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!

The Essential Batman Encyclopedia

Collects: Original content

Released: June 2008 (Del Rey)

Format: 400 pages / 32 pages of color plates / $29.95 / ISBN: 9780345501066

What is this?: A thorough reference book detailing 70 years of Batman comics

The culprit: Writer Robert Greenberger

When the Random House blog Suvudu launched last August, they had a Batman trivia contest; the prize was The Essential Batman Encyclopedia by Robert Greenberger, a former editor at DC. I was fortunate enough to win a prize, although it took about half a year to get the book (I have no idea why, but I suspect some sort of personnel shuffling). Still, I was impressed with the book.

One word of warning, though: Do not read this book all the way through at once. Since this is a set of alphabetical entries on just about everybody Batman has come across, approach the Essential Batman Encyclopedia the same way you would Wikipedia: look up something, see an interesting cross reference, and then start wandering. Reading straight through, as I did … well, it takes a while, because it’s hard to read more than six or eight pages at one gulp (basic dictionary / Bible rules), no matter how interesting the subject matter. And after a while, it all begins to blend together, and your brain feels ready for a long stretch in Arkham.

There are, in essence, three or four types of entries, all of them footnoted to help place them chronologically. There are the gangster entries, which stretch from the beginning of Batman’s career to the end of the Silver Age. If they’re goofy gangsters — the ones with stupid gimmicks or the ones who take advantage of Batman being intangible or having a broken arm or being a purple giant — they’re from the ‘50s and ’60s. If not, they’re from the ‘40s, and the stories sound surprisingly sane and interesting. If they mention real crime — you know, with ethnic groups, so we can blame our troubles on foreigners and minorities — then the character’s from the ‘90s or later. The second kind of entry covers the long careers of Batman’s costumed villains; these aren’t as fully footnoted as I might have hoped, but they are pretty complete entries. Then there are entries that tie in to all the crossovers and plot devices Batman’s gone through since Knightfall.

It gets a little repetitive. That’s not Greenberger’s fault, and he tries to throw in cutesy nicknames like “Bird of Banditry” (Penguin) to add a little variety to the entries. (They don’t help.) And it definitely doesn’t help when he has to deal with Earth-1 and Earth-2 versions of characters, then any revisions to the Earth-1 character that were caused by Crisis on Infinite Earths or Zero Hour or Infinite Crisis.

But Greenberger makes things as simple as they’re likely to be. He is to be praised for not stinting on those entries focusing on Batman’s early career, even if I didn’t care about Ferris Hedrant or “Fingers” Nolan (his name is the most interesting thing about him). On the other hand, The Essential Batman Encyclopedia also doesn’t linger on those early “glory” days, giving readers plenty of info on Gotham’s current happenings. I felt there might have been fewer entries on the ‘70s than other decades, but maybe nothing other than Ra’s Al Ghul’s plots happened back then.

The illustrations do help; they are sprinkled throughout, and rarely do two pages go by without some sort of illustration. Those in the text are black and white, taken from all points of Batman’s publication history; there are also 32 pages of color plates from many different artists, although they shade toward the last 20 years. Some of the black-and-white pictures aren’t captioned, and although most are easy to place with an entry, some are difficult.

For those of you who wondered exactly what orifice Grant Morrison was pulling his ideas out of during his Batman run, here’s where you can find out. If you read through this book, you find that almost every odd plot point, every weird name came from some Silver Age story you haven’t read. (And judging from the descriptions, you don’t want to.) Zuhr-En-Arr, Thomas Wayne in a Batsuit, the Batmen of All Nations (or Club of Heroes, if you prefer) … They’re all here. Unfortunately, the book was published before the end of Morrison’s run, but it does include a portion of those stories as well.

Greenberger’s done an excellent job with the The Essential Batman Encyclopedia. It is reasonably priced, and it’s very detailed. (I wish he would have used a more conventional style for his references — put the period after the reference, man! — but that’s a minor, if enduring, criticism.) Despite all the boring stuff that’s happened to Batman (any character who’s been around for 70 years is going to have a lot of boring stories in his books), The Essential Batman Encyclopedia is extremely interesting.This is really an outstanding work for all Bat-fans.

Rating: (4.5 of 5)

The Marvel Comics Guide to New York City

Collects: Original content

Released: November 2007 (Pocket Books)

Format: 256 pages / black and white / $13 / ISBN: 9781416531418

What is this?: A travel guide to Marvel’s fictional New York and the places in real New York that fictional Marvel characters have traveled

The culprits: Writer Peter Sanderson

And now for something slightly different.

The Marvel Comics Guide to New York City is not a comic book or trade paperback. It is, as the title implies, a guide to the New York City inhabited by Marvel’s villains and supervillains, written by Peter Sanderson.

Comics fans who have read Marvel’s and DC’s own reference materials will recognize the name. Sanderson, a long-time historian of Marvel and DC stories, uses his knowledge to take readers on a whirlwind tour of the Big Apple, although it mostly features Manhattan. Each real site, be it a building, street, or neighborhood, is described with information an out-of towner might not know; the descriptions are followed a few events highlighting the locale’s Marvel history. Fictional sites are placed within the context of the city before their history is explored.

Sanderson has the unenviable task of mapping fictional structures to real-life buildings — such as Yancy Street with Delancy Street or Avengers Mansion with the Frick Museum — and trying to shoehorn the fictional places into New York real estate. Despite the carelessness of some of Marvel’s creators, Sanderson does this admirably, and as anyone who’s read his work might imagine, he’s meticulous about his references. But he also manages to avoid being pedantic. He lays out the conundrums before the reader with a shrug, as if to say, “What can you do?” As Marvel readers might guess, New York beyond Manhattan is given short shrift — Spider-Man was born in Queens; what else has happened outside Manhattan? — but the other four boroughs plus Long Island, Westchester, and upstate New York are mentioned.

Sanderson generally sticks to the comics, but there are several references to the Spider-Man movies. Sanderson mentions shooting locations as well as the places those locales were meant to stand in for. Sanderson walks a fine line here — the comics have a long history, and shoving them aside for the Johnny-come-lately movies could alienate comic fans, but given the movies’ larger overall audience, cutting the references to them would be dangerous. In the end, Sanderson manages to balance the two continuities well enough to satisfy both camps.

The book could have benefited from more pictures — or, failing that, color pictures. It isn’t bereft of illustrations, so that isn’t a total loss. But fictional locales are frequently unillustrated, even though they have to have been drawn in some Marvel comic; usually, an unhelpful cover image is substituted. More importantly, though, a map would have been extremely helpful, and the cartographic absence is a major mark against the book.

Despite my interest in Marvel history, this book failed to grab me. New York doesn’t interest me, and differentiating the places within the Big Apple enough for me to care is a challenge this book isn’t up to. A map is absolutely essential for keeping everything in context for people unfamiliar with New York, and the book misses that. Still, finding out about the fictional places and the real places that inspired Stan Lee and other Marvel creators does make for some interesting moments.

Rating: (2.5 of 5)