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.

Uncanny Avengers #4

I am an adult who reads comic books. For some reason there is opprobrium attached to this distinction. But comic books are no longer the juvenile media they were when I read them as a child. The superhero titles published by the two industry giants, Marvel and DC, are for the most part morally complex, well written and aimed at an adult audience; if they are targeting juveniles, they're juveniles who can, for instance, stomach abstruse details about Norse mythology and comprehend theoretical physics. I've learned a lot about accepting pain and moving forward by reading The Punisher, Marvel's ongoing saga of nihilist vigilante Frank Castle.

But before I say anything else, check out this page, written by Rick Remender with art by John Cassaday, from Uncanny Avengers #4. The Red Skull is breaking it down for Captain America:

This is something that could have only appeared in an underground comic when I was a kid. If the text is too small to read from the scan, here's what the Red Skull is telling Cap:

Seeing your nation with fresh eyes my dear Captain America, I assure you --  

You've lost your war. 

It just happened so slowly you grew accustomed to it.

But if you look to your heart, you will realize the truth. 

You're no longer fighting to preserve this rancid nation -- 

You're fighting to change it back. 

To add some semblance of sanity to an incurably sick culture that breeds only parasites, greedy polluters and psychotic madmen. 

A hopeless struggle you continue out of habit.

You imagine that if you fight hard enough, one day you will wrest control from the bankers who own you and return this nation to its former glory. 

Clean streets. Honest neighbors. Attractive wives. Green lawns. 

But in reality this is, and will remain, your America. 

An uneducated population fixated on competition, material wealth and voyeurism. 

Violent monsters doused in antibiotics to offset their diet of sugary sweet drink and mounds of carcinogenic cow flesh! 

THIS IS WHAT YOU FIGHT FOR!

Damn. That's a fine Marvel comic book.

I started reading comic books again four years ago, around the same time that I started having trouble with my last girlfriend. At first I just wanted to make an inventory of an old comic collection that I had stowed in the closet. I started reading some titles, like the Black Panther vs. Killmonger saga in Jungle Action, that had left an impression on me growing up in the Bay Area in the 1970's. Next thing I knew I was going to a comic shop. As my relationship imploded it was nice to sojourn with the heroes of my youth.

I'm going to try to make Saturday the day I post about comic books. So far we've got a few regular features on this blog. We've got a Friday evening "Hippies vs. Punks" post; a Sunday morning movie review of a recently-released-to-DVD Hollywood film; a Sunday evening archive project, working through letters I wrote soon after being belched from the academy into New York City in the late 1980's; -- to go along with the daily quotidian commentary of reading the news and listening to music and running and going to work.

I recently caught up on all the back issues of Thor and Journey Into Mystery. It chewed up weekend after weekend in February and March, but I'm glad I took the time. Kieron Gillen's run on Journey Into Mystery was impressive; it featured the reborn boy Loki as the protagonist, and it managed to capture the pure-heart mischievousness of youth; it managed to make the star of the comic book the putative prototypical comic book reader, a boy.

Marvel's Thor turned fifty last year. In this fiftieth anniversary year of the Kennedy assassination I will mention that an epiphany I had during the millennium when I was deep in the reeds of the Kennedy assassination literature is that there is a connection between Jack Kirby's "The Mighty Thor" and Jack Kennedy. Thor's face as drawn by Kirby looks too similar to JFK's for it to be an accident. Kirby is saying something. What?

PunisherMAX

Evil is all there is. Evil and the extirpation of evil. Personal injury and an unending feeling of loss propel you. This is the world of Marvel Comics' Frank Castle, The Punisher. He is an archetypal American hero. The lone killer. The outsider. The perfect nihilist. John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers.

Last year at this time, the work week following the MLK holiday, we enjoyed the unusual bounty of four days of snow closures at the local. I celebrated this windfall by reading the entire run of PunisherMAX. Written by Jason Aaron with art by Steve Dillon and colors by Matt Hollingsworth, I want to call it a masterpiece.

The Punisher doesn't have super-strength or a healing factor; he's not a mutant or a mystic. Frank Castle is an ex-soldier whose family was gunned by the mob. He is a vigilante and a killer; he brings to mind D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature and the ruminations found there on Deerslayer of the Leatherstocking Tales:

But you have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

The Punisher's credo is when in doubt subject yourself to more pain. So during the week of heavy snow, despite feeling over-trained and suffering a sore throat, I went out running  four miles in the abandoned, silent, white streets each day except for one.

What really affected me about PunisherMAX is Frank Castle's return to the house he lived in with his family prior to the slaughter of his wife and children; he uses it as a base of operations for his war against the Kingpin. Similarly I find myself forever returning in dream to the apartment in Berkeley I shared with my ex-wife; it's always abandoned and blighted -- sick -- like Frank Castle's old suburban home. Why am I always going back there? Over the years it has become such a familiar pattern that when I find myself there I know I am inhabiting a dream. Is it in The Future of an Illusion that Freud says to be an adult is to be at home with loss?

Frank Castle is a guy without specials powers; a guy without an ounce of levity in his soul; someone who is always injured and exhausted and suffering. Then it dawned on me as I finished the last few issues in the series that what PunisherMAX is about is work. Going to work. Everyday. We got to do it. It's a nasty business that requires a lot of painful compromises. But we got to do it.

Below are three scans from PunisherMAX. The first two are facing pages from PunisherMAX #21. The third is from the last issue in the series, PunisherMAX #22. I selected pages that caught the haunted vibe of his occupation of his old, abandoned house.