Secret Avengers #11

I heard sobbing when I got back to my desk after relieving the receptionist for her afternoon break. I poked my head up out of my cubicle and looked around for the source of the sound. It was a young coworker. I assume she had been fighting with her boyfriend again.

It was an appropriate conclusion to a horrendous Friday. Dark and rainy, everyone morose, it is days like these where one comes in close contact with hopelessness. The repetition and exhaustion make it hard to remember to be happy that one is employed.

Earlier that morning, as I was preparing to depart for work, I was thinking about the dire state of world affairs. I wondered what could the 1% and its servants in the political class do to reinvigorate the allegiance of the masses. The system is collapsing and the people know it; a pervasive sense of alienation seems to be an inherent part of present-day society. Either the power elite change things up and figure a way to rekindle hope among the plebeians or the system is going to fracture.

A solution that came to mind is a massive jobs program -- an economic boom that included plentiful employment at significantly higher wages for your average worker. That might do the trick, might cure people of their alienation and still leave the power elite in its high perch.

But then I checked myself. Chances are remote that there will be full employment at wages that wouldn't be immediately gobbled up by rising health-care coinsurance and housing costs.

So back we come to alienation and onrushing system collapse.

One hopeful sign that when the system is overturned the common folk might rise up and meet the challenge is that we seem to have advanced (when I say "we" I mean we plebeians in the capitalist industrial G8 neoliberal core) beyond a simplistic Manichaeism in our popular conceptions of order. We now see that light and dark are not strictly delimited; that they commingle, interact. There is much darkness in light and vice versa.

Case in point, most successful, compelling Hollywood drama no longer presents the United States Government as the "good guys." The films that do, like, for instance, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), are nearly unwatchable. The form is so familiar, so bereft of any mooring in reality other than through past iterations of the genre, that no amount of special effects or star power is going to rehabilitate it.

Rather, today, effective storytelling is dependent upon highlighting the conflicted nature of order. For instance, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) did a tremendous job of depicting USG as a secret criminal enterprise nested within the larger shell of government. I would say that this is a broadly accurate treatment of the U.S. deep state.

A Marvel title that explores the deep state is Secret Avengers, now in its third volume. Written by emerging star Ales Kot with consistently strong art by Michael Walsh and colors by Matthew Wilson, the current story arc juggles a number of interesting ideas: post-structuralism, post-traumatic stress disorder, a sentient black-hole bomb named Vladimir, a mysterious doomsday force called Tlön, a cyber-hallucination reconstruction of Kowloon Walled City, etc.

But the relationship at the story's foundation is longtime Super-villain M.O.D.O.K. and S.H.I.E.L.D. director and Secret Avengers boss Maria Hill.

Maria Hill is Marvel's chief character representing the U.S. deep state. She is very similar to the Jessica Chastain character Maya, the insatiable CIA agent bin Laden hunter, in Zero Dark Thirty (2012) -- a beautiful, highly-motivated elite bureaucrat bent on doing the right thing but who is part of an enormous, morally vacant high-tech machine.

Maria Hill has lured M.O.D.O.K. away from A.I.M. and given him a S.H.I.E.L.D. position to conduct research and assist the Secret Avengers team on the Helicarrier Iliad. Hill uncovers a plot by M.O.D.O.K. to sabotage the Secret Avengers. But, as revealed in Secret Avengers #11 (eight scans can be seen below), M.O.D.O.K., seeing himself in Maria Hill, falls in love with her. The issue ends with M.O.D.O.K. announcing to Agent Coulson and Hawkeye his desire to become an Avenger.

If M.O.D.O.K. can be an Avenger, we are beyond good and evil. Is this what Kot is saying? If we are beyond good and evil, and people understand this, why not discard the old order and reevaluate the system?

Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #1

To me there is no question who is currently doing the most powerful and innovative art in comic books. It is Marco Rudy. I raved about his work on New Avengers Annual #1. Now he is teamed with rising star writer Ales Kot on the new Winter Soldier title, Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier.

I don't know if it is merely crass commercial desire on the part of Marvel's editors to cash in on the success of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), but the former sidekick of the star-spangled Avenger is recast as a special agent in charge of protecting Earth from outer-space threats; or, as Bucky Barnes partner Daisy "Quake" Johnson asks, "Man on the wall, guarding Earth against all known threats by murdering them before they murder us?"

Kots crafts a complex narrative featuring underwater smuggling of a potent drug imported from a planet in a far-off galaxy, Namor, Loki, "bad trip" psychedelia and life in outer space. Marco Rudy's art brings the story to life.

The scenes aboard orbiting satellite stations located above Earth and Mars (seen in the first few scans below) remind me of "Winnie-ther-Pooh Acres" in Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964).

Iron Patriot #5

Iron Patriot #5 was the the end of line for the series. It is too bad. Because though the story by Ales Kot never in the main rose above the level of filler, the art by Garry Brown and the colors by Jim Charalampidis jumped out at you. Brown's work on Iron Patriot was truly alive, a combination of Primitivism and classic Kirby from his Silver Age heyday. When in the future I look back on 2014 Garry Brown's five-issue run on Iron Patriot will sparkle like a Zeitgeist diamond.

Kot acknowledged in a Tweet that Iron Patriot was not his best work: "I believe Iron Patriot is my weakest work, but I managed to find a way to make it personally relevant through what I feel amounts to sheer will and a firm refusal to give up on anything I ever put out into the world." 

Bravo! Very Nietzschean. And Kot strikes a Nietzschean chord that ends the series with strength and depth when a comatose Rhodey dreams of seeing his father, who just sacrificed his life to save him, as a boy. Make sure to see the last scan at the bottom of the page. The text reads:

I don't remember much of the next few days.

Just fragments of dreams. 

People stopping by. 

Being immersed in Tony's meditank.

I had a dream about you. 

You were fishing, alone. 

You were a boy. 

You smiled at me. 

I realized that I was myself, as I am now, and you were that boy again. 

You said something but I couldn't remember what it was.

Previously I have opined that nihilism is the province of fathers and sons. The father leads the way into the abyss and the son dutifully follows along behind. In the process, a reversal takes place. The father becomes the idealized son, "the youth of eternal summers" that Van Morrison sings about in No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986), and which Kot and Brown capture so well. And we are back in the garden.

This is "the tain of the mirror" to the ceaseless striving and constant suffering of the eternal recurrence: We are always already -- here, now -- back in the garden.

Iron Patriot #2

Marvel has a slew of new titles, nearly all of which are impressive. They are being published under the heading "All-New Marvel NOW!" These are tremendous, fresh comic books. The new titles include, to name a few, Charles Soule's She-Hulk, The Punisher by Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Gerads and the gorgeous, stunning Iron Fist: The Living Weapon by Kaare Andrews.

Another standout is Iron Patriot, Marvel's reclamation of the baleful Norman Osborn superhero persona from the Dark Reign cycle (which, if you ask me, is the high point for Marvel of the last six years, an appropriate cap to the Civil War and Secret Invasion crossover events). James Rhodes, a.k.a., Rhodey, Tony Stark's Friday, dons the Iron Patriot armor at the behest of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I have never followed a title that Rhodey appeared in other as a cut-out character, part of a larger super-group. James Rhodes was introduced after I had for the most part given up on reading comic books. He is a manifestation of the late Bronze Age, and one of the defining achievements for Marvel at the time -- his association with Iron Man while Tony Stark struggled with alcoholism, I mean -- along with Frank Miller's rejuvenation of the Daredevil title. Rhodey is most commonly known as War Machine, a more military-oriented Iron Man; he is now played by Don Cheadle in the movies, though I much preferred Terrence Howard in the role.

In any event, Iron Patriot is ably written by the energetic Ales Kot, whose work on Secret Avengers I was impressed with. But the real eye-opener of Iron Patriot is Garry Brown's art and Jim Charalampidis's colors. Below you will find ten scans from Iron Patriot #2. To me, this is fine art. It reminds us of the lesson that art is supposed to impart: "You are free."

Freedom is not a political construct. Freedom is in the mind. Or, put another way, "Prison's in your mind ... Can't you see I'm free?" That's from Charles Manson's statement to the court during the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. Art reminds, or should remind, must aspire to this reminiscence of primordial freedom. In order for civilization to remain vital, to avoid stasis, there must be art. Comic books provide visual art on a mass scale better than any other medium. That is what I am saying.

Secret Avengers #16

The best way to read a comic book is with lots of natural light. This makes spring and summer the best months. What I find is that a post-run endorphin high improves the experience as well. I stumbled upon this one evening after work. It was early summer. I was just back from a run in Fort Tryon Park. The light coming through my sixth floor studio apartment windows was ample and had a green-tinted aqueous quality. I dug into an Iron Man comic book. At that point I probably hadn't read a comic book in a decade. The experience was mind-blowing. Iron Man battled Mandarin and a bunch of dragons on mainland China. I was young, fit and my brain was coursing with natural opioids. I flew along with Tony Stark as he fought in mid-air with the dragons; plus, Mandarin blasting away with those damn rings of his. The green of the dragons was highlighted by the green light pouring through my open windows. From that point forward, this would have been 1991, I was convinced that comic books are much more than a juvenile, toss-off media. Now this is widely acknowledged not only by aesthetes but Wall Street as well since comic-book-derived blockbusters keep the big studios afloat.

Secret Avengers, currently in its third volume, has never been much more than mediocre. (Though that is not entirely true -- Rick Remender's volume one run was noteworthy for its exploration of artificial life.) I think Secret Avengers was designed to maintain a sinister vibe in Marvel's Avengers franchise once Dark Avengers, the seminal Marvel title during the early days of the Obama administration, was cancelled.

I must say I greatly enjoyed the last issue, Secret Avengers #16, of the second volume, seven scans from which you can inspect below. In the first four, Mockingbird fights a battle to the death with A.I.M. Scientist Supreme, Dr. Andrew Forson. It is always good to see a tertiary hero get some time in the spotlight. Artist Luke Ross outdoes himself here. He maintains Mockingbird's femininity but captures the brutality of the fight with Forson. She takes a knife to the pelvis and returns it by forcing the blade into Forson's face. Ross's use of multiple inset panels to capture the action is superb. As an example of the medium, I don't think it gets any finer.

Then, for the pièce de résistance, take a look at the last three scans of a wasted Mentallo sitting on an A.I.M. Island beach at sunset as nanobots trickle out of his ear and into the surf (capturing sort of what I felt like reading that post-work, post-run Iron Man comic book long ago). Writers Nick Spencer and Ales Kot are to be praised.