Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Comics Review: Ode to Matt Fraction


Matt Fraction may just be the best comic writer out there right now. I know this is a bold statement, despite the "may", but I have been really impressed.

Part of that is that I have been able to read a lot within a fairly short time period, so I have more to go on than with many writers. It was Comixology again. They had a .99 cent Matt Fraction sale, and having heard good things, I went for it. That meant 12 issues of Defenders, 5 issues of Hawkeye, 17 of the Immortal Iron Fist, and 10 issues of The Order. (I also picked up Young Avengers #6 later for more on Hawkeye.)

I started with Defenders. The Immortal Iron Fist issues take place before the Defenders issues, which I realized later, so there could have been some advantage in reading that first, but that is fairly minor.

That leads to one of the things that Fraction does exceptionally well, but let me backtrack. I think that I don't like superhero comics. I can't back that up based on how often I get captivated by superhero comics, but in my mind that is not what I prefer, and there are reasons for that. It has to do with the larger than life situations where huge cataclysms happen, and important relationships and deaths happen, and then it all gets reset, and also the repetition as you need to be reminded once again that Wolverine heals fast or that Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. (I guess some of that is also preferring limited runs to ongoing series, but again I can't prove that I really do.)

The Matt Fraction reading was full of pleasant surprises because he kept handling these things brilliantly. There were things that I understood better about some developments in Defenders after reading Immortal Iron Fist, but it was not a problem. There are plot elements in both Immortal Iron Fist and The Order that seem to be influenced by Marvel's Civil War series, which I have heard of, but not read anything on, and that was not a problem. There were little phrases and nods, but not hammering over the head with explanation or leaving unsettling gaps. That alone is a nice trick.

Also, having recently read the first issue of a complicated multi-character team-forming arc that just felt loud and messy, I am impressed with the innovative and effective way that The Order was laid out. The interviews as framing devices were interesting, and despite multiple characters and a lot going on, it was easy to follow. The stakes were clear, the plot threads could be followed, and it all worked.

One thing that resonated with me over and over again is how much I liked different characters. That was certainly true with Clint Barton in Hawkeye, which I was expecting, and with Henry Hellrung and Pepper Potts in The Order and Jeryn Hogarth in Immortal Iron Fist, where I really had no expectations. It was also true with Stephen Strange and Betty Ross in Defenders, and I was not expecting that at all.

One thing that bothered me in some of my early Spider-Man reading was that I felt like the writer didn't really like Spidey, and he was favoring other characters over Peter Parker. That was also my first exposure to Dr. Strange (it was in a Dormammu story).

With Dr. Strange, they started out with two minor characters who didn't like him. One is a jerk, and he speaks (thinks, actually) what may be the funniest line of the series "You even sleep sanctimoniously." And you laugh, because it feels true, but that is the jerk. Then, a little later, the more sympathetic character, Molly, tells  him "I wish you knew, just for one second, how you make other people feel." And he does. You have met a former lover, you see him as more human, and he becomes a sympathetic character, instead of an annoying one.

Fraction is good at finding the humanity in his characters. Their vulnerabilities are realistic, and their biggest vulnerability may be caring. That was where I kept finding myself caring about the characters, when they cared about others - from team members in danger to pizza-loving dogs.

It was the characters that got me into Defenders, but then the plot kept getting bigger and more over the top, as tends to happen when you have all of these people with ridiculous powers. Fraction made it make sense, for how all of those many powers and anomalies could happen, and it was perfectly logical, though still huge. And then he undid it.

It should have felt like a cheat, but it didn't. Some of that may have been the desire to have things come right again, because, as previously stated, they care and you care, but also, the way he undid it was beautiful, and was summed up in a beautiful line.

"This time one small act of kindness made all the difference, because in the face of all our nightmares kindness is the most impossible thing of all."

Matt Fraction is smart, and he has heart. It's a winning combination.

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