Catching up on comics with CGraig: Transformers Versus G.I. Joe #9-11

(IDW, 2015-2016)

More licensed comic book goodness to dive into.  Since I mentioned it in the Samurai Jack post, I thought I should catch up on it.

I've been wondering how long this series would (or could) last from day one.  I had suspected that with last year's full-length Free Comic Book Day zero-issue this would be a brief mini-series, of your typical four-issue variety.  Yet, issue four came and yet the story continued rolling on, each issue progressively tearing down sacred cows and pushing the story beyond safety and conventions.  With each issue writer/illustrator Tom Scioli and co-writer John Barber put together one of the wildest rides on the comic book stands, delivering a title that bathes in nostalgia but refuses to live there.  I mean, the depths of the history of these two toyline-derived universes that Scioli and Barber plumb is astounding, not just looking at toy shelves, but taking in decades of comic book and animation history to reference and coming out the other end with something that feels completely different, and yet true to what's come before... it's a remarkable feat.

Scioli channels the masters of the 60's - Kirby, Steranko, Ditko, Kane and more - though doesn't rest there.  He frequently pulls from cinema but even more relies upon his imagination to construct just epic pages and panels.  All the while the storytelling is the most eclectically paced I've seen.  It's rather staccato in nature, little snippets of scenes, characters flow in and out, sometimes disappearing for multiple issues before returning, plus Scioli and Barber are not afraid to kill anyone off...anyone at all.  When the first batch of Joes are gunned down early on, one wasn't quite ready for that...it had to be a dream, just as the Autobots, the good guys of the Transformers world, were still the bad guys to the Joes for quite some time.  It all felt wrong, and yet Barber and Scioli persisted.  Eventually the Autobots and Joes had their unifying moment, but not in time to stop the nefarious Cobra/Decepticon plan which resulted in the annihilation of Earth! (No shit!)  It's not played for a dream or anything other than the final fate of mankind, and it'd be deliciously bleak if it weren't so excessively over-the-top.

Issue #9 is the best issue of the series, if only because it's the most cohesive and coherent.  It takes place in humanity's deep past where the Gaels were at odds with the Vikings, looking for any edge.  A Transformers ship had crash landed on Earth centuries prior, and in this historic land, their remains are worshipped as gods by a snake clan.  The Gaels steal from these gods to help them in their war against the Vikings, their anachronistic technology giving them and edge up on their enemies, but also cursing them.  This story is largely that of Destro's ancestry but touches upon many things Joe, Cobra, and Transformer in brilliant ways.  It's also a solo effort from Scioli, though Barber still joins him for the post-issue commentary.  It's a side-step from the regular story, adding little to the actual onging story, but it pads out Joe history with epic storytelling in such a manner it never actually gets.

Issues 10 and 11 return to the ongoing form, but as it gets deeper into the series, Scioli seems to be more focused on pushing his limits, creating some utterly daft sequences that just look remarkable, and sometimes utterly ridiculous, though never anything less than entertaining.

There's only two issues left in run it's been announced this week, just as I was beginning to think this could go on without any apparent end.  As Scioli and Barber thin out the herd of characters on all sides, they delve deeper into character-focused storytelling (like issue 11's focus on Falcon), and there's still so much more to tell.  I'm curious as to how all this will pan out...annihilation I imagine, but I guess we'll see.

Catching up on Comics with CGraig: Samurai Jack #20

(2015, IDW)

Some licensed comics are born from nostalgia, or from commerce, from brand recognition, or from trademark perpetuation.   Most licensed comics are, in fact.  But every so often there comes a licensed comic that is a real passion project for its creator(s) and thus transcends just being a mere extension of a TV, movie, or toy property, instead becoming a fair extension of it.  Sometimes it even goes so far as being essential, and on rare occasions even transcends the source. 

There are many examples: Steve Rude's Space Ghost one-shot in the late 1980's; Evan Dorkin's Bill and Ted's run for Marvel in the early 1990's; Ryan North's Adventure Time comics; the still-going Scioli/Barber Transformers vs. G.I. Joe; and this all too briefly-lived Samurai Jack series written by Jim Zub and (mostly) illustrated by Andy Suriano.

Both my kids (7 years apart) became entranced by our DVD copies of Samurai Jack at a very young age.  The simplicity of story structure, often minimal dialogue to parse, along with clean, striking visuals and a hefty dose of emotional outbursts make it very attractive and interesting to kids at that age (and the appreciation just gets deeper as you get older with it).  It's a rare show that preaches persistence in the face of loss or disappointment (the kids might not take the message to heart though). Samurai Jack's four seasons never felt complete.  It's not that it needed to continue on forever (and I don't know if I could handle Jack's continual heartbreak for too much longer) but it was (and remains) utterly unique, and completely transfixing that it certainly hadn't reached the point where it was getting old.

DC, around the end of the 90's, toyed with Samurai Jack comics, mostly within the pages of their Cartoon Network anthology series and never with much more than a work-for-hire feel.  There was no passion.  Zub and Suriano bring both passion and appreciation of the TV series to their pages. 

It can't transcend the show, for Jack's, sound design, use of motion, and vocal performances are so integral to its being.  But on the page Suriano replicate the way the show would break apart its screen into dynamic, distinctive comic-like panels.  But in every way Suriano didn't just emulate the show, he brought himself into it.  Character designs were just slightly off model with a bit of the artist's flair, and he managed to create and design entirely new environments that felt like they belonged to Aku's mad future.

This last issue is a love letter to the show, with the title, "Mako the Scribe" a tribute to the late voice actor of Aku.  Phil Lamarr (voice of Jack) gets a character too (as does Suriano).  The issue acts as coda to both the comic and TV series without bringing a direct ending, instead flashing to Jack's future where he's a much different man fighting foe a much different purpose.  None of this run had Genndy Tartakovski's input but I hope when the series returns next year and Tartakovski eventually gives it it's deserved finale that it runs pretty much exactly like this.