Jordan Hoffman Dot Com

Over the past week or so I have read the seven collected hardbound editions of DC Comics’ recent crossover event, Blackest Night. I’d read little bits here and there but I did what the creators would have wanted me to do and I’ve treated it as a comprehensive text.

Further, instead of blogging the individual book, as I normally do, I’m gonna’ do what’s easier for me and, again, what they would probably want and stir it all up in my mind and conceive of it as just one thing, despite multiple writers and artists all adding their own flavor into the stew.

So what do I think?

I like comics with big, bold colors, and the very nature of this story (the emotional spectrum at the engine of creation/existence as made manifest by Roy G Biv) is one giant excuse to have page after page of vibrant color explode out of every panel.

I also like when obscure, particularly square Golden Age characters show up, and, therefore, I’m a fan of Geoff Johns who loves nothing more than a solid deep cut. For God’s sake, the original Mr. Terrific shows up as a zombie – you don’t get more square than him! Seriously, everyone you’ve ever cared about in the DCU past or present gets a moment on stage here.

As an avowed Green Lantern fan (and, even more so, a Green Lantern Corps fan) I found myself more interested in the main stream of this story. Maybe, just maybe, tying EVERYTHING in the DCU wasn’t exactly for me. But for a snoozer chapter here (like, say, The Question or Jonah Hex) there is something really bizarre that takes some risks – Superboy Prime assaulting the offices of 1700 Broadway, I’m looking at you.

Nothing tops the Corps, though, and hats off to Blackest Night being a Green Lantern-driven story. Because Green Lantern is awesome. Green Lantern/Green Lantern Corps is the greatest thing happening in comics right now, and much of what has been making it cool is all the weird-ass shit leading up to Blackest Night. The Blue Lanterns are here to stay, as is Larfleeze and a rage-napalm-spitting Atrocitus.

Okay, my wife may’ve thought I was nuts wasting an entire beautiful Sunday plowing through these weighty tomes, but she’s enough of an Indigo Lantern at heart to allow me the indulgence. (Now if only I can convince her to dress like a Star Sapphire – reowr!)

The 1970s reboot of the JSA, introducing Power Girl and doing its best to make sense of Earth-One and Earth-Two.

These are the last embers of the Silver Age whiz bam pow comics – with some wonderfully dated narrative prose from Paul Levitz. It’s stupid, it’s fun. Wildcat is my favorite.

The email correspondence between author and filmmaker (in Sri Lanka and Los Angeles, respectively) is interesting in that I find all behind-the-scenes material on filmmaking interesting. What makes this book such a treasure is Clarke nerding the hell out about the miracle of the then very much embryonic internet.

To send and receive email in 1983 was a very difficult process – and Clarke’s extremely detailed descriptions are a wonderful capsule. That he recognizes how swiftly the method of communication will be adopted and altered is just as striking.

Hyams meant well with 2010. I should watch it again.

Right on the heels of GL’s Agent Orange is this final pre-Blackest Night arc from the GL Corps.

There’s a riot in the sciencells, Arisia and Sodam Yat fight Mongul and the Sinestro Corps on Daxam, Soranik Natu learns the truth about her father and Kyle and Guy stand-up to the Alpha Lanterns – even if it means protecting the life of (now Red Lantern) Bolphunga the Unrelenting.

Read that sentence again.

Now ask me why I love the Green Lantern Corps.

An absolute victory of an arc – the final one of the straight GL comics before the start of “Blackest Night.”

Hal Jordan runs afoul of yet ANOTHER color in the emotional spectrum: the orange light of insatiable avarice.

The will of Green must forge with the hope of Blue to. . . .oh, who cares, show me some crazy aliens and pour gobs of fluorescent ink on the page! And a giant blue sage elephant-warrior!

This is one of the most fun GL books out there.

Picking up nicely where Emerald Dawn, the Vol. 3 origin tale of the early 1990s, left off, it is time for Hal Jordan to a) face the music of his drunk driving and b) begin to learn that Sinestro is a persnickety dick.

Tremendous fun – while still a little bit of a Gee Golly Gosh holdout from the Silver Age, but still dazzling in its trippy space cops storyline.

500 (mostly) great pages of badass bounty hunter comics.

Here’s what I discovered – when I read Star Wars comics, I hear Wilhelm Screams in my head.

As this is a massive collection, there are different writers and artists on display. Some are better than others. When it’s cookin’, though, it’s great.

My favorite story is called Underworld: The Yavin Vassilika, which has competing Hutts sending all the great Bounty Hunters, such as IG-88, Dengar, Zuckuss and Lando & Han, on a wild goose chase. The drawings are really groovy and the fan service is through the roof.

I tore through his hefty tome on an airplane and now I’m hungry for more.

This may be a first for me when commenting about a Marvel book – but this is absolutely fucking fantastic. This and Vol 1 (Super-Human) of The Ultimates is, with some minor tweaking, all they need for creating a fantastic Avengers movie.

If the Thor that comes out in theaters is *this* Thor, we’re in for some real fun.

Truly beautiful, disturbing imagery and one of the best uses of comics as a true artform. Light on story, heavy on tone – wonderful abstract painted panels that threaten to rise to the level of genuine, impressionistic art.

(The stuff about Harvey Dent gateway drugging from a coin to a deck of cards to the IChing is cool, too.)

Does a Justice Society of America/Justice League of America crossover need to bring in the Legion of Superheroes? That’s just wayyyy too many capes and masks to keep track of.

All the charm of the JSA’s first (recent) book is overwhelmed by the massive, plodding plot.

A lively good start to a new iteration of the Marvel team-up. Mark Millar has a good ear, even if he likes to date himself (too much Freddie Prinze Jr.) though the characterization of Hank Pym, Bruce Banner and an out-of-time Steve Rogers are pretty damned cool. Good to know Thor is using his hammer to destroy corporate America, too.

Lots of new crazy developments on Oa!

Hal Jordan and John Stewart meet new Lanterns both Red and Blue as the GLC prepare for the execution of Sinestro. Yet, for some reason, Sinestro seems excited by all this.

A very colorful book.

I do not make a habit of reviewing single issue comics. This is for a number of reasons – mostly because it takes about five minutes to read most single issues, and reporting on something so (let’s face it) insubstantial as that for this blog would start a precedent I don’t think I could handle.

Still, though, a special shout out must be given to this one-shot that came out two weeks ago. It is one of five in the second round of stories told from the Joker’s POV about some of Gotham’s most notorious villains. Other recent entires have been on Killer Croc and Harley Quinn (both pretty good) and the Riddler (which stank.)

The one of the Mad Hatter, however, is the type of comic you can hold up as Exhibit A if you ever get in a bar fight with some snob who wants to argue that comics aren’t a true, intelligent art forum.

It is strangely and beautifully drawn, truly surreal and absolutely creepy. It’s just about The Mad Hatter being obsessive and murderous and is very light on plot, but it is quite shocking in its delivery. I strongly recommend checking it out even if you don’t know jack about Batman or what’s going on in the DC Universe. It may’ve been conceived as just filler material for the shelves, but it is five minutes worth of brilliance.

So here is further evidence that when I get into something, I really get into something.

Not collected in any paperback are four issues of a halted “Season Two” of Top 10 and one Special Issue.

It’s definitely the least interesting Top 10 out there. Even the non-Alan Moore “Beyond the Farthest Precinct” collection has the signature frakked-up sci fi element. This plays it much more like a straight police procedural.

The good news is that there is less fancy stuff to get between you and the characters you now love – so it is fun. (As is a B-story about a hero who is caught “crossover dressing” by his wife and takes a weekend retreat with the Premise Keepers to find his origin story. Comics fans will never stop slapping their knees at that shit.)

This is for the few diehards out there. Worth reading if you qualify, but not for the general audience.

I adore Alan Moore’s Top 10, its prequels and sidequels, so how could I not read an authorized sequel, even if Moore himself didn’t write it?

Beyond the Farthest Precinct, set five years after we’ve last looked in on Neopolis is. . . .good. It’s good. It doesn’t sing with the unmistakable Alan Moore brilliance, but it is good.

Certainly the love for references and visual Easter eggs continues. There are just as many here as in classic Top 10. The characters don’t really ring quite as true, though. You can definitely tell something is missing. Still, though, a fun time, and worth checking out if you are already a fan.

This prequel to Alan Moore’s Top 10 doesn’t come anywhere close to the brilliance of the original – or of the sidequel Smax, but it is still tremendously fun to return to Neopolis. There are a few moments here and there of Moore really firing and spitting out ideas as wonderful as anything else in his canon.

Very soon, I think, I will just break and announce I am reading anything with Moore’s name on it. He’s that good.

A great trade paperback put out just before Blackest Night that is a must for fans.

It is Geoff Johns’ GL mixed-tape, essentially, picking out just the stories (going back to Silver Age) that he really digs. Some classic bits I’ve read before, but some deeper cuts, too. Makes for a great collection & Johns’ commentary is (mostly) interesting, too.

This just-concluded arc shows Northlanders has it for establishing tone and getting you in the headspace of brutality and harsh climates.

Story-wise, it doesn’t deliver on its promise, but it is still pretty effing cool to be trapped with this village on the Volga as factions fight for power and one woman fights for survival.

When oh when does the Northlanders movie get announced?