Master plans of the Mastermind

Kyle’s become a man with a plan.

I’ve been doing a very painstaking archeological dig on my nightstand. I think I’ve reached the second or third strata of books dating back to the “I can get to that any day now” era. Due to geological erosion, that means I’m starting to see bits of wood peaking out of the thinner “FCBD Comics I’m not interested in reading but I don’t want to throw away until I do read them” strata. From the little bit that I can see, there’s lots of interesting striations of the “WTF is that?” variety, which might slow down the excavation process.

One of the things that I was able to clear away was a Power Girl trade that Kris had loaned me a while back. It’s a collection of all the different Power Girl origin stories throughout the years. See, Power Girl has had this very weird history as different major ret-cons of the DCU have once again messed up her origin somehow. It was really interesting to look at how much writers jumped through hoops to try to rectify her different origin stories from the Survivor-of-Krypton to Descendant-Of-Atlantis-Magician-And-The-Survivor-Of-Krypton-Thing-Was-Just-An-Illusion to No-Really-Survivor-Of-Krypton-But-A-Different-Krypton-From-Elsewhere-In-The-Multiverse-And-This-Is-All-A-Bit-Confusing-Isn’t-It-Here’s-Some-Amanda-Connor-Art-To-Distract-You.

One of the other things I found interesting was looking back at her original origin story written in 1978 and seeing how the story telling has changed. What I found most interesting is how much of the comic was not told via action or art panels, but by narrative text bubbles. You could almost hear an Adam West Batman-esque narrator reading them from panel to panel. I found it a very interesting experience and quite different then what you see today. In today’s comic, where a fight scene might go for 5 or 6 panels, in the 70’s it would get summed up in 2 panels and some narrative text boxes. While this would allow for the story to progress a lot farther in the same number of pages, today’s panel layouts definitely give artists more freedom to show off their skills. My gut reaction is that I like today’s mode of story-telling better, but I’m not sure if that’s because I honestly think it’s better or whether it’s just the style that I’m used to. What do you think, dear reader? Have you read some of these classic Golden and Silver Age comics and have a preference in how they are written versus the Modern Age? Drop us a line on the Batphone, I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

As a special Labor Day treat, Kris has his thoughts on his pull list from last week.

Kris, what’s on your pull list?

• Brightest Day #9 - Finally the story seems to be moving along. I just hope this keeps up.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #36 - I love this book and I’m hoping its ending will live up to some of the better arcs of the series.
• Cowboy Ninja Viking #8 - This book is great and the art just gets better with each issue.
• Freedom Fighters #1 - My pick of the week. This is how you start a new book. It serves a nice introduction, but leaves enough unknown to keep you coming.
• JSA All-Stars #10 - Wacky escapist fun. Giant Gods smashing LA and Power Girl being awesome.
• Red Hood: Lost Days #4 - Jason Todd could be so awesome if they let him.
• Secret Six #25 - Not Simone’s best work, but it’s still better than most stuff out there. I love Bane and his new Secret Six, especially Giganta, but the actual Secret Six seemed shallow in the wake of the cat’s cradle arc.