the pretty flames that bridges make

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It's been a week of unexpected farewells to things I'd rather not have said goodbye to--nothing heartbreaking to lose, just one small wave from the dock after another. Hence the absence of posting. I assume things are going to pick up some during the summer; I'm even thinking about 52-blogging.

Really, the thing I've kept going back to this week is the fourth and final issue of Bulleteer. It's probably tied with Zatanna as my favorite of the Seven Soldiers titles, which is saying something (Jog has had some very interesting things to say about the series, too). A few things I've noticed:

*As more than a few people have mentioned, there's a serious problem with the art: Sally is supposed to look like she's 16 years old, and doesn't, which misses the whole point of the story. (She even appeared in Zatanna #1, convincingly looking younger and saying "I'm 75 years old and I can't get served in a bloody bar!") The point, of course, is that superhero comics have been trying to "grow up" for decades and haven't, because they (or rather the people who produce and consume them) are unclear on what "growing up" would mean... because "mature," in mainstream comics terms, means bullets and headlights, winks and teases, cunningly placed wisps of smoke.

*The first, second and fourth issues of all the SS comics have parallel cover designs; the fourth ones are all images of the protagonists escaping from their context in one way or another (even the fourth Mister Miracle is him pulling the old empty tomb trick). Alix's pose on the cover of Bulleteer #4 is of course a cheesecake shot, but it's a sort of foreshortened/fisheye image: she wants to get out of the picture plane, but she also wants to get out of the comic book that her life has become.

*We never see the back of Sally's neck, but we do see her reaching back to touch it a few times... and it can't just be to strike a pose, can it?

Unrelatedly: The final Smallmouth column for the moment. And thank you, Laura, for the link to this fantastic, not especially safe-for-work webcomic, which I can't believe I didn't see any time in the last five years; if you're going to read it, you're going to need 45 minutes or so.

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This page contains a single entry by Douglas published on March 19, 2006 11:55 PM.

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