Blog Monkey Read Comic.

If there's one thing I love, it's stories that have an element of Frankenstein's Monster about them. Things that rip, and tear, and rend their way through history, classic literature, decades of comic book continuity and then sew the pieces back together into a new whole. I wouldn't say they're my favourite stories, but I love them none the less. Part of this appeal is the 'Where's Wally?' level of fun to be had. Or Waldo, for our Trans-Atlantic friends. One of my proudest moments, when I was still becoming confident enough to tackle more complex, dare I say, 'adult' books was figuring out who Anubis and Thoth were before their true identities were revealed in American Gods and I don't think I've really outgrown the wonder of sifting through works like that, like Fables and like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and either identifying who the various characters are supposed to represent, and if I don't know (as I didn't know Anansi at the time) finding out. Even when you know the general pool that the writer is drafting from, it can still take you by surprise. Afterall, one minute Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray are making love against a tree, the next...

... Is that... Is that Rupert the Bear, Alan Moore?!

I think this is part of the reason I'm as enthralled with superhero comics as I am. This whole notion of taking otherwise disparate characters that may only be linked by the tenuous bond of happening to be published in the same format and genre as the others is the cornerstone of the superhero team up book. Not to mention with most of the big names having seventy years of history, and even smaller tier characters usually having at least a decade or three behind them, one writers interpretation of a character in 1983 could be galaxies away from another in 1960, or even 2014. Stitching together the sordid history of Hawkman, as Geoff Johns attempted in Justice Society, was as much an act of pushing several different characters into one mould as any issue of Justice League or Avengers. I dread to think what would happen if one were to try and blend all of the various identities of the Question from Ditko up into one continuity and one, blank, unstaring face and we've already seen the maddeningly brilliant, and often just plain maddening, results of Grant Morrison trying to make every single moment of Bat-Continuity work in one incredibly disjointed line.

It's an amazing strength, and an incredible weakness really. It allows for even the most minor character to be reinvented anew, for the grand tapestry of continuity to be wound, unwound and rewound again as any writer or editor or artist sees fit, displaying a whole new, exciting work for the audience to behold. Of course, on the downside there are always those who much prefer how the tapestry used to be, thank you very much! And even if one can forgive this, and roll with the punches, after so many alterations and re-airings even the most resilient tapestry starts to become frayed and faded. I'm put in the mind of something Paul Cornell once said regarding Doctor Who, that sometimes it does a franchise good to lay fallow, and the relevance that statement holds to many a big title out there, but that's perhaps a discussion for another day.

Image taken from aintitcool.com

Failing all of the above, though, there's always just the ultimate expression of Where's Wally/Waldo? in comic media, the big battle scene/charge forward/team meeting where even if your most beloved character is only known by two people in the entire world, if one of those people is the writer of what you're reading? Chances are you'll find him! JLA/Avengers was practically pornography for this kind of thing, involving characters from across both of the big two in costumes from more eras than you can shake a stick at, and I have to admit... I loved it.

So given my now much ruminated on love of this kind of story, when I saw the Kickstarter page for Code Monkey Save World, I was in.

Code Monkey Save World, for those who don't know, is a comic book project by writer Greg Pak and musician Jonathan Coulton to transform Coulton's musical work into a story of fumbling heroism, inept villainy and unrequited love. You can read more about the project here. For those of you who have no idea who Jonathan Coulton is, well, this may ring a bell...

But he's oh so much more than just that one, albeit rather brilliant, song. Jonathan Coulton is a bard for the new age, a man who in days of yore would be telling grand tales of adventure and love and humdrum office work and the material worth of extremely fancy pants around roaring camp fires. And they'd also be rather amusing to boot! His songs are all quirky little stories in and of themselves, telling self-contained tales of colourful characters that will bloom to life in your imagination and, at the very least, put a smile on your face. The idea of these songs being brought to life in comic book form is alluring enough as it is, and Greg Pak, the writer behind the fantastically excellent Incredible Hercules series, is certainly the man to do it.

So, as the popular internet meme often cries, I shut up and I gave them my money.

Fast forward to a few months later, and a non-de-script brown envelope arrived at my door earlier today. Inside, I found the following:

I'd been reading Smoke and Mirrors all afternoon, and it seemed like the perfect antidote to the string of rather unsettling short stories that come after The Goldfish Pool. A literary palette cleanser, if you will. I was fairly excited, I'd only read the first issue on it's own, resolving to experience the rest of the story in one sitting. I'm glad I did, really, it read a whole lot more fluidly than my experience with reading the first issue alone.

You see, Code Monkey Save World is not really the kind of book that demands a keen eye in case you miss a small, hidden away reference or a character you think is an extra is in fact a wink to another song. There are some nice touches, and great detailing in the background. I love, for example, that the SCM company name is featured prominently in the first few pages - Giving those in the know a clue of what's to come, without being entirely too obvious. But for the most part, it focuses it's efforts on bringing to life a few characters and scenarios from a handful of songs with a laser keenness, rather than becoming a menagerie of tit-bits and nudge-nudge-wink-wink references from across Coulton's discography.

Instead it exemplifies the other reason why I love these kinds of stories, the way they allow writers to take existing ideas and characters that were presented in one way and then expose them to whole new elements not possible in their original incarnation. It would be like throwing Sherlock Holmes into Hogwarts, or Darth Vader into King Arthur's court. You may not get anything particularly good from it, you may even be completely dismissive of it in principle, but if it existed and was put into the right pair of creative hands, well, you'd want a peek, wouldn't you? I know I would.

The one thing I think Pak has done extremely well in this project, is to take just the right elements from just the right songs so that all the stories are allowed to interweave and entwine together to make something wholly unique, but still feeling very true to the original voice of the music. This isn't just spot the song reference, it's taking the stories from Jonathan Coulton's songs and carefully stitching them together into something else. To the point where I can happily listen to The Future Soon and imagine, very clearly, that the poor, hapless, lovesick soul in that song, is one and the same person as the maniacal super villain from Skullcrusher Mountain. And to be honest, I think that's a much greater achievement, that must have taken a hell of a lot of careful planning and work connecting the various dots, than a cursory read of the comic would imply.

Couple this with some good, but not perfect, characterisation, an upbeat tone of sly humour throughout and some very clean, very beautiful art from Takeshi Miyazawa and for me, at least, this is something I'm very proud to have had a hand in making happen. I notice the spine of the book has a little '1' on it, and if this creative team intends to do more in future? I'll definitely be game at throwing them some more money, and look forward to seeing what other songs they want to not only bring to life, but breathe a whole new life of their own, into next.

Final verdict? It most definitely puts the rock in the house!

Alan Moore, knows the score... Or does he?

So, something I wrote in my last post got me thinking. It's a topic I'm almost afraid to touch, because I know I have friends who feel very strongly on the matter, and it's hardly timely, but I promised weekly blogs (to myself, if nobody else!) and this is what has been buzzing around my brain this week. So here we go!

Last post when I wrote about Day of the Doctor, I mentioned in passing Doctor Who's inclusivity and how, at it's best, it had something for everyone. This got me thinking about something that got the internet somewhat riled a few months ago, when a snippet of an Alan Moore interview was posted around various comic book sites. In this interview, Alan Moore had the audacity to say... Well, see for yourself...

 "I hate superheroes. I think they're abominations. They don't mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience... These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it's nothing to do with them. It's an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men. Someone came up with the term graphic novel. These readers latched on to it; they were simply interested in a way that could validate their continued love of Green Lantern or Spider-Man without appearing in some way emotionally subnormal... I don't think the superhero stands for anything good. I think it's a rather alarming sign if we've got audiences of adults going to see the Avengers movie and delighting in concepts and characters meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of the 1950s."

 You can read the full interview at the Guardians website here, where Alan has a nice chat about the most recent project with his name attached and has a little pop at Grant Morrison to boot. But what you see above is the majority of the "offensive" material, and many comic book sites chose to cut it down even smaller than that, to a sentence or a snippet.

Now, let's make a few things clear. Alan Moore doesn't hate superheroes. I know he just said he did above, right up there, in black and white but he later clarifies he hates what they've become, 'they don't mean what they used to mean... I don't think the superhero stands for anything good'. At the time I also argued that, perhaps, he didn't mean to say that enjoying these things as an adult was emotional subnormal. Afterall, how could he? Alan Moore is a fan of what superhero comics used to be, if not what they are today, and will talk for hours about Shuster, Siegel, Ditko and Kirby with the best of them. In fact, he does so in great detail in this video about Stan Lee's contribution to Spider-Man. If those with a vested interest in superheroes in their adult years are emotionally subnormal, then he must be too. Which can't be right, can it? But in the time since, I've changed my mind. I think Alan Moore meant every word but he doesn't care about appearing emotionally abnormal for the things he loves, and nor should we. Surely, that's the very lifeblood of geek culture, right there?

Stripping away all the bitterness and the purposely confrontational tone, Alan Moore's point is fairly simple. The modern audience for superhero comics has come to expect their entertainment to grow with them and adapt into something that suits their more adult tastes, rather than evolve into something that may capture the imagination of a modern audience of children in the same way that comic books entranced him as a child. Some might see this as a good thing, some might wonder, in the face of competition such as video games and the internet, what else publishers can do but indulge their older audiences but for Moore this is a problem.

And... I'm surprised to find that on thinking about it, I actually agree with him.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm very much a lover of modern superhero comics and until I was forced to slash my comic budget to next-to-nothing I was picking up a good twenty-to-thirty titles a week. While I was collecting, I loved them. I enjoyed the highs of Geoff Johns Green Lantern enough to ignore the lows, I despaired at the cancellation of Doom Patrol and L.E.G.I.O.N. (still two of the best superhero titles in years, in my opinion) and I despaired that the current Legion of Superheroes titles in the new 52 didn't really seem for me. But as I was reading, I started to notice a problem. It first hit me in Batman, and it hit me quite hard years ago, just after HUSH was published. All the stories were becoming very similar, all built around the central pillar of 'MY PARENTS ARE DEEEEEEEEAD!!!' angst that Bruce feels, all concerned with misery and dwelling on mistakes and something very peculiar was happening to the villains. They seemed to becoming more brutal, more savage, embracing taboos such as cannibalism and self-mutilation to make them seem more frightening. They were becoming alarmingly savage, and to be honest... Sometimes it was a very tough read.

Taking a few steps back I started to realise, this isn't something that's particular to Batman. It was rife in the DC titles I was reading. Green Lantern featured Black Hand blowing his own brains out, very graphically, on panel. Supposedly minor characters were being butchered in increasingly gory and creative ways to up the stakes in big events and make the new, big villain look all the more scary and ruthless. Barry Allen, a light hearted man with a healthy relationship with his wife and two parents very prominently in the frame was suddenly made an orphan, now driven by solving the murder of his mother that his father had been wrongly convicted for. Somewhere, somehow, in so many of the titles I was reading - It seemed as though the fun had either gone, or was increasingly being asked to take a backseat to the kind of drama, angst and graphic depictions of violence that, while I'd never say has no place in superhero comics, surely shouldn't be allowed to be this prominent.

Now, to be clear, I can only really talk with authority to what I read in DC comics. When it comes to Marvel, I'm not expert and for all I know, they're a haven of wonderful stories told in a way that's accessible to all. Although considering Sentry tore Ares clean in two in a gore laden double page spread and a couple of other, worrying story beats I caught drift of I can't say for sure. I'm also not saying that all superhero titles need to be child friendly, in fact (before you throw your Tiny Titans collections at my head!) my argument isn't that titles need to be child friendly at all - They should be family friendly. I can't help but think that if I can't pick up the core titles of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, all these staples of the superhero genre and be just as comfortable sharing them with a ten year old as I would an eighty year old, in the same way that I'd very comfortably settle down to watch Doctor Who with just about anyone of any age range without thinking, then surely there's a problem. It's the one point I certainly don't agree with Moore on, superheroes shouldn't be for nine-to-thirteen year old's, they should be for everyone, and right now they're failing even at that.

Now you can make all kinds of excuses for why the comics are heading down this road, and I understand them well, but as touched on in my last post - DC, and in turn Time Warner, are suffering from something more problematic. This attitude of making everything dark, of making everything violent and of creating heroes and villains who live almost solely in the extreme with no balance has seeped into their movies. If you showed the designs for many of Nolan's Batman villains to people with no context, I'm certain few would be surprised if you told them they were designs for the latest slasher movie. Nolan sacrificed much of what made Batman fun and unique, and also the pure charm of so many characters, to chase something that was gritter, more realistic, more... Grown up. Yes, it was a huge sales success, but it ties directly into what Moore was saying above. Man of Steel is almost as bad, it's a movie where nobody smiles and the stakes are defined by how many skyscrapers are toppled and how much visible destruction can be crammed on screen at any given moment. In terms of comic book lore and mythology it's a spot on adaptation, but in terms of heart and mortality? I'm quite convinced it has none. One has to ask the question, who are these films for? What is the prime target audience? And ultimately, is it right that a Superman movie, Superman of all things, is aimed more at teens and adults than at a more family orientated audience?

Never fear though, it's not all bad! Because there is another point on which I break with Moore, and that's on the example he uses. The Avengers, the good old, superhero team up that was years in the making. It's not the best of superhero movies, but it's most certainly one of the most accessible. While Marvel comics may (or may not!) be indulging in the same slow, depressing march to 'maturity' that DC are, their film studios have just been fantastic throughout. Mixing humour, action, the right amount of angst and drama to create fun movies that I believe can be enjoyed by almost everyone. The Avengers is as prime an example of this as any movie out there. While it didn't get all the characters right, and while I thought a couple of the performances and emotional beats fell flat, let's look at what that movie is. Bunch of guys in gaudy costumes get together to fight an evil demi-God in a gaudy costume, culminating in an alien invasion where all the heroes have to come together to ultimately stop a force that looks unstoppable and save the day. That! That right there is superhero comics in their purest form, ladies and gentleman. Add in some fun, light-hearted banter, a layer of sympathy for the villain and an understanding that the stakes aren't tied to the amount of people being torn apart or the number of buildings being toppled on screen and you have a winner.

For as much as I worry about the future of superhero comics, and in what direction we're headed in, Marvel's films give me hope that we're not entirely lost in the quagmire of wanting to be mature and realistic, yet not really understanding what those terms mean or how to pull them off in a mature or realistic way, that other products have been slowly sinking in for awhile. I can fully appreciate what Alan is saying, and I can agree with him, but where he only sees the mangling of superheroes into something ugly and misshapen with no redeeming qualities whatsoever - I see a serious problem that, hopefully with the advent of digital distribution and Marvel's film work, DC's animated products (which have been, by and large, fantastic in keeping a balance between the lighter and darker shades of superhero comics without over indulging in either) and even Warner's own Arrow - Which seems to take just enough from both movies approaches to create a very entertaining program - Will iron itself out as a younger audience becomes more engaged with the characters and these products are easier for them to get a hold of.