The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 118: Klarion #6, May 2015

And so we reach the end of Klarion, and I have to say I find myself slightly confused. Not that the story confused me, but the characterization of the main character is a bit weird. Maybe that's the point, but I'm having a hard time telling whether we should actually like Klarion or not. It kind of has that Dexter vibe to it, in that he's pretty much a complete sociopath who's trying to fit in. But not trying quite as hard as Dexter does.

Anyway, the story wraps up, which is always a nice thing to have in an ostensibly prematurely cancelled comic. Klarion, for all his bluster of tooling about the Multiverse in the first issue seems content to stay where he is. Which is actually one of the things I can't quite figure out about the series. I had a quick flip through the Multiversity Guidebook, and I can't find an Earth in the Orrery that fits the setting of this series. I'm assuming it's some magically protected quarter of Earth 0, but you never know. I know that this is one of those oft-mocked continuity-geek questions, but if we consider what it is that DC and Marvel are engaged in right now with their big events (Convergence and Secret Wars, respectively), it seems that reminders of continuity are of paramount importance at the moment. Where, then, is Klarion?

(Okay, the thought occurs just now that the processes that both fictional universes are undergoing might actually be the view internally of what the revision wave trope from Supreme looks like. I'll think on that more.)

The nice thing is that at the very end of the issue, we have the thoroughly optimistic "The End...?" That question mark is hope, is the potential that we haven't seen the last of the witchboy, the promise that his adventures continue, regardless of whether or not we are witnessing them. The fictional universe, through punctuational tricks like this one, takes on a life of its own.

It was nice to dip my toes back into the DCU. I've missed it, and the kinds of stories that it has the potential to tell. Moving on tomorrow I'm going to look for something weird, an indie comic of some sort. Enough of this mainstream! Let's see exactly what kind of strangeness is hidden in the collection. See you tomorrow!

(Edit: I lost numbering here. Was originally published as Day 119.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 117: Klarion #5, April 2015

I unfortunately have to continue my criticism of this series with this issue. While it's nice to see McCarthy back on art, I really do think that this issue and the last could have been condensed into a single issue. This would have tightened up the pace of the overall story which, as I noted last time, might have had an effect on the continuation of the series. This is also the second cover of the series that has depicted Zell attacking Klarion, something that has never actually occurred in the comic itself. I noted last time that I felt like this might have been some shoddy editing, and I'm inclined to think the same thing with this cover, and with the stretching of a shorter story into a 6-issue story.

Have you noticed that my critiques of series become more vehement the longer I'm reading them? I still haven't quite figured out how to address this problem. I suppose I could just read single issues, but with extended storylines like this one, I feel like I would lose track of the tale and have to go back and re-read everything that came before. Not that I have anything against such practices, but it would make the whole "read all of the comics in my collection" project a bit more protracted.

Anyway, all that said, I'm still enjoying the series. The real test, especially in this project, of a good read for me is whether or not I feel like I would have bought or read the comic as it was being published. Klarion would definitely have made it this far (I do try to give a comic 6 months before jettisoning it). Whether or not it would have survived past issue 5 or 6 would really have depended on whether or not the storytelling got tightened up a bit. Nocenti and McCarthy are good storytellers, but I think the difference between good and great is knowing how much and how long of a story is likely to retain audience interest. You can tell a 12-issue story featuring the Justice League or the Avengers (Hickman's run is kind of a 100+ issue storyline, right?), but not with someone like Klarion. He just doesn't have that fictional cachet.

So we'll finish up this series tomorrow, and then move on to something completely different, I think. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 115: Klarion #4, March 2015

Closing in on the final issue of Klarion. It's sad, because this initial storyline seems like just that: an initial storyline. I'd love to have seen the kind of adventures Klarion would get up to cruising the Multiverse with Beelzebub.

That said, the series really has managed a fascinating look at a Chaotic Neutral character. For those not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons alignment-speak, that's someone who doesn't follow any laws, and falls on either the side of good or the side of evil, depending on the situation. It's a tough alignment to play in-game, but Nocenti has pulled off a pretty good depiction of it. Klarion does what he thinks is best very much dependent on how it will all turn out for him. He'll occasionally think of others, but only if their well-being (or lack thereof) is somehow beneficial for him as well. But, all this considered, he's still got some likable characteristics. It's, I think I've said before, an interesting contrast to the characters I'm also reading in The Adventurers, where there's a similar characterization, but not quite as much of a likability.

I do have a criticism, though. Whether or not this series was planned as an ongoing or a limited run, I think this particular initial storyline has dragged out for far too long. We spend this whole issue in a pocket universe inside Klarion so that he can get some futuristic technology with which to combat Coal and his "Buddybots," but it seems to me that this episode could have been told in far fewer pages. It could also be that this is the first issue to feature guest artists, and while they attempt to maintain the aesthetic of McCarthy's prior issues, they're not quite up to the task. Well, in my humble opinion. One has to wonder, then, if this story had been condensed into four issues instead of the six I expect it's going to take, if the series might have been more successful. Introduce the character, give him an adventure that introduces some supporting cast, and then rocket him into another adventure. Asking readers to devote six months to a story featuring a character they may never have heard of is asking a bit much in this market, I think.

Ah well. I'm still enjoying the crap out of it. And it's really nice to have a little peek back into the DCU after having become so disillusioned with the New 52. (That said, DC's new Prez series, while not in-continuity, is really lovely, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out.)

Okay. Conclusion of book 1 of The Adventurers tomorrow. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 113: Klarion #3, February 2015

A couple of odd things occur to me after completing this issue. First, it seems that each of the issues of Klarion has an alternate cover. Is this a standard practice for DC now? I appreciate that the alternates seem to have a bit more of a Vertigo rather than mainstream DCU feel, thus catering to different audiences, but isn't the proliferation of alternate covers what caused the crash in the 90s? Best start looking for shelter, I guess.

The second thing, also cover-related, is that this particular cover has, literally, nothing to do with anything that happens in the story. Zell does not attack Klarion. She just doesn't. One wonders if this is a case of whomever edits the series realizing that it was not going to be a big hit, and just  phoning in the production responsibilities. I'm not saying that that is what happened, but having a cover that blatantly has nothing to do with the story but makes it seem like it has something to do with the story is just sloppy. Also, can anyone tell me how Zell's anatomy is working in this picture. The longer I look at it, the harder it is for me figure out.

As for story, it's just as weird. The old Magic versus Technology plot has been around as long as we've had magic and technology, but the setting that Nocenti and McCarthy have crafted makes this a particularly nice iteration of the tale. I'm sort of glad that I know there's only 6 issues. If I didn't, I'd certainly be getting invested in all of the plot set-up that's going on, the rogue witch hunters, Noah and Piper, the parental figures who look out for the young magicians (or do they?), the burgeoning romance (?) between Klarion and Zell, and especially Klarion's wrestling with good and evil. The way he straddles this line is a nice metaphor for the struggle between doing right and wrong that so permeates the experience of adolescence, coupled with the feeling of never getting caught. I miss that feeling. Sometimes.

I hope Nocenti and McCarthy at least get to finish off the story of Coal and his weird sentient tech. But if they don't, it's okay too. Peter Milligan's fantastic early Vertigo series Enigma plays with the idea that characters can simply move off the focal voice's stage, and we never find out really what happens in the end. In superhero universes, this happens all the time. Regardless of how Klarion ends up, Klarion is still out there somewhere, checking out magical hotspots and being sort of good and sort of bad.

But we're not there yet. A few more days of Klarion mixed with the Adventurers. Which we'll get back to tomorrow. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 111: Klarion #2, January 2015

Did I say it last time? I think I did. Klarion is too weird to exist. This, sadly, should have been apparent to any who read it right from the beginning. It reads like an early-days Vertigo title, which I think is just a bit too experimental for New 52-era DC. Sigh.

What can I say about McCarthy's art. How about I show you instead?

And pretty much every page looks like this. At the end of the issue, while Klarion and Zell are climbing ropes, the panel borders twist and turn like the ropes themselves. This kind of page construction, in the hands of a lesser artist, could become very confusing very fast, but McCarthy's got a great sense of the flow of the story. I know I've just compared the series to early Vertigo, but that's in tone, not look. This is far prettier than any of the early Vertigo stuff. Perhaps this is the reason for the brevity of the series, though. The art is innovative, but still holds to the general aesthetic of the current DCU, while the story hearkens back to a publishing enterprise that the very existence of the New 52, in that it folded Vertigo versions of superheroes into the DCU, seems to discourage.

Klarion is weird. And not just content-wise, but context-wise. Like Dial H before it, it's just too strange to live in this new conservative DCU.

As a closing note today, I am still concerned that Klarion is falling into the same trap that the main characters from The Adventurers are: he's just not likeable. At least in Klarion's case he's a teenager, meaning at least some of his affectations are just that, affectations, designed to put off the "old people" who try to tell him what to do. But having read his wiki-history (I'm coining that term, BTW), he's been portrayed more as villain than as hero over the course of his quite long history. Not that, in a series of only 6 issues, we'll get to delve much into that, but it's worth keeping in mind. It's difficult to write a story about a villainous character, I would imagine. I'm struggling with this notion right now. How do you develop sympathy for the unsympathetic? I was going to bring up Dr. Doom from the Secret Wars series, but Doom's always had that sympathetic undercurrent, his accident, his loss of his mother, his love for Sue Storm. There's always been something about him, even though over-shadowed by his megalomania, that allowed a reader to put themselves in his place. I don't know that I can do that, yet, with Klarion. Give it a couple more days, I guess.

See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 109: Klarion #1, December 2014

I should be clear about my stance on the DC New 52 titles: once Dial H and Animal Man were cancelled, I stopped reading the DCU titles. I'm confounded by the aesthetic direction DC has taken over the last few years, and, much as I love the characters dearly, I think DC has entered a particularly creatively, well, dull period. There's occasional glimpses of the DC we knew. Multiversity offered something pretty great. Gene Yang's Superman might be great, but one wonders how much all of these writers at DC are being corralled by editors and chief creative officers, forced into boxes that don't necessarily fit.

Ann Nocenti's got some chops. She's got years in the business under her belt. I've read bits and pieces of her run on Daredevil, and all of her short-lived Kid Eternity series from Vertigo. So when I was at the comic shop yesterday and saw five (consecutive!) issues of Klarion in the dollar bin, I figured I'd take a chance and dip my toes back into the DCU.

I'm glad I did.

I've like Klarion since I was first introduced to him in Seven Soldiers. He's a weird kid with a weird background, which, in my experience of the DCU, usually makes for a really cool story. Think of the aforementioned Dial H and Animal Man. Atypical corners and characters. Klarion is just such a corner too. I've only read the first issue so far, but Trevor McCarthy's art is putting me in mind of the J.H. Williams work on things like Chase and the Tangent: Green Lantern titles. It's dark and labyrinthine and makes you feel that, along with the Witch-Boy, you're being pulled down into a place that's not healthy to be.

Which is why Nocenti's opening of the comic is so perfect: "The Multiverse is awesome. An Infinity of choice...I want to kick up some dust and explore..." The most noble of reasons for an adventure. Klarion's not following a higher calling, or seeking revenge, or any of the usual suspects when it comes to character motivation in superhero comics. He just wants to see what's out there. That said, in service of that quest, I don't think he's particularly concerned with who gets hurt along the way. Including the reader. And it is there that I'd form a bit of a caution: writing a character who is not altruistically motivated is all well and good. But I think a reader has to be able to connect with a focal character on some level, and the most unsuccessful of antiheroes are the ones who don't manage to achieve this. It's okay to hate a character, as long as you still have some investment in what happens to a character.

I've only read this issue, but as I say I have the first five, and according to DC's site, issue #6 is the last one.

I mean, of course it is. The comics the most interesting thing DC have put out in years (in, of course, my own opinion. Others are welcome to love DC as much as they can), so of course it isn't give a proper chance. Though maybe I'm being pessimistic. Maybe it was only ever planned as a 6-issue series.

But probably not. More Adventurers tomorrow, I think. And then maybe more Klarion. See you then.