Comic Review for MOOC Module 1: Addiction

I felt like I had gone too long without writing about comics. The last round of reviews was really only in late March, which was not bad, but I think I have been reading so much that it is building up. Yes, I think there was only two weeks left for music videos, but we may be getting into some overlapping areas, and it feels right to take this week and catch up on comics.

I have been taking a Massive Online Open Course, Social Issues through Comic Books. I have currently done most of the reading for three out of five modules: Addiction, Environment, and Social Inequality. It is not all, because there are a few books I am still trying to get my hands on, but they are also extra, and because there are two modules left, there will clearly be another round left anyway.

One issue that I have when reading comics is that I have such a drive to know the story that I usually don't fully appreciate the art on the first pass, and need to go through it again. With the MOOC there is an added level of complexity, because I need to think about it not just in terms of art and story but also how the social issue is being handled. Not only is that more to think about, but it means that there are some where I am really going to want to discuss spoilers, which I normally avoid in reviews.

So I think the way to handle this is to start with a list of the materials and whether I recommend them or not, and then everything below that may contain spoilers. We read a lot of comics, but there are also academic articles, interviews, and other material, some of which I may bring in as concepts are discussed.

Addiction:

Buzzkill #1-4, written by Donny Cates and Mark Reznicek, Art by Geoff Shaw, Colors by Lauren Affe, Recommended!

Green Lantern V2 #85 and 86, written by Denny O'Neil, pencils by Neal Adams, Inks by Dick Giordano,  Not recommended

Batman: Venom (The Dark Knight #16-20), written by Denny O'Neil, Art by Russ Braun, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and Trevor Von Eeden, Not recommended

Sex Criminals #1, written by Matt Fraction, art by Chip Zdarsky, partial recommendation because it is well written but the content is very adult. I am not continuing with it, but I can see that some people would.

Optional:

The Invincible Iron Man, Vol 7: My Monsters, multiple story runs include work from Matt Fraction, Salvador Larroca, Kano, Howard Chaykin, and Carmine Di Giandomenico, Recommended!

Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle, written by David Michelinie, art by John Romita Jr, Bob Layton, and Carmine Infantino, Not horrible, but not recommended.

Red Light Properties #0, art and story by Dan Goldman, less recommended, but not bad.

Also, I think this came up in one of the discussions, but I totally recommend this web comic about the Rat Park experiment by Stuart McMillen:

http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/#page-1

Maybe it's easier to start with the ones that I don't recommend. One of the interviews was with Denny O'Neil, and I liked him very much, so I don't want to be giving bad reviews to his writing. There are probably reasons why they didn't work.

With Green Lantern, he was in it, but it was really about Green Arrow and his ward Speedy getting hooked on drugs. Part of why I could not like it was that I could not like Green Arrow at all. I could not believe anyone ever did. And I suspect there was something captured in terms of how a lot of people would view those with drug problems, but it was hard to sympathize. The part that worked best for me was just a throwaway line, when one of the villains talks about the racism his father faces and the release in his weapon collection:

"All day long he answers to Chink...Slant. At night he comes home and grooves on the armament -- pretends he's Genghis Khan or somebody.. pretends he's killing his bosses instead of kissing their feet. Pop's escape trip."

But he's found another escape trip in drugs, and then his black friend one-ups him because he hears much worse names, and the drugs help him get by. There's a lot in there, but it doesn't get unpacked because these are ultimately disposable bad guys.

Part of the problem may be that with most of these, when the writer has addiction experience, it is with alcohol, and that is so different legally and socially that while it is not completely unrelated, it's still not equivalent.

Batman's Venom storyline was an interesting idea, but it needed more thought. Batman's addiction felt so contrived. Yes, he would be upset about not being able to save a kidnapped child from drowning, but the father was so unaffected by the death, and so focused on pushing the pills onto Batman, how could he not tell that something was up? Batman is supposed to be smart!

It was a nice touch that Batman's turning point was being asked to kill Jim Gordon, but Batman's long fall, and time chasing the wrong villains, and time in improbable rehab don't show you that drugs are bad because it is too unrealistic, even before the shark comes into play.

I think where it lost me was that life was too cheap in this. Both of the main villains sacrifice their children, innocent people die, and ultimately Batman is not heroic enough. What's the point in having superheroes if the villains cause that much damage first. (You may draw your own Man of Steel comparisons.)

Where Buzzkill and My Monsters work are because they feel real, and human. In My Monsters, one of the segments has Tony speaking in an AA meeting. It is humorous because the artwork shows events that are much more dramatic than what he is describing, though everything he says is true, just with higher stakes and more robotics, but ultimately it is a true story of how addiction happened and working with it, warm, funny, and touching.

Buzzkill is much darker, because the character is so sympathetic, and ultimately his demons are too strong. I tried thinking of alternative scenarios, where he could have made it, like if his father had died in the first battle, but that would have done different things to him. Maybe sometimes there is just too much stacked against you. Just the fact that I did look for other resolutions, however, shows the impact it had.

I don't have as much to say about Sex Criminals and Red Light Properties because they were both free introductions, and where I can see how addiction could come up, it's not really there. The main characters in Sex Criminals can stop time when, well, technically I think it's the orgasm that does it. It does appear that they are making some questionable choices, and with that ability, sex addiction certainly seems possible, but it is not necessarily a factor and again, that content is not really for me.

The protagonist in Red Light Properties rids homes of ghosts, but needs substances to accomplish it. Dealing with the ghosts looks like it may have a worse toll than anything he ingests, but this is just a brief introduction. It's an interesting concept, but the art mixes drawings with photos, and I find it a bit disorienting, though you could argue that works for the concept. 

Update: After watching the Matt Fraction interview, he also said that the main characters were not sex addicts, but what I had not thought of until then was that other characters in the book do have substance issues, so it fits in well there. It is still just really adult content.