Joss Whedon

Comic books; never had any use for ‘em. I know that’s not necessarily the warm fuzzy way into a lot of your hearts, but they’ve always held the same kind of appeal to me as anime, which is to say not a lot. Right, still not making new friends here, I know. I don’t necessarily have anything against comic books ... well actually, maybe I have a little something against them. The few that I’ve glanced at seemed, by and large, like melodramatic Gordian knots of poorly thought out plots left to fester and decompose upon a steaming quagmire of two dimensional, formulaic characters. Oh, and there were pictures. So, it was with some trepidation that I read The Astonishing X-men by Joss Whedon and John Cassady.

You might wonder why someone with my clear intolerance would suddenly, and voluntarily, pick up a comic book. A valid question, I assure you. I’ve had many people try and convince me that I need to give comic books - or as they desperately call them in a vain attempt at validity, graphic novels - a chance, and I can see why they’d make that play at me. I am, after all, in a partnership running a website about video games, so pushing the envelope of uber-cool urban trendsetting, I am not. Still, people who extol the virtues of graphic novels, or, heaven forbid, try to characterize it as literature, more often than not find that I have a slightly lower opinion of them instead of the desired higher opinion of comic books. It’s narrow-minded, I freely admit, but it’s just never been my cup of tea.

So, what did it take to finally put The Astonishing Xmen in my hands? Well, there were two very important factors.

1) It was free.

I have a vague sense of the type of shop in which one would go to purchase the latest in superhero page-turners. It is not a pretty picture. It is the same place one would go to purchase Yu-Gi-Oh cards, or pornography - an all-purpose stop for people with time on their hands. There’s a chain of stores near me which I’ve visited twice that seems to be the shop of choice for comic books, and collectible cards, and magazines of, shall we say, all kinds. I can’t say that I’ve ever made a purchase from this particular chain of stores, dingy holes in the wall that they are with a pungent and I assume permanent odor of something upon which I’d rather not think. I really can’t imagine putting something from that place in a paper bag to take home with me.

Considering my now solid unwillingness to even go in the store where one buys comic books, the only way for one to enter my hands would be for someone else to retrieve it, pay for it, preferably sterilize it, and bring it to me in a well lit public forum. Which, as it turned out was what happened. The reason I didn’t hand it back to that person with an unpleasant sneer is my reason number 2.

2) Joss Whedon

I’m a Joss whore. A relatively new convert, I’ve never actually seen an episode of Buffy or Angel on its original air date, but I’ve since absorbed the two series like an inexhaustible chamois at a twenty-four hour carwash. And, though I loved both series in very general and usually non-sexual ways, I demanded extra quiet from my household when treated to an episode written by The Joss himself. That initial enthusiasm turned to a kind of deific worship when Firefly came along, and now I’d honestly watch a show about the habitual spin-cycle imbalance of a particularly sullen washing machine if Whedon were involved.

Look, I’m not saying I’d go gay for Joss Whedon or anything, but I’m not exactly saying I wouldn’t either. That’s the planet we’re living on here.

It is my enthusiasm for all things Joss that gives me license to not feel bad about slandering these comic books that I’m sure are so precious to so many of you. I have plenty of comic book crazy friends who, with not a whit of irony, regard my unhealthy Whedon-love as just a little bit sad. Truth is we all have some line of nerdiness which we very consciously do not cross, imagining that such restraint perches our fragile - and frankly delusional - egos ever so slightly higher on the food chain. Don’t believe me? Picture a grown man wearing a dirty sheet with plastic elf ears throwing pieces of paper at another grown man in an orc mask shouting “Fireball! Fireball!” and tell me you don’t feel just a little bit superior. And, there’s probably someone even lower that those people feel superior over, though I can’t begin to imagine who.

So, that’s the set up. Joss Whedon and free material means that, yes, I will try and read a comic book ... oh, pardon me, I mean graphic novel.

But, let’s be honest. I start at a disadvantage. First, I have a purely passing knowledge of the X-Men. I’ve seen the movies, and some of the cartoons when I was younger. However, there is apparently an entire encyclopedia of mind-bogglingly complex story tangents and plot twists played out through a cadre of characters I’ve never even imagined hearing of. I am, within a few panels, hopelessly lost. It’s like going to a party hosted by an old acquaintance you barely knew, and hanging out with their unfamiliar and unapproachable friends as they wax nostalgic about that time in Singapore. All you can do is get drunk, hope you hear a funny story, and wait for the night to end.

My first problem is that I have no idea who the main character is. Shadowcat, or Kitty Pryde (seriously?!), probably evokes any number of interesting tidbits of trivial information for the genuine X-Men fan. It takes me three pages before I realize she’s somehow passing through walls! Though, this may only be evidence that I’m irretrievably stupid.

Beast and Cyclops are both familiar enough, but I similarly have no knowledge regarding Emma Frost aside from the fact that John Cassaday does a masterful job of drawing her breasts. I really think he takes his time and enjoys doing it. Apparently she has quite the history with the X-Men and was at some point very very bad, but is now presumably reformed. I decide to search the web for some background on Miss Frost and find the Marvel Directory. I begin reading, and eventually run across the following: “Later, the X-Men joined with the Hellions in order to protect the White Queen from a time-traveling attacker known as Trevor Fitzroy, but not before Fitzroy’s brutal assault plunged Frost into a deep coma and brought about the untimely demise of each and every one of the Hellions.” My brain promptly explodes in protest.

And that illustrates my basic problem with comic books. They are soap operas. Yes, there are superpowers, but a story arc where the main character is mentally possessed, winds up amnesic as a result, and is eventually manipulated to an evil path bent on world domination that pits him against his once dead twin is as perfectly reasonable on One Life to Live as it is in issue 47 of The Only Very Occasionally Incontinent X-Men.

I persist in reading. But, by issue two where an X-Dragon named Lockheed becomes the Deus Ex Machina for our heros, I find myself as perplexed and annoyed as the bad guy ... Ord. Ord is apparently from the Breakworld, and presumably susceptible to stealth dragon attack. I don’t know if this is supposed to mean something to me, but I’ve decided to spend a lot more of my life being grateful I don’t live on a world where people name other people Ord.

It’s not all bad, mind you. There are refreshing Joss moments smattered about. When Lockheed the Dragon dispatches Ord , Wolverine points out that he left “without so much as a ‘this isn’t over!’ There’s simply no etiquette these days.” There’s also some genuine chemistry between the characters and without knowing the full story surrounding the multitudinous conflicts, Joss manages to subtly play out histories in dialogue. Say what you want about Whedon, but the man knows dialogue! And when Ord shows up at the school, and the kids point out that the X-Men aren’t around at the moment, but they can take a message ... well, that was sorta genius. It’s little things here and there, the turn of phrasings that makes Joss what he is.

Still, even Joss finds himself constrained by the medium. The man knows television and film, and he tries to play familiar games that don’t seem to work as well on the page. I keep feeling like Joss is dying for a good dissolve that he can transition with. It just don’t flow the same.

I should probably say something about John Cassaday. He’s probably a damn legend of the art or something, but I really have no idea. He’s got a very smooth style about him. His characters look like real people, and their reactions evoke emotion through drawing alone. He manages to draw innocence, corruption, turmoil, and fury before the words ever soak in, and that’s pretty impressive to me. There are probably plenty of folks who could pour forth ten pages of thoughts on the artwork of John Cassaday, and perhaps deservedly so, but I’m in it for the words, and that above all else may be why graphic novels just aren’t my bag, baby.

So, for having read my first com, errr, graphic novel do I finally have greater respect for the art form and those who enjoy it? Not really. It had a few moments that let me manage to forget that I was a thirty year-old man reading a comic book, but mostly I felt no less self-conscious than if I’d been reading ‘How to Cope With My Raging Herpes!’ Does all this have more to do with my own preconceived notions, hangups, and biases than anything else? Uh, you think? Just like I’m never going to get onboard with pretty much anything Capcom makes, it’s not about whether there are plenty of people out there who like this stuff. It’s just that I’m not one of them.

You may now proceed to verbally berate me.