MQ’s Favorite Things of 2011

Right around now, when most people are speculating on the year to come, I tend to reflect on the year that has passed.  I think of opportunities missed (cross-country road trips) and those taken instead (law school).  I think of people who have left my life and others who have entered it.  And of course, I think of all the things I’ve seen and read.  Now, I’m sure many other geek-culture sites will have their obligatory “Best Of” lists, all with varying degrees of integrity and sense.  Here, I just want to share my unbridled enthusiasm for the things I’ve enjoyed the most from the past year, which may or may not have any connection with what is actually good or bad.

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Xombi

I love the fantasy genre—always have.  I’ve grown up on a daily diet of sword-and-sorcery fiction, but there’s a big difference between these flights of fancy and the subtle works of magical realism, where writers make the natural and supernatural stand side-by-side.  In Xombi, John Rozum incorporated science and the occult together to craft a thoroughly weird, wondrous world where castles float on giant skulls, golems fly on rocket packs, and nuns call on the saints to bless their guns.  Rozum also developed sympathetic, even lovable characters, none of whom wore a cape or descended from any legacy superhero brand.  He made a Korean-American man his star without once calling attention to his race or culture.  And he did all this with the help of Frazer Irving, whose impressionistic art allowed the fantastic elements of the story to seep into your very senses.  It made me almost sick to see the series cancelled, and I still miss it deeply.

Jimmy Olsen

Nick Spencer knows how to make the old new again.  Nothing proves that better than his taking a campy, bowtie-wearing photojournalist/semi-sidekick and turning him into a hero of overlooked geeks everywhere.  Jimmy Olsen recalls the spirit of the great Silver Age stories by making you feel like anything can happen and the universe is one giant playground to run around in, wearing only your boxers if you please.  But more than the zany plots (repelling a massive alien invasion by boredom), what I love about this story is its enormous heart.  Through all his adventures, Jimmy shows that even an everyman with no powers and few skills to speak of can win the day, be a hero, and get the girl.  Also, Chloe rocks

The Unwritten

Nothing could have made me happier as an English major than to have an ongoing series devoted to not only exploring works of literature, great and small, but the very nature of storytelling itself.  While Mike Carey spent early issues of The Unwritten laying down a rich plot that traversed both the fictional and nonfictional worlds, this past year has seen him and critical collaborator Peter Gross tackle bigger, more profound questions, ones where even the non-answers can have enormous impact.  Ambitious in every way (you don’t make a “Choose Your Own Adventure” issue unless you have serious guts and chops), this title has the distinction of actually living up to its lofty goals most of the time.  As someone who loves words, I find reading about reading almost as much fun and stimulating as reading itself.

DC’s New 52

It’s impossible to hide the fact that I’m an unashamedly devoted DC fan.  When I think of heroes I want to meet in real life, the ones I wish were real and saving the world right now, I think of Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and so many other illustrious names in the DC canon.  While I never participated in the Marvel-vs-DC debate as fiercely as some, it always bothered me that DC was such an entrenched second banana to its longtime rival.  So it was admittedly gratifying to see the publisher take such dramatic steps to clean up its convoluted continuity, reinvigorate its brand, and place its creators on projects they believed in.  More than the fact that DC finally overtook Marvel in sales, I’m just incredibly happy with the wide variety of stories spinning out of the DC stables, and how much stronger as a whole their entirely line of comics have become.  Compared to the stuff they offered in 2010, I’m much prouder to call myself a DC follower now than before.

Xombi #6 – Review

By: John Rozum (writer), Frazer Irving (artist)

The Story: I don’t know about you, but I have a sudden urge to play Cranium.

The Review: Every writer on the market has a measure of imagination; you can’t get anywhere in writing if you don’t.  But it’s fair to say that some have a little more than others.  While you have plenty of people who can take classic ideas and polish them up to make them like new, only a very few, dare I say special, individuals can dream up something so unheard of that it deserves the classification of originality.  I contend Rozum is one of those special guys.

But don’t take my word for it; take Rozum’s, in his description of the Sisterhood of Blood Mummies: “…they each have developed a second, external [circulatory system] connected to a second heart.  The extra blood…gives them incredible energy and endurance levels…  To protect themselves they wear cloaks woven…by spiders which crawl all over these cloaks making any necessary repairs and feeding on the mosquitos drawn to the sisters.”

Rozum also delivers a solidly crafted story.  Though he dropped in a handy plot device last issue with the Pearl of Wisdom, he doesn’t use it give David and his pals a convenient way out of their predicament.  Of all the revelations the pearl offers to David, he chooses not the one that will help him defeat Finch, but one that eventually serves a different, but nonetheless crucial task in reviving the fortunes of the ruined Floating Skull.  It says a lot about the kind of person David is.

Xombi #5 – Review

By: John Rozum (writer), Frazer Irving (artist)

The Story: Riding on pterodactyls.  Golems with rocket packs.  Nuns and guns.  ‘Nuff said.

The Review: There’s been a lot of speculation, both dark and ecstatic, about the upcoming state of the DCU, post-Flashpoint.  Through it all, I’ve managed to keep my cool, encouraging cautious optimism whenever possible.  But one of the few things that threatens to break my veneer of objectivity is the thought that among the new lineup of titles coming this fall, Xombi will not be counted with them.

While it’s true I have a soft spot for David Kim, since we share a racial demographic, I really just appreciate that Rozum treats him as a person, not a cliché.  Even if you strip away David’s last name and distinctly Oriental (yup, I said it—I’m Asian so I can) appearance, his character remains just as sympathetic.  His good nature, decency, and affectionate manner are qualities we can all appreciate in a hero, and none of it has anything to do with his race.

You have to admire how the entire cast always shows fully-formed personalities well beyond their stereotypical appearances.  For example, your first instinct is to understand Nun of the Above’s distaste for magic as part of her religious devotion, so it’s all the more surprisingly impressive when she snaps, “I don’t agree with all church doctrine, but embracing the occult as Julian does only invites darkness.”  Bitter personal experience, not dogma, fuels her prejudice.

Xombi #4 – Review

By: John Rozum (writer), Frazer Irving (artist)

The Story: So you worked as a librarian in a castle built on a giant floating skull—how quaint.

The Review: The most delightful thing about reading Xombi is the deep sense of creativity fully at work here.  Most of the fantasy elements we get from mainstream comics tend to play in familiar, safe territory: magicians, demons, ghosts, and the like.  Even when Rozum uses these archetypes as the basis for his stories, he always gives them fresh spins, but usually, he goes much farther afield, pitching the most unexpected concepts at you.

In this issue, Rozum packs in a lot of fun asides that get only a brief mention, unlikely to be even seen in the future: “…vegetarian recipes from Mars from back when it had natives to still call it Ma’aleca’andra; four of the seven swords of skin; a jar containing a captured chimney wraith; pearls of wisdom collected from oysters grown in the Sea of Tears…”  They arrest your imagination, but always feel like they only scrape the surface of what’s in store for this title.

Most of these details get offered by the latest strange case to fall into David’s indestructible hands, the shockingly well-preserved Annie Palmer.  Even though her attempts to explain her unusual past results in an incredibly chatty issue, she has an active, sympathetic narrative voice that gets across all the expository history of her life on the Skull Stronghold and her grim affair with the impeccably manipulative Roland Finch.

Hearing how Finch causes the denizens of the Stronghold to destroy themselves from within (and using Annie to do it) really brings new meaning to the jerk boyfriend.  The guy has the perfect tone to be a top-rate villain: an overgrown spoilt child with such a nauseatingly high opinion of himself that he won’t even dirty his hands to get his goals done.  By the time he finishes his callous speech to the devastated Annie, you’ll want to suckerpunch him yourself.

Xombi #3 – Review

By: John Rozum (writer), Frazer Irving (artist)

The Story: I’m not crazy—you’re crazy if you think this skull in my hand isn’t also a laser gun!

The Review: The burden of most mainstream superhero comics comes from their constant need to deliver action to the readers—not necessarily physical fights between heroes and villains, but something obvious always has to be going on.  This trend doesn’t allow for much tackling of profound subjects except by chance, and then it often gets clumsy or superficial treatment.  But the best crafted comics revolve their plot around the message they want to get across.

Small wonder Rozum places right in the thick of this issue’s action a monologue from a ghost to a character who can’t tell himself if he’s dead or alive.  The ghost (the doomed James Church?) states it’s not just David’s Xombi status; it’s the tragic fact that most of the living don’t truly take advantage of life, the natural evolution of that old adage, “Youth is wasted on the young.”

Though slightly long-winded, the speech is nonetheless important not only in the context of the story, but for the series.  Besides the undeniable poignancy of the scene (“I wish I could smell the dew on the grass before I go,” the ghost says sadly in his last moments), it also gives our hero a deeply personal mission beyond whatever supernatural case he latches onto next.  The ghost’s farewell advice to David—and to us, essentially—is to stop regretting what he doesn’t have and cherish the overlooked treasures already before him.

Rozum smartly bookends the scene with the tense showdown between the freed Marantha and the supporting cast of Julian Parker, our Catholic ladies, and Rabbi Sinnowitz, who carry out their duties with experienced efficiency.  With everyone getting plenty to do, the issue feels rich and lively, especially since we also get to see David’s abilities in fairly gruesome action as he gets repeatedly mauled, only to run back into the fray seconds later.

Xombi #2 – Review

By: John Rozum (writer), Frazer Irving (artist)

The Story: If anything has ever validated my fear and loathing of trick-or-treaters, this is it.

The Review: The world grows more devoted to the laws and products of science all the time, but the supernatural still holds a powerful grasp on our imaginations and curiosity.  It’s been used to answer all the questions logic and empiricism can’t, to explain the mysteries science has made no headway in.  The supernatural is at its creepiest and most intriguing when it brings to life the stuff our rational minds know better to accept, but we subconsciously still wonder of.

This issue plays on exactly that, one of the best examples being the rustling husk, a creature whose grim origins are described as follows: “Those dead wasps and yellowjackets you see littering your window sills?  These homunculi hit men are made from swarms of their ghosts, driven mad with desperation at trying to get through the window glass to the outside.”  The concept is at once startling, frightening, tragic, wildly imaginative—and thus irresistible.

Really, the greatest strength of this series is the originality of its many ideas: the bullets embodied with the powers of the saints, the miniaturized prison for supernatural criminals, the “snow angels” whose very bodies warp space, the soulless Halloween children—the list goes on and on.  Many comics go through dry spells of several issues before they deliver a fresh idea, and some never offer any at all.  On that point alone, Xombi deserves a ton of praise.

But the grander and more far-reaching ideas have more risk of confusing the plot.  Rozum is not totally immune to this.  James Church got introduced to us as a reader infected by a book virus turning him into a real-life Mr. Hyde.  Now we find that complicated setup is a blind for a much more ancient, destructive creature, sealed within the miniature prison without the wardens’ knowledge.  Left unchecked, these twists can quickly become discouragingly bewildering.

Xombi #1 – Review

By: John Rozum (writer), Frazer Irving (artist)

The Story: Can some super-powered nuns and a guy who never needs to use the restroom work together to defeat a miniaturized serial killer?

The Review: Once a staple of comics, the horror genre has grown out of favor, nowadays only found among the less-trodden stands of indie publishers than the throng of titles from either the Big Two.  It’s the times that have changed; the threshold for what can horrify people has gotten a lot higher, and so many of even the mainstream series feature horror elements that it’s hard to generate enough potent, new ideas for a dedicated horror comic.

After reading the first issue of Xombi, you may be convinced that at least with Rozum at the helm, there’s plenty of fresh ideas to keep the title going for a long time.  Rozum first wrote the series back in the early nineties, and in this revival, you get a swift re-intro to the character and the grim origins of his powers, which seem just as compelling as when they first appeared.  But more than that, you get the sense this title offers something different from the rest of the pack.

Consider the opening events alone: a painted tiger mauling a cow in a completely different painting, chickens giving live birth, movie characters disappearing off the reel—as the talking heads on a quarter, a nickel, and some pennies indicate, these are all the signs of something even more unnatural to come.  Despite the small scale and not necessarily original nature of these things, Rozum strings them together in an effectively creepy way.

The title also gets a truly oddball cast of characters.  David Kim, the titular Xombi, is the least of it.  You also get a posse of metahuman Catholics, including a shrinking nun, one with clairvoyance, and a schoolgirl blessed with heavenly light.  Just to give you a sense of what kind of people you’re dealing with here, let me say they don’t flinch at much—even a shrunken prisoner impaled to a dollhouse wall with a normal-sized pair of scissors through her sternum.