Comic Book Interlude 12

Was visiting a nearby metropolis (Get it?  Get it?) the other day and happened upon some trade paperbacks.  What was I to do?  Buy them of course.  This stuff will probably seem like ancient history to anyone living in North America, but where I live American comics are few and far between.

1. Dark Nights: Metal by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

I remember hearing about this one years ago and being intrigued by the idea.  For whatever reason I forgot about it later on.

In Dark Knights: Metal the Justice League discovers a Dark Multiverse "beneath" the multiverse as they knew it.  Ruling over this Dark Multiverse is a godlike version of Batman known as Barbatos, and in his employ are several other versions of Batman culled from the same Dark Multiverse.  All of the evil versions of Batman have one thing in common, they evolved from an earlier Batman that cast his scruples aside and framed the war on crime in more Darwinian terms.

Fortunately for the Justice League, there's a magic metal that will put Barbatos and his minions out of commission, but they have to act fast because Earth is rapidly sinking (?) into the Dark Multiverse.

You can probably guess how it ends.  I thought it was... OK, but it's a far cry from what Grant Morrison has done with similar tales of magic and parallel worlds.  I think writer Scott Snyder was wise to throw physics out the window and instead offer a more "Silver Age" take on the Justice League, albeit one with a lot more violence.

2. Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads

Another series I'd been hearing about but forgot about later on.

Many years ago Brian Michael Bendis did a run on Moon Knight that I loved.  My favorite part of that run was Marc Spector hallucinating the entire Avengers, going out with them and having "adventures," and having to answer for his behavior later on.  It was great fun, and an interesting take on the character.

More recently, as everyone probably knows, the comic book Saga has broken records and become wildly popular.  I really enjoyed Saga when it first appeared, though I have to admit I lost touch with it a couple of years ago.

Tom King's Mister Miracle reminds me of both Bendis' run on Moon Knight and Saga.  It's got the unreliable narrator, it's got the mental health issues, it's got the human frailty, and it's got the day to day dramas that most superhero comics don't touch.  Is it well done?  Yes, but the art reminded me a bit too much of Bill Sienkiewicz and the story, again, reminded me of both Moon Knight and Saga.  Tom King has a good ear for dialog, but I was hoping for something more.  Maybe his version of Vision is better?

3. Infinity by Jonathan Hickman and Jim Cheung

Thanos or Darkseid?  I'd have to go with Darkseid.  He's got Kirby's Fourth World mythos behind him, the Anti-Life Equation, and he's been featured in some great stories.

Then again, when I started reading comics Thanos just wasn't very interesting.  He'd tangled with Adam Warlock, and he was starting to reappear in relation to Silver Surfer, but on the whole he came off like a Darkseid clone.  

I'm also not sure if it's fair to credit Jim Starlin with his "creation."  A lot of later comic book writers did all the heavy lifting when it came to Thanos.

Thanos aside, Infinity is REALLY long and doesn't offer much in terms of a story.  On the one hand there's Thanos menacing the Earth yet again, this time in search of his son, who he wants to kill.  On the other hand there's a race of aliens called The Builders, who are out to annihilate (?) the cosmos.  There are also some references to Marvel's "New Universe," and a subplot involving Atlantis and Wakanda going to war.  That's about it.  All in all it's a fairly vacuous exercise, and surprisingly so given what Hickman did later with the New Avengers.

Some elements of the Infinity storyline found their way into Avengers: Infinity War, so if you're an MCU fanatic there's that.

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Albums That Changed My Life 7: "Rust in Peace" and Other Thrash Albums

So after getting into Iron Maiden I entered my metal phase.  For whatever reason I never really got into the other NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) bands, though I do remember liking Def Leppard after seeing them on MTV.

Instead I went backward.  As I bought up Iron Maiden's discography, I noticed that a lot of the older, (and to me) more obscure albums on the shelves were actually much cheaper.  For this reason I started listening to bands like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.

I loved all that stuff for a while, but I guess none of those albums managed to resonate with me until years later.  I suppose a lot of it had to do with my age at the time, and also the fact that they those albums sounded a bit quaint and old-fashioned to my adolescent ears.  I would change my mind later of course, but back then I was looking for the next big thing.

Enter Megadeth and "Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?"  The first time I heard this song was on MTV's Headbanger's Ball, and even before the song was over I'd kind of forgotten about Iron Maiden.  Megadeth just sounded so new.  They had the attitude, they weren't dressed like girls, and their music sounded great over a pair of earphones.

Dave Mustaine, unknown to me then, had been around during much of my brief obsession with Iron Maiden.  While I was discovering Maiden he was playing in Metallica.  A lot of the other thrash bands also had roots in the early 80s, but many of us didn't discover this until much later on.  Our awareness of these bands began with the TV and radio shows that promoted them, and these TV and radio shows only appeared several years into their respective careers.

I branched out into Anthrax, Metallica and (to a lesser extent) Slayer.  I grew my hair long.  I had a denim jacket with patches.  I started wearing a lot of black, and I bought T-shirts of my favorite albums.  I probably looked ridiculous at times, but comments about how I looked only set me more firmly on the path I was traveling.  The "Big 4" (Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer and Metallica) led to Suicidal Tendencies, Sepultura and Testament.  Every month I was discovering a new band, and learning a new song by heart.

This went on until the end of high school, when I have to admit that grunge/alternative stole some of the space from my once sprawling thrash collection.  But until 92 or so I was an avowed metalhead, hating nothing more than the slow, poppy strains of glam bands like Cinderella, Ratt and Poison.

I think this is what drew a lot of people to thrash metal in the first place: a shared hatred of "glam" or "hair" metal.  We knew what we hated, and this made us love what we loved even more.  Motley Crue?  FUCK that noise!  Bon Jovi?  Christ, what's wrong with you?  Yeah, it seems kind of silly in retrospect - especially given the ironic way in which the glam/hair metal bands are followed now, but back then the threat was real, and those of us who knew about REAL music had to band together.

Looking back at that time, there are some definite standouts among the thrash albums of that era.  As said above, my introduction was through "Peace Sells," but there were a lot of other great albums released during that period.  Megadeth's (mindblowing) "Rust in Peace" and "Countdown to Extinction."  Metallica up to (and not including) "The Black Album."  Anthrax's "Persistence of Time."  Slayer, a band I didn't really appreciate back then, had a spectacular run of albums up until "God Hates Us All."  All of which is not to mention the bands from Florida, Sweden, Germany, other parts of Europe and elsewhere.  Seattle even had its own thrash band, Metal Church, who are sadly forgotten.

But yeah, grunge.  For many of us grunge made thrash seem old in the way that thrash made the NWOBHM bands seem old.  It's sad to say, but musical styles fall out of fashion, and thrash was no exception.  Claim whatever loyalty to metal you will, you're not likely to hold on to your Metallica T-Shirts when everyone around you is suddenly sporting Nirvana or Mudhoney.

I can only hope you won't judge me too hard for this.  I was after all a teenager living in Seattle, and those grunge bands were our own.  I never disavowed my love of thrash, I never threw away any cassette tapes or CDS, but as the 90s rolled in I developed a definite preference for Alice in Chains, Nirvana and Soundgarden.  Alice in Chain's Dirt tour was the first big concert I ever went to, and by that time the thrash bands were already fading from our collective consciousness.

Not that I didn't get back to thrash later on.  After passing through grunge, jazz, glam rock, progressive rock, and whatever other phases I did manage to reunite with that copy of "Rust in Peace," purchased so many years previous, and worshiped so devoutly.

And you know what?  It still sounds awesome today.

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5 Great Metal Albums

This is Gojira, from "The Way of All Flesh."  They hail from France.  I saw them on tour for this one.  Great show!

This is Decapitated, from "The Negation."  No Polish jokes please, as they are Polish.  The drummer on this album died not long ago.  He is fondly remembered.

This is Obscura, from Germany.  This track is the best one on "Cosmogenesis."

Revocation, from the States.  This is from "Existence is Futile," their newest.

And some good 'ol Dillinger Escape Plan, just to slow things down a bit.  This is from "Ire Works."