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PIPELINE COMMENTARY AND REVIEW #30
29 December 1997
by Augie De Blieck Jr.
http://www.nic.com/~augie/pipeline
At Last: The Divine Right Column
Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to Augie's Rant on How Comics
Shouldn't Be Done. It all starts about a month ago. Wizard announced a
contest asking readers to submit a plot for an 8 page story for Jim Lee to
draw for DIVINE RIGHT 1/2, a book they planned to publish. My ears perked
right up. This sounds like fun. The wannabe writer in me was excited, but
decided to wait a couple of weeks. Why? Well, by then, issue 3 would be
out. That would give me the first three issues of the series, the New
Horizons half-issue, and the pair of Gen13 issues that Jim Lee did which
also loosely connect into the story. All in all, close to 100 pages of
storyline to give me an idea of what to write.
I sat down and read them all recently. And you know what? I haven't
the faintest clue what's going on. I don't know who's fighting who, or
why, or what this Creation Equation is. No story has yet developed.
Instead, we've had a 3-issue long fight sequence interrupted by the
occasional romantic interlude between the lead character, Max Faraday, and
his Internet friend, or between Max's friend, Dev, and Max's sister, Jenn
who continues to rebuff him.
The story so far: Max Faraday accidentally download an equation. But
this isn't any equation. Nope. This is much more than the Quadratic
Equation. This is the Creations Equation. And what does it do? 100 pages
later, it is not only unclear, it is muddied and there has been no attempt
made to explain it. Nor has there been any attempt to explain why looking
at an equation grants a person super powers. Even radioactive spiders make
more sense than this.
Then there's the bad guys. Or the good guys. It's tough to figure
out. And no, I don't mean that these are characters who are complex human
beings, capable of great or evil things, but dimensionalized by human
foibles. No, I mean I can't tell you who is on whose side. Everyone is
there for Max, that much is true. Past that, you can't really tell good
from bad by clothing or armor. And you can't tell it by the way they act.
And you can't tell it from the writing, the narrating, nor the captioning.
You might be able to figure it out given the info on the inside front cover
or in the preview issue, but you know what? That's not story-telling.
That's outright cheating and bad writing. If you can't explain who the
characters are in the course of your story, your story will suffer. By the
end of issue three, John Lynch and Caitlyn Fairchild (of Gen13 fame) come
seeking Max, as well. (Oh, wait, I almost forgot about the last three
pages. It looks like we have a fourth faction coming after Max now, too.
Again, the reader is given no idea who they are - unless they've read
WildCATs - but we know they look good, and wear little to no clothing.)
So to sum up: We've got four separate factions who want to control
the power Max has. We have no idea, save one, about who is on what side.
We don't even know who these characters are or what their powers are, aside
from whatever we can suss out from the art.
The end of isssue three points up the fact that Jenn defended herself
from some of the monsters with her gun. Reading the preview issue or
cover copy, it's made clear that she's in the Army to some degree or
another. But I can't recall that ever being brought up in the book.
There hasn't been a single story yet. Nope, we've got half a dozen
factions wandering around, doing whatever it is that they do. The reader
is given little idea as to what that is. I would like to read a story,
with a beginning, middle, and an end. Even Uncanny X-Men, in the worst
days of Chris Claremont's dangling plot lines, had those. This book has
had a series of fight sequences, intermixed with chase scenes and stern
characters speaking harshly at each other, all the while looking good and
smoking cigarettes.
This isn't to say there's no potential for this book. No, characters
of Dev, Max, and Jenn are interesting enough, all easy to relate to, and
have interesting interrelationships. It's good to see a brother and sister
who actually do love each other. I'm a bit curious about what happened to
their parents, though. That's yet to be mentioned, but I expect will
someday. (I just hope it doesn't tie in to the storyline. Ugh)
The art is top notch. I mean, it is Jim Lee. The three page blue
sequence in the second issue if drop-dead gorgeous. It's well and subtley
done. At the same rate, though, I wonder if I tire of his art. I know
all the tricks and all his cyphers. I know what to expect. There
aren't too many surprises anymore. There was a time when X-Men was so
damned exciting because you never knew what cool page Lee would draw
next. Maybe my focus has shifted more towards writing and so I don't
appreciate the art as much. Maybe I've seen it all.
But the storytelling sometimes leaves me cold. There have been a
couple of double-page splash pages which didn't need to be done. If he
wanted to draw something big, a single-page splash would have done fine,
thanks.
The characters are all easily distinguished from one another. There's
some nice subtleties here, too, like the resemblance between Max and his
sister. Dev looks completely different and so is easily separated. The
various villains/good guys/whatever have wildly different gear and some
even move differently from the rest.
In the end, though, it's all just another WildStorm book, where plot
counts over characters. Where the carefully crafted backstory and
WildStorm legend counts more than introducing new readers to new and
interesting characters. Where fancy production values get easily mistaken
for strong artistic leanings. Where the supposedly intelligent main
character uses AOL. ::duck grin run:: Could be worse -- he could be using
a MAC. (Boy, I'm really asking for it now, aren't I?) Where cool
abbreviations take lease over common sense and ease of readability. (OK,
admittedly, this book isn't as bad as most other WildStorm books are. And
I still say it was the best part of Erik Larsen's Image-X issue of
WildC.A.T.s wherein he made fun of that.)
And one last thing - is it me, or was the preview issue mostly promo
art with captions over it to make some semblance of a story? (Although
let's be clear. There is no story there. Only semblances of plot and
character.)
-Augie
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