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District X: Mr. M 2005 (SC TPB) 148 pgs.

Written by David Hine. Pencils by David Yardin, Lan Medina, Mike Perkins. Inkers various.
Colours/letters: various. Editor: Mike Marts

Reprinting: District X #1-6 (2004) - with covers

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Published by Marvel Comics

District X reflects the experiments in mainstream (ie: super hero) comics that seems to arise from time-to-time as either an attempt to find a new spin on super heroes...or as an attempt to move away from super heroes, but with just enough super hero trappings to retain the familiar target audience.

In this case, District X spins out of the whole X-Men franchise (hence district...X), yet on the surface is really just a police drama. The premise is that there's a ghetto of New York that is largely inhabited by mutants -- not the cool mutants that become super heroes, but those with odd little abilities, or freakish appearances. And like any ethnic ghetto, there are those eking out honest livings...and there are mobsters and drug dealers and the like. Patrolling this beat falls to non-mutant officer Ismael Ortega who, as the series begins, is paired with a taciturn Fed, the mutant -- and ex-X-Man -- Bishop. Bishop is presumably there to give the series a recognizable "super hero" star -- though dressed in street clothes, with a shaved head, and with a bit of a non-personality, I'm not sure how recognizable he is (I'm not that familiar with Bishop from his X-Men days, so I can't judge).

The strength of such a hybrid series -- where it's sort of an X-Men/fantasy comic, and it's sort of a mean streets police drama -- is that it can be a fresh spin on both genres (or milieus). The weakness...is it basically just slightly tweaks cliched milieus. Even the idea of misfit mutants whose powers are more a hinderance than an attribute has been done before -- in X-Men comics themselves, or the Wild Cards book series. While police dramas are a dime a dozen.

As such, the result is a perfectly decent opening arc -- that doesn't maybe become much more. The core plot involves two rival mobsters, and a new street drug dubbed "Toad Juice". As an example of what I mean about how all these things have been done before is that the street drug is actually a byproduct of a mutant boy -- literally his sweat is a hallucinogen. Yet a similar idea was already used in the Hulk mini-series, Nightmerica. And, you know what? I wouldn't be at all surprised if writer David Hine was unfamiliar with Nightmerica -- it's just inevitable similar ideas will recur if you're working in similar milieus. Which is why it's how and what you do with story ideas is as important as the idea itself -- that's how you keep things fresh.

But though there's nothing especially wrong with the plotting in this story arc...there's nothing that particularly great about it. I know I'm a broken record, but these days there are just too many comic book storylines serialized over multiple issues (to justify the TPB collection) that don't really need or even warrant such a lengthy serialization. There aren't really a lot of plot threads or story twists. The intriguing aspect of this story arc is the title character -- Mr. M. He doesn't even appear until the second chapter, and seems a somewhat peripheral character...which is kind of what makes him intriguing (since the story arc is named after him, know he won't remain peripheral) with an effective character design as a gaunt introvert.

The lead characters of Bishop and Ortega are perfectly serviceable without actually gelling into personalities much. I don't know if that's just a weakness with the writing, or whether it's a problem with the "cinematic" style of modern comic book writing, where we don't get to flesh out heroes with thought balloons and text captions. Maybe if this was a screenplay, and real actors were saying the lines, the characters would have personalities by virtue of the actors' charisma. The series opens with Ortega's partner -- a bigoted, old school street cop -- getting injured in the line of duty, and with some other characters getting shot. Ortega ends up covering up the details of the shootings. But though this is sort of threaded along as a sub-plot...it never really becomes anything, not even as much of a character exploration. Though we can understand, even sympathize, with why Ortega does what he does, the fact is, he -- an officer of the law -- took it upon himself to conceal and misrepresent the circumstances of an incident. It would've been nice to get more exploration of that, and what it says about his character and how he views his position in the community.

The mob war stuff eventually builds to a kind of perfunctory climax, but by this point the Mr. M stuff has moved to the foreground. As well, we get some more delving into Ortega's family life (other than knowing his wife is a mutant, we really hadn't spent much time with his family previously). And we get some fleshing out of the personalities -- like explaining why his daughter wore a Che Guvera T-shirt, something I'd've thought unlikely given that police officers tend, I think, to be right wing. But it turns out his wife is the Castro sympathizer. This attempt to add some real world reality and political debate to fantasy mutants is nice -- Ortega points out oppressive Cuba has the highest per capita prison population in the world, while his wife points out the US has the second highest. The only problem with that is: that it's not technically true. Statistically the US has the highest per capita prison population in the world. The US state department or Amnesty International might argue it's hard to get accurate data on a regime like Cuba -- fair enough. But that still means writer Hine has one character quote a statistic, and the other basically make something up (or, at least, speculate) and present that as a legitimate argument. (Granted, Hine might've felt it would bog down the scene to have Ortega say: "While there's no verifiable documentation, non partisan human rights experts suspect Cuba's prison population is much larger than the government admits! So there!")

Still, there seems to be more stuff happening in the last couple of issues, in terms of plot twists and character development, than in the previous four, and it might have been wiser to have spread it out better.

The art throughout is very good, of a realist, straight forward style. It's effective, and tells the scenes well. I'll admit, it perhaps lacks a certain mood or atmosphere, something that might better evoke the feel of an urban slum. Still, it suits the milieu better than, say, cartoony or manga flavoured visuals would.

There are some cute ideas in District X, and its various mutant powers (like a mob henchman named Mr. Punch who got that name for a rather different reason than you might assume). There are also kind of odd bits, like the mutant street drug having a lethal effect on non-mutants, causing them to sprout root-like growths. Yet the series opens with Ortega and his partner coming upon a mutant with a similar ability -- without any indication there's a connection. So is it just that the artists like to draw roots?

Ultimately, this opening arc of District X is perfectly agreeable effort -- solid dialogue, and clean visuals, with a decent pacing. But at six chapters, writer Hine hasn't really come up with anything more than a generic mob war story, which doesn't really build to any clever or surprising climax, nor with many intriguing twists along the way. The heroes are likeable but fairly non-descript heroes, the villains pretty generic thugs. Mr. M is nicely enigmatic, though even his behaviour toward the end seems a bit like an abrupt plot twist, rather than a logical development of personality or themes.

It's a decent read. Nothing more, nor less.

Cover price: $__ CDN./$14.99 USA

DP7 Classic  2008 (SC TPB) 200 pages

Written by Mark Gruenwald. Pencils by Paul Ryan. Inks by Romeo Tanghal, and others.
Colours: Paul Becton. Letters: Phil Felix. Editor: Ralph Macchio.

Reprinting: D.P.7 #1-9

Rating: N/R (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Published by Marvel Comics

I haven't given this an "official" rating -- N/R = no rating -- because I haven't read the whole thing. I picked up a bagged set collecting issues #1-5, though, allowing me to offer some opinion on it.

When Marvel Comics launched its "New Universe" experiment, the notion was to take the heightened "realism" that had kick started the Marvel Age renaissance of the 1960s -- and take it to the next level. So there were no costumes, and there was supposed to be a greater attempt at asking: "what if people with super powers really existed?" The results were mixed, the New Universe line for a long time regarded as an ill-fated experiment -- or an ill-conceived act of hubris. Yet the better series, or the better ideas in the various series, really were ahead of their time and, indeed, still ahead of comics today. And the whole "New Universe" feel was applied lock, stock and barrel to the initially well-regarded Valiant Comics line that started a few years after (both were overseen by Jim Shooter) -- "super hero" comics, but without the costumes, and an emphasis on talky, character-driven scripts.

And clearly Marvel feels the old series had more going for them (and more fans) than you might think, and have released some TPB collections of the old series -- including Star Brand and Psi-Force.

D.P.7 follows a group of characters who begin manifesting unusual paranormal abilities which, though giving them super powers, also carry negative side effects that make them freaks and outcasts. They meet at a clinic established to help such "paranormals", but when they realize the clinic has a secret agenda, they escape, hitting the road together.

D.P.7 is a mix of plus and minuses (the title stands for "Displaced Paranormals"). The basic background can seem a bit vague. The heroes are supposed to be freaks, keeping their abilities secret from the world -- yet enough people have begun manifesting super powers that there's actually a publicly advertised clinic for them! The characters go on the run from the Clinic...but why they don't go to the authorities (or at least a lawyer) is kind of muddy. Even the "origin" of their abilities is mysterious. References are made to a "white event" (a white light in the sky), but since the New Universe comics were all part of the same universe, it's not clear how much you're supposed to know about that from reading other New Universe comics.

Where the series works is simply in the characters, their interaction, and exploring the pros and cons of their abilities. Some are "stock" powers -- like a speedster, but here given the twist that he can rarely slow down, vibrating even when standing still so that he appears as a blur, and needing to eat six or seven meals a day just to maintain his metabolism. Some are more atypical, like a woman who can affect traction. While some seem like established characters, like a guy who can release an anti-body version of himself ala the Doom Patrol's Negative Man.

Cleverly, some of the characters have abilities that can be useful in a group...but wouldn't be that interesting for a solo character, making for a loose "team" where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Scripter Mark Gruenwald throws together the diverse personalities -- most are decent people, but with different ideas and aspirations, none really wanting their new abilities, and their goal more survival than becoming civic minded do gooders. And because the New Universe was maybe supposed to be more realistic -- without actually being labelled "mature readers" -- it touches on ideas a lot of comics probably would've shied away from, such as religion in a sequence where, after feeling science has failed them, some consider trying an exorcism to eliminate their powers. One character even leads a prayer circle...while others are atheists.

Granted, Gruenwald's ear for dialogue can be clunky. This is particularly true in the first issue (a character being shot at thinks: "I'm afraid of guns!") but gets better as it goes, as he rounds out the personalities with a little more nuance. It isn't that I object to the need to spell out someone's motivation in a thought balloon...but even by the standards of the time, some of the dialogue is clumsy. At the same time, there are other, nicely believable exchanges.

The issues are crammed with a lot of small panels, a lot of verbose dialogue balloons. It's an adventure/thriller series, but it's also a character/human drama series, too. And I mean that in a good way.

There was a sense with some of the New Universe comics that the creators were rambling, unsure how to avoid being too "old school" (supervillains and jewel thieves) but not sure what "new school" entailed. So the first few issues just repetitiously deal with them on the run from super powered bounty hunters sent by the clinic (though nicely showing them learning how to use their powers). With the fourth issue, the series starts to break away from that -- with mixed results. One of the group is arrested in a small town on suspicions of being a monster responsible for some cattle mutilations. It provides a different plot...but relates to my earlier point about "realism". Gruenwald intends the townsfolk to be prejudicial and small minded -- but they arrest Dave just 'cause he's big, not because he was found near a dead cow or with anything on him that would connect him to the crime. I mean, what are they going to present to a judge by way of evidence? This isn't a small minded town...this is "Deliverance" country.

The art by Paul Ryan suits the tone of the series, straight forward with realist figures. It tells the story, even as it is undynamic. Like with some of the other New Universe series, and indeed the later Valiant Comics, there's a deliberate artistic choice to try an avoid the sense of superhero exaggeration and dynamism...but you could still go for the "realism" with a little more cinematic panache. Heck, in one scene a character remarks how dark it is -- but in the art and colour, there's little attempt to drape the scene in a nocturnal moodiness. Still, Ryan's realist style suits the scenes more than would a cartoony or exaggerated artist.

Despite some heavy handed exposition and a feeling the plots are struggling to decide what the series should be, D.P.7 works fairly well. The talky, character-driven sequences and interpersonal dynamics are compelling, getting you to turn the pages as easily as any dust up between arch foes. Gruenwald, who earlier wrote the equally revisionist (if more super hero-centric) Squadron Supreme does a nice job of coming up with the quirks to the abilities, to asking "if a real person could really do this...what would be the repercussions?" in a way that a lot of "realist/revisionist" comics in the years since have failed to do convincingly.

Cover price: $__ CDN./ $24.95 USA. 

Dragon Lady  2000 (SC TPB) 144 pages

Written and Illustrated by Milton Caniff.

Reprinting: Amazing Comics #1-4 (which reprinted a storyline from the 1930s newspaper strip, Terry and the Pirates)  plus a couple of non-Caniff short stories

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Published by ACG Comics

Terry and the Pirates was a newspaper strip that followed the adventures of young Terry Lee, an American boy living in the Orient, and Pat Ryan, a rugged soldier-of-fortune type who acts as his guardian. At least that was how the strip started out (Terry grew older and became a young man as the strip progressed). This particular storyline (which ran from the end of August, 1937, to the middle of February, 1938) features the introduction of the Dragon Lady, an Oriental femme fatale who just may develop a soft spot for Pat as the story progresses. Despite seeming to meet her demise at the serial's conclusion, the Dragon Lady would reappear in the strip, becoming highly identified with the series overall.

Terry and the Pirates is something of a benchmark in the evolution of the newspaper strip, and Caniff is an artist who had enormous influence on succeeding generations of comicbook artists, so I'd been wanting to read some of the strip for a long time.

A single story stretched out over so many months could become tedious, but this turns out to be a convoluted affair, almost like two or three stories that segue one into the other. Pat is hired to help catch a spy stealing documents for a new plane. That spy turns out to be the Dragon Lady. But soon the story has taken an unexpected turn and Pat is in the Chinese jungle at the mercy of a warlord, with Terry and manservant Connie in pursuit (despite being called Terry and the Piates, here adult Pat is more clearly the main character).

The unfortunate thing about newspaper adventure strips is that their artistic heyday was probably in the 1930s and 1940s and, like Golden Age comicbooks themselves, it means that they reflect antiquated attitudes. With Terry and the Pirates set in the exotic Far East, you can't avoid noticing an underlying racism. Right in the opening strip we meet a series regular, Connie -- Terry and Pat's comic-relief Chinese manservant. Connie, unlike everyone else, isn't drawn particularly realistic; with his huge teeth and big ears, he's a caricature. Dimwitted and goofy, he's more uncomfortable that amusing. Though, to be fair, he is portrayed as having a good heart. Which is better than most of the other Asian characters, who are drawn less grotesquely, but are generally villains. Throw in ostensibly good guys occasionally using racial slurs and it's enough to make most modern readers cringe.

Though, and here's the paradox, there are occasional Oriental characters who are not portrayed in quite so dismissive a light. And the Dragon Lady herself is intelligent and seductive.

So, does that make Dragon Lady unreadable. Well, no. If we dismissed every book or movie that was tainted by racism (or sexism), we'd eliminate 60 percent of stories told prior to, say, the mid-1950s at least. But we don't. If there's enough entertainment value inherent in the rest of a story, we can hold our noses through the more offensive bits.

I say "can", not necessarily "should". If someone feels it would sour the story too much for them to enjoy it, then I respect that. For my part, though, I found myself willing to look past the occasional lapses.

Milton Caniff was considered a master of his craft, and this epic storyline shows some of why. Older strips had more room to work with than the few adventure strips remaining today: four panels a day, often of enough size to fit in a fair amount of verbige. There was also a defter handling of repitition, with less obvious reiteration of information, making for a smoother read when the strips are assembled back-to-back (though there's still enough repetition that its newspaper origins are evident). It's a technique that has been lost somewhat in modern North American adventure strips, though the British (at least into the early 1980s) were still expert practitioners of the craft with strips like Modesty Blaise and Axa, where repetition was kept to a minimum.

The exotic, Far East locale full of junks (Chinese boats), warlords, and Chinese architecture is well depicted, making the story decidedly atmospheric and enthralling. I'd never read Terry and the Pirates before, but there's something delightfully evocative and nostalgic about it all, as if I had read it long ago, in another life.

The story is well-paced and clever, taking unexpected twists. The nice thing about these older newspaper strips is that they had enough room to inject a little bit of characterization, to keep things from being too breezy, and a touch of humour, even as they're written to be fast-paced, like a movie serial.

As noted above, Caniff was an influential artist, which is more clearly obvious in his later work which influenced the likes of Frank Robbins and others. I actually find this, his early style, more pleasing. He utilizes a less stylized, generally realistic art that I quite enjoyed.

The format for this book is worth commenting on. Firstly, the first two issues contain a back up story not by Caniff (a horror story culled from some old Charlton Comics title and a war story culled from Fightin' Marines). Neither story is especially memorable, nor thematically connected to the main story. The final two issues dump the back up story, and switch to reprinting the strips in a vertical format (meaning you have to turn the book on its side to read it). Although that's not such a bad idea when published in its comic book format, in this TPB it's a bit awkward as the spine isn't as limber, forcing the pictures to curl a bit toward the spine. As well, the editors were rather lax in reprinting the accompanying Sunday strips -- sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. As such, there are occasional jumps in the story (though with a text blurb to tell you what you missed) and a whole week or so of dailies are skipped at the end (though you don't notice it). There's also a couple of pages in the first issue that got switched with each other. All of this means that, though not a bad re-presentation of these strips, it's not the best, either.

This TPB is dubbed a "Special Collection", and it doesn't so much reprint Amazing Comics as it literally collects them between a single cover. It really seems as though it's the four issues glued together, complete with front and back covers of a different paper than the story pages, plus ads. It's also worth noting that this was apparently limited to only 600 copies.

Unavoidably dated by some of its sensibilities, nonetheless this collection of Terry and the Pirates is an entertaining adventure harkening back to a bygone day of adventure and mystery. It gives an idea of why the strip, and Caniff, is so well regarded all these decades later.

Cover price: $__ CDN./ $10.95 USA. 

Dreadstar, Definitive Collection, part 1  2004 (SC TPB) 192 pages

Written and Illustrated by Jim Starlin Inks by Starlin, with Joe Rubinsten.
Colours: Glynis Oliver. Letters: Jim Novak. Editor: Archie Goodwin, Jo Duffy.

Reprinting: Dreadstar #1-6 (1982)

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Additional notes: intro by Walt Simonson; sketches; covers

Published by Dynamic Forces

These comics have been reprinted a few times: originally published as a deluxe format comic by Marvel's imprint, Epic, then reprinted in 1985 as a six issue, regular format mini-series still by Marvel called Dreadstar and Company, then in 2001 Slave Labour Graphics released a series of black & white TPBs reprinting the saga -- beginning with the precursor series "Metamorphosis Odyssey" -- of which these six issues comprised volume 4, sub-titled Plan M and finally Dynamic Forces has released issues #1-12 as both a single hard cover, and a two volume TPB collection. Whew!

Dreadstar is basically a chip off the Star Wars block in that it follows a group of rebels battling intergalactic tyranny. Except here the heroes are caught in the middle between two warring tyrannies, the religious-fueled Instrumentality, and the royalist Monarchy. As well, the series borrows a bit from super hero comics in that this rebel group is just a team -- just five characters -- and some with super powers. And clearly the series has enjoyed a certain lingering "cult" appeal, given the number of times it's been reprinted over the years (or, at least, the times these early issues have been reprinted).

The first issue supplies a recap of what's gone before. Despite this beinging with issue #1, hero Vanth Dreadstar had been around for a while, first being introduced in Starlin's "Metamorphosis Odyssey" saga serialized in Marvel's Epic Illustrated magazine (and collected in a TPB), and then appearing in a Dreadstar Annual #1, then a Dreadstar graphic novel. And "Metamorphosis Odyssey" was definitely a "mature readers" story, moreso than the Dreadsat regular series.

All six issues here tell relatively self-contained adventures (no "to be continued" cliff hangers between issues), meaning it's not too hard to just jump in even if you just found one or two in the back issues bins.

These initial six adventures provide a reasonable introduction to Jim Starlin's science fiction saga, and the characters drop references to a mysterious "plan M" throughout that, then, is revealed in issue #6, creating a sort of story arc. At the same time, these six issues were never really meant to form a stand alone arc, building to a definitive climax in #6 (Dynamic Forces has released issues #7-12 in a second TPB and, I assume, those dozen issues do better form a story arc). Even "plan M" isn't so much threaded through the series as a developing plot line, as it's just referred to occasionally, before being revealed. So elements are introduced, but not developed, and references are made that never lead anywhere. Even the very uniqueness of a hero caught between two forces is muted, as Vanth by the end of these six issues forms a temporary alliance with the Monarchy.

However, taken as just six issues of an on going series that don't end on a cliff hanger or anything, Dreadstar and Company is a decent enough read, with strengths and weaknesses. Each issue totals about 30 pages of story (save the last issue, which is 22 pages). As such, Starlin can take his time with the issues, mixing talkiness with action scenes, and, as noted, crafting self-contained adventures. But, despite that, the stories and the characters aren't especially elaborate. The issues are enjoyable...without being that memorable after the fact, despite what should be grandiose, memorable scenes -- like Vanth and pal Syzygy trying to get out of the way of a nuclear bombardment! Likewise, issue #2, for instance, is very much a character issue focusing on Willow...but even after six issues, Willow remains a fairly bland personality.

The stand out adventure is #5, with Starlin working a little more humour into the proceedings, putting a little more swashbuckling into his space opera.

Starlin's art is appealing, if a lttle too prone to big muscles and, sometimes, stiff postures. But his backgrounds are detailed, which is a plus in a science fiction series where it's all about creating a reality -- though, mayhap, it's a little too conssistent: the corridors in one ship look rather like the corridors of another, which look a little like the corridors on this planet or that. Along with the 30 pages, there are plenty of little panels, meaning the stories don't feel skimpy.

And Vanth and his crew have personalities -- I don't want to suggest they don't. It's just that, like with the action-adventure, little really stands out.

Ultimately, this certainly leaves one open to looking up subsequent comics. But neither are these issues strong enough to necessarily make such a pursuit a priority. There's a feeling a lot more could be done, than is. Even Plan M, when it's revealed, is a great, audacious, potentially controversial, idea. But, at least as presented here, it's not handled especially convincingly.

This was enjoyable, the leisurely pace making it a relaxed read, even as it ends up seeming a little thin at times, with protagonists who are personable if not much more.

This is a review of the comics based on the earlier reprint mini-series, Dreadstar and Company.

Cover price: $__ CDN./ $19.95 USA. 

The Drowned

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
   For my review at www.ugo.com, go here.

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