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The 9 Greatest Comic Book
Look, so far, Ultimatum has been a disappointment, and it's not hard to realize why. Jeph Loeb is totally screwing the pooch, both figuratively and literally. It's pretty obvious that Loeb's abilities lie more toward character studies (Superman For All Seasons, the Marvel "Color" books) than big blockbuster action; the scope is just too big for him, and when that happens, you end up with writers inserting cheap "shock" moments because the story doesn't have any depth, any resonance. It doesn't really feel like there's any notable moments because the "shocks" don't feel…organic.
I was a little surprised, though, since the basic premise is so natural to comics: revenge. In this case, Magneto's seeking revenge against the entire world for the deaths of his children, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, in a rather extreme fashion - reversing the magnetic poles of the Earth. You'd think that would be an easy concept to write a great story about, but again, Loeb's screwing it up something fierce.
But what he did do, was make me think about other great revenge "moments" in comics. You probably won't agree with me (in fact, I'm sure you won't), but here's my Top 9, in no particular order:
I fucking love "Lone Wolf". I've always enjoyed the samurai genre, but LW was the first time I felt like was reading actual illustrated literature. Not quite a comic, not exactly a manga, LW is the tale of Ogami Itto, who serves as the Shogun's executioner (the "Kogi Kaishakunin"), an extremely prestigious position. In a bid to take his spot, rival Yagyu Retsudo secretly sends a group to break into Itto's house. Itto kills the men, but during the battle his wife, along with the rest of the household, are killed, and the assassins sneak a funeral tablet for the Emperor into the Itto family shrine. Why does that matter? In olden Japan, that was essentially saying you wished for the death of the Emperor. Itto knows it was Retsudo who set him up, but he still has to give up his post as executioner and commit "seppuku", a form of ritualistic suicide. Instead, he kills his guards, takes his infant son (the only survivor of the attack) and becomes a badass mercenary, declaring them both to become "demons" in his search for revenge that lasts for 28 volumes, and over 8,700 pages.
From beginning to end, this LW is an epic tale of a man who throws away his own humanity in a quest for revenge that eventually leads him against an army or two - no exaggeration. How obsessed is he? The above manga, six films, four plays and a television series, and across every telling of the story, one of the most tense moments is when Itto leaves a major decision to his infant son, Daigo:
Wu-Tang, bitches!…Sorry; forgot where I was for a second. The point is, this guy is willing to kill his own son for his revenge. That's serious, man.
Gran'ma is not pleased. Preacher quickly gained a reputation as one of the most inventive, hilarious, visceral comics around, behind the writing of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's art, and the final part of the "Until the End of the World" storyline certainly played a big part. As the story has progressed, Rev. Jesse Custer and sometimes-girlfriend Tulip O'Hare, while on a quest to track down God and make him pay for his various "sins", have been kidnaped by Custer's insane hillbilly relatives. Led by the oddly long-lived Gran'ma Marie L'Angelle and her loyal enforcer Jody, Custer is brought back to fulfill his supposed destiny to become a priest, and Tulip is killed. Meanwhile, the "Word of God", the ability to make anyone do anything you say, has abandoned Custer, and with God seemingly on the side of the rednecks, it looks as though the series may be over.
Until issue #12. For what appear to be contradictory reasons, God brings Tulip back to life, at the same time Custer confronts his demons in the form of Jody, the man who's been beating him down his whole life.
It's hard to describe the amount of carnage that splatters across the next 24 pages; you have people running around on fire, an old woman getting blown up by an oxygen tank in the middle of a burning house, a guy getting a nail through his eardrum, some other guy getting his head blown off…it's brutal, in an awesome way. And by the end, Jesse and Tulip have exacted their bloody revenge completely.
Deena Pilgrim is in a bad spot. As one-half of the lead detective duo in "Powers", Volume 2 finds her and partner Christian Walker overwhelmed by a crime wave in the wake of a federal law making superpowers illegal. Naturally, the move backfires, as law-abiding heroes accede to the law, while the bad guys just keep on doing what they do, all in the midst of a disturbing evidence of a "superpowers virus". Things get even worse for Pilgrim by issue #5, as she's taken captive during a botched raid by a super who works for the Bug, a formerly-incarcerated super who also happens to be one of the flashpoints for the plague.
Guess who put him in jail?
The rest of the issue has Walker desperately searching the entire town for Pilgrim, while the Bug tells her exactly what he has planned for her. Turns out his particular powers are addictive, and he's going too use that to turn her, to make her his mole inside the department. At least, that's the plan - until the end of the issue, when Pilgrim forces his hand into his mouth and creates a feedback that kills the Bug, and transfers his powers to her.
Issue #6, meanwhile, is told partially through flashback, as Pilgrim wakes up in the hospital and tells Walker and the rest of the force just how she escaped. We get flashes of mayhem, as Pilgrim makes damn sure nobody in the Bug's gang escapes, even trapping one gangster who can shift through solid walls partially through a sofa, before finally blowing up the entire building as Walker and backup arrive at just in time to see her emerge from the rubble.
C'mon, we all knew it was coming. If you don't know about "The Night Gwen Stacy Died," I don't know what to tell you. Just imagine "Spider-Man 1" with a blonde instead of a redhead. Oh, and instead of Spider-Man saving her and a cable car full of kids, the girl dies. Besides that, everything else is pretty much the same, including the big fight and the Green Goblin impaling himself on his own glider while trying to kill Peter Parker. Seriously, did you get to this site by accident or something?
Brian Azzarello is neck-and-neck with Ed Brubaker for the title of "crime writer of this generation", and nowhere is that more evident than his mobster magnum opus. 100 Bullets elevates revenge to an art form; from the initial plot concerning seemingly-average people being given untraceable weaponry and carte blanche to revenge themselves on their enemy, to the labyrinthian corridors of generational feuds and decades-old power grabs we see as the series expands, Azzarello traces intricate patterns of retribution that feed into each other, doubling back just when you think they're over, suddenly exploding in someone's face in a completely unexpected moment. I'm sorry, I would get more specific except I fully expect you to go check this series out, and I don't want to ruin it for you.By the way, the series isn't over quite yet. The 100th and final issue is set for release on April 15, and coincidentally, there's two last betrayals that haven't been fully reconciled yet.
The key to revenge is making sure that it's of an equivalent nature; you don't necessarily want to go too far, but you want to make sure you've gotten your point across. Wolverine's got a pretty serious bone to pick with the Hand, as they've actually managed to do something clever; namely, they've managed to "kill" Wolverine, but rather than deliver the coup de grace, the Hand do their magic Ninja thing to bring him back as one of them, essentially putting the entire Marvel Universe on red alert. S.H.I.E.L.D. eventually get Logan back, but not before he causes epic levels of chaos. Before it's all over, Wolverine's killed fellow X-Man Northstar, broken into the home of the Fantastic Four, gotten Electra into the clutches of the Hand (no pun intended), and nearly completely crippled S.H.I.E.L.D., while almost killing Nick Fury. So he's understandably peeved.
Which explains him going ballistic on the Hand's hidden mystical temple headquarters, a "secret city in a forgotten forest that's only visible to the outside world for thirteen minutes after dawn." Few do blockbuster-action comics like Mark Millar, and part four of "Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." is no exception. Case in point? An apparent avid student of the Chicago way, Logan meets the thousands of sword-wielding ninjas with a Sentinel he's voice commanding. What follows is Wolverine at his most feral, mowing down arguably hundreds of enemies with no compunction. Occasionally we see Wolverine fight against his berserker side, wrestling with the relative necessity of it against his struggle to retain his humanity. This is not one of those times.
Revenge is a concept that stretches past what some people might consider regular parameters, superseding things like race, gender, religion…even morals, strangely enough. Whether you're dealing with angels, devils or people who exist in the grey area between, at the end of the day, people will always be capable of seeking vengeance. Which brings us to the end of Mark Gruenwald's 12-issue series, which was called "Civil War" (hah!) but could have just as easily been called "Everybody Dies!". Originally a blatant rip-off of DC's "Justice League", Squadron can be considered among those other seminal 80's comics that really pushed the boundaries of the medium. Basically, fake-JLA decides that fighting supervillains and stopping the odd natural disaster wasn't enough, and decide to use their powers to essentially create a utopia on Earth. After one year, despite Batm- sorry, Nighthawk quitting the team in protest of the Squadron taking over the U.S. government, fake-JLA has managed to reach their goal, eliminating war, poverty and various other ills. This victory's come with a price, though, as it transpired that the only way to "really" stop supervillains and the like from committing crimes is to use technology to modify their behavior, effectively draining them of their free will.
Meanwhile, Nighthawk creates his own team, called America's Redeemers, meant to take down the Squadron, and it finally comes to a head in the final issue. It's not just seeing classic "DC" archetypes seriously go at it in one of the earliest depictions of what such a fight would look like that's jarring, it's how much actually happens. Broken necks, skulls and spines, people exploding and having massive coronaries that literally make their hearts explode…if someone turned me into a mental zombie, I would be out for blood, and I really got the feeling that the "bad guys" felt the same here.
Michonne & The Governor - The Walking Dead, #33
Walking Dead's really made a name for itself; yes, a great deal of that is due to Robert Kirkman's fantastic writing, but part of it can be attributed to the title's "no-holds barred" style of storytelling. One of the most graphic examples can be Michonne's retribution concerning the Governer, a crazy redneck who leads a military-style outpost. It's a relatively calm place, except for the coliseum-type games, which pit captured "intruders" against zombie hordes for entertainment. There's other ways for the Governor and his men to have "fun" also, as Michonne finds out the hard way.
In a somewhat ironic twist, while we can infer what happens to Michonne, we never really see it. We don't really have to; as the Governor says, "Tell me, girl – how long do you think it would take for me to ruin your life – shatter your sense of security – really fuck you up? I think a half an hour could do it – but really, I plan on doing this every day as often as I can, until you figure out some way to kill yourself," while his henchman ties her legs to opposing walls…we can pretty much figure it out.
The Governor, though? He, and us as well, don't get that benefit. We sit and watch as he gets a power drill to the shoulders, an arm chopped off, his dick hammered to a wooden plank (we don't actually see that, per se, but still), some fingernails ripped out, and finally a scooped-out eyeball, before she's forced to leave him for dead. Damn.
Most people in Barracuda's position would consider themselves fortunate. I mean, he went up against Frank Castle and a Great White shark, and all he lost was an eye, all the fingers on his right hand, a bunch of teeth, several pints of blood and a boat. Better than losing your life, right? As far as Barracuda (a character based on Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Stagga' Lee) is concerned, though, he'd have preferred to have lost his life, considering he lost something even more important: the top spot, at least as far as Barracuda's concerned. And that is some shit that he simply will not stand for. But how to get Castle back?
And that's where Barracuda gets a game-changing brainwave. After getting e-mailed a mysterious list of known Castle contacts while recuperating, he embarks on a little quest, that leads to a sometime-Punisher cohort named Yorkie, which leads to a shocking moment: Barracuda carrying an infant girl into the room where he has Castle tied up, and informing the Punisher that he's the father by announcing "Congratulations; it's a bitch." The fight that follows isn't even one between men; it's more like a brawl between two wild, rabies-infested animals. In the end, though, it actually pales next to a moment that even Barracuda claimed he'd been "lookin' forward to like nothin' else ever." See, one of the things that made the Punisher different from other "killers" is that he's essentially a force of nature; no ties to anyone, no weak points to exploit. Just a man and a gun…except after that one moment.
