Andy's Blog

Quite an interesting essay from J. Michael Straczynski, about why he won’t be doing any more comics work. This was interesting to me on several levels. I too have some vision problems which may get worse, though hopefully not to the level he experienced. And I too make my living by staring at computer screens and typing on a keyboard. So that’s a bit scary.

And his compulsion to shake things up whenever he gets too comfortable is admirable. That’s something I really don’t have, at least not to the extent that he has. If I get comfortable at something, or in some place, I usually just try to hang on. Though I do try to learn new things often, and my last job change was largely motivated by a desire to shake things up a bit. So I guess I’m not a total “stick in the mud.”

I’ll miss his comic book work. I enjoyed a lot of his stuff, including Rising Stars and Midnight Nation.

Then one day, that same voice, the voice that keeps challenging me and kicking over the apple cart and forcing me to start over, said “You’re done, move on, find something else to do, stretch yourself as a writer, take chances, risk failure.”

Source: Why J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI Is Leaving Comic Books, In His Own Words

I just finished reading Grant Morrison’s Action Comics run. (He wrote the first eighteen issues of the New 52 Action Comics relaunch, starting in 2011.) As with a lot of his work, it’s a bit overwhelming. There’s a good review of the run here, and an “exit interview” with Grant Morrison about his run here.

I really liked the Rags Morales art, especially in the early issues. The simple design of his costume (t-shirt, jeans, and work boots) works better than I thought it would. And Morales and Morrison made a conscious choice to reference the look of the earliest Superman stories from the 30s, in terms of the way the character moves and interacts with his environment.

The narrative goes a little crazy, fairly early. It almost seems like Morrison just had a short attention span or something. But pretty much everything ties together in the end. The “fifth dimensional” aspect of the story explains the time jumps and the seeming lack of connection between some of the stories.

This series makes a good counterpoint to his All-Star Superman series. That one featured a more mature Superman, influenced by the Silver Age Superman comics. This series is more about the Golden Age Superman.

If you wanted to pick up the series, it’s completely contained in the first three of these Action Comics trade paperbacks. It’s definitely not a story for everyone. You need to be able to appreciate Morrison’s oddball approach, and be OK with a somewhat non-linear narrative. And it helps to have a good sense of humor about some of the more ridiculous aspects of Superman’s history.

I just finished reading the last of the stack of Legion of Super-Heroes comics that I started reading a few weeks ago. The last issue I read was Legion 63, the final issue in Paul Levitz’s long run, and the final issue of the Baxter series. I really enjoyed reading these, though things got a little dicey near the end.

When Keith Giffen came back on the title, with issue 50, a lot of stuff about it started to change. The final storyline, The Magic Wars, was fun to read, but is obviously starting to set up stuff for the new “Five Years Later” post-Levitz series. So a lot of the charm of the earlier Levitz/LaRoque run was gone by then, with several characters departing or getting killed off, new uniforms, and other late 80s / early 90s stuff creeping in. I find Keith Giffen’s art to be interesting, but often frustrating, and likewise I’m also often frustrated with books that he’s plotted or co-written.

I really admire Paul Levitz’s long run on this book. He wrote the book for about ten years straight, pretty much all through the 80s. I don’t remember exactly when I started buying the Legion book, but it was fairly early in his run, just before the Great Darkness Saga started. So, a very good time for an impressionable teenage superhero and science fiction fan to start reading that book. Levitz was great at juggling the large cast of characters in the Legion, bringing different characters in and out of the spotlight, matching them up with each other in different and interesting ways, and just generally keeping the whole gigantic space opera of it running for so long.

I recently discovered a podcast about the Legion, that is currently talking about some of the books I’ve just finished with. It’s called the Legion of Substitute Podcasters. It’s pretty geeky and a bit rambling, but it’s fun to listen to, if you have the time and the interest. I’ve also found an episode of another podcast that talks about Levitz’s run. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’ve got it bookmarked. It’s kind of cool that people are still talking about these books.

Well, that was a fun trip into some old comics nostalgia. I feel like I need to read something contemporary and/or high-brow next, though I’m not sure I’m ready for high-brow. So maybe just the first few issues of Civil War II or some of the DC Rebirth stuff that I’ve been picking up at the comic shop.