Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett takes on Fear Itself (and a couple of other new comics).
I realize that I’m on record as not being the biggest fan of licensed comics but I am a huge fan of the work of Roger Langridge from Fred the Clown to Thor: The Mighty Avenger. So of course I was happy to hear Marvel would be publishing his Muppets stories (see “Marvel to Publish Langridge’s 'Muppets'”). He did a remarkable job of bringing the characters to life and it’s nice knowing the material will be getting more exposure, especially in a larger size (though undoubtedly there will be retailers who will complain that it won’t fit on their shelves) and for only $5.95.
I never thought I’d live long enough to see an issue of Fantastic Four sell more than a hundred thousand copies again (see “’FF’ #1 Top Comic in March”), or that the only two comics to sell more than a hundred thousand copies in the last six months would be issues of the Fantastic Four. Though of course there were mitigating circumstances, one was a new #1 and the Human Torch died in the other. I wish this could be seen as an endorsement of Jonathan Hickman’s new direction for the series but hopefully some of the people who bought all those issues will actually read them and find out for themselves just how good it is.
Well, I read Marvel’s Fear Itself #1 and enjoyed it on its own merits. As the beginning of yet another superhero epic event it’s pretty good, but it was also interesting to read it as a metaphor for what’s going on in this country. Though it goes unnamed there’s a riot on the site of the proposed Islamic Cultural Center of New York (though the script goes out of its way to make sure we know it wasn’t the result of the machinations of The Hate Monger or The Sons of the Serpent) and there are scenes of someone that’s lost their home and is forced to look for work in another part of the country.
Which is good as far as it goes but unfortunately Tony Stark gets another ‘brilliant’ idea (seriously, after Civil War you’d think there’d be some kind of review process); he’ll put people back to work by having them build the Asgardians a new city on Earth! Odin deeply resents outsourcing jobs to Earth and repeatedly says the Norse Gods could rebuild* with a snap of their fingers. But given the Aesir aren’t known for being builders it seems more likely the place was built using cheap troll labor.
I hate to spoil it for you but from this issue’s ending it doesn’t look like the plot of Fear Itself will be focusing on the economic implications of the Stark Job Program, which is a shame since I can see a lot of possibilities in a story where Americans become the Day Laborers of the Gods (though I imagine the experience would be analogous to how Bahrain treats its day laborers).
There was an unsigned piece recently on the Guardian newspaper’s Website titled “Why Christopher Nolan is taking Batman to the rustbelt,” subtitled “Pittsburgh and other postindustrial cities are a fitting location for cinema’s dystopian future.” It talks about the third Batman movie filming in Pittsburgh as part of a trend of Hollywood productions being shot in places such as Cleveland (Spider-Man 3) and Detroit (Transformers 3). Here’s the paragraph that caught my attention:
Yet this region of America, with its grandly tumbledown cities and postindustrial landscapes, seems a fitting location for Nolanesque creepshows. When searching for locations for The Road, the filmed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel about the end of the world in nuclear winter, the producers felt no need to add much CGI to the area outside Pittsburgh in winter.
I have to confess it’s a little hard reading a foreign newspaper make a part of America sound like Mordor. I’m familiar with the idea that movie producers, especially ones like Roger Corman, sometimes take their productions to less expensive locations; for a while the Philippines were popular, then Ireland, then Eastern Europe. Because the exteriors of the Underworld movies had such a strange, gloomy atmosphere (and were filmed in Yugoslavia) I used to like to joke they took place on “Planet Bulgaria.” But it doesn’t seem so funny when you find out it doesn’t take a lot of special effects to make a part of your own country suitable for a “Nolanesque creepshow.”
* What, exact? I’m as big a continuity nerd as they come but until this moment it never occurred to me Marvel Comics has been interchangeably using the term “Asgard” to describe the Norse Gods city and the realm it resided in. But then, what else would you call it? Asgard City? Asgardopolis?
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.