Strange Adventures (comics)

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Mitch Gerards, Evan "Doc" Shaner

Collects: Strange Adventures (Vol. 5) #1-12

I think one of the things I like least about Tom Kings work is that I always feel like shit after I read one.

His writing often has a theme he goes back to, trauma, and he's admittedly good at it. It likely stems from his past experience in the CIA. He knows how trauma can fuck you up and most of his stories are about how it can break you down, lead you to do things you might never have without it, from self destruction all the way to war crimes. It's a good theme, but I wonder if he ever feels the need to write beyond that. I also wonder if he realizes any time he takes a comic character his approach doesn't do a lot more than ugly them up pretty bad.

Adam Strange as a character is very much in the vein of classic space adventurer serials like Buck Rogers or John Carter of Mars. He's one day teleported to a far off planet, falls in love with it and uses its technology to fight against anything that might threaten it. A lot of adventure and sci-fi, pulpy stuff. There's the occasional war, but it's much in the way that sort of stuff is depicted in comic books, without dwelling much on the horrors of it. Pretty clean cut Silver Age fare.

Tom Kings "Strange Adventures"* asks what it looks like when we stuff all the horrible stuff in.

We start after the war on Rann, the planet of which Strange has become an adopted son of sorts, is over. Strange and the Rannians had pushed back the Pykkt and saved their planet. Now, in the wake of the war, a retired Adam has returned to Earth with his wife. What awaits him is adulation and medals. He wrote a memoir about the war, which carries the same title as this comic, and spends his days at book signings. Until one day, one of the people who showed up for the signing turns hostile. He screams about knowing what Strange did, about the things he'd done to the Pykkt, and causes a scene. 

Under intense scrutiny, Strange turns to Batman, asking him to dig into Stranges past and life to absolve him of wrongdoing. Batman rightly decides that he cannot do this for Strange, that given their long history of fighting together and friendship Batman could not possibly be objective, but he promises to turn the case over to someone who could. Michael Holt, Mr. Terrific. A man who lives up to his name. Suddenly, Adam Strange is wary of the investigation he called for. Turns out it's for good reason, as when Terrific starts digging deeper, some things stop adding up. By the end, a lot more will be revealed than Adam Strange bargained for.

As always with Tom King, it's impeccably written. Even when I don't much care for the work in question, I can never deny he's a skilled writer. And he synergizes well with Mitch Gerards and Evan Shaner. The story, as it unfolds, switches between the present day on Earth and snapshots of moments of the war on Rann in the past, both with a different style. On Earth, it's more detailed, almost grimier, reflecting the uglier side of things slowly coming to light. On Rann, it's brighter, cleaner, with simple lines and bold colors, as if to reflect the inspiring story he told of the war, of the biggest moments. It's a neat trick and the contrast can be a gut punch when things start breaking down in the present while we see moments in the past of triumph and love.

Tom King is spoiled for great artists to work with. He's like Mark Miller in that way. Only, you know, actually good at the whole writing thing. Or at least he's a hell of a lot more consistently good than Mark Miller's ever been.

I think I just don't like his approach or what he does to characters or settings. Most of the time it just makes me roll my eyes. I think back to Murderin' Riddler for one example but he does it to almost anything he touches. There's Batman, obviously, which he positioned as a form a slow burn suicide. But he also did it to Mr. Miracle, who may or may not be trapped in an eternal purgatory after a suicide attempt he may or may not have escaped from. He's done it to the JLI, where Guy Gardner is seemingly murdered quite brutally** and Ice ends up essentially fitting the femme fatale role that's never once been even remotely hinted for her as a character. He takes interesting characters, often with depth, and utterly breaks them in ways you can't walk back from.

I cringe when a new Tom King comic is announced with some DC property I like, because there will be some new way in which characters I like are twisted in ugly ways.

That said, I should say that it's fine and despite my probably harsh words I'm not mad about it or anything. His Batman run aside most of his work is self contained and designated outside main continuity. It harms no one allowing him to do his take on these things because he doesn't have to worry about whether he breaks the proverbial toy or not. Adam Strange is as he always has been in the DC Universe proper. For this reason it's not like I'm even saying "why do they keep giving this guy work". They're often Black Label. He can go nuts. I'll either like it or I won't, and that's okay.

I just think, after numerous work, I just don't like the way he takes these bright characters and utterly breaks them. Even when it's not in continuity, it's not fun to see Adam Strange as a war criminal who has done some terrible things beyond that I won't talk about because it would spoil the whole third act. Part of me thinks that taking these bright, colorful characters and doing such utterly nasty things to them is about as childish as you could ever view these fictional entities once written for kids.

That's probably why I've turned on a fair bit of 80's comics. You know the ones, where everything had to grim and gritty it up. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but it starts to feel so very edgelord, to me, to take things that are meant to be a positive escape from a frankly terrifying real world and drag them through the mud. That's probably why I've turned on a lot of Alan Moores work, long held as classics, including Watchmen. Some like Swamp Thing fit, because that's horror, but everything else? Geez, dude.

But outside my personal feelings about approach? Or content? Strange Adventures is a very, very well written and drawn comic book. And it may well work incredibly well for you. Maybe this approach is what some people are looking for and it's good it's there for them. I don't even regret reading it despite disliking its tone and I would encourage anyone to try it for themselves. It might be their new favorite. It's well written, well drawn, I'd even say that overall it's a good story. I almost never regret reading a great comic, even if it makes me feel like shit.

I simply never need to read it again.

Batman - One Bad Day: Riddler (comics)

 

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Mitch Gerards

Original Graphic Novel

To my surprise, this is the first time I've reviewed a comic or graphic novel written by Tom King. A strange omission, really, given I've read several of his comics. So I might as well get this out of the way first.

I've liked some of Tom Kings work but whenever the man is on something related to Batman he just absolutely loses me.

I didn't review it, partly because it slipped my mind during the years long span I'd been away from this blog, but I had read roughly half of his time on the mainline Batman book during the Rebirth relaunch/rebrand. First arc was shaky but not bad, but he lost me with the second, I Am Suicide. His thesis statement for Batman, at least that early in the run, seemed to be that the very identity of Batman was meant as a form of slow burn suicide in the wake of his parents death. 

I'm not going to go into all the problems I have with that because this review is not about that run, but at least a part of my problem with it lies in what an utterly dour, cynical, selfish slant this places on the entire being of Bruce Wayne and Batman. It removes anything heroic about the crusade and, in some ways, makes him a monster. It colors everything differently. Robin and the Bat family suddenly become less about found family and trauma bonding, instead becoming about a psychotic broken manchild dragging a bunch of kids into something that he intends to kill him someday. It's less about justice and more like a slow form of slitting his wrists.

Suffice to say, I didn't finish the run. I made it farther than you might think, all the way to the wedding-that-wasn't, before I called it. It was around when Catwoman decided Batman couldn't be effective if he was happy. Maybe that was editorial, who knows, but it fit too well with what King was doing even if he didn't originally intend it. I was looking for some kind of refutation of this thesis, but somewhere around fifty issues in it didn't seem to be coming and it was, frankly, a little too late even if that actually was the endgame. The run kind of ruined Batman and Catwoman together for me, to the point I don't really want to read it anymore, and when I saw the next arc was going to be super dark Batdickery like we were still in the 90's, I dipped. Out of like fifty issues I enjoyed the double date two parter and that was pretty much it. Kite-Mans reinvention was great, but it happened amidst an overlong and weirdly bad take on a war between two rogues.

This graphic novel has the benefit of being out of continuity, I assume, and boy is that ever a good thing.

Most of this overlong preamble has been spent complaining about Kings take on Batman, so this is a good enough spot to break that a bit and talk about what works. Tom King is a talented writer. That's obvious even in the things I don't like. He has a nice rhythm and storytelling sensibility that combines to feel very him, if that makes any sense at all. I can dislike a story he writes, but it's less an issue with the mechanics or flow than it is with what the story is about, themes and the like. The mechanics are the aspects of the bookending sequences that I like, even as I don't much care for the ending itself. We'll point of view through a bystander as they set off home from work, texting his wife, then bam, cut to black. We get several black panels for the rest of the page, signifying death, before flipping to the next where confirmation comes with CCT footage of the mans last moments.

It's the trick The Sopranos famously pulled in the very last scene of the show, only this graphic novel knew to set up and explain it beforehand so no one is confused at the final reprise.

Mitch Gerards is one of Kings better collaborators. Which is not a diss on the others, Tom King seems to attract good artists, Mitch is just that good. There's a moodiness to everything, a dreariness, that colors every scene without being dark or grimy. Shadows are heavy, but the other colors contrast through brightness. Slim shafts of white for rain, a near constant in any outdoor scene. Deep in the book, Gerards hands us one of the loveliest scene transitions in comics through use of a basketball court. The change in time period signified by color, the past using the haze of orange that's been part of every flashback breaking into the thick shadows and dark greens hanging over the present day sequences. Top shelf work.

Too bad about the actual story.

I'll preface here by giving a big old SPOILER WARNING. I'm going to talk about the entire plot. Blogger doesn't exactly have spoiler tags, so this is the best I can do. If you somehow made it to my site, I assume you want my opinion and to give that, well, I gotta talk about the story. Otherwise, you might as well cut here and rest assured I didn't like it. I think I'm done with giving arbitrary grades, so there's nothing like that to look for. I'll also note these are all my opinions, so you may feel differently, and also that this is not intended for continuity so it's more or less harmless.

All that now out of the way, One Bad Day: Riddler as a story is essentially bad fanfiction.

Strong statement? Depends on how you mean it. I have a fairly positive view of fanfiction. It's essentially free, democratized writing. Anyone can write whatever they want and put it out for their peers to read. It isn't making any money, so burgeoning writers can play with characters and settings they would otherwise never be allowed to. You know, since capitalism and our copyright laws are an utter joke. 

Most people like to say that "most fanfiction is bad". So? Have you taken a look at a lot of things that have actually been published? Eragon and Harry Potter were once wildly popular despite the actual writing being somewhat pedestrian, at times bad. 50 Shades of Grey made a load of money and that started out as actual fanfiction. You can get enjoyment or like characters even in bad work. That's the entire concept of "good bad" media.

Also, to be blunt, most of todays most popular media are basically corporate approved fanfiction. Stan Lee hasn't exactly written Spider-Man or Iron Man since the 60's. Bill Finger and Bob Kane have been dead a long time, but Batman lives on. We place too much stress and negative feeling on the word simply because it's unofficial or because random people are allowed to put whatever they want out.

When I think of bad fanfiction, I think less in writing quality and more of a bunch of tired tropes or lazy ideas. Things that have been overdone. Possibly pretentious. Often rooted in a misunderstanding of characters and theme. Or maybe they just make everything really gritty and dark and depressing because that's real, man.

Unrelated to the previous sentence, I joke, the Riddler is a murderer in this comic and the smartest bestest man in the world.

Murderin' Riddler is not a take I like, but whatever, I can deal with it. The Batman had him as a killer and that worked. But that film was also trying to tell a story about class inequality that tied into what Riddler was doing. He, along with Catwoman and Batman himself, was a third of a trio that spoke to three different walks of life, status and privilege. It played to the theme of the film and that's why I accepted it.

In One Bad Day: Riddler, the Riddler decides to just start offing civilians because all the riddles prior to this were just one big game to him. Now he's tired of the game and wants to send a message to Batman that old Eddie is his better. Interspersed with all this are flashbacks to Edwards childhood as the son to the dean of a prestigious school. Said father demands perfection or he breaks out the corporal punishment. One of Edwards teachers likes to encourage outside the box thinking so he puts one riddle at the end of tests. Edward cannot think outside the box and gets frustrated so he cheats. He's caught, but the teacher gently chastises Edward. However, when the teacher mentions he'll have to tell Edwards father and hopes at least it'll be a learning experience, Edward coldly murders him on the basketball court, slamming the teachers face into the pavement until it's crushed. 

That is his "One Bad Day".

It's rather groan inducing, really, when you get to the end of the comic and realize everything has just been a pretentious "the gloves are off, the silly villain everyone laughed at is a grim, dark, gritty killer" story. Hell, it's groan inducing even before you get to that point. In order to make this all work, Edward Nygma is given a competency and cognitive ability that borders on superhuman. But really, it's just kind of stupid.

Eddie always knew who Batman was, you see, along with all of Bruces kids. He's been able to sneak in and out of the Manor a lot over the years, get into safes, even found The Pearls. Seen everyone sleeping. He knows who every cop and guard is, who their family is. There's a confusing sequence late in the book where he seems to be able to lay down on the ground, his words causing the guards to shoot and kill each other. He convinces Film Freak to slit his throat after Nygma bests Film Freak in a film trivia game. He knows about Jim Gordons marriage failing, what happened to Sarah Essen, a bunch of personal events he should never be able to find out because how would he have been there. He was apparently the one who gave Joker the plans that led to the famous apartment shooting in Killing Joke.

You see what I'm getting at here? I didn't even get everything. Written out plain, it's absolutely ludicrous. How hard is it to hit that point in a DC Universe story? Where I accept a man who can fly and shoot heat beams. Where a guy dresses like a Bat to fight crime without being crippled by year three. Where a ring powers up and creates things out of green light. It's sudden over competence, reminding me of some fanfiction I've read in the past where a fan of a minor character is upset at how said character is treated in universe so they're going to make them a real threat.

All in service of an ending you know is coming. I sighed halfway through. The threat in the last confrontation is that Riddler knows everything, he's changed and if Batman ever hits him again he'll kill someone, so Batman has to leave him alone. Then a couple page sequence of everyone being scared stupid by him, where mob bosses and bank heads all decide if the Riddler shows up you give him whatever he wants. Everyone laughed at him but now he's scary. No one can stop him, everyone is too afraid.

Did you guess how it ends?

Batman tells the Riddler that he can change too. That Riddler has been abusing his weakness for mercy. We point of view with Riddler. In the mirror he finally notices Batman behind him. Cut to black. Four whole panels of it.

What can I say but "fuck off".

It's definitely non continuity. I don't think I have to explain why at this point. So you can take it or leave it as a what if. But for my money, it's a comic that is unintentionally sillier than any gimmick scheme Riddler's ever done. The book never tells us that Batman killing the Riddler is the only way, only implying it through a seemingly extreme no win scenario. You'll often see some people excuse storytelling beats like this, where a character who kills is suddenly forced to cross that line because they were "left with no choice". The film Man of Steel is a good example with its climax of Superman being forced to execute Zod to save a family, a hollow sequence that occurs after the two practically level Metropolis amidst their fight and likely kill tens of thousands. But there's always a choice.

After all, everything is as it was written to be.