Why do I do this to myself? the Brave & the Bold #33

Wonder*Woman, Zatanna, and Batgirl

J. Michael Straczynski & Cliff Chang

It looked good on the stand in the Borders, I swear.  Three female superheroes, linked arm in arm, strolling over a bunch of fallen villains (including a monkey with a ray gun!).  How could I go wrong?

Well, to start off with, Wonder Woman makes yellow light explode out a man’s pants, and not in a good way.

First, I couldn’t tell which direction the yellow stream is even supposed to be going.  And what’s with the old duffer’s flying trucker cap?  Isn’t it enough to be disrobing one person per panel with unfortunately pee-yellow light explosions?

Grand Ballroom, this way to the yellow pants!  It’s like a Dr Suess, except not funny.

Anyway.  Zantanna pops by via a mirror and tells Wonder Woman she wants a ladies night out.  No, I’m not kidding.  Eight minutes later we watch Batgirl capture some purse-snatchers.  Purse-snatchers!  The cover promised me monkeys with ray-guns, dammit!

As Batgirl leaves the scene, we get this:

I stared at this page and tried to figure out what the heck is happening.  Finally, I decided that her bike flies between panel 4 and 5, although I don’t know why.  Apparently so we can see Wonder Woman hanging onto the middle of the bike?  I don’t even know.  Where the hell is my armed monkey, dammit?

Zantanna and Wonder Woman convince Batgirl that even supes need to relax or the stress puts them off their game.  They need to go dancing to relax!  I’m not making this up.  By now, I have resigned myself to never seeing the ray-guy monkey and to reading lame jokes about shoes, and in that respect, I am not disappointed.  Alas.

When the get to the club, Batgirl doesn’t dance, because her shoes are too tight, but she doesn’t want them magicked because her dad bought them for her.  Aw.  Or something.  Besides, no one asked her dance!

Whereupon the handsome fella below gets hit in the back of the head with a pink paintball and the action resumes and the monkey appears and–!  But no.  I’m afraid not.

Instead, as you can see, there’s some pathetic hipster dancing with a guy who might as well be wearing gold disco chains.  Blah, blah, blah dancing.  Blah, blah, blah girls eating fries in a diner.  Blah, blah, blah heartwarming talk about Batgirl’s dear old dad.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?  When Wonder Woman starts talking about “her people” the Greeks and how they used oracles as a kind of pretechnology super-computer for getting intel, I just wanted this stupid comic over.  I wasn’t getting my monkey, I wasn’t getting girl-group fighting, I got a comic book with family scrapbooking and a cheap plot twist at the end that made me roll my eyes.  You know it’s bad when the most interesting thing in the comic is an ad that appears to be for puffer-fish.

30 thoughts on “Why do I do this to myself? the Brave & the Bold #33

  1. I don’t think she can be, because then WW’d be saying Hi from under the street level in the 5th panel and Batgirl’s cloak/hair wouldn’t be streaming out to the left.

  2. No, no; she picks her up after the streaming hair panel; when WW says hi they’re already in the air.

    It all makes perfect sense, I tell you!

  3. Apparently Batgirl is a little slow on the uptake and didn’t realize Wonder Woman was lifting her into the sky until she was well over the skyscrapers.

  4. Do you generally intentionally misinterpret things to make bad jokes about them, or is this a one-off article?

    This comic is really bad, but not for any of the reasons you pointed out.

    I mean, please, you obviously didn’t actually not understand any of the pages you posted, so why are you taking really snarky, cheap shots at this comic instead of, I don’t know, actually talking about it on any sort of level that doesn’t make you look like all you care about is telling this REALLY AWESOME JOKE that isn’t actually awesome at all?

  5. VM is pointing out that the comic is telling it’s story — through the use of visuals — in a crappy manner.

    I did understand the Batgirl/WW sequence for example — but it’s still a mess. Where does WW come from that she’s able to pick up that bike like that? Why would she do that anyway? it’s stupid.

    Also, the main point is that there aren’t any monkeys with guns. Are you contending that there are in fact monkeys with guns?

    Here’s a possibility — maybe part of the problem is that VM is a casual reader of DC comics, rather than somebody steeped in the last 30 years of stupid crossovers. As a result, maybe the plot points that seem obvious to you aren’t as obvious to her. Maybe that’s actually a flaw in the comics themselves, rather than in the person who points it out.

    And, you know, I hate to say this, but — is it possible that you’re so invested in these crappy funnybooks that your sense of humor has atrophied? I mean, here you are, getting all worked up about a comic you don’t even like. It looks a little silly.

  6. Also, the pee light joke is too awesome. If you don’t think so you are objectively wrong, and an evil Terminator will devour your soul on Judgment Day.

  7. I think most people’s problem with this review, and at the very least mine, is that it feels very dishonest. I’ve read several of Vom Marlowe’s posts. I know that she isn’t new to comics, whether those comics are manga or Moore or whatever. Am I seriously, seriously supposed to believe that she doesn’t know that the yellow pee light is what it looks like when something zooms by? It’s been used to portray fast action in every comic ever, from Peanuts to Avengers to Naruto to Sailor Moon. That is basic. “Fwoom!” isn’t a zooming sound? People’s hats flying off and clothes ruffling isn’t a symbole of speed? But, okay, it’s yellow, and pee is yellow, so ha ha ha? C’mon, now.

    The Batgirl thing is similarly dishonest. We see street in the background, and then we see skyline. Two plus two: Batgirl is higher now than she was before. Next panel: the reason why.

    This isn’t hard. This isn’t being steeped in continuity with no lifeline. This is basic stuff that is in almost every comic book ever made. You can find yellow pee lines in Peanuts. Done in Schulz’s style (thin lines, with maybe sweat marks around the lines), of course, but it’s the same effect. How did Wonder Woman lift the bike? By getting low to the ground and scooping it up, I assume, same way everyone has ever lifted everything.

    Not being a DC reader has zip to do with being able to look at a comics page, and there’s no fancy storytelling tricks in this book. Marlowe is not a newbie. She reads comics, whether those comics are manga or American. I refuse to believe that she doesn’t understand basic storytelling. I don’t even like this comic. JMS is a crap and cheaply emotionally manipulative writer, and the only thing I’ve heard praised about the comic is Chiang’s clean linework.

    This review feels like a cheap shot. There are scads of reasons to dump on this issue, but “yellow pee lines” and “pink paintballs” aren’t one of them. That’s just playing dumb.

  8. Ah, you’re upset because you’re a fan of the art.

    Personally, I can’t in general understand how people who read superhero comics in general manage to do so without constantly pointing at the art and laughing out loud. I find the pages VM pointed to to be cluttered, visually confusing, and designed as if the artist blindfolded himself (or possibly herself, I guess.) The paintball over the head thing, for example, looks absolutely ridiculous; the dancing is similarly lame. It’s half-assed schlock. If you like it, you like it, but it’s not dishonest to note that it looks like shit — and that, as a result of the artist’s general cluelessness and/or disinterest, a number of unintentionally funny moments result.

    Said unintentionally funy moments being the only pleasure I can see anybody deriving from said comic. Don’t take our sole pleasure away from us!

  9. Oh dear, I seem to have hit a nerve.

    I *do* find some of these panels confusing. That’s because they make no sense. They contradict their own previously established visual rules. I can outline why in tedious detail if there’s interest.

    But really, yes, I am making cheap shots at the empty pair of pants that is shooting streams of golden light from the crotch. *laughs some more*

  10. Even now, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Empty Pairs of Pants Shooting Streams of Light From the Crotch (NSPCEPPSSLFC) are composing a stern letter with your name on it, Vom.

    Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  11. Not intentionally–I’d had a couple of off-site conversations about this post prior to making a comment, and unconsciously brought it up in my comment. I in no way meant to imply that everyone hates this post.

    I disagree with pretty much every point in Noah’s response to me, including my being upset “because I’m a fan of the art,” but I think it’d be better for all of us if I bow out of the conversation rather than continue on.

  12. It’s the faux-naivity combined with the not so funny jokes that grate. “Hur-hur those speed lines look like pee”. Hilarious.

    Neither of the two quoted pages are confusing, though in the second case it’s slightly more understandable. You first have the camera switch quickly from the right to the left in the first two panels, which is often confusing. Worse, the amount of space eaten by that dramatic shot of B.G. in the second panel means the setup in panels 4-5 has too little room to work in. The payoff in the last panel therefore is more abrupt than it would’ve been in the hands of a better artist.

    But both sequences are bog standard, not at all unique to superhero comics, so Noah’s derison is misplaced.

  13. They’re not confusing…to you!

    Honestly, it’s amazing to me that you can be so confident that because something is clear to you, it must be clear to everyone — and if it isn’t clear to that other person, then that other person must be duplicitous. It’s like the comics internet version of conspiracy theories. “Those manga readers…they’re in a plot to pretend they don’t understand our funnybooks! And to assassinate JFK!”

    You might click on the link in my comment just above for a discussion of why folks who read manga more often than superhero comics might find these pages really confusing.

  14. I’m kind of scratching my head at some of the comments here. Maybe I’m wrong (and Noah’s comments probably show that I am), but Vom was having a go at this book. Then some commenters complained that she was being petty by having a go at the book (perhaps because they think HU didn’t do this kind of humour/review?), then Noah tells them that Vom isn’t wrong (which she wasn’t).

    Is that the gist of what’s happening here?

  15. You’ve got it more or less. There’s kind of side argument about whether VM was overstating her confusion in order to more thoroughly make fun of the book.

    I contend that she wasn’t overstating her confusion, and I think that particular argument leads interesting places about how one processes comics narratives.

    You rightly bring up another important point, though, which is that this book is (at least from these pages) quite, quite bad, and no one needs to apologize for mocking it. For Christ’s sake.

  16. I’ve had lots of experience reading superhero comics, and that “yellow pee light” page confuses the heck out of me. In the first place, those don’t look like speed lines to me: all the speed lines I’ve ever seen have been parallel, not converging. In fact, if I had seen only the first four panels, I would have guessed that there is some sort of explosion or rocket bursting from the guy’s back, especially given all the dynamite. (And to me FWOOM is more of an explosion sound effect.)

    But even granting that they are speed lines, I still can’t read the page in a way that makes sense. Here is my genuine best attempt: Wonder Woman (I assume) slams into Explosive Guy’s back without decelerating, propelling him rapidly forward. (You would think that the sudden impact would break his back, but maybe this iteration of WW doesn’t mind crippling bad guys.) She then proceeds at the same speed — dangerously — through the ship, carrying him in front of her, only a few feet off the ground. As she does so she removes and discards his explosive clothes, though not, apparently, his dynamite belts. Finally (?) she angles sharply downwards, crashing herself and Explosives Guy into something as she does so. They can’t have crashed into the doors, otherwise they would be hanging outward, not inward.

    Alternatively, she disrobed Explosives Guy between panels 4 and 5, and carries only his clothes with her on her passage through the ship, discarding them as she goes. This would actually make more visual sense (it would explain why Explosives Guy in the bottom tier in the bottom tier has no speed lines, though he should be moving as fast as WW) but even less narrative sense. If there’s a natural way to read this page that makes more sense, I’d sincerely like to hear it.

    And why is the ship shown tilted 30 degrees in panel 3. (If it had really suddenly pitched so far, everybody would be falling over.) And why the bizarre perspective in panel 7?

  17. I’m wondering if the perspective is an effort to acknowledge B&B’s history; Aparo would do crazy perspective stuff all the time, some of which was even quite visually confusing. (The difference being that his art was always lovely even when you couldn’t tell what was going on, which is not so much the case here.)

    That’s probably totally off base, though. More likely he’s trying to generate visual interest any way he can but just isn’t very good at it.

  18. “there’s some pathetic hipster dancing with a guy who might as well be wearing gold disco chains.”

    That’s a great line. It made me laugh because my brother used to wear flashy gold chains when he went out clubbing, and it always looked ridiculous.

  19. Uh… is this a case of comic snobbery, the art is here is beautiful. Let me guess the artist doesn’t use stick figures or paint splotches and therefore it sucks. sure superhero comic art can be crap but not always. Everyone has their own tastes I suppose; I’ve looked for alternatives to superhero comics and at least on the American comic scene ugly @$$ art seems to in. I think the old saying is my 2 year old makes stick figures and just b/c some art critics call it beautiful doesn’t mean it is.

  20. I’m genuinely surprised at how many people believe I was dishonest with my puzzlement. I wasn’t being dishonest. Adam explains my confusion with the pants page pretty well.

    The bike scene really makes no sense, even though Noah and Richard have explained the trope, it’s just not physically possible. If Wonder Woman picked up the bike the way Superman does cars, she would have to be *under the earth*. You can’t sneak under a bike’s undercarriage–they don’t have them. She’d have to sneak under the moving wheels.

    Richard, my sister hauled the whole family to her school to take a disco class in the gym. We learned how to point our fingers in the sky just like Travolta. Good times.

    Seafire, What can I say? I hate arty comics art. The lines in this comic are nice, and the anatomy is competent, but the composition is terrible. I need to be able to tell what is going on. If you enjoy beautiful art, I highly recommend manga. Some of the face styles are different, but the anatomy and line work can’t be beat.

  21. “I’m genuinely surprised at how many people believe I was dishonest with my puzzlement.”

    Yeah. As I said in the other post, I think people who are used to parsing this sort of thing are so used to it that it feels very natural. They’re using specialized knowledge, but they don’t feel like they’re using specialized knowledge…so since they’re just doing what comes naturally, if you don’t get it you must be dishonest.

    It’s an understandable train of thought, but kind of unfortunate for various reasons.

  22. I got a look at the page after the Explosives Guy page, and my first interpretation was correct, even though it doesn’t make sense either narratively or visually. EG is sans dynamite belts in the second page, so WW did remove them; I guess the artist and/or writer just didn’t think that was worth depicting. And the second page adds one more absurdity: WW apparently does all this with her lasso wrapped around EG’s neck.

    Iirc, the page in the post and the subsequent page are part of the same double-page spread. If I had seen both pages to start with, I probably would have figured out by myself what was going on in the first page. Conversely, I wonder if those who say they weren’t confused by the first page would have said the same if they hadn’t seen the second page.

  23. Yet another opinion follows:
    I’ve been reading superhero comics for more than thirty years — so long that I can read Zatanna’s backwards script without thinking about it, and there haven’t even been that many Zatanna comics, ya know? Regarding the art, the detail and anatomy work are excellent. It’s a little bit Neal Adams, a little bit Jerry Ordway, and a little bit seventies romance comic. That last part may or may not have something to do with the Saturday Night Fever guy. I’ve only been to a few clubs in “Gotham,” but I don’t remember seeing anyone dressed like that.
    The storytelling is definitely problematic, though. The yellow speed lines don’t make any sense. I assume that’s Wonder Woman, but why would she glow yellow? Elliot S! Maggin used to say Superman should be a purple blur at speed, because our eyes would blend the red and blue. I don’t know if it’s true, but it made sense to me. Now that I think about it, this may require an experiment with a model rocket engine and an action figure. Volunteers? Anyway, there’s no defense for WW picking up the bike. Neither the how nor the why are clear, as I think Noah said above. WW running alongside the bike and asking BG to pull over so they can talk would have been a better visual, and it would have been an opportunity for good dialogue. BG’s reaction is the worst part, though — cluelessness, followed by happy recognition? Confusion, terror, and mild irritation should all have crossed her face in less than a second — and would have made a nice little sequence of close-up panels. Kirby said you can make any silly thing happen as long as the characters react realistically.
    Finally, I didn’t read the comic, but if there was no knock-down drag-out with a sci-fi armed monkeyman, the readers were cheated. It would have been great fun with these characters, and the whole “We need a girl’s night out to decompress” thing would have sold itself. The bonding at the end would have been sweeter after bigger-than-life violent team heroism, like the drink in the bar at the end of a good cop show.

    Thank. I feel better now.

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