Demo

   I have a conflicted relationship with Brian Wood and Becky Cloonon's Demo. Though I find almost all of Wood's projects to be of interest, I admit that I don't really enjoy them. This isn't intended as an insult to Wood's writing because there are plenty of very talented writers whose work doesn't strike a chord with me. 

   The first Brian Wood project I ever read was his Generation X work for Warren Ellis's Counter-X project. I was an X-Men completist at the time, and I wasn't enjoying ... well, any of the X-Books around that time so whatever Wood was trying to do was lost on me. But like many writers before him, company-owned super-heroes was not to Wood's taste. In his author's note to the AIT*PlanetLar collection of Demo, Wood, very politely, explains that he conceived the series after "I had spent some time a few years before writing teen superheroes for Marvel Comics, and I wanted to take a stab at something similar, but something I would have more control over, to interpret the concept of 'young people with power' the way I wanted to." The series progresses quickly through various permutations of powers and approaches to adolescence, power, and identity. Pretty long-standing and persuasive super-hero themes. But Wood eschews the narrative trajectory of the super-hero: the origin, the villain(s), the costumes, the serial story-telling. Each issue is a different character with no connection to the ones that preceded it.

   As a project, the first volume of Demo (Wood and Cloonan are planning more) is scattershot. It feels less like a collection of short stories than like a series of improvisations on a theme. Over the next few weeks, I'm hoping to write a series of posts about these stories - one per issue, at least, is the plan. Some of the issues resonate with me, while others leave me cold. I'm hoping that by putting together a more sustained reflection on Demo, I'll be able to appreciate even those issues of which I am less than fond.

   Next week: Demo #1: "NYC"

Death and Rebirth of the Author

   Roland Barthes published an influential essay in 1967 called "Death of the Author." Barthes argued against using a critical framework that relies on aspects of the author's identity - gender, race, sexual orientation, age, historical context, and so on - because it creates places an interpretive tyranny on any text. Barthes compares text to textile, remarking that a text is made up of a fabric of quotations drawn from varied and indeterminate centers of culture rather than from the singular experiences of an individual. Every reading and re-reading is a new act of creation and Barthes is more happy to consider the figure of the author as a scriptor who produces but does not command the meanings of the work.

   I don't often come back to Barthes, because I have so deeply accepted his ideas. But there are moments when I cringe a little at the dismissal of legitimate criticism or questions because the issues at stake were not "intended" by the author of the text (let's not even get into the fact that, with comics, you have enough cooks in the kitchen - writer, penciller, inker, colorist(s), editor(s), publishers, and so on - that any pure unanimity would be nearly impossible). I'm reminded of Brian Michael Bendis dismissing complaints about the assault of Tigra in New Avengers #35 because he didn't intend to make a comment about gender and violence in super-hero comics. Once the story is published, it's not really up to Joe Quesada, I'm afraid to say, just as it wasn't up to Bendis, what the story is about. It's up to readers what, if anything, the Death (and now Rebirth) of Captain America means as an allegory. From CBR's interview with Joey Q: 

Jonah Weiland: When Steve Rogers died, was there one mainstream question that you kept getting where you had to hold back from rolling your eyes?

Joe Quesada: Yes. The one question was, "What are you trying to say about America and or American politics?" [laughs] I was like, "I don't know. We're just trying to tell a great story. There's nothing more to it than that!" But they were trying to get deeper, trying to find that controversial nugget where there really wasn’t any, and at the end of the day, if we were trying to say something about American politics, we'd never be able to time it anyway because the amount of time it takes to create a comic book, etc. etc. Things happen the way they happen. But that’s the tricky thing about writing stories with a character that wears the American flag as his costume, people are going to read stuff into his stories that sometimes isn’t there.

 

   Let's ignore that Quesada didn't actually write or draw any of the issues that make up that storyline. Let's ignore the "we're just trying to tell a great story" because that's not true (it would be more accurately to say that he's trying to sell a great story). Any weird, unforeseen themes that appear, regardless of what the creators of Captain America intended, are fair game.

   Joe Quesada is the Editor in Chief, and therefore bears the responsibility for any significant stories in the Marvel U. I can sympathize with his feeling that certain reporters were just digging for a sensational sound-byte or hoping to stir up controversy. And it isn't the place of reporters to make literary interpretations (they have other important things to do). But Quesada is quite mistaken to deny that someone could see an allegory (even a poorly constructed or thematically weak allegory) where one was not intended. It's ridiculous of Quesada to say that "people are going to read stuff into his [Captain America's] stories that sometimes isn't there [sic]." If they read it, then it's there. As readers, they have created that meaning in the text. Just because this long "Death of Captain America" story was not intended to be a comment on the transition from Bush to Obama, doesn't mean that it can't be read as such. It could even be read as a layered allegory for the relative merits of the metric system, if one were so inclined. It's then up to the person who sees the subtext to argue convincingly that it is, in fact, present and persuasive. This is how we reject the bad interpretations (the metric system one, for instance) and find the good ones. Joe Quesada might disagree, but I think that one could easily make a really compelling argument about the present political moment through the lens of Captain America's death and resurrection.

 

Sigh of Relief

   Not that I really believed it, but this week's Uncanny X-Men #511 threatened to bring back Jean "Phoenix" Grey. Again. Being one of those comics fans who actually got addicted to the X-Men in the 90s (particularly the Age of Apocalypse, in all its resplendent narrative glory), I only really knew Scott and Jean together. I was really surprised when Grant Morrison killed her off over in New X-Men #150. I had been collecting X-Men comics for long enough  that they all seemed pretty rote by then. Even Morrison's stuff seemed filled with only refurbished takes on Chris Claremont's stories. When Jean actually died, even with the requisite back door left open for her eventual return, I was floored. Though Marvel didn't know what to do with most of Morrison's contributions to the X-Men, I am very glad that they didn't abandon Scott's relationship with Emma Frost. If Jean had come back, well, then we would get a love triangle instead of the less straightforward - and far more emotionally wrenching - betrayals that Scott and Emma have been inflicting on each other. I'm really looking forward to seeing how that plays out. Jean Grey will be back eventually, but her return at this time would circumvent too many interesting stories to be worth it.

Remember the Last Time?

   So, Flash: Rebirth #3 is out today (or tomorrow in Canada) and that got me wanting to re-read Mark Waid's run. Waid's Flash was one of my gateway drugs into comics (partly because a good friend of mine traded me almost the entire run up to that point, around from #62 - 100, for the #13s of the Heroes Reborn stuff. I don't know if I've ever been so close to theft in my entire life.)

   By the time it's finished, Geoff Johns's miniseries will be the same length as Waid's story (discounting the cliffhanger at the end of #73, "The Return of Barry Allen" ran from #74 - 79). By the end of #75, a reader is pretty sure that this isn't Barry Allen after all. The thematic purpose of the story was to establish Wally as a worthy successor for Barry precisely because he is a different character. Zoom, the crazed Flash fan and a clear precursor to Johns's Ur-Fanboy Superboy Prime, idolizes Barry and wants to be exactly like him. His attempts are futile, and in a bit of time-travelly confusion, they actually create the psychotic Zoom that would/had menace(d) Barry in stories already told. To stop Zoom, Wally has to move on from his own idolization of Barry and accept his role as the Flash. It's all very pop-psychology, with just enough Freud to make things the tidy motivations a little messier. Far from being a love-letter to the Silver Age, Waid's story is a pretty stirring embrace of a new character.

   What Johns's seems to be doing is a little different. For one thing, he's actually bringing Barry Allen back. If he follows his road-map from Green Lantern: Rebirth, as he has admitted in interviews, then he's planning to keep all the Flashes around but put the Silver Age version back in the title role. Johns has made the doubts about bringing Barry back into the plot of the series, as characters express a variety of opinions about what his return means. It's all very meta. He wants to, like Waid did with his story, focus on why the man in the red tights should be wearing them ... he's just arguing the opposite point that Waid did. At the same time, he's trying to preserve Wally as someone special. He wants to re-establish Barry Allen as the Flash, but keep Wally West around as something other than a junior side-kick. What Waid did was prove that the new guy deserved the job. What Johns's is doing is trying to show that the new guy didn't do anything wrong, but that he's going to be replaced anyway. It's not him ... it's us.

   It's not that I anticipate Johns is going to do a narrative disservice to Wally West. Far from it, I would guess. But, unlike the Green Lanterns, there doesn't seem to be any real publishing desire, or mythological infrastructure, to support so many Flashes. Jay gets a pass because he mostly keeps to himself over in the Justice Society. But look at Roy Harper and his Red Arrow persona. Granted, the JLA book has been a supreme mess lately, but having what amounts to two versions of the same character (in slightly different costumes) doesn't work. Sure, Wally can hang out with the Titans, but that book has too many insurmountable problems, and will just get canceled again. He'll pop up here and there in the main Flash comic, and might even be a regular supporting character, but he'll be pushed to the background.

   This stuff happens in publishing. Eventually, if a character is published for long enough, something has to be done to keep him or her fresh. It's OK to put Wally on the shelf for a while, and give Barry some air again. But I'm still convinced Ted Kord's coming back, so maybe I'm just a silly optimist.

   

Reading Bone

   Jeff Smith is pretty great. So far RASL has been energetic and inventive. Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil, though Smith's weakest work, displays a fine balance of restrained ebullience and genuine affection for its characters. But, come on, with Jeff Smith it's all about Bone. 

   Briefly, though Smith's work deserves much more, Bone is fun to look at through the lens of reading. The relationship between reader and text is one of the big themes of the entire series. The three titular Bones - Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, and Phoney Bone - resemble the hobbits of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (Smith himself has described Bone as "Bugs Bunny meets Lord of the Rings"). They are the human avatars, the characters allowing a point of entry into a medieval world. The Bones' world, encapsulated in their hometown of Boneville which is never so much as glimpsed, is described as our world would be. It seems to be an industrialized, modern society - a great contrast to the feudal, primarily agrarian world they encounter. The Bones are put in the position of readers right away: they enter the world through reading a map (a map drawn by Thorn, as it turns out, when she was a child ... the story calls out to the reader).

                                                                                                                

   By reading the map, the Bones are led into an adventure. There is a sense that Smith's world is like that of Baum's Oz books: though the adventure is real, it takes place on an imaginary plane, adjacent to the more mundane "reality." Fone Bone loses his companions in a plague of locusts, survives a long fall into a ravine, and emerges in a world that is not at all like the one he knows. Tracing Fone Bone's adventures is a copy of his favourite book, Moby Dick. Fone Bone is a reader, and is willing to launch into an impromptu lecture on Melville's novel if given even the slightest chance. Scenes from Moby Dick barge into Fone Bone's dreaming life and begin to take on a prophetic quality. The book begins to become shape the reality of the reader.

   As exemplified by Fone Bone's involvement with Moby Dick, reading becomes more than a passive act. The Bones are important in the narrative, and its actions could not take place without them but they enter a world that precedes them and will continue after they are gone. They must learn the pre-existing relationships and rich back-stories. They are often swept along by events and characters over whom they have no control. In this way, they are like readers of Smith's series, who become involved in the action and are engaged in its production (and what's a comic without a reader?).

  

   The last scene of Bone left me quite dissatisfied the first time I read the series. There seems to be no story logic for why the Bones leave. Why would they want to go back to Boneville? We hear almost nothing about families or close acquaintances back home and they don't seem to miss much about it. As with the Narnia or Oz books, I wondered why the characters would want to leave their friends and adventures behind for the mundane life they had before their life-changing adventures. But that's how reading works. You can tumble into the world for a while, but you always have to leave. When the Bones leave Thorn and Granma Ben behind, it's a sad parting because, like the Bones, you have developed affection for these characters through reading. Like the Bones, you leave them because, eventually, you have to put the book down.