LUDIC LOG

Lately people have written me, asking for more facile reviews of comic books they will never even hear of, let alone read. I certainly don't want to let anyone down, so let's take a look at the fruits of my latest trek to Chicago Comics.

The Golem's Mighty Swing, by James Sturm

This book (It's from Drawn & Quarterly, So You Know It's Artsy [TM]) is the pride of the industry right now; it's won all sorts of awards, culminating with the Harvey for Best Graphic Novel. Its plot, simple enough to tell, turns on one key game in the season of a 1920s-era barnstorming Jewish baseball team. Beset by minor calamities that begin to add up, their manager agrees to place his star hitter -- a passing-complected black -- in the costume of a golem, the legendary monster of kabalistic lore, in order to draw a bigger crowd.

For the most part, The Golem's Mighty Swing is deserving of the huge praise it's gotten. It's probably the best comic I've ever read about baseball; it owes a big debt (which Sturm acknowledges in the introduction) to the Japanese series "Shonen Champion", which is clear in the action sequences, but shows an amazing confidence in its quiet portrayal of the game, which succeeds incredibly well without the hyperkinetic frenzy of manga baseball books. Its story is surefooted, its characters compelling, its villains never cardboard stereotypes, and its premise perfectly delivered. Additionally, the racial angle is subtly portrayed but fully present at all times, and Sturm manages to integrate the black and Jewish experience together without bobbling either.

The art is quite good; I'm unfamiliar with Sturm, and at first the illustration (something of a cross between the old New-Yorker-house-style work of Canadian artist Seth and the new New-Yorker-house-style work of "Julius Knipl" cartoonist Ben Katchor) didn't win me over, but as the story progressed it seemed clear that the static, slightly rough charcoal pencils were perfectly suited to the story.

The only odd thing in the story is the ending. After what seems like a dead-perfect conclusion to the tale, there's what appears to be an extra chapter, or possibly an epilogue, that is so completely out of place and clumsy that it almost seems to be a mistake. It adds a bit to the ideas behind the story, but its structure is hamhanded and its ending is an openly bewildering ambiguity that seems ridiculously out of place given what has come before. The book is truly excellent, but would profit from ending 10 pages sooner.

Alec: The King Canute Crowd, by Eddie Campbell

Volume one of Australian-by-way-of-English artist Eddie Campbell's ongoing autobiographical memoir. This is his oldest, roughest stuff, and he anticipates it will show; the introduction contains a lot of unnecessary apologizing for what he considers to be egregious slips in the work. In fact, it's a surprisingly mature and skillful piece of comic art, considering how relatively young he was when it began; his art has obviously improved a great deal from the first Alec books to the triumph of From Hell and the artistic leaps forward of Bacchus, but this is no amateurish scrawl. The Campbell hallmarks are there (heavy black inkwork, lots of grime, jagged edges, odd angles, and his excellent, though idiosyncratic, lettering style) and he's already locked into his outstanding use of odd objects and signage to portray tone and mood.

The writing is good, but not great. Considering this is largely a chronicle of his early 20s -- a time when writers are often at their most self-absorbed and pretentious -- it almost never falls prey to those traps; likewise, despite the titular obsession with all his mates at the local pub and the cycles of abusive drinking that eats up all their free time, it's not a brainless, bibulous tits-up, either. It's smart but not condescending and festive without being moronic, and it's often very, very funny. Unfortunately, it's obviously governed by Campbell's moods; it obsesses over detail that's irrelevant to readers who don't have his intimate familiarity with the people and places involved, and stretches where he's in love are as tedious to the reader as hearing a friend go on and on about "the one" at a party are to the listener. Finally, it's relentlessly British and not especially user-friendly to an American audience.

That said, it's certainly worth a look. The art is terrific, it's got plenty of laughs (and even more familiar, knowing smiles for those of us who remember our own dissipated youth), and at the very least, it reminds readers numbed to tears by the new wave of shoegazing autobio comics that it can be done right.

Daredevil: Born Again, by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli

This was always one of my favorite story arcs of all time from a mainstream superhero comic, and a friend of mine surprised me with a gift of a new reprint edition of the whole story during his recent stay in Chicago. Reading it years later, I still think it's one of the best stories ever to grace the usually graceless pages of cape-and-cowl funnybooks, but my perceptions have somewhat changed.

The plot is nothing special, almost standard superhero fare: a villain (the Kingpin, a great old Spider-Man foe given new life by Miller) discovers our hero's secret identity and sets out to destroy him. The twist: instead of going after his friends, he goes after the secret identity itself. He throws Matt Murdock into a pit of financial ruin, damages his professional standing, wrecks his career, and slanders his reputation. Then he just steps back and lets Murdock destroy his own friends, as the shambles his life has become turns him into a shabby, paranoid nutcase. It's really a dramatic turn; the villain (while finally undone not by punches and powers, but his own overarching ambition and hubris) rarely even sees the hero (and the one time he does, he defeats him unconditionally), and the hero spends most of the book as a filthy, raving wreck.

When originally published, I was awed by David Mazzuchelli's art; looking back on it now, I can see flaws in it. It's still excellent -- Mazzuchelli was a newcomer, and his style was still developing; he would go on to do the tremendous "Batman: Year One" before putting out his own books and eventually abandoning comics altogether for fine art, but Born Again is still light-years past most of the other work that was being done at the time (and still is). But it doesn't wow me like it did when I first saw it; indie comics, possessing an artistic freedom denied to superhero books and their mandated house styles, have made me much harder to please than I was back then. Although the comparison is unfair, thinking of how much better Frank Miller's own art has gotten since his Daredevil run makes Mazzuchelli's work seem somwhat diminished. All that said, it's still very good art, and a perfect complement to the story.

Which is really the revelation. The story is much, much more sophisticated than I recalled. There are subtleties I completely missed; the action is wire-tight and brilliantly paced; and the characters -- a reintroduction of the formerly bland, vapid Karen Page; the suddenly antiheroic Matt Murdock; the patient, awful monster that is the Kingpin; an incredibly mature, intelligent portrayal of Captain America; a funny and touching rendering of Foggy Nelson; the tragic, pitiful villian Nuke -- are absolutely masterful. The dialogue is often rather clunky; dialogue has never been Miller's strong suit. But it's pleasing to reread the superhero books of my youth and find that at least one was written better, rather than worse, than I remember.