Would That There Was Anything Funny About The Sentence "THE DEAD SPEAK!"
As I have done every so often in this newsletter, I will tell you about a big comic. How big? Well, it's going to have a first print run of 1.2 million copies in its country of origin. It's the latest in a long-running and well-beloved series that has been part of countless childhoods all over several countries. As such, it's going to be one of the best-selling individual volumes of a comic in the world, and it has been announced with all the appropriate pomp during festivities at this year's Angoulême International Comics Festival. Here's the problem: it's a new Gaston Lagaffe comic, the first attempt in 30 years at continuing André Franquin's foundational gag comic masterpiece.
Dupuis, the book's publisher, have put considerable time and effort towards the goal of reviving the comic. They hired Marc Delaf, a Canadian artist that had proven to be a skilled mimic of Franquin in a one-page gag made for a 2017 tribute anthology, and gave him five years to hone his talents further. The results, which were previewed to the press as part of the announcement, are genuinely stunning. They seem plucked from the series' 1970s heyday, with only the few anachronistic allusions to our modern times betraying their newness. On craft alone, it's unimpeachable. It's loose and animated, but it maintains the staggering level of detail that Franquin put into the original. Everything you could want from such a revival is there, and everyone is happy, right?
Of course not. See, André Franquin was very protective of his character. So much so that, when the comic first got adapted to screen in 1981, he had the names of every major character changed. He was fine with the filmmakers taking the gags, but the characters were his. It will therefore not surprise you to learn that he was vehemently against the idea of new Gaston comics being made after his death. That happened 25 years ago, and now his daughter Isabelle, who was only informed of the new comic four months ago, is pretty upset about it. In 2012, she successfully stopped the publication of a spin-off from Marsu Productions, who held the rights to much of the Franquin catalog.
Forced to defend themselves, Dupuis have pointed to the contracts Franquin has signed. They claim that their papers are in order, and that the law, which gives Franquin's estate a right of control over what's done to the property, has been followed. The legal battle seems like an inevitable tragedy, but I'm more interested in the moral battle, because, as someone who somehow found themselves devoting their lives to comics, I can't help but see the many parallels between this and things that have happened on the other side of the Atlantic.
It has it all! Publishers turning into content silos through the drudgery of mergers and acquisitions, desperately trying to cash in on their trove of memories so they can look shareholders in the eye and say they have created value! Appeals to nostalgia as a replacement for any sort of actual creativity! The dead, disrespected as their life's work is turned into just another thing to exploit! In the face of all of this and all the many millions to be made, staggering precarity among all the workers in the bande dessinée pipeline! Finally: creative industries all over the world are getting fucked up in converging ways. Fun fact: did you know that this year's Angoulême will be the first edition during which creators will be paid for their signing sessions? Somehow, that's true!
The matter of Gaston is grimly illustrative, but is that enough to make it a landmark? Is there going to be a court case? I don't know. I think it's worth paying attention to, because comics with print runs so large they end up being sold in supermarkets between socks and office supplies are worth paying attention to. It's something I wanted to put on your radars because it feels big. I've been pretty terrible at predicting the future, and my attention span is all kinds of fucked. That's why I just write these things down. Oh and hey: welcome back.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: WHEN I DIE, TEN THOUSAND MORE SHALL TAKE MY PLACE, SO DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT GETTING YOUR TAKES
I go away for a few weeks, on account of I'm burnt out and my shoulder is fucked up, and what do the fuckers do, thinking they'd get away with it? They go and release a whole new Punisher comic, that's what. It's called Punisher #1, it's written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Jesus Saiz, and it is for my money as contemptible a comic as you are likely to read in 2022, not that you should. As you might have read if you get your comic news from people who would not die for comics, this is Marvel's attempt at separating the Punisher from those signifiers of his that have been embraced by the latest incarnation of America's fascist id. Gone is the skull, gone are the guns, and in are the many katanas of the Hand. This is our premise: Frank Castle has gotten so good at the whole mass murder thing that they made him high priest of ninja violence. You might think the two contradictory; that would be more thought than the comic displays in this first oversized chapter.
The fundamental problem is that Jason Aaron is at cross purposes with himself. On the one hand, he wants to make a comic about the god-king of ninjas fighting a warrior cult wearing antique helmets and three-piece suits and shooting GI Joe style green laser guns. On the other, he wants to make a serious comic, in the vein of his Punisher Max, about how, golly gee whiz, isn't it kinda messed up how good at violence this guy is, I mean, think about it. It wants to be about big questions, but it also wants to be about how frickin sweet it is to slash a guy's throat chanbara style.
It's a beautiful comic, because Jesus Saiz is great at this, but that can't hide all the ugly truths of all Punisher comics. It is a comic about how sicknasty cool it is to be the guy deciding on his lonesome who gets to live and die. To be so literal it hurts, at one point the Punisher is presented by his followers with the day's executions. Murderers, rapists and abusers who had gotten away with it, his high priestess explains. Your faithful servants have done the hard work for you. Don't worry about it. Don't think about it. You know who the bad guys are, all you have to do is swing the sword. Killing is bad, sure, but not for you, not when you have to do it. You can take away the skull. You can take away the guns. You can't take away this mentality, and you don't want to denounce it, because there's money to be made. It's cowardly and it's noxious.
Anyway, that Punisher show is now streaming on Disney+, I hear.
The easiest way for me to articulate what frustrated me so with Batman/Superman: World's Finest #1 is to just go ahead and tell you that one of the figures hiding in the shadows and plotting Superman's demise has very Magog-like horns. To me, it's the kind of detail that gives the whole game away. Kingdom Come, which some would call Alex Ross and Mark Waid's magnum opus, was about relitigating the early 1990s in comics. It was a response to the grim antiheroes Image Comics was using to build an empire, manifested in the form of a Cable-looking motherfucker with extra biblical pomp. That's where Magog, a strawman made of everything the children of comics' Silver Age hated about their younger and wealthier contemporaries, comes in. He is the bad future that our good old boys Batman and Superman are supposed to prevent.
So, yeah, bringing him back, in a comic that is so entirely devoted to being a Silver Age tribute that it features the Doom Patrol in their straightest possible incarnation? Fighting this fight? At this time? When our Superman is bi and our Batman is stepping away from the spotlight and letting the colorful, the weird and the gay as hell take center stage? It's very sus, to me. Like the exact kind of comic Superman and the Authority was trying to prevent.
And yet, I cannot bring myself to say that it is a bad comic. How could I, when Dan Mora is in there making career-best work like he just keeps doing all the time? How could I, when Tamra Bonvillain gives the whole thing a warmth and a humanity so finely crafted? It's big action, it's big feelings, there's some cool twists and takes on formulas Waid knows you've seen before! There's one super-interesting deep continuity dive in there! And yet, I am forced to see past all the self-evident greatness. I can only see the bigger project at play, a comic so deliberately built from nostalgia that it's willing to go and relitigate modern comics, again.
In trying to make sense of it, I arrive at this: Mark Waid makes comics for people who know their favorite comic of all time has already come out. And that's just not me.
I know there's one week left of this, but I'm ready to render at least one judgment, based on this week's X Lives of Wolverine #5. One of the ambitions of the event was to recreate the dynamic of House of X and Powers of X, the game-changing series that launched this moment in X-Men history. On that front, it's a total failure. With the full picture, I can tell you exactly what X Lives of Wolverine was supposed to be. It was a crossover between X-Force and Wolverine, advancing the story of the former while exploring ideas toyed with in the latter. Nothing more, despite what the copywriters at Marvel Comics' marketing would have you believe, but, thankfully, nothing less.
The ending is satisfying, because Wolverine cutting the shit out of one dude in an appropriately dramatic setting is always satisfying on some base level. Yet, it can't help but show how it could have been more. Joshua Cassara's final flex features a display of formal ambition that could have been worth exploring if Ben Percy had felt so inclined. Instead it's just kinda there, being great for its own sake. Perhaps more time, more care, or a better environment would have served this story, and how it's been told, better. In any case, I had a good time, so, maybe that's all it had to be? Perish the thought.
And here we are! All healed up and ready to get in the melee again! Oh boy does it feel good to have the one good draft! Did you miss me? Because I missed you! I missed this! Fingers crossed it never gets this bad again! Tell your friends! We're still doing this! Subscribe if you haven't already! Get the word out! And when it's done, HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!