Another Old Piece of Writing

About a year ago I found the website popmatters.com, which reviews various forms of popular culture. It is divided into different genres of pop such as movies, television, books, video games, and comic books. Over the summer I noticed that there were less and less reviews were being posted in the comic book section. I checked their submissions area and saw that they were looking for a new person to review comics. While not a paying job, one does get to keep the comics that they send to review. So I wrote a review of the Marvel Comics series "House of M", which came out over the summer. However, I never emailed it to popmatters.com. They wanted several reviews and I never got around to writing any others. Actually, I never even came back to proofread this one, but I am going to post it anyway. I think it is a decent piece of writing, but it does have some sentence errors. Lots of comma issues. Enjoy.

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House of M
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Oliver Coipel
Inker: Tim Townsend
Colors: Frank D'Armata

by David J. Graham

World History is charted by epic events. Timelines consist of dots that highlight those moments in the past when events surpassed the ordinary. The reign of Alexander the Great, the life of Jesus, Charlemagne King of the Franks, the Industrial Revolution, WW I and WW2, the Cold War and, finally, 9/11 are a chain of events that outline certain moments when the world was changed. Epics in fiction are stories of grand size and scope, where a hero or many heroes rise to accomplish extraordinary feats.

Epics in comics seem to occur almost every other year. Comic book epics highlight those times when publishers are looking to grab more of their fan's hard earned cash. Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Secret Wars, Zero Hour, The Infinity Gauntlet and Age of Apocalypse are some of those epics that the two largest comic book publishers have produced and even though the stories were fun, they hardly impacted the world of the characters in any real significant degree. Too often, when a publisher concludes its latest epic, very little of the world has changed. Often times many of the superheroes involved do not remember the events at all. When that occurs, long time and loyal readers are upset, because when you follow a character for years, and you grow up and mature, but your heroes do not, that is not a nice realization to come to.

The Infinity Gauntlet was an epic story that Marvel Comics produced in the early 90's. It was a six issue series, which had crossovers in at least half of Marvel's comics of the time. It told the story of Thanos, the Mad Titan, using a powerful cosmic tool to kill half the people in the Marvel Universe. The superheroes of earth, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Spider-man, Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, practically every Marvel hero, rallied together to oppose a cosmic mass murderer, but at the end the story there were only a handful of characters that remembered what had happened. DC comics trimmed its universe of extraneous Supermans and confusing parallel earths by creating a Crisis. The DC superheroes opposed a villain of great power and when it was over their universe was rebooted and the characters were given updated origins that better reflected the times that they were in. Comic book epics are not stories of extraordinary heroes accomplishing even more extraordinary feats, they are marketing devices that tell stories of little consequence.

In 2005, House of M was an eight issue series that crossovered into sixteen other Marvel titles. It was the sequel to 2004's "Avengers Disassemble" story, which told the story of Earth's Mightiest Hero's being attacked and beaten by one of their own. In H of M, mutants, who have traditionally been the victims of racist hatred in the Marvel Universe, had somehow become the dominant species and have made the planet a utopia. Marvel's most militant mutant activist character, Magneto, is the benevolent leader of the world's mutants. Almost all of Marvel's heroes live ideal lives. Peter Parker is a publicly loved celebrity who is married to his first love, Gwen Stacy, has a son, and makes tons of money as an entertainer, and manages his success with his uncle Ben. The X-Men are not hated and feared by humanity, they live perfect and loved lives. However, the world changes when Wolverine realizes that everything is not as it should be.

Before H of M, there was "Avengers Disassembled", in which Marvel's premeire teram of heroes had their worst day ever. Every member of the team is attacked by his or her worst weakness. Seemingly at random, one horrible event after another leaves the Avengers beaten, broken, and more than a couple of the heroes are murdered (including fan-loved Hawkeye who dies attacking a Kree mother ship). The mastermind behind the attacks is revealed to be the Scarlet Witch, long time Avenger, daughter of Magneto and a mutant. The Scarlet Witch's reality warping mutant powers drove her insane and lead her to attack and kill her friends. Six months later the past Avengers join with the New Avengers and the X-Men to confront the Scarlet Witch and decide her ultimate fate.

The current style of story telling in comic books is to drag out events, across multiple issues, and eventually meander into some sort of a plot, and then end things abruptly without a clear conclusion. House of M does not get to be an interesting story until the mutant utopia has been established, at the end of the third issue. When the climax occurs in issue seven, with a particularly entertaining plot twist, the action abruptly seizes. The whole story feels at though you are riding that first extremely tall hill of a roller coaster and when you finally get to the top, after a very long and tedious crawl upwards, you are stunningly slammed into a brick wall only half way down the sloped hill. When issue number eight begins you are sitting back at the beginning of the track and it is time to get off the coaster, but you are not sure what actually happened when you went on the ride.

Comic book epics can tell extremely entertaining stories. The rallying of heroes to oppose evil is hardly ever boring, but it is hardly original or innovative. The comic book epic is as much a marketing device, to increase a publisher's sales on a large amount of its books, as it is a piece of dramatic fiction. Long time readers of comics want to see their favorite heroes be given more depth by the taking apart in grand events, but that hope may be expecting too much from superheroes. Superheroes are simple characters, their origins are colored with shades of grey that offer some depth and make them appealing characters, but they are entertainment first and literary second. The current style to tell simple stories over multiple issues could hurt the industry if readers decided that they preferred to wait for a collected trade paperback rather than bother with extraneous chapter of a large story. Readers may decide that they do not want to spend their money on something that is not going to amount to anything of significance until months later.

House of M is an entertaining Marvel epic. It involves many of Marvel's current popular characters and some of Marvel's less popular past characters. It has a slow moving beginning, but its ending does leave an impact on the current incarnation of the Marvel Universe. However, if you are a long time reader of Marvel comics then there is nothing in H of M that you have not seen in The Contest of Champions, Maximum Carnage or Heroes Reborn. If you are new to comics then give H of M and chance and expect to have fun. Its open ended conclusion promises more to come, but I doubt it will lead to anything that we have not already seen before.

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