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Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts: 411

Note: For four years in the '90s, under my old name of Elayne Wechsler-Chaput, I wrote weekly comic book reviews, sometimes of up to 20+ books each week, entitled "Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts." I posted them on Usenet and CompuServe and they'd probably turn up on any number of Google groups searches through the rec.arts.comics groups. They seemed to be fairly popular with fans and pros alike, led to some great friendships and fascinating conversations and correspondences, and were excerpted in a number of letter columns and for blurbs on trade paperbacks. Some major life changes, particularly a new job situation and just not being able to keep up any more with reading comics as soon as they came out (a necessity in the immediacy of online culture), led me to stop doing the reviews in 1998. If you want to see some of them, click here. I've resurrected the "P-E FYT" style once before on this weblog (on September 27 to review a couple online comics) and felt it was time to bring it out of mothballs again for this book, which I consider very special and timely. It's published by Marvel Comics and is available at any local comic book store.

411 #1 (of 3)

Introduction by Bill Jemas

Featuring

"Understanding the Culture of Nonviolence"
Essay by Dr. Arun Gandhi
Spot illustration by David Mack

"Blowup"
Story: Bill Jemas and Chuck Austen
Script: Chuck Austin
Artist: Phil Winslade
Colorist: Chris Chuckry
Editor: Mike Raicht

"Tit-For-Tat"
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Frank Quitely
"Digital Inks": Avalon Studios
Colorist: Dan Brown
Editor: Mike Raicht

"Seeds"
Writer: David Rees
Artist: Tony Salmons
Colorist: Rick Bryant
Editor: Jennifer Lee

Letterer (all stories): Randy Gentile
Editor-in-Chief: Joe Quesada
President: Bill Jemas

Here's the 411 on 411 on 4-11... I mean, here's what I thought...

In Jemas' introduction, written on March 4, he notes, "Stories about peacemakers are particularly difficult to tell with America on the brink of war... the theme of sacrifice for the sake of peace is hard for many Americans to accept right now... You see, for any nation to engage in war, the most inhumane human enterprise, its people must believe that their enemy has given up the right to be treated as human beings - in short, that they deserve to die. In wartime, looking for the humanity in your enemy can't help but be seen - by patriots - as unpatriotic... These stories are neither anti-American nor anti-Iraqi, nor anti-French nor anti-Israeli. 411 is pro-human. It is a tribute to peacemakers, to people who turn the other cheek in the face of violence..." Boy howdy is it, and props to Jemas for not putting quotation marks around the word "patriots" as I would have. I can't think of anything more in keeping with the love for one's country than the eschewing of violence against others', the realization that we're all in this together.

Dr. Gandhi tells a story of his grandfather's conversion to the culture of nonviolence, the mental paradigm shift necessary to turn inward and reflect on the causes of hatred and prejudice rather than immediately lashing out against it and perpetuating the cycle of anger and violence still further. I thought it lacked a bit of a punch (no pun intended) but was a pretty good primer for people who aren't used to thinking in these terms (including the many who still confuse pacifism with passivity). "Nonviolence," Gandhi notes, "cannot be a strategy or a weapon to use when convenient and discarded when not. Nonviolence must become a way of life with a set of positive attitudes that one must diligently cultivate with the same zeal and devotion that one displays in one's efforts to improve one's material standing in life." Again, pretty much in line with what I've talked about earlier today and in past blog entries about positivity versus negativity.

But Gandhi garners my disagreement when he repeats his grandfather's claim that "Materialism and morality... have an inverse relationship: When one increases, the other decreases. Our obsession with materialism has caused us to sacrifice our values." I figure he's talking about the obsession part rather than the materialism part - after all, greed and sloth are two of the seven deadly sins - but I do think it unfair to cast aspersions on people who enjoy and feel they deserve creature comforts. I think everyone deserves them and should enjoy them, but in moderation - unselfishly, sensibly, without ostentation or yearning for status or validation through them. In short, I think Gandhi torpedoes (oh dear, more war metaphors) some of his message about positivity by condemning people for living in the material world, rather than for living there too much or excessively or to the exclusion of the spiritual world. But he does end his essay with a strong exhortation towards sharing the wealth among the family of humankind: "Good relationships can only be built on the solid foundation of respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation and must be nurtured with love and care. A nation is ultimately judged by the way people treat each other." Such can be said of us all, and I think this is one of the keys to practicing nonviolence. A nation, like a corporation, is made up of individual people, and individuals can make a difference, both in our lives and in the lives of those we touch. And this difference, this way we practice our lives, can have a snowball effect and become truly profound and earth-changing. I think we've only seen the tip of that iceberg with all the worldwide peace rallies that have taken place these past few months, and look forward to the continuation of that positive energy (the "second superpower" as some have called this world opinion in favor of peace).

On to the stories. The first one had the most impact on me, perhaps because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has touched on my life for the past 30 or so years (to the point where it is the Subject Not Discussed With Parents). The visual storytelling is top-notch as Winslade attempts to channel his inner Neal Adams only to find an outer Brent Anderson (which is still a compliment, honest). The expressions on his characters' faces are enough to bring one to tears, and the pacing is perfect and never lets up, a textbook example of how to portray kinetic action without fistfights (and the explosion only takes up one panel). If I had one complaint it would be the sameness of the panel structure, a slave to the current school of "wide-screen" popularized by such talented artists as Bryan Hitch; Winslade doesn't deviate from it at all until the last page, a split splash, which admittedly does make the ending stand out more. Chuckry's colors are very effective mood-setters, particularly the red anger of the Palestinian suicide bomber and the clear blue sky against which much of the action is played out; I wish more colorists understood the impact of pure, unmuddied colors to convey even more of a sense of foreboding during momentous events (think 9-11). Jemas and Austen come up with a very effective "twist ending" to this tale of a father's loss and thoughts of revenge for his child's death, and Austen fleshes out the characters' personalities quite well for such a short story (12 pages).

Next, Millar does "on-screen" narration (and Quitely draws a pretty spot-on Millar) introducing a tale about his Irish grandfather in the early years of the last century. It's worth relating to the uninitiated that "the troubles" go back, as do a great number of things across the pond, many centuries - a difficult concept for Americans to grasp sometimes. Millar and Quitely seem to be very in synch in their depiction of the conflicts of the era between the Irish working class and British constabularies, and Quitely's art doesn't even suffer that much from being "digitally inked" (i.e., darkened by computer, likely by a colorist rather than an inker). This kind of real-life stuff really brings out the best in him. The art's not terribly kinetic but I like the restraint in this case; that more is implied than actually shown (and Brown and/or the "digital inker" have gone a bit heavy on the K-tones here, making the visual atmosphere darker and grittier) adds to the feeling of gloom and general hopelessness. Unfortunately, that means Millar's granddad's prank (the way in which he took revenge for a beating at the hands of the bobbies) tends to fall a little flat as a result; the real "moral" of the story seems to be more that the family got the hell out of Ireland and up to Scotland to escape the madness. Even so, for what I consider the least effective story in the book it's still pretty solid.

The final vignette takes place in Afghanistan and concerns itself with a family's reaction to landmines. Coincidentally, this week's Riverdale Press features a "Letter from Cambodia" by co-publisher/editor Richard Stein, reporting from Boeung Krasar where "hundreds of children in blue and white uniforms awaited" Stein's and wife Hillary Baum's arrival as representatives of the local chapter of the United Nations Association, which had raised funds to clear landmines throughout the area with enough money left over to make an initial payment on a new schoolhouse. The schoolchildren, Stein noted, "were seated in what had been the center of a minefield." It was a comprehensive, uplifting piece giving not only a historic overview (and the Kissinger/Nixon barbarism was not omitted!) but emphasizing the good that can be done in this world towards building up rather than destroying. A perfect lead-in to this last tale. I didn't care for the art that much, Salmons is a little too impressionist for my tastes, and Bryant's limited palette of muted colors took a bit of getting used to, but it was a very pleasant surprise seeing Rees (best known for his "Get Your War On" commentary strips) carry a fictional tale from start to finish. I found the theme a bit telegraphed but it worked well as a fable (and a tribute to family dynamics and "breaking the cycle") anyway.

Not a dud in the bunch as far as I'm concerned. I eagerly await the two subsequent issues (even, as rumored, sans contributions from Caldicott and Kushner). Well done, folks.

So, what did y'all think?