitor's war machines. Sacrificing two noble, well-known characters mean that the deaths have weight without requiring much character background. Pérez does superlative work drawing the storming of the Anti-Monitor's asteroid citadel – essentially it's a setpiece, but a thrilling one. He puts the flagging Wolfman to shame.

Where the first act rushed to its climax, the second act sees the plot stall. It spends too much time laying the groundwork for future stories instead of telling its own. It's hard to care about undercooked newcomers like Lady Quark, Dr. Light and Wildcat (though it's good to see women added to the spandex set). A subplot involving the Green Lantern Corps feels skeletal and could be integrated into the main story better. Too often, the action devolves into a super-melee. Despite a sense of danger & even doom, and Pérez's superb layouts, these fights lack the flare that the first four issues possessed.

Instead, these middle issues are filled with digressions, dead-ends, and hanging plot threads, ranting tyrants and arrogant scientists. But underpinning Crisis is that marvelous cosmology: Harbinger, titan-sized and translucent, holding at bay the blankness that threatens to erase all of existence. They remind me of classic Lee/Kirby collaborations: breathtaking art and boundless creativity arm-in-arm with plotting that sometimes collapses and sometimes soars.

BOX SCORE Crisis on Infinite Earths #5 – 8
dates: August – November 1985
writer: Marv Wolfman
artist: George Pérez

Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-4

GRADE

B+

REVIEW
I've never read Wolfman & Pérez's epic mid-'80s revision of DC's properties. Now, only a third of the way through, I'm agog. They're attempting to revise DC continuity from within the story, which is like lifting yourself by pulling on your feet. Even in the first four issues, the story shows strains over this logical paradox. Wolfman, seeming to improvise as he writes, leaves plots dangling in the hope that resolutions will present themselves later. He sacrifices clarity for an epic scope (ironic since this work's goal is to clarify DC's continuity). Fortunately, Pérez combines his eye for detail with a dense layout. Together, they make DC's various subgenres cohere under the cosmic sci-fi umbrella that is Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The creators begin with a bold flourish: the utter destruction of a well-established mirror-dimension (Earth-3, complete with evil Justice League). The only survivor, in a nod to Superman's origin myth, is the infant son of a heroic Lex Luthor, rocketed through the dimensional barrier to safety. The opening not only establishes the stakes, it places the usual protagonists (Superman et al) on the story's periphery. For the rest of this first act, the creators pepper each issue with one- and two-page scenes that show the usual heroes in action.

The focus, however, is on new characters -- a gambit meant to increase the book's accessibility. There's the mild-mannered Lyla, whose alter-ego Harbinger is fated to kill her father-figure, and the purple-haired Pariah, who drifts like a wraith into each universe to witness its destruction. Unfortunately, both characters are undramatic: Harbinger is a pawn with ill-defined cosmic powers, while Pariah (in Wolfman's inimitable prose) “can only cry!”

The major active player so far is the beetle-browed Monitor, an enigmatic manipulator who gave Harbinger and Pariah their powers. From each universe, the Monitor shanghais superheroes and villains to protect massive machinery meant to stabilize the universes. Ultimately, he sacrifices himself (a la Obi Wan Kenobi) even as the last universes are destroyed. It's a doozy of a cliffhanger.

But who's destroying the universes, and why? The antagonist of Crisis lurks in the shadows, ranting like a Kirby despot. Though his identity is hidden, he's related somehow to the Monitor. The multiversal destruction increases his power and saps the Monitor's. The villain has corrupted Harbinger, and like the Monitor, his MO is to snatch people up (the Psycho-Pirate, the Flash, and Red Tornado). Of course, it's a mystery why he needs pawns when he's already successfully destroyed all but three universes. Probably it's just more evidence that Wolfman's improvising.

Maybe that's also why, despite the sturm und drang, there's not much to Crisis on a thematic level. You could read the Monitor and his counterpart as stand-ins for DC's editors, but that concept's a non-starter. What theme you could elaborate on involves Superman as the embodiment of heroism. In every issue, one universe's Superman or another saves a bystander. The evil Superman tackles the antimatter wall head-on, while a lion-hearted Luthor iterates Jor-El's rocket to salvation. And in the most poignant moment of the first four issues, Supergirl demonstrates her mettle while her friend Batgirl is paralyzed by depression. In this series, Superman represents courage even in the face of the apocalypse. But that's not much.

Even looked at as the first act of a three-act plot, issues one through four only barely hold together. So why am I enjoying Crisis on Infinite Earths so much? The stakes are clear and the tension is finely tuned (I have no idea how the heroes will save the day). Pérez does amazing things with panels and pages, and his pacing is superb. But mostly, it's the creators' audacity of imagination: cavemen, cowboys, and caped crusaders all sit pensively in the shadow of those enormous Kirbytech tuning forks, while a wall of white Nothing churns before them. It's the end of the universe: enjoy the show.

BOX SCORE
Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 – 4
date: April – July 1985
writer: Marv Wolfman
artist: George Pérez