PATSY WALKER: HELLCAT

Taking a few moments to gush over a miniseries I finally got around to reading. It had been sitting in my Amazon box for almost a year before I found the time, but I’m glad I did!

In the old 2008 days of Avengers Initiative, Kathryn Immonen and David Lafuente got the chance to work with a character nobody had cared about, or even thought of, for years…

The story was self-contained and had no effect on the greater MU. If you read it, you’re reading it for fun. Not continuity. Not importance or weight. Just pure fun. It starts with Tony picking Patsy to serve as the Initiative’s representative in Alaska….

Patsy arrives in Alaska….

Issue one is mostly banter and set up, but it’s masterfully scripted and wonderfully drawn. Every page feels alive and joyful…They even figured out a novel way to handle the recap page:

Every page of this mini bursts with creativity…Even the recap page!

It’s also terrific in the way it plays with Hellcat’s “nobody” status. It does so much, much better than the DC Aquaman reboot, which relies on nasty sarcasm about how lame Aquaman is–whereas this book shows Patsy as oblivious to the fact that she’s an unknown. In fact, her self-promotion and ego does more than fly in the face of her lack of fame…It almost seems like a reaction to it.

This mini turns Hellcat from nobody to antihero

And, in the end, it’s just silly.

It also gets a little NextWAVE-ish

Silly, joyful, cute, wonderful…More comics should be this fun.

INTERLUDE: FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST FAMILY

Today, we take a break from rereading every single issue of the FF ever published and delve into a retelling of the group’s origin from 2006…

I’m reading the Fantastic Four comics, issue by issue, and posting a panel at a time.  But when it comes to miniseries and one-shots, I’m not even trying to be a completist.

However, this one bears mentioning because it’s absolutely great.

Joe Casey went through a phase of retconning classic Marvel histories.  He started with The Avengers in Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1-8 (which I really should review here someday), and followed it up with Fantastic Four: First Family.  If you’re not familiar with Casey’s work, this is a good way to get into his mainstream work.  (His indie work is pretty edgy.)  The retelling here adds some background and characterization we haven’t seen before, even in the well-trodden 40+ years of FF comics.

Thus, a panel from each of the six issues of this mini.

First, in #1, we see Thing first getting his name—and his heart broken at the same time!

Next, in #2, we actually are given a decent explanation for unstable molecules.

Turns out, they’re just like the F4’s own bodies!  This is clearly canon–and I’m pretty sure it’s the first time this concept was introduced.  I say it’s clearly canon because it just popped up as part of Marvel Now! in the new Fantastic Four book by Matt Fraction…

I love little details like that.  I highly recommend Warren Ellis’ take on Ultimate Fantastic Four.  He offers many creative, science fiction explanations for the things the FF can do.

#3 offers the “origin” of the Baxter Building; the team’s powers have manifested and the army folks who sponsored their first flight want to make sure the F4 stay together and master their powers, so they tell them about a building they could buy for a song.

This retcon writes out of FF history the fact that they rented the building for the first 200 issues or so.  (Or maybe it doesn’t.  The General doesn’t say the building is for sale, so I suppose it could be a rental.)

One does have to wonder why, if the military was so interested in keeping the FF as an asset, they wouldn’t give the team a state-of-the-art base….

And why he doesn’t want to give them one away from a major city.

In #4 we get what appears to be a soft-porn panel.

Proof that Joe Casey always, always has a sense of humor, even when retelling one of Stan Lee’s bombastic, light stories with a more somber tone.

But my favorite part of this series is the incredibly inside joke of naming the F4’s first real enemy after a founding member of the Foo Fighters.  Here, he telegraphs his joke with a reference to that rock and roll band’s big hit off their first album.

And finally, in #6, we get the obligatory “rally up” panel.

If you’re a fan of the FF, and if you’re reading my blog you must be, you owe it to yourself to check out this title.  I’m sure it’s available dirt cheap used on Amazon.

HAPPYDALE

Why haven’t you heard of this comic?

Because it was a 1999 two-issue Vertigo series by Andrew Dabb (who later wrote for the WB TV series “Supernatural”) and the Eisner-nominated artist Seth Fisher, best known for working on Flash and Vertigo Pop! Tokyo before his untimely death in 2006, and it was about as weird as they come.

You can get it used and cheap on Amazon.

And you should.  It’s terrific.

I’ve posted one panel, above, that illustrates how bizarre this book is.  But it’s also ultraviolent and disturbing.  Check out the website here.

I loved this book.  It’s perverse, hilarious, unsettling…And you have to study each page, because there’s so much detail.  Like in the panel above, chock full of randomness like baby chicks, “Clam Road” (in Happydale), a guy in a robe…And it all reappears and has meaning.

It’s like the Torah.  You have to study it.

Get this book!