2009: A Musical / Dancing Review

2009 is four days gone now. Good riddance, I say. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see the back of a year as I am for 2009. And I’m not sure why, exactly. Maybe it’s the long-term gloom and doom of financial crises and greed, swine flu, and terrorism. Maybe it’s because I tried to work a home-improvement project into my schedule during December as I was also preparing for Christmas and guests. Maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe it was endless crossovers and events from Marvel and DC …

Yes, that last one sounds appropriate.

But before we give 2009 a final swock to the nuggets, I decided to look through my year’s worth of reading and point out the best of my year. (Yes, I know some — many — of these didn’t come out in 2009. I don’t care. If you want timeliness, go somewhere else.) So here are the top 5s, in Marvel (which is most of what I read) and non-Marvel lists:

Marvel:

5. Guardians of the Galaxy: Legacy (4): Emerging from a crossover I didn’t care about, a bunch of characters I was only vaguely aware of were stuck in a team book that seemed to be heading for permanent crossover events. But somehow the first volume worked, and worked well.

4. Mini Marvels: Secret Invasion (4): The 2009 collection of Chris Giarrusso’s Mini Marvels wasn’t as good as the 2008 version (Rock, Paper, Scissors), but it’s still hilarious. You should all go out and buy the recently released Mini Marvels Ultimate Collection.

3. Hood: Blood from Stones (4): This book, which features the Hood’s origin, showed why Brian Bendis was so eager to use the petty crook turned superpowered antihero. It also showed Bendis didn’t care about what made Blood from Stones so good.

2. Incredible Hulk: Planet Hulk (4.5): A sprawling, over-the-top action movie of a comic, Planet Hulk made the Hulk interesting for the first time since Peter David left. And then Hulk was promptly handed to Jeph Loeb, who gave us Red Hulk. Way to capitalize, Marvel.

1. Age of the Sentry (4.5): Marvel’s answer to DC’s Silver Age Superman nonsense, recounted with a knowing wink and smile — but never to the detriment of the character.

Non-Marvel:

5. RASL: The Drift (4): Jeff Smith’s story about a scientist / thief who penetrates alternate realities has me eager for more. Compare this to Casanova, which also has thievery and alternate realities; Casanova threw so much high concept at the reader I was screaming for it to stop, but RASL’s slow pace has me intrigued. On the other hand, RASL’s publication schedule will mean I’ll probably remain intrigued for quite a while.

4. Promethea: Collected Edition, Book 1 (4.5): Although I wasn’t as excited by the next two volumes of Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III’s coming-of-age / metafiction comic, this one had me eager to read the rest of Sophie Bangs’s adventures.

3. Usagi Yojimbo, v. 23: Bridge of Tears (4.5): I was greatly anticipating the only new Usagi Yojimbo reprints of the year, and Stan Sakai didn’t disappoint. Of course, Sakai and Usagi never disappoint.

2. Tales Designed to Thrizzle, v. 1 (4.5): Michael Kupperman’s absurdist masterpiece nearly snuck by me, but I was glad I found it. Now I too know the majesty that is Snake ‘n’ Bacon.

1. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History (5): A classic for a reason — Art Spiegelman tells a story of one family’s collision with the Nazis and the Holocaust movingly, using not-so-funny funny animals, without making the protagonists perfect saints.

Honorable mention should go to The Essential Batman Encyclopedia (4.5) by Robert Greenberger as the outstanding comics reference book I read this year. Of course, I only reviewed two reference books, but that shouldn’t take away from the impressiveness of the book.

Reviews will resume on Friday. Here’s hoping 2010 will knock the sour taste 2009 left out of our mouths!

Sentry: The Age of the Sentry

Collects: Age of Sentry #1-6 (2008-9)

Released: June 2008 (Marvel)

Format: 152 pages / color / $19.99 / ISBN: 9780785135203

What is this?: The faux Silver Age adventures of the Sentry, Marvel’s most powerful psychotic retcon.

The culprits: Writers Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin and artist Nick Dragotta (and others)

The Sentry is problematic in the Marvel Universe. He was created by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee as a vehicle for a single, excellent story that played off the established Marvel world but left little role for the character. But then followed another limited series, and then the Sentry became part of the New Avengers …

Not what the Sentry was intended for, and fans have debated how well the character can fill the role. The Sentry was intended to be a supremely powerful character — an analogue of Superman — but one who was mentally ill, creating his own destructive nemesis, the Void. That’s not as bad for an ongoing character as Siena Blaze, a supervillain who was so powerful she risked destroying the world each time she used her powers (Spoiler: the world was not destroyed), but it’s close.

Sentry: The Age of the Sentry avoids all those problems neatly. Seeing a Superman analogue in the Marvel Universe, writers Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin gleefully write sendups of DC’s Silver Age stories, those over-the-top and often bizarre tales that defied logic and consequence. The villains in these stories include the wonderfully absurd Cranio, the Man with the Tri-Level Mind (he actually has three brains in a transparent dome); Ursus, the Ultra-Bear (a giant bear); and the Mountain Man, a superpowerful hillbilly (and yes, they don’t shy away from calling them hillbillies). The Guardians of the Galaxy are remade as Legion of Superheroes analogues, and Ms. Marvel is recast as the Sentress, complete with Lolly, a sidekick who more than causally resembles Wonder Woman’s friend Etta Candy. There’s even an Earth-1 / Earth-2 team-up.

Parker and Tobin don’t neglect Marvel’s Silver Age; the Sentry fights the Mad Thinker and the Tinkerer, although the story’s trappings are more DC than Marvel. Millie the Model co-stars in one adventure, and Tyrannus and the Moloids are the villains for another. A story involving early Marvel characters celebrating the Sentry’s birthday could have been right out of any anthology title of the early ‘60s. The framing sequences for the stories involve Sue and Reed Richards telling Franklin bedtime stories about the Sentry, and each story has a cover to a fake Marvel comic and its own letter column.

It’s not just that the stories ape the goofiness of the Silver Age; the stories are genuinely — and knowingly — funny. At one point, the Sentry tells a villain, “My life is wacky — but a very specific kind of wacky.” Trying to excuse Reed’s inability to keep telling Sentry stories, Sue says Reed has been working to reverse global warming, only to change it to working on a cure for the Thing when she realizes the Thing is listening in. The Earth-1 Sentry beats up beatniks and uses a Colt .45 to fight crime, which disturbs his Earth-2 counterpart. There are also weird bits with Harrison Oogar, the caveman of Wall Street, and Truman Capote as a villain. This is perhaps the most hilarious book I’ve reviewed this year (in a close race with Tales Designed to Thrizzle).

There is a serious side to the stories as well. The stories gradually mature, just as comic book stories did. Parker and Tobin don’t shy away from the Sentry’s insanity, working it into the stories without disturbing the flow. The effect is jarring — a joke one panel, the Sentry snapping into a delusion the next — but somehow it works.

The art is top notch as well. Nick Dragotta draws a story in each issue (usually the lead story), with other artists, such as Ramon Rosanas and Colleen Coover drawing the second story. Dragotta is especially impressive, shifting styles from slightly cartoony to more serious. Each artist seems to take the goofiness and run with it, drawing weirder and weirder stuff (Dragotta sets the bar high in the first issue with the Men-Bot, a robot with two heads: one is Jerry Lewis and the other Dean Martin). When the story calls for a shift to a more serious tone, the artists are up to the challenge as well. The styles even sync up pretty well, which is an incredible achievement; although Coover stands out as different, she’s drawing a Millie the Model story, which is a completely different genre, so that makes sense.

For some reason, this book is not available online at Borders, Barnes & Noble, Booksamillion, Overstock, or Amazon. I have no idea why this is, but it annoys the heck out of me.

When this came out, I was skeptical about it, but I’m glad the reviews (and covers) won me over. Sentry may not be “the new apex of the art form,” as the blurb from Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog calls it, but it is outstanding fun.

Rating: (4.5 of 5)

The Sentry

Collects: Sentry #1-5, Sentry: Fantastic Four, Sentry: Hulk, Sentry: Spider-Man, Sentry: X-Men, Sentry vs. the Void (2000-1)

Released: October 2001 (Marvel)

Format: 240 pages / color / $24.99 / ISBN: 0785107991

The Sentry is one of those rare Marvel books that succeeded despite being hailed as a critical success. Created by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Jae Lee, the team who gave you critically successful Inhumans miniseries in 1998-9, Sentry burst onto the scene in 2000 amid a screen of low-key publicity claiming the character was a forgotten Silver-Age Marvel character.

Of course that was just hype to make people pay attention. But it worked, at least to a degree, and people were induced to read a fairly successful mystery. Rob Reynolds is overweight, a possible drunk, and maybe mentally disturbed. But he keeps having memories of being an incredibly powerful superhero called the Sentry. Jenkins and Lee allow the reader to think he may be hallucinating early in the series, but then the Sentry begins awakening the memories of his superhero colleagues: Reed Richards, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, etc. Meanwhile, his old archenemy, the Void, becomes active again, and Rob, as the Sentry, tries to unravel why everyone forgot him.

Who betrayed him? Why did even he forget himself? What happens in his battle with the Void? I can’t tell you. There is a big reveal at the end of the story, one of such magnitude that if you know it, it will put a considerable dent into your enjoyment of the story. My wife, who didn’t know, loved the story. I knew, and although I enjoyed The Sentry considerably, the reveal seemed obvious.

The mystery is revealed slowly, with flashbacks in the style of the appropriate comic-book period. Lee is the only penciller credited for the Sentry issues, and if he did the flashback art, then he shows truly astonishing range. Kirby-esque ‘60s art, Alex Ross-style painted art, grim and gritty ‘90s art (not a stretch for Lee, but it’s not done in his normal style), a Byrne pastiche, and Romita-style Spider-Man flashbacks are all presented as part of the story. Lee’s normal style is scratchy and takes a little time to get used to, but given the themes of less-than-perfect memory, it’s appropriate.

Jenkins doles out the clues slowly, almost frustratingly, leaving enough ambiguity to support different theories. He uses the characters of the Marvel Universe as a framework to wedge his new (old) hero and make him stick. It’s a surprisingly effective story, given that the Sentry is an entirely new character who accumulates all of his history (up to that point) within the pages of this book.

The one-shots bog down Sentry in the middle of the story. Sentry #5 sets up the confrontation between Sentry and the Void, with all the heroes gathered to help the Sentry vs. his old nemesis. But then the plot goes on hold for four flashbacks, with other heroes recalling how important the Sentry was to their development as heroes and human beings. Each of these stories is drawn by artists other than Lee: Phil Winslade aims for a retro feel but hits more John Byrne than Silver Age in the Fantastic Four story; Rick Leonardi gives an ‘80s feel to the Spider-Man tale; Bill Sienkiewicz draws a Hulk story in his beautiful, scratchy style; and Mark Texeira rounds out the flashbacks with a very ‘90s-looking Angel story. The only one of these stories that is halfway important to the plot is the Hulk story, which makes it appropriate that Sienkiewicz draws it; it isn’t his best pencils by a far cry, but it matches Lee’s style much better than the other artists.

The original press pieces from Wizard are included, along with interviews with Stan Lee and Joe Quesada. They’re worthy additions to the book, especially with Lee seeming to confirm he created the Sentry in the interviews without actually ever saying he had anything to do with the character. It’s an interesting little extra that makes an excellent story a little better, a tongue-in-cheek joke that allows us to remember when Marvel could promote new books.

Rating: (4.5 of 5)