Obscure but Memorable Comics

A few posts ago I said that Marvel Comics' Civil War #1 made all other comics feel silly and irrelevant. I also said it I was pretty sure it was a passing feeling, and looking through some old comics, I see I was right.

I hardly consider myself a connoisseur of independent/creator-owned comics, but in the last couple of years two titles in particular caught my eye, and I don't regret buying them for a minute, entitled We3 and Chosen. I will review them in the order in which I enjoyed them, being, last one most.

We3, from DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, is the story of three household pets that have been turned into cybernetic killing machines by the U.S. military-industrial complex. When the military brass decides that they are obsolete and gives the directive to have them decommissioned, all hell breaks loose. What transpires over the next three issues is essentially a brutal, protracted chase that culminates in a truly savage fight to the finish.

Written by Justice League of America and X-Men writer Grant Morrison and beautifully illustrated by his X-Men collaborator Frank Quitely, the story is essentially a scathing commentary on animal testing, set in the context of some kick-ass comic book action sequences.

I don't really find Morrison to be the genius that some people say he is, but he really knows how to keep a reader's attention. Following the odyssey of this little family of oddballs is rather engaging, if not a little predictable at some turns. I also love the way he paces the story. I always had a sense of what was going to happen, but I still wanted to see how he would get there. It's not what I'd call groundbreaking, but the presentation definitely feels fresh. This is due in no small part to Quitely's nearly flawless art. Given that the three protagonists are animals who can only engage in the most rudimentary dialogue possible, it falls upon him to convey their character effectively, and he does a magnificent job.

We3 is certainly not without its problems, foremost of which being the plausibility of the science involved. It reads a little bit like Robert O' Brien's The Secret of NIMH, in which a bunch of street rats and mice became super-smart after being injected with foreign DNA, a concept which, as we now know, is scientifically absurd. There is a bit of suspension of disbelief involved here; we the readers are supposed to buy the notion that the U.S. government would try untested technology on three adult animals when they could much more easily breed animals specifically for the job. This story clearly has its origins in the notion "wouldn't it be cool if household pets were made into killing machines" but Morrison never offers a satisfactory explanation for such a conceit, which I think is necessary in a "realistic" comic book, and as a result the story can't quite transcend its decidedly comic-booky premise.

Finally, there's the fact that the creators lean on the "awww" button a little too much, meaning that they try a little too hard to call attention to the tragedy of the lead characters instead of just letting their inherently tragic situation speak for itself.

Flaws notwithstanding, however, We3 was, back when I was completing its three issues, a truly involving read from start to finish. This story, being self-contained and apparently independent of any superhero universe, came without any baggage such as continuity or pre-existing sentimental attachments to any of the characters. One really wonders where the characters are going, or will end up, even though there's some idea of where that will be.

And then there's the art. Hooo boy, it made me sad the day Frank Quitely signed a multi-year exclusive contract with DC Comics that meant he wouldn't be drawing the X-Men or any other Marvel character for a while, but if it means he gets to produce stuff like We3 all the time, then I'm more than happy he made the jump. This guy's attention to detail is fantastic, and his characters are more expressive than those drawn by about 70% of all other mainstream comic book artists, including some of the best. He doesn't quite draw the prettiest girls around, but I'd take his moody and expressive females over Jim Lee's generic lookalike babes any day.

An altogether different pleasure came from buying and reading Dark Horse Comics' Chosen, an acclaimed and slightly controversial comic book miniseries by Civil War scribe Mark Millar and DC/Vertigo Comics mainstay Peter Gross, that purportedly asks one simple question: what if some snot-nosed kid growing up in suburban America suddenly found out that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ? Jodie Christianson, a 12 year-old just like any other, finds this out the hard way when an 18-wheeler of a truck falls on his head and he walks away without a scratch. From that point on it's a series of thrills and chills, with Jodie performing one miracle after another and making converts of just about everyone in the town with the exception of the local parish priest. It's a coming of age story in probably the most literal sense of the word, with a twist at the end which feels kind of spine-tingling in light of current events.

For anyone, and I mean anyone who has experienced puberty, this comic book is an absolute must-read. It's Stand By Me set in the 1980s with a religious/supernatural undercurrent. This story is pure fun, so much fun that it feels like a guilty pleasure sometimes. Like We3, it was a comic I avidly waited for because in this case I only had the vaguest idea of where the story was going, and while in retrospect I should have seen the twist at the end coming, the truth of the matter is that I was enjoying myself too much to play sleuth.

Millar, whose knack for entertaining and believable dialogue is almost unparalleled, is truly in his element here. Though he has openly and repeatedly professed a love for the larger-than-life characters of Superman and Captain America among others, he has shown a real knack for capturing the the small and intimate, as is shown by the way he wrote Peter Parker when he did Spider-Man, as well as his characterization of little Jodie and his friends here. I'll grant that some of the dialogue feels forced, but there are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments here, like the scene where Jodie turns water sitting in a bunch of plastic soda bottles into wine.

As for the art, let me just say that while Peter Gross is the last person on earth I'd want to draw my superhero comic books, he is the only person I'd choose to draw this project. He perfectly captures the naivete of Jodie and the sleepy little town of Peoria, Illinois with such skill that it feels like he was born to draw this book. This not a story that needs ultra-slick linework and rendering from the likes of Steve McNiven or George Perez, but one that needs a touch of innocence and simplicity, which Gross delivers.

The twist ending, which I hope I haven't given away by now, actually comes as something as a relief for some reason, more than the sledgehammer that Millar probably intended. Although I wonder if it wasn't some kind of cop-out from the way he had planned it before, this doesn't diminish the enjoyability of everything that came before it. I understand he has a sequel in the works to be entitled American Jesus. I know I'll be there for that.

We3 and Chosen are available as collected editions, and I'm pretty sure, for the more economically-minded, they're available online by now, having come out in 2004 and 2003, respectively. Whether one reads them off his laptop or a book in his lap, both these miniseries are solid arguments for respecting comic books as a legitimate mainstream art form.