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"