Welcome to another Weekly Emanata, the MEGATONik review of comics. As these are a combination of readerly reaction and critical examination, expect spoilers. I’m going to write as if you, the reader, has some passing knowledge of comics, but feel free to post questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. Last week’s column got eaten up by the server switch; if any of you got a chance to read it and have it saved in your temporary internet files, it would be much appreciated if you’d sent it my way.

Beanworld vol 1: Wahoolazuma
by Larry Marder

My bias, straight up, is that this is one of my favorite comic books. I’ve written about it previously on MEGATONik here and here, so I’ll try not to repeat my praises.

Yes, Beanworld is an awesome look at the artistic process, ecological relationships, and what comics can do. However, after my last reading, I always bore the caveat that the first few parts of the book weren’t that good. Reading these earliest issues again, reproduced in a great little hardcover volume by Dark Horse, I can see where I got that opinion; the earliest Beanworld stories don’t seem as free and well-developed as the later issues. They were much, much better than I’d allowed in my memory, though, and the stories built upon them later on make them even better. Things that seem to idiosyncratically stick out for awhile are woven into the unique form of story that Beanworld is telling, a cause and effect that is alien to me but makes perfect sense. It’s not a comic; it’s a process.

So go read Beanworld. Get it from a comic store, a bookstore, the internet or even a library. (My hometown university library has a newly-donated copy of Eclipse’s old Beanworld reprint.) Visit Marder’s blog for neat insights into his process in making a process. And then read Beanworld again. It can change the way you live.

Madame Xanadu #8
written by Matt Wagner
art by Amy Reeder Hadley

Wagner and Hadley have been chugging away on this title, fleshing out the history of a centuries-old fortune teller that has mostly been a cipher, a supporting cast member in DC’s mystic titles. Wagner’s plots have, so far, been tightly told across two-issue arcs, each focusing on different formative era’s of Madame Xanadu’s past. It started in pre-Roman England with the main character as a young witch, jumped to her time with Kublai Kahn (where she got her name), spent two issues in prison during the French Revolution, and has now finished a tour of London with Jack the Ripper.

Ugh, right? Isn’t the Jack-the-Ripper craze over? Who’s going to make a better Ripper comic than Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell’s From Hell? That was my outlook after issue seven, which had Xanadu running around trying to protect the women of Whitechapel and figure out who Jack is. A butcher? A doctor? A syphilitic prince? I felt my interest slipping away.

That all turns around this month. I don’t know if Wagner was predicting what readers would be feeling or just following his own idea of story, but it turns out that none of what Madame Xanadu thinks and worries over matters. It ceases being a Ripper story and becomes a surprising (but logical) tale of passions and consequences centering once again on Xanadu, giving her a pretty significant moment of character growth.

I continue to be amazed with Hadley’s art. A preview of her pencil work was what initially drove me to buy this title and, at this point, I’m almost disappointed that she’ll be taking a hiatus while Michael Kaluta, an honored member of the “old guard” when it comes to the mystical side of the DC Universe. Hadley has a sense of manga to her work in its fluidity and lack of detail, but her characters’ facial expressions and body language is clear and strong.

Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 #5
by David Petersen

David Petersen draws beautiful pictures. This is a nearly-irrefutable fact; check out his website. His linework is evocative, his colors are moody, and the whole process seems holistic and unified.

David Petersen’s stories move quick. Blink and they’ve gone by, with some important fact couched in the plot that rat-a-tats along at a regular cadence; there are no bass drum booms that hit to let you know, “This is a fact to remember.” This isn’t a terrible thing; there is the obvious argument that there aren’t any clues like that in real life. However, this isn’t the real world (if you couldn’t tell by the armed mice), and when I’m in a story world, I expect some sort of signals about which facts are important. The confusion that arises in me is only increased by the large delays between each issue; I’m sure they read much better back-to-back or in book format.

Connected to my previous complaint is a lack of proofreading. There is some confusing dialogue that could be aided immensely by a strategic comma here or there. I assume both of my problems come from the fact that Archaia Studio Press (ASP), Mouse Guard’s publisher, is still new to the scene and doesn’t have a strong stable of editors to catch these things.

Nova #22
written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
pencilled by Andrea DiVito

I stopped buying this book regularly a little under a year ago. I think I realize why now that I’ve started buying it again. Around issue thirteen or so, the adventures of Nova, last member of a team of space cops decimated by war, had stopped being about the fallout of said war and devolved to flying around and fighting bad guys.

Now, I’m not the kind of reader that tries to put weight and meaning into superhero comics. I think X-Men is a weak metaphor for racism and prejudice and Superman won’t tell us much about the Jewish experience in America. So don’t take me the wrong way when I start talking about how this issue (and the few preceding it) dispenses with the binary physical conflicts and dives into sticky gray interactions. There are still space cop dragonmen busting through walls and holographic computer brains taking over planets, but it’s all just frosting over a story about sibling rivalry, doing what you can before you die, and someone who thinks he’s right and doing anything he can to achieve his ends.

Also, that is an awesome cover by Juan Doe. The thumbnail doesn’t do justice to a strong, simple design with all sorts of neat, subtle colors. Doe has been doing all sorts of one-shot comics here and there (Fantastic Four: Isla de la Muerte, Arkham Asylum: Scarecrow, and next week’s Spider-Man/Human Torch: ¡Bahia de los Muertos!) that, since they aren’t part of the big ongoing titles, are liable to be ignored. It seems like people are starting to take notice, though.